A Fragment of Fear by John Bingham Read Free Book Online Page B

exterior?
    I could find no answer to the question before I left the Bower Hotel.

CHAPTER 3
    O n the evening of October 10th, I caught the 8.25 p.m. train back to London. It was cold, it had been bitterly cold all day. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the first touch of winter had descended, and with it a thick mist.
    Either the heating on the train had gone wrong, or they had forgotten to switch it on, and I sat huddled in a corner of the carriage, sometimes thinking, sometimes trying to doze, waiting for the train to gather speed, which it never did.
    Opposite me a woman sat, large and ungainly, her figure shrouded in a thick jersey and a short coat, topped off with a white mackintosh. She looked about fifty, and had a round face encased in a layer of wool, a cross between a skiing hat and a blue child’s bonnet, which tied under the chin. Myopic, naïve eyes looked through large horn-rimmed spectacles; mostly at the mist-covered night, sometimes at me.
    I guessed she wanted to talk, and took no notice. I dislike talking on trains. And I was thinking about the Bower Hotel.
    The visit had not been an entire success, but at least I had seen the place where Lucy Dawson had lived. I could write:
    Old Mrs. Dawson, who was murdered in Pompeii, was a woman in her late seventies. A tall, thin, frail woman, she lived most of the year at the Bower Hotel, Burlington-on-Sea, a good class residential hotel. She liked to spend a few weeks on the continent each year.
    For the rest of the time, her life appeared to be uneventful, mostly whiling away the days in the manner usual in such hotels, though she took some interest in a seamen’s charity.
    Tragedy, however, was already known in her family. Apart from the fact that her father lost most of his money as a result of a business transaction with crooks, her husband had been murdered after only two years of marriage when he disturbed a burglar; and now she herself was destined to die a tragic death behind the sunbaked walls of an ancient Roman city.
    I leaned my head against the train upholstery, eyes closed, forming the dull, uninspired sentences in my mind as the train ground its way through the mist.
    As a background picture it was terribly thin, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
    As to the Stepping Stones, who had sent a wreath, I was beginning to lose interest in them. The wording, “In memory of happier times,” was old fashioned and pedantic. They were possibly some amateur entertainment group with whom Lucy Dawson had once been associated, two or three of whom still survived in London or some provincial town. Perhaps they even met from time to time to play a piano and entertain each other in reedy voices with songs from their youth.
    I was beginning to paint a sentimental picture of them, when suddenly, to my annoyance, the woman opposite me spoke.
    “The fog service is always much worse on Sundays.”
    “Yes,” I said, hating her, and opened my eyes, and closed them again.
    “Still,” the voice went on, “I’m well wrapped up and I quite enjoyed a day in the country.”
    The word “quite” sounded a sad little word, indicating that the speaker had not enjoyed her day in the country as much as she had expected. I sighed.
    “Hardly a day to plod round the woods,” I said, since what had to be had to be. “It’s not exactly primrose weather.”
    “No,” she said solemnly, “it’s not the right time of year for primroses. I missed Mass, too.”
    “You are a Catholic, I suppose.”
    “Yes, are you?” she asked eagerly.
    I am not a Catholic, but Juliet is, and I know a good deal about the subject. Suddenly, I saw myself engaged in some ghastly Protestant v. Catholic argument, of the kind which invariably leads nowhere at all. This I could not contemplate.
    “Yes,” I said, to forestall it.
    “And I suppose you practise? ”
    “Oh, yes,” I said, in case she should start giving me a tolerant lecture about overcoming the Weaknesses of the Flesh. I need not