The Travelling Bag
SUSAN HILL is the winner of numerous literary prizes. In 2012, she was awarded a CBE for her services to literature. Author of the Simon Serrailler crime series and numerous other novels, her literary memoir, Howards End is on the Landing and the ghost stories The Man In The Picture, The Small Hand, Dolly and Printer’s Devil Court are all published by Profile. The Woman in Black, which was has been running in the West End for over twenty-five years, and was a huge film in 2012, is published by Profile in hardback.
ALSO BY SUSAN HILL
GHOST STORIES
The Small Hand
The Woman in Black
Printer’s Devil Court Dolly
The Man in the Picture
NOVELS
Strange Meeting
In the Springtime of the Year
I’m the King of the Castle
SHORT STORIES
The Boy who Taught the Beekeeper to Read and other Stories
CRIME NOVELS
The Various Haunts of Men
The Pure in Heart
The Risk of Darkness
The Vows of Silence
The Shadows in the Street
NON-FICTION
Howards End is on the Landing
The Travelling Bag
And Other Ghostly Stories
SUSAN HILL
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
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Bevin Way
London WCIX 9HD
www.profilebooks.com
Copyright © Susan Hill, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN 978 1 78283 237 9
Contents
The Travelling Bag
Boy Twenty-One
Alice Baker
The Front Room
For my much loved son-in-law, Jack Ruston
THE TRAVELLING BAG
PART ONE
‘Tell me, what would you say has been your most – shall we say “intriguing” case, Gilbert?’
Tom Williams and I were sitting over an after-dinner brandy in the small library of our club. It was a dreary London evening, but in here, the fire glowed and the lamps cast circles of tawny light. One or two other members had come and gone but it was the Upper Drawing Room which would be crowded – that and the card rooms. The Great Library was closed while the beautiful old plasterwork, which had been damaged by a leaking roof, was restored.
Tom Williams was a retired bishop, but you would never have known it, for he was without a vestige of the usual smoothness or pomposity too often acquired by his kind and preferred the modest but comfortable surroundings of this club, whose name was not well known, to the grander premises of smart ones. The Tabor was tucked away down a side street of St James’s, unimposing, perhaps even a little shabby. But it was efficiently run and had better food than most clubs – a well-kept secret. Some of its members had names to conjure with but those were accompanied by retiring personalities. There were statesmen, members of the judiciary and high-ranking military men, and they all mingled easily with artists, writers and gentlemen of the turf, and even with someone of my profession, if such it can be called.
I am a psychic private investigator. I studied mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge and followed with a second degree in the natural sciences. But from very early on, my deepest and most compelling interests were the investigation of crime, including the psychology of the criminal, together with the extra-sensory powers of the mind. I am not a spiritualist, nor do I dabble in any form of the occult. I do not tout for clients. I have more work than I can comfortably handle and turn down at least half the requests I receive for my services. People know of me, though I have never advertised.
So it was that, over dinner with Tom Williams, I had been answering some of his questions about both aspects of my work, although he was more intrigued about the investigative side, which was understandable, given his Christian profession. In my view, however, the psychic is only an example of the variety of untapped human potential and has nothing to do with any form of religion. On those matters I stand neutral, a respectful sceptic.
‘Every case has its fascinating aspect,’ I said now, lifting my brandy glass towards the glow of the fire and watching its contents seem to blaze. ‘I would not take one on which did not. They have much in common too, yet each is unique in one way or another and it is that which provides the excitement and the challenge.’
‘Pluck one out.’
It came to me at once, as these things do. A picture formed in my mind of a downtrodden-looking man and then, superimposed upon it, one of a woman, wearing a violet-coloured coat with a fur collar, and a small hat. Her expression was one of pleading and anxiety but there was also a determination in her face and a singleness of purpose. She had appeared in my consulting rooms without appointment, at the end of a bitter January day and, after I had invited her to sit down, she had leaned forwards in the chair opposite to mine. She held, close to her, an old-fashioned travelling bag of brown, cracked and faded leather.
‘I see by the glint in your eye that you have hit upon a case,’ Tom said, smiling.
‘Yes. Perhaps because it is linked closely to this club. One or two things happened within these walls.’
‘Then I will order us another brandy and you will tell me the tale.’
I shook my head. ‘No. There is rather too much for the end of a long, convivial evening and I must be up early tomorrow. Besides, I would like to glance again at my case notes first. Let us meet here in a week’s time.’
Tom agreed, albeit reluctantly, for I had whetted his appetite, he said, and he was impatient to hear the story. We set up our appointment for the following Wednesday, which is generally a quiet evening in the Tabor – possibly because it is the only evening, other than a Sunday, when the roast meat trolley is not wheeled out.
We parted and as soon as I got home, I dimmed the lamps in my quiet sitting room and sat recalling the story clearly, without any need to consult my old case notes. Once I have begun to focus, a single image is usually enough to lead me to the rest, and I had already recalled one that evening.
I would tell my tale as if I were reading aloud from a book. Tom was the best sort of listener, eager, but quiet and attentive and I knew he would not interrupt me until the story was done.
I happened to have some free evenings – a visit to the opera and two dinners had been cancelled. It was the season of infectious coughs and colds in the city and people were inclined to stop at home. I was able to prepare myself well.
This was my story.
One
When Walter Craig was in his first year as a student of medical science, it was already clear that he had a fine mind, a dedication and an application to his work which would see him go far. But even more important, he had a flair, a spark of inventiveness that gave him the ability to make intuitive connections which others did not see. Although these had then to be put to the test, step by careful step, they were almost always proved to be correct and he obtained a first-class degree with the highest possible marks. He went on to begin ground-breaking research into the workings of the central nervous system, which promised to have important application to the treatment of some devastating diseases. Those who began to
make practical use of his theoretical work were awestruck that so young a man should be making such discoveries. A brilliant future surely lay ahead of him, together with all the honours and prizes he would naturally attract.
But he was a shy, modest and even rather nervous man who preferred to spend his time in the laboratory, or at his desk, rather than socialising and otherwise putting himself about. It was left to others, then, to promote his discoveries.
He worked hard – too hard. After six years of intensive study he took a bad cold one winter, and the cold developed into pleurisy and then pneumonia. He was desperate to get back to his work but lacked all energy – both physical and mental – to do so, and sank into a lethargy accompanied by a deep depression which lasted many weeks. Before his illness he had been working on a new theory about the make-up of the spinal cord, in terms of electrical impulses travelling between there and the brain. He had some proof of his theories but needed to do many more painstaking experiments and the fact that he was unable to continue was the greatest frustration he could suffer. There seemed to be nothing else of interest in his life, though he enjoyed listening to choral music and went regularly to hear the college choir, in spite of being no sort of religious believer. Yet there was something spiritual about his response to choral singing and indeed, in one sense, to the discoveries he was making in his work.
In so far as people knew Walter Craig at all, they liked him – for what was there to dislike? Certainly his prolonged absence was noticed – no one else burned the lights so late. But it would be too much to say that he was greatly missed.
When he was ready to come back, his doctor recommended that he obtain some help with the routine parts of his research and, after initial reluctance, he agreed. He realised that, as well as receiving assistance, he would be giving someone else valuable experience. He had never been a teacher, and, until he found exactly the right pupil, he said that he did not know whether he would make a good one. He interviewed five potential assistants and rejected all of them. He gave no reasons, beyond saying either that they were ‘not up to it’ or that he would be unable to work with them. And then, the sixth applicant appeared. Silas Webb was just the sort of young man that anyone who knew Craig assumed would be rejected out of hand. He was very handsome, had an almost boyish enthusiasm for medical science, and his knowledge of the area Craig worked in was already good. Webb’s open and engaging manner concealed a certain slyness and he was not universally trusted, though no one ever put a finger upon why.
After a couple of months, one of the professors asked how Webb was getting on. Craig was thoughtful for a moment – he never made quick replies to questions, let alone passed quick judgement.
‘He is sound,’ he said. ‘He is able and willing. I think I can teach him a good deal, if only he will listen and be patient. He has clever ideas of his own but he does not always follow them through and he lacks that painstaking attention to detail which is vital. But he has taken a lot of the routine work off my shoulders, so that I can devote my energies to new ideas. He still needs supervision – I dare not leave him entirely to his own devices. But without him I should be much further behind, thanks to this wretched illness.’
He was still easily exhausted, no longer had the stamina to work late into the night and occasionally had to take a full day off to rest. He had aged. He had a general greyness about him. But he had recovered all his passion for his work and for making discoveries and he was as excited as ever when some experiment ‘came out’ or calculations proved correct.
Several months later, when it seemed that his work was reaching a critical point, he was taken ill again, with a recurrence of the old pattern of fever, deep depression and complete exhaustion, and this time his doctor was cautious in his prognosis. Craig would recover but it would take longer and perhaps the after-effects would be lasting. He might return to his work but it seemed likely that he would be prey to these debilitating attacks for the rest of his life.
For two weeks, Silas Webb carried on working alone, arriving early and leaving late. He used the extra time, he said, to pursue some research of his own.
And then he disappeared. He did not come into the laboratories, the science library or the college office. He left no message and replied to none. After a few days, someone went round to his lodgings. The landlady said that he had gone, although his bill was paid up to the end of the term. His rooms were empty of every trace of him.
Walter Craig was told but he was sunk into a deep lethargy and appeared not to be interested, or to care. He would find another assistant when he returned and he said again that, although he had liked Silas well enough, he did not have the finest of minds, the ultimate spark of genius to reach the heights of scientific discovery. ‘Though with application he might, perhaps, climb half-way.’
Two
It was a full two years before Craig was well enough to be able to come back without the need to take days off for rest. Gradually, he had grown physically stronger and he returned to the work which had been coming tantalisingly close to fruition. But his mental sharpness was blurred beyond repair. As soon as he tried to pick up old threads he found that he no longer made the instinctive connections which had led him so far along new paths. Realist that he was, he decided that he would go step by small step back over everything, until he arrived again at the point where he had had to break off because of his illness. Perhaps new links and ways forward would present themselves as he worked and he would reach his goal by the careful, methodical process of science.
He had not progressed far before he began to discover gaps where he had previously joined threads together. Whole sets of figures and calculations were missing. He came to dead ends, and whereas he knew that he had unquestionably progressed to, let us say, Point Eight, the results now before him came to a full stop at Point Five. Vital sections were missing. Piece by piece, day after day, he retraced his steps, once again working far into the night, but to no avail. The conclusions were always the same. In his wilder moments, when he was completely exhausted, he began to doubt himself, to question whether he had really made the progress he imagined, after all. But, in his right mind, he knew that he had.
Walter Craig was a proud and independent man and it was several days before he took his case to a couple of his seniors, but once he had decided to do so, his resolution was firm. The evidence seemed to him as clear as spring water.
His claim was dismissed out of hand.
‘You were seriously ill, Craig, your memory failed you – through no fault of your own, I stress, no fault of your own. There appear to be some gaps in this work but there is no evidence whatsoever that anything has been tampered with. You say that the only person who had access to it was Dr Webb, but he disappeared over two years ago and has never raised his head here again, though I believe that he was heard of at one of the German universities, doing interesting work. I know nothing more and I would advise you to draw no conclusions and make no accusations. Take time to pursue some other line of research. Then again, there is teaching a-plenty for you. We have a very promising intake of young scientists who would benefit from your guidance.’
Instead, insulted and proud, Craig took up a post in London, less senior than he merited but which gave him, along with a light teaching load, time to pursue his own work.
He had continued in this way for several years, and was apparently content, until he sat down one evening to read the latest issue of an academic quarterly which covered his own general field. He quickly digested two short articles before coming to the principal section of the journal, which always contained a piece of important original research. To achieve publication here represented one of the highest pinnacles of a career. It would usually lead to opportunities for further research, promotion, and even eventual fame and glory. The work of Nobel Prize winners and Fellows of the Royal Society had on occasion been first noticed in the journal.
Craig settled down to read and as he read, he was at first puzzled, but
then greatly shocked, to recognise his own work, his own discoveries and applications. All the essentials were set down on these pages – references to tests, calculations and conclusions made and results anticipated, although, naturally, some significant details were omitted. No one was incautious enough to reveal their full hand to the greedy outside world, and those who were legitimately interested in pursuing the matter would go straight to the author of the paper.
He read on, seeing before him the lost links, the statistics which had apparently vanished, the missing pages. The paper used everything he had spent so many years working out and proving. All the conclusions drawn had been enabled by his missing data. He felt nauseated as he re-read and then misery and a deep sense of both failure and betrayal quickly overcame him. He knew what had happened, of course, the moment he read the name of Dr Silas Webb. He also saw, at the same moment, that he could do nothing. There was no point in protesting to the editors of the journal, or even to Webb himself.
He had no proof, it would be his word against that of a man who had been his assistant and gone on to great success. There was nothing unusual about that. The pupil has often outstripped the master, to reverse roles when that master has nothing more to teach.
He set the journal aside and sat, hunched into his chair, brooding. Anger and bitterness burned slowly inside him and he woke the following morning feeling the weight of far more years than were on the calendar, certain that he would now achieve nothing to mark him out from the herd of mediocre men.
He never spoke about the matter. He did not pursue it. And over the course of the next fifteen years, he looked on at the rise of Silas Webb.
They did not meet. Webb now began to move in illustrious circles. The research led to glory, when it was successfully applied in a clinical context, diseases of the central nervous system were targeted and sufferers given new hope, at first gaining relief and short-term improvement, later, complete cures.