He did not answer, simply looked through the window at the station master taking up his position. We shook hands. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Yeats.”

I went with him to the door. Stepping out onto the platform, he made way for an American couple, excusing themselves, hurrying to catch the train. I stepped aside to let them on.

DC Yeats waited. I stayed by the door, with the feeling that he was not quite ready to say goodbye. Was there something else he wanted to tell me?

“Wouldn’t it be interesting, Mrs. Shackleton, if a dead person could utter just one more sentence?”

“That depends on the sentence.”

“He might have accused the man who killed him.”

It was an intriguing thought. There may be something he had left undone. He meant to change his will, pay back a loan, or return a borrowed book.

The train began to move. I expected Yeats to wave and turn away, but suddenly he was trotting alongside the carriage. I leaned forward to hear what he wanted to say.

“As well as the spuds there were gold coins in the sack—two spade shield George III guineas.”

We gave a last wave. Not wishing to be decapitated as the train left the station, I ducked back. Perhaps what our man had left undone was the start of a workers’ revolution, funded by Russian gold of British origin. Two guineas wouldn’t go very far.

Had Yeats forgotten, until now, to tell me about the coins? Unlikely. This must be one more titbit of information that Commander Woodhead had intended to keep from me.

He was not to know that Yeats and I would forge a bond over an unseemly fit of the giggles.

* * *

Martin Yeats stepped from the fug of the station. He wished he was going north with Mrs. Shackleton, to follow her lines of enquiry. She put him in mind of his mother and sisters, women who stood no nonsense. Women who earned their place in the world. He was glad he had told her about the potatoes, and the coins. Mr. Woodhead was growing forgetful.

Chapter Four

The American couple, who had caught the train at the last minute, were to be my companions for the journey. Their name was Loomis. They were from Connecticut, here for the Ryder Cup Golf Tournament.

Mr. Loomis offered to put my satchel on the rack, in a rather persistent way that made me determined to keep it close. Had I been alone in the carriage, I would have looked through the papers.

I escaped to the restaurant car and requested a table for one, where I could look through the documents privately.

In the description of the victim, there was no mention of callouses to the thumb and finger, those marks of a persistent scribe that DC Yeats thought might mark him out as an author who wrote by hand.

The disposal of the body on a train was so bizarre as to seem an act of stupidity, or panic. Yet someone had taken the time to strip him of his clothing. If I wanted rid of a body, I wouldn’t put it on a train to one of the busiest stations in the Empire.