The Bedlam Detective

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Sebastian Becker’s train had been standing in this little English rural stop for fifteen minutes or more. When he looked out through his compartment’s window the view fogged and cleared, fogged and cleared, adding an illusion of movement as the locomotive’s idling boiler vented its unused energies and a breeze drove the cloud vapor on down its flanks. Sebastian saw a landscape of field and hedgerow, hedgerow and West Country field, all the way out to the blue distant hills.

There was a railway guard working his way down the platform toward them, stopping at each compartment to ask the same question.

A glance around Sebastian’s companions in first class showed strangers, all. A fat man in tweeds. Two clerical men, and a woman with a child. The child was about eight years old and wore a sailor suit, much as Sebastian’s own son once had. A pint-sized sailor, on his way to the seaside. The plush fabric of the seat made the child’s bare legs itch. Whenever he squirmed his mother would reach for his arm and shake him, once, in silent remonstration.

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