Ghost Train

Mrs. Lattie Birkenhead, the Widow of Birch Copse

It was a fine May morning in Yorkshire. The sky was cloudless and birds could be chirping from the manicured shrubs planted in front of the Birkenhead household. While it was a beautiful day, it should be noted it was a strange day. There was not any rain. It was also strange because this fine morning of May twenty-eighth, Lionel Birkenhead was found dead in a hotel bed in Italy. Conversely, Mrs. Lattie Birkenhead was asleep in Birch Copse, their Yorkshire home.

Lattie arose as she did every morning, late. She waltzed into her bathroom and slid out of her nightskirts before then tiptoeing to the cupboard in the corner across from the clawfoot tub. She chose dried lavender flowers and jasmine oil, Lionel’s favorites, from her array of scents and dropped them into the tub before easing herself in. The water was cold. The maids were still getting used to Mrs. Birkenhead’s new presence at Birch Copse, after all the Birkenheads were newlyweds. Lattie bathed in the cold water in excitement, “Lionel is coming home soon! A few more days and I can hold my beloved in my arms once again!” she whispered to herself. She squealed, unable to bear her anxiety much longer. She emerged from the tub and toweled herself off, waltzing once more into her closets.

“Oh Marjorie! Oh Marg!” Lattie called to her dressing maid, “Lionel is to be home soon and I can hardly bear the anticipation building in my bosom!”

“Madam… Madam I, uhm, have a telegraph from the Villa d’Este.”

“Is it from my dear Lionel? He must be full of anticipation as well-- Marjory what is that sour look on your face about? You could curdle cream with a pus like that,” Lattie laughed. The envelope that the telegraph was put in was crinkled and the seal was broken. Nosy, thought Lattie, I will have to have a talk with these maids. I will have to assert authority. Married life is going to be challenging. Why I did not believe Mother, only God knows. Oh to be the lady of this house!

Lattie opened the envelope and Marjorie cringed. Lattie’s eyes ran over the words on the paper and her face dropped. So did the towel. She felt as if all the blood had left her body and her heart was struggling like a fish out of water to beat. She began panting and clutched her naked breast. “Now Mrs. Birkenhead, let’s wrap you in a robe and sit you down. With all the blood lost from your cheeks you are like to faint.” Marjorie took Lattie’s hand and led her back into the bedroom, wrapped her in the silk robe that lay on the floor, and sat her down on a chaise lounge near the windows of the room.

“Mrs. Birkenhead, I know. I am so sorry for your bereavement. Everyone at Birch Copse is at a loss. But we have done our weeping this morning, it is your turn my Lady.” Marjorie stood up and handed Lattie a bible from her skirts. “Here. I have marked passages from my own husband’s death. I pray they give you comfort as they had given me. When you are ready you may come down to break your fast and begin funerary preparations.”

So there Lattie sat, a widow at twenty, half naked in her bedroom weeping over her old maid’s bible at ten thirty-four with a telegraph crumpled in her hand. We were going to share monogrammed stationery, thought the widowed Lattie Birkenhead. We were going to knock on each other’s doors at night and to read to each other titillating pages from our nighttime novels. Lionel would give me children, and I would care for them and Birch Copse. This is not fair! Lattie finished her thoughts and finished her weeping all at once. Lionel and her had one night together as husband and wife before he left on his last European tour. “One year,” he had told her, “just one year and I will be yours. I am too young to not have traveled the world on my own, to have indulged my manhood before being responsible for you and Birch Copse and my father’s business.” Now Lattie would have to wait until death to rejoin her beloved. This is not fair, Lattie thought as she stood from the chaise lounge and stormed into her closets. Something is wrong with Lionel’s death. “Indulge my manhood” indeed! How could I have been so stupid! I must know how he died. I will ask everyone who knew Lionel best. I will unravel the mystery of his holiday. Fuming, she rang the bell to call Marjorie back into her rooms and changed into her underclothes.

“Fetch black die and my wedding dress. There is no time to order a mourning dress. And fetch me some stationary, I have to prepare the funeral train.”

Mr. Richard Hammond, Bereaved, and closest friend of the Late Lionel Birkenhead

“Holly, this is the most queer funeral invitation I have ever received! The widow Birkenhead is asking me on a train ride to London to receive Lionel’s body. She is asking over fourteen hours out of a day to ‘Mourn and discuss the wild oats of the deceased,’” said Richard Hammond to his wife. He held the letter out in his hand to Mrs. Hammond and walked from his position at the mantel into the sitting room. After handing his wife the invitation he sat down in his armchair and held his head in his hands. Lionel is dead. Well that is not so perplexing. Yet Lattie is smarter than we thought.

“The ditz has featured it out?” Holly asked, stunned at reading the invitation for herself.

“I do not think so,” replied Richard, “but she is beginning to. I suppose she is not as dim as we originally believed.”

“I suppose so, too.”

Lionel and Richard were friends since boyhood. Reckless and wild children they were, with no sense of order whatsoever. They took after the poets Shelly and Byron, staying out late, stealing brandy from the cellars of Hammond’s father, and writing poetry in the orchards rather than attending lessons with their tutors.

Richard grew into a proper young man and married Holly and inherited his father’s business and ran his household. Lionel, however, wanted to continue in the bohemian lifestyle. He came to Richard asking him why he decided to marry and become normal. “How dreadful it is to conform!” Lionel declared. “Why would you desire such a pitiful life my dear friend! We could be writing poetry, drinking away our fortunes in Rome, and dying in battle before we became decrepit old misers.”

“Because, Lionel, I do not want to die at thirty-six in the mud. The era of Romance is dying and I refuse to die with it! We must both face reality.”

“I simply refuse!”

“Your father will not be very proud of you destroying the family name. Not to mention the family business. Hell Lionel! You are the only son and heir to the Birkenhead Bank. You could live so comfortably into old age.”

“With just one woman and in just one city for my whole life! I renounce it all! I want to travel the world a bachelor like Shelley and Byron!”

“Those men were not bachelors. Do you not remember Byron’s scandal with Annabella? Or Shelley’s wife who wrote that terrible monster story?” This stopped Lionel’s hissy-fit. “If you are to be as those bohemian poets,” Richard continued, “you must at least marry. Marry someone dimwitted while you’re at it! Find some girl who will not protest you going on holiday after holiday, or your drinking of your life away.”

“How would I find her?” asked Lionel.

“I was not being serious—”

“But I am. Richard I need your help to live out our dreams. If you will not follow them then I must! I will do it! But you must help me.”

Lionel and Richard stayed up all night by the fireplace making the plan that would secure Lionel’s rebellious future. They sat in the armchairs near the hearth and watched the flames consume log after log while they rolled cigarettes and smoked and pondered.

⬥⬥⬥

Richard shot up from the chair. He had fallen asleep and the cigarette he had lit before slipping off burned his fingers. He quickly gathered the still burning butt and threw it into the fireplace and shook the ashes from his trousers off onto the floor. Nicholas will sweep it tomorrow, he assumed. Richard then walked up to the mantel to where he had left the widow Birkenhead’s invitation. Lionel is so long gone. I do not know how to fix this.

The Hammonds’ cat, Eddie, who had placed himself in the armchair that was opposite of the sleeping Richard, awoke at the sound of the grandfather clock striking one. Richard decided against reviewing the invitation to retire to his rooms for some rest, but the bed was cold. He stayed up longer, tossing and turning, thinking about how his and Lionel’s plan had gone all wrong. Is he really gone? We did not plan this.

Richard recalled the first time he had met Lattie Birkenhead. At the time she was Lattie Charpentier, the daughter of Margarette and Francis Charpentier. The family came from a long line of French builders and craftsmen, that is until Lattie’s great grandfather decided to purchase a few apartment buildings after the landlords died in the Revolution. Those apartments raised the Charpentier family’s wealth over two generations, and Margarette and Francis moved themselves to Yorkshire to raise their only child, Lattie. Rumer had it that Lattie, on that trip, had a serious fever that caused her to become impaired. Her tutors had said she was the dullest student they had ever taught, and that it was a miracle that she learned her letters. She read the same simple books over and over, and was surprised each time she got to the climax. She was the perfect imbecile to marry off to Lionel. What was more promising about Lattie than her idiocy was her family’s status. No one would believe a hint of gossip from their lips, whether it were true or not.

Richard arranged for Holly to invite Lattie to tea under the premise that Holly was looking to make new friends since she moved to Yorkshire. On that same day Lionel and himself would return from a morning hunting trip and settle themselves, by “chance” in the sitting room with the women during their chatter. Richard looked at her plain face and her too elegant clothes, and remarked that she looked “Lovely, do you not think so Lionel?”

“Yes, Rich, I do think so,” he replied with a smile flashed in Lattie’s direction.

Lattie Charpienter, Soon to be Widow

Lattie was then invited to the Birkenhead’s New Year’s Ball. Lionel was able to court her more freely. Lattie had not been invited to a ball before and was mystified by the gallantry of the whole affair. Lionel, though entranced by the numbers of women free from chaperones and pixilated with drink, focused his attention to the task at hand.

Lattie sat on a chair in the corner of the ballroom. She was pale and shivered like a bird with fright. This is not at all like what my stories described a party to be, she thought to herself. There is the dancing and the music, and even the champagne and macaroons, but where is the joy in a ball if no one will ask me to dance? She looked down at her shoes which she had bought for the party. They were one of seven pairs her father brought home from his last visit to France. She felt a tear welling in her eyes, and brushed it away with one of her silk gloves. It was then when she was trying to rub the makeup spot off of that glove that Lionel approached her. “Miss Charpentier, you look absolutely miserable. This attitude is unacceptable for one facing a brand new year,” he proclaimed while handing her a too-full champagne glass and taking the seat next to hers. “Cheers.”

They clinked glasses. Lattie sipped at the drink while Lionel swallowed his portion in one go. He brought the flute away from his mouth and let out his breath, looking back at Lattie he said “Finish yours too, quickly! It is but eleven-thirty and you haven’t partied one bit.” He grabbed two more flutes from a passing butler; “And these too,” he added as she coughed the last of her first drink down. While Lattie was distracted with two new drinks, he slipped the glove she had had on her lap into his pocket. After she finished her third helping of champagne Lionel pulled her up to her feet and proclaimed “Let us dance!” before dragging her onto the center of the ballroom.

They danced the last half hour of the night away, and when the grandfather clock struck midnight he squeezed her hand as the partiers cheered. When the guests departed Lionel waited with her for her carriage, laid the blanket over her legs, and pressed a flower stolen from one of the arrangements into her hand. Lattie was swept away by Lionel that night.

Two days later he called on her at her home. “Your daughter’s glove, Mr. Charpentier. I found it in my home after the ball. I would like to return it to her, and possibly entertain her with a stroll, if you do not mind.”

“Non, monsieur. Please, uh, enjoy un rendez-vous.”

From January to October Lionel called on Lattie for strolls. Twice a month he came with a poem in his breast pocket he would read to her. The first spoke of beauty and the love he had for nature. The poems grew more and more specific, addressing Lattie’s beauty and the love he bore for her. In the last poem he knelt down and asked her to read the last lines, as they were much too strong for him to speak aloud. “Laetitia Marie Charpentier, will you marry me?”

Lionel Birkenhead, Rascal

Lattie and Lionel married the following spring. The willow trees on the Birkenhead estate’s long strings of foliage blew in the soft breeze, filling the air with the smell of new beginnings. Through the marriage Lionel came into his inheritance, and bought the estate the couple named Birch Copse. On the wedding night, after the wedding had been consummated, Lionel rolled onto his side to face Lattie. “I hope we have made a little boy tonight, Darling.”

“I hope so too,” Lattie whispered while slipping the pillow out from under her hips. She smiled.

“Now, Mrs. Birkenhead,” She giggled in response at the sound of her new title, “I must tell you something. Tomorrow I leave for a holiday. I will be gone but one year. Just one year and I will be truly yours. I am too young to not have traveled the world on my own, to have indulged my manhood before being responsible for you and Birch Copse and my father’s business. And when I come back we will have a little boy.”

Lionel was hoping for a boy. That boy would be the heir that would take over Birch Copse and the Birkenhead Bank after he was gone. The next day Lionel shoveled as many bank notes as he could into his suitcase, and on his way to the train he slipped his will to Richard Hammond’s head butler. He was never seen again.

Richard Hammond

All of the guests piled onto the train in their dark dresses and their black gloves and hats. Richard handed his and Holly’s tickets to the conductor, and waited for him to clip one of the corners. He then led his wife onto the train car to a seat. The Hammonds watched as Minnie Harper, the Birkenheads’ closest neighbor, squeezed her plump frame through the center row of the train car. She claimed she could be a doppelganger of Queen Victoria. Her husband, Jonathan Harper however, had a physique nowhere near that of Albert’s. Victor Williams and his nervous wife, carrying their newborn, took their seats furthest from the front. Lattie’s parents stood behind her at the head of the car with an empty box meant for sympathy cards. Richard thought he should have bought one, it didn’t cross his mind. He made it a note to do so when he and Holly returned home.

When everyone had seated themselves the conductor announced that the widow Birkenhead had purchased everyone a pot of tea and a plate of liverwurst sandwiches for the ride to London in thanks for joining her in her travels. When the lunch was served Lattie walked her way through the aisles and expressed her gratitude to all of those on the funeral train. Richard picked the crusts off of his sandwich and watched Lattie. Why did she have her wedding dress dyed? Lionel left her enough money to buy a new dress and jet ring every week if she wished. As she got closer Richard patted his breast pocket for the envelope containing Lionel’s will. It was still there. He took out the will and laid it on the seat next to him.

When Lattie reached the Hammond’s seats she threw off her mourning veil, which was her wedding veil cropped and dyed black, and stared daggers at Richard. Her face was red and the skin around her eyes looked swollen and was rubbed almost raw from the wiping of tears. She then faked a modest smile and turned to Holly. “Thank you for coming, let me pour you some tea.” Lattie poured.

“You both are withholding something from me,” she stated in anger.

“Oh yes, Lattie, your husband’s will.”

“I do not mean his will, Richard, I know you have had it in your possession this past year,” she said while ripping the envelope from his gloved hand and putting it down on the table on the opposite side of Richard. “What I mean is that you two are withholding information from me on my husband’s death.”

Lattie Birkenhead

“What do you mean by that my dear?” asked Holly Hammond.

“You know what I mean. You do! The hotel has told me nothing about Lionel’s death. That is suspicious.” The Williams’s baby began to cry. Lattie pushed Holly over on the bench seat and placed herself on the empty space she had made. “I will be sitting with you this afternoon. Sir! Bring us more tea, please!”

“Excuse me!” stated Holly.

“Do not make a fuss, Mrs. Hammond. This is my husband’s funeral.” Lattie replaced her veil as the attendant came to bring a new pot. The attendant bowed slightly and left. “Now, tell me where Lionel is.”

“I do not know what you mea—”

“I am French, not an imbecile. I speak your language well. My parents were sure I had gotten an education, but I cannot help my accent. Additionally you two are my only acquaintances, if I can call you that anymore. I do not know what Yorkshire has had against my family. There have been false rumors placed against myself and my reputation; I know. Perhaps is it because we are foreign, or perhaps it is my family’s breeding.”

“No dear, it’s not that… it’s…”

“It is what, Mrs. Hammond?” Holly opened her mouth to reply, but no response fell out.

“Precisely. I have gotten to know the general British society from the few books my tutor left for me. I could not have learned from experience. The books taught me how friends should be, and you have not behaved in a friendly way to me since Lionel’s death. You had not reached out to me, not even once. I believe you three have been playing behind a façade at my expense. Where is he?”

The Hammonds looked at each other nervously. Holly’s eyebrows pushed furled in worried frustration. We are trapped, Richard. We must tell her. Richard understood his wife’s expression and nodded in agreement with her thoughts. They looked to the widow Birkenhead.

“We do not know,” Holly replied in a hushed tone.

“Who is in the casket I’m receiving?”

“We do not know. I lost contact with Lionel four months after he left his will with me,” whispered Richard. “I have not opened it, though.” Lattie whimpered and drew a handkerchief from her pocket. “He did not leave just you, Mrs. Birkenhead, but me too. He did not even say goodbye. Let us open the will. I have only assumed what is inside is what we had planned, but there may be something different inside.”

Lattie took off her gloves and took up the envelope from the train table. “Let us look.”

Lionel Birkenhead’s Will and Testament, and Letters

Inside were two letters—one addressed to Richard, one addressed to Lattie—and the will. Richard tore open his envelope and pulled out the paper. The letter was brief:

Rich,

Thank you for helping me plan my escape. The will is written as we had planned: my son will inherit everything. Lattie may maintain the house until he comes of age. I have decided that instead of going on a series of trips and having to make up excuses every time I return home, I simply will not return home. I have begun plotting my “demise.” I will write to you soon with details.

I hope after my funeral you may come out to see me in Sweden. I will book us a room with a view of the Alps. We can write poetry again, like we did as boys.

I will write soon,

Lionel

PS: Give the other letter to Lattie in three months.

Lattie’s letter was brief also:

My dearest,

I miss you so while I am away, but it is for the best I am gone. I am enjoying your nation’s countryside very much. I hope my son is growing in you. When he comes, name him after our dear friend Richard Hammond. Remember the day we met at his home?

I hope you are making our home to fit your fancy. You will be in it a long while without me.

Yours ‘til death,

Your loving husband—Lionel

They both wept.

He had not written at all. The bastard forgot all about me. How could he have wanted his son named for me, but forget me? Probably when buried between foreign prostitute’s thighs, thought Richard Hammond. Holly patted his hand.

He never loved me. He left me alone to bury whoever is in that casket. Holly did not comfort her.

◆◆◆

Richard had read and reread his letter while tearing apart his liverwurst sandwich. Holly sat in repentance staring out the window. Lattie paced up and down the train car for hours fiddling with a loose string on the wrist of her left glove. By the time the train had arrived at London the glove was torn up through the pinky finger.

The conductor informed the funeral guests that they had an hour and a half to stretch their legs in the city before the train was to return to Yorkshire. Outside on the station platform were two greasy men in grey and brown suits. “Italians,” murmured Holly under her breath. They stood with a six foot wooden box. The shorter of the two men waved his hand up into the air, then back down to point at the lettering on the box. It read: BIRKENHEAD, LIONEL. The taller man checked his breast pocket for the paperwork. When the train was empty—of all guests but the Hammonds, the Widow Birkenhead, and her parents—Lattie waved the two men into the train car. Two servicemen brought the box containing the casket up and into the back of the car.

The servicemen began to leave but Lattie stopped them. “Please, open it.”

“Now Mrs. Birkenhead, you will stink up the train with your husband’s stench. We are sorry for your loss, but do not make an irrational decision. Am I not right, sir?” the taller man asked Richard.

“Take it outside and open it on the platform. We have traveled long and we must see the body.” Richard was stern in his order, and ungloved one hand to snap at the servicemen to hurry them.

“No, no! His body is not… erm, very good looking.” The short man urged.

“He is dead. Of course he will not be good looking, give me that crowbar! I will do it myself.” Richard took the tool from the servicemen and began to pry open the box. Inside was Lionel’s casket. Like the box the casket was also bolted closed. The smell of death began to permeate the platform, but Richard did not hesitate, not even to cover his nose momentarily with the perfumed handkerchief his wife held out.

“Stop, sir!”

The casket bust open.

The corpse was still in the clothes it died in. Its nightclothes were bloodstained around the neckline under a slit neck and petrified eyes. The face of the corpse was purple and bloated and the rigor mortis had locked the fingers around the throat. It was most definitely Lionel.

“Mrs. Birkenhead, I am so sorry.” Richard bemoaned. The two greasy men dropped the paperwork and ran.

Giovanni Rossi, the Tall Man

Giovanni Rossi and Armani Bianchi had met Lionel at a hotel bar in France. They had found Lionel’s reason for vacation fascinating, and his wealth even more so. Rossi and Bianchi had many rounds, night after night, on Lionel’s tab. Lionel found the two Italians fascinating as well. He enjoyed their stories of the women in Italy, stories of how free they were with their bodies and how easily they laughed at a man’s joke.

“You are to be on vacation for a year, my friend?” asked Rocci one night. Lionel nodded. “Then you have months and months to plan for your ‘demise.’ Forget about home for a while. You are not going back anyways. Come to Italy with us and we will set you up with some female companions. They might inspire your, uh, poetry, you might say.”

The three laughed.

And so Lionel Birkenhead forgot his plotting, as it was rather taxing and he was supposed to be on vacation. He planned his next stay to be in Italy. They were to leave at the end of the week.

⯁⯁⯁

Rossi and Bianchi, while Lionel slept on the couch he had fallen asleep on, took hotel stationary from the room and began to write a letter to their “dear cousin.” Etta. They told Etta about poet Birkenhead and his keen eye for cat houses. They also told her about his money. The two asked if she might be a kind little kitty, and if she might sharpen her knives.

On the morning of the group’s departure Lionel met the two in the lobby of the hotel. “Good morning! Are you all packed for the train?” asked Rocci.

“Almost,” Lionel mumbled. “I have one more bag. The bellboy didn't grab them all apparently. I was just waiting for you before I went up to go grab it myself.”

“Of course. We will get what you have loaded onto the cab outside.”

“Could you also have the manager send off this letter? It is to my friend Hammond at home, you know, the man who came up with my holiday plan. I have not written him at all since I left. Well, I have but I have not sent any of the letters. In my last note to him I announced I was plotting my death and I have been too embarrassed to tell him that I have thought of nothing.”

“Do not worry, my friend. We’ve got you covered.”