Dead for a Spell by Raymond Buckland

know
when
it happened, if’n it
has
happened, sir. I can only tell you what I seen. I knows it wasn’t Tilly’s stuff, ’cos she was all about lovey-dovey over this boy she’s wantin’. Then this Tower card suddenly drops in. Here!” She looked up at me as a thought suddenly struck her. “Now as I think on it, the Tower
did
come up inverted. Upside down. I wondered about that. P’raps that was to show it was already done for?”
    â€œPerhaps,” I agreed. “Though you would know better than would I. Thank you, Miss Abbott. Thank you very much. I will pass on this information to Mr. Stoker.”
    *   *   *
    F riday morning I sat in the second-class compartment of the London and North Western Railway carriage bearing me north to Liverpool. It seemed to me that I had left Euston Square station at an ungodly hour and was suffering a seven-hour journey costing the Lyceum Theatre twenty-one shillings and ninepence each way. Mr. Stoker had insisted that I go and speak with the local police in Warrington and glean all that I might about the murder that took place there on the thirty-first of January.
    Inspector Bellamy had initially been strongly opposed to what he termed “interference in the affairs of Scotland Yard” but had finally acceded that Mr. Stoker’s special expertise might help break what was turning out to be an insoluble case for the Warrington police.
    The train proceeded by way of Rugby, Crewe, and Stoke-on-Trent. At Liverpool I had to change onto the Cheshire Lines Railway to Warrington. It seemed to me to be a far cry from the backstage of the Lyceum Theatre, and, more importantly, the trip meant that I would be unable to meet with Jenny on this weekend. I sighed. The things I did for Mr. Abraham Stoker!
    The train sat for a lengthy stop in Stafford, affording me a fine view of Stafford Castle, situated on a hill overlooking the countryside. Stafford is on the River Sow above its junction with the Trent. Its claim to fame is the manufacture of shoes and boots and as the onetime residence of Izaak Walton. I was not sorry to hear the plaintive whistle of the locomotive and to suffer the lurch as the train once again moved forward, gathering speed as it hurried toward the Potteries and Stoke-on-Trent. Soon chimneys rose in all directions, with furnaces, warehouses, and drying houses for the pottery industry.
    I must have dozed off but awoke to the changing rattle of the wheels as the train started across the long iron viaduct over the River Mersey. Shortly afterward the locomotive passed through the deep cuttings in the red sandstone and steamed, breathing heavily, into the Lime Street station where, with a long, loud sigh, it came to rest at platform three.
    Clutching my portmanteau, I escaped the confines of the carriage and consulted the listings to find the branch line to Warrington. I discovered that I had a wait of a little over an hour for my connecting train and sought refuge, and refreshment, in the station waiting room. I sat nursing a cup of weak, lukewarm railway tea and nibbling on a digestive biscuit, and thought back to Edwina Abbott and her tarot cards. If, as seemed faintly possible, the emergence of the Tower card in the midst of Tilly Fairbanks’s reading had a connection with the crime I was about to investigate, why had it suddenly turned up now, two months after the actual murder? Miss Abbott had not seemed surprised, telling me that the tarot revealed its secrets when they were most needed. Some divine hand, presumably, was dealing the cards.
    *   *   *
    W arrington is a busy little town on the right bank of the Mersey. It is a town of some antiquity, dating to Roman times when it was a major crossing point of the river. Today it manufactures cotton, iron, and glass. After making my connection and then finally arriving, I walked the half mile along to the Patten Arms, an ancient oak-beamed tavern