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She stopped and grasped his arm, looking up at him under one of the weak lamps. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was upset. Of course, I trust you.”
He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t trust him, but he’d save the warning for another time. Tonight, in this moment, she could trust him. “I’ll get us to the railyard safely. God knows whether we’ll find anything...”
They walked on until the area became a bit more industrial, with the bleak outline of factory buildings clouding the sky and the smell of coal burning their noses. She held the lantern up for light now since the gas lamps were few and far between.
“Is that the railyard?” She pointed to the end of the street where platforms were just visible, as were several train cars.
“So it is. I wouldn’t have thought the trains ran tonight.”
She was starting to move again. “There’s someone there. I see other spots of light.”
Callahan had the sort of feeling he often had when a scheme was about to go wrong. His belly twisted and bile rose in his throat. “Maybe we should stay back out of the way.”
She looked at him as though she were a child who’d been given candy only to have it snatched away again. “We won’t discover anything back here.”
“Which means we also won’t be discovered.”
She continued walking and he had to hurry to catch up. “We haven’t done anything to fear discovery. We’re a couple out for a walk.”
“On a rainy night a mile from our home. Not suspicious at all.”
But they were almost to the railyard now, and even Cal was drawn in by the activity. Several men seemed to be gathered around a rail car. It wasn’t a passenger car, rather one he’d seen used to move crops or minerals mined from the ground. The side door was open, and a man shown a lantern inside.
Bridget moved toward a small cluster of onlookers. At least Cal identified them as such. They weren’t in uniform and didn’t move with practiced efficiency. She took Cal’s arm and elbowed him, obviously expecting him to begin the conversation.
“What’s all this about then?” Cal asked, obliging her. “We were out for a walk and noticed the commotion.”
“Isn’t the railyard closed on Sundays?” Bridget asked.
“It’s closed, but an hour or so ago a man came running out from there claiming he’d found a dead body,” a man of about forty with a thick, black mustache said.
“Poor soul,” the woman beside him said. She was about forty as well, her gray-streaked hair pulled under a dowdy hat. “He must have been looking for some place to wait out the rain.”
“Broke the lock on a railcar and found more than he bargained for,” another man said. Cal couldn’t quite see his face, but he sounded younger. Familiar as well, though a good number of men came into The Selkie on any given day so that a fair lot of Dubliners were now familiar to him.
“A dead body,” Bridget whispered to him. Cal resisted the urge to pull her closer. He liked the warmth of her body as she rose on tiptoes to speak in his ear. “I don’t think that’s coincidence. Come on.”
Cal held back. He had seen his share of corpses and had no wish to see another. Moreover, he suspected Bridget was not quite as familiar with death, and he didn’t think now the best time to expose her. “Let’s wait here and see what the authorities have to say. That looks like the coroner and that’s the magistrate.”
“You wait here. I’ll go closer.” She moved forward, and Cal blew out an exasperated breath and followed. As they neared the railcar, he could see the objects illuminated by the light. A man’s feet dangled a few inches from the floor. He followed them up and saw the unfortunate soul had hung himself, a burlap sack over his head.
“Go ahead and cut him down,” the magistrate said, gesturing to the man inside the car. He stood on a crate, a knife in hand.
All eyes were on the body now as the rope gave way under the knife and the man fell in a heap to the floor of the car. Cal had no doubt that were everyone not so absorbed with the scene in the railcar, he and Bridget would have been told to go back to stand with the other observers. As it was, they went unnoticed.
The man Cal had assumed was the coroner stepped up and into the railcar. He bent and lifted the hood from the dead man’s neck. Bridget flinched back as the light from the lanterns clearly illuminated the red welts and burns on the flesh of the man’s neck.
“We should move back.”
She nodded, but neither of them moved. The coroner pushed the hood further back then, after working it over the man’s nose and forehead, removed it.
“Joyce, come look at this,” the coroner said. The magistrate moved closer and shook his head.
“I was afraid of that.”
“Bring the wagon closer, and we’ll load the body and take it back to my office. Maybe someone will come to identify him.”
“What was that about?” Bridget whispered.
