Read Cherringham--Last Train to London for Free Online Page A

gothic texts.
    Through the open church door, she could see only darkness. She crossed the threshold.

9. Doom
    After the bright sunlight, it took a few seconds for Sarah’s eyes to adjust. She looked around. The church was empty. It looked just as it had done twenty years ago.
    It probably hasn’t changed for hundreds of years, she thought.
    Instead of the modern plastic chairs which filled most churches these days, here there were seventeenth-century box pews. And on the crumbling walls there were faded paintings which must go back more than a thousand years, depicting biblical scenes.
    As Sarah followed Jayne through the church, her footsteps echoed on the smooth, worn flagstones.
    Eventually Jayne stopped at the altar and sat on a bench. Sarah joined her and waited. The air was cool. Outside, Sarah could hear birdsong and the occasional playful shouts from children on the river.
    “You see the ‘Doom’?” said Jayne, nodding to the faded painting on the East wall.
    “Doom?” asked Sarah.
    “Judgement Day. Right there. Christ separating those who will go to Heaven, from those who will go straight to Hell.”
    Sarah looked at the wall and suddenly remembered how, as a teenager, she’d been fascinated by the details in this graphic image of Hell, the ingenious tortures imagined by the medieval painter.
    “This was Otto’s favourite place,” said Jayne eventually. “In the whole world, he said.”
    “Was he religious?” said Sarah, sensing that Jayne was ready to talk.
    “No, not now.”
    “But once?”
    “As a child in Germany – yes, I think so.” She took a breath. “We didn’t talk about that.”
    “He grew up there?”
    Was there a bit of hesitation?
    “In Erfurt. What used to be East Germany.”
    “But he never went back?” said Sarah.
    “He hated it. He was an orphan. It was communism. Would you go back?”
    Sarah knew she had to keep this conversation going.
    “He has no next of kin?” she said.
    “No.”
    “He never talked about his family?”
    “Are you listening? He grew up in an institution.”
    “So, Jayne. You and Otto …” Sarah groped for the right word. “Were you …?”
    Dangerous ground here.
    “We were very close,” said Jayne, turning and looking directly at Sarah. “Is that enough for you?”
    Sarah nodded and changed the subject.
    “Where did he learn to do puppetry? In Germany?” she said.
    “I don’t know,” said Jayne. “I think so. When we first met, he showed me his Kasperletheater. Very old, and those classic German puppets … so beautiful …”
    “He kept them in special cases,” said Sarah, coaxing.
    “Yes,” said Jayne. “They were worth a fortune.”
    “Really? Did anyone else know about them?”
    Sarah spoke softly. She sensed that Jayne’s anger was beginning to dissolve, sitting here in the cool air of the church.
    “People in the trade, I suppose,” said Jayne. “Otto bought and sold puppets online, you see. Never his most precious ones, of course. But others he ordered from all over Europe and then sold on.”
    “And you don’t know who might have broken into his house and stolen them?”
    “Oh but I do,” said Jayne, turning to Sarah as if her question hardly needed asking.
    Sarah blinked in surprise.
    “Who?”
    “Krause, of course.”
    “Krause?”
    “‘The Puppet King’,” he calls himself.
    “Is he local?”
    “He’s got a unit on an estate outside Chipping Norton. Full of party crap.”
    “But he sells puppets too?”
    “He does shows. Bad Punch and Judy shows. Or junk with themed puppets. Horrible things – ripped off from American cartoons.”
    “And you think he stole Otto’s puppets?”
    “Krause hated Otto. Tried to put him out of business.”
    “Why?” said Sarah.
    “He was jealous, of course,” said Jayne. “Otto’s puppets were handmade, special. He did shows the old-fashioned way. The children loved him.”
    Jayne sniffed the air. “Krause was a hack. Otto was an artist.”
    “So Krause –