Lost baggage porter js-3 Read online

  'How do?' I said to the superintendent of the office.

  He gave a grunt.

  'What's that?' I said, giving him the chance to try again.

  But he just grunted once more – it was the best he could do.

  It was hard to say what was greyest about him: his hair, his beard, his eyes, his skin. He was like the old sailors in Bay- town, only they had light in their eyes. I reckoned he must've been with the Company a good half-century, all the while being pushed further and further towards the edge of the show.

  'I'm missing a quantity of Railway Magazines,' I said to this dead-ender, 'bundled into dozens, and stowed in a blue portmanteau.'

  'Date of loss?' said the old man, with hardly energy enough to make a question of it. He had a telegraph instrument at his elbow, and a ledger set in front of him; beside this was a copy of the Press. Otherwise the counter was empty. The kid in the shadows at the back had only the stool he was sitting on. I told the bloke the date, and the man started turning the pages of the ledger back towards it: 7 January, that stormy Sunday when the wife and me had had our first tiff, a real set-to on the platforms of Halifax Joint station as we took our leave of the town for good. There was the wife, angry and in the family way – not a good combination – and there was I, still mourning the job I'd lost, and all around us the four bags we'd not entrusted to the guard's van.

  When we'd got to York, I'd attempted to carry those four but, looking back, I only picked up three. When we discovered the loss, the wife had said: 'We'd have had no bother if you'd not been too mean to fetch a porter', and it hadn't sounded like the wife speaking at all but like something read from a book called Familiar Sayings of Long-Married Women.

  'No,' the old clerk said after a while. 'I can turn nothing up in that line.'

  'All right then,' I said. 'I'm much obliged to you.'

  I turned towards the door, and I heard a scrape of boots from the shelves. The kid in the shadows was standing up.

  He called out: 'They were marked down as "Books: miscellaneous", Mr Parkinson. I have 'em just here.'

  The kid had a high, cracked voice, as if rusty from want of use.

  Parkinson, the lost-property superintendent, looked at my belt buckle for a good long time, evidently annoyed that I should have struck lucky. Then he rose to his feet, saying: 'It is long past my booking-off time.'

  He drew a line in the book and signed his initials against it.

  'If the porter can be of any assistance you are free to consult him,' he went on, 'but I can spend no more time on the matter.' Parkinson walked to the wall where his waterproof hung on the same peg as a dinty bowler. He put them both on, and walked towards the umbrellas, looking at them all for a moment, quite spoiled for choice, before finally giving a heave on a bone-handled one. He said nothing to the porter but walked to the doorway where he opened the door and shook the brolly furiously for a while, making a good deal of racket about it. When at last the brolly was up and over his head, it was like the moment when a kite takes off, and he walked away fast under the rain. Then the telegraph bell began to ring. After four of the slow dings, I looked towards the porter who was still standing in the shadows, now with a pasteboard box under his arm. 'Will you answer that,' I said, 'now that the governor's gone home?' 'He's not gone home,' said the porter. 'Where's he gone then?' 'Institute.' That was rum. The superintendent had launched himself out into the rain with the look of a man at the start of a long walk. The bell was still ringing. 'But will you answer it?' He shook his head. 'Not passed to do it, mister.' 'But it could be a pressing matter' I said. 'Such as what?' he said. I couldn't think. We listened until the bell stopped, and then we were left with just the sound of the rain. There was one mighty crash from the goods yard outside, and the kid said: 'I have your magazines here, mister, if you'd like to step through.' There was a part of the counter that was hinged. I lifted it up, and walked towards the shelves, the lair of the lost- luggage porter.

  'You a policeman?' he said.

  'Sworn as a detective with the Railway force. How do you know?'

  He pointed at the book that was sticking out of my side pocket: I put my hand to it, and saw that the words 'Police Manual', written in gold, could be made out.

  As I closed on the porter, I could see that there wasn't much difference in width between his head and his neck. It was as though his neck just kept going up through his stand- up collar until it met his fair hair. My guess was that he had had some disease, and been growing in the wrong way ever since; he looked like a sort of ghostly worm. He wore the uniform of a platform porter, with the same low cap, but there was no company badge. Even the telegraph boy in the station had sported a badge, but they couldn't run to one for Lost-Luggage Porter.

  The porter showed me the box. Looking inside, I read the familiar words: 'The Railway Magazine, 6d'. On the topmost one, there was a picture of an express inside a little circle as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. I was glad to have them back, though they brought back sad memories – which was why I'd put off collecting them. Over the years since schooldays I'd supposed the purchase of each one to be a milestone on the way to the job of engine driver, but it would be a miracle if I ever attained that goal, after what had happened at the back end of 1905, in the Sowerby Bridge engine shed at Halifax.

  'Miscellaneous, eh?' I said, looking down at the magazines.

  The lost-luggage porter nodded, or shook his head; I couldn't really tell.

  'All items are entered by Mr Parkinson,' he said presently, 'and he is very fond of that word.'

  'Do you have the portmanteau they came in?' I asked.

  'Reckon so' said the porter, and he moved deeper into the maze of shelves, giving me a clearer view of the one containing the books. Each volume was inside its own little tin coffin, with a number chalked on the side. I looked into the first of the tins: A History of Hampton Court Palace. The second one I saw held Every Man his Own Cattle Doctor.

  I began drifting along the lines of shelves. As far as most of it went, 'miscellaneous' was pretty near the mark: a ball of string, a stethoscope, a fan, a muff, some sort of automatic machine, a pair of field-glasses, a length of lace, sundry pictures, hair brush, shovel, leather hatbox, tin ditto, scent bottle, whistle, a pair of scissors, a clock, a lamp, a china figure, a box of collars, a pair of braces, a knife, a thermometer, a birdcage, a pail, a fishing rod. Sometimes like met like: one shelf contained only good cloaks, wrapped in brown paper – against moth, as I supposed. All the top shelves contained nothing but ticketed hats. Walking sticks and travelling rugs had shelves to themselves while another was for gloves by the hundred. And there were more umbrellas at the back, too.

  The porter returned, dustier than before, with my blue portmanteau in his hand, and began loading my magazines from several of the metal tins back into it.

  I said: 'A charge is made for collection, I suppose.'

  'Thruppence,' said the porter.

  I fished out the coin from my pocket, and handed it over.

  'You've to sign the ledger' he said, 'and put down your address.' So we went over to the counter again.

  'You've a lot of umbrellas in here' I said.

  No reply from the porter.

  'I daresay everyone says that' I said, setting down my name and address in the ledger. 'The brollies ought by rights to be stood up' I said, looking up from the book. The porter had unwrapped his buffet from brown paper. He was sitting on the high stool formerly occupied by Parkinson, and starting to eat bread. '… If they were stood up, they wouldn't rot,' I said. The porter just chewed at his bread, and looked at me. 'The worst weather for you blokes must be rain,' I said. 'You must be head over ears in work whenever there's a downpour.' 'Folk don't forget umbrellas when it's chucking down,' he said. 'They forget 'em when it stops.' 'I see. Because then the brollies are not like… first thing on their minds.' I looked at the clock that ticked above the staff coat hooks: it was nigh on half-past five. 'You must want it pouring all the ti
me then' I said. After a longish pause, the porter said: 'It can do just what it likes.' Behind me, I heard the sound of the rain increasing. I spied a shelf containing nothing but leathern purses and pocketbooks. I went close and saw that they were all empty. 'What's become of the money that was in these?' I asked the porter. 'Pinched,' he said, still eating. 'So you reckon the finders lift the money before bringing in the pocketbooks?' 'No,' said the porter. 'How do you account for it then?' I waited quite a while but there was no answer from the strange kid. 'Well, thanks for turning these up'1 said, tucking the portmanteau under my arm. He might have said something to that, and he might not. I turned towards the door and the rain; I opened the door. 'Items lost across all the North Eastern territories are forwarded here under a special advice if not called for after a week,' the porter said, and I stopped. He was climbing down from the high stool, and for some reason – maybe the thought of being left alone in that dismal room – was suddenly minded to chat. 'Why are some brollies kept at the front, and some at the back?' I said, letting the door close behind me. 'Paragons and silks at the rear,' he said, 'cotton brollies at the front. They would be stood up, only where would the water drain off to?' 'I never thought about that.' 'I have. All hats are kept high so as to reduce damage by pressure.' 'Eh?' I said. 'Many curious articles do come to hand,' he said, crumpling up the brown paper in which his bread had been wrapped. 'We had a banana in last week.' 'Where from, mate? Africa?' 'Leeds. Well, Leeds train, any road.' 'What happened to it?' 'Mr Parkinson entered it in the ledger.' 'As what?' 'A banana.' 'What happened then?' 'It turned black, and I asked Mr Parkinson for leave to pitch it into the stove.' 'Waste of good grub,' I said. 'If somebody had tried to claim it would you have required them to furnish a full description?' He seemed to hesitate on the point of utterance, but in the end simply looked at the black window. I opened the door again. 'Well, I'm much obliged to you, mate!' I said, stepping out into the rain with my bag. I was skirting around the wagons again, when he called after me: 'Where you off to?' 'Home,' I called back. 'Can you get over to the station in one hour from now?' 'Why?' He coughed a little. '… See summat,' he said, after a while. 'Where exactly in the station?' 'Down side!' he called back with the rain sliding down his bent, white face. 'I've to lock up first, but I'll see you at half six!' 'Aye,' I said, 'all right; half six, then.' It would mean biking back to Thorpe-on-Ouse an hour later. The wife would be put out, but she couldn't expect me always home directly in my new line of work. I wondered why the queer stick wanted to see me, and then it hit me: I was a policeman.

  Chapter Three

  I lugged the magazines with me through Micklegate Bar – the grandest of the city-wall gates – and on into the city At the Little Coach in Micklegate, I took another drink, putting the peg in after a couple of glasses, and when I stepped out the rain had eased off, though the streets were still empty.

  I knew York a little, having grown up nearby at Baytown. (I'd also had an earlier spell of working for the North Eastern Company, my railway start having been a lad porter out at Grosmont.) But I couldn't think of where to go, so I pursued an aimless way about the centre of the city, where the streets were narrow and ancient, the houses all overhanging, falling slowly towards the pavements. I turned into Stonegate, where a solitary horse was turning on the cobbles, too big for the street.

  I walked on through those ancient streets: cobbles, shadows, funny little smoke-blowing chimneys on powdery- faced, sagging houses; old buildings put to new uses: bakeries, drug stores, tea rooms – newly established or selling off, the shopkeepers came and went at a great rate but the old houses carried on, even though some of them looked as though they could barely support the gas brackets that sprouted from them. I turned and turned, and presently I struck the Minster, the great black Cathedral; the Minotaur of the labyrinth, as I thought of it, with its two mighty West towers, sharp-pointed and horn-like.

  I doubled back across Lendal Bridge, looking along the river at the coal merchants, sand merchants, gravel merchants. They all became one at night: so many shouting men, so many cranes, so many dark barges, which were like the goods trains – meaning that they seemed to shift only when you turned your back.

  In Railway Street, on the approach to the station, I passed by two dark, dripping trees with Evening Press posters pasted on to the trunks. The first read 'York Brothers Slain'; the second made do with 'Yorkshire Evening Press – The People's Paper'. A constable was coming towards me. I'd seen him before about the station, but he was not with the railway police. Of all the lot from Tower Street – which was the main copper shop of the York Constabulary – he was the one whose patrol took him nearest to the railway station. He was a smooth, dark, good-looking fellow with a waxed moustache; he looked like a toff who'd dressed up as a policeman for a lark, and he passed me by without a glance or any hint that we were in a way confederates.

  A two-horse van nearly knocked me over as I wandered under the arches into the station forecourt, and another came charging close behind. I walked past the booking halls, and struck the bookstall, and here were Evening Press posters by the dozen, loosely attached to placards and pillars, and this time every one of them reading, 'York Brothers Slain'. The posters moved in the cold breeze that blew through the station, and I thought of each one as soaked in blood, so to speak, like pieces of newspaper stuck on to shaving cuts. The whole bookstall was blood-soaked, now that I came to think of it: the shilling novels full of murders; the periodicals with their own mystery killings, moving towards their solutions in their weekly parts, and each tale with its own detective hero – a sleuth hound with peculiar habits but a mighty brain. The man who stood in the centre of all this sensation – the stout party who kept the bookstall, who was nearly but not quite to be counted a railwayman… he stared out at me with no flicker of recognition in his piggy eyes. Did he not see in me the invincible detective type?

  I moved in on to Platform Four. The station was alive even if the city was not, and it was ablaze with gaslight. 'Down side,' the lost-luggage porter had said. That meant crossing the footbridge, and, as I put my boot on the first step, the telegraph lad came skipping down towards me with telegraph forms in his hands.

  'You found it then, chief?'

  He was looking at the portmanteau.

  'Aye,' I said, grinning at him, 'office and bag both.'

  'Champion,' he said, before haring along Platform Four to the telegraph office, where he would doubtless have a couple of minutes' rest before being shot out again like a bagatelle ball.

  'Down' side…

  Well, half the platforms were on the 'down'.

  With the portmanteau seeming to grow heavier by the minute I walked over the bridge to Platform Five, where a train was about due. A dozen folk stood waiting, and there was a big fellow lying on a luggage trolley smoking: a station lounger, waiting for a 'carry'. I walked west of the platform, through an arch in the station wall to Platform Fourteen. It was a wooden platform – a new addition – but this was where the Scotch expresses called, and there must have been one due, for thirty or so people waited, including the platform guard with his silver whistle strung about his neck, and his little army of porters, all talking in short bursts, as if nervous.

  The clock on Platform Fourteen showed 6.40 when I saw the engine come swerving through Holgate Junction, steam flowing from the chimney like a witch's hair, the line of lights behind bulging to the left, then to the right. I heard a cough behind me, and it was the lost-luggage porter, sopping wet and with a small valise over his shoulder. He said nothing but just gave me a half-nod as the engine came up, the handles on its smoke box making the shape of half-past four.

  The engine pulled up alongside us, and it was another thing again close to, with the leaking steam, and the rain on the boiler like sweat. Hard to credit that it needed the permission of signals or the help of men to get to its destination.

  'What's going off then?' I asked, just as the engine came to a stand alongside us.

  'Summ
at is,' said the porter. 'The Blocker's pitched up, so the Brains'll be here presently.' He was looking vexed, staring along the length of the platform, observing all the give- and-take of train arrival.

  'What's your name?' I said.

  'Edwin Lund.'

  He said it fast, without putting out his hand; he didn't seem over-keen to learn mine but I gave it him:

  'Stringer,' I said. 'Detective James Stringer.'

  No; still didn't sound right.

  A man came up, half running half walking through the arch that led to Platform Five.

  'The Brains, I call him' said Lund in an under-breath nodding in the direction of the man. As he spoke, Lund was shifting along towards the north end of the platform, looking away from the man he'd just identified.

  The man was too tall for his coat, and his long hands were held out to the side, so that he settled like a bird onto the platform. He began looking about. Then the really big fellow, the lounger from Platform Five, was with him.

  'You'll have your bob's worth now, mister,' said Lund, who'd taken up position on the opposite side of a porter's cabin from the two blokes we were watching.

  The Blocker was straight into a party of ladies boarding at a door somewhere about the middle of the train. He seemed set on doing the job of a porter, and was offering to help a lady with her basket, but she was shaking her head, and so he only added to a mix-up of cloaks, bags, and over-sized bonnets. The Brains stood looking on. A porter was coming up the crowd now. The Brains stopped him in his tracks, and started trying to chat with him, but the porter would have none. He was after the tips from that scrimmage of train- boarding women.