The Lost Luggage Porter Read online

  No reply.

  'What'll you do?' he said after a while.

  I thought hard for a second.

  'I'll make a report’ I said.

  He looked at me and then looked away. He'd been galvanised by the activities of two vagabonds, but now he'd

  gone back to his silent ways.

  'You'll be a witness, won't you?' I said. 'You'll stand to all

  we've just seen?'

  He might've nodded; hard to tell. I picked up my bag, just

  as an S class 4-6-0 rumbled up to the place recently left by the

  Scotch Express. More steam, more rain-sweat. It was a mighty

  green beast, hard to ignore, but Edwin Lund managed, standing there on Platform Fourteen with his cap in his hand and

  his long, twisted face turned away from the engine.

  As I made to walk off, he suddenly called: 'Garden Gate!'

  'You what?' I said, stopping in my tracks.

  'Garden Gate,' he repeated. 'Public house. You'll be able to

  put your hands on those chaps in there.'

  'How do you know?' I said.

  He shrugged.

  'They're regulars there. Never fail.'

  'But

  how

  do you know?'

  'I live close by, Ward Street, and I've seen 'em in there’ he

  said. 'Well...

  going

  in, any road.'

  'You didn't follow 'em in?'

  He shook his head.

  'Taken the pledge, like.'

  'Well’ I said, 'I might get across there tomorrow ... That's

  my starting day on the force.'

  'Garden Gate, Carmelite Street’ said Lund, before being

  overtaken once again by his cough.

  Chapter Four

  I walked over the footbridge, heading for the bike stand at

  the front of the station. My way took me near to the Police

  Office and sure enough it was shut for the night. A notice on

  the door asked any passenger in distress to contact the night

  station manager. I'd been in the Police Office once before,

  very briefly, on the day I was sworn.

  At the bicycle stand, the Humber was waiting. I took the

  lamp out of the saddle bag. There was water in the top all

  right but I was rather low on carbide. I pulled the little handle that set the water dripping on to the powder, opened the

  front of the lamp, lighted a match and put it in. The rain in

  front of the lamp now fell through white light. I fixed the

  lamp to the front fork and set off for home.

  I cycled up Railway Street with a trace of acetylene smell

  coming to me from the lamp. It had been a twenty-third

  birthday present from the wife, and at five bob was worth

  more than the bicycle. I was glad of it, of course, but while

  beforehand I'd thought of every subject going during my

  cycle rides, I now thought of only one: the bloody lamp. It

  would keep going out, and it

  would

  keep falling off the

  bracket.

  Along Thorpe-on-Ouse Road new, white-brick houses

  were going up. In the ones already occupied, light burned

  brightly, as if for swank: look at us, nicely settled with electric

  light, running water upstairs and all modern conveniences

  laid on. I thought of the Camerons, and then I thought of

  Edwin Lund. He had a down on the pickpockets of York

  station ..

  .

  But why were they any concern of his?

  Beyond the building line, I was flying past the racecourse

  when the gas gave out in the lamp, and so I went on just as

  fast, but with a little nervousness. I came along by St

  Andrew's Church. The field in front was like the night

  stretched out and laid flat on the ground. One minute later I

  was skirting the gates of the Archbishop's Palace and skidding into Thorpe-on-Ouse Main Street, which was really the

  only

  street, separating the two rows of trim cottages set in

  nearly straight lines. Johnson, the bootmaker, faced Scholes,

  family butcher; Lazenby's post office faced Daffy, newsagents;

  the Grey Mare public house faced the Fortune of War public

  house, and if one shop or business should close down, it was

  like a tooth knocked out of a mouth. And so it had long been.

  No man in Thorpe-on-Ouse supped in both the Grey Mare

  and the Fortune of War. It would be like bigamy. The Mare

  had

  its

  lot and the Fortune its own. I was for the Fortune of

  War, but I couldn't have said why. I looked across to the front

  bar. No noise from there and no movement behind the lace

  curtains. I could hear a horse shifting in the stables behind,

  but that didn't mean it wasn't asleep and dreaming. I stood under the street's one gas lamp, listening to the

  River Ouse rolling on out of sight past the eastern edge of the

  village. You could hear the river at any time in Thorpe, but

  you needed to work at it. It came to you if you paid attention.

  I looked up at the sky, trying to make out the planet Mercury

  - the Twinkling Wanderer, the

  Yorkshire Evening Press

  had

  called him. There were a few stars staring straight back.

  Nothing twinkling. Over the road and along, I saw an

  Evening Press

  placard propped outside Daffy's newsagent

  and seeming to glow somewhat. I could not make out the

  words, but I knew they would be 'York Brothers Slain', the

  news blaring out though the shop was long since shut.

  Would the placard be there the next day? For John and Duncan Cameron would still be dead then.

  I opened our garden gate. The cottage we'd taken at five

  bob a week was just over from the Fortune of War, cut away

  from the road with a long garden in front and another

  behind. It was number 16A, as though squeezed in at the last

  minute between numbers 16 and 17. The people who'd had

  it before had risen to pig keeping, and there were makeshift

  sties to front and back. It was only as I approached the front

  door that it struck me I was without the portmanteau and its

  magazines. 'Buggeration!' I said out loud. Where had I left

  the bag: on Platform Fourteen or at the bike stand?

  I opened the door, which gave directly on to the parlour,

  and there was the wife, sitting at the strong table by the fire,

  and going at her typewriter as usual - fairly racing at it.

  Whereas some women took in dress-making, the wife took in

  typewriting from an agency in York, and that by the armful.

  'How do?' I said, kissing her.

  'Did you get your magazines then, our Jim,' she said, not

  stopping typewriting.

  'I got 'em, but then I lost 'em again’ I said.

  'You 'aporth,' said the wife, clouting the lever that slid the

  typewriter carriage. We had the machine on hire; it was a

  Standard, and the wife said it was worn to pieces but it

  seemed to serve pretty well.

  'I collected it from Lost Luggage all right, but then I left it

  near the bike stand, what with all the palaver of ...'

  It was unfair to blame the lamp, so I stopped there. I fettled

  up the fire a bit, saying: 'How's t' babby today?' and giving a

  grin. The wife didn't like these Yorkshire speaks.

  Between her and the typewriter was her
belly under the

  maternity gown. She had all on to reach the keys.

  'I'm too busy to be thinking about that,' she said, and I

  looked across at the page in the machine: 'Thank you for

  yours of 14th inst. ..'

  'That kid's going to be born writing letters,' I said, walking

  through to the kitchen where I found a bottle of beer in the

  pantry.

  'Oh I was forgetting. There's a telegram for you!' the wife

  called.

  I hurried back into the living room with the bottle

  unopened - news of a telegram could make you do that.

  The wife was pointing at the mantle shelf, at an envelope

  addressed: 'Detective Stringer, 16A, Main Street, Thorpe-on-

  Ouse, York'. It was a shock to see myself called a detective in

  print. The form read: 'REPORT TO POLICE OFFICE 6 A.M.

  TOMORROW'. My instructions had been to book on for my

  first day's duty at eight, so this was a turn-up. But it was the

  name at the bottom that really knocked me: Chief Inspector

  Saul Weatherill.

  It had to be concerning the Camerons. What police business in York could

  not

  be just at that time?

  The wife had stopped typewriting, and was looking at me.

  'It's from the Chief Inspector,' I said to the wife. '. . . Top

  brass.'

  'What's he say?'

  'He wants me in at six.'

  'In where?'

  'The police station.'

  'Where

  is

  that, exactly?' said the wife, going back to her

  typewriting, only more slowly.

  'It's at the railway station.'

  The wife frowned over the keys, saying:

  'So you're stationed at the station?'

  Was she the one person in the vicinity of York who knew

  nothing of the murder? Ought I to tell her? She'd pushed me

  towards police work, and she ought to see what it meant in

  practice . . . But she was not in the condition to receive

  shocks.

  'There must be something on,' I said, dropping the

  telegram into the firewood basket.

  'We had a letter as well,' said the wife. 'Your dad . . . He's

  coming here on Sunday.'

  No smile came with these words. My dad and the wife did

  not get on. Dad had turned out in all weathers to listen to the

  Conservative chap in the late election, and the wife . .. Well,

  the wife was a suffragist.

  'If he's coming, he's coming,' I said, sitting down on the

  sofa.

  'Yes,' said the wife, still typewriting. 'The train service

  between Bay town and York is unfortunately excellent.'

  'On the day,' I said, 'you are to make a big tea.'

  The wife was like a cat on hot bricks whenever the subject

  turned to cooking. Cheese, bread, cocoa, yes: anything more,

  a fellow had to fight for it.

  'I will make a

  tea,'

  she said carefully.

  We had many more hot dinners out than other couples

  similarly placed, and ate a sight more from tins than was

  probably good for us. Then again, the wife earned money

  typewriting, and a good deal of that went on the housekeeping.

  'When he comes,' I said, standing up and walking over to

  the fire, 'will you try to avoid a set-to?'

  'How am I to do that?'

  'Just don't bring up the subject of votes for women as soon

  as he steps through the bloody door.'

  I crushed a speck of coal that had flown out on to the

  linoleum. I could not sit down when having these discussions with the wife.

  'Is it my fault if your dad suffers from sex prejudice?' said

  the wife.

  'He's sixty-five’ I said. 'He didn't know what sex prejudice was until you showed up.'

  'Well then’ she said, 'I'm only too happy to have been of

  assistance to him.'

  I looked about the room.

  'Where's the sewing machine?' I said.

  'It's in a safe place, where it will not get in the way.'

  Or used, I thought.

  Dad had bought the wife a sewing machine, sent together

  with a note suggesting that she might make a layette for the

  baby. But the wife meant to

  buy

  a layette for the bairn, and

  that was all about it. He'd also taken to sending her "The

  Ladies' Column", snipped out from the

  Whitby Gazette.

  It

  was all recipes and household hints. The wife had read the

  first one only. 'I don't believe it's written by a woman at all’

  she'd said, before pitching it into the fire.

  'We must put the sewing machine out again when Dad

  comes’ I said.

  'Very well’ said the wife.

  'He's trying to make you a wife more like his own’ I said.

  'She loved cooking, you know, my mother ...'

  'The poor soul’ said the wife, typewriting away.

  But it was best not to dwell on this subject, for Dad's wife,

  my mother, had died in childbirth (with me the child in

  question).

  I sat down, thinking once again of the Camerons, but saying:

  '. .. Chased some pickpockets today at York station.'

  'Arrested them, did you?'

  I shook my head.

  'They ran off.'

  'What're you going to do about it, then?'

  'Make out a report,' I said.

  'That'll settle 'em,' said the wife, grinning.

  She might tease me but the wife was pleased that I'd

  joined the police. It was one of the few things she had in

  common with my dad: they both wanted me to get on. Dad,

  of course, was an out-and-out snob with about as many aspirations as any comfortably retired butcher could run to,

  while the wife . .. Well, she was something of a snob too, for

  all her belief in the woman's cause and Co-operation.

  I had suffered alone after being stood down from my job

  on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway To the wife, it was

  simply a great thing that the tin tub was not now needed

  every night. Then again, she came from money herself in a

  modest way. Her mysterious, lonely-looking father had

  owned several properties in and about the viaducts of

  Waterloo, and the wife had come into a bit when he'd died,

  with the result that she was plotting the purchase of a house

  to replace the one we'd lately sold in Halifax. This, she said,

  would be equipped with a thirty-shilling walnut bureau 'for

  our correspondence' and a five-pound pianoforte for 'musical evenings' which I had spent hours trying, and failing, to

  imagine. (Neither of us could play a note, to begin with.)

  These were the fixed aims of her domestic life, and housework could go hang in the meantime.

  I had supper of boiled bacon, pickles and tea, and read a

  little more of my

  Police Manual,

  telling myself I would keep

  at it until the biggest log on the fire burnt away, but it didn't

  seem to burn, only to turn black. There was a lot of it left by

  the time I got up to 'Fraud' and quit the book.

  I went up to bed with the wife at a little after ten. Before

  pulling the lace curtain of the bedroom to, I peered past the

  fern that stood on the window ledge. Nobody about in

  Thorpe. I thought for some reas
on of the Archbishop sleeping in his Palace, the river flowing slowly by; and it was

  impossible not to imagine him looking like one of those statues found on church tombs. The Palace would bring a few

  trippers to Thorpe in summer (I'd been told) but it was a

  sleepy spot, all right. After Halifax, it was like being left

  behind by the world. Yet, two weeks before we'd arrived

  there'd been a windrush through the village - not occurring

  anywhere else - and forty-nine objects, according to the

  vicar, had been overturned, including the oak next to the Old

  Church, which stood marooned by the river.

  The wife came into the room carrying her raspberry tea,

  recommended for those in her condition. Her nightdress

  hung about one foot higher than usual, because of the baby

  bulge beneath, and her travel around the bed put me in mind

  of the orbit of the planet Mercury. Her due date was two

  months away. If the idea bothered her, it didn't stop her

  sleeping, and she was quickly off.

  I wanted a boy - tell him about engines. Except that I was

  done with them myself. I could hardly think about locomotives now, without going back in my mind's eye to Sowerby

  Bridge Shed, 12 November 1905. To think that at the start of

  that day, I'd still been able to see my way clear to a life on the

  footplate. What with memories of that calamity, and wondering whether I'd be put to chasing murderers come six

  o'clock in the morning I couldn't sleep, so walked down to

  the kitchen for a bottle of beer. But we were all out.