Death on a Branch Line Read online

  Just then there came a clattering noise from close-by, and Mrs Handley came out of the back door of the inn and walked across the garden into the outhouse. She returned after a moment carrying a ham. The Yorkshire Ham. The call of a nightjar came from the yellow cut field, and it stopped Mrs Handley in her tracks.

  ‘Is she crying?’ I said, looking over the wife’s shoulder.

  Lydia sat down on the bed again.

  ‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised,’ she said.

  I heard the clatter of the door from directly below, signifying that Mrs Handley had re-entered the inn.

  ‘What are you thinking about, love?’ I asked the wife, as I fixed what I thought of as my holiday neckerchief in place. It was green to match the sporting cap, but I reserved that for the present on account of the wife’s mood.

  ‘Scarborough,’ she said.

  I should’ve known not to ask.

  ‘… The Italian band on the pier,’ she ran on, ‘… a lemon tea at the Grand … the Chinese lanterns at dusk in the Esplanade Gardens.’

  If we’d gone, I thought, she wouldn’t have been so keen on it all.

  ‘We will go to Scarborough,’ I said, transferring the bundle of papers from my kitbag to the inside pocket of my suit-coat, which lay on the bed. ‘I’ve another leave in August, and we’ll go then. Meantime, shall I tell you how we’ve come to fetch up here?’

  I had been eyeing the place next to the wife on the bed, but I thought it better to tell the tale while standing.

  I gave Lydia the story I’d had from Hugh Lambert, and told her of my plan of campaign. I didn’t say whether I believed the story to be true. When I’d finished, I stood waiting for her to say, ‘Well, it’s all too daft for words.’ Instead there came through the open window a beating of air. It was the fire-breathing of the iron intruder: the 8.41 ‘down’.

  ‘I’m off to meet that in,’ I said, and I snatched up my suit-coat and new cap and quit the room. Let the wife digest the story at her leisure – it was a lot to take in.

  Spilling out through the front door of The Angel, I saw that the long table now stood empty, and that Mervyn Handley’s ferret had been untied and removed. The train gave two screams as it approached through the trees, and I began running along the dusty downhill road, which brought the sweat pricking under my shirt. The floating sharpness of engine smoke mingled with the dizzying country-side scents of hay, cut corn, hedge flowers and meadow flowers – and all for my benefit alone, for there was no-one else about. It was unnatural for an evening to be so close. A man deserved a rest after six, but this bugger of a sun would never let up. Seemed set on proving a point, it did: I can keep this up for ever, you know!

  I ran past the triangle of dying grass that marked what seemed to be the centre of Adenwold, and across the station yard, where I had to step aside to let a man in a long white dust-coat come through. He was hatless, and with silver hair, and the coat came out behind him like wings. Behind him, the train was just coming to a stand. Had he come down early from it? He’d have risked a broken ankle if so. I turned about and watched him tear across the station yard, and then away in the opposite direction to The Angel.

  He might or might not have arrived by train. My priority was to observe those who certainly had done.

  I gained the ‘down’ platform, and stood level with the tail light of the guard’s van, which blazed away needlessly in the golden evening. A man was walking away from a third-class carriage. He was a clerkly sort, sweating in tall collar, black shiny suit and a cheap, high-crowned brown bowler that clashed. He carried a portmanteau and a Gladstone bag. The lad porter was on the platform, watching the man. He’d made no move to assist him.

  The clerkly sort kept turning about as he walked, as if to make sure that nobody else had climbed down from the train – which nobody else had. He stopped as I watched him and gave me a steady stare for a second or two before striking out for the barrow boards and Adenwold.

  As he crossed the station yard, he passed a man approaching the simmering train: a parson in a light white suit. He carried a small suitcase.

  Was this the Reverend Martin Ridley, the vicar who’d been in the woods at the time of the killing? He stepped onto the platform and came past me without a glance. The porter closed on him. They exchanged a word, and the porter took the suitcase. The vicar wore a white straw hat with a red ribbon around the crown that pulled at the brim, making it wavy and flower-like. His face was redder than a vicar’s ought to be. I did not care for his looks, but he was evidently deemed worth money by the porter, who now opened a door marked ‘First’ for him. The vicar climbed up, passed down a coin or two and the porter slammed the door.

  So that was one less to worry about.

  The engine gave a whistle, and I watched the train move away, the reflected sun burning in the blank carriage windows. When it had gone, the lad porter turned and faced me – giving me a stare that had in it a sort of steady defiance. Maybe he’d been given a rating by the station master after my complaint, but I doubted that.

  I doubled back over the barrow boards just in time to see the lately alighted fellow in the bowler skirt the triangular green. From the station yard, I watched him take the dusty uphill road. He must be heading for The Angel. After all, it was that or a ten-mile tramp to the next village.

  The man appeared to be having bother with the catch on his Gladstone bag, and kept pausing to secure it. A female form was advancing on him from the part of the road that was bounded by the hedges. It was the wife in her high-waisted holiday dress. As the two crossed, the clasp on the man’s bag gave way, and the goods inside spilled out onto the road. Four heavy-looking items in green cloth bags tumbled down, and a quantity of papers floated up and a little way away in the hot evening air. The wife closed on the man, and I was a little jealous of him for the speed with which she came to his aid. She almost knelt in the road to help collect up the papers. By the time I was level with them, everything was back in the bag.

  ‘You for The Angel?’ I asked, lifting my sporting cap.

  ‘I’m for the inn, anyhow,’ said the man.

  His accent was London.

  ‘It’s called The Angel,’ I said.

  The man removed his bowler to mop his brow. His hair was divided perfectly into two halves from neck to forehead as though he was just up from a swim.

  ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ said the wife.

  ‘Well, it is extremely oppressive,’ said the man, before remembering himself and adding, ‘but yes, it is lovely.’

  There was something artificial about his speech, as though he wanted to be better than he was.

  I said, ‘You’ve come up from …?’

  ‘Oh you know,’ he said, ‘London way … Norwood area,’ and then, in a kind of panic, he looked up at the sky, saying, ‘Not a cloud!’

  He had us down as people who could be fobbed off with talk of the weather. He nodded to us, turned on his heel, and marched on, but after a second he stopped again, and called to me: ‘I say, you ain’t Franklin, by any chance, are you?’

  ‘Name’s Stringer,’ I called up to him, ‘Jim Stringer.’

  He nodded and turned on his heel. He had not given out his own name. I ought not to have given him mine. Lydia stood next to me, and close enough for me to know that our late argument was at an end.

  ‘Why did you not say you were a policeman?’ she asked, when the man was out of earshot.

  ‘I don’t want him to bolt,’ I said.

  ‘You think he’s here to make mischief for this John Lambert?’

  ‘Well, he’s not here for a ramble in the woods, is he?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve found out where this man Lambert is?’

  ‘He’s at the Hall.’

  ‘Which way is that?’

  ‘Don’t know just yet.’

  ‘Why not ask someone?’

  I looked at my silver watch: quarter to nine.

  ‘I don’t know who to trust. You don�
�t know who might be in with the bad blokes.’

  Lydia was grinning at me. I might almost have thought she’d taken a drink at The Angel, only she never touched a drop.

  ‘Fairly drowning in mysteries, aren’t we?’ she said.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said.

  ‘Him,’ she said, taking hold of my sleeve, and pointing up the road after the clerk.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what about him?’

  ‘The papers he’s just dropped,’ she said. ‘Half were quite blank, and half were written in German.’

  ‘German?’

  ‘Your face, Jim Stringer,’ she said, grinning.

  Chapter Eleven

  We were taking a turn through the woods, the wife occasionally giving a glance at my cap, and frowning. I had half an eye out for the Hall, but I was above all trying to develop a plan.

  The low sun seemed to track us through the trees, always keeping a wary distance. I revolved in my mind the events of the evening, while the wife talked fast. She was in good spirits in spite of my cap, and she picked wildflowers as she walked. She’d fallen into conversation with Mrs Handley, the landlady at The Angel, and taken a liking to her. ‘She’s a feminist, if she but knew it,’ Lydia said. ‘She’s perfectly well aware that she ought not to do as much work as she does, but she says that her mind runs on so if she doesn’t, and she’d rather have the work than the worry.’

  ‘Why was she crying in the garden?’

  ‘I’m sure that was on account of the work,’ said the wife.

  ‘Not the worry, you don’t suppose?’

  She gave me a quick glance, but made no answer.

  The wife had also been galvanised by a quick cold bath, and a glass of Mrs Handley’s lemonade. ‘It’s nectar, Jim,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose that man from Norwood is connected to the Moroccan business?’ she went on.

  ‘Well …’ I said, for the question knocked me.

  ‘He’s up to devil knows what,’ said the wife. ‘Do you suppose it’s too late for violets?’ she said, as we came out into a clearing.

  We looked about, and I said, ‘That fellow’s made you sit up, hasn’t he? Do I take it you believe something’s going on?’

  ‘No,’ said the wife, ‘I don’t for one minute.’

  I put my hands in my trouser pockets, and eyed her coolly.

  I said, ‘But it’s true about the German papers?’

  She nodded once, briefly.

  ‘There are fixed agents,’ the wife said cheerfully, ‘and there are travelling agents. The Germans have a brigade of spies in Britain … I’m just thinking of all the lies I’ve read in the newspapers … Honestly, it’s all such rubbish. Why shouldn’t a man have German documents about him? He might be half-German for all we know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but given what I told you at the inn …’

  She was shaking her head, wouldn’t have it. She had chosen her side in Britain’s battles. The folk who talked up the German menace were the ones who talked down the women’s movement, and you couldn’t believe in both.

  I saw by the presence of telegraph poles that we were hard by the railway line. Swallows flew fast through the evening air, making a high, singing noise as they swooped over the wires. I might once have taken this for the sound of the wires themselves, for I had been told in my early days on the railways that it was possible to hear the electrical signals as they flew from pole to pole. But this was not true. You could not hear the signals however close you stood.

  Just then, two sharp cracks came from the wood; a cloud of birds rose up from it, and moved away to the left like smoke.

  ‘It’s fucking happened,’ I said.

  ‘You will not …’ said the wife, but I was straight back into the woods and crashing through the branches as a third shot came.

  ‘You there!’ I called out. ‘Police! Stop firing!’

  I felt panic as I clashed through the trees, but my curiosity was stronger than my fear.

  ‘Give over, mister!’ came a high voice through the trees – a boy’s voice. ‘It’s only t’ rabbits I’m after.’

  It was Mervyn Handley, the kid from the inn, but I had to march on for a good half-minute more until I clapped eyes on him. He stood amid fallen trees in the woodsman’s clearing I’d seen from the train, and he held a double-barrelled shotgun pointed down. His powder flasks and shot pouches were too near the fire that bent the warm air behind him. His ferret – which was tied to the skeleton frame of a steam saw – was too near the terrier that was tied to the thickest branch of a fallen log, the result being that the dog was barking fit to bust, and the ferret was giving a constant thin scream. In the clearing, patches of ferns grew, and there were two dead-straight rows of sunflowers. Some of the timbers had been used to make a low shelter with a tarpaulin slung over the top. At the entrance, I saw a dead rabbit, a woodsman’s bill-hook, a funny paper for boys and a sack.

  The boy was calming the dog – and so also the ferret – as I spoke up.

  ‘Do you know of a John Lambert?’ I asked him.

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Stops up at …’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Up at t’ all.’

  ‘The Hall? Is he the squire, so to speak?’

  Mervyn Handley frowned.

  ‘Well … there’s t’ new man.’

  But surely, I thought, John Lambert – being the eldest son – would have inherited the house? He would be the new man. But this might be a rather complicated matter. I tried a different tack.

  ‘John Lambert’s father died, didn’t he?’

  ‘Aye, mister,’ the boy said, and he looked at me levelly. After an interval, and still eyeing me, he said, ‘Shot to death.’

  ‘And who shot him?’

  Silence for a space. Then the boy said:

  ‘His son. Master Hugh.’

  ‘He’s about to swing, en’t he?’

  The lad nodded.

  ‘Why did it take so long to come to a hanging?’

  ‘Master Hugh made off. France, and all over.’

  ‘When did they lay hands on him?’

  ‘Last back end.’

  ‘And you knew the man accused – Master Hugh?’

  A long beat of silence.

  ‘I knew him, aye.’

  I was going in strong here. I knew the kid didn’t want to be asked, but then again I knew he would answer. So I kept on.

  ‘What did you think of him?’ I asked, and he shot back the answer directly: ‘Liked him.’

  The wife was pacing about near the fire; she had entered the clearing only a few seconds after me, so she’d been privy to the whole conversation. I began to hear the sound of a river rolling past.

  ‘Why did you like him?’

  No sound but the rushing river.

  Mervyn said:

  ‘He’d give me presents.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a dormouse,’ said the kid, this time fast, and he turned his head once again to the side. ‘There now,’ he said, and nodded two or three times.

  The wife cut in to spare the lad more of my questions:

  ‘What’s your dog called, Mervyn?’

  ‘Alfred,’ he said.

  ‘Is it safe to stroke him?’ she asked.

  ‘It’ll be safe for you,’ he said, which put the wife in a fix, leaving her no option but to go over to the animal.

  The wife was stroking the dog, which seemed more bored than anything else by the attention.

  She asked, ‘What is this place, Mervyn?’

  ‘This?’ he said, looking about him. ‘It’s t’ set-up.’

  ‘The set-up?’

  Mervyn coloured up at hearing his name for the place repeated, but Lydia’s more amiable questions gradually put him at his ease, and it all came out.

  The set-up was his seat of operations against rabbits, or a place he’d come to eat his snap after a morning’s toil in the fields or at the inn. He was half pot boy at the inn, half farmer’s boy, f
or he would do turns at all the local farms, helping at harvest and threshing, picking thistles in summer and stones in winter. The Handleys had once farmed land leased from the Hall, but the man later murdered – Sir George Lambert – had turned them out and given them the pub instead. When I asked why, the boy said, ‘Not rightly sure.’

  Anyhow, Mervyn did not seem especially down on the late Sir George Lambert. The boy described him to us as a great man for hunting and cricket – a very loud and hearty gent from the sound of it, but ‘all right’.

  ‘Would you like to manage an inn when you’re older?’ Lydia asked Mervyn, and I could see she was taken with the boy, even though he spoke the broad Yorkshire she was forever trying to lead our Harry away from. Mervyn shrugged.

  ‘Or you might think of the North Eastern Railway,’ I said. ‘The present lad porter at Adenwold’s not up to much, I’ll tell you that.’

  Mervyn kept silence. Having laid down his shotgun and given the fire a kick, he was moving towards the river.

  ‘Lad at t’ station?’ Mervyn said as he walked. ‘… I steer clear.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ I called after him.

  But he didn’t seem to hear.

  I indicated by a nod of the head to Lydia that we should follow the boy over to the river.

  ‘Don’t press him so,’ she said, as we followed in his wake. But I knew she was as keen as me to find out more.

  ‘What about the station master?’ I asked Mervyn when we were all at the river bank.

  ‘’Im?’ he said, ‘’im wi’ t’ little men?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘The model soldiers in the booking office.’

  Mervyn was drawing what looked like a great rubber bag from out of the river. It had been tethered to the bank like a fisherman’s keep net. He upended it and … well, it was like watching a whale vomiting out dead rabbits, for the rubber bag held half a dozen of them.

  ‘He’s a weird one all right,’ said Mervyn, flinging away the bag. I looked over to the wife; her face was a picture.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said to Mervyn. ‘What’s all this?’