Death on a Branch Line

by Andrew Martin

‘Keeps the rabbits cold,’ he said.

  ‘It’s an old mackintosh, I suppose?’ put in the wife.

  Mervyn shook his head.

  ‘Cover for an invalid mattress,’ he said. ‘At least that’s what me mam says.’

  ‘Where d’you find it?’

  ‘In t’ wood. Soon as I saw it, I knew it’d come in.’

  ‘It’s a clever use of it,’ said the wife.

  ‘It does,’ said Mervyn in a modest sort of way.

  He told us that the village carter, a fellow called Hamer, would give him tuppence for each rabbit and then sell them on to the butcher in East Adenwold. There was no butcher in Adenwold itself.

  ‘Why do you have a fire going, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.

  ‘In case I pull summat out o’ there,’ he replied, indicating the river.

  ‘You can take a fish by hand?’

  ‘At odd times, aye.’

  He was stuffing the rabbits into the sacking.

  The wife asked, ‘Have you ever been to Scarborough, Mervyn?’

  ‘I ’ave not.’

  ‘It’s only an hour’s train ride,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t ’old wi’ t’ railway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It did for all t’ farms round ’ere.’

  Railways were bad for farms. They brought cheap food from abroad.

  ‘There’d be no lemons here without the railway,’ I said.

  ‘Well then,’ said Mervyn, ‘I don’t like lemons.’

  The wife asked him: ‘Do you never use the railway to get about?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I just walk over t’ fields.’

  ‘It sounds a very nice way to travel, I’m sure,’ said the wife.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mervyn, ‘it is.’

  I asked him: ‘Mervyn, who were the villagers beating on the rabbit shoot? When Sir George was shot, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve no notion,’ he said, eyeing me.

  I nodded, saying, ‘Where’s the Hall from here, Mervyn?’

  And he stood pointing.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘And now?’ I asked the wife, as we walked fast through the woods.

  The boy’s talk of the murder had flicked her imagination. I could tell that by her silence.

  ‘We’re not going to call, you know,’ said the wife.

  We were not in the habit of leaving cards. We did not have any cards to leave. If I became a solicitor then we would do.

  ‘We’ll just have a peep at the place,’ I said.

  We were moving now along a wider track. There seemed a whole roadway of tracks in the woods, with great junctions under the branches but never any people.

  We came to an edge of the trees, and there was the Hall. There were seas of corn to left and right, and pasture directly before it, across which two telegraph wires were carried towards the house by a line of poles that seemed to originate in the woods. A long drive ran through the pasture and ended bang at the front door. It was dead straight but went up and down a good deal, like a long sheet being shaken out. The drive seemed longer than the house required. It was only a moderate-sized mansion, but made up for that in handsomeness.

  ‘It’s not so big that you couldn’t imagine living in it,’ I said, but the wife made no answer. Looking at the house, she was off in her own world.

  In the pasture stood a couple of dozen oak trees, set widely apart. Each looked like a green planet, and each had a white wooden railing around its base as if to say: this tree is special, not like that common lot in the woods. The cattle were all lying down and swishing their tails, worn out after their day of great heat, but the house stood proudly. To the left side of it from our point of view stood a group of buildings like something crossed between churches and farm buildings. As we looked on, a man moved from behind one of the great trees. He had on a light white suit and seemed – even from two hundred yards’ distance – to be under some great strain. He held a book under his arm.

  ‘What’s he about?’ asked the wife.

  ‘It’s him,’ I said, as the white-suited man approached.

  As he moved closer, I saw that he wore thin wire spectacles, also that the book he held was a Bradshaw, so that I immediately thought of him as a man important enough to require a timetable always to hand. He might have to go anywhere at any time by train. But he was not important-looking in the normal way.

  ‘Fine evening,’ he said, in a very sad tone that stopped everything in its tracks.

  He was well-spoken, of course, but he didn’t look the part of a country squire. He had the same out-of-the-way, almost feminine looks as his brother. He was as pale as Hugh Lambert, but even thinner and more sickly-looking. His close-trimmed beard fitted under the curves of his cheekbones in a way I thought Jesus-like. Unlike his brother, he was inclined to be bald, and such black hair as he did have was rather damp, making him seem feverish; his shirt was disarranged, and his tightly knotted white necker was more like a garrotte, as his brother’s had been. But he was the sort that did not need to be smart. He was from brass, in other words.

  ‘You are John Lambert,’ I said.

  He did not deny it, but touched his spectacles, and looked over to the far edge of the grounds, where a man was cutting grass with a scythe.

  ‘That man’s been hard at it all day,’ he said, ‘and he hasn’t had a cup of tea since four o’clock. He told me that himself just now.’

  We watched the fellow about his work.

  ‘Rather late to be cutting grass,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not a job for the middle of the day in weather like this,’ said John Lambert. ‘The temperature touched ninety-five here this afternoon.’

  ‘Ninety-six in York,’ I said.

  ‘Well, York’s south of here,’ said Lambert. ‘It’s practically tropical. Who are you?’

  And in the moment of asking that question, he did look like the squire of Adenwold. I decided that I would still keep back my occupation.

  ‘Stringer,’ I said, and he shook my hand, saying nothing.

  ‘I fell into a conversation with your brother at York station,’ I said. ‘He was changing trains there, being transferred to Durham gaol. I suppose you know he was transferred?’

  He looked down at the timetable in his hand, then up at me.

  ‘How did you come to be speaking to him?’

  ‘I work at the station,’ I said.

  He looked at me, as if to say: that’s no answer, and you know it.

  ‘Why did he come off the train?’ he asked.

  ‘There was a delay. The fireman was taken sick.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Shortly after Retford.’

  ‘At Doncaster?’ he asked sharply. ‘Selby?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said.

  It was time to give him the hard word.

  ‘He told me there may be people who perhaps … mean to kill you.’

  John Lambert suddenly tipped his head up, as though revolving this notion.

  ‘That may very well be,’ he said.

  It was like finding that a dream of your own matched exactly someone else’s. He touched his glasses again, as though a defect in his vision was his main concern of the moment. Here’s a man who’s read too much, I thought. I longed to say the word ‘Ponder’ and see whether he started at it.

  ‘They may be here already or they may be arriving by train,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm …’ said Lambert, in a comical sort of tone.

  He, like his brother, had a taste for grim humour.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked the wife from behind me. ‘And why do they want to harm you?’

  I turned about. She looked strange saying that with flowers in her hand, and it was as though the man did feel the question impertinent, for he gave answer to me and ignored Lydia.

  ‘I am not at liberty to say.’

  Lydia asked, ‘If they’re going to kill you anyway, then what do you have to lose by speaking out?’ and I was
torn between annoyance at her cutting in like this and the thought that it was a good question.

  But John Lambert kept silence.

  I tried another approach:

  ‘Why do you not make off?’

  ‘Fatalistic disposition,’ he said with a shrug, and he nearly smiled again, adding: ‘Let me put the matter less whimsically …’

  ‘Could you?’ said the wife from behind.

  ‘If I made off,’ said Lambert, ‘they would find me anyway.’

  ‘One “up” train stopped by request at Adenwold this evening,’ I said. ‘We came in by it, and a bicyclist got off as well.’

  Lambert nodded, and he now seemed distinctly amused.

  ‘Sounds fairly benign so far,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve no reason to fear a bicyclist?’ I enquired.

  ‘We’ve all got reason to fear them,’ said Lambert. ‘They’ve no brakes at all, half of them.’

  ‘Then,’ I went on, ‘at 8.41, a scheduled “down” train arrived. A man from Norwood came in by it.’

  ‘Norwood?’ said Lambert.

  ‘It’s in south London,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He carried papers written in German.’

  I watched him for a reaction, and he watched me back.

  ‘There are three further trains tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘The 8.51, the 12.27 and the 8.35 p.m.,’ Lambert cut in with a faint smile. It was as though the Bradshaw was not so much in his hand as in his very bloodstream.

  ‘And each of those also leaves,’ I said. ‘You might keep that in mind.’

  I looked at the Bradshaw in his hand. There were a thousand pages in it. He might go anywhere.

  ‘The governor of Wandsworth gaol believes your brother to be innocent,’ I said.

  ‘I share the gentleman’s opinion.’

  ‘If he didn’t kill your father, then who did? Do you know? And do you plan to let on? Is that why you’re in danger?’

  John Lambert just eyed me, and he seemed very remote behind those thin glasses of his. He was very likely remote from everyone.

  ‘My brother has sent me here to help you,’ I said. ‘And yet …’

  ‘And let me help you, Mr Stringer,’ he cut in. ‘As long as you are connected to me your life is in danger.’

  Well now.

  I wanted a little time to think in. I must send the wife away for one thing. And I ought to bring in the Chief.

  ‘You mean to save your brother from the gallows,’ I said at length, ‘but how?’

  ‘Mr Stringer,’ he replied, ‘I am sure that you have better things to do on a fine week-end like this than to fret over the private troubles of a stranger.’

  ‘We were on the point of going to Scarborough,’ said the wife, in a hollow sort of voice. ‘Just like most of this village.’

  ‘Go to Scarborough,’ said Lambert, again addressing me.

  ‘All the hotels are full,’ I said flatly, and at that I saw a new and deeper complication in the man’s face – a sign of great trouble.

  ‘Mr Lambert …’ said the wife, and I knew that she had relented somewhat towards him in that moment. He looked directly at her for the first time, and nodded as though to thank her for the step she had taken but she seemed to hesitate on the point of speech. Lambert nodded at us both, turned on his heel and walked away. Ought I to have shown him the papers of his brother? They were in my pocket. I raised my hand to them. But instead I called after him one of the hundreds of questions I might have put:

  ‘What is your profession?’

  He stopped, and half-turned towards me, saying, ‘I fill notebooks, Mr Stringer.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  We walked fast through the woods. The darkness was drawing down, but still the heat hung heavy in the wide, tree-made tunnels. In the light of John Lambert’s warning, the woods looked different. The trees either side of us were monsters – great spiders with even their highest branches swooping right down to the ground.

  ‘Do you believe it now?’ I asked the wife.

  ‘I think there’s something in it all,’ she said.

  Whether she believed it or not, she would be leaving Adenwold in the morning, I would make sure of that. One murder had happened and another was coming, or at least an attempt, and I would have to put myself in the way of it. It struck me again that I ought to get the Chief over to Adenwold first thing in the morning. I knew he was generally in the office of a Saturday.

  We came out of the trees and we were at Mervyn’s set-up, which was more than ever like the scene of an explosion in the woods. As far as I could make out, the lad had gone, and taken all the dead rabbits with him. We walked on, and struck the railway track, which we followed a little way, walking under the telegraph wires. The wife was ahead of me, stumbling now and then on the track ballast.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘we’re heading the wrong way.’

  But she’d come to a stop in any case. The wires from the pole before us were down, and lay by the side of the tracks, all forlorn like a dead octopus. They ran on as normal from the next pole along, but of course one break was all that was needed.

  Was this to prepare the way for the killers?

  Or were they already in the village?

  This doing would cut off the station’s telegraph office – very likely the only one in the village – from all points west, and it was odds-on the line would be cut the other way, too. How could I contact the Chief now, short of taking a train out in the morning? But if I did that, I would miss the ones coming in. And would the trains run? It was possible to operate a branch line without telegraphic connections, but special arrangements had to be put in hand.

  The wife stood silent, with arms folded as she kicked at one of the stray wires. She said, ‘They have ordnance maps of the whole country-side, you know – the travelling agents, I mean. They’re picked up from time to time, but it’s all hushed up.’

  We walked on in silence through the dark woods. Every so often, there came a crashing as a bird tried to fly through the trees, and I did wish they would stop trying, for they put me in a great state of nerves.

  When we gained the top of the road that rose from the centre of the village, we saw a greenish light through the windows of The Angel. I opened the front door, and we stepped into the little hallway where we had the options ‘Saloon’ or ‘Public’, or the stairs that led up to our room. There was no question but that Lydia would take the stairs. She didn’t drink, and had never set foot inside a public house, but when I asked, ‘You off up, then?’ she said ‘Not just yet’, and stepped into the public bar with me.

  Was it fear or curiosity that had made her do it?

  We pushed through the door, and half a dozen – no, eight – faces looked back at us.

  It turned out that, whichever door you walked through, you got the saloon and the public, and that the bar – on which stood six green-shaded oil lamps – was a sort of wooden island in-between the two. The ‘public’ side was wooden walls and wooden benches. The ‘saloon’ side was a little smarter. It had the red rose wallpaper and a fish picture over the fireplace similar to the one in our room. This one showed a pike, but with no instructions and no display of hooks. (If you wanted to catch a pike, you could work out how to do it yourself.) All the windows were open, and a warm breeze occasionally wandered through from the ‘public’ to the ‘saloon’ side. Mr Hardy, the fat station master, stood alone at the bar on the ‘public’ side, and there were a couple of agricultural fellows talking and smoking at a table behind him. The two arrivals-by-train – the bicyclist and the man from Norwood – sat in the saloon side, and each had a small round table to himself. The man from Norwood had a pipe on the go, and was reading documents. The bicyclist was eating a pie – the Yorkshire pie, I guessed. Every now and again, he would lay down his knife and fork and give a loud sigh. After a while, it came to me that this might be connected to the fact that Mr Handley the landlord, sitting on a high stool on the saloo
n side, was addressing him. He did so again now, in a very deep, drunken voice, an underwater sort of voice like a deaf man’s, and I couldn’t make it out, but the bicyclist sighed again and said, ‘It certainly cannot be ridden in its present condition – not with the inner tube holed. The wheel would zig-zag intolerably.’

  His machine was evidently punctured. Like most who take to biking he was middle class – might have been a university product. As I watched, Mr Handley was served a pint in a pewter by his wife. It must have gone hard with her that he wasn’t paying.

  Mrs Handley smiled – still cautious, but I had a persuasion that she was warming to us. I ordered a pint of bitter for myself and the lemonade for the wife, and Mrs Handley seemed quite chuffed at this. Her husband being a man for strong waters only, and her boy not liking lemons, I supposed that she was glad to find a taker for her home-made brew. She poured the lemonade and then said to me: ‘We have John Smith’s bitter, and Thompson’s ale. The Thompson’s is a little stronger.’

  ‘Oh, my husband knows all about that,’ the wife cut in, and I thought with excitement: Now she’s definitely nervous. Unpredictable things happened when the wife became stirred-up.

  Mr Handley made some further remark to the bicyclist. I couldn’t understand a word he said, yet the bicyclist seemed to have no trouble in doing so.

  ‘Cycling is certainly beneficial in that way,’ he said, in reply to Mr Handley. ‘It is said to promote a general activity in the liver,’ he added, at which he gave a pitying look to Handley, as if to say, ‘But your liver has enough on as it is.’

  He then stood up and quit the bar.

  I asked for John Smith’s, and plunged in haphazard as Mrs Handley passed me the pint.

  ‘Almost everyone hereabouts has … well, gone.’

  She folded her arms and eyed me for a while.

  ‘Moffat’s here,’ she said, ‘down on the East Green. He’s the baker.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he gone?’

  ‘He doesn’t like Scarborough, I suppose.’

  ‘Can’t credit that,’ said the wife, and she grinned, whereas Mrs Handley did not. Or not quite, anyhow.

  ‘Caroline and Augusta are here,’ said Mrs Handley.

  ‘Who are they?’