Death on a Branch Line

by Andrew Martin

  Here was a clearing, and another triangular green, this one better kept than the first and with – for all the heat – greener grass. A market cross stood in the centre of it. A terrace of cottages ran along one edge of the green. They looked pretty in the sunshine, and quite deserted. Their owners were having a holiday from them, and they were having a holiday from their owners. A row of three shops ran along another side: a baker’s, a saddle-maker’s and a tobacconist and confectioner’s, this last with the sun kept off by window posters for Rowntrees Cocoa and Player’s Navy Cut that looked as though they belonged in York and not out here in the wilds. Only the baker’s looked to be open, and there was a good smell coming out of it: hot and sweet, to go with the dizzying smell of the hundreds of flowers blooming all around.

  The shops stood opposite to me, the terrace to the left. On the right was Adenwold parish church, which was contained within the half-ruined skeleton of a much larger church, and covered over with ivy. In the graveyard were little enclosures made of thick hedges, like natural rooms, and inside these were clusters of graves – whole families of the dead. Alongside the graveyard was a grand pink house. This must be the vicarage, and I was sure it had claimed the vicar who’d just left the station.

  The lately-arrived man in field boots was now examining a finger-post that pointed towards a narrow road running away to the left of the baker’s. I came up behind him and read: ‘TO THE HALL’.

  ‘You’re for the Hall?’ I asked the man.

  He wheeled about, but he hardly looked at me. Rather, he seemed to be looking into the far distance, and I had the idea that he might have learnt that gaze in Africa. But he also had London written all over him – expensive education and five hundred pounds a year. He gave the shortest of nods. He was for the Hall. At this, I gave him my name but again kept back my profession. The man put down his bags and shook my hand, but didn’t introduce himself. His eyes were exactly the same colour as the sky.

  He was a tough-looking bloke, and if one of those bags of his held a gun – which seemed to me more than likely – and if he was on his way to shoot John Lambert, I would not be able to stop him by force. All I could do was try to put him off by saying what I knew.

  ‘There’s a man staying at the gardener’s cottage which is connected to the Hall,’ I said. ‘His name’s John Lambert and I believe him to be in danger of …’

  ‘Of what?’ asked the man, and it was not sharp, but in the manner of a polite enquiry.

  ‘In mortal danger,’ I said.

  There was a silence. Or rather the air was filled with the sound of bees.

  ‘How do you know?’ the man eventually asked.

  ‘He said as much. I spoke to him yesterday.’

  The man put down his bags.

  ‘Did you seek him out, or just come upon him?’

  ‘I’m here on holiday,’ I said. ‘I was out strolling with my wife, and I just came upon him.’

  The man put his hands behind his back, and placed his legs wider apart.

  ‘Did you not recommend that he summon the police?’

  He’d forced my hand.

  ‘I am the police,’ I said, and I showed him my warrant card, saying, ‘Do you mind my asking your business at the Hall?’

  But, still with his hands behind his back, he put a question of his own:

  ‘You’re here on holiday, you say?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Who’s your officer commanding?’

  And that was sharp.

  ‘That don’t signify,’ I said, feeling like a lout. ‘I’ve asked about your business at the Hall.’

  ‘I have an association with John Lambert,’ said the man. ‘I am … a confidant of his. The poor fellow is considerably agitated at present.’

  It struck me as I spoke that John Lambert might be a mental case, and that this might be his doctor. He picked up his bags, and said, ‘You can be assured that my visit is in Mr Lambert’s own best interests.’

  ‘Then you’re not here to do him in?’

  By way of answer to this stab, the blue-eyed man merely changed the angle of his head.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask for your name,’ I said.

  ‘That’s confidential,’ he said, and he looked at me levelly. ‘Do you mean to arrest me?’

  I had never yet arrested a man of a markedly superior class. Anyhow, I had no reasonable cause to suspect him of any crime.

  ‘Arrest?’ I said. ‘Not a bit of it’ – and I added, by way of a touch of humour, ‘I’m for easy going.’

  ‘Good day to you, Detective Stringer,’ he said, and I watched him walk off, my head seething with the word ‘ass’ directed at my low-class self.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I needed more authority. I would summon the Chief from York.

  But how?

  A girl in a very white pinafore with black-stockinged legs that looked too thin, making her seem somehow spider-like, came out of one of the houses. And I’d thought they all stood empty. She skirted the green and walked over to the baker’s.

  I pictured Hugh Lambert in Durham gaol. He had forty-seven hours left to live. Did he wish it was more, or less? A condemned cell was bigger than the common run of cells, and was a kind of open house. There was always a warder looking on; the governor would come and go; the priest, too. Lambert was about to die, but was not yet dying, and this was an odd notion: as though time itself had been meddled with.

  I followed the girl into the baker’s. The interior was dark and unbearably hot. There were twelve loaves on the shelves behind the baker, I counted them as I waited for the girl to buy her loaf – only she didn’t buy it but was given it gratis. I bought the smallest one remaining, and said to the baker: ‘You’re about the only person left in this village?’

  He grinned. He looked a decent sort, gave his name as Moffat.

  ‘Only two of us here on the East Green,’ he said. ‘My daughter and myself.’

  ‘Was she the one in just now?’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘Hardly any point baking today, I’d have thought.’

  ‘I’ve just done a few,’ he said. ‘We generally have a couple of trippers by.’

  ‘There was a murder here, I believe?’

  ‘I believe so,’ he said, and that rather threw me. ‘Before my time,’ he ran on. ‘We’ve only been here three months.’

  I decided to rule him out of account. He could have no interest in stopping John Lambert from speaking out about the murder of Sir George.

  I asked him: ‘Do you know if the village carter’s about?’

  ‘That’s Will Hamer. He should be coming by here in just a minute.’

  I came out of the baker’s, tore off a bite of bread and waited. Moffat was now leaning in his shop doorway whistling, and the tune wove its way steadily through the birdsong: ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’. The sun was raying down, everybody was waiting for everything and I ate my bread with half an ear cocked for the sound of gunshots from the Hall.

  I heard instead a rattling of cartwheels, and looked up to see a load of hay creaking along the narrow hedge-tunnel with not an inch to spare on either side. The load was like a barn on the move, and yet only one horse did the dragging, and only one man led the horse.

  At the same time, a rulley drawn by the lop-sided combination of a horse and a donkey was coming from the opposite direction – the way that led to the Hall – and I decided that the man driving this must be the carter, Will Hamer. He had two beasts to the farmer’s one, and yet he carried no load. He looked far wiser than a carter needed to be, with a white halo of hair and beard.

  Will Hamer and the man leading the load of hay stopped and had a good laugh at how they’d come to be on the same bit of road at the same time. Presently the farmer sauntered on, his great haystack rolling behind. There was a placard on the side of the cart reading ‘Sidebottom: West Adenwold’. I would rule him out of account as well, provided I did not see him around again.

  I walked a
cross to Hamer before he could get going again. Standing next to the donkey, I held up my warrant card. He gazed down at me with a bright smile on his face, which by degrees became a frown.

  I said, ‘Can you make it out, Mr Hamer?’

  ‘Bits,’ he said. ‘I can read bits. I can’t read all words, like.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, pocketing the card, ‘who can? Now I’m on police business, and I’d like a message sent. Could you do that?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I can take you a message anywhere,’ he said. ‘East Adenwold, West Adenwold …’

  ‘The lines are down here,’ I said, ‘and I need a telegram sent. Can you carry a message to West Adenwold for me? West Adenwold is the nearest of the two, isn’t it?’

  ‘The nearest to where?’ asked the carter.

  ‘To here.’

  He frowned again.

  ‘And there is a good-sized railway station there?’

  No reply, but I pressed on: ‘And there is a telegraphic instrument in that station?’

  ‘Aye to both of those,’ Hamer said presently, and with a smile returned. The fellow was as slow as a wet week; there again, it suited me that he couldn’t read. I took out my indelible pencil, and began scrawling in my pocket book as follows:

  To Chief Inspector Weatherill, York Station Police Office. Come to Adenwold by first train. Matter of the gravest …

  I broke off. The gravest what? The gravest gravity? I scratched out the sentence and wrote: ‘Life or death matter at hand.’

  I passed it up to Hamer, saying, ‘What’s the cost?’

  ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘what d’you reckon?’

  ‘They ought to send it for nowt,’ I said, ‘since it is police business – and how about two bob on top for yourself?’

  The carter had such a big grin on him when I passed up the money that I thought a bob might have been nearer the mark. Thanking me, he moved off, which was a matter of waking up the donkey and horse with a shout of ‘Come on, men!’

  He went off a little way, and then stopped. He turned about and said, ‘Line might be down at West Adenwold ’n’ all.’

  ‘Let’s leave it that you are only to send the message if you can,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he replied, as if this was a very interesting new idea. ‘Only if I can.’

  A thought struck me, and I said, ‘Mr Hamer, you wouldn’t have brought anybody into this village today, would you?’

  ‘Me?’ he said, and he looked at me for a while. ‘I should say not!’

  And then he winked very slowly, which I wished he hadn’t done.

  He re-started his beasts, and I took out my silver watch. It showed 9.45. Hamer ought to be at West Adenwold station by ten thirty, and the wire ought to reach York within five minutes of that. I guessed that the 12.27 arrival at Adenwold would leave Pilmoor at about midday, which meant that, if the Chief received the wire as soon as it arrived at York station (which was odds-on), he’d have an hour and half to get to Pilmoor. That would be simplicity itself. Being on the main line, Pilmoor was served by a good many fast trains from York, and it was only sixteen miles to the north. The only weak link in the chain was Hamer, who had now disappeared from sight in the hedge-tunnel.

  I pocketed my watch and looked up.

  Lydia was dawdling along the hedge-tunnel, moving slowly, which was out of the common for her. I called out to her and she quite ignored me. I wondered at this until I saw that the clerk from Norwood, the one who’d spilled the German documents, was coming along behind her. He walked briskly, and carried once again the Gladstone bag. I called again to Lydia, and once more she ignored me, but cut across the green making straight for the shut-up confectioner’s shop. The Norwood clerk had stopped and was looking about. I had a persuasion that it wouldn’t do to be seen by him, so I pulled down my cap, and turned a little aside as I watched him walk through the churchyard wicket. Lydia was watching the man from the shop doorway.

  ‘What’s the game?’ I asked, walking up to her.

  ‘I’m following him,’ she said, pointing to the clerk as he tramped across the graveyard in his cheap suit and high-crowned brown bowler.

  ‘But you were in front of him,’ I said.

  ‘I was following him from the front,’ said the wife.

  The Norwood man had now cleared the graveyard and was leaving it by the opposite wicket.

  ‘He’s off to the parsonage,’ said the wife, as the man opened the gate of the big house behind the church, and walked up to the door.

  ‘Come on,’ said the wife. ‘I want to know what he’s about.’

  So we too entered the graveyard, moving in the great, delaying heat between the compartments of the dead bounded by the thick dark hedges. As we walked, I told Lydia about how I’d sent for the Chief and how I expected him by the 12.27 train. I told her about how I’d met the earlier train in and collared the man in the field boots, and she in turn said that she’d had breakfast at the long table outside the inn, where entertainment had been provided by the sight of the bicyclist making a show of mending his puncture.

  ‘He was making such a palaver that I challenged him directly about it,’ she said.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I said. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I just said, “Surely this hole is of your own making. I saw you attack the tyre last night.”’

  ‘Pitch right in, I would … And what did he say to that?’

  ‘He said, “I had a fancy that it was punctured, but I thought I’d make quite sure.”’

  ‘He never did,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Did he seem put-out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll bet. I’ll bet he was creaking in his shoes.’

  ‘I couldn’t imagine how anybody could behave more suspiciously,’ the wife ran on, ‘until about two minutes later when that man came down to breakfast, and started looking over his German papers while drinking coffee.’

  And she pointed towards the vicarage, where we glimpsed through low graveyard trees the Norwood clerk, still waiting to be admitted. We’d come to a stop before one of the newer graves, which stood outside the green enclosures and lay exposed to the bright sun. ‘In Memoriam,’ I read, ‘Sir George Arthur Horton Lambert, Baronet. 1855–1909. Deus Fortitudo Mea.’ That meant something like ‘God give me strength’. No, couldn’t be. It was a very simple inscription anyhow, but then I supposed there were many things you couldn’t very well put on a murdered man’s gravestone. ‘Died peacefully’ was out for starters; so was ‘Loved by all’. There were no flowers on the grave but just a single bush growing up from the grass mound.

  ‘He was reading his German papers over coffee at the front table,’ the wife repeated, looking across at the Norwood man, ‘and when I walked behind him, pretending to be interested in the wisteria, he folded them up. A moment later, he turned to me and said, “I say, you’re quite sure your husband ain’t Franklin? It makes no odds either way to me. Only, I know Franklin’s expected.”’

  I looked surprise at the wife. She had made a very fair imitation of the man’s cockney accent.

  ‘I’ve already told him I’m not Franklin,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, he doesn’t believe you.’

  ‘Wait a bit,’ I said. ‘What if the man in the field boots is Franklin?’

  The door of the vicarage remained unopened, but as we looked on, the red-faced parson appeared from around the side of the house, and shook the clerk’s hand. He then took him back around the side with him.

  ‘Come on,’ said the wife, and we closed on the house.

  From the front gate, we could hear the vicar talking to the man from Norwood, but could not make out the words. The two were in the back garden.

  ‘We’ll walk round the side of the house, only we’ll do it slowly, listening out all the while,’ said the wife, pushing open the front gate.

  ‘What’ll we say if they see us?’

  ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘
we thought it was part of the common.’

  ‘That won’t wash,’ I said.

  ‘Then we’ll ask about service times in the church.’

  ‘Push on, then,’ I said.

  The wife opened the gate, and we both stepped into the garden. She let go of the gate, and it clanged shut. It was on a spring. The wife turned to me and gave a look of alarm with eyes extra-wide, which she did half in jest. I thought: She was worried for a while last night, but now she’s back to larking about. The fact that we’d been told we were in danger seemed to have faded completely from her thoughts.

  The vicar’s garden was well-kept and well-watered. The grass was bright green. The flowerbeds were as bright and various in colour as Turkey carpets, but what stood out was the red: red apples hanging from the trees, red roses – and the red ribbon in the hat of the red-faced vicar as he led the man from Norwood through the rear garden. He was escorting him towards the opened doors of a round wooden summerhouse, and the surprising thing was the tone of his speech. He had that glorious house and garden – his own little Yorkshire Eden – and yet he sounded glum; sounded like a right misery, in fact.

  ‘Servants, curate and verger gone away to Scarborough,’ he was saying, as the birds in his beautiful garden sang like mad. ‘… I had to see to my own breakfast, and not an egg to be found …’

  The two entered the summerhouse, and were lost from earshot.

  It was little more than a circle of French windows – mostly propped open – with a wooden roof on top. It stood at the very end of the garden, and just behind it were iron railings separating the back of the vicarage garden from the woods that were everywhere around Adenwold. To the left side of the summerhouse (as we looked) stood a row of sweet peas supported on canes, making a kind of wall. Lydia eyed me, and we had the same thought in the same instant. We dashed past the sweet peas and so, screened from the summerhouse, gained the rear railing. We climbed over, and were in the edge of the woods.