Death on a Branch Line

by Andrew Martin

  As I carried on with my explanations, the Chief was agitatedly moving his hand over his head, shifting the strands of sweaty hair, so that they were one minute like so many tangled S’s, the next drawn straight as railway lines. Station master Hardy had abandoned his seat on the steam crane, and was watching us across the tracks from the booking office doorway; porter Woodcock also looked on from the ‘up’ platform, where he’d advanced a little way towards his pot of white-wash, but had still not laid a hand on the brush. I did not believe that either could hear my talk with the Chief.

  The porter had made no move to cross the tracks to help the Chief with his bags, so my governor had evidently failed the test. Any one of the cricketers might have passed it, but none had looked in the least need of assistance.

  The charabanc was now driving away from the station yard amid the sound of more explosions. The scale of it seemed out, for it did look a normal-sized car at first glance – and yet there were more than a dozen men in it.

  The little station was left silent except for the high birdsong, and the ceaseless rattling of my own voice as I went on with my story.

  The clock on the ‘up’ said 12.35. Station master Hardy remained at the doorway of the booking office looking, as he ever did, in fear of some catastrophe coming around the corner. Porter Woodcock had disappeared.

  ‘It’s a good job you were in the office when the message came,’ I said to the Chief.

  He gave a grunt. ‘Now where’s the Hall?’ he enquired.

  ‘We’ll go there directly,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t get past yourself,’ said the Chief.

  I turned about and eyed him.

  He said, ‘It’ll only take one of us to see whether there’s anything in this.’

  Well, it came to this: he hadn’t believed my story.

  … Or did he want to keep the business for himself? In the past, when I’d struck something big, he’d given me a pretty free hand. But this was very big: one death certain, and another threatened. And the gentry were involved.

  I’d had visions of walking up to the Hall with the Chief. We’d take the place over. He’d be my authority, but I’d be in the lead. We’d get John Lambert out of the clutches of Usher, force him to say what he knew – the thing that Usher wanted him to keep back – and then we’d lay hands on the true killer, which for preference would be Usher himself.

  I was in a stew of sweat; I dragged my handkerchief over my brow, and could think of nothing better to say than, ‘It’s too hot.’

  ‘You want to get your coat on,’ said the Chief.

  ‘Well, it’s not as if I’m on duty, is it?’

  The Chief made no reply but lit another cigar.

  ‘Have you come armed?’ I asked.

  He eyed me over the flaring Vesta. ‘Are you trying to scare me, sonny?’

  Our pint of the day before had been amiable enough, but I had perhaps bested the Chief over the matter of the bank’s man on the platform. I’d pointed out his error, and that might have rankled.

  ‘The Hall is that way,’ I said, indicating the direction of the second village green. ‘It’s signposted.’

  I was buggered if I was going to tell him about The Angel, or offer to take his bag up there.

  After the Chief had quit the platform, the station master called across the tracks to me:

  ‘Was he the one?’

  ‘Eh?’ I called back. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The one that was at Tamai?’

  It was unlike Hardy to be coming forward. He seemed galvanised for the first time since my arrival. He ignored Woodcock, who sat on the bench, smoking.

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked Hardy, as I cut across the barrow boards.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as I gained the ‘up’, ‘he looked the part … about the right age …’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I said, challenging him – although to say anything to Hardy was to challenge him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and he took a step back into the booking office.

  Somehow emboldened by the Chief’s rejection, I stepped into the booking office after him.

  Trapped heat and dust made the place suffocating. The tall desk was still covered with a jumble of papers, but some of the books had now been stacked on the counter where stood the ABC telegraph machine. But that must be dead since the line was down. As before, the arrangement of soldiers had pride of place on the strong table, and it seemed that Hardy was minded to talk about it.

  ‘The push for Khartoum,’ Hardy said, indicating the soldiers on the table. ‘Thirteenth of March, 1884, east coast of the Sudan. I show the British square,’ he ran on, as he knelt down beside the table, quite heedless of his uniform. His head appeared over the brown-coloured board like a desert moon. As he spoke, he touched the tops of soldiers’ pith helmets with his fingertips, moving from one to another like a kind of blessing.

  ‘The square was formed against a massing of the Mahdi’s forces …’

  ‘The dervishes, as they were known?’ I said. ‘The fuzzie-wuzzies? They wanted to kick Egypt – and us – out of the Sudan?’

  ‘Correct,’ he said, ‘quite correct. In the square there were all sorts: York and Lancasters, Marines and other regiments besides, but I show the York and Lancasters only. You might have brought your friend in for a look,’ he said.

  This was a turn-up: a bit of steeliness in his voice, as if I’d let him down.

  ‘He was in a hurry,’ I said, ‘– business up at the Hall.’

  Hardy appeared to show no interest whatsoever in what might or might not be happening at the Hall, but carried on moving his fingers across the ranks of little soldiers. They wore khaki uniforms with white bands on the tunics and pith helmets and white puttees. Some wore moustaches, and these did not come standard but were various in shape and size.

  I asked Hardy: ‘Did you paint them yourself?’

  ‘Sable brush,’ he said briskly.

  ‘It’s well done.’

  This compliment seemed to check him for a second, but he made no acknowledgement of it.

  ‘We have three poses. First, standing,’ he said, indicating upright soldiers; ‘… then kneeling to repel,’ he went on, indicating others; ‘and finally kneeling to fire. It’s the Winchester rifle, of course,’ he added, standing back, as if for a better view of his own creation.

  ‘You haven’t modelled the Mahdi’s men,’ I said.

  He blew out his cheeks.

  ‘Leave those chaps to the imagination,’ he said, ‘and they don’t bear thinking about too much. They slashed hands and arms first – then go for the head and body. Wouldn’t take prisoners, mind you, but then nor would we – not at Tamai. It was life or death.’

  He advanced on the table again, and shifted a couple of the kneeling figures a few eighths of an inch.

  ‘The square was broken, you know,’ he said, looking up. ‘I don’t show it broken, but it was, and you saw the character of the British soldier: officers and men risking their lives for each other.’

  All I could think to say was ‘Yes,’ for I’d been quite knocked by Hardy’s speech. He lived for this miniature display.

  ‘I should imagine that if you’d been in that lot,’ he said, indicating the display, ‘then everything that happened next in your life would be of quite minor importance.’

  I thought of the Chief. Certainly he was not over-anxious.

  ‘… quite minor importance,’ repeated Hardy, who then took a deep breath and looked at me. ‘All my paints and all my brushes,’ he said, ‘… all stolen last week.’

  ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ came a voice from the doorway, and it was Woodcock the porter.

  He leant against the door frame, smoking.

  ‘This is Mr Hardy’s little war,’ he said, addressing me. ‘Nice, en’t it?’

  I kept silence.

  ‘His big war’s summat different,’ said Woodcock. ‘That’s against me. No – joking aside – he wants me stood down, don’t you,
Mr Hardy? He’s got his monkey up with me, has Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Clear off, you,’ said Hardy.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Woodcock said, ‘what with him always acting so friendly like, but he’s plotting against me. You want to be careful that board don’t get kicked over, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘And why might it?’ asked Hardy, looking down at the floorboards.

  ‘Somebody might just come in and give it a bit of a fucking boot,’ said Woodcock as he moved away from the doorway.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mrs Handley was peeling apples in the middle of the trestle table that stood before The Angel. There were a couple of documents in front of her. Mervyn sat at his end with his terrier but without his ferret. His gun was propped against the end of the table.

  My silver watch said five to one. Perhaps Hugh Lambert would be taking his second-to-last dinner. It would be brought to him in the condemned cell, and he would eat observed by guards, who would then watch him walk it off in the exercise yard. Later they might watch him smoke a cigarette or even, since he was condemned, a cigar.

  As I walked up, the wife came out of the inn, and sat down opposite to Mrs Handley. It seemed that they’d become fast friends in my absence. I didn’t much fancy telling the wife I’d been put off by the Chief.

  ‘What are these, Mrs Handley?’ the wife asked, indicating the papers, and looking sidelong at me as I stepped up to the table.

  ‘Oh, pictures of Master Hugh,’ she said, and I saw that she was once again a little teary. She passed two photographs across to the wife, and I stood at Lydia’s shoulder and looked at them. In the first, Master Hugh wore a harlequin outfit and held a frying pan as if it was a banjo. He was in a beautiful garden and he was smiling, but it was a quiet, secret sort of smile, not the jollity you might have expected given his rig-out.

  In the next photograph he was more himself, or so I imagined. You’d still say he was smiling but if you looked carefully his mouth was turned down. He wore a dusty black suit. He was in the country-side somewhere – some wild-looking spot – and indicating an object on the ground amid a mass of ferns.

  Mervyn had risen from his place at the end of the table, and joined us.

  ‘That’s him up at the ridge,’ he said.

  ‘It’s up above the old quarry,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘He’d take Mervyn and me up there.’

  ‘See brock,’ Mervyn put in.

  ‘To look at the badgers,’ said Mrs Handley, by way of explaining.

  ‘He knew just when they’d come out of their holes. He would say it was the last train – the last train of a day that did it. The badgers would listen for it going away, and then they knew it was safe to come out.’

  ‘Was that another of his jokes?’ I asked, and Mrs Handley frowned at me.

  ‘Certainly not,’ she said.

  In that case, I wondered what the badgers did for an alarm clock on Sundays, when there was no evening train.

  ‘Just look at that suit,’ Mrs Handley said, gazing fondly at the photograph. ‘You’d never believe he’d been at Eton, would you?’

  ‘You might not,’ I said, ‘but then again, he doesn’t look like a murderer either.’

  Mrs Handley kept silence. The matter was not to be spoken of.

  She rose to her feet, asking, ‘Would you two like some food?’

  The wife asked, ‘Oh, what do you have, Mrs Handley?’

  ‘Cheese, pickled walnuts and salad. That do you?’

  ‘It sounds just lovely,’ said the wife.

  I knew that Lydia could not abide pickled anything, but when she was ‘out’ with me she was always extra-friendly to whoever else was around, so as to let me see what I was missing.

  Mrs Handley collected up the two photographs and put them on top of the pile of papers; then she went inside The Angel.

  Looking directly ahead, the wife asked me, ‘Did your Chief turn up, then?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘He’s gone to the Hall.’

  ‘So you’ve given the whole matter over to him?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you want?’ I said, ‘So that we can get on with our holiday?’

  The wife made no answer, but just looked at me for a while before nodding towards the front of the pub, and saying, ‘The bicycle’s gone, you might care to notice.’

  ‘Isn’t it round the back?’

  ‘It is not,’ she said.

  She’d been onto that bicyclist from the very beginning. But his behaviour – and that of every other train-arrival – was no longer any concern of mine. Let the Chief figure it all out.

  Mervyn was saying from his end of the table: ‘Mam writes letters to him, you know.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Master Hugh,’ he said. ‘Mam’s been writing to him.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And what does she put?’

  ‘She’ll generally just ask him: “Are you going on all right?”’

  ‘And what does he reply, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.

  ‘He’ll generally put: “All right just now. Thanks for asking.”’

  ‘But he’s about to be executed,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why he puts “all right just now”,’ said Mervyn. ‘All right for the present.’

  That doubtful look came over him again, as if he wondered whether he ought to have spoken out at all. Mrs Handley came out with the food, a jug of aerated water and two glasses on a tin tray.

  ‘Do you suppose they’ll pray over Master Hugh in the church tomorrow?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘Well, that’s not our church, so I wouldn’t know. We’re Catholic, and the nearest church for us is St Joseph’s, out at East Adenwold, which is a bit of a way.’

  I had the idea that this was a highly convenient state of affairs as far as Mrs Handley was concerned.

  ‘… But I shouldn’t think so,’ she ran on. ‘Not if the vicar has anything to do with it.’

  ‘Did he not like Master Hugh?’ the wife asked.

  ‘He liked the Major,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘The two of them got on thoroughly, and he would always take his part in Sir George’s arguments with the boy. Ridley would ride out with Sir George every morning, hunt with him as well.’

  ‘What’s become of the hunt?’ I asked.

  ‘Stopped,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘It was the vicar himself led all the hounds down to the station, where they were packed into a van and taken to some chap in Lincolnshire.’

  ‘What did you think of him?’ I couldn’t resist asking. ‘The vicar, I mean?’

  She folded her arms and eyed me.

  ‘He wouldn’t last long in a Catholic church, I’ll tell you that much.’

  ‘Why not?’ the wife cut in.

  ‘He’s hardly ever at home. He’s always running about the place.’

  ‘Doing what?’ asked the wife.

  There was a beat of silence.

  ‘He has a lady at Barton-le-Street.’

  ‘A lady?’ said the wife.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Handley, ‘a woman. And she’s thought to be one of a few. “Live and enjoy” – that’s his motto.’

  You’d take a ‘down’ train to get to Barton, and the vicar had done just that the night before. He’d returned this morning by an ‘up’. Was this fancy woman the explanation for his journey? It did not seem possible to pursue this subject with two women present, and so I fell silent.

  ‘The new tenant at the Hall …’ the wife began.

  ‘… Robert Chandler,’ Mrs Handley supplied.

  ‘Yes,’ said the wife. ‘Is he there at the moment?’

  Mrs Handley nodded. ‘He’s been here all summer.’

  ‘Do you think he shot Sir George really?’ the wife asked, and she laughed after she’d said it, just as though it was a joke, which I didn’t think it had been.

  ‘I’m quite sure he didn’t,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘I believe he was out in India at the time of the shooting. He certainly wasn’t
here, anyhow. And how would he know that John would want him to take it over? Besides, it’s not as if he wants it. He’s only come in as a favour to John.’

  It seemed that nobody wanted the Hall, or the running of the estate. ‘Master Hugh was found in the woods,’ Mrs Handley ran on. ‘He had the gun in his hand which was later shown to be the murder weapon, and his father was dead at his feet.’

  ‘He pleaded not guilty, though,’ I said.

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you?’ said Mrs Handley.

  Her line, then, was that she liked Master Hugh, but was in no doubt that he had done the killing. She might perhaps have approved of his having done it.

  ‘Happen the new man will give you the farm back?’ I said, and Mrs Handley gave me a very choice look at that, eyes fairly burning into me. At the end of the table, Mervyn had started scuffling with his dog Alfred. He didn’t want to hear any more about Master Hugh.

  Mrs Handley shook her head once, saying, ‘That’s gone.’

  ‘The fellow that came upon him,’ I said, ‘Anderson, Constable for the Adenwolds. Where does he live?’

  ‘Retired to the city,’ she said.

  ‘Which city?’

  ‘York,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘Where do you think?’

  It struck me again that she thought me an idiot.

  ‘Who’s the new copper?’

  ‘Don’t recall his name,’ she said. ‘We hardly ever set eyes on him. He lives out at East Adenwold.’

  The fellow might as well have lived on the moon.

  Mrs Handley had gone back to apple-peeling, and Mervyn was walking away up the dusty road with his dog and his gun. Watch out, rabbits, I thought. The wife rose from her seat to call out after him: ‘Bye, Mervyn!’

  She missed our lad Harry, and she’d taken to Mervyn in his place.

  She said, ‘I’m off up for a bath,’ and she went inside the inn.

  She was in a strange mood – torn: half-friendly, half not; half wanting me to be investigating the Adenwold mysteries, half not. Above all, she was annoyed at the arrival of the Chief, for it reminded her that I was not the top man even in the York railway police.

  Had the heat got to her? Not a bit of it. She was always agitated – feverish, so to say, even at the best of times. It was just womanliness and you couldn’t cure that with a cold bath.