Murder At Deviation Junction

by Andrew Martin

  'No,' I said. 'He had a valid ticket.'

  'Davitt?' said Shillito, and his voice rose to such a pitch of disbelief that it sounded almost like a girl's. It worked on me like an electric jar, and I suddenly knew I could no longer be either the doorstep or the doormat. Well, I don't recall the moment, but only afterwards, with Shillito lying on the floor next to his desk, and skin split across my knuckles. He was looking up at me from just next to the ash pan of the stove, which somebody had half pulled out, and that was the best bit: the puzzlement on his face, the newness of the look that I saw there.

  I picked up my topcoat and hat, and walked out of the office with my handkerchief over my hand. I was in search of a bottle of carbolic, and a pint of beer, but I didn't walk fast, and Shillito didn't come after me, or didn't see me in the crowds, for the station was like one colossal club now. It was five o'clock, rush hour, but there was something more. It was 16 December, and Christmas had started. There was all sorts going off in York: concerts and parties and plays, which all meant more top hats for the men and fancy bonnets for the women, fur collars and meeting off trains and kissing and laughing. I was not part of it. I had blood on my shirt, which had somehow flown there from my hand, and I was out of a job or as good as. But I had paid Shillito out, and that made up for it.

  In the booking hall, the Salvation Army played and the decorated tree finally looked right. I walked on - out into the latest snowfall. I walked over the bridge that crosses the lines joining the old and new stations; even the old station looked picturesque, with its lamps all lit, and snowflakes flickering down over the crippled wagons kept there. I cut down Queen Street, heading for the Institute, where there was tinsel over the doorway, and paper chains in the corridors. I followed one of these past the reading room and the bars until I came to the caretaker's office. He was in there as usual, smoking by the hot stove. He was called Albert, and he was the idlest bugger that stepped.

  'Now I know you've a bottle of carbolic in here, Albert,' I said.

  He pointed with his pipe towards a cabinet, taking in my hand as he did so.

  'What's up?'

  'I clocked Shillito,' I said.

  'Get away,' he said, but he wasn't really interested.

  Albert had a nice set-up. Cleaning equipment arranged in a barricade all around him, and very seldom touched. A broken basket chair by the stove to sit on and a pint pot placed underneath that he filled up from the Institute bar—regular like.

  'I've just nicely sat down,' he said. 'We've half a dozen dinners here tonight if we've one. Every function room to be swept and fire made - no two seating arrangements the same, and all to be set out by Muggins here - Passenger Clerks we've got coming in, Railway Reading Circle, League of Riflemen, Angling Club. I don't know why they don't just form the Society for Making Work for Caretakers, and have done - You crowned Shillito, did you say? He's a big lad, twice your size.'

  There was an ambulance box in the cabinet. I took out the carbolic, and a roll of bandage. As I splashed on the carbolic, I made a face at the sting.

  'Hurts, does it?' said Albert, grinning. 'It's Christmas that brings it on, you know - scrapping, I mean. You should be here after hours on party nights. One minute it's "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot", next thing they're braining each other with iron bars down in the siding.'

  'I can't believe the Reading Circle acts like that,' I said.

  'Them?' Albert replied. 'They're the worst of the bloody lot.'

  'I'm off to the Women's Co-operative Guild annual beano,' I said.

  'You'll need a drink,' said Albert. 'Two drinks - you're never going in that suit, are you?'

  'Why not?'

  'Because it looks like nothing on earth.'

  I did not want to be reminded of that.

  I asked Albert, 'Which floor are the riflemen on?'

  'Top,' he said, taking another pull on his beer. 'Nice drop of punch they've got up there.'

  I climbed the four flights to the top, where the room was packed. The Chief's team were in there, and the opposition. A shield was being passed around; everyone looked very happy, but only one side could have won it. A red-faced shootist came up to me, and said, 'We've finished top of the league table in number one district - fourteen points!'

  I moved away (for he looked minded to kiss me) and circled the room, keeping an eye out for the Chief, and not knowing what I would say when I saw him. I'd tell him about Pickering and how Moody had fled, and then about what had happened in the office. I would give him my side of it, but what was my side of it? I'd belted the man, and that was all about it. I'd had my reasons, but the Chief knew those of old. I moved over to the tall windows. They looked down on the Lost Luggage Office and the small siding that stood next to it. The snow was streaming quickly on to both, as if to say, 'Let's get a load down while no one's looking.' I knew a young fellow who'd worked in the Lost Luggage Office, and met a bad end. I turned towards a better sight: the long table in front of the window that held the big silver punchbowl. I pushed across to it and looked inside - the stuff was orange, and there were many fruits floating in it of a kind not normally seen in York.

  Somebody passed me a glass - the stuff was, or had been, hot - and then I saw the Chief, and so had to drink it. I downed the punch and things were different straightaway, which was just as well.

  The Chief held the shield in his arms, and was receiving congratulations from his fellows, which meant that his lonely practice of the morning had paid off.

  The Chief didn't seem surprised to see me, but then he was canned.

  'Can you shoot straight?' he said, coming up to me.

  'Probably not after drinking this stuff,' I said, showing him the empty glass.

  He passed me another one.

  'You've something to say to me,' he said, and it might have been a question or not.

  'I went to Pickering to see a man connected to the Travelling Club,' I said, 'but he made off while I waited in his house. Then, later on, there was a bit of set-to with Shillito. It came to blows. Well, on my part.'

  The Chief was giving me a queer look.

  'There's been bad blood between the two of us, as you know sir, and-'

  He continued with the queer look: he was making a decision - I could see him doing it. He would ignore what I'd said.

  'Why do you not shoot?' he said.

  It took me a while to adjust, but I eventually said, 'I always think I'll end in the army if I take it up.'

  'It's not a bad place for a young lad to be,' said the Chief.

  I began to say something, and he cut me off with 'When trouble comes, you must be master of your rifle.'

  He shot me the funny look again; then he gave me the road - moved off back into the crowd.

  What the hell had he meant? That Shillito would come after me with a gun, and that I ought to be ready? That the Travelling Club business would end in bullets fired? Or was he saying that, since I was done for as a copper, my only remaining hope was to take the King's Shilling?

  I would take another bloody drink, at any rate.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Ebor Hall was packed and very brightly lit. I'd have felt a little dizzy entering it even if I'd not had such a peculiar day and drunk the Rifle League's brain-dusters.

  I could not see the wife, but I could see her hand in almost everything. The holly that hung from the gas mantles and all about the stage - that was her doing; and the piano was not in its alcove but at the side of the stage - so she'd managed to get that shifted. A lady was playing it, and ladies were in fact doing everything, especially collecting up papers or passing out cups of tea by the gross. I knew what was happening: the spelling bee had just come to an end. Half the ladies were sitting on clusters of chairs under gas mantles and half were moving about. All the ladies were talking, and it was all to do with the Movement and its stores.

  'Have you seen the new York store? Plate glass and electric light to show off the loaves.'


  'There are better things in the old store, I think.'

  'We had a very nice visit to the warehouse ...'

  I caught sight of one of the ladies looking at my suit and at my bandaged hand; she turned to point me out to the woman sitting next to her, but she was talking fourteen to the dozen with a third woman. I walked on through the hall; half wanting to see the wife, half not. I could trust myself to speak; the only trouble was that I was not as concerned about my appearance as I knew I ought to be . . . and the only other problem was that my head seemed a long way from my shoulders. As I looked about, the piano came to a stop, and that somehow left me feeling as though every woman in the place was eyeing me, and not in a way I would have liked; but in fact they were all now facing the stage, where a very well-spoken woman was calling for quiet.

  She was bonny-looking, though fifty years old at least. I liked the way her grey hair set off her dark eyes. She was upper class, but a socialist - there were more of that sort about than you might have thought, and they were given to speech-making

  She was making a speech now.

  'Co-operation is not merely about buying goods at a community store, and then waiting for the dividend . . .'

  'I wonder if she takes cock?' said a man who was suddenly alongside me. He lurched as I turned to look at him. He was a sight drunker than me, and had evidently been given up as a bad job by whatever woman had brought him.

  'We must apply our principles of co-operation to every aspect of our existence . . .'

  'Your missus in this show?' asked the drunk.

  I nodded.

  'Mine 'n all. She knows the price of grate polish in every Co-op in Yorkshire, but I say, "Buy the bloody grate polish; clean the bloody grate.'"

  Behind him I saw another of the few men in the place, and after a moment of disbelief I realised that it was Wright, the police- office clerk. He must have a wife who was a Co-operator. He was coming up to me fast; and curious as usual.

  'What the heck are you doing here?'

  Before I could answer, he said, 'I've been hunting for you all afternoon. The man Bowman from London - he's been -'

  But the wife had stepped in between me and Wright, and was blocking him out.

  'Hello, baby,' I said.

  She sort of slid away, and the woman who'd made the speech had replaced her. She was holding out her hand to me. In shaking hands, she had to touch the bloody bandage.

  'Avril Gregory-Gresham,' she was saying. 'Lydia's told me so much about you.'

  The wife, slightly behind her now, close to Wright, was looking murder at me. It made her look beautiful in a different way. But Mrs Gregory-Gresham didn't seem quite so bothered about the state of me. She was more like Wright - a curious type, and she frowned quite prettily as she said, 'You look rather -'

  'Pardon my appearance,' I broke in; and it was as if a different man was speaking. 'I've been in a fight.'

  The wife was still there; but I did not like to meet her eye. Mrs Gregory-Gresham was frowning more deeply.

  'I am a policeman,' I explained

  'Yes,' she said, 'I know that,' and she was leaning towards me, not away, which was good.

  'The fight,' I said. 'It was much -'

  I couldn't speak for a moment.

  'Much of a muchness?' suggested Mrs Gregory-Gresham.

  I had meant to say that what had happened had been much less bad than it looked or sounded - or something.

  'Are you quite all right?' she said, and the fact of the matter was that she was trying to help. 'Forgive me, but you do smell rather strongly of -'

  'Yes,' I said quickly, 'carbolic.'

  'You were arresting a wrongdoer?' she asked, and I at least had enough off to say, 'That's just it. I am investigating a murder.'

  'The man you arrested was a murderer? But this is fascinating.'

  'The business was pursuant to a murder,' I said, or that's what I'd meant to say, but I'd never even tried to speak that word sober, so I suppose it came out wrongly. As Mrs Gregory-Gresham looked on, I fished in my pocket for the photograph of the Travelling Club. As it emerged, I saw that it had become quite crumpled after the adventures of the day, and I thought of it as being like the calling card of a man who travels in some goods that nobody much wants.

  'Most of these men are certainly dead,' I said, 'and so is the man who took this picture. Nobody knows why.'

  Least of all me, I thought.

  'You think,' she said, taking the photograph, 'that one of them killed the others.' 'Yes,' I said,'- or that someone else did.'

  There was quite a long pause, after which Mrs Gregory- Gresham asked:

  'What is your surmise about the murderer?'

  'That he did not want this picture seen, that he will stop at nothing ... that he is not a member of the Co-operative Movement.'

  She laughed at that, but only for a second.

  'But I know this man,' she said.

  She was indicating the young man.

  'Phoebe - that's my daughter - she knew him at the University. They had a jolly at the river; a day of . . . rowing, you know, and she introduced me to him.'

  'What's his name?'

  'I can't remember, but I know the face; oh, now I know it. He was from the north,' she said in a rush, 'Middlesbrough way - and he'd won a prize for speaking.'

  'Speaking about what?'

  'Anything. It's the hair that I recognise, and he was sweet on Phoebe, I distinctly had that impression. I also think she was rather taken with him, although of course she never let on.'

  A long bar of silence; then the piano started up again, just as Avril Gregory-Gresham said, 'His family had a place in Filey - on the Crescent, and they would summer there. Well, we have a place there too, and Phoebe had been in hopes of seeing him over the -'

  'Last summer?' I put in.

  'Last summer, yes.'

  'She looked in the register every week. It's a ridiculous thing, but any fairly well-to-do visitor is listed in the local paper there.'

  'Did he not come?' I said, thinking how strange the words sounded.

  Avril Gregory-Gresham shook her head.

  'He did not. I will speak to Phoebe, and I will get his name to you directly. I will speak to the girl next week, and pass on the name to Lydia, who will give it to you.'

  I took this to mean that she would after all be giving the job of secretary or typewriter to the wife, who for the present stood in the background, still looking very doubtful. A moment later there was a switch, and in the fast-changing strangeness of the Co-op ladies' social, the wife was before me.

  'Well, Mrs Gregory-Gresham found you fascinating.'

  More tea was being distributed.

  'I found you drunk,' added the wife.

  'Yes,' I said. 'Well, you're both right.'

  There was a new Co-operator speaking from the stage.

  'What's going off now?' I said.

  The wife half-turned her head towards the stage.

  'Blind man's buff,' she said. 'What do you flipping well think?'

  More speeches were taking place.

  'Some speak of the sections and districts of our organisation,' the woman was saying. 'I say we are the moon and the stars . . .'

  They applauded that, did the Co-operative ladies.

  'What happened to your suit?' enquired the wife. She was nearly but not quite angry.

  'It's been a very long day,' I said. 'But I'll tell you this. I think you have secured your position.'

  'I think you are right,' she said slowly; and she nearly smiled into the bargain.

  I held the photograph in my hands, and she was looking down at it.

  The woman on the stage was saying, 'Until the King himself hears our message . . .'

  'I've got into a few scrapes on account of these chaps,' I said, indicating the photograph. 'It's murders in the plural, looks like, and I had a bit of a row . .. not with a man I was trying to arrest, as I said just now, but with another officer.'

  'You we
re fighting with another policeman?'

  'One blow started and ended the matter.'

  'You should have told Mrs Gregory-Gresham,' said the wife. 'She's had many a fight with a policeman herself.'

  'I daresay,' I said, nodding, for of course the Co-op ladies went all out for the women's cause.