Murder At Deviation Junction

by Andrew Martin

  'You didn't get any grub?' I said.

  'Dinner baskets available at Derby, apparently,' he said. 'And there's always the restaurant car.'

  'I didn't cable the office,' I said, sitting down opposite Bowman. 'The fact is that I'm in bother with my governors. They haven't given me leave to be here.'

  'Well...' said Bowman.

  He seemed embarrassed for me; but then he was always red.

  'My aim is to go back with the mystery of the Travelling Club solved,' I said. 'I must bring the killers to light. Nothing else will serve.'

  Bowman took a long drink of wine, and then sat forward in a curious, hunched way, looking down at his boots, face flaming.

  'Of course, it's odds on I will fail,' I added, 'and then I'll be on the stones.'

  'Where does your office think you are?' asked Bowman, looking up.

  'Well, since things aren't running on so smoothly for me just now, I daresay they think I've just - you know, bolted.'

  I thought of the high brick wall at York, the word 'Workhouse' running along it.

  The doors began to slam shut all along the train. On the platform, a new army of porters stood back from the carriages alongside a barrow piled with mailbags. They were waiting for the next train to come in. As far as they were concerned, we were ghosts, already gone.

  At six-thirty on the button, the bell rang piercingly; our carriage seemed to lean towards the buffer stops for a moment, and then we swung forwards and we were off, gliding out from under the glass and into the snow.

  Bowman sipped wine as we watched the house-backs roll away in the darkness, and we kept silence until Leagrave. I stood up as we drummed through that station.

  'I'm off up front again,' I said. 'It's best we keep on the nose.'

  I walked along. The narrow corridors were full of bustle: people talking, smoking, making ready for dinner, all full of Christmas plans. I did not walk quite as far as the last compartment of the last carriage, but stopped short of it so that I could just see the right side of the lower half of the man. I saw his right leg - the orange boots and yellow socks. It was quite still, but his right hand was moving. The hand was bringing something out of his coat pocket. He placed the object on the seat to his right, and reached out quickly to pull down the compartment blinds.

  It was a revolver that had been in the man's hand.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The jollity of the corridors seemed very strange as I returned to our compartment - where Bowman slept. He had a look of concentration. The wine bottle, one inch remaining, was placed in the corner of the compartment, steadied by his coat. I sat down opposite, and watched him. Presently, he began to groan, and I imagined all the men in Wimbledon doing that every night, trapped in their neat red houses.

  It was just as well that he slept. I did not need to tell him about the gun until Inverness, where matters would have to come to a head. No, that was quite wrong. I ought to warn him earlier, for we would be joining the man in the Inverness carriage at Edinburgh, and so moving within shooting range.

  We did not stop at Derby. It was a beautiful, bright station, but it spun away from us at a great rate. I finished off the wine as we raced on. I was ravenous by now, and I thought about the restaurant car. It seemed odd to have an appetite when I knew that there was a bullet waiting for me at the far end of the train.

  The restaurant car was all life, though; full of chatter and the clanking of the pots in the narrow kitchen. I stood by the door, reading the menu of dinner. Ten bob, it cost. Mock turtle, halibut and so on. 'Passengers are earnestly requested not to pay any money without a bill,' I read. Well, chance would be a fine thing. The waiter skirted past me twice, but said not a word. At busy times like this, you had to be a First Class ticket holder to get a look-in.

  I returned to the compartment to find the ticket inspector - and Bowman paying his fare: single to Inverness. I did not try it on with the warrant card, but just paid over the coin. I took a return: four pounds and five bloody shillings. I would get it back, I supposed, if I ran the killer, or killers, to earth.

  When the ticket inspector had gone, Bowman took his glasses off and looked at me, but his eyes were not up to the job without specs.

  He looked towards the window, saying, 'It seems tempting fate to buy a return.'

  I made no answer, but thought of the gun. What was Bowman looking at without benefit of his specs? The scene beyond the window was a blur to begin with. He put them on again after five minutes, but only in order to go to sleep again.

  We were at Trent for nine forty-two, and Bowman slept on. It was a gloomy place, with smuts floating under the gas lamps and a loud crashing out of sight. On the other hand, three tea wagons stood waiting for us. I pulled down the window, and a pageboy dragged his trolley up. I had it in mind to buy one of the five- shilling baskets. I asked what was in them and the kid shrugged, saying, 'Pot luck.' Then it seemed that his conscience got at him, for he added, 'Chicken or beef.'

  I asked for one of each, and he had to open the baskets to look: bread, salad, cold meat, cheese and a small bottle of wine.

  'Can I pay you for an extra one of those?' I said, pointing down at the bottle. 'My friend likes wine.'

  'Aye,' said the kid, 'don't we all?'

  And he gave me an extra one gratis, saying, 'Never a word to the governors, eh, mister?'

  That wouldn't have occurred had my suit been in better nick.

  I sat back down; the cold air had wakened Bowman.

  I said 'Chicken or beef?' and we fell to, still not speaking, save for Bowman's muttered thanks. We were half-way through the supper when a man in sombre black joined our compartment. He looked just the sort to have boarded in the gloom of Trent.

  Bowman drank his wine in silence, looking just as anxious as if he already knew about the revolver. On and on, swinging violently on. The rhythm of the wheels over the rail joints was steady until a mass of points were hit, and then the train swayed and rolled, and there'd come a sound like a brick wall collapsing, but still we kept on. The man in our compartment got down at Leeds; we didn't give him goodbye. The dining car was taken off there too.

  I thought it was promising that the man in the yellow stockings was armed. It was another proof that I was on to something. I looked through the window at empty fields. Such lights as came and went showed the ground as black and white with melting snow. In some fields the snow cover was complete, and these were perfect, like jewels. They appeared with greater regularity as we approached the heights of the stretch to Carlisle: the summits and viaducts came and went, with the snow gangers out in strength, watching us from the wilds of the night.

  We came to Carlisle, the mighty Citadel station, with a skeleton staff of laughing men larking about on the platform. It was half past one in the morning, and they had the run of the place; that's why they were happy. More banging as the Midland engines were taken off. The North British company would take us on.

  I dozed as we rolled towards Edinburgh. Twice I was woken by ringing bells in signal boxes sliding back away from us in ever thicker falls of snow, but both times it was the three bells that are rung for 'line clear'. At three-thirty a.m. I saw the ticket inspector walking past the door.

  'How long before Edinburgh, mate?' I asked him.

  He looked at his watch.

  'Twenty minutes.'

  Bowman was asleep again, groaning again, a litter of bottles and glasses at his feet. I tapped him on the knee, and he jerked forwards, his glasses nearly tumbling off his nose.

  'The Inverness carriages will come off at Edinburgh,' I said.

  'Eh?' he said, in the confusion of sleep.

  'We must join it then,' I said.

  Bowman caught up his coat, and stumbled behind me towards the front of the train. The first compartment in the first of the two Inverness carriages was free, and Bowman said, 'Where is the fellow?'

  'End compartment of the next one,' I said.

  Bowman nodded
and sat down as I walked along a little way.

  The corridor blinds were still down in the man's compartment. On returning, I put the blinds down in our own.

  At Edinburgh, the two Inverness carriages were cut loose, and a new engine banged into us. It was more like a smash than a coupling, but Bowman just took the jolts and stared straight ahead, all conversation gone. We both slept over the Forth Bridge - must have done, for the next thing I knew was Perth at five o'clock, and another change of engine, evidently conducted by invisible men, for I heard shouts but looked out on an empty platform and one stationary baggage wagon, dazzlingly lit for no good reason.

  We were approaching Inverness, and I woke again to see sleet flowing through the greyness beyond the window. It was nearly nine. For all the freezing weather, there had been no schedule slacks. In a goods yard to the left of the ticket gate stood a row of wooden letter As: snow ploughs to be fitted to the engine fronts. I stepped into the corridor. Our man was waiting at the head of the short queue for the door at the end of the carriage. I counted the queue - nine people - and I thought of all the effort the Midland company had gone to for this.

  The night on the train had not put a crimp in the man in the least: breeches and socks were perfect as before, coat swinging open, cap pulled low over the great boulder of a head. He climbed down, advanced along the platform and stood still for a second, breathing the cold air of Inverness, taking the sleet. I thought: he likes this - this must be his home. He had a barrel chest, legs a little too thin and bandy. He might have been a boxer once - a boxing farmer. His white moustache was like the handle of a pail.

  We walked the length of the short train, and we were right behind the man at the ticket gate. I thought: there is nothing out of the way in this - the three of us were all on the same train, and now we're heading for the same ticket gate. We had no option but to follow him; the only thing that marked us out was our lack of luggage. The man crossed the booking hall. He was standing before a wall panel showing the timings of Highland Railway trains.

  'He's going on,' I said.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-three

  But then we watched from the ticket gate as the man crossed the booking hall and left the station.

  'He's not going on,' said Bowman. 'He's done with trains.'

  He cut diagonally across the square that lay beyond the station, and walked into the Station Hotel. A five-second battering from the icy wind, and we were in the hotel ourselves - soft carpets, soft fires, beautiful warmth. There was a bar or lounge directly opposite the reception desk. The man who looked like Sanderson was carefully folding his coat, and draping it over the arm of a chair. As we looked on, a waiter approached and asked to take his coat. The man refused with a quick headshake. He then said one very short word to the waiter, which, as I worked out a moment later - when the waiter returned with a silver tray - must have been 'tea'. When the waiter placed the tea before him, the man did not seem at first to notice it, but then he took the silver tweezers, and moved four sugar cubes from the sugar bowl to the cup. He drank one cup, stockinged legs akimbo. There was more in the pot, but he left it. He did not smoke.

  He then repeatedly shot his cuffs while sitting in the seat: left, right, left again. There must be just the right amount of shirt linen extending beyond his country coat sleeve. His clothes were not quite of the best quality, I thought. He was not, by his looks, a rich man, and there was something tired about his clothes, as if he tyrannised over them.

  He now fell to stroking his moustache, coaching it forward, as though conjuring for himself an ever-longer top lip. Suddenly he stood up, put some silver on the table and walked smartly out of the hotel. Another blow in the square - where stood the snow-topped statue of some kilty fellow from times past - and we followed the man once again through the booking hall of the station, and on to a bay platform. Here another short train waited - but there was a powerful engine at its head. I sent Bowman to buy biscuits and water bottles and climbed up. As I did so, the man looked for the first time directly at me. He sat right by the door. His head was tilted back, and he inhaled slowly through his white 'tache as he saw me, as if to say, 'Now you're a bit over-familiar. What's your game?'

  I took a seat two along. It was a Highland Railway carriage, flimsy as a cricket pavilion, and with no compartments but open seating - and with no beating either. Bowman came up by the same door, and gave not a glance at the man but coloured up even more deeply as he brushed past him. He carried a paper bag in which were bottles of mineral water, bread and cheese.

  'You might've picked up a couple of footwarmers,' I said with a grin, to which Bowman made no reply. He had barely spoken since Edinburgh. Only two other passengers joined the carriage - two men. They were discussing church matters but were not vicars. Their accents made them sound mechanical, as though driven by clockwork: the words 'rector' and 'kirk' came round again and again. I could only see the backs of their heads, and it bothered me that they did not move more.

  We came out of Inverness by a great grey stretch of water. A single ship sat miserably in the middle of it. The line was single, and there were many pauses for other trains to pass, and many stations. We heard them before we saw them, for we approached to the sound of a bell rung by hand by the stationmaster. I recall the strangest of the names: Beauly, Muir of Ord, Foulis, Nigg. It was odd to see ordinary-looking - by which I mean English-looking - working people standing about near such station nameplates. Not that there were many outdoors in the sideways-flying sleet. All the stations were church-like, made of heavy stone. They had what looked like low fonts projecting from the station houses, and I fancied these must be for the dogs to drink from. The stations were not meant to look beautiful; they were meant not to be blown away.

  One of them would come up, and it was as if the town supposed to go along with it had been mislaid. Or there might be a few buildings - more of a camp than a town. There was a sawmill by one station; a blacksmith's by another; sidings here and there, with horses being loaded; some wagons with a word written in a giant letters - 'HERRING'; great tanks of lamp oil. Well, the people went to where the fuel was. Every platform showed a simple sign with one arrow pointing in a direction marked 'Inverness', and another marked 'Wick and Thurso'; no 'up' or 'down' here. We were way beyond all that.

  At most stations, one or two climbed up into our carriage, and one or two got off. Our man remained; the two ministers remained. I wanted as many up as possible, for every person aboard was a guarantee against the man loosing off a bullet from his pistol.

  We were now somewhere beyond a spot called Dingwall. When would the bloody man get off, and what would I do when he did? I had no notion. We'd been on the go for more than an hour. I looked at Bowman, and he seemed to be asleep. Had he even noticed the great mountains to our left? You could mistake them at first for great banks of clouds, until you worked out that they were not moving. I peered forwards: our quarry sat still as before. I could see the top of his wide cap.

  One of the ministers was saying, 'It's all to the guid, it's all to the guid . . .' and I cursed his ignorance. It was not all to the good.

  I turned again to the window. The sound came of another bell floating through the sleet, another station rolling into view. A curiosity on the platform: a smoking stove attached to the base of a water tower - against ice, as I supposed.

  There came a clattering of a door in the next carriage as I read a poster on the station wall: 'Further North! Further North! Fortnightly Passes for Visiting the Northern Highlands', and then, underneath, in smaller print: 'Summer Only'.

  I looked at the seat opposite; Bowman was eyeing me from the depths of his coat. The turned-up collar had skewed his glasses.

  'Who comes up here in winter?' I asked him.

  'Juggins like us,' he muttered.

  Huddled in his coat, he did not meet my eye; he had hardly the will to speak. He hadn't taken on alcoholic fuel for a long while, and he had now reached the point of being made
tired by the cold - which was a dangerous point. He belonged in an office, not a Highland train; an office or a pub, of course.

  I looked out at two winter diehards in the fields, following a hay wagon as we moved on.

  I was almost asleep myself when a jolt of the train brought me up sharply. Bowman was eyeing me again.

  'The wild sea disclosed,' he murmured, and he nodded to the right. Great grey waves were rising and coming at us. The line was practically on the beach.

  'When will he bloody get off?' I said, nodding along towards our friend; but Bowman had gone back into his own world.

  I had hoped the man might step down at Helmsdale. This was a seaport with a slightly larger station. For once, grey houses blocked the view of fields and sea. But while everyone bar the two ministers got off there, our bastard sat tight.