Murder At Deviation Junction

by Andrew Martin

  We kissed, and the wife, looking at my sodden suit, said, 'It's rained just in time for Christmas' - adding, 'Mrs Gregory- Gresham has written to confirm the appointment.'

  'Very good,' I said. 'How's Harry?'

  'Much better. He's gone back to school.'

  It was all very good, but again I felt strongly my own unimportance. I produced the little engine from my pocket.

  'He'll adore that,' said the wife. 'He'll think he's got the moon.'

  He would have a few other things besides, but not much: a top, a ball, a bag of chocolates. We walked through to the kitchen now, where a pot of tea was on the go. A seed cake stood on the table in brown paper.

  'That looks an expensive item,' I said.

  'The Archbishop's man brought it,' said the wife.

  The Archbishop of York had his palace at Thorpe-on-Ouse. At Christmas, one of his servants went around the village houses in a coach delivering cakes and sweetmeats cooked in the Palace kitchens. Given that we didn't have any money to speak of, this felt a little too much like receiving charity.

  'You don't mind taking it?' I asked the wife.

  'I like the Archbishop,' she said.

  'Why? You wouldn't have charity from any other sort of gentry.'

  'The Archbishop is different.'

  'How come?'

  'Because he's religious ... well, sort of.'

  She grinned at me. I liked that; she looked smaller when she grinned.

  'Did you trace out any murderers in Scotland?'

  'Several,' I said.

  'But did you find who'd killed the men in the picture?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then you will have your promotion ...'

  'There are complications,' I said.

  'Such as?'

  'None of the guilty men has yet been taken into custody, for one.'

  'Where are they then?'

  I shrugged.

  'They're all over the shop.'

  She looked at me narrowly.

  'But you made progress?'

  'Yes. Do you want the detail of it?'

  'No,' she said, walking over to the larder and pulling back the thin curtain that hung there.

  'I've been quite housewifely over the past two days,' she said.

  There were some new items in the larder: in pride of place were about a dozen plums and four tins of pineapple rings. The wife explained that the plums were all for Harry. A vegetarian diet was recommended for a weak chest. Everything that cost money was recommended for it

  'As for the pineapple,' said the wife, 'I thought we'd have it on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after Boxing Day. What do you think of that as a plan?'

  'I would like them with custard,' I said.

  She ignored that (for she couldn't make custard, and refused ever to learn), saying instead, 'I'm dead set on making jam roly-poly.'

  I pictured her about it. She would start enthusiastic, and then turn silent. It was best to be out of doors when the wife cooked. She was looking at me.

  'You're all in, our Jim. You'll have to go to bed.'

  'I don't think I'll get off,' I said. 'I've too much on my mind.'

  She was still smiling. She had no inkling that I might be out of a job by the end of tomorrow.

  'I'll bring you up a bottle of beer if you like.'

  'I'll tell you what - I haven't had a fuck for a little while,' I said.

  'I should think not,' said the wife. 'You've been in Scotland for a little while.'

  She stepped back and leant against the cold kitchen wall, saying, 'What were the women like up there?'

  'I didn't really see any women.'

  'That is a very good answer,' she said, grinning again.

  I followed her upstairs. On the bed, I got the wife's dress up. She wasn't going to take it off because she had to take some letters across the road to the post office for the two o'clock collection ... but it did come off eventually, and we were in the middle of a rather hot tangle, with the church clock striking two, when I asked:

  'Now, are your boots upstairs or downstairs? The elastic-sided ones, I mean?'

  'Why on earth do you ask?' said the wife, stopping what she was about.

  'Well

  'They're by the stove, I think. I was hoping you'd have a go at them with Melton's cream.' 'Oh.'

  'I was going to wait until Christmas Eve,' I said, '. . . only I thought of Uncle Roy, who would sort of make Christmas come early. About a week before, he'd come over from Stafford with a couple of pounds' weight of sugar balls, you know, and it struck me that—'

  'Sugar what?' said the wife.

  'Sugar balls,' I said.

  'But what have they got to do with boots?'

  A sudden reversal occurred at that moment, so that she was looking down at me as she asked:

  'What have they got to do with anything?'

  I couldn't come out with it.

  'Nothing,' I said. 'Nothing at all - let's just carry on.'

  And we did; and afterwards, when she was getting dressed, the wife said, 'I'm going to see Lillian this afternoon. I'm going to ask if you can wear Peter's suit for the interview. He's about your size.'

  'Not the suit he digs graves in?' I said.

  The wife was backing towards me with her hair pulled up. As I fastened the hooks of her dress, she said, 'Peter Backhouse has three suits. One for digging graves, one for attending the important funerals and one for getting drunk in the Fortune of War. The point is that the mourning suit is of quite good broadcloth, and I think you should wear it on Friday.'

  If she wanted me to wear it, I would wear it. It wouldn't matter what I thought or what Peter Backhouse thought. Lillian Backhouse would go along with the wife's scheme; she would do anything for Lydia and vice versa. They were both New Women, and that sort came with an uncommon amount of push. The wife was now 'doing up' the bedroom, and the sound of rain beyond the window was fainter, so that I couldn't tell whether it was falling from the sky, or just trickling away in the gutters.

  Finding a comfortable position for sleep, I said, 'You can't really have jam roly-poly without custard, you know.'

  'Custard needs lemons and we haven't got any.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because I didn't choose to buy any.'

  'I don't see what you have against custard.'

  'Have you never tasted a jam roly-poly so good that it didn't need to be drowned in pints of the flipping stuff?'

  'No.'

  'Well then, I feel very sorry for you, I really do.'

  But she really did not.

  'If the rain stops,' the wife said as she was quitting the bedroom, 'we'll go for a walk with Harry after school. We're to give him a turn in the fresh air whenever possible.'

  Lydia woke me at four, by which time the rain had stopped.

  Harry was not a bit exhausted by his first day at school in a long while, and once he'd had his cup of beef tea, a bit of bread and cheese and one of the plums (which was more than he'd eaten in weeks), he was keen to walk along the river a little way for a look at the swing bridge that brought the London expresses over Naburn locks and into York.

  It was a beautiful blue evening, if cold. We walked along the river towards the little village of Naburn, which was a strange business. The way took you through dripping trees, across a couple of silent fields ... and then you struck the huge iron bridge with signals riding above and flashing lights. As we stood alongside it, an unruly goods came over - mixed cargo, going on for ever. It was as if a whole factory had been dismantled and entrained.

  'What do you reckon to that?' I asked Harry.

  'It's eeenormous,' he said.

  He was sitting on my shoulders and kicking my chest - which hurt. We were about to turn around and go home, when the high signals shifted.

  'Eh up,' I said, 'another one's coming.'

  It was a big engine that brought the carriages - the biggest of the lot. I could scarcely credit it, but it was a V Class Atlantic that was
coming riding over the locks of the Ouse.

  'Now you don't normally expect to see that on a London run,' I shouted up to Harry, as the thing came crashing over. 'It's called the Gateshead Infant!'

  'Why, our dad?'

  'It's called "Gateshead" because it was shopped out of Gateshead, and "Infant" ... well, because it's big.'

  'Are you trying to confuse the boy?' said the wife.

  'What do you think, Harry?' I shouted up, when the last of the carriages and the brake van had finally gone over.

  No answer.

  'Better than an aeroplane any day, wouldn't you say?' I craned around to see his face, and I could tell he was thinking it over. The question, like many another just then, was rather in the balance.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The next morning I walked through to see the Chief, who waved at me to sit down, which might have been good or bad. His office was full of cigar smoke. The great shield his team had won in the shooting match was propped on the mantelpiece, which was barely wide enough for it.

  'What do you think this place is?' said the Chief, with the cigar still in his mouth. 'A bloody boxing ring?'

  But the Chief, having called me in for a rating, had already gone distant. He was shifting some papers - mostly telegrams - from one side of his desk to another; he read each one very quickly as he slid it across.

  'I lost my temper, sir' I said. 'I daresay I ought to apologise.'

  I would go no further than that. I would not be made to eat dog. That had been the whole point of striking out, and that was also the reason the Chief had told me to strike out. He had done it to bring me on.

  Or was he about to give me the boot?

  'Where is Detective Sergeant Shillito, sir?' I enquired, and for the first time it struck me that I might have landed the bloke in hospital, for I had not clapped eyes on him since my return.

  The Chief looked up from one of the telegrams, saying in a dreamy sort of voice, 'Seems there's a bad lad on the loose.'

  'Sir?' I said.

  The Chief always talked in mysterious fragments, and I got hold of his thoughts in spite of, and not because of, the words he used. I knew of one bad lad on the loose, of course, and the whole of my difficulty rested in that person, namely Small David. The departure for France of Richie Marriott - the suicide (if it had really happened) of his father - I could give these events the go-by. But it was not possible to keep Small David under my hat. His crimes could not be dodged.

  The Chief slid two more pieces of paper from one side of his desk to another, but he fixed on a third. He was now leaning low over his desk in a worrying sort of fashion. It seemed he was trying to turn his cigar into smoke at the fastest possible rate; to disappear into a fog of his own making.

  Presently he looked up, saying:

  'No, alarm's off.'

  'What, sir?'

  The Chief pushed his chair back, put his feet on his desk with a clatter that threatened to bring down the shooting shield and said, 'Circulars from the Northern Division. We were to keep an eye out for a mad Scot. Big bloke, not over-keen on coppers, believed to carry a revolver. Battered his own brother to within an inch of his life . . . He was seen first thing today at Middlesbrough station buying a ticket for York.'

  'Is a name given?'

  The Chief looked again at the paper in his hand.

  'Briggs.'

  He dropped his cigar stub to the floor, and lowered one boot from his desk on to the cigar.

  'Seems he was dead set on coming to York - you've gone white, lad,' he said, eyeing me more closely.

  A beat of silence.

  'Any road,' the Chief went on, 'they've just sent word to say they've got him.'

  'They've run him in?'

  The Chief raised his boot back on to the desk.

  'Now you've gone red,' he said. 'Aye - they've shot the bugger dead.'

  The Chief scratched his head, setting his few strands of hairs wriggling. On his face was a complicated expression. He looked at me for a while from behind his boots - watched me as I thought on.

  Small David. He'd returned from Scotland on Monday morning, had his set-to with the troublesome brother and then he'd tried to come after me. I took a breath, for I meant to start in on my account of events at Fairy Hillocks. But then I held the breath.

  The Chief suddenly pulled a pasteboard envelope from a desk drawer, and swept all the papers on top of his desk into it.

  'You've been away from the office for two working days,' he said, 'Friday and Monday. Do you have anything in your notebook to show for it?'

  'Not in my notebook, no.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because I didn't set anything down in my notebook.'

  'Why not? No pen to hand?'

  'That's not why.'

  'You had a pen to hand?'

  'I carry two at all times.'

  'Indelible?'

  'One indelible; one - whatever is the opposite of indelible.'

  'Can you give me one good reason why a young detective should carry any pencil other than an indelible one?'

  'Trust, sir,' I said,'. . . that's what it all comes down to. If I was trusted more, then I could write in normal pencils, but I am not trusted.'

  '"If I were trusted more" I believe is the correct English.'

  'That proves my point exactly, sir.'

  'To return to the notebook,' he said, lighting another cigar. 'You didn't make a note ... because nothing happened?'

  'Because too much happened.'

  'Do you want to have been on leave?'

  I couldn't make him out.

  'It is not a good idea to frown at me in that way,' said the Chief. 'Do you find the question unclear?'

  'You're saying I don't have to tell you what happened.'

  'That's it.'

  I thought it better to leave a moment of silence before giving my reply.

  'I accept.'

  My difficulties were falling away at a rate of knots, but the fact that I had been let off the need to explain what I'd been about in Scotland did not mean that I would be allowed to keep my position.

  'Am I to be stood down?' I asked.

  'Shillito means to speak to you about your future,' said the Chief, rising to his feet.

  It was not the answer I had hoped for.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I walked into the main office and Shillito was waiting there, holding a leathern notecase under his arm. There was a mark on his forehead that I'd made. He watched me come out of the Chief's door, and motioned me towards my own desk. Wright was looking on from his corner - the best ringside seat.

  Shillito sat at his own desk, which was directly opposite mine, and he began to eye me. Was he going to ask for my notebook? As he continued to stare, Wright sharpened a pencil without looking at it. His eyes were on me. A great train was leaving from Platform Four, and the noise made my heartbeat begin to gallop.

  Just then, the Chief came out of his own room and quit the office without a look back. It was all no good; I was for it.

  Now Shillito was speaking.

  'As a body of men we must stand together, would you not agree, Detective Stringer?'

  'I would, sir.' (I found I didn't object to calling him 'sir' as long as I fixed my eyes on that mark that I'd made.)

  'We're up against it on all fronts,' he said.

  I nodded. The train had gone, leaving only the steady, slow scrape of Wright's pencil-sharpening blade.

  'We do not have the privileges of the ordinary public detectives,' Shillito ran on, 'and the travellers are frequently against us.'