The inquest into Peters would return a verdict of suicide. It was a shame that Peters should be set down for ever as having done away with himself - but then, how could that ever have been disproved except by confession of Small David, which had never been likely?
As for Lee and Falconer - Lee was deemed to have been murdered and he had been. The wrong man had swung for it; but not, by all accounts, an entirely innocent man. Falconer was put down as disappeared, and no injury was done to his name and reputation as a result. It was perhaps a more dignified fate than the one that he had met in reality. Small David had got his deserts just as surely as Marriott himself, and the men who'd deserved to come out of it with unstained characters had done so: Richie Marriott was on the Continent, where he would no doubt remain, and only he and I knew of Bowman's involvement. We in fact were the only three who knew the cause of the Travelling Club's disappearance, and it seemed to me fitting that only three should know, for there was no rightness or dignity in the explanation. A word from my schooldays came to me: the business had been a shameful one from start to finish.
But it was now played out.
I walked in a happy haze about the snowy streets of central Middlesbrough, where the shops were all either full to bursting or closing early - nothing in between. I had half an eye out for the Middlesbrough Brown's. I would buy Harry a lead man to go with his clockwork loco - a guard with arm raised, forever giving the 'right away' to the little engine. It struck me that I could also run to a scarf to go with Lydia's gloves. Of course, the situation called for a pint as well, but it would be a risk to slip into a pub so close to Captain Fairclough's office. In the end, I decided to put it all off to York: I would take an early train back.
I hurried up the steps at the back of the station that gave on to the 'up' platform. In the parcels office they were still stamping and labelling like mad. At the platform ends, salt was going down, and I had a moment of alarm about the weather. If there'd been drifting, I might be kept on the coast for Christmas, and that really would be a calamity.
I could not stop thinking of all the things I might do being once again in funds and, happening to give a glance in the direction of the telegraph office, I remembered Bowman. It was half past midday. I had another ten minutes until train time, so I darted in to send a wire, which took longer than I'd expected because of a queue full of people sending their love to all points of the compass, whereas if they'd really meant it, they'd have posted Christmas cards long since or gone to see the love objects in question.
I climbed aboard the Whitby train with seconds to spare - no time to look at the engine. I fretted that it might be pushing a snow plough of some kind. We rocked away and, as Ironopolis came into view, I saw that only a few furnaces remained in blast, and that all the strange little wagons had been tidied away into sidings. Our train was only a quarter full; the light was fading already, and I felt that most people had already gone to their Christmas places. I had a compartment to myself, and I looked at first to the seaward side, where the holiday town of Redcar soon came up, with the black sea crashing beyond the lonely 'Tea' flag. A few minutes later, the snow was coming down slantwise again on Marske. There was a sudden crashing to my right, and I turned and saw a full-sized snow plough being taken on the 'down' line between two ordinary engines, as though the Company was trying to smuggle the thing through to Middlesbrough. We were in and out of Saltburn in very short order. The platform lights blazed, and I watched half a dozen muffled-up people hurrying away to Christmas.
For a moment there was nothing but the swinging station sign.
We pulled away and were soon flying through Stone Farm, where I thought I saw Crystal standing stock still on the platform and being snowed upon. I made a move towards the window, meaning to drag it down and call out 'Happy Christmas!' to the miserable old fossil.
Next thing we were in the town of Loftus, gliding along the high street in the same direction as the snow. From the platform there came nothing but a few throat clearances out of sight. We pulled away into the country and a seabird flew alongside the window - and then suddenly it was taken higher, as if yanked up on a wire.
I turned the other way and the door of the compartment opened. Small David sat down over opposite me with his tweed coat spread wide, a smile on his face and a revolver in his hand.
But it could not be Small David. Small David was shot.
'Are you . . . Sanderson?'
'Och, ye've sniffed me oot.'
He had addressed the top of my head, with his own great head tilted back.
But he couldn't be Sanderson either - Gilbert Sanderson was hanged.
There was some bloody complication: a mass of dried blood under his flat sporting cap - the cap was welded to the head by the stuff, and yet he was grinning. It was Small David all right; he hadn't crowned his brother. He had been crowned by his brother.
'I can see ye're thinkin' hard.'
I was thinking how the police had taken him for Sanderson, and now I had confused him with his brother, with the same disastrous consequences. He gave a glance towards the window: the white fields rolled on under the blackening sky. There were farms and what looked like farms but with flames rising above, farms on fire - and these were the mines.
'Yer brain's too wee, de ye ken that?' said Small David.
My mistake had arisen because I had not been able to think of him as suffering at the hands of another man, but only as the cause of suffering. I looked down at his yellow socks - there was blood on them too, and sweat and filth, and all the horrible leakage of his great body.
'Smart eh!' he said, and I saw that he had no teeth, just like a great baby. Had they been lately knocked away by his own brother? I saw through the window a summerhouse in a garden of snow coming fast by the window - that was all wrong. I turned again to face Small David.
He said, 'Ye'll alight the train in a wee while.' 'Willi?'
'Aye, ye wull.'
'It was the brother that was shot by the police -'
'Aye, gone for ever.'
'He gave you a good battering.'
'Och, he could nae batter a fish.'
'Why didn't you shoot him, Small David?'
'I was savin' the bullets for yersel'.'
'Where's Marriott?'
'Hum? Stull deed.'
'The son, Richie?'
'He's awae tae France.'
'But you've taken all of his father's money.'
'A guid deal of it, aye.'
He looked away from me and he looked back.
'My fair share,' he said.
We were both being rocked as the train slowed. I looked to the left and down. At Flat Scar mine, the endless rope still turned, sending the swinging buckets out towards the mine station, where a mineral train waited with a fuming engine at the head. The flywheel turned inside the wheelhouse, and the sea smashed against the little jetty beyond. It was Christmas for some, the telegram lad had said, but not for the blokes of Flat Scar, and not for me. Snow had been scraped away and piled up all around the mine, like so much white slag.
There came a fluttering from beyond the right-hand window, and I thought at first that another seabird was flying close by, but it was the rattling wind gauge that marked the start of the Kilton Viaduct. The train noise was different now, as we slowed and ran on to the viaduct, and it galvanised Small David, who rose to his feet, motioning with the revolver for me to do the same.
As I stood facing the man, I realised that I stood taller than him; but he held the gun. He drew open the door of the compartment and motioned me into the corridor, which was empty. I had the feeling that we were the only men aboard. Small David pushed the gun into me, indicating that I should walk along the corridor.
The corridor went on for ever, but we slowly closed on the carriage door. As we did so, he spoke:
'I was no quite comfortable while ye were left alive.'
'How did you know I'd be in Middlesbrough?'
'Yon bottle man told me.'
'Spoken to him recently, have you?'
'I have nae.'
I knew then what the telegram had been: a warning from Bowman that he had at some early stage let slip the fact that I had an appointment at Middlesbrough.
We were now at the door.
'I wull be calling upon the bottle man presently, but ye have the honour of being the first tae dee.'
Small David opened the door, and the snowy gravel was flowing along beneath our boots. On the other side of it stood the low wall of the Kilton Viaduct, and beyond that lay the long drop to the beck and the mineral line.
'Oot,' he said.
I jumped, and he followed directly after.
We were alongside the carriage bogies, and the wheels themselves were horrific and merciless when seen close to. The carriage walls towered above us, and they came on, and came on.
'Stir yersel,' said Small David. He meant me to walk to the middle of the viaduct, and there he would make me leap.
I leapt early.
One hand on the viaduct wall and I was gone. From the middle of air, I saw the mine, the endless rope turning under the darkening sky. My bowler was falling in advance of me; it was disloyal, abandoning ship. Well, a bowler was a ridiculous article in any case. My limbs were just so many floating things, and by slow degrees it seemed that my boots were becoming higher than my head. I wondered whether I would make a full somersault before I smashed. I was no detective sergeant; it was not meant to be. I was an engine man who had missed his way, and that was all about it.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-eight
It ended neatly enough, for I landed in a perfect grave - a grave of snow. I lay in it, and thought about what had happened. The fall had not ended with the smash, but had continued for a little while after with a sort of dark, burning roar, and the notion that the word 'Chute!' was being shouted very loudly into my ears.
Above the top of my snow-grave I could see the side of the viaduct. I had leapt from the point at which it began, and fallen perhaps only thirty feet on to the top of the valley side. I began an upwards crawl out of the snow, and my hands seemed small and very red, and my back was ricked. It was easier to move to the left than to the right. But I came out all right, and stood up, a little bent over. A sea wind was coming up at me; it blew the snow through the legs of the viaduct. The sky had a look of dangerous dark blue against the whiteness all around, and I knew this was the coldest day I had seen, but I could not feel it. The snow was my friend now, even though I had fought it all my life.
I seemed to be very high as I stumbled forwards. I was on a high ridge of snow - it had been made when a track to my left had been cleared. The track ran down to the beck, and the zigzag mineral line. The mine itself lay far below, and an echoing rattle was coming up the valley from there. The mineral train was leaving the mine station, or attempting to do so. The ironstone wagons were all hitched. The train was jerking back and forth, as if it was trying to unfreeze itself.
I climbed the bank side for a little way, and was quickly underneath the viaduct at its lowest point. I moved underneath it. My back was all right as long as I held it in a certain position, but I had to move a little way crabwise. I climbed on to the eastern side of the viaduct top (whereas I had jumped from the western side). I crouched against the viaduct edge, and the wind gauge was there: one small, mad windmill. No, it was like a trapped bird, and it was frightening to be near it. The thing's arms turned at a furious rate, and the thing itself was spinning bodily. Small David stood fifty yards beyond me, and on the opposite side of the single track. In the gathering dark, he was peering over the western viaduct wall, looking down at the zigzag line where the iron train had stopped - looking for me. I began walking towards him. I did not care if he saw me. I did not know what would happen if he did, because I was not thinking. Instead, I walked, with the line beside me. No trains would come, I knew that - we were quite safe from interruption.
Small David was now moving along a little way - going away from me. But I kept up my steady, bent-over advance. There was now a steadier clanking coming from below the viaduct. The mineral train was moving.
I veered to my left and gave it a glance. It was coming up to the legs of the viaduct. Small David looked down at it too, but he did so from a stationary position in the middle of the viaduct. I looked to the right. It hurt to do it, but there was the Rectory Works. The fires leapt from the kiln tops, more beautiful than any Christmas decoration, and it was the strength of purpose that made them so.
In the middle of the sound of the sea, and the sea wind, and the clanking train, I stood to the rear of Small David. He was leaning over the viaduct wall. It was hardly decent, but I reached forwards and took hold of the tweed of his topcoat where it lay over his arse. I lifted it and I pitched him away into the wind. I had done with him.
I leant over and watched him go.
In the middle of air Small David looked like a frog I had once seen making a leap: too thick about the middle, arms and legs of no account, although these did move about a little as he flew. He hit a middle wagon of the iron train, and then - thank Christ - he stopped moving. I could not have stood the sight of him squirming on the ironstone, but then again, what would have happened if that sight had indeed met my eyes? I looked along the viaduct wall to the wind gauge. It operated a signal that checked trains in any really strong blow, and it was still thrashing away for all it was worth, not aware that the disaster had in fact already occurred.
I turned about again and looked at the kilns of the Rectory Works. A strange red spirit crawled upwards from the top of each one. On the gantry that ran along the tops stood a single man. I remained for an hour on the Kilton Viaduct, and I watched every wagon from the train rise to the point where it was tilted by automatic process. Sometimes the gantry man was visible in his upper world, sometimes not. He came and went from a metal shack attached to one end of the gantry platform. Whatever he was about up there, he did not pay attention to what was being pitched into the kilns. Anything that came up with those wagons was for burning and no questions asked.
Presently, a train came along the viaduct. It would be at about five p.m. - I could not have said at the time. I stopped it with my hand. I believe that I made the driver aware of my warrant card, but it may be that he'd said, 'Let's have you in, mate,' before seeing it.
I was taken up on to the footplate, and I took up a position directly before the fire, causing the fireman, as I seem to remember, to curse all the way to the terminus. But I believe that I was magnetised by that fire, for the driver had to shift me bodily away from it at Whitby West Cliff, explaining that here they must pitch it away, having reached the end of their turn.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-nine
I made my way out of the station with my new, bent walk, but I felt that I was straightening up by degrees.
The town of Whitby was freshly covered in snow, which was ruffled by great gusts coming in from the sea. The black water was low in the harbour, and the ships and boats were all a little skew, as if drunk, which their owners very likely would have been at that moment. The pubs and hotels around were all ablaze with light as I walked first around the grand new buildings on the west side.
I was trying to walk off the effects of having killed a man.
A car was turning outside the front of the Metropole, and half the guests - in their finest clothes - had turned out to watch the manoeuvre. They looked like the most innocent people in the world.
I went across the harbour bridge to the east side, and walked along the road on which stood the offices of the Whitby Morning Post. They were closed now, and I squinted inside at the heap of back numbers on the long table. Old papers made a litter. You ought not to look back. But still I turned - or was it the wind racing in from the sea that made me turn? - towards the Bog Hall sidings, spread out beyond the station, where all the wagons and carriages were arranged in neat lines for their Christmas rest. One of them had been something
special once, for the saloon built to the instructions of the Whitby-Middlesbrough Travelling Club was doubtless still in there. The wind rose again, stirring the boats and lifting the snow crystals from all the rooftops, and the high graveyard of St Mary's church. I didn't quite like to look towards the church, for I had hardly turned the other cheek back there on the viaduct.
I looked instead towards the town of Whitby in general, Amid the flying white particles, I saw a softer, rising whiteness from beyond the station roof. It was Christmas Eve, and the men at the controls of that steaming engine would be anxious to be away. I made towards them.
Murder At Deviation Junction Page 26
