We'd had all this from Lillian Backhouse, a skinny woman with shiny black hair that was never worn up, and who went about the village with an airy, high-stepping walk, and looked to me like a female pirate. She'd had seven children, and not one born under the doctor. Yet she was not worn out. In fact, she believed in 'freedom's cause' - votes for women - and had become great pals with the wife as a consequence. They were both liable to fling at you questions, or more often statements, regarding the status of women and so the best thing, I found, was not to be in the same room.
Lillian's husband, Peter, was the verger at St Andrew's, a quiet chap, who in practice lived in the graveyard and the pub, with the balance of his time at present spent in the second because he knew that in the end the balance would be spent in the first.
Major Turnbull came sweeping out of the post office as I approached. He lived in one of the big houses by the river. He would have been sending a telegram, I guessed. He was a nice man who'd been in the Zulu Wars. He was in business now, and all his dealings lay far beyond the village. He wasn't a swell, but more of a practical, hard man - not unfriendly though. He gave me a quick nod as he, too, turned away in the direction of the Palace.
Outside the post office stood a trap. A lady in a white cape sat inside with a white dog on her knee. They made a ghostly pair in the white morning mist. I noticed her gloves. They were trimmed with fur. The wife had been after a new pair of gloves.
I gave the report to Mrs Lazenby, the postmistress, who worked behind the counter under a great clock and a photograph of a man and woman sitting at either end of a long table. There was too much light in the picture, so there was a burst of whiteness in between the pair. As Mrs Lazenby took the envelope she read the address, which vexed me. She was the postmistress, and could not send envelopes without reading the addresses. And she knew me for a railway policeman in any case. As she put on the stamps, I read it as well: 'Chief Inspector Weatherill, Police Office, York Station'. It would get there in the afternoon, but I said: 'Can you mark it down as urgent?'
Mrs Lazenby looked up at me, and I thought she was going to ask, 'Where's your specs then?' It was quite a nice calculation to work out where I ought to be wearing them, and where I ought not. Instead, she gave me a big smile and said: 'Not long now, is it?'
It came to me after a few seconds that she was talking about the baby.
'Well,' I said, 'it's a month, you know.'
'Could happen at any time then.'
Thank you very much, I thought. The place smelt of food. There were stacks of letters and parcels on the sofa, around the fireplace. The post office was also Mrs Lazenby's living room, and it was hard to make out where one ended and the other began.
'My first was six weeks before time’ she said.
I had lost my job on the footplate, joined a criminal band, and was about to become a father 'at any time'. It was all too bloody drastic.
And yet Thorpe-on-Ouse was quiet as I stepped back into the main street. The trap with the white lady in it was gone. I stood still, fancying I could hear the river running away out of sight towards the locks at Naburn. I walked on, and could hear the wife at her typewriting from half way along the garden.
'What are you doing still here?' she said when I pushed open the door.
The words of the Chief came to me, and I said: 'I can't be clocked to my new work with a patent time clock, you know.'
'Well I can,' said the wife. 'I've an armful of correspondence on behalf of Cooper and Son.'
There were sweet jars next to her machine: Opopanax and Parma Violets.
'Who are Cooper and Son when they're at home?'
'Saddlemakers.'
'Never heard of 'em . . .' I said, sitting down on the sofa and picking up my Police Manual. 'Keep a shop, do they?'
'Railway Street,' said the wife, continuing to type.
'Where on Railway Street?'
The wife stopped typewriting for a moment, and gave me an interesting look; then pitched a bundle of flyers over towards me.
M. Cooper and Sons were at 4 and 6 Railway Street. Besides saddles they made pair and single-horse harnesses, horse clothing, hunting and riding bridles. 'It says here they're Patronised by Royalty,' I observed.
'Yes,' said the wife. 'I'll bet they are.'
I opened the Police Manual. It must have been a mystery to the wife - me sitting there reading, in the middle of what ought to have been a working day. I'd so far managed to keep back all details of my secret work, and there'd been no mention of the Cameron murder between us. The book fell open at 'Stolen Goods'. 'See "Receiving"', I read, 'and "Restitution."' It struck me that, the night before, I'd stolen a knife. The wife was sitting in a room with a thief.
I looked across at her, and it was just as if she knew, for although she was still typewriting a tear was now rolling down her cheek, like a small intruder running away across a field.
'Now hold on a minute,' I said, getting up fast, and walking across to her. There was her work typewriting on one side of the machine, and her personal church-ladies' and suffragist typewriting on the other. One side represented the world as it was; the other side how she wanted it to be.
I kissed her and said: 'What's up, kidder?'
'It's all up,' she said. 'When the baby comes . . . That's me finished.'
Another shocking thought came: in all the past eight months something had been missing, namely happy remarks about the baby from the wife. I hadn't noticed.
'It is not over,' I said. 'I make fair wages in the police; we are to have our new house, and we will have a skivvy.'
'We can't run to a skivvy, and you know it.'
'We bloody can.'
She looked at me, saying nothing, and the decision was made. We would have a skivvy or help of some kind.
'You should go upstairs and have a lie down.'
'What earthly good will that do?'
'I don't know,' I said.
I looked at the wife.
'I could come with you,' I said.
'And what will you do?'
'You'll see. You'll have plenty of time free to carry on with your work for the women's movement,' I said as we climbed the stairs. 'I was thinking that in about a year's time you might have a demonstration in the station. Very likely I'll be a detective-sergeant by then, and I'll be the one to order all your arrests ... We'll be quite a team.'
The wife fell down on the bed saying nothing, and I fell down next to her.
'How do you feel just now?' I said.
'Overcrowded,' she said, and she nearly laughed.
Love-making with a woman who's in the family way was a speciality that Mr Backhouse the verger might well have mastered over the years, but I was still finding my way, this being the first child.
'It's a bit of an obstacle course, this is,' I said to the wife.
'Bit of an obstacle race more like, the way you go at it,' she said.
Downstairs again shortly afterwards, the wife went back to her typewriting. I built up the fire, and settled down on the sofa with my Police Manual, at which point the wife ordered me out.
I walked over to the Fortune of War for a pint, and I saw, three doors down from the pub, the doorway of Scott Johnson, Boot and Shoe Maker. Scott was in the doorway on one side, his son, William, was on the other. They wore the leather aprons they worked in. In between stood a fellow wearing a brown suit and a bowler, and sucking on a long clay pipe. They were all three watching me, and Scott Johnson was nodding in my direction while saying something to the smoking fellow, as if he'd just pointed me out.
They watched me cross the dusty road, and my feet and their heads were the only things moving in Thorpe-on-Ouse. And there was no noise but for the unseen river and the twisting sound of one bird singing.
In the pub, I said to Bill Dixon, who kept the Fortune.
'Any idea about the new hand at Johnson's?' 'What new hand?' he said.
'There was a fellow in the doorway with 'em just now.'
'He'd be having a pair of boots made.'
'Why would he be staring out into the street? It just looked rum, that's all.'
'If he was in the doorway, he'd be staring out or staring in,' said Bill Dixon. 'He'd have to be doing one or t'other, do you take my meaning?'
He went off upstairs and I was quite alone in the pub, trying to picture the Police Gazette face of the man who'd be waiting for me the following day in the Big Coach.
After dinner - corned beef, fried potatoes and a pot of tea -1 had a bit of a kip on the sofa, and when I woke up it was four o'clock and the wife was standing over me with a telegraph form. The Chief had got my report; he wanted me in the next morning at six once again.
PART THREE
The Big Coach
Chapter Ten
Chief Inspector Saul Weatherill was sitting back in his chair, scratching his scraps of hair and yawning, and the more he scratched the more he yawned.
'But was any offence committed other than by yourself?' he said, at last.
I thought for a moment. The gaslight shone blue and white - the colours of coldness - and steam rolled from our mouths. The chief sat in his overcoat, as before, and (also as before) looked as though he wouldn't be stopping.
'Well this, sir,' I said, indicating my eye, although there was hardly anything left to see. 'The one I've called the Blocker belted me, as I said.'
Weatherill had turned up late, and it was now 6.35 a.m.; the fish train was in, having arrived early, and we could hear the crashing all along Platform Three.
'So what's going off tonight?' he said, over the racket.
'As I said in the report, sir, I can only make a hazard as to that.'
'Where exactly did you say that in the report?' he said.
'At the end, sir.'
He nodded thoughtfully, looking at the two pages of the report, which lay folded on his desk. Next to these was a small envelope. He slid it over to me, and there was a goods yard pass, made out in the name of Gordon Higgins.
I'd set out in my report my reasons for requiring it, but still the chief said, 'Why do you want it, again?'
I thought: wake up, can't you?
'I want it because I've told 'em I've got it. It's just my way of getting a leg in.'
I looked down again at the goods yard pass.
'Why Gordon Higgins?' I asked.
'Why not?' said the Chief. 'You wanted a made-up name, and they don't come much more made up than
that...
Reckon it could be another railway job?' he asked, leaning forward, suddenly keen.
'I reckon it is, sir.'
'If it's not, of course, we father it on to Tower Street.'
A great roaring from Platform Three checked us for a moment, then silence - the fish train had gone, leaving only the sound of the Chief breathing through his 'tache.
Presently, he stood up.
'You'll go along to meet this new fellow, and see what's what.'
'Any idea who it might turn out to be, sir?'
'Have I any idea?' he said, quite amazed to be asked. 'Me?'
He fished a stack of newspapers out of his desk.
'A few of the local lot have picked out Shillito,' he said, pitching across to me a heap of newspapers tied up in brown paper. They were all Police Gazettes. 'Commit the faces to memory, and you might find you recognise one tonight. Chuck 'em away when you've done. We have more than enough copies of each edition. Remember,' he added, walking towards the door, 'keep your mouth shut as far as possible and your eyes and your ears open.'
I could have done with some advice of a more specific nature.
'If my lot do nothing more than make a plan this evening, then that's conspiracy, isn't it?'
'It is,' he said, nodding, 'and it will be open to us to indict them for that.'
'And will we?'
'Reckon we'll get 'em for the act, eh?' he said. 'That generally goes better in court.'
It was the answer I deserved. I had been trying to bring the matter to an early end, and had been doing so out of funk, but the chief didn't seem to have noticed. He didn't seem to have noticed anything, really. Only now he was giving me a good, hard look up and down. 'It really is a shocking suit,' he said, from by the door.
I put the glass-less spectacles on.
'And they set it off to a tee,' he added. 'They make you look like a fellow whose woodcut was circulated to us just before Christmas: Herman van . . . summat or other. He'd come over by steamer from Rotterdam.'
'Oh yes, sir?' I said.
'Fellow was a sodomite,' said the Chief, scratching his wisps of hair. 'Still is probably, because we never caught him ... I'd bring you into the hotel for bacon and eggs, lad, only it wouldn't do for us to be seen in company.'
'Not to worry sir,' I said, 'there's plenty of dining rooms along the river'll see me right.'
He was about to make his breakaway, so I said:
'I wanted to ask you about the Camerons, sir - the pair that were done in by the goods yard.'
He looked at me without any trace of expression.
'That's Tower Street,' he said at length.
'Do you want it to be Tower Street, sir?'
He looked at me steadily for a while, and for a moment I thought his temper would give way. But he just gave a sigh, walked around to the mantelpiece and lit a cigar. Leaning on
the mantelshelf he began smoking, still looking at me directly and saying: 'Do you realise how much work we have on here?'
'No,' I said.
'Make believe for a minute that our job is just the policing of this railway station. Now, there are fourteen platforms and it is the biggest railway station in the country. It is also the busiest. Besides the engines of the North Eastern, it receives those of six other companies, and if our duties as an office were just confined to crimes committed within the station we would be over our ears in work ...'
Ash was falling from the cigar on to the Chief's open coat, on to the suit beneath. He paid it no mind. The suit wasn't up to much, but he wore gentleman's boots. He turned at the mantelpiece - a giant of a man really, and case hardened.
'...
The next thing to imagine,' the Chief continued, 'is that we are responsible solely for the railway matters carried on within York as a city. York is the administrative centre of the Company, it's also the geographical centre; the Company is the biggest employer of its men by far, and the city has its racecourse, its market, and is a holiday ground in its own right. Shall I name you one thing in York that's not to do with the railways?'
'Go on then,' I said.
'Go on then?' he said. '"Go on then, sir", you mean.'
'Go on then, sir.'
'Well I can't,' he said quietly, 'which just proves my point.'
'What about York Minster, sir?' I said, but he ignored me, saying: 'York alone would stretch us to the very limit and beyond, but it's not just the station, and it's not just York. You see, lad, in theory we cover about a third of the Company territory but in practice, should any affair begin on our part or finish up in it, then that's very likely to be ours as well.
The fact is, we look to the whole of the North Eastern railway for our work, and this is the biggest railway in the country in geographical extent and it's the biggest carrier of goods and people ...'
He pitched his cigar into the cold grate, and began moving his arms.
'...
Berwick to the north, Hull to the fucking east, Carlisle to the west, Sheffield to the south. Five thousand route miles of track, seventeen docks; sixty-eight million passengers carried in the last year alone ...'
'There's one more thing I think we should be looking into,' I said.
'Oh, for crying out loud,' said the Chief.
'Richard Mariner. He was night porter at the Station Hotel here, and he committed suicide.'
'How do you know about that?' he said sharply.
'It was on the front page of the Yorkshire Evening Press, sir. He was a railway employee - so was
one of the Cameron brothers and I'm wondering whether what happened to them was to do with the matter that I'm investigating.'
'But we don't know what you're investigating,' said the Chief. 'That's why you're bloody investigating it.'
'The Camerons were shot near the goods
yard ...'
'Outside it,' he said, 'and don't you forget.'
'Two bits of business in the file that you gave me were carried on in the goods yard. Richard Mariner worked at the hotel, where another of the jobs was done.'
The Chief said nothing.
'Can I go to the hotel, and ask questions about Mariner?'
'I'll do it,' he said, very quickly and surprisingly as he adjusted his coat. He was striding towards the outer door of the Police Office now. 'Come on,' he said, 'time you were out of here - bring those papers.'
On Platform Four, I was saying good morning to the Chief under the finger-pointing sign reading To the Hotel' as a short train pulled away alongside us. There was a shout, and a bloke came running from the ticket gate, hailing the train. Somebody in a carriage opened a door for the bloke, and the bloke was up on the footboard and in.
The Lost Luggage Porter Page 8
