A Third Class Murder: a cozy 1930s mystery set in an English village

by Hugh Morrison

  ‘That really is most kind of you,’ said Shaw. He turned to go. ‘I shall purchase a ticket.’

  Ambler winked. ‘Don’t worry about that, vicar. You get up here in the cab with me.’

  Shaw smiled. ‘Thank you. I shall be most interested to see how it all works.’

  Chapter Twelve

  A few minutes later Shaw was fulfilling a childhood dream of riding on the footplate of a railway engine, crammed into the little cab with Ambler and Webb, the fireman. The noise, heat and smoke were far greater than he could have imagined, and he dreaded the scolding he would get from Mrs Shaw when she saw the soot on his clerical collar. The high point for Shaw was being allowed to pull the whistle to give a merry toot as the train passed over the little pedestrian level crossing just outside Lower Addenham.

  As they approached the lone signal on the line, he noted the short distance between the railway track and the road. Anyone fleeing from the train to a waiting bicycle, he realised, would have had only a short distance to run before making good his escape.

  Ambler turned to Shaw and spoke, raising his voice almost to a shout to make himself heard.

  ‘This was where they think the murder happened, wasn’t it? I saw that young feller run off the train across the fields there,’- he pointed to his right - ‘but I never thought he’d done a murder.’

  Shaw replied, raising his voice also. ‘Did you say he was on the right hand side, Mr Ambler? The man I saw ran from the left side of the train, down to the road.’

  ‘Don’t know anything about that,’ said Ambler. ‘The chap I saw was on the other side of the train, running for his life across the fields back to Addenham.’

  Shaw’s mind was suddenly in a whirl. He decided now was not the best time to distract the driver with questions, so he bided his time until the train arrived at Great Netley station.

  After Ambler had eased the train to a halt, turning various wheels and pulling several levers, he turned to Shaw.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed that, vicar.’

  ‘It was splendid,’ replied Shaw. ‘And thank you, also, Mr Webb,’ he said to the fireman. ‘If you’ll kindly point me in the direction of the signal box, I shall be on my way.’

  ‘I’ll walk you over there, vicar,’ said Ambler, wiping his hands on an oily rag which seemed to have the effect of making them appear dirtier rather than cleaner. ‘I don’t have a great deal to do until the run back, and George here will get her ready.’

  The two men walked along the platform in the opposite direction to the handful of passengers who had emerged from the little train.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Ambler,’ said Shaw, ‘but I feel I ought to be sure about what you said just now about the man we saw running from the train. As both of us may be called to testify in court over what we saw on the day of the murder, it would do well to be in agreement over which side he ran from’.

  ‘Sing from the same hymn sheet, as it were, eh vicar?’ said Ambler with a grin.

  ‘Quite,’ replied Shaw. ‘A defending barrister could make good use of confusion over such matters.’

  Ambler frowned as the two men stopped walking and stood together on the narrow wooden platform.

  ‘You mean I might have to be up in court?’

  ‘It is highly likely that we both will be called upon to testify. Could you recognise again the man you saw?’

  Ambler thought for a moment. ‘Not rightly, no. I only saw him from behind, like.’

  ‘I see. Now, the man I saw ran from the train on the left side, past the signal and onto the road. Yet you say the man you saw ran from the right side of the train, across the fields back to Lower Addenham.’

  Ambler’s eyes narrowed and Shaw noticed dark lines of soot embedded in the creases around them.

  ‘Well all I can say is this,’ said the driver. ‘The fellow I saw was definitely running off from the right.’

  ‘And you told this to the Inspector?’

  Ambler paused. ‘You mean the fellow with the moustache asking the questions here the other day? No, I never spoke to him. After he’d been talking to you and the others he shot off and left the talking to an ordinary bobby who took some notes. Come to think of it, all he asked was if I’d seen anybody running away from the train and I said yes. I don’t think he asked me which way he was running. Just told me they might have to speak to me again and that was that. I thought they’d have wanted to know a bit more but they didn’t seem to. For all they know I could have done the chap in myself.’

  Shaw smiled at the notion. ‘Presumably with Mr Webb the fireman as your partner in crime? I find it rather unlikely.’

  ‘Next you’ll be saying that mystery blonde woman that disappeared off the train was my gangster’s moll!’

  Ambler laughed but then turned it into a cough, presumably as he remembered he was talking to a clergyman.

  ‘But speaking seriously,’ said Shaw, ‘it is certainly rather intriguing. Either one of us is wrong about where he saw the man, or…’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Or,’ replied Ambler, raising his eyebrows, ‘there were two men.’

  Miss Ellis, plainly dressed as usual in a shabby and unflattering tweed suit, was sitting in her favourite place at the counter of Cokeley’s shop, poring over two large ledgers. She occasionally made marks in one of them with a pencil, while referring to the other. Dance music from Mrs Cokeley’s wireless drifted down from the upstairs flat.

  She looked up as the front door opened and a man and woman walked in. She recognised the man as Mr Symes, the rather odious fellow who was something to do with the estate agency down the road. He was almost as lecherous as Cokeley, she thought to herself.

  She had also seen the brassy blonde woman before - some sort of secretary, she assumed- and had noted with distaste her peroxided hair and tight-fitting frocks. Miss Ellis wondered whether she had to put up with lecherous behaviour from her employer as well. Perhaps she even enjoyed it? She had heard some women did.

  ‘Yes?’ said Miss Ellis to the couple, in a cold tone of voice.

  ‘Good morning my dear, and how are you this fine day?’ responded Symes warmly. His type always said things like that, thought Miss Ellis. She ignored the attempt at flirtation.

  ‘May I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘You could help me by putting a smile on that pretty face,’ said Symes, taking his hat off and turning it in his hands in front of him.

  Miss Ellis felt herself blush and hated herself for it. She noticed the blonde secretary eyeing her with what looked like pity.

  ‘Never mind him, dear,’ said the secretary. ‘He’s a brute like most men are, aren’t you?’

  Symes chuckled and leaned closer to Miss Ellis, who shied away from him in distaste.

  ‘And that’s just what you ladies love, isn’t it, Miss…?’

  ‘Ellis. What do you want?’

  ‘These, for a start.’ Symes leaned forward and scooped up the ledgers on the table.

  ‘Put those back,’ said Miss Ellis angrily. ‘Those are private company accounts,’ She felt herself blush again.

  ‘Alright love, keep your hair on,’ said Symes, replacing the books on the counter. ‘That’s why we’re here. Old Ma…I mean, Mrs Cokeley, has asked us to go through a few things to do with the shop accounts. I’m sure she’ll be down for those ledgers later. Is she in?’

  ‘Wait one moment. I will see if she is available,’said Miss Ellis primly. She got up and turned to walk to the staircase but was confronted by Mrs Cokeley in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, good morning Mr Symes, and Miss Frobisher,’ trilled Mrs Cokeley, who was puffing on a cigarette in a holder.

  ‘You’re looking particularly lovely today, Mrs C,’ said Symes unctuously.

  ‘Oh you do flatter me, Mr Symes,’ replied Mrs Cokeley with a girlish giggle. ‘Won’t you please come through?’

  Miss Ellis glared at the pair as they passed by her and followed Mrs Cokeley up the stairs.

  ‘Here’s the signal box
, vicar,’ said Ambler, as he and Shaw reached the end of the platform at Great Netley. Shaw felt a childish thrill as he was allowed to proceed through a little wooden gate, with a metal sign attached which warned of a fine of five pounds for anyone caught trespassing on the railway.

  Ambler led the way up a flight of metal steps on the outside of the little white-painted wooden building, which had large windows facing out on to the tracks. The driver pushed open the door and called out cheerily. ‘Morning Bert, morning Graham.’

  Two men were standing at a row of large, waist-high metal levers beneath the windows of the little building. The older man smiled in recognition at Ambler, but the younger man, a portly, red faced youth, was absorbed in the effort of pulling one of the levers forward.

  ‘I’ve bought an interested party along, Bert,’ said Ambler. ‘This here’s Reverend Shaw from down the line at Addenham. Reverend Shaw, Bert Fox.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Fox, who, thought Shaw, with his stocky build and grey beard was distinctly un-fox-like in his appearance. ‘Oh and this here’s Graham, Graham Moffatt, my assistant.’ He pointed to the younger man, who nodded silently at Shaw.

  ‘Nothing wrong is there, Perce?’ said Fox. ‘Only we don’t often get parsons in here. Nobody’s died, I hope?’ he added with a chuckle.

  ‘Now that’s not in very good taste, is it Bert?, chided Ambler. ‘Considering what happened last week.’

  ‘Ah of course, how could I forget?’ said Fox. ‘No disrespect intended. They’ve caught the fellow who did it, I heard.’

  ‘The police have charged a man, that much is true,’ said Shaw. ‘But fear not, I am not here on clerical matters. It has always been a desire of mine to see how a signal box operates, and Mr Ambler was kind enough to invite me to look around.’

  ‘Well I’ve been on the signals all me working life,’ said Fox, ‘so it don’t seem like anything special to me, but I’m happy to show around a friend of Percy’s. It’s quite straightforward really.’

  Shaw wondered what could possibly be straightforward about the little room with its array of levers and detailed maps and timetables on the opposite wall.

  ‘These here levers control all the signals along the line here between us and Lower Addenham, and a mile or so each way to Ipswich and Midchester.’

  Fox pointed to a linear map on the wall showing the locations of signals. ‘I keeps an eye on the timetable and Graham operates the signals. It’s a young man’s job really, as pulling them things all day fair tires you out.’

  An electric bell tinkled from somewhere in the room. Fox consulted his pocket watch and said ‘London line clear now, Graham.’ The young man heaved on a lever and there was a metallic clunking noise from below the floorboards of the room.

  ‘How on earth does it work?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘It’s all done by hydraulics,’ explained Fox. ‘There’s a hydraulic system under here that forces a cable along the side of the line, and that operates the signals and the points up to a mile away.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Shaw. ‘It never really occurred to me how it all works. If asked, I would probably have thought each signal had its own operator stationed by it, rather like policemen on traffic duty.’

  Fox chuckled. ‘That was how they did it in the old days, when the trains was slow and there was only a few lines, but you’d need hundreds of men for that now,’ he said. ‘And they’d be stood out in the cold and wet all day, poor beggars. ’

  Suddenly an electric bell mounted on the wall above the signal levers rang three times. Fox ran his finger down a printed timetable on the wall.

  ‘Wake up Graham,’ called out Fox to his assistant, who was dozing over the levers. ‘Heavy goods from Netley West coming through.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Graham, and pulled one of the signal levers down.

  Fox then turned to what looked like a telegraph operator’s switch under the bell, and tapped it three times.

  ‘Now see what happened there, vicar,’ said Fox. ‘That’s the goods train coming up from London. It’s just passed through the next station to us, Netley West, so the box there lets us know with a signal through that there electric bell, and so we changes the signal and points here to let it through. Then I taps ahead up the line to the next box. And so on, all the way up the line to Norwich.’

  ‘But, to the best of my knowledge there is no signal box at Lower Addenham,’ said Shaw. ‘How therefore are you notified of an oncoming train from there?’

  ‘Ah, I see you’re an observant man, vicar,’ said Fox. ‘Well, Lower Addenham’s on a branch line. It only goes from here to there and back again. There’s only the one little train on it that just goes back and forth, see. So all that happens when the train leaves Lower Addenham is the station master sends me the signal via his telegraph bell that the train’s left. Right, Perce?’

  ‘That’s right,’ replied Ambler. ‘pushing buttons while sitting on his backside is about all that lazy beggar’s good for.’

  Fox and Ambler both laughed.

  ‘A most impressive system,’ said Shaw with a smile. ‘But would it be possible to operate a signal manually, from outside this box?’

  ‘Well technically yes, vicar,’ replied Fox. ‘The cable can be operated manually at the signal, but you’d only do that for maintenance or some such. There’s a fail-safe weight on ‘em, so that if anything goes wrong they drop down horizontal, which means stop.’

  ‘So in theory a signal could be operated without your knowledge?’ asked Shaw.

  Fox paused. ‘In theory sir, yes.’

  ‘Is that not rather dangerous?’ said Shaw. ‘What if trouble makers, nuisance-mongers and the like were to alter the signals? It could cause havoc. ’

  ‘I recall that was done in Ireland during that nasty business a few years back,’ mused Fox. ‘But it’s unlikely here. For a start you’d have to know how to do it, and there’s a special key that only us signalmen have, to do it with. So any Fenians or what-not wanting to cause trouble would have to get one of those keys.’

  ‘I think I see what you’re driving at, vicar,’ said Ambler, who up until now had been quietly smoking a short, dirty pipe while he stared out of the signal box window. ‘You’re thinking somebody deliberately stopped that train last Wednesday so’s they could rob and kill that poor fellow.’

  ‘I must admit the question had entered my mind,’ said Shaw cautiously.

  ‘I highly doubt it though,’ said Ambler. ‘More likely it was a special or an excursion passing through the main line so Bert here gave the order for the train to stop. Ain’t that right, Bert?’

  Fox chuckled. ‘I don’t know every blooming train off by heart, I’m not God Almighty, am I? Pardon me, vicar.’

  Shaw smiled. ‘Now that you mention it, it may be of interest to the police if you were able to find out whether the train last week received a stop signal from here.’

  ‘Police?’ said Fox with surprise. ‘What they want to know about my signals for?’

  ‘Indulge me, please, Mr Fox,’ said Shaw. ‘Did you give a stop signal to the, now what was it, yes, the 12.55 from Lower Addenham to Great Netley, on Wednesday last?’

  Fox sucked air through his teeth as he ran his finger down one of the timetables on the wall. ‘12.55. 12.55, now let me see…there’s no scheduled main line service then. The 12.55 should have come straight through onto the main line to here, without needing a stop signal.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Ambler. ‘We don’t normally stop at that signal. Could have been a special though.’

  ‘A special?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘But I usually gets a separate notification of specials, which I pins up on the board here. I don’t recall getting that. Only thing I can think of was it was a delayed train coming through. Probably up from Ipswich. They’ve been having work on the line there. I don’t recall though.’ Fox called across the box to his colleague. ‘Can you remember anything, Graham?’

  Graham mumbled
something indistinctly.

  ‘Speak up, lad,’ said Fox.

  ‘I said that were the day I was ill.’

  ‘Ah, that’s right, I remember now,’ said Fox. You was off sick, or so you said. Probably hung over, more like, weren’t you?’ he said with a good natured laugh.

  ‘I don’t drink, Mr Fox,’ said Graham, blushing furiously.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Fox, ‘I had to run the box on my own for that afternoon shift. I thought about sending for young Jack, that’s Jack Ellis, my other assistant signalman, but Wednesdays and Mondays is his days off and I had no way of getting in touch, so I says to myself, “Foxy, you’re on your own today.”’

  ‘Did you say his name was Ellis?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Fox. ‘Lives over your way. Perhaps you know him? But then again I think he’s chapel’.

  ‘Ellis…’ pondered Shaw. ‘Does he happen to have a sister?’

  ‘Think so,’ replied Fox. ‘He’s mentioned a sister. Here, didn’t she work for that fellow as was murdered last week?’

  ‘I believe that may be her,’ replied Shaw. After a pause, he continued.

  ‘Did Mr Ellis mention anything of the murder?’

  Fox shook his head. ‘What, Jacko? No, he’s a quiet one, him. Keeps himself to himself.’

  ‘Probably on his best behaviour,’ interjected Ambler. ‘Got into a spot of bother a year or so back, didn’t he?’

  Fox bridled at this comment. ‘It was nothing more than high spirits, a bit of drunk and disorderly, the police let him off with a warning and so did the station master. Water under the bridge.’

  ‘My lips are sealed, Bert,’ said Ambler in an admonished tone.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, vicar,’ continued Fox, ‘if I did stop the train you’re talking about, it was most likely because of a late running train up from Ipswich. But I must admit I can’t remember rightly, with all the running about I was doing. If it’s really important I suppose I could find out for you.’

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself, Mr Fox,’ said Shaw. ‘It was really only a matter of private interest. Now I ought to let you two gentlemen get on with your work.’