Death on a Branch Line

by Andrew Martin

  I sat down next to her on the counterpane, and we went over everything. I undressed by degrees as we spoke, and was down to my undershirt when I looked at the wife, and said:

  ‘You’re leaving by the first train in the morning, anyhow.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I am not. Apart from anything else, I’m set on seeing inside that house.’

  She meant the Hall. She had a liking for grand houses. The Archbishop of York had his palace at Thorpe-on-Ouse, and the wife would find any excuse to go inside. She aspired to own a grand house herself, although she’d never admit the fact. It was terrible in a way to think that she had all these ambitions kept down.

  ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to fetch the Chief,’ I said.

  In my five years on the force, the wife had never set eyes on the Chief but I knew she was strong against him. He was the fellow who kept me out all hours, who put dangerous work my way.

  Talk of the Chief brought me back to the subject of station master Hardy, and how it was the Chief’s regiment that he had in miniature in the booking office. I told her a little of what I knew about the Chief’s time fighting in Africa:

  ‘All they had to hand’, I said, ‘against the spears of a thousand charging dervishes was –’

  ‘A large quantity of guns.’

  As the wife said this, she was stretching out on the bed.

  She was always down on the army. In the first place, it was all men, and secondly it would be the army who’d put a stop for good-and-all to the women’s movement if it took matters that bit too far.

  I was beside her now, and my hand was under her night-dress, making its regular explorations.

  ‘Do you suppose the blank papers in that man’s bag were written in invisible ink?’ she said.

  ‘But then why wouldn’t he put the German stuff in invisible ink as well? This is not the time to be seen carrying German papers about.’

  The wife said, ‘I’ve often thought – if you can have invisible ink, then why can’t you have invisible anything else? Invisible bicycles.’

  And, not waiting for an answer, she quickly stood up and took her night-dress off; then she walked over to the wardrobe, and fished my darbies out of my suit-coat pocket. She sometimes liked me to lock her hands into them for a while before our love-making. She liked to pretend to be in desperate straits, with no knickers on and her hands fast. I thought it a strange look-out for a reader of The Freewoman, but that was the wife all over. She was an unpredictable sort.

  We fucked once, and then we did it again, differently arranged, in very short order. It might have been the danger of Adenwold that had stirred her up, and the danger of Morocco, the raging fires and the strikes and all the rest; or just the fact that somebody had been in our room without our say-so. As we turned in, I thought: Well, she’s off in the morning, no question. The Chief will come in and she will go.

  I put the oil lamp to its lowest setting and closed my eyes. But sleep wouldn’t come, and I fell to listening to the country sounds – the many desperate rustlings, scufflings and screechings. The chimes of midnight floated up from the village, and I walked over to the chair on which I’d left my suit-coat. I took out the papers and read again from the memories of Hugh Lambert:

  And so we began to avoid each other more than ever. If father was in the country, then I made it my business to be in London, and vice versa. According to Ponder we were like the opposing carriages of a funicular railway. ‘I will run up to London,’ I would say, but I could never say it lightly. Father told me often enough that this was one of my troubles: ‘Too much London,’ and it’s true that upon returning from a spell there, I would lie awake at night, still somehow hearing the heavy roll of the traffic, as though the city were an infection not lightly to be shaken off. Indeed, the …

  I could not read the next few lines.

  I shuffled the pages, and read:

  She is a treasure, but he … His speech I find a kind of chloroform. When he addresses me, I drift off, and every other sound supersedes him: the babbling of a nightingale, the wind rattling at the window panes of the inn. He is often in drink, of course, but the defect in his speech has some deeper cause. On the farm, I was never required to speak to him. He was always on the other side of a field, working happily. And no wonder … how beautiful that place was! A farm under sycamores, and with a rookery in each corner. Does Mr Handley drink to bury the pain of its loss? I do not know. The man is incomprehensible to me, but it is all I can do when in his presence not to apologise continually for father’s conduct.

  I put aside the papers.

  Sir George had removed the Handleys from one of the estate farms, and given them The Angel instead. I had already had this from the boy Mervyn. Was the inn fair compensation for the farm? Would the loss of the farm make a motive for murder?

  What did John Lambert know about it all? And what did he aim to do about it?

  I walked towards the window with a fast-beating heart, and pushed aside the curtain. But there was only the violet night, and the building heat.

  PART TWO

  Saturday, 22 July, 1911

  Chapter Fifteen

  In my dream, Mr Handley’s blurred voice spoke over Adenwold scenes, giving out country-side facts:

  ‘Here is the hawthorn, the roots are polished black.’

  ‘Here is our station – the porter has turned on the danger lamp.’ ‘Here are the rabbits running. We kill them at harvest time when they have nowhere to hide.’

  ‘Here is a field put to grass.’

  ‘This is not like your place – we are all under the great house.’

  Mr Handley seemed to give a cough, and I woke suddenly to a blare of light and heat beyond the open window, and the distant beat of the 8.51 ‘up’ approaching through the woods. It might be over a mile off yet. The wife was lying on her front and looking as though she’d been dropped from a great height. She was asleep, and yet the day was half done. I stood up and looked down at her. Any person asleep always seems better off that way, and there was nothing for it … I had meant to put her on the first train, but I could not wake her.

  The counterpane was twisted to one side, her night-dress was up and her brown arse was on full view. What ought a gentleman to do? I pulled the night-dress down; I put on my suit and cap, threw cold water on my face and stowed the warrant card (which was evidently not safe left in the room) and the papers of Hugh Lambert in my inside pocket. The engine gave another long shriek, as if to say, ‘I have given you fair warning! The station is now approached!’ I clattered down the stairs of The Angel. No coffee, no breakfast – fine holiday this was! The long table stood empty before the dusty road, and no breeze moved the wisteria.

  Rounding the bend that led towards the station, I ran into a confusion of geese, all flapping to take off, and none succeeding any better than any quantity of madly dashing white-skirted women. Nobody seemed to be attending them, and the green was silent and deserted as before.

  I crossed the white dazzle of the station yard, and arrived at the ‘up’ platform just a second after the train. It was a Saturday train – short: two carriages and a guard’s van.

  Who had it brought?

  I walked along the ‘up’, watching the doors, and as I did so, the vicar, who had departed Adenwold the previous evening, climbed down and moved quickly along the platform before cutting across the station yard and disappearing from view. He had left, and now he had come back, carrying the same bag and wearing the same white suit and flower-like hat. He had perhaps been at a dinner. He was another to be taken into account. Or was he? John Lambert had told Hugh that ‘they’ would be coming for him, and the vicar was not a ‘they’. The same objection could be raised in the case of the bicyclist or the man from Norwood. But either might be an agent of some larger group. Or they might all be in league.

  I walked further along the platform, still watching the train. The carriage windows were once again sun-dazzled, but I made out an old man sleeping in Third, and
he looked as though he might have been inside that dusty red rattler since it was built, or then again he might have lived and died in it, for he made no stir as I looked on.

  Coming up to the station house, I noticed for the first time a public telephone attached to the side of it. Pasted above the instrument were the instructions: ‘How to Use the Telephone’, but these were half-obscured by a notice freshly pasted over: ‘Out of Order’. I looked up and saw the west-leading wires reaching away into the woods. They would meet their doom within half a mile, and I could not believe the ones that led in the other direction remained intact either.

  I turned again to the train.

  All the doors of the carriages remained closed. The engine simmered and waited for its signal; the clock on the ‘up’ moved to 8.55.

  In the gloomy doorway of the booking office, I spied the bulk of station master Hardy. What were those soldiers of his in aid of? Some station masters would spell out the name of the station in white stones on a bank of grass, or they’d have a super-fancy flower display – pansies in an ornamental barrow. But the model soldiers were not laid on for the benefit of the passengers – they were entirely for the benefit of Hardy.

  The fellow turned towards me from within his hole, and his mouth made the shape of his habitual ‘Oh’, but he kept silence.

  There then came the sound of rough Yorkshire voices from the head of the train – from the locomotive itself. As I looked on, a small figure climbed down from the footplate. It was the porter, Woodcock. He was now saying something to the unseen driver or fireman; he carried a cloth bag that no doubt contained the snap and bottle of tea for his turn.

  ‘Your lad comes in on the engine, does he?’ I asked Hardy.

  He turned in the shadows.

  ‘He likes a ride up,’ he said.

  ‘He lives along the line, I suppose?’

  ‘The lad? He lives at East Adenwold. First train of a Saturday brings him in just nicely for the start of his duty. Well, a little late, but near as makes no odds.’

  The idle little bugger ought to have biked in like any country station junior, as I had done myself when I’d had my railway start in the village of Goathland up on the Yorkshire Moors. I looked at Hardy, and my gaze seemed to shame him into further speech.

  ‘The boy has a crib in the signal box,’ he added, ‘and he sometimes kips up there.’

  Hardy then looked down at his boots.

  I said, ‘Telephone’s bust.’

  ‘It is, aye,’ he said, looking up.

  I eyed the communicator and receiver dials of the ABC machine behind him, saying, ‘Telegraph’s out too, I suppose?’

  Hardy nodded. ‘There’s been a general collapse out in the woods,’ he said. ‘It’s not the first time … It’s all out while they fix it.’

  ‘When did you hear of this?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘By company runner?’

  He nodded again, and I thought of the silver-haired man I’d seen the night before, hurrying through the station yard. He’d been running, but he hadn’t looked like a railway messenger. He’d looked more important than that.

  ‘How’s the line being worked then?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hardy, ‘by ticket.’

  In emergencies, a driver would be given a ticket or token authorising him to proceed even against signals set at danger … But I had no clear understanding of the system.

  ‘I’ve had a look,’ I said, ‘and I’d say the line’s been cut.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hardy, ‘well now …’

  Woodcock was now eyeing me from a distance of ten feet – it was always a face-down with him. His head was too compressed for my liking – like an old apple. He pursed his thin lips and gave a tremendous fart, staring at me all the while, so that it was very hard to keep in countenance.

  ‘Been burning some bad powder,’ he said, just as a carriage door opened behind him, and a man stepped down.

  He was a dapper dog, this one: blue lounge jacket, white flannel trousers, stiff collar and stripy tie; and the trousers were tucked into highly polished army field boots. I imagined that he’d been arranging his clothes to a look of perfection in his compartment, and that this accounted for his delay in getting down.

  The fellow carried a document case and a biggish carpet bag. He was trim, well set-up – uncommonly blue eyes, sunburnt face and sandy hair. He put me in mind of a prosperous sort of colonial farmer, and he had evidently passed a test that I and the wife had failed, for Woodcock put down his own bag and hurried up to the man. Here was a chance to put the bleed on – carry the two bags at a shilling apiece to some waiting vehicle, for this was certainly the sort of fellow who’d be met, except that I could see clear through to the station yard, and it was empty as before.

  The man sent Woodcock packing with a word. He then struck out along the platform and out towards the triangular green where he stood getting his bearings. I watched him from the platform as Woodcock moved alongside me again.

  ‘Bad luck,’ I said.

  No reply from the porter.

  ‘Do you know him?’ I asked.

  ‘I know his type,’ said Woodcock.

  ‘That chap falls into the class of a mean toff,’ I said. ‘Looks a good bet for a tip, but en’t. I was a lad porter myself once, and I always reckoned to be able to spot that sort the minute they climbed down.’

  ‘Cut the blarney,’ said Woodcock.

  I said, ‘You have a ride in on the engine come Saturday, I see,’ and I nodded towards the locomotive.

  Woodcock muttered something I couldn’t catch, before asking in a louder voice, ‘You okay today, pal?’

  He was moving, as he spoke, towards the end of the train, and the guard’s van. I looked on as he took down from the unseen guard a quantity of newspapers, a wooden box and a hamper tied about with a leather strap. The newspapers were loosely covered in brown paper, but I could make out one of the headings: ‘The Moroccan Sensation: Reports of a Further Grave Incident’.

  ‘Reckon you were half seas over last night,’ Woodcock said, standing over the packages, ‘spoiling for a scrap, you were.’

  The train was at last pulling away.

  The wooden box, I now saw, was a crate of wine.

  ‘Who’s this lot for?’ I asked, indicating the goods, and shouting over the roar of the departing engine.

  ‘Nosey bloke, en’t you?’

  I fished in my pocket for a tanner and passed it to him.

  ‘You’d have had that earlier if you’d carried our bags,’ I said.

  ‘Well then,’ said Woodcock, looking down at the coin, ‘I’m glad I didn’t bother. This is all for the bloody Hall, of course. Why do you want to know?’

  And it came to me that I might put him off with a lie.

  ‘You asked me last night if I was a journalist,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact I am. I’m hunting up a bit of background for an article on the hanging of Hugh Lambert.’

  ‘What paper?’

  ‘Various,’ I said. ‘I’m with a news agency.’

  He eyed me.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me about Hugh Lambert?’ I ran on. ‘Or John, come to that?’

  ‘There is not,’ he said.

  A consignment note was tucked into the leather belt that held the lid of the hamper down. I caught it up before Woodcock could stop me. The delivery came from York, and was marked: ‘Lambert, The Gardener’s Cottage, The Hall, Adenwold, Yorks.’

  I looked across the station yard towards the triangular green. The dapper man in field boots was still gazing about. He was a stranger to Adenwold, that much was obvious.

  ‘Lift the lid,’ I asked the porter, pointing at the hamper.

  He made no move.

  ‘Irregular, that would be,’ he said. ‘Mr Hardy might not like it.’

  He nodded towards the urinal, where station master Hardy was making water, the top of his head just visible over the wooden screen.

  ‘You don’t
care a fuck for what he thinks,’ I said.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ the porter said. ‘Give me a bob and I’ll do it.’

  He was a mercenary little bugger. I handed him the coin; he unbuckled the strap and pushed the lid open. ‘Aye,’ he said, looking down, ‘… seems about right.’

  Inside the hamper were perhaps fifty railway timetables, all in a jumble. At the top was one of the Great Eastern’s, with a drawing of one of that company’s pretty 2-4-2 engines running along by the sea-side. But in the main, the basket held the highly detailed working timetables that came without decorated covers and were meant for use by railwaymen only.

  Woodcock kicked the lid of the basket shut.

  ‘Timetables,’ he said. ‘Bloke’s mad on ’em.’

  As he spoke, I watched the dapper man in field boots striding across the green. He moved with purpose, and I knew I’d better get after him.

  ‘When’ll they be carried to the Hall?’ I asked Woodcock, indicating the timetables.

  ‘Carter’ll take ’em up presently.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When it suits him – don’t bloody ask me.’

  ‘Who’s that bloke just got down?’ I asked Woodcock, pointing towards the man in field boots.

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry, mate,’ I said, keeping one eye on the bloke. ‘Everything considered, you’ve been surprisingly helpful.’

  ‘That’s me all over,’ said Woodcock.

  ‘I’m obliged to you,’ I said.

  ‘I’m more surprising than I am helpful,’ he said as he made off, ‘so look out.’

  The man in field boots was walking amid the cawing of rooks towards the two lanes on the opposite side of the green from the one leading to The Angel. Of this pair, he was aiming towards the lane furthest away from the station, which was bounded by two towering hedges. I made after him, but lagging back a little way.

  The hedges made two high walls of green with brambles and flowers entangled within. A ladder stood propped against one of the hedges, and it looked tiny – only went half-way up. But it was a good-sized ladder in fact. The only sounds in the hedge-tunnel were our footfalls and the birdsong, and I thought: It must be very obvious to this bloke that he’s being followed. But he did not appear to have noticed by the time we came into the open again.