Death on a Branch Line

by Andrew Martin

  ‘All set?’ I called up to Woodcock.

  His shout came through the rain.

  ‘Hold your fucking horses!’

  He was fifteen foot above me, leaning out from the top of the pole, and scraping at one of the telegraph wires with a pocket knife. I looked again at the ABC. It was like a portable grave, with the one dial (the communicator) lying flat and the other (the indicator or receiver) raised vertical like a little tombstone. Around the outside of the communicator dial were golden keys, one for each letter, number or punctuation mark. You pressed the key you wanted, the handle flew to it and that was it sent. I found myself mentally picking out the letters for J-O-H-N-L-A-M-B-E-R-T. Where the hell was he? I had no notion, but in the darkness of the storm, it was very easy to believe that he’d come to grief. I looked at my silver watch again: six, dead on.

  ‘What’s up?’ I called to Woodcock.

  ‘All this … green shit on the wires,’ he said.

  Verdigris. That’s what it was called, and the connection wouldn’t be made until it was removed. Woodcock was certainly putting his guts into the job, leaning out far from the top of the pole like the high-flying man in the circus as he reaches out for the swinging trapeze.

  ‘Worked out your bloody message?’ he called down.

  ‘Lambert innocent,’ I called up. ‘Do not hang … forward directly to Home Office, London.’

  (There would be no difficulty in reaching the Home Office, I decided. Any telegraph clerk would have it in his directory.)

  Woodcock, still at his wire-scraping, called out something I couldn’t catch.

  ‘Come again?’ I called up.

  ‘Please do not hang!’ he shouted down. ‘Remember to ask nicely!’

  He was a cold-hearted little bastard, and that was fact. It was five after six.

  Woodcock was now tying our two wires to one of the six carried out from the pole. Christ knew how he could tell which was the right one. Then he was down from the pole, and pulling at the trailing ends of the wires he’d tied onto the ones above. Crouching low, and working by the light of the storm lamp, he connected them somehow to the back of the ABC, and then took the battery out of his top-coat pocket, which he tied on by two smaller wires. As soon as the connection was made there came a blue flash, which I took at first for our little bit of electricity. But then came the boom of the thunder, and the rain doubled its speed. Woodcock was crouching on the bank of slimy track ballast, eyeing me and trying to light a fag.

  I glanced at my watch: 6.25.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Woodcock. ‘Hand over your pocketbook.’

  ‘Eh? Why?’

  ‘Because I need bread, you silly sod. How much do you have in it?’

  ‘Nothing doing, pal,’ I said, at which he stood up.

  ‘I’m taking a big risk by sending this message,’ he said. ‘It puts me right in the bloody line of fire.’

  ‘I’ve given you a fair spin,’ I said. ‘You’re off the hook; we have an agreement.’

  ‘I’m clearing out in any case,’ he said. ‘Meantime, I might or might not work this doings for you. It all depends on you handing over your gold.’

  ‘Forget it, mate,’ I said.

  ‘All right then, I’m off, and I don’t much fancy your chances with that thing.’

  He climbed the track ballast and stepped over the rails and into the field beyond. The lightning came again, and Woodcock was suddenly a hundred yards further on, walking with his hands in his pockets through cut corn under the roaring rain. There came another bang of thunder, and out of this seemed to grow another, more regular noise – the beating of an engine.

  The first Monday train. I hadn’t bargained on that. Would it stop at the station? The week-end was over now, after all. If it did stop, then Hardy might board it and ride away to freedom. It would look queer, the station master getting on the train; it would be like the station getting on it, but who’d lift a finger to stop him? Everything was going to pot. I ought to have brought the Chief in again, even if that meant involving that pill Usher. The engine drew out of the woods, and came on. The rain made a haze above the carriage roofs; and it made a waterfall as it rolled down the carriage sides. Will Woodcock still be in sight by the time this has passed? I wondered.

  He was, but only just – a small black shape on the far side of the field in the milky light. I looked down at the ABC – at the white dials glowing in the lamplight. It was all connected up, but those dials seemed to have sprouted a few more foreign-looking signs and symbols since the last time. Woodcock had got me so far, but he wasn’t the sort to do people favours – his heart just wasn’t in it. It struck me that, in pushing his luck in the way he had been, Woodcock had been asking me a sort of question. I took out my watch, and the hands seemed treacherous.

  Six thirty-three.

  I scrambled up the bank and sprinted over the tracks and across the field towards Woodcock. He turned about and watched as I gained on him. I came to a halt at two yards’ distance, with the rain making a curtain of water between us.

  ‘Fancy a scrap?’ I said.

  I got a good one in the very moment he nodded his head. Another silent flash came just then, and it showed me Woodcock bringing his fists up in a way he’d no doubt wanted to be doing ever since he’d clapped eyes on me, but our set-to did not last long, and it was over before the thunder boom that belonged to that particular lightning bolt came rolling around. We both happened to be down on the corn stubble at that point, and Woodcock, standing up, said, ‘Have it your way,’ and began trailing back in the direction of the tracks and the ABC.

  As he walked, he lit another cigarette, and began muttering to himself. When he got back to the ABC (which was soaked but, I trusted, well sealed) and its faintly glowing companion the storm lantern, he immediately crouched down and set about winding the handle on the front of the wooden case.

  ‘What’s this in aid of?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’ve put the switch to “Alarm”,’ said Woodcock, ‘and I’m turning ten times to give ten rings.’

  ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but they can.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why ten? It seems a bloody lot.’

  ‘That’s the code for Pilmoor – tenth stop on the branch, en’t it?’

  ‘They would count it from fucking Malton and not the other way. What’s our code?’

  ‘Six bells.’

  I looked at the time. Six-forty. Lambert would be with the priest now. The High Sheriff of Durham would be taking coffee with the governor of the gaol, and being reminded of the correct form. When he stopped winding, Woodcock turned a switch and stepped back, saying: ‘Off you go, then.’

  I looked at my watch, and for the first time I could do so without straining: ten to seven. I didn’t need the lantern to see the dials in the clearing light, but still the rain thundered down. I looked at the necklace of gold keys around the indicator dial. You pressed the key according to the letter or number you wanted to send; the pointer flew to it, and at that instant the circuit was broken, and you pressed the next letter, winding the handle to fire that one off, and so on.

  I pressed the key for ‘F’, and began.

  My message, of which I was not over-proud, was: F-O-R-W-A-R- D-T-O-H-O-M-E-O-F-F-I-C-E-L-O-N-D-O-N-L-A-M-B-E-R-T-I- N-N-O-C-E-N-T-M-U-S-T-N-O-T-H-A-N-G-A-C-K-N-O-W-L-E- D-G-E-S-T-R-I-N-G-E-R-Y-O-R-K-R-A-I-L-W-A-Y-P-O-L-I-C-E-A-D-E-N-W-O-L-D.

  I had finished with a full stop. That was the icing on the cherry, so to say, but I had not bothered with spaces between the words.

  ‘Like to lay on the drama, don’t you?’ said Woodcock, who’d been looking on from behind. I made no reply to that, and Woodcock came forward and once more turned a switch on the machine. We would now await the acknowledgement.

  Two minutes to seven by my watch.

  A further three minutes went by, and no sound came from the ABC. It was just a lump of bloody wood;
you might as well expect a tree to talk. My eye ran up the wires connecting the thing to the cables above, and it all looked about as scientific as washing on a line.

  Woodcock said, ‘Exciting, en’t it?’ and just as he spoke, the machine gave a ring, and then another five, which seemed like a miracle, not least because I couldn’t immediately see any bell. A second later, the needle on the indicator dial began flying.

  Craning forward, I watched the letters as they were signified. The first was ‘I’, and the whole message ran as follows:

  ‘I-N-N-O-C-E-N-T-O-F-W-H-A-T-?’

  He’d even put the fucking question mark in.

  ‘I told you he was a cunt,’ said Woodcock, and he was up the telegraph pole directly, adding, ‘Reckon the signal’s come and gone, and come again. He’s only had the first part of it. Even that clot would know it was murder if he’d got the bit about the hanging. I’ll take down the wires, and we’ll set up further along.’

  ‘You’re saying it’s the verdigris?’ I called up the pole.

  ‘Eh?’ said Woodcock.

  ‘The green shit!’ I said.

  ‘That’s it, mate!’ called Woodcock.

  It was five after seven.

  ‘I can’t afford to shift,’ I said. ‘There’s no time. Can you not just scrape a bit more off?’

  ‘Makes no odds to me,’ he called down, and I wondered if that was really true. He was leaning and scraping once again, anyhow.

  ‘Green shit,’ he was saying as he came down, ‘that’s what it’s called in the manual, I believe.’

  Two minutes later, I re-sent, as Woodcock lit another cigarette. (He was a great hand at smoking in the rain.) The lightning had stopped, and the rain was slowing now. Woodcock set the machine to let us hear back from Pilmoor; then I blew out the lamp and paced up and down by the railway line. Hugh Lambert would be making ready to leave the condemned cell. A handshake from the warder who’d stopped up half the night with him. That warder would be a hard-arsed character, but dignified with it.

  The six bells came after five minutes, and the pointer jumped first to ‘R’, and then:

  E-C-I-E-V-E-D.

  ‘Can’t spell,’ said Woodcock from behind.

  The pointer kept on moving, as Woodcock ran on: ‘Christ, you’d think he’d be able to spell “received” in his job.’

  ‘Shut up, will you?’ I said.

  ‘You watch the needle, you bonehead,’ said Woodcock, ‘you don’t listen to it.’

  The remainder of the message ran:

  … W-I-L-L F-W-D-H-O-M-E O-F-F-I-C-E.

  ‘He’s wasted another minute telling us that,’ said Woodcock, as the pointer fell back to zero for the final time. ‘I’m off, anyhow,’ he added, and he turned a switch on the ABC, and began sauntering away towards the trees.

  ‘Where are you off?’ I called after him.

  He half-turned and said, ‘We have an agreement, mind,’ at which he entered the woods, and was gone from sight. He was on his way –I would discover later – to steal thirty pounds from the safe in the booking office at Adenwold station, and then to disappear.

  I sat by the tracks contemplating the ABC.

  Was my business with it concluded? I didn’t fancy lingering beside it in case it rang again, followed by some further query or contradiction from Pilmoor. Come to that, I didn’t even know if Woodcock had left the switch open to receive. But I felt duty bound to sit by the thing, and I did so until the rain had quite stopped, the sun was raying down and the Adenwold chimes of eight had floated faintly across the drying field towards me.

  In the silence that followed, I lay back and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the sky had washed itself light blue. A bumble bee bounced into view, and I heard the call of a wood pigeon, a steady, urging-on sound. It seemed to keep time with a regular noise from the woods, a tramping of feet. I looked up, and thought for a moment I saw Hugh Lambert all in white, breaking free of the woods, but it was not Hugh. It was of course John, changed from his evening suit into the clothes in which I’d first met him. The sunlight flashed upon his spectacles. He put his hand up to them, and stood at the border of the woods, watching. I rose to my feet, and saw, from the corner of my eye, another man advancing to my left. He too wore white, and he limped. It was Cooper in his dust-coat. He held a shotgun, but somehow I dismissed that from my mind. He would hold a shotgun. John Lambert – who carried no weapon – was the one to pay attention to. I called out his name. He was looking at the ABC, head tilting in wonder as his eyes roved up and down the wire joining it to the telegraph lines.

  ‘Is the connection made?’ he said, and he began to advance.

  ‘It is,’ I said, ‘and I trust that your brother has been saved.’

  Cambridge man, first-class degree and brilliant intellect, yet he looked baffled; and when Cooper’s shot hit him in the chest, the look of bafflement increased, and kept on increasing as he slowly collapsed. I looked towards Cooper, and he had the gun trained on me, weighing up the wisdom of a second shot.

  PART FOUR

  Tuesday, 7 November, 1911

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  We walked along Whitehall in the rain. The black cabs came on and on like one long funeral. Tiny trees along the pavements; the buildings were grey cliffs and every man held an umbrella except for the Chief and me, and the two policemen in capes who happened at that moment to be lumbering along beside us like carthorses. We passed the entrance to Downing Street – one tradesman’s van was parked a little way along it with a white horse in the shafts.

  ‘Do you suppose Mr Asquith’s at home?’ I said.

  The Chief made no answer, but looked at his watch.

  ‘We’ve an hour to kill,’ he said.

  The letters on the side of the van read: ‘Williams of Pimlico’.

  I said to the Chief, ‘You’d think they’d put “Williams of Pimlico: Suppliers of Bread to the Prime Minister”.’

  ‘Full of good ideas, you are,’ said the Chief.

  He stopped and eyed me for a moment before adding, by way of making amends, ‘The Tories wouldn’t buy the bread if it was a Liberal prime minister and the Liberals wouldn’t buy if it was a Tory.’

  ‘Expect not,’ I said.

  ‘Shall we take a pint?’ said the Chief.

  The pub was like a tiny baronial hall, with shields on the wall, and criss-crossed with high beams; and it reeked of past-food. As the rain streamed down the windows, and the Chief bought two pints on expenses, the man at the next table was talking about India. ‘Do you see yourself going out there?’ he kept asking the woman he was with. It was pretty bloody obvious enough that he wanted her to go out there, so why didn’t he just say so? Another fellow, steaming on the same bench as me, said to a man standing before him in a coat with a fur collar: ‘For the first time in years I’ve been able to do a bit of shooting,’ and as he spoke, the pub was filled with the sound of the Westminster bells, which were so deep-toned they might have been inside your head.

  ‘Care for another?’ the man at the table asked the woman.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Well, I know I don’t fancy going out in that,’ the man said, contemplating the streaming windows.

  Why must he go round the houses so? He put me in mind of the Adenwold bicyclist. The lengths that fellow had gone to just to get a fuck! He’d even made a show of taking the bloody machine to the blacksmith’s to get the wheel fixed. As if anybody had been interested! Well, I had been, and the wife, too; she’d always suspected him, just as though one bicyclist might prove as important in the whole business as the combined forces of the state.

  The Chief was saying something about the fellow we were going to see – Major somebody or other. His name came in two parts: Henderson-Richards or some such hedging of bets. I imagined him as a man who couldn’t decide between Henderson and Richards, who considered them both good names and had determined to have the best of both worlds.

  He was in the Sp
ecial Police, or army intelligence, or both. It was the office for muffling-up, anyhow, and our meeting with him would mark the end of the business that had begun with the transfer of Hugh Lambert at York. It would all be laid to rest, and with no undue ceremony beyond my own name being put to a paper.

  My name evidently counted for something in this – otherwise, why would they have called me down to London for the signing (even if it had taken them three months to get round to it), and that with a special first class travel warrant and with the Chief as chaperone?

  ‘Take another?’ asked the Chief, draining his glass and watching me over the top of it.

  He was altered in his approach towards me since the Adenwold events – more watchful. I’d brought off something big, after all: Hugh Lambert had been released and pardoned, if that was the term. Usher had fixed it all after talking to Hardy and Mervyn – this in spite of his strongly held opinions against men of Hugh Lambert’s type. Lambert had evidently had a handshake from the governor of Durham gaol, a letter from the governor of Armley and an armful of money and a rail pass into the bargain.

  This last he’d used to come up to York station in the middle of August.

  As before, old man Wright and I had been the only ones in the office. Wright had a scar on his forehead – nothing to the Chief’s scars but very noticeable all the same. He’d slipped and fallen on his July week-end in Scarborough – taken a tumble down the steps from the Marine Parade to the beach. I couldn’t help thinking it was his own fault for having talked it up so much in advance.

  Also as before, it was a day of unbreathable heat on Platform Four, and the sparrow had been outside the door, for I’d had my snap in front of me as on that earlier occasion. But this time Hugh Lambert had practically trodden on the poor thing – didn’t give it a glance. He’d marched up to me and put out his hand, and I was that shocked to see him that I forgot to stand. Old Wright did so, however, and sharpish, as if he’d seen a ghost, for he’d heard all about Hugh Lambert.