The Necropolis Railway js-1

by Andrew Martin

I would have liked to have had my diary by me, but it had gone. Stanley had taken it, along with my replacement pocket book and the brake handle, before putting me in the box. What he would have made of the writings in it I could not guess, for they were mainly scribbles, and mainly, until Stanley got himself in my sights, wrong. I was sure I had everything straight now, in any case.

  'Number one,' I said, and I was in high force even before they were settled in their seats, for here was a chance to show my mettle, which I had not been able to get through railway work. 'Number one is Mr Stanley. He looks like a man in want of money, and that is exactly what he is. He speaks on interment for pay, and no other reason, but he was not paid enough. They agreed to keep his address weekly, even though the audiences were so poor, but he wanted more money. I heard him say at the address he gave on the day of Mr Smith's funeral that he had not been in the cemetery for almost four months, and he changed the subject double-quick afterwards. This would have put him there in August, and, I believe, on the afternoon of Wednesday 12 August Mr Stanley did travel to Brookwood – probably not on the funeral train which was running that day, but on a service of the common run from Waterloo.' 'Stopping train to Bournemouth?' said the Captain, and he looked across at the Governor, who just nodded, and who I could tell was anxious on account of the greyness mixed in with the red of his face.

  "The week before,' I continued, 'he had asked the board of the Necropolis Company by letter for an increase in pay, but he was refused.'

  'How did you know this?' said the Captain, who'd been smiling and smoking a cigar all along and seemed, unlike the Governor, to be a man without a care.

  'Because I went into the room at the Necropolis where the minutes are kept.'

  'Regular spit-fire of self-dependence,' mumbled the Governor, then, more loudly to the Captain: 'No wonder Mr Smith brought him on!'

  'It wasn't lawful to read the Necropolis minutes, though!' said the Captain, but his smile only widened as he did so, and the eye into which the smoke was streaming slowly closed -which I took to mean that I should go on.

  'Sir John Rickerby, the chairman, had gone down on the funeral train, and Stanley, I suppose, knew that. Sir John made a habit of walking in the cemetery during his trips down there.'

  'Ornithologist?' said the Captain, and he was delighted with that word, which I did not know the meaning of. He was not like a policeman at all. "The trouble being that he was a creeping Jesus.'

  The writer looked up at this, but immediately went back to his scribbling.

  'He walked with a stick, I mean,' I continued. 'So Mr Stanley could smash his head… I mean the head of Rickerby… and it would look…' I did not like this talk of head-smashing that was coming from me, and the Captain could see it. He stood up and went away, returning with another glass of beer for me, which I drank while the writer, very mysteriously, continued to write. Maybe he had been so far behind that he needed all of my drinking time to catch up.

  'Stanley smashed the head of Rickerby against a tombstone' I continued, 'knowing it would look as though he'd fallen.' The writer wrote; the Governor looked at the Captain. 'On the stone'1 said, 'were written the words "Thy Will Be Done.'"

  The writer looked up again at this and I put him down as a church-goer. 'This we do know', said the Captain.

  'Number two' I continued, 'Henry Taylor. Henry Taylor was at the cemetery on that same day.'

  I looked at the Governor, who nodded and said, 'Rode out on the Red Bastard with Arthur Hunt and Vincent.'

  'It is possible that he took a walk in the cemetery, because Hunt had given him a scolding. He liked the cemetery – Mike told me that – and Arthur Hunt was always chucking people off his engines.'

  'You've told me all about this fellow Hunt' said the Captain to the Governor. 'Socialist' said the Governor, nodding.

  'Here is the important connection: I believe Stanley saw Henry Taylor watching him doing the murder of Rickerby, or that's what Stanley thought; Taylor may very well have seen nothing.'

  'Carry on' said the Captain, and the smile was gone now. The Governor's I had not seen for some time.

  'Taylor was killed a week later, and I reckon Stanley must have followed him about a fair bit before the right moment came along. He left his lodge, which is my lodge now Looking at the Governor here, I couldn't tell whether this was a new one on him. 'He left the lodge but never got to the shed. I think Stanley followed him, and got him somewhere along the river. There are some lonely spots behind the gasworks.'

  The beer had made me sleepy, and my head was hurting. My sutures might have been of the finest silk but they did give me gyp. "The next one was Mike' I said.

  'Is this number three?' asked the writer, although he did not look up this time.

  I nodded at him, thinking Mike ought to have a number to himself. 'Stanley had seen Henry Taylor and Mike together around Waterloo or Nine Elms. Well, they were always together, best of friends. One foggy day he followed Mike to Nine Elms. By rotten luck, Barney Rose was under orders to let Mike take the Jubilee off-shed that morning, and he was alone on it for a while.' 'What's a Jubilee?' said the Captain.

  'An 0-4-2 tender engine,' said the Governor in a thoughtful voice. 'Very fine motors.' For some reason the writer looked up at him on hearing this.

  'Number four,' I said, which made the writer get back to writing, 'Mr Rowland Smith. A number of reasons here for Stanley to get him. He was not the new chairman of the Necropolis or even a director, from what I could see, but he was holding the purse strings at the time, and when Stanley again asked for more pay – and his second and third requests went into the meetings at the start of November and the start of December – it was Smith he blamed for saying no. Smith also wanted to sell Necropolis land; that was known, but he set about it at an amazingly fast rate, and maybe it began to look to Stanley as though in time he'd get rid of the whole show, leaving no call for an address at all. Finally, Stanley might have got wind that Mr Smith was set on finding out what had happened to Henry Taylor and Mike, and he was set on it. That was one of the reasons he'd brought me on – to be his eyes and ears on the half-link.'

  'He wrote to you, didn't he?' said the Governor. 'He meant to ask what light you could cast on all this?'

  I nodded, and then apologised to the Captain, for I had quite forgotten to show the letter to the police.

  'We found a copy at the flat,' said the Captain. 'Some of his papers were in a safe that survived the blaze.' He glanced at the Governor, and continued: 'I've heard a good deal from Mr Nightingale of the way Mr Smith pitched you in at the deep end… Now, is it your belief that Stanley started the blaze at Mr Smith's flat?'

  'With paraffin,' I said. "There's no shortage of it at any railway place.' 'A new sort of exploit for him, then, wasn't it?' 'Oh, I expect he bashed him on the head first.'

  'I wonder', said the Captain, 'what gave Mr Smith the idea, up there in Yorkshire, that you would make such a great hand at detecting?'

  I thought of Grosmont, Crystal's flowers, the hot waiting room, Rowland Smith's boots…

  'I guessed that he was bound for London,' I said. I could not help but add, however, "There again, he was on the up.'

  'Maybe he'd forgotten about up and down,' said the Governor. 'Mr Smith has… He had, I mean, many good points, but he did not have the railways in his blood.'

  'Above all,' I concluded, 'Stanley killed Smith because he knew Smith was trying to find out what had become of Henry Taylor.

  You see, it is my belief Rowland Smith liked Henry Taylor.' I looked at the Governor and I looked at the Captain, and as I did so they both finished off their glasses of beer and I couldn't immediately bring to mind the word that Vincent had used of Smith. Then it came to me: Tommy Dodd. I did not speak it out loud, but said in a half yawn, although quite firmly, to the writer, 'Number six.'

  Number six was me, and it turned out the longest, even though I was beginning to tire. I told them all about how each man in the half-link had had his knife in
to me. They thought I was Rowland Smith's man, just like Taylor, and that I would split on them. I was a bit careful about saying what I might split on them for: I mentioned Hunt's socialist ways, but not the mutual improvement class or the trade-union letters I'd seen. I said that Barney Rose 'perhaps seemed a little casual about his business', rather than go any further towards speaking of drink. Drunkenness, I was sure, had set in after the Salisbury smash that Vincent had mentioned, and his boozing had led to his mistakes, one of which had been seen and reported to the Governor by Taylor. As to Vincent, well, he covered up for both of them.

  They also all lived in fear of being taken in for the murder of Henry Taylor, because they knew they all had reason to have done it. Taylor was not one of their London lot. He was Smith's man, and Arthur Hunt especially hated Smith. Taylor had reported Barney Rose, and he was likely to beat Vincent to the footplate. It didn't look good for them either when Taylor's great pal Mike – another out-of-town lad brought in by Smith – was jacked in.

  The writer's hand was racing as I explained that I should have known the half-link were innocent because they could have had no real reason to crown Sir John Rickerby. Stanley, on the other hand, had cause to hate or fear everyone who'd been killed.

  With the great confidence I now felt, I asked whose coffin I had been in, and the Captain said, 'Mrs Davidson-Hill's. There was a great deal of distress at the funeral when you were found.' I said I had no memory of any of that, but I was sorry, and the Captain said, 'You are hardly to be blamed.'

  Two other questions occurred to me. 'How was I found?' I asked, for I was curious to hear what explanation Mack had come up with other than the truth, which is that he'd been trying to get his hands on the dear old lady's jewels.

  "They heard you knocking,' said the Captain, and I smiled to myself at that.

  Then I asked what had happened to Mrs Davidson-Hill herself, but I never did get to hear, for at that moment one of the sisters came to look at my gauze, and the Captain said, 'I would rather not say just at the moment.'

  'Will you put salt on Stanley?' I asked, when the sister was gone. The Captain said nothing, but just smoked slowly, in a way that made me ask again: 'Will you put salt on this man?'

  "The difficulty', said the Captain, 'is evidence, and the other difficulty is finding him.' 'Doesn't the Necropolis hold an address for him?'

  'We looked into that when you first mentioned him,' the Captain said. "They have him down as being at a certain lodge, which he has lately quit.' He began digging something out of his coat pocket. 'I want you to go carefully until we can get to him. I've ordered the constables in your territory to keep a close watch on your lodge, and it's three blasts on this if you see him.' He had stopped rummaging at last and produced a silver whistle.

  Well, I nearly burst out laughing. 'I would rather give him three blasts with a shotgun'1 said.

  At this the Governor smiled for the first time, and said, 'It's more fun to watch 'em dangle.' Later, my landlady was brought to my bed by Sister Purvis. They were as beautiful as each other: one second you would think one had the edge, another the other. I couldn't help thinking that it was like watching two Atlantics racing. After a long period of smiling on all sides, Sister Purvis left and my landlady remained. She sat on my bed saying nothing and it was a very happy time as far as I was concerned, except that shameful thoughts of Signal Street would keep coming back.

  'I haven't yet managed to get any cocoa in' she said after a while. 'Don't concern yourself on that score' I said.

  'I could make up the cocoa – when I get it – the night before and leave it in the range for you to pick up in the morning. It would still be hot – well, it would be quite hot.' She looked at the electric light over my head for a while before adding: 'I daresay it would not be absolutely cold, at any rate.' 'No need for that,' I said.

  'I would do that' she said, 'and I would be happy to do it, only I've been a little rushed.' I nodded. 'Would you like to hear the whole tale?' I said. 'It comes in six parts.' 'Of course' she said. 'Number one -'

  'But not now, perhaps,' she said. 'You need to rest.' She made sure nobody was looking and gave me a kiss. Then she stood up. 'The room is now advertised in several papers,' she said.

  After a long pause, as I recalled how I had attempted to escape from the casket, I said, 'I'm sorry for not having put up your notice at Nine Elms.'

  The fact was, I hadn't wanted another in the lodge with the two of us. She said that it was all right.

  After a further pause, I said, 'I'll be out tomorrow, and I wondered whether you would like to come on another excursion.' 'With Mary Allington?' she said. 'Of course,' I said, and she turned away and suddenly laughed – a very short laugh but very beautiful. She left shortly after. The greatest astonishment came at six on my last day, just after I'd started on a plate of mutton and my bottle of beer. It was Arthur Hunt, still black from a day at Nine Elms, carrying a package roughly done up with string. Somehow things were the wrong way about between us, for he was very ill at ease in the hospital, as a man so full of strength and vigour could hardly fail to be. I asked him to sit down but he would not for fear of dirtying a chair, and nor would he take a bottle of beer, which I could have got for him easily. There was then a great collision of apologies, in which Arthur said he'd seen I was a decent sort, not sent in to sneak, on the ride out to Brookwood.

  I said, 'I'd never have guessed that was what you were thinking.'

  'In truth,' he said, 'I only thought it later, but the thoughts came from what I saw that day.' 'Why were you all going to twist me in the Old Shed, then?' 'Twist you? We were coming to improve you.' 'But you all looked fit to be tied.'

  Arthur shrugged, saying, 'We might have taken a couple of pints. And Vincent clatters the engines as he goes – it's just a habit of his.' He looked at me solemnly for quite a while. Then he said, 'An engine man doesn't need as much imagination as you've got.'

  'I'll try to put that straight,' I said, thinking: but how can a thing like that be changed?

  'Buck up,' said Arthur. 'I've brought you a copy of the Bible.'

  This was a turn up; I hadn't had Arthur down for anything in that line. But when I pulled away the wrapping from the package I saw a book called Engine Driving Life by M. Reynolds. 'You might look at the first page,' said Arthur. There he had written, in a fine hand, but with some smudging: The steam is up; the engine bright as gold; The fire king echoes back the guard's shrill cry, The roaring vapour shrieks out fierce and bold, A moment – and like lightning on we fly.' 'I've had the whole story from the coppers,' he said – and I was glad he spoke at that point, for I could not have. 'I never took to that fellow Stanley and if I see him about I'll knock him into the middle of next week.' 'You know of him then?' 'I've seen him at the Necropolis station; I know him to be another parasite in a collar and tie.' I nodded.

  'It couldn't have happened if he'd been in a trade union,' said Arthur. 'But what union could Stanley ever be in?' 'In time there'll be one for every class of worker,' said Arthur.

  By now I was ready to have a go at thanking him properly for the book, but again he cut me off in my stumbling attempts: 'You've got it in you to put up some good running,' he said. 'But I can't chuck coal to the front,' I said. 'No,' he said. 'And my fire-raising is not of the best.' 'It is not.' 'I can't read signals when they come in a jumble.' 'I noticed that.' 'And I'm no great hand at injecting.' 'No.' 'It is enough for now that I have a great affection for it all, and a determination to get on?' 'No,' said Arthur.

  'So,' I said, 'How can you be sure I'll ever be up to the mark?'

  He was buttoning his coat to go. 'Because I'm going to make bloody sure, that's how.'

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Monday 4 January continued

  I came out of St Thomas's on the Monday afternoon, and the wind from the river immediately started battering me. I turned a corner into the racing world of cabs and trams and horses, with their drivers in all combinations of moods, and thought
: this is my home now. It was all the world of Waterloo. As I set off to Nine Elms, I resolved to take my first route, via the streets. But that would mean that Stanley had won, so I began to make my way by the side of the river, although I was not so brave as to chuck the whistle away.

  In the Embankment gardens, a man was sitting completely still on a bench. He was leaning forwards and his high hat was tipped back. His hands were in his pockets, and I imagined that, in his head, he was flying through the air. I stopped and stared, and with the sight of him came a shuddering wonder at all I had been through.

  I walked along the valley of the shadow of death, with the distillery and the gasworks on one side, the water on the other. A boat came swinging up, its black chimney bundling beautiful black clouds into the air, pumping out night-time. There was a man at the prow, a friendly looking sort, and this city sailor was making ready the ropes for landing. I nearly called out to him, in a cheery way, 'Cut that smoke out!' for I was happy in spite of my sutures.

  Crook's eyebrows jumped at the sight of my stitches when I reached Nine Elms. 'I won't be booking on today, Mr Crook,' I said.

  'Not at all, young Jim,' he said, 'not at all. Rest is what you need.' 'I want to walk around,' I said. 'You do that!' exclaimed Mr Crook. 'You take the air.' As I walked out of his place I realised this was by way of being a joke.

  On entering the shed I was met with such a hail of hellos and how are you's that I grew dizzy giving my greetings and thanks in return. Barney Rose was there, gabbling cheerily about the faulty fielding of the Australians which had permitted some new victory for England, and suggesting that he was going off, and would I take a pint with him directly. Arthur would be at the Turnstile, and somebody called 'Tiger' would be along too. 'Who's Tiger?' I asked, still in a daze.

  'Why, it's Vincent,' said Barney, and there he was, with Arthur alongside of him, and Arthur looked like an uncle and Vincent looked like a nephew as they never had before.

  I had to say no to the offer of the drink, as I was still pretty done up and I felt a pint would have knocked me out, but they left me in no doubt that the offer stood for whenever I was ready to accept. As I walked away from the mouth of the shed, I saw Flannagan limping towards me, grinning all round his head, and I thought: he's a good, brave fellow to be able to smile like that with legs like his.