Death on a Branch line js-5

by Andrew Martin

  ‘Did he not appeal?’ I asked the boggle-eyed man. He shook his head, and I thought about the time I’d seen a fellow hung at Durham gaol…

  The execution had not arisen from a railway police case, but from a stabbing in the Durham workhouse. It was just after I’d had my promotion that the Chief had taken me north, and he’d eyed me throughout the proceedings. He’d said, ‘It’ll fix you, lad. A copper who’s not seen it happen is floating about in a dream world.’

  But the business itself had been like a dream — both fast and slow like a dream. The prisoner had been marched through thick fog across the yard, and this had happened in a sort of relay. He’d set off in company with four wardens, the governor, the vicar and the doctor — all blokes who might have been looking out for him, who might in some way have been on his side; but they gave him over to the hangman and his assistant, who definitely weren’t. The Chief and I had waited in the shed that held the gallows, and which normally contained the prison van. We’d stood alongside the High Sheriff of Durham or some such gentry.

  The place smelt of oil and horse droppings, and the absence of the van was the most terrible thing about it. When the prisoner came in, it was all movement and no words. The High Sheriff had whipped off his top hat at the exact moment of the drop, and I thought he should have done it sooner.

  The man was left hanging in what seemed to be a great weight of silence, and it came to me only then that the whole thing had happened in the time it took the prison clock to strike eight.

  And that silence, and the fog, had seemed to stay about us for the rest of the day.

  The boggle-eyed man was now looking at the photographs in the police office; his suit coat was over his arm.

  ‘He’ll be roasted in that cell, you know,’ I said.

  ‘Bring him in here if you like,’ he said. ‘He’s not the sort to attempt a breakaway.’

  Chapter Five

  The condemned man had on a good-quality flannel suit, and a loose white necker that was rather bandage-like. He’d been permitted to carry a roll of papers, and these he stuffed into his suit-coat pocket as I opened the cell door and said, ‘You can wait up in the office if you’d rather.’

  ‘It is a little close in here,’ he said.

  He was well-spoken, and my own accent was a little ‘out’ when next I addressed him, as it usually is when I try to accommodate to upper-class pronunciation.

  ‘You can sit here,’ I said, indicating my own desk.

  Boggle-eyes was not giving us the benefit of his distinctive expression but lounging in the doorway with his back to us. He’d collected up his baccy, I noticed. As we entered the room, he gave us only a brief backward glance before stepping out onto the platform and falling in with his two confederates.

  Lambert nodded at me as he sat down, and then looked all about the room. It was a young man’s curiosity and he was young — about of an age with me: late twenties, not more. He had very wide dark eyes, and he looked like an author. Not just any author, but a particular one: the fellow that wrote Treasure Island. I’d seen his photograph on the first page of a copy of that book, but I couldn’t just then lay hold of his name.

  Hugh Lambert blew gently upwards, and his long hair lifted.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Is it a hundred?’

  ‘Ninety-six here in York,’ I said. ‘They say it’ll break come…’

  I tailed off. Thunderstorms had been predicted for Monday, by which time the man before me would be well beyond their reach. Boggle-eyes was still talking to his mates about ten feet away from the office door. I heard him say, ‘I’ve lost my golf swing, and do you know, it’s haunting me — fairly haunting me, it is.’

  His place at the doorway had been taken by a sparrow. Hugh Lambert caught sight of it, and at first swivelled in his chair to get a better view; he then very gently picked up the chair and settled down again facing the bird. He looked up at me and, indicating the bread left on my desk, said, ‘Mind if I…?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ I said, and he rolled a pellet of bread, and pitched it over towards the bird.

  ‘You’ve fed her before,’ said Hugh Lambert, as the bird took the bread. ‘She wouldn’t be there otherwise.’

  ‘She?’

  Lambert nodded.

  ‘A male sparrow has a grey crest.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t necessarily know,’ I said. ‘I mean, anything that comes in here ends up more or less black. There’s a robin that pitches up pretty regularly. He stands there and sort of demands to be fed… Makes me laugh — the sheer brass neck of it.’

  ‘The robin is the most English of birds,’ Lambert said in a dreamy sort of voice.

  Was this a good thing or bad as far as he was concerned? After all, it was England that would shortly be hanging him. He threw another bit of bread for the sparrow.

  ‘I saw a robin once at line-side,’ I said. ‘He was sitting on a ‘WHISTLE’ board.’

  ‘And was he whistling?’ asked Lambert, half-turning towards me.

  ‘He was.’

  Lambert grinned. In fact, it was more like a short laugh, and it showed pluck to laugh in his situation.

  ‘It was by Grosmont,’ I said. ‘Up on the moors yonder.’

  A beat of silence. Lambert threw another pellet.

  ‘You were with the railway up there?’

  ‘Porter,’ I said. ‘That’s how I got my start.’

  ‘Are you keen on railways per se? Or is it just a job for you?’

  Perhaps this was his way of taking his mind off what was coming… by examining the minds of others? But before I could reply, he said:

  ‘My brother reads timetables for amusement. Can you beat that?’

  ‘Well, I’m a bit that way myself,’ I said, ‘or was as a lad, anyhow.’

  ‘I always liked the adverts in the Bradshaw,’ he said, and it was very worrying to hear him speak as if he was already dead.

  ‘Eux-e-sis Shaving Cream,’ I said, ‘and then the picture of the two men shaving: ‘“Eux-e-sis versus Soap”, and the man using soap is bleeding half to death.’

  I ought not to have used that last word, of course, but Lambert gave a grin, before saying, ‘I always liked the adverts for hotels at the back — to know that all those places would be happy to accommodate you. I found that very welcoming. You were at Grosmont, you say?’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘ Your part of the world.’

  I wanted to get onto him. I felt I ought to give him a chance to say something because I had the notion that he wanted to speak up. He turned towards me but kept silence.

  I said, ‘Adenwold’s a pretty spot, I believe.’

  ‘Just now,’ he said, eyeing me levelly, ‘the hedges will be full of thrushes.’

  I nodded once.

  ‘Skullcap, tufted vetch, alder,’ he continued, in a tone now severe. His face was black and white: white skin, black eyes, black beard. His clothes were worn anyhow, but still with a rightness about them.

  ‘Have you been there?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t believe so,’ I replied, slowly.

  ‘Do you mean to go?’

  I looked towards the doorway, but the sparrow had made off. I was on the point of replying to Hugh Lambert when he asked, with great emphasis, ‘Could you see your way clear to going?’

  My boots creaked, and the wooden floor also creaked in the unbreathable heat as I moved towards the police office door. The three guards were talking by the platform edge. A high screeching of wheel flange on rail came from some far-off platform, and a single green locomotive was running light through the station, going fast and seeming to enjoy its freedom, like a child running home from school. I pushed the door until it was on the jar. I turned to Hugh Lambert.

  ‘What’s at Adenwold?’

  ‘My brother John,’ he said.

  ‘Will he not come up to Durham to see you?’

  Lambert shook his head, shook his hair. I supposed it was the privilege of the condemned man
to be allowed to grow it.

  ‘My brother is a very intelligent man,’ he said, ‘but in this business he’s too partisan.’

  I didn’t take his meaning, and I told him so.

  ‘Well…’ said Lambert, ‘he believes me to be innocent, and he means to secure my release.’

  ‘How? Will he bring forward some new evidence?’

  Lambert moved his hair with his hands.

  ‘I can’t say, but he has told me that he means to make a stand or take a stand this week-end.’

  ‘But again,’ I said, ‘ how?’

  ‘I don’t know how, I don’t know why. My father always said I should be hanged, and the governor of Durham gaol will shortly oblige him. That is to be considered an accomplished fact.’

  I’d got more than I’d bargained for there, but I was spared the need to reply by the office clock chiming the half-hour. I was embarrassed by that clock. It seemed to fairly whiz.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Lambert, ‘ did you do it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and he met my gaze for a moment before looking sidelong, towards the door. ‘It’s certainly possible,’ he continued, ‘otherwise why would they be hanging me?’

  A beat of silence.

  ‘In trying to secure my release, my brother puts himself in considerable danger from people who… want to stop him.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He has told me that much, and you see there ought not to be any more deaths over this. Two is enough. Will you open the door again?’

  I did so, and the sparrow was there once more. It looked ridiculously small. The three guards were beyond the bird at the platform edge.

  ‘The idea is that I save your brother?’

  Lambert nodded, side-on to me again and lobbing pellets at the sparrow.

  ‘And not you?’

  ‘I’m past saving.’

  ‘As a consequence of your brother being saved, you might be saved.’

  ‘Two for the price of one,’ he said, and he folded his arms, and nearly smiled. ‘Now I doubt that.’

  The men on the platform were stirring. They’d finished their talk, and were coming towards the police office.

  ‘These people who mean to stop him speaking out,’ I said, ‘who are they?’

  The Met men approached the open door.

  Lambert said, ‘I don’t know… Only that they are…’

  ‘What?’ I said, indicating the guards. ‘Is it these men?’

  He shook his head very violently at the suggestion, and I must have been mad to make it. The London blokes were all quite above board: I’d seen all their warrant cards.

  ‘These people you mention,’ I said, ‘are they in Adenwold?’

  The fellow who’d been short with me was the first through the door and into the room.

  ‘They will be there this week-end,’ said Lambert.

  And the Met men were now close about him, a new fireman evidently having been found.

  Chapter Six

  A minute after they’d gone — during which time I’d sat stunned on my desk — Old Man Wright pitched up again.

  ‘Anything doing?’ he said.

  ‘Not much,’ I said.

  There was something about Wright. You didn’t want to tell him things.

  ‘I’ve found you a hotel room,’ he said.

  ‘Oh aye?’ I said.

  ‘Well, a word of thanks wouldn’t come amiss,’ he said, ‘seeing as how I’ve just spent half an hour telephoning from the Institute.’

  Don Shearsmith, the manager of the York Railway Institute, would vouch that any personal calls you made were in fact made on North Eastern Railway Company business. In theory, these favours were given gratis and with no expectation of return, but with Shearsmith there was always a price to pay at some later date.

  ‘It’s Jernigan’s Hotel,’ Wright said. ‘Not one of the premier ones, granted. There’s no sea view, but that would be asking the earth at this late stage. It’s above the Marine Drive on the north side. It faces sort of side-on to the sea, so if you leaned out of your window, and kind of craned your…’

  I said to Wright: ‘Pitch us over a Bradshaw, will you?’

  In the police office, we had the use of all the working timetables, but for ordinary business we used the monthly Bradshaw just like any ordinary tripper. Wright chucked over the one that sat on his own desk, saying, ‘There’s a train for Scarborough at six. We’ve booked, but you and your missus would have to stand.’

  I looked up Adenwold, and folded the corner of the page.

  I stood up, and walked through to the Chief’s part of the office.

  ‘Do you want this bloody room or not?’ Wright called after me. ‘You’ve to confirm directly if so.’

  ‘I’ll think on,’ I said.

  A map of the network hung behind the Chief’s desk. I climbed onto his desk chair, so that I was at eye level with Adenwold.

  It lay twenty miles north of York on a quiet branch running west to east between the market towns of Pilmoor and Malton. Pilmoor was on the North Eastern main line and Malton was a regular destination from York, and the branch ran between them like a filament in an electric light bulb — something delicate and slight.

  From west to east the stations on it, beginning after Pilmoor, were Husthwaite Gate, Moorby, West Adenwold, Adenwold, East Adenwold, Slingsby, Barton-le-Street, Amotherby. These were all villages, and Adenwold, I knew, was smaller than both West Adenwold and East Adenwold, which was rum because their names would lead you to think it was bigger.

  They would be there this week-end. Adenwold was small, but it still might have a population running to hundreds, or a hundred at any rate, and the station was like a valve, periodically letting in more.

  I looked again at the map.

  Another singular point: there were bigger gaps between Adenwold and West and East Adenwold than between any other two stations on the branch. The three Adenwolds sounded like a family, but in fact they were not.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you playing at?’ asked Wright, who was watching me from the doorway of the Chief’s office.

  Pilmoor to Malton was the ‘down’ direction; Malton to Pilmoor was ‘up’. Farm produce and machinery, timber, limestone and gravel (for there were plenty of quarries up there) would be carried by the pick-up goods trains, and there’d not be above one of these each way every week-day. As for the passenger trains… I took up the Bradshaw, sat down in the Chief’s chair and put my boots on the desk as he often did.

  ‘You’ll catch it if he walks in,’ said Wright, who was evidently unaware of the Chief’s wife’s birthday.

  I turned to the page I’d marked in the Bradshaw. A down-line train from Pilmoor would arrive at Adenwold at 8.41 p.m., but there was an earlier ‘up’ train from Malton, marked with a ‘B’ symbol in the timetable. This service only stopped at the principal stations on the branch, and Adenwold was not counted one of these. But the ‘B’ meant that it would set down at any station if advance notice was given to the guard. Why ‘B’ meant that in a Bradshaw I never knew. Anyhow, this service was scheduled to call at East Adenwold at 7.45 p.m., which meant it would pass through Adenwold itself about ten minutes after, or stop there if requested.

  On the Saturday, three trains were scheduled to call at Adenwold: an ‘up’ service from Malton arrived at 8.51 a.m., a ‘down’ from Pilmoor arrived at 12.27 p.m. and another ‘up’ arrived at 8.35 p.m. One train arrived in Adenwold on the Sunday — a ‘down’ at 10.05 a.m.

  The best bet would be to go to Adenwold, find Lambert’s brother directly and have the whole tale from him.

  ‘Ever been to Adenwold?’ I called across to Wright.

  ‘Now hold on a minute,’ he said, ‘your missus is in hopes of the beach and sea air. You can’t take her to bloody Adenwold!’

  ‘The inn there,’ I said, stepping back into the main office, ‘what’s it called, do you know?’

  Wright shrugged, having fallen into a sulk. He w
as so dead set on getting me fixed up with a hotel in Scarborough — preferably one slightly more inconveniently placed than his own — that he wouldn’t be party to any plan that took me in a different direction.

  ‘Your missus!’ he called, as I stepped out into the hot gloom of the station light. ‘She’ll be in fits!’

  Chapter Seven

  I walked through the ticket barrier, past the booking office and cab stand, and turned right under the glare of the sun. Two minutes later, I was breathing the dusty air of the Railway Institute reading room. The clock said twenty to six, and it ticked away the life of the super-annuated railwayman sleeping in the one armchair. The rest of the room was mostly hard wood: tall stools, and tall, sloping desks. At these, you read the paper of your choice from the selection ranged on the long table by the window.

  The back numbers were stowed underneath. I hauled out a bundle of Yorkshire Posts, and leafed backwards through them until I found the account, in the paper dated Thursday, 27 April, 1911.

  There was a woodcut of Hugh Lambert in the dock, and the name of the writer came to me in a flash. Stevenson. Hugh Lambert looked like Robert Louis Stevenson. The article was headed ‘The Moorby Murder — The Killing of Sir George Lambert’, then ‘The trial in summary by Our London Correspondent’. It began: ‘For the past week, the crowded court has listened closely to the sad and painful story of how a son perpetually at odds with his father finally resorted to murder.’

  The killing had occurred in the early evening of Wednesday, 8 November, 1909. Hugh Lambert had made off immediately afterwards, and had eventually been arrested in London after living for more than a year abroad. It had happened during a ‘rough rabbit shoot’ in the woods close to the Hall at Adenwold, family seat of the Lamberts. Present at the shoot were Sir George Lambert, his friend the Reverend Martin Ridley, parish priest of Adenwold, and Hugh Lambert. Two villagers had also been employed to ‘walk-up’ the rabbits, but these were not named.

  Hugh Lambert did not go in for country sports, and he described the shoot as ‘a debauch’, in which he had been forced to participate by his father. He had admitted that he had earlier quarrelled with his father, and that they were both drunk on the ginger liquor that his father habitually consumed before walking nightly through the coverts with his guns, of which he kept a good many. The three men on the shoot had become separated in the woods. Hugh Lambert’s account was that he had fallen down in a drunken swoon. When he returned to consciousness, an extra shotgun was beside him. He picked it up, and found that he was standing over his father’s body. A policeman called Anderson (‘Constable of the Three Adenwolds’) was just then walking through the woods with his spaniel. He had hailed Hugh, who had then run off, making his way to Paris and later Italy. The gun was later found to be one of Sir George Lambert’s, and to be covered with the finger marks of Hugh.