Death on a Branch Line(19)

‘Just the ticket,’ I said.

As she quit the room, the wife sat on the bed.

‘Why is there any need to call it a “Yorkshire” ham?’ she said when the door was closed. ‘That talk’s all for the benefit of trippers. Doesn’t she see that we are Yorkshire?’

It was a strange thing for the wife to say, for she herself was not Yorkshire. She’d been born in London, and had lived there until we’d married. She was now looking down at her dress, as if trying to make out her knees through the muslin.

‘Well, I’m torn about the landlady,’ I said. ‘She’s sort of half-friendly, isn’t she?’

‘It’s quite obvious that her husband never does a hand’s turn,’ said Lydia. ‘Why is it his name over the door, and not hers?’

It seemed to me that the wife always fell back on her hobby horse, the sex war, when in a bad mood.

‘I liked the lad, though,’ I said, and the wife made no reply to that.

‘Still hot, en’t it?’ I said, removing my collar and moving over to the washstand. ‘You could cut it with a bloody knife.’

I lifted up the jug of water that stood beneath the washstand and began giving myself a sluice down. The washstand was too small, and, although I wasn’t looking towards the wife, I knew that she was eyeing me and thinking: Why must he slosh about so?

‘What was she doing with the lemons?’ the wife asked, as I dried my face.

‘Making lemonade,’ I said.

The wife, who was no great hand in the kitchen, seemed irritated that I knew this. She was browned off again, and the little headway I’d gained with her on the train since Malton was now lost. The Angel Inn, although clean and bright, was not up to the mark, being too cottage-like and countrified. The wife liked wildflowers and she was a good walker, but Thorpe-on-Ouse (where we lived, and which was just three miles outside York) was village enough for her. For all her Liberal-Labour leanings, the wife aspired to society, and that was not to be had in a remote spot like this.

As I put on a clean shirt, she walked over to the window, which gave onto the kitchen garden of the inn. I stood behind Lydia, towelling my face, for it was not just then safe to touch her. The garden was pretty well-kept, but lonely-looking somehow. The raspberries, growing along twines stretched between canes, put me in mind of telegraph poles and wires. Cut cornfields lay beyond, and beyond them the dark green wall of the woods. There was something not right about the woods. Shadows of trees fell upon the trees at the edge of it – and yet where were the ones that made those shadows?

Just then there came a clattering noise from close-by, and Mrs Handley came out of the back door of the inn and walked across the garden into the outhouse. She returned after a moment carrying a ham. The Yorkshire Ham. The call of a nightjar came from the yellow cut field, and it stopped Mrs Handley in her tracks.

‘Is she crying?’ I said, looking over the wife’s shoulder.

Lydia sat down on the bed again.

‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised,’ she said.

I heard the clatter of the door from directly below, signifying that Mrs Handley had re-entered the inn.

‘What are you thinking about, love?’ I asked the wife, as I fixed what I thought of as my holiday neckerchief in place. It was green to match the sporting cap, but I reserved that for the present on account of the wife’s mood.

‘Scarborough,’ she said.

I should’ve known not to ask.

‘… The Italian band on the pier,’ she ran on, ‘… a lemon tea at the Grand … the Chinese lanterns at dusk in the Esplanade Gardens.’

If we’d gone, I thought, she wouldn’t have been so keen on it all.

‘We will go to Scarborough,’ I said, transferring the bundle of papers from my kitbag to the inside pocket of my suit-coat, which lay on the bed. ‘I’ve another leave in August, and we’ll go then. Meantime, shall I tell you how we’ve come to fetch up here?’

I had been eyeing the place next to the wife on the bed, but I thought it better to tell the tale while standing.



I gave Lydia the story I’d had from Hugh Lambert, and told her of my plan of campaign. I didn’t say whether I believed the story to be true. When I’d finished, I stood waiting for her to say, ‘Well, it’s all too daft for words.’ Instead there came through the open window a beating of air. It was the fire-breathing of the iron intruder: the 8.41 ‘down’.

‘I’m off to meet that in,’ I said, and I snatched up my suit-coat and new cap and quit the room. Let the wife digest the story at her leisure – it was a lot to take in.