Death on a Branch Line(25)

Lydia asked, ‘If they’re going to kill you anyway, then what do you have to lose by speaking out?’ and I was torn between annoyance at her cutting in like this and the thought that it was a good question.

But John Lambert kept silence.

I tried another approach:

‘Why do you not make off?’

‘Fatalistic disposition,’ he said with a shrug, and he nearly smiled again, adding: ‘Let me put the matter less whimsically …’

‘Could you?’ said the wife from behind.

‘If I made off,’ said Lambert, ‘they would find me anyway.’

‘One “up” train stopped by request at Adenwold this evening,’ I said. ‘We came in by it, and a bicyclist got off as well.’

Lambert nodded, and he now seemed distinctly amused.

‘Sounds fairly benign so far,’ he said.

‘You’ve no reason to fear a bicyclist?’ I enquired.

‘We’ve all got reason to fear them,’ said Lambert. ‘They’ve no brakes at all, half of them.’

‘Then,’ I went on, ‘at 8.41, a scheduled “down” train arrived. A man from Norwood came in by it.’

‘Norwood?’ said Lambert.

‘It’s in south London,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘He carried papers written in German.’

I watched him for a reaction, and he watched me back.

‘There are three further trains tomorrow,’ I said.

‘The 8.51, the 12.27 and the 8.35 p.m.,’ Lambert cut in with a faint smile. It was as though the Bradshaw was not so much in his hand as in his very bloodstream.

‘And each of those also leaves,’ I said. ‘You might keep that in mind.’

I looked at the Bradshaw in his hand. There were a thousand pages in it. He might go anywhere.

‘The governor of Wandsworth gaol believes your brother to be innocent,’ I said.

‘I share the gentleman’s opinion.’

‘If he didn’t kill your father, then who did? Do you know? And do you plan to let on? Is that why you’re in danger?’

John Lambert just eyed me, and he seemed very remote behind those thin glasses of his. He was very likely remote from everyone.

‘My brother has sent me here to help you,’ I said. ‘And yet …’

‘And let me help you, Mr Stringer,’ he cut in. ‘As long as you are connected to me your life is in danger.’

Well now.

I wanted a little time to think in. I must send the wife away for one thing. And I ought to bring in the Chief.

‘You mean to save your brother from the gallows,’ I said at length, ‘but how?’

‘Mr Stringer,’ he replied, ‘I am sure that you have better things to do on a fine week-end like this than to fret over the private troubles of a stranger.’

‘We were on the point of going to Scarborough,’ said the wife, in a hollow sort of voice. ‘Just like most of this village.’

‘Go to Scarborough,’ said Lambert, again addressing me.

‘All the hotels are full,’ I said flatly, and at that I saw a new and deeper complication in the man’s face – a sign of great trouble.

‘Mr Lambert …’ said the wife, and I knew that she had relented somewhat towards him in that moment. He looked directly at her for the first time, and nodded as though to thank her for the step she had taken but she seemed to hesitate on the point of speech. Lambert nodded at us both, turned on his heel and walked away. Ought I to have shown him the papers of his brother? They were in my pocket. I raised my hand to them. But instead I called after him one of the hundreds of questions I might have put:

‘What is your profession?’

He stopped, and half-turned towards me, saying, ‘I fill notebooks, Mr Stringer.’





Chapter Thirteen


We walked fast through the woods. The darkness was drawing down, but still the heat hung heavy in the wide, tree-made tunnels. In the light of John Lambert’s warning, the woods looked different. The trees either side of us were monsters – great spiders with even their highest branches swooping right down to the ground.

‘Do you believe it now?’ I asked the wife.

‘I think there’s something in it all,’ she said.

Whether she believed it or not, she would be leaving Adenwold in the morning, I would make sure of that. One murder had happened and another was coming, or at least an attempt, and I would have to put myself in the way of it. It struck me again that I ought to get the Chief over to Adenwold first thing in the morning. I knew he was generally in the office of a Saturday.

We came out of the trees and we were at Mervyn’s set-up, which was more than ever like the scene of an explosion in the woods. As far as I could make out, the lad had gone, and taken all the dead rabbits with him. We walked on, and struck the railway track, which we followed a little way, walking under the telegraph wires. The wife was ahead of me, stumbling now and then on the track ballast.