Death on a Branch Line(32)

I put aside the papers.

Sir George had removed the Handleys from one of the estate farms, and given them The Angel instead. I had already had this from the boy Mervyn. Was the inn fair compensation for the farm? Would the loss of the farm make a motive for murder?

What did John Lambert know about it all? And what did he aim to do about it?

I walked towards the window with a fast-beating heart, and pushed aside the curtain. But there was only the violet night, and the building heat.





PART TWO


Saturday, 22 July, 1911





Chapter Fifteen


In my dream, Mr Handley’s blurred voice spoke over Adenwold scenes, giving out country-side facts:

‘Here is the hawthorn, the roots are polished black.’

‘Here is our station – the porter has turned on the danger lamp.’ ‘Here are the rabbits running. We kill them at harvest time when they have nowhere to hide.’

‘Here is a field put to grass.’

‘This is not like your place – we are all under the great house.’

Mr Handley seemed to give a cough, and I woke suddenly to a blare of light and heat beyond the open window, and the distant beat of the 8.51 ‘up’ approaching through the woods. It might be over a mile off yet. The wife was lying on her front and looking as though she’d been dropped from a great height. She was asleep, and yet the day was half done. I stood up and looked down at her. Any person asleep always seems better off that way, and there was nothing for it … I had meant to put her on the first train, but I could not wake her.

The counterpane was twisted to one side, her night-dress was up and her brown arse was on full view. What ought a gentleman to do? I pulled the night-dress down; I put on my suit and cap, threw cold water on my face and stowed the warrant card (which was evidently not safe left in the room) and the papers of Hugh Lambert in my inside pocket. The engine gave another long shriek, as if to say, ‘I have given you fair warning! The station is now approached!’ I clattered down the stairs of The Angel. No coffee, no breakfast – fine holiday this was! The long table stood empty before the dusty road, and no breeze moved the wisteria.

Rounding the bend that led towards the station, I ran into a confusion of geese, all flapping to take off, and none succeeding any better than any quantity of madly dashing white-skirted women. Nobody seemed to be attending them, and the green was silent and deserted as before.

I crossed the white dazzle of the station yard, and arrived at the ‘up’ platform just a second after the train. It was a Saturday train – short: two carriages and a guard’s van.

Who had it brought?

I walked along the ‘up’, watching the doors, and as I did so, the vicar, who had departed Adenwold the previous evening, climbed down and moved quickly along the platform before cutting across the station yard and disappearing from view. He had left, and now he had come back, carrying the same bag and wearing the same white suit and flower-like hat. He had perhaps been at a dinner. He was another to be taken into account. Or was he? John Lambert had told Hugh that ‘they’ would be coming for him, and the vicar was not a ‘they’. The same objection could be raised in the case of the bicyclist or the man from Norwood. But either might be an agent of some larger group. Or they might all be in league.

I walked further along the platform, still watching the train. The carriage windows were once again sun-dazzled, but I made out an old man sleeping in Third, and he looked as though he might have been inside that dusty red rattler since it was built, or then again he might have lived and died in it, for he made no stir as I looked on.

Coming up to the station house, I noticed for the first time a public telephone attached to the side of it. Pasted above the instrument were the instructions: ‘How to Use the Telephone’, but these were half-obscured by a notice freshly pasted over: ‘Out of Order’. I looked up and saw the west-leading wires reaching away into the woods. They would meet their doom within half a mile, and I could not believe the ones that led in the other direction remained intact either.

I turned again to the train.

All the doors of the carriages remained closed. The engine simmered and waited for its signal; the clock on the ‘up’ moved to 8.55.

In the gloomy doorway of the booking office, I spied the bulk of station master Hardy. What were those soldiers of his in aid of? Some station masters would spell out the name of the station in white stones on a bank of grass, or they’d have a super-fancy flower display – pansies in an ornamental barrow. But the model soldiers were not laid on for the benefit of the passengers – they were entirely for the benefit of Hardy.