Death on a Branch Line(36)

I followed the girl into the baker’s. The interior was dark and unbearably hot. There were twelve loaves on the shelves behind the baker, I counted them as I waited for the girl to buy her loaf – only she didn’t buy it but was given it gratis. I bought the smallest one remaining, and said to the baker: ‘You’re about the only person left in this village?’

He grinned. He looked a decent sort, gave his name as Moffat.

‘Only two of us here on the East Green,’ he said. ‘My daughter and myself.’

‘Was she the one in just now?’

‘She was.’

‘Hardly any point baking today, I’d have thought.’

‘I’ve just done a few,’ he said. ‘We generally have a couple of trippers by.’

‘There was a murder here, I believe?’

‘I believe so,’ he said, and that rather threw me. ‘Before my time,’ he ran on. ‘We’ve only been here three months.’

I decided to rule him out of account. He could have no interest in stopping John Lambert from speaking out about the murder of Sir George.

I asked him: ‘Do you know if the village carter’s about?’

‘That’s Will Hamer. He should be coming by here in just a minute.’

I came out of the baker’s, tore off a bite of bread and waited. Moffat was now leaning in his shop doorway whistling, and the tune wove its way steadily through the birdsong: ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’. The sun was raying down, everybody was waiting for everything and I ate my bread with half an ear cocked for the sound of gunshots from the Hall.

I heard instead a rattling of cartwheels, and looked up to see a load of hay creaking along the narrow hedge-tunnel with not an inch to spare on either side. The load was like a barn on the move, and yet only one horse did the dragging, and only one man led the horse.

At the same time, a rulley drawn by the lop-sided combination of a horse and a donkey was coming from the opposite direction – the way that led to the Hall – and I decided that the man driving this must be the carter, Will Hamer. He had two beasts to the farmer’s one, and yet he carried no load. He looked far wiser than a carter needed to be, with a white halo of hair and beard.

Will Hamer and the man leading the load of hay stopped and had a good laugh at how they’d come to be on the same bit of road at the same time. Presently the farmer sauntered on, his great haystack rolling behind. There was a placard on the side of the cart reading ‘Sidebottom: West Adenwold’. I would rule him out of account as well, provided I did not see him around again.

I walked across to Hamer before he could get going again. Standing next to the donkey, I held up my warrant card. He gazed down at me with a bright smile on his face, which by degrees became a frown.

I said, ‘Can you make it out, Mr Hamer?’

‘Bits,’ he said. ‘I can read bits. I can’t read all words, like.’

‘Well,’ I said, pocketing the card, ‘who can? Now I’m on police business, and I’d like a message sent. Could you do that?’

He nodded.

‘I can take you a message anywhere,’ he said. ‘East Adenwold, West Adenwold …’

‘The lines are down here,’ I said, ‘and I need a telegram sent. Can you carry a message to West Adenwold for me? West Adenwold is the nearest of the two, isn’t it?’

‘The nearest to where?’ asked the carter.

‘To here.’

He frowned again.

‘And there is a good-sized railway station there?’

No reply, but I pressed on: ‘And there is a telegraphic instrument in that station?’

‘Aye to both of those,’ Hamer said presently, and with a smile returned. The fellow was as slow as a wet week; there again, it suited me that he couldn’t read. I took out my indelible pencil, and began scrawling in my pocket book as follows:

To Chief Inspector Weatherill, York Station Police Office. Come to Adenwold by first train. Matter of the gravest …



I broke off. The gravest what? The gravest gravity? I scratched out the sentence and wrote: ‘Life or death matter at hand.’

I passed it up to Hamer, saying, ‘What’s the cost?’

‘Well now,’ he said, ‘what d’you reckon?’

‘They ought to send it for nowt,’ I said, ‘since it is police business – and how about two bob on top for yourself?’

The carter had such a big grin on him when I passed up the money that I thought a bob might have been nearer the mark. Thanking me, he moved off, which was a matter of waking up the donkey and horse with a shout of ‘Come on, men!’

He went off a little way, and then stopped. He turned about and said, ‘Line might be down at West Adenwold ’n’ all.’