Death on a Branch Line(46)

To turn up in this way at a village with the shadow of an execution hanging over it did not seem right. They all stood on the platform, joshing and larking about, and the Chief was fighting his way through, coming towards me and looking none too pleased. Cricket wasn’t one of his games. As he closed on me, I pulled off my cap by way of a salute, and started in straightaway by asking whether he’d had the story of Hugh Lambert’s lay-over at York station, at which the Chief shook his head briskly, and spat.

The train was noisily taking its leave (nobody had boarded), and the platform was clearing as the cricketers streamed over the barrow boards towards the station yard and I began telling my tale to the Chief. He listened with head bent forward and eyes closed as though making a great effort to understand.

Or was he drunk?

That was not out of the question. Saturday was the Chief’s principal boozing day, and his breath came over a little sour.

The Chief was nodding occasionally, and looking over towards the station yard, where a charabanc had drawn up. It had many seats – looked like a sort of omnibus with the top deck sliced off. At the wheel sat that bad shilling of Adenwold, the fucking vicar, the Reverend Martin Ridley, who was climbing down now as the cricketers straggled across the yard towards him. He moved towards the first of the blokes and greeted him by miming the bowling of a very fast ball, which caused a good deal of dust to fly up in the station yard and the vicar’s hat to fall off.

As I carried on with my explanations, the Chief was agitatedly moving his hand over his head, shifting the strands of sweaty hair, so that they were one minute like so many tangled S’s, the next drawn straight as railway lines. Station master Hardy had abandoned his seat on the steam crane, and was watching us across the tracks from the booking office doorway; porter Woodcock also looked on from the ‘up’ platform, where he’d advanced a little way towards his pot of white-wash, but had still not laid a hand on the brush. I did not believe that either could hear my talk with the Chief.

The porter had made no move to cross the tracks to help the Chief with his bags, so my governor had evidently failed the test. Any one of the cricketers might have passed it, but none had looked in the least need of assistance.

The charabanc was now driving away from the station yard amid the sound of more explosions. The scale of it seemed out, for it did look a normal-sized car at first glance – and yet there were more than a dozen men in it.

The little station was left silent except for the high birdsong, and the ceaseless rattling of my own voice as I went on with my story.

The clock on the ‘up’ said 12.35. Station master Hardy remained at the doorway of the booking office looking, as he ever did, in fear of some catastrophe coming around the corner. Porter Woodcock had disappeared.

‘It’s a good job you were in the office when the message came,’ I said to the Chief.

He gave a grunt. ‘Now where’s the Hall?’ he enquired.

‘We’ll go there directly,’ I said.

‘Don’t get past yourself,’ said the Chief.

I turned about and eyed him.

He said, ‘It’ll only take one of us to see whether there’s anything in this.’

Well, it came to this: he hadn’t believed my story.

… Or did he want to keep the business for himself? In the past, when I’d struck something big, he’d given me a pretty free hand. But this was very big: one death certain, and another threatened. And the gentry were involved.

I’d had visions of walking up to the Hall with the Chief. We’d take the place over. He’d be my authority, but I’d be in the lead. We’d get John Lambert out of the clutches of Usher, force him to say what he knew – the thing that Usher wanted him to keep back – and then we’d lay hands on the true killer, which for preference would be Usher himself.

I was in a stew of sweat; I dragged my handkerchief over my brow, and could think of nothing better to say than, ‘It’s too hot.’

‘You want to get your coat on,’ said the Chief.

‘Well, it’s not as if I’m on duty, is it?’

The Chief made no reply but lit another cigar.

‘Have you come armed?’ I asked.

He eyed me over the flaring Vesta. ‘Are you trying to scare me, sonny?’

Our pint of the day before had been amiable enough, but I had perhaps bested the Chief over the matter of the bank’s man on the platform. I’d pointed out his error, and that might have rankled.

‘The Hall is that way,’ I said, indicating the direction of the second village green. ‘It’s signposted.’

I was buggered if I was going to tell him about The Angel, or offer to take his bag up there.