Death on a Branch Line(50)

‘York,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘Where do you think?’

It struck me again that she thought me an idiot.

‘Who’s the new copper?’

‘Don’t recall his name,’ she said. ‘We hardly ever set eyes on him. He lives out at East Adenwold.’

The fellow might as well have lived on the moon.

Mrs Handley had gone back to apple-peeling, and Mervyn was walking away up the dusty road with his dog and his gun. Watch out, rabbits, I thought. The wife rose from her seat to call out after him: ‘Bye, Mervyn!’

She missed our lad Harry, and she’d taken to Mervyn in his place.

She said, ‘I’m off up for a bath,’ and she went inside the inn.

She was in a strange mood – torn: half-friendly, half not; half wanting me to be investigating the Adenwold mysteries, half not. Above all, she was annoyed at the arrival of the Chief, for it reminded her that I was not the top man even in the York railway police.

Had the heat got to her? Not a bit of it. She was always agitated – feverish, so to say, even at the best of times. It was just womanliness and you couldn’t cure that with a cold bath.

A single breath of breeze shifted the wisteria growing on the inn front, like a summer sigh. The shadow of a branch waved over the table and became strange when it struck the aerated water. Mr Handley, standing in the pub doorway, boomed out something that might have been ‘You’ve had a long chat out here,’ followed by the question: ‘Don’t appeal?’ or ‘No appeal?’ and I somehow had the idea he was talking about the water. I was never a great one for water, aerated or otherwise, and I took this to be an invitation to take a pint, at which I said, ‘I’d quite fancy a glass of Smith’s, thanks,’ but no sooner had I said it than it occurred to me that he had meant Master Hugh had not appealed against the verdict of guilty and sentence of death.

I stepped through into the public bar after Mr Handley, and the place was empty except for the bloody bicyclist, reading a book. I nodded to him, and said, ‘I see your bike’s gone. Still jiggered, is it?’

‘Took it up to the blacksmith,’ he said, only half looking up from his book. ‘Chap called Ainsty, but he wasn’t about. He’s off fixing some motor, apparently.’

Well, here was more data for the wife, fascinated as she was by the movements of the bicyclist.

The bar smelt of wood and wisteria. All the windows were propped open. On one side they gave onto the golden cornfields and The Angel garden; to the other, they looked onto the trestle table, the dusty lane and the woods.

Mr Handley was at the barrel of Smith’s pouring me a pint, and one for himself. He boomed out a remark in his habitual blurred manner, and I could not understand. I asked him, as politely as I could, to repeat it, and it was hard to keep in countenance as he made the same baffling noise again. I looked over to the bicyclist for help, and sure enough he looked up from his book and reported with a sigh:

‘He says, “There are as many crimes committed high as low.”’

I nodded at Mr Handley, and said, ‘You’re right over that,’ although I was thinking of the constant succession of working men I’d given evidence against in the York police court. You hardly ever saw a toff before the magistrates.

‘Mr Handley,’ I said, ‘did Sir George Lambert have any military connection?’

Mr Handley shook his head as he raised his glass to his lips. He then touched the glass to his lips, and half the beer went down in an instant. I raised my own glass and tried the same, but I didn’t have the trick of it, and my glass went down by just two inches and I nearly choked. To cover up the embarrassment, I said, ‘Does the pub pay?’

Well, I had to listen very carefully, and say ‘Pardon’ a lot, but I got the gist. The pub did not pay. The village was in decline. The limestone quarry had been worked out, and farming had been in a bad way for years. His talk became a constant low moan on a theme of everything going to pot: the timber in the woods round about was not of the sort wanted by the modern house-builders, and the holiday trade was nothing to what it had been at the height of the cycling craze. Whole fleets of cyclists, it appeared, had once passed through the Adenwolds every week-end.

At this news, I looked across towards our own bicyclist, but he’d quit the room. Mr Handley talked on, and I pictured Lydia in the tin bath upstairs. I always liked to hang about when she took a bath, and if she didn’t tell me to clear off, that meant we would have a ride. Mr Handley was running on about how he was thinking of removing with his family to York. I asked him, ‘Where in York?’ and – not being very interested in the reply – revolved my own thoughts as he gave it.