Death on a Branch Line(52)

He was half in a ditch, his head pointing down into its depths, his boots higher than his head. Directly above was the stout branch of a giant oak. Had he come down from it?

Or had he been pursued through the woods, only to come a cropper as soon as he escaped the trees?

He seemed to have attained a kind of peacefulness in his position. His eyes were closed, and he looked to be having a pleasant sort of dream, but his head was cut by brambles, his face was bluish and a quantity of dark-coloured blood had flowed from the corner of his mouth.

I held my hand over his mouth, and felt nothing. I knelt down and put my face directly in front of his, at which I detected faint breaths. If he had come down from a height, and suffered a smash, I ought not to touch him.

Had he tried to make away with himself by leaping from the tree? Perhaps he was in low water financially. He’d sounded desperate enough, and the vicar had evidently not purchased the red engine.

It seemed wrong that I should be able to view his head so closely. I touched my hand to his hair, and my fingers came up rust-coloured. Blood (and a good deal of it) was working with the Brilliantine to keep Gifford’s hair fixed in place, and shining. I touched again, and there was a groove under the hair. I pulled my hand away fast. Had he taken a bullet?

I sat up on the edge of the ditch; ten yards to my left, a wooden bridge ran across it, half-hidden by brambles. Two white butterflies danced in the air before my face, as if to say, ‘Isn’t this all a lark? You may have your troubles, but we’re on holiday just at present.’

I set the little engine down next to the Gladstone bag, and looked at my silver watch: one thirty-five.





Chapter Twenty-One


Flying along the margins of the cornfield, I kept a look-out for the telegraph poles that ought to be somewhere ahead. They would indicate the territory of the railway line.

I rounded a bend and came upon the silent poles, and their confederates, the silent tracks. I slowed somewhat as I went past the downed stretch of cable. It struck me that railway policemen ought to be issued with portable telegraph instruments. With these, and a length of cable looped over the right wire, it was possible to send your own messages.

Running now along the railway sleepers, I looked up. The poles carried six wires: telegraph and telephone either way – that accounted for four. The other two would be the wires linking the signal boxes of the branch, for the sending of the signalmen’s bell codes. To send a message, you’d have to know which was which; you’d need the portable doings, and you’d need to go beyond the point of the cut. Then you’d be within reach of the normal world, and sanity.

I kicked up my boot-heels and I flew on. The station, waiting on the far side of a tree-made arch, seemed to swing and shake as I pounded down the track.

I found it quite deserted, like a ship becalmed. But Will Hamer and his horse and donkey stood dreaming in the station yard, with the rulley hitched up behind.

I ran at the fellow, gulping at air and unable at first to speak.

Instead, Hamer spoke.

‘It’s you again,’ he said, smiling.

‘There’s a man badly injured in the woods,’ I said. ‘I’ve just come from him. He’s near the bridge over the ditch.’

‘I know that spot,’ said Hamer, who was now not quite smiling but still looking amiable, ‘On the edge of Clover Wood.’

So there were separately named woods within the woods.

‘He may have fallen out of a tree,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ Will Hamer said, ‘I expect so.’

‘Will you fetch a doctor?’

‘Aye,’ Hamer said again, making no move, ‘I will do.’

‘Where is a doctor?’

‘Well now, East Adenwold,’ Hamer said. ‘Doctor Lawson – deliver to him regular like. Very good man for an emergency if you can catch him in.’

‘You’d better look sharp,’ I said. ‘I reckon the fellow’s dying. Might you un-harness the donkey? I mean, wouldn’t the horse be quicker on its own?’

Hamer looked at his horse for a while. Presently, he said, ‘Wouldn’t move at all on his own, wouldn’t that bloke. Pair of ’em might go a bit faster, though, and don’t think I en’t tried a few tricks. I’ve had ’em this way and that: him to the left, him to the left. You name it, I’ve tried it.’

I stood silent. Was there any other way of getting help to Gifford apart from employing this blockhead?

‘… Mangel wurzels I’ve tried,’ he was saying. ‘Short rein, long rein …’

He turned and fixed on me a sort of questioning smile.

‘You look down-hearted, mister,’ he said.