Death on a Branch Line(55)

‘I don’t know,’ replied the wife, ‘but that’s what makes it all so exciting.’

It was one of the things that made it exciting to the wife.

Presently, she went back to The Freewoman, and I looked at Hugh Lambert’s papers again, but I kept striking bits of bad handwriting, or bits I’d already read.

The wife said she’d like a look, so I passed the bundle over. ‘I never went well on a horse,’ she read out loud. ‘Ponder did, but he simply refused …’

‘Who’s Ponder?’ asked the wife.

‘The brother, John,’ I said, ‘on account of his studious ways, I suppose.’

‘… Ponder did, but he simply refused,’ she repeated. ‘However, he would ride out with father and I if father had been especially bold with the brandy, which would make him liable to violence. He saved me from countless thrashings, just by riding in-between us, playing the part of a mounted policeman …’

And she read on from there in silence.

‘What we have here,’ she said, when she eventually put the bundle aside, ‘is impressions.’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘It’s literature, worst luck, written only for his own satisfaction.’

‘But then why do you suppose he gave it you?’

‘Well, it’s all in there, I suppose, in a roundabout way.’

‘What do you make of him?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand him at all.’

‘Do you know why, Jim Stringer?’ she said, and after giving me a strange look for a while, she went back to looking over the sheets of paper.

‘Who’d want the verdict to stand?’ I asked her a little while later (my silver watch gave ten to four). ‘… Or, to put it another way, who’d have wanted Sir George dead in the first place?’

‘The pheasants of Adenwold, I should think,’ said the wife, still reading Hugh Lambert’s papers.





Chapter Twenty-Two


Come eight twenty-five by my silver watch, Lydia was standing by the door of our room in her best blue cotton dress. It was set off to a T by the high black belt, and the white fancy blouse that showed through at her neck and shoulders. She carried her little leathern bag that was half-bag, half-purse.

‘Look alive,’ she said, as I did up my bootlaces. ‘And remember that it is not fashionable to be intoxicated.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ I muttered, following her through the door.

I had her railway ticket in my inside pocket, but I knew I’d have a job to get her on the train, especially since I meant to go to the party myself. This would strike her as unfair. No self-respecting woman Co-Operator would stand for it.

We’d both slept a little in the early evening; then I’d lain on the bed making notes in my pocket book of the week-end’s events so far. Later, I’d kept station outside the pub with a pint in my hand watching for any sign of the Chief, but he’d not pitched up. Did he mean to stay at the Hall? And would he be at the beano? Would Usher be there?

I could have done with more than just one pint to set me up, but I supposed that a glass of wine would be put in my hand directly I stepped under the Chinese lanterns. You got wine directly on arrival at the Christmas party given by the Archbishop of York for the whole village of Thorpe-on-Ouse. There was no messing about there – the Archbishop was certainly going to be drinking, and he didn’t want to stand out.

Along the lane leading down from The Angel, a doorway in the low, bent houses stood open and one of the old ladies stood by it, as though presenting the place for inspection. Lydia, walking ahead, gave her good evening but received no response. I tried the same, with the same results. She might be near-blind. She looked as though she could see, but only very far-off things. I then overtook the wife, and stood with arms folded in the station yard. She walked towards me shaking her head.

I indicated the station.

‘You’re off in there,’ I said. ‘The 8.35 is an “up”. It’ll take you to Pilmoor, and you’ll change there for York.’

‘That’s what you think,’ she said, standing before me on the dusty stones.

It was a good thing the village was empty, because we were all set for a scrap.

‘Here’s the return half of your ticket to York,’ I said.

‘What do you think I am? A consignment of goods?’

I could hear the beat of the approaching train.

‘There’s been a bad business here. A man is waiting to hang for it, but I don’t think he’s the guilty party. Gifford was nearly done in because of what he knew. There’s a man at the Hall threatened with death if he spills the beans. It’s no …’