Death on a Branch Line(70)

She read it over and looked up, worried, just as a knock came at the door.

It was Usher. Cooper, still in his dust-coat, was behind him. We would be allowed to go, but we must consent to be chaperoned by Cooper until John Lambert was brought in. A full search was evidently now under way. As we left the room, Usher practically bowed to the wife, taking credit for a decision that I suspected had been forced on him by the Chief, but she swept past him without a word, for he was back to being gallant.

The wife went on ahead, I walked in the middle, Cooper lagged behind silently; and that was how we crossed the lawn and approached the path through the woods. It hadn’t been settled that we’d go that way – it just fell out like that. The day was sticky and grey; the clouds rolled like smoke over the fire of the sun. As the light came and went, so did the shadows of the decorative trees.

As we entered the woods, the wife for some reason turned a new way, and we came by the railway line and the telegraph poles. The cut in the wires that we’d seen already lay in the other direction, and the present ones were intact as far as could be made out, but I knew there must be an interruption somewhere. As we walked on, parallel to the tracks, I took out my silver watch. Ten o’clock. In five minutes the ‘down’ train would come by, very likely having by-passed the station like the train of the evening before. There was no point in asking Cooper about any of this. He had a fine head of silver hair and black eyebrows, a combination that seemed to dictate silence. I also knew that he’d taken strong exception to the wife and me on the strength of the conversation he’d overheard between us outside the yellow room. My persuasion was that he thought us a pair of mischief-makers rather than traitors, but still his dislike was obvious.

The man was a sort of grey angel of death. He would keep me from discovering the truth about the shooting of Sir George, and so he would bring Hugh Lambert – an innocent man, as I was increasingly certain – to his doom.

But as it turned out, we shook Cooper off with no bother at all.



At just gone ten, he hailed us from behind.

‘Hold on there,’ he shouted. ‘I’m off behind a tree.’

He stepped away from the path a little and made water as I heard the first spots of rain on the leaves overhead; he’d seemed to bring it on by pissing. As Cooper stepped away from the path I took off my cap, which was prickling my head. The wife leant against a tree up ahead, kicking the trunk with her boot-heel.

The rhythm of her kicking was gradually drowned out by that of the 10.05, which was upon us a moment later. It had not stopped at the station but unlike the train of the night before, was coming on at a moderate pace, as though picking its way through the trees.

‘Look out there!’ the wife suddenly yelled, and Cooper stepped out from behind his tree with his hands on his fly buttons.

‘There’s a man just leapt up onto that train,’ said the wife. ‘I believe it was John Lambert.’

She’d had the same view of the train as I’d had, and no such event had occurred, but Cooper was flying again, white coat-tails streaming behind him. He could just about keep up with the high coaches, but he measured his pace until he was level with the guard’s van, which offered hand-holds. The guard was leaning out and looking down at him as he ran, as though admiring an athletic prodigy. But Cooper was screaming at the guard to stand back so that he could make his leap, and just as the train was picking up its pace, he did so.

It was a good leap, and he gained the handholds without difficulty, but one of his legs swung out, and clattered into a stout-looking tree branch. The guard pulled him into the van a moment later, and the train retreated from view, leaving great peacefulness and freedom, and the sound of dripping rain.

I eyed the wife.

‘Well, you might have thought you saw something,’ I said. ‘It might have been an honest mistake.’

‘I don’t think you’d have any difficulty persuading Usher that a woman had made a mistake,’ she said.

The rain came on, making the sound of many small creeping animals.

‘What now?’ I said.

‘Mervyn?’ she said.

I nodded: ‘His place in the woods – the set-up.’

We found the clearing, and the boy was there, amid the river sound, the fallen trees and the rusting foresters’ machinery. Raindrops came down at intervals, widely spaced, and the boy was placing what looked like small sticks on a fire. He stepped back from the flames as we came up. His shotgun lay on the ground, with the bill-hook hard by.

He wore breeches, and a coat that looked like moleskin. His head seemed small under the mass of his hair. Any man of middle years would have given worlds for hair like that. He said nothing as we approached.