Death on a Branch Line(88)

As before, old man Wright and I had been the only ones in the office. Wright had a scar on his forehead – nothing to the Chief’s scars but very noticeable all the same. He’d slipped and fallen on his July week-end in Scarborough – taken a tumble down the steps from the Marine Parade to the beach. I couldn’t help thinking it was his own fault for having talked it up so much in advance.

Also as before, it was a day of unbreathable heat on Platform Four, and the sparrow had been outside the door, for I’d had my snap in front of me as on that earlier occasion. But this time Hugh Lambert had practically trodden on the poor thing – didn’t give it a glance. He’d marched up to me and put out his hand, and I was that shocked to see him that I forgot to stand. Old Wright did so, however, and sharpish, as if he’d seen a ghost, for he’d heard all about Hugh Lambert.

‘I owe you my life, Detective Stringer,’ Lambert said, and he sounded none too happy about it.

‘I’m sorry for what happened to your brother,’ I said. ‘I called to him at the wrong time. They thought the machine was being used to communicate on his behalf. It was just a … bit of a mix-up.’

‘A mix-up,’ he repeated, and he evidently didn’t think much of that way of putting it.

He then stood and eyed me for a while, looking down on me – I couldn’t help thinking – in more ways than one. He wore a boxy suit that didn’t suit him and he looked more out-of-sorts than he had before, but in a new way. After an interval of silence, he turned on his heel and quit the office.

Even Wright was put out on my behalf.

‘That was a bit rich,’ he said, coming up to me quickly as though I’d just been struck a blow. ‘… After what you did for him.’

Well, what had I done? I’d killed his brother, or as good as. Hugh Lambert’s own life was somehow of no account to him and this, according to the wife in our many hours’ conversation on the point, was a consequence of his father’s treatment of him. Because of the way he was, his father had undermined him (it was the wife’s word), and undermined he’d stayed.

This was the wife’s big theory: this business of the undermining. As for his brother’s death, this – according to Lydia – was none of my doing. It was Cooper who’d pulled the trigger. It was all out of my hands. I’d done my level best and should be proud.

I’d had this from the Chief as well, but with something added: I could tell the Chief was pleased by what I’d brought about. It had solved the problem of John Lambert, a man with all the mobilisation plans in his head, and a man who’d proved himself not to be trusted.

But what kept me awake at night was this: Hugh Lambert had told me in the police office that his brother would be in danger from people who would be in Adenwold ‘over the week-end’, and because of what he’d told me, I had become one of the people. I was one of the ‘they’; in fact, I was the very man.

The strangeness, the ghostliness of it …

As the Chief waited at the bar, a fellow came darting in out of the rain clutching some papers in a paste-board envelope, and he handed them to a bloke holding a glass of ale, who said, ‘Thanks, pal.’

‘No, thank you,’ said the other.

The one who’d received the papers was looking at the other fellow’s bowler, which was quite soaked.

‘You’ll need a new one now,’ he said, and the man with the wet hat laughed.

These two were government officials; they were engaged in conducting the business of the state, and seemed very happy about it – or not vexed by it, at least.

Wet hat dived back out into the rain, and the Chief was joined at the bar by the man who’d been sitting next to me, and this fellow had left his newspaper on the bench. From where I sat, I read the date: Tuesday, 7 November, 1911. The paper lay folded to reveal an article on the weather. Not the present weather – the dark clouds and warmish rain – but that of the late summer, which had broken all records and remained just as much a talking point in the papers as all the endless strikes and revolts among the workers. ‘Cuckoos and chaffinches were heard singing in September,’ I read, picking up the paper, ‘and chiffchaffs late into October … There have been curious approximations to the habit of nature in more torrid climates.’ The man whose paper this was did not seem to be buying a drink, but was talking loudly to another bloke at the bar and, as I looked on, he said, equally loudly, ‘Well, I’m going to the lavatory now.’

That meant I could look a little further into his newspaper.