Death on a Branch Line(9)

He was well-spoken, and my own accent was a little ‘out’ when next I addressed him, as it usually is when I try to accommodate to upper-class pronunciation.

‘You can sit here,’ I said, indicating my own desk.

Boggle-eyes was not giving us the benefit of his distinctive expression but lounging in the doorway with his back to us. He’d collected up his baccy, I noticed. As we entered the room, he gave us only a brief backward glance before stepping out onto the platform and falling in with his two confederates.

Lambert nodded at me as he sat down, and then looked all about the room. It was a young man’s curiosity and he was young – about of an age with me: late twenties, not more. He had very wide dark eyes, and he looked like an author. Not just any author, but a particular one: the fellow that wrote Treasure Island. I’d seen his photograph on the first page of a copy of that book, but I couldn’t just then lay hold of his name.

Hugh Lambert blew gently upwards, and his long hair lifted.

‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Is it a hundred?’

‘Ninety-six here in York,’ I said. ‘They say it’ll break come …’

I tailed off. Thunderstorms had been predicted for Monday, by which time the man before me would be well beyond their reach. Boggle-eyes was still talking to his mates about ten feet away from the office door. I heard him say, ‘I’ve lost my golf swing, and do you know, it’s haunting me – fairly haunting me, it is.’

His place at the doorway had been taken by a sparrow. Hugh Lambert caught sight of it, and at first swivelled in his chair to get a better view; he then very gently picked up the chair and settled down again facing the bird. He looked up at me and, indicating the bread left on my desk, said, ‘Mind if I …?’

‘Not a bit,’ I said, and he rolled a pellet of bread, and pitched it over towards the bird.

‘You’ve fed her before,’ said Hugh Lambert, as the bird took the bread. ‘She wouldn’t be there otherwise.’

‘She?’

Lambert nodded.

‘A male sparrow has a grey crest.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t necessarily know,’ I said. ‘I mean, anything that comes in here ends up more or less black. There’s a robin that pitches up pretty regularly. He stands there and sort of demands to be fed … Makes me laugh – the sheer brass neck of it.’

‘The robin is the most English of birds,’ Lambert said in a dreamy sort of voice.

Was this a good thing or bad as far as he was concerned? After all, it was England that would shortly be hanging him. He threw another bit of bread for the sparrow.

‘I saw a robin once at line-side,’ I said. ‘He was sitting on a ‘WHISTLE’ board.’

‘And was he whistling?’ asked Lambert, half-turning towards me.

‘He was.’

Lambert grinned. In fact, it was more like a short laugh, and it showed pluck to laugh in his situation.

‘It was by Grosmont,’ I said. ‘Up on the moors yonder.’

A beat of silence. Lambert threw another pellet.

‘You were with the railway up there?’

‘Porter,’ I said. ‘That’s how I got my start.’

‘Are you keen on railways per se? Or is it just a job for you?’

Perhaps this was his way of taking his mind off what was coming … by examining the minds of others? But before I could reply, he said:

‘My brother reads timetables for amusement. Can you beat that?’

‘Well, I’m a bit that way myself,’ I said, ‘or was as a lad, anyhow.’

‘I always liked the adverts in the Bradshaw,’ he said, and it was very worrying to hear him speak as if he was already dead.

‘Eux–e–sis Shaving Cream,’ I said, ‘and then the picture of the two men shaving: ‘“Eux–e–sis versus Soap”, and the man using soap is bleeding half to death.’

I ought not to have used that last word, of course, but Lambert gave a grin, before saying, ‘I always liked the adverts for hotels at the back – to know that all those places would be happy to accommodate you. I found that very welcoming. You were at Grosmont, you say?’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Your part of the world.’

I wanted to get onto him. I felt I ought to give him a chance to say something because I had the notion that he wanted to speak up. He turned towards me but kept silence.

I said, ‘Adenwold’s a pretty spot, I believe.’

‘Just now,’ he said, eyeing me levelly, ‘the hedges will be full of thrushes.’

I nodded once.

‘Skullcap, tufted vetch, alder,’ he continued, in a tone now severe. His face was black and white: white skin, black eyes, black beard. His clothes were worn anyhow, but still with a rightness about them.