The Baghdad Railway Club(91)

I was alongside the window of Pearson’s. I had five minutes before Manners’s express departed for London. It was a four-minute run to the station. I pushed at the shop door. Old man Pearson stood behind the counter. When he saw me, he froze.

‘I’m Stringer,’ I said, panting. ‘I brought in the brooch or whatever it was.’

‘I know you did,’ he said, eyeing me steadily.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Have you looked at it?’

‘I have. Do you want to sit down?’

‘No. Look, is it real?’

‘How do you mean “real”?’

‘Is it valuable?’

‘You might say that,’ he said. ‘Where did you lay hands on it?’

‘I’ll tell you later. Look, I’m in a hurry.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can see that. Shall I start with the stones or the tassel?’

‘The stones.’

‘Pastes,’ he said. ‘You can tell by the tiny air bubbles in the . . .’

I made a dart for the door, but checked myself. ‘And the tassel?’

‘Fake pearls. A combination of glass and fish scales believe it or not, a very curious and antique formula.’

I believed that I heard old Pearson say, as the door clanged behind me, ‘I’ll give you two pounds for it if you like!’

I raced pell-mell over Ouse Bridge and along Station Rise. At half past three exactly, I clattered through the ticket gate on to platform four, and the express was drawing away. I began chasing it. A platform guard stood in my way, and I just floored him. When the train cleared the platform, I did too, running over the black rubble of the Holgate sidings. The express was approaching Holgate Junction. In a moment, the curvature of the line would take it from my sight. I gave it up, sat down on the rubble half dead, but as the train began to bend, a head appeared from the window. The head was bald. It disappeared back into the carriage.

A moment later, the train began to brake.





Chapter Nineteen


The express from York whirled my First Class carriage fast through the night. It was heading . . . Well, it makes no odds. Let’s say I was on War Business. I might mention that it was towards the end of that summer of 1917 – a season of blaring and indeed murderous sun in Mesopotamia and rather weak sun and frequent showers in Blighty. The rain was lashing at the windows as we flew along; the fields seemed grey-blue rather than green, and the gas was up.

I caught up my Railway Magazine, opening it at the page marked ‘At the Club Room’ and ‘Forthcoming Talks’.

‘On Thursday October 9th,’ I read, ‘Mr John Maycroft will give his talk, Humour on the Rails, together with lantern slides. This was unavoidably postponed in January. Mr Maycroft is the author of Humours of a Country Station, Our Booking Office, Down or Up & c. & c., and is widely considered our principal railway comedian. Tea and coffee will be served.’

This was not the page I had wanted to see. I had in any case already read of the promised coming of Maycroft, so I turned to the article I’d been halfway through: ‘Some Developments at Crewe’. My place was marked with a picture postcard I’d received a week before. It was of the booklet type, with attached leaf for longer messages. It had come from Manners and was doubtless one of the ones he’d bought in the York Station Hotel. It featured a grid of photographs showing parts of the Bar Walls and parts of the Minster. Underneath the pictures was written ‘Did you know that York is a jewel of the North?’

‘Well . . . did you?’ began the message from the ever more flippant Manners:

. . . I believe you did. A tedious report will be despatched to you shortly, but I thought you should know that Major Findlay is dead. He was given pretty fair warning that he would be taken in charge for the murder of Boyd, and that Miss (or should I say Mrs) Bailey would give evidence against him. He did the right thing. Your York surmises proved quite correct, and we did not have to press the lady too hard. She had already resolved to speak out about her suspicions of Findlay, not that any of it really amounted to evidence, but in the end it didn’t need to. He had not spoken to her since they’d returned together to the clubhouse to look for the photograph. Findlay had then gone off on his own after Jarvis, who’d given him his wrong account of what had happened between Boyd and Shepherd. Findlay was thus encouraged in thinking he’d got away with what he’d done, and it seems he urged Jarvis to come out publicly against Shepherd. It was all too much for Jarvis. Anyhow later on, in the desert, Findlay announced the wounded Shepherd as the killer of Boyd, and all of Harriet Bailey’s doubts came together, resulting in her outburst.