Death on a Branch line

Chapter Eleven

We were taking a turn through the woods, the wife occasionally giving a glance at my cap, and frowning. I had half an eye out for the Hall, but I was above all trying to develop a plan.

The low sun seemed to track us through the trees, always keeping a wary distance. I revolved in my mind the events of the evening, while the wife talked fast. She was in good spirits in spite of my cap, and she picked wildflowers as she walked. She’d fallen into conversation with Mrs Handley, the landlady at The Angel, and taken a liking to her. ‘She’s a feminist, if she but knew it,’ Lydia said. ‘She’s perfectly well aware that she ought not to do as much work as she does, but she says that her mind runs on so if she doesn’t, and she’d rather have the work than the worry.’

‘Why was she crying in the garden?’

‘I’m sure that was on account of the work,’ said the wife.

‘Not the worry, you don’t suppose?’

She gave me a quick glance, but made no answer.

The wife had also been galvanised by a quick cold bath, and a glass of Mrs Handley’s lemonade. ‘It’s nectar, Jim,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose that man from Norwood is connected to the Moroccan business?’ she went on.

‘Well…’ I said, for the question knocked me.

‘He’s up to devil knows what,’ said the wife. ‘Do you suppose it’s too late for violets?’ she said, as we came out into a clearing.

We looked about, and I said, ‘That fellow’s made you sit up, hasn’t he? Do I take it you believe something’s going on?’

‘No,’ said the wife, ‘I don’t for one minute.’

I put my hands in my trouser pockets, and eyed her coolly.

I said, ‘But it’s true about the German papers?’

She nodded once, briefly.

‘There are fixed agents,’ the wife said cheerfully, ‘and there are travelling agents. The Germans have a brigade of spies in Britain… I’m just thinking of all the lies I’ve read in the newspapers… Honestly, it’s all such rubbish. Why shouldn’t a man have German documents about him? He might be half-German for all we know.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but given what I told you at the inn…’

She was shaking her head, wouldn’t have it. She had chosen her side in Britain’s battles. The folk who talked up the German menace were the ones who talked down the women’s movement, and you couldn’t believe in both.

I saw by the presence of telegraph poles that we were hard by the railway line. Swallows flew fast through the evening air, making a high, singing noise as they swooped over the wires. I might once have taken this for the sound of the wires themselves, for I had been told in my early days on the railways that it was possible to hear the electrical signals as they flew from pole to pole. But this was not true. You could not hear the signals however close you stood.

Just then, two sharp cracks came from the wood; a cloud of birds rose up from it, and moved away to the left like smoke.

‘It’s fucking happened,’ I said.

‘You will not…’ said the wife, but I was straight back into the woods and crashing through the branches as a third shot came.

‘You there!’ I called out. ‘Police! Stop firing!’

I felt panic as I clashed through the trees, but my curiosity was stronger than my fear.

‘Give over, mister!’ came a high voice through the trees — a boy’s voice. ‘It’s only t’ rabbits I’m after.’

It was Mervyn Handley, the kid from the inn, but I had to march on for a good half-minute more until I clapped eyes on him. He stood amid fallen trees in the woodsman’s clearing I’d seen from the train, and he held a double-barrelled shotgun pointed down. His powder flasks and shot pouches were too near the fire that bent the warm air behind him. His ferret — which was tied to the skeleton frame of a steam saw — was too near the terrier that was tied to the thickest branch of a fallen log, the result being that the dog was barking fit to bust, and the ferret was giving a constant thin scream. In the clearing, patches of ferns grew, and there were two dead-straight rows of sunflowers. Some of the timbers had been used to make a low shelter with a tarpaulin slung over the top. At the entrance, I saw a dead rabbit, a woodsman’s bill-hook, a funny paper for boys and a sack.

The boy was calming the dog — and so also the ferret — as I spoke up.

‘Do you know of a John Lambert?’ I asked him.

The boy nodded.

‘Stops up at…’

‘Where?’

‘Up at t’ all.’

‘The Hall? Is he the squire, so to speak?’

Mervyn Handley frowned.

‘Well… there’s t’ new man.’

But surely, I thought, John Lambert — being the eldest son — would have inherited the house? He would be the new man. But this might be a rather complicated matter. I tried a different tack.

‘John Lambert’s father died, didn’t he?’

‘Aye, mister,’ the boy said, and he looked at me levelly. After an interval, and still eyeing me, he said, ‘Shot to death.’

‘And who shot him?’

Silence for a space. Then the boy said:

‘His son. Master Hugh.’

‘He’s about to swing, en’t he?’

The lad nodded.

‘Why did it take so long to come to a hanging?’

‘Master Hugh made off. France, and all over.’

‘When did they lay hands on him?’

‘Last back end.’

‘And you knew the man accused — Master Hugh?’

A long beat of silence.

‘I knew him, aye.’

I was going in strong here. I knew the kid didn’t want to be asked, but then again I knew he would answer. So I kept on.

‘What did you think of him?’ I asked, and he shot back the answer directly: ‘Liked him.’

The wife was pacing about near the fire; she had entered the clearing only a few seconds after me, so she’d been privy to the whole conversation. I began to hear the sound of a river rolling past.

‘ Why did you like him?’

No sound but the rushing river.

Mervyn said:

‘He’d give me presents.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a dormouse,’ said the kid, this time fast, and he turned his head once again to the side. ‘There now,’ he said, and nodded two or three times.

The wife cut in to spare the lad more of my questions:

‘What’s your dog called, Mervyn?’

‘Alfred,’ he said.

‘Is it safe to stroke him?’ she asked.

‘It’ll be safe for you,’ he said, which put the wife in a fix, leaving her no option but to go over to the animal.

The wife was stroking the dog, which seemed more bored than anything else by the attention.

She asked, ‘What is this place, Mervyn?’

‘This?’ he said, looking about him. ‘It’s t’ set-up.’

‘The set-up?’

Mervyn coloured up at hearing his name for the place repeated, but Lydia’s more amiable questions gradually put him at his ease, and it all came out.

The set-up was his seat of operations against rabbits, or a place he’d come to eat his snap after a morning’s toil in the fields or at the inn. He was half pot boy at the inn, half farmer’s boy, for he would do turns at all the local farms, helping at harvest and threshing, picking thistles in summer and stones in winter. The Handleys had once farmed land leased from the Hall, but the man later murdered — Sir George Lambert — had turned them out and given them the pub instead. When I asked why, the boy said, ‘Not rightly sure.’

Anyhow, Mervyn did not seem especially down on the late Sir George Lambert. The boy described him to us as a great man for hunting and cricket — a very loud and hearty gent from the sound of it, but ‘all right’.

‘Would you like to manage an inn when you’re older?’ Lydia asked Mervyn, and I could see she was taken with the boy, even though he spoke the broad Yorkshire she was forever trying to lead our Harry away from. Mervyn shrugged.

‘Or you might think of the North Eastern Railway,’ I said. ‘The present lad porter at Adenwold’s not up to much, I’ll tell you that.’

Mervyn kept silence. Having laid down his shotgun and given the fire a kick, he was moving towards the river.

‘Lad at t’ station?’ Mervyn said as he walked. ‘… I steer clear.’

‘What’s his name?’ I called after him.

But he didn’t seem to hear.

I indicated by a nod of the head to Lydia that we should follow the boy over to the river.

‘Don’t press him so,’ she said, as we followed in his wake. But I knew she was as keen as me to find out more.

‘What about the station master?’ I asked Mervyn when we were all at the river bank.

‘’Im?’ he said, ‘’im wi’ t’ little men?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘The model soldiers in the booking office.’

Mervyn was drawing what looked like a great rubber bag from out of the river. It had been tethered to the bank like a fisherman’s keep net. He upended it and… well, it was like watching a whale vomiting out dead rabbits, for the rubber bag held half a dozen of them.

‘He’s a weird one all right,’ said Mervyn, flinging away the bag. I looked over to the wife; her face was a picture.

‘Hold on,’ I said to Mervyn. ‘What’s all this?’

‘Keeps the rabbits cold,’ he said.

‘It’s an old mackintosh, I suppose?’ put in the wife.

Mervyn shook his head.

‘Cover for an invalid mattress,’ he said. ‘At least that’s what me mam says.’

‘Where d’you find it?’

‘In t’ wood. Soon as I saw it, I knew it’d come in.’

‘It’s a clever use of it,’ said the wife.

‘It does,’ said Mervyn in a modest sort of way.

He told us that the village carter, a fellow called Hamer, would give him tuppence for each rabbit and then sell them on to the butcher in East Adenwold. There was no butcher in Adenwold itself.

‘Why do you have a fire going, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.

‘In case I pull summat out o’ there,’ he replied, indicating the river.

‘You can take a fish by hand?’

‘At odd times, aye.’

He was stuffing the rabbits into the sacking.

The wife asked, ‘Have you ever been to Scarborough, Mervyn?’

‘I ’ave not.’

‘It’s only an hour’s train ride,’ I said.

‘I don’t ’old wi’ t’ railway.’

‘Why not?’

‘It did for all t’ farms round ’ere.’

Railways were bad for farms. They brought cheap food from abroad.

‘There’d be no lemons here without the railway,’ I said.

‘Well then,’ said Mervyn, ‘I don’t like lemons.’

The wife asked him: ‘Do you never use the railway to get about?’

He shook his head.

‘I just walk over t’ fields.’

‘It sounds a very nice way to travel, I’m sure,’ said the wife.

‘Aye,’ said Mervyn, ‘it is.’

I asked him: ‘Mervyn, who were the villagers beating on the rabbit shoot? When Sir George was shot, I mean.’

‘I’ve no notion,’ he said, eyeing me.

I nodded, saying, ‘Where’s the Hall from here, Mervyn?’

And he stood pointing.