Death on a Branch line

Chapter Twenty

Mrs Handley was peeling apples in the middle of the trestle table that stood before The Angel. There were a couple of documents in front of her. Mervyn sat at his end with his terrier but without his ferret. His gun was propped against the end of the table.

My silver watch said five to one. Perhaps Hugh Lambert would be taking his second-to-last dinner. It would be brought to him in the condemned cell, and he would eat observed by guards, who would then watch him walk it off in the exercise yard. Later they might watch him smoke a cigarette or even, since he was condemned, a cigar.

As I walked up, the wife came out of the inn, and sat down opposite to Mrs Handley. It seemed that they’d become fast friends in my absence. I didn’t much fancy telling the wife I’d been put off by the Chief.

‘What are these, Mrs Handley?’ the wife asked, indicating the papers, and looking sidelong at me as I stepped up to the table.

‘Oh, pictures of Master Hugh,’ she said, and I saw that she was once again a little teary. She passed two photographs across to the wife, and I stood at Lydia’s shoulder and looked at them. In the first, Master Hugh wore a harlequin outfit and held a frying pan as if it was a banjo. He was in a beautiful garden and he was smiling, but it was a quiet, secret sort of smile, not the jollity you might have expected given his rig-out.

In the next photograph he was more himself, or so I imagined. You’d still say he was smiling but if you looked carefully his mouth was turned down. He wore a dusty black suit. He was in the country-side somewhere — some wild-looking spot — and indicating an object on the ground amid a mass of ferns.

Mervyn had risen from his place at the end of the table, and joined us.

‘That’s him up at the ridge,’ he said.

‘It’s up above the old quarry,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘He’d take Mervyn and me up there.’

‘See brock,’ Mervyn put in.

‘To look at the badgers,’ said Mrs Handley, by way of explaining.

‘He knew just when they’d come out of their holes. He would say it was the last train — the last train of a day that did it. The badgers would listen for it going away, and then they knew it was safe to come out.’

‘Was that another of his jokes?’ I asked, and Mrs Handley frowned at me.

‘Certainly not,’ she said.

In that case, I wondered what the badgers did for an alarm clock on Sundays, when there was no evening train.

‘Just look at that suit,’ Mrs Handley said, gazing fondly at the photograph. ‘You’d never believe he’d been at Eton, would you?’

‘You might not,’ I said, ‘but then again, he doesn’t look like a murderer either.’

Mrs Handley kept silence. The matter was not to be spoken of.

She rose to her feet, asking, ‘Would you two like some food?’

The wife asked, ‘Oh, what do you have, Mrs Handley?’

‘Cheese, pickled walnuts and salad. That do you?’

‘It sounds just lovely,’ said the wife.

I knew that Lydia could not abide pickled anything, but when she was ‘out’ with me she was always extra-friendly to whoever else was around, so as to let me see what I was missing.

Mrs Handley collected up the two photographs and put them on top of the pile of papers; then she went inside The Angel.

Looking directly ahead, the wife asked me, ‘Did your Chief turn up, then?’

‘He did.’

‘And where is he?’

‘He’s gone to the Hall.’

‘So you’ve given the whole matter over to him?’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’ I said, ‘So that we can get on with our holiday?’

The wife made no answer, but just looked at me for a while before nodding towards the front of the pub, and saying, ‘The bicycle’s gone, you might care to notice.’

‘Isn’t it round the back?’

‘It is not,’ she said.

She’d been onto that bicyclist from the very beginning. But his behaviour — and that of every other train-arrival — was no longer any concern of mine. Let the Chief figure it all out.

Mervyn was saying from his end of the table: ‘Mam writes letters to him, you know.’

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Master Hugh,’ he said. ‘Mam’s been writing to him.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And what does she put?’

‘She’ll generally just ask him: “Are you going on all right?”’

‘And what does he reply, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.

‘He’ll generally put: “All right just now. Thanks for asking.”’

‘But he’s about to be executed,’ I said.

‘That’s why he puts “all right just now ”,’ said Mervyn. ‘All right for the present.’

That doubtful look came over him again, as if he wondered whether he ought to have spoken out at all. Mrs Handley came out with the food, a jug of aerated water and two glasses on a tin tray.

‘Do you suppose they’ll pray over Master Hugh in the church tomorrow?’ Lydia asked.

‘Well, that’s not our church, so I wouldn’t know. We’re Catholic, and the nearest church for us is St Joseph’s, out at East Adenwold, which is a bit of a way.’

I had the idea that this was a highly convenient state of affairs as far as Mrs Handley was concerned.

‘… But I shouldn’t think so,’ she ran on. ‘Not if the vicar has anything to do with it.’

‘Did he not like Master Hugh?’ the wife asked.

‘He liked the Major,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘The two of them got on thoroughly, and he would always take his part in Sir George’s arguments with the boy. Ridley would ride out with Sir George every morning, hunt with him as well.’

‘What’s become of the hunt?’ I asked.

‘Stopped,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘It was the vicar himself led all the hounds down to the station, where they were packed into a van and taken to some chap in Lincolnshire.’

‘What did you think of him?’ I couldn’t resist asking. ‘The vicar, I mean?’

She folded her arms and eyed me.

‘He wouldn’t last long in a Catholic church, I’ll tell you that much.’

‘Why not?’ the wife cut in.

‘He’s hardly ever at home. He’s always running about the place.’

‘Doing what?’ asked the wife.

There was a beat of silence.

‘He has a lady at Barton-le-Street.’

‘A lady?’ said the wife.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Handley, ‘a woman. And she’s thought to be one of a few. “Live and enjoy” — that’s his motto.’

You’d take a ‘down’ train to get to Barton, and the vicar had done just that the night before. He’d returned this morning by an ‘up’. Was this fancy woman the explanation for his journey? It did not seem possible to pursue this subject with two women present, and so I fell silent.

‘The new tenant at the Hall…’ the wife began.

‘… Robert Chandler,’ Mrs Handley supplied.

‘Yes,’ said the wife. ‘Is he there at the moment?’

Mrs Handley nodded. ‘He’s been here all summer.’

‘Do you think he shot Sir George really?’ the wife asked, and she laughed after she’d said it, just as though it was a joke, which I didn’t think it had been.

‘I’m quite sure he didn’t,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘I believe he was out in India at the time of the shooting. He certainly wasn’t here, anyhow. And how would he know that John would want him to take it over? Besides, it’s not as if he wants it. He’s only come in as a favour to John.’

It seemed that nobody wanted the Hall, or the running of the estate. ‘Master Hugh was found in the woods,’ Mrs Handley ran on. ‘He had the gun in his hand which was later shown to be the murder weapon, and his father was dead at his feet.’

‘He pleaded not guilty, though,’ I said.

‘Well, wouldn’t you?’ said Mrs Handley.

Her line, then, was that she liked Master Hugh, but was in no doubt that he had done the killing. She might perhaps have approved of his having done it.

‘Happen the new man will give you the farm back?’ I said, and Mrs Handley gave me a very choice look at that, eyes fairly burning into me. At the end of the table, Mervyn had started scuffling with his dog Alfred. He didn’t want to hear any more about Master Hugh.

Mrs Handley shook her head once, saying, ‘That’s gone.’

‘The fellow that came upon him,’ I said, ‘Anderson, Constable for the Adenwolds. Where does he live?’

‘Retired to the city,’ she said.

‘Which city?’

‘York,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘Where do you think?’

It struck me again that she thought me an idiot.

‘Who’s the new copper?’

‘Don’t recall his name,’ she said. ‘We hardly ever set eyes on him. He lives out at East Adenwold.’

The fellow might as well have lived on the moon.

Mrs Handley had gone back to apple-peeling, and Mervyn was walking away up the dusty road with his dog and his gun. Watch out, rabbits, I thought. The wife rose from her seat to call out after him: ‘Bye, Mervyn!’

She missed our lad Harry, and she’d taken to Mervyn in his place.

She said, ‘I’m off up for a bath,’ and she went inside the inn.

She was in a strange mood — torn: half-friendly, half not; half wanting me to be investigating the Adenwold mysteries, half not. Above all, she was annoyed at the arrival of the Chief, for it reminded her that I was not the top man even in the York railway police.

Had the heat got to her? Not a bit of it. She was always agitated — feverish, so to say, even at the best of times. It was just womanliness and you couldn’t cure that with a cold bath.

A single breath of breeze shifted the wisteria growing on the inn front, like a summer sigh. The shadow of a branch waved over the table and became strange when it struck the aerated water. Mr Handley, standing in the pub doorway, boomed out something that might have been ‘You’ve had a long chat out here,’ followed by the question: ‘Don’t appeal?’ or ‘No appeal?’ and I somehow had the idea he was talking about the water. I was never a great one for water, aerated or otherwise, and I took this to be an invitation to take a pint, at which I said, ‘I’d quite fancy a glass of Smith’s, thanks,’ but no sooner had I said it than it occurred to me that he had meant Master Hugh had not appealed against the verdict of guilty and sentence of death.

I stepped through into the public bar after Mr Handley, and the place was empty except for the bloody bicyclist, reading a book. I nodded to him, and said, ‘I see your bike’s gone. Still jiggered, is it?’

‘Took it up to the blacksmith,’ he said, only half looking up from his book. ‘Chap called Ainsty, but he wasn’t about. He’s off fixing some motor, apparently.’

Well, here was more data for the wife, fascinated as she was by the movements of the bicyclist.

The bar smelt of wood and wisteria. All the windows were propped open. On one side they gave onto the golden cornfields and The Angel garden; to the other, they looked onto the trestle table, the dusty lane and the woods.

Mr Handley was at the barrel of Smith’s pouring me a pint, and one for himself. He boomed out a remark in his habitual blurred manner, and I could not understand. I asked him, as politely as I could, to repeat it, and it was hard to keep in countenance as he made the same baffling noise again. I looked over to the bicyclist for help, and sure enough he looked up from his book and reported with a sigh:

‘He says, “There are as many crimes committed high as low.”’

I nodded at Mr Handley, and said, ‘You’re right over that,’ although I was thinking of the constant succession of working men I’d given evidence against in the York police court. You hardly ever saw a toff before the magistrates.

‘Mr Handley,’ I said, ‘did Sir George Lambert have any military connection?’

Mr Handley shook his head as he raised his glass to his lips. He then touched the glass to his lips, and half the beer went down in an instant. I raised my own glass and tried the same, but I didn’t have the trick of it, and my glass went down by just two inches and I nearly choked. To cover up the embarrassment, I said, ‘Does the pub pay?’

Well, I had to listen very carefully, and say ‘Pardon’ a lot, but I got the gist. The pub did not pay. The village was in decline. The limestone quarry had been worked out, and farming had been in a bad way for years. His talk became a constant low moan on a theme of everything going to pot: the timber in the woods round about was not of the sort wanted by the modern house-builders, and the holiday trade was nothing to what it had been at the height of the cycling craze. Whole fleets of cyclists, it appeared, had once passed through the Adenwolds every week-end.

At this news, I looked across towards our own bicyclist, but he’d quit the room. Mr Handley talked on, and I pictured Lydia in the tin bath upstairs. I always liked to hang about when she took a bath, and if she didn’t tell me to clear off, that meant we would have a ride. Mr Handley was running on about how he was thinking of removing with his family to York. I asked him, ‘Where in York?’ and — not being very interested in the reply — revolved my own thoughts as he gave it.

What was the Chief up to at the Hall? Had John Lambert killed the Major, and did he mean to make a confession to it in order to save his brother? No. Couldn’t have, because he’d been in London at the time, and the court must have heard evidence to that effect.

What — if any — was the connection between the timetables for the military and the murder?

And the man Usher… If he meant to murder Lambert, why hadn’t he just gone ahead and done it directly? How did things stand between Usher and the new owner of the Hall?

Who had been the man in the dust-coat running away from the station?

And what was the bloody bicyclist up to?

I thought of Gifford, the man from Norwood. I took out my silver watch. It was ten after one; I was supposed to have seen him at the inn at one.

‘Gifford,’ I said, interrupting Mr Handley, ‘the commercial traveller… Have you seen him about?’

Mr Handley shrugged, muttered something like, ‘Not lately.’

I drained off my glass and — telling Handley that I was off to take a turn in the woods — I quit The Angel.

I didn’t mean to go into the woods, though. I meant to bang on the vicar’s door to ask questions as follows. One: why had he been staring at us in the graveyard? Two: why had he called Gifford back? Three: where did he suppose the man might be just at present? Bugger the Chief. He was an old man, shortly to be super-annuated. I would pursue that matter independently of him.

But I wasn’t long out of the front door of The Angel when, looking to my left as I walked towards the first green of Adenwold, I saw something wrong-coloured lodged in the greenery of the woods. I went in after it.

The road was lost to my sight within ten seconds as the barriers of green fell between it and me. I might just as well have jumped into a green sea. I twisted my way between the trees and holly bushes, brambles and ferns, all connected by spider webs of ivy and bindweed, and after half a minute of battling I came to the hat: a brown, high-crowned bowler. It hung on a brier bush in company with thousands of red berries glowing in the green darkness. No name was written in the crown, but it was Gifford’s, I was sure. I caught it up, and fought my way through to the wide clearing that lay beyond the brier bush.

This I took at first to be an expanse of flat moss, but a slip of my boot proved it to be a green and black pond over which a hundred insects swooped, the lot of them looking like man-made flying machines going through their paces. Why had Gifford, the man from the London suburbs who hated nature, entered this abandoned world?

I skirted the pond as he must have done after losing, or abandoning, his bowler, and pressed on, picking my way. Low, sharp branches kept whisking off my own hat as if to say, ‘ Keep it off: show us some respect, won’t you?’ At every turn, my boots broke the twigs beneath my feet, and I began to feel unsure about what lay beneath, like a man walking over the rotten rafters of an ancient attic.

I called out ‘Gifford!’ a few times, but there came no answer.

Of course, he might have gone the other way around the pond. My route led in the direction of a golden light coming through the trees, and as I came to the limit of the woods — and re-entered the heat of the day — I saw that the golden-ness was made by the sun and a cornfield combined. The edge of the woods was marked by clouds of cow parsley, just as the border of a fancy handkerchief is marked by lace.

I walked along a little way, and then I saw another wrong colour, this time on the ground. I picked up the red model engine: the single-driver. It was made of stout soldered tinplate, and beautifully finished. The maker’s name was stamped in German underneath. It might have been something like ‘Gastin’, with two little dots over the ‘a’, but the letters were too tiny to be made out.

Turning the model over in my hands, I thought of the German railways. It was said that you had to show your ticket to the guard on all trains with no exceptions, and that the guard saluted you like a military man when you did so. The station masters saluted passing trains all along the line, whether those trains stopped at their stations or not. As a people, they were lacking in humour, and they carried method too far.

But Gifford, surely, was neither German nor a travelling agent of that country. As he had said himself, he was a traveller in small locomotives. Yet he had possessed some secret, some knowledge touching on the Adenwold mysteries, and he had meant to tell me it.

Had he been observed in the course of observing someone? Had the vicar brought him into the woods to put his lights out, only to drop in on the railway station and collect the cricket team?

The locomotive had spilled from its bag, which was hard by in the grass. I looked up and there, lying under cow parsley, was Gifford’s Gladstone bag… not six feet from the man himself.

He was half in a ditch, his head pointing down into its depths, his boots higher than his head. Directly above was the stout branch of a giant oak. Had he come down from it?

Or had he been pursued through the woods, only to come a cropper as soon as he escaped the trees?

He seemed to have attained a kind of peacefulness in his position. His eyes were closed, and he looked to be having a pleasant sort of dream, but his head was cut by brambles, his face was bluish and a quantity of dark-coloured blood had flowed from the corner of his mouth.

I held my hand over his mouth, and felt nothing. I knelt down and put my face directly in front of his, at which I detected faint breaths. If he had come down from a height, and suffered a smash, I ought not to touch him.

Had he tried to make away with himself by leaping from the tree? Perhaps he was in low water financially. He’d sounded desperate enough, and the vicar had evidently not purchased the red engine.

It seemed wrong that I should be able to view his head so closely. I touched my hand to his hair, and my fingers came up rust-coloured. Blood (and a good deal of it) was working with the Brilliantine to keep Gifford’s hair fixed in place, and shining. I touched again, and there was a groove under the hair. I pulled my hand away fast. Had he taken a bullet?

I sat up on the edge of the ditch; ten yards to my left, a wooden bridge ran across it, half-hidden by brambles. Two white butterflies danced in the air before my face, as if to say, ‘Isn’t this all a lark? You may have your troubles, but we’re on holiday just at present.’

I set the little engine down next to the Gladstone bag, and looked at my silver watch: one thirty-five.