Death on a Branch line

Chapter Twenty-Two

Come eight twenty-five by my silver watch, Lydia was standing by the door of our room in her best blue cotton dress. It was set off to a T by the high black belt, and the white fancy blouse that showed through at her neck and shoulders. She carried her little leathern bag that was half-bag, half-purse.

‘Look alive,’ she said, as I did up my bootlaces. ‘And remember that it is not fashionable to be intoxicated.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ I muttered, following her through the door.

I had her railway ticket in my inside pocket, but I knew I’d have a job to get her on the train, especially since I meant to go to the party myself. This would strike her as unfair. No self-respecting woman Co-Operator would stand for it.

We’d both slept a little in the early evening; then I’d lain on the bed making notes in my pocket book of the week-end’s events so far. Later, I’d kept station outside the pub with a pint in my hand watching for any sign of the Chief, but he’d not pitched up. Did he mean to stay at the Hall? And would he be at the beano? Would Usher be there?

I could have done with more than just one pint to set me up, but I supposed that a glass of wine would be put in my hand directly I stepped under the Chinese lanterns. You got wine directly on arrival at the Christmas party given by the Archbishop of York for the whole village of Thorpe-on-Ouse. There was no messing about there — the Archbishop was certainly going to be drinking, and he didn’t want to stand out.

Along the lane leading down from The Angel, a doorway in the low, bent houses stood open and one of the old ladies stood by it, as though presenting the place for inspection. Lydia, walking ahead, gave her good evening but received no response. I tried the same, with the same results. She might be near-blind. She looked as though she could see, but only very far-off things. I then overtook the wife, and stood with arms folded in the station yard. She walked towards me shaking her head.

I indicated the station.

‘You’re off in there,’ I said. ‘The 8.35 is an “up”. It’ll take you to Pilmoor, and you’ll change there for York.’

‘That’s what you think,’ she said, standing before me on the dusty stones.

It was a good thing the village was empty, because we were all set for a scrap.

‘Here’s the return half of your ticket to York,’ I said.

‘What do you think I am? A consignment of goods?’

I could hear the beat of the approaching train.

‘There’s been a bad business here. A man is waiting to hang for it, but I don’t think he’s the guilty party. Gifford was nearly done in because of what he knew. There’s a man at the Hall threatened with death if he spills the beans. It’s no…’

‘Well, you’re not about to spill the beans,’ the wife cut in. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’

‘I’d have thought you might want a bit of moral support when you see that man Usher again.’

The beat of the train was loud now. It was approaching at a lick.

‘Harry will want to see you anyway,’ I said.

‘You know perfectly well that he’ll be having a lovely time with Lillian Backhouse and all her kids. She’ll have given them lemonade today, and they’ll all have gone swimming in the river.’

‘But you told her not to take them swimming in the river.’

‘But I know perfectly well that she will do, and that Harry loves going.’

‘Why did you tell her not to take him, then?’

‘Because it’s dangerous.’

The 8.35 was bustling through the woods, dragging its banner of smoke.

‘For once in my life I’ve been invited to a party at a grand house,’ said the wife, ‘and if you think I’m going to climb up into a filthy third-class carriage and ride to Pilborough with some lecherous old man eyeing me from the corner seat…’

‘It’s Pil moor, and there won’t be any lecherous old man.’

‘There will be. There always is. Ask any woman.’

‘It’s coming too fast,’ I said, turning.

The two of us looked up at the station, and the train was there, rattling and thundering; each coach was itself for a small second, and then… a shocking silence. It had run right through.

I ran across the yard, and onto the ‘up’ platform.

Woodcock the porter was on his high perch, turning and laughing. The signalman, Eddie, laughed back at him from his balcony. They hadn’t bargained on the train not stopping. Station master Hardy was in his doorway; he retreated into it, back towards the little soldiers, as I approached, asking, ‘Did you have a traffic notice about that?’

He shook his head like a little boy.

‘The lines are down,’ he said, ‘and no-one’s come by.’

‘Then the driver’s had orders from…’

‘Oh, from Pilmoor, most likely,’ Hardy said.

‘It was to stop anyone leaving,’ I said.

‘But no-one wanted to leave,’ he said, and he indicated the empty platform.

The 8.35 had left a smoky tang in the air. I looked up at the signals. Woodcock and Eddie were both smoking, looking down with the remains of smiles on their faces. Were they on the inside or the outside of events? Where had they been in the afternoon? Slacking in the village? The urge was suddenly strong on me to see whether John Lambert was still living, and to try my luck again with the Chief.

I walked through the wicket and back into the station yard where the wife stood waiting.

‘More mysteries?’ she said, as I approached, and she didn’t wait for an answer, but just said, ‘Come on, we’ll be late.’

It was getting dusk as we struck out along the lane indicated by the sign reading ‘TO THE HALL’. The wife was walking a little way ahead, and it seemed to me that she turned into the woods early.

‘Hold on,’ I called out.

She’d taken a woodland track we’d not seen before.

‘It’s this way,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the back of the house.’

‘That’s a bit out of it,’ I said. ‘We might as well be servants.’

After three minutes in the wood, we came to a tall gate, propped open.

‘Cap off,’ said the wife, as the Hall came into view.

The back of the house looked the same as the front but even handsomer, as I might have guessed, for the aristocracy would beat you all ends up. There was a stone pond immediately behind the house, and a very mathematical-looking garden had been made around this. Two stone staircases curled down from either side of this garden to reach the terrace, which was dramatic like a stage, except that it was sunken rather than high. Two wires were strung high across the terrace, and the paper lanterns hung from these. They held my attention, each like a little paper concertina: orange, red, green, and giving a beautiful soft glow, but one had got scorched and smoke was racing away from the top of it as the paper burned.

The lanterns were like toys, childish things, and yet the Chief stood underneath them. He was to the rear of the terrace and the sight of his clothes hit me like a station buffer.

The Chief wore an evening suit: trousers with braided seams, varnished shoes, white bow tie — and the hairs on his head were mustered into parallel lines and held down by Brilliantine. The perfection of the suit pointed up his natural imperfections, and I knew that I was for once seeing the Chief out of his element. The fellow he was speaking to, on the other hand, looked practically born to wear an evening suit, and he had one foot raised on a white iron garden chair which gave him a confident look. He was smoking a very white cigarette, and this made him seem to be pointing all the time, saying, ‘Now look here, it’s like this,’ while the Chief listened and looked as though he wanted to smoke but daren’t.

This second man was Captain Usher.

A couple also stood waiting on the terrace and these I knew must be the Chandlers: the brother-in-law of the murdered man and his wife. Robert Chandler was a bald man whose head went in slightly at the middle like a peanut shell; his wife was a round and pretty woman in a lilac dress with a train. They were both somewhere in the middle forties, which made them about of an age with Usher.

Of John Lambert there was no sign.

‘But they told us not to dress,’ the wife was saying, in a tone of voice I’d not heard from her before, for it seemed to hold real fear. We were approaching two avenues made by dark firs that had been cut into cones like witches’ hats. Which one to choose? Would there be a right one and a wrong one? You could bloody well bet there would be.

But before we reached the trees, an advance party approached us: a chambermaid and a manservant of some sort — two servants kept back from Scarborough. Both carried trays holding bottles and glasses. They closed on us and then divided, the parlourmaid making towards the wife, the manservant heading my way.

I realised that he was the servant I’d seen that morning, the amiable one who’d directed me to the gardener’s cottage. He no longer looked horsy, but like an expert on wines.

‘Hock or claret, sir?’ he said.

I took a claret because it was nearest. But I felt I moved too fast, because the man said, ‘Or there’s champagne at the table, sir?’

Looking over, I saw a small table covered by a white cloth, and over-crowded with bottles and ice buckets. I had the notion that the four people standing around it and waiting for us were all adults, and that the wife and I were children. Evidently the four had all eaten supper, and we had received an invitation of an inferior sort after all, and I knew this would go hard with the wife. I knew also that her nervousness and embarrassment on this account would far exceed in her any anxiety about any murderous doings.

We were not approaching the terrace by the two proper walkways, but had somehow ended up going haphazard over the grass. Having drunk off my claret, I found that I was now making towards the hosts with an already empty glass, which also didn’t seem quite etiquette. The wife, of course, carried no glass, since she was tee-total.

It was Chandler’s wife who was waiting to greet me at the margin of the terrace. Do not on any account say, ‘I see that you do yourselves pretty well here,’ I told myself. Do not say, ‘This is laying on luxury.’

She shook my hand, she might even have curtsied; she said something I didn’t quite catch and then, after a long beat of silence, I heard myself saying, ‘Lovely place you have here.’

Meanwhile Lydia was being greeted by the host, who said, ‘It is lovely to see you again,’ and the two ‘lovelys’ seemed to clash.

From the rear of the terrace, I heard a laugh from the Chief as he spoke to Usher, and it was not quite natural, not quite him. Had Usher got him under the gun? Had he bested him as he had bested me?

And where had the Chief got his bloody dinner suit from?

The hostess, who stood before me, was looking down at the ground. Beneath the folds of her dress, she moved one of her feet, as though testing the bricks beneath. She looked up again, and a ruby necklace rose on the slopes of her white bosom as she took a deep breath. I had the idea that she was at once very distant and very near, and that she was a little squiffed. She then spoke all in a flurry:

‘We had such a friendly talk earlier on at the village with your wife, Mr Stringer. She said she was absolutely just dying to see some Chinese lanterns, and — anything to oblige!’

She turned and smiled with arm outstretched, presenting the lanterns of which there was now one fewer, the scorched one having burnt right out. I looked from it towards the Chief, who had certainly noticed me, but had not yet given me any acknowledgement. Mrs Chandler, spotting the direction of my glance, said, ‘You won’t believe it but those two are talking about camels.’

As the manservant poured more claret for both of us, Mrs Chandler said something about how the two men had been in Africa, so what could you expect? There was practically nothing in Africa but camels. Then the host, Robert Chandler, came over with his arm in Lydia’s.

I looked at Lydia’s white-gloved hand, and there was a glass of champagne there, and the sight was so all-of-a-piece and so elegant that for a moment the shock did not register. As I looked on, she drained off the rest of the glass and shot me a look that clearly said, ‘You put away gallons of alcohol every week, so why shouldn’t I take a glass now and again?’ I understood straightaway that it was the shame of not being invited to the meal that had made her do it, but the sight of the glass so knocked me that I said to the host:

‘By the way, Mr Chandler, where is John Lambert?’

‘John?’ he said. ‘Well, we hope to see him here. But I think he is a little over-strained just at present.’

‘That’s what everyone says,’ I said.

‘Do they?’ said Mr Chandler, and he looked put out. ‘I was rather congratulating myself on my — y’know — insight. He’s not a very forward party exactly, and he’s been conferring with Captain Usher all day, so I expect he’s pretty worn out. Now that sounds as though I’m being rude about Usher when in fact he seems a perfectly pleasant chap who knows a very great deal about camels and horses and dogs and things like that. Tell me, do you know that fellow that runs The Angel? What’s wrong with him?’

It hardly mattered what I said in reply. I was becoming confident that Chandler — who at some stage after the arrival of my fourth glass of claret told me to call him Bobby and his wife Milly — did not really know Usher, and that he was out of the picture as far as any bad business was concerned. As he burbled on in his amiable way, he kept glancing over to Lydia, who was talking to Milly, while I heard the Chief say to Usher, ‘Strange that is, sir… I always took the General for a base wallah,’ at which they both laughed, but especially the Chief.

Of course, that would be how things stood between them. Chief inspector was a higher rank than captain, but Usher was an army captain, and it was the army that signified. The Chief had only been a sergeant major in his service days, so the Chief ‘sirred’ Usher just as I ‘sirred’ the Chief. Only that word sounded wrong on the lips of a man who’d seen as much as my governor.

Another glass of claret was presented to me by the footman, who seemed to have become a special ally of mine. I looked across to the Chief again, and Usher was watching me. Had he been forewarned that I’d been invited? His gaze was not over-friendly, and I was quite sure that if he’d had his way I would be nowhere near the Hall at this moment, but it seemed that he was a species of guest just as I was, and so caught between good manners and whatever business he had in hand.

I drained off my glass at a draught, and said to Bobby Chandler:

‘There was a murder here, of course.’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Good subject for a party conversation!’

I gave a sudden nervous laugh, quite unintended, and Bobby Chandler made to give me a nudge with the back of his hand, saying, ‘Could it be that we share the same sense of humour, Mr Stranger?’

And then he fell to looking at Lydia again.

‘It’s Stringer,’ I said.

‘Yes, my brother-in-law…’ he said. ‘Perfectly blameless existence walking about this place blasting animals to kingdom come, and then made away with by his own son — what do you think of that?’

‘It’s a bad look-out,’ I said.

‘ Damned bad,’ said Bobby Chandler. ‘And with his own thirty-inch barrel, one-hundred-and-fifty-guinea twelve-bore.’

‘It’s a bad look-out,’ I said again, and I thought: I’m canned already.

‘When I got the news,’ said Bobby Chandler, ‘I was absolutely devastated for about — well, not that long if we’re quite honest. I didn’t know my brother-in-law all that well, and he wasn’t really my sort.’

He was looking at Lydia again.

‘It’s a shame about young Hugh of course, in a way, but I hardly knew him either…’

So it was not really such a great shame.

‘Good-looking boy, Hugh,’ he said vaguely. ‘Had a governess absolutely devoted to him. Absolutely devoted. Now governesses are always either terribly pretty or absolutely grim-looking, don’t you think?’

I wondered at the question, since it must be obvious to him that I was not acquainted with many governesses. Was this generosity in him or plain ignorance? Had he expected us not to notice that we hadn’t been invited to the supper, but only the afters? He’d very likely not thought about it either way. His chief goal was avoidance of boredom, and proper form and ‘the done thing’ could go by the board as far as he was concerned.

Well, it was all right by me.

‘… And if you knew anything about my brother-in-law,’ Bobby Chandler was saying, ‘you’ll know which sort young Hugh’s governess was. Can you guess?’

‘Pretty,’ I said.

‘Decidedly,’ said Chandler. ‘I only saw her twice, and even though she was a servant of sorts… Now I’m not quite drunk enough to say what I’m going to say next, so change the subject please, Mr Stranger.’

‘What was her name?’ I said, and the sharpness made Bobby Chandler take a step back.

‘That is not changing the subject of course,’ he said, ‘but I believe her name was Emma. The vicar here,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘was distinctly keen on her.’

‘Did either man conduct a…’

And the world stopped, and the sliver of moon winked down at me encouragingly, as I found the word ‘liaison’.

‘I think that possibly they both did,’ he said with a sigh, as though suddenly extremely bored.

‘Both at the same time?’ I said.

But he didn’t seem to hear. He had turned a little way away from me and, keeping half an eye on Lydia, began instructing the waiter about opening some more of the right kind of bottles.

The vicar, who was supposed to be such a great pal of the murdered man, would not be dismissed, would not be stood down from the ranks of suspects.

Bobby Chandler was still speaking to the manservant, having quite forgotten about the governess. Lydia was still speaking to Mrs Chandler, who was drinking hock, but Lydia had not re-filled her own glass; the first one seemed to have done the trick, and it had emboldened her to bring out her hobby horse, for she was speaking about one of her great heroines, Emmeline Pankhurst, until Mrs Chandler interrupted, saying:

‘I know Emmeline Pankhurst slightly.’

The wife was shocked at this, but tried not to show it.

‘Oh,’ the wife said, ‘and what does she say about the progress of the cause?’

‘Well, I don’t really speak to her about that.’

‘Really?’ said the wife. ‘That’s rather like knowing William Shakespeare and never mentioning his plays.’

‘But William Shakespeare is dead,’ said Milly Chandler, and the force of the last word made her stumble slightly.

‘I admire her daughter Sylvia very much,’ the wife was saying. ‘She works tirelessly for the poor in the East End.’

‘Yes, she’s very tedious,’ said Milly Chandler, and she eyed Lydia for a moment, looking to see her response to this. But she burst out laughing after a second in any case.

The small table seemed to have been replenished with red wine; there were also now walnuts, almonds, crystallised fruits in silver bowls, cigarettes and cigars in silver boxes. The manservant was at my elbow, and it seemed that he intended to take my glass away. Perhaps he’d noticed that I’d had enough. But as it turned out he only meant to give me a new one. ‘This is the ’98, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a better vintage.’

‘Reckon so?’ I said.

Bobby Chandler was facing me again, and to test my theory about him, I said, ‘Where were you when you heard the news of the murder?’

‘India,’ he said, very simply. ‘We were visiting people we know out there.’

‘Where do you actually live?’ I asked him.

‘Well, here now,’ he said, ‘most of the time.’

‘But where were you before, exactly?’

‘Oh, London, you know. We’re not really country people.’

‘Ten to one your place in London is not as big as this,’ I said, gesturing up towards the Hall.

Chandler glanced thoughtfully up at the great house.

‘Perhaps not quite,’ he said. ‘But there’s a lot I don’t care for about this place. It has no cellar, for instance — well, it won’t do after tonight. John doesn’t drink, and my brother-in-law left very, very few decent bottles, so I thought we might as well drink them off so that we know where we stand, do you see?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, if there’s nothing left, there’s nothing left. It’s an extremely straightforward position.’

The Chief was at my elbow.

‘Will you step over here, lad?’

He took me by the arm, and moved me a little way to the side of the terrace. He held one of his small cigars. He was friendlier than before.

‘Lydia’s looking well,’ he said.

‘Good,’ I said, and then, after a pause, ‘Is it all in hand, sir?’

‘It is and it isn’t, lad.’

The Chief was normally as straight as they came, but now he looked and sounded shifty.

‘I came upon a fellow lying in the woods,’ I said. ‘I thought he must be…’

‘We can’t speak of it here,’ said the Chief — and he was eyeing Usher.

‘You had supper earlier on?’ I enquired, after an interval of silence.

‘Aye,’ said the Chief, and he almost smiled. ‘Roast quails… and it went from there.’

On the terrace, Usher was pacing and smoking.

‘Where’s John Lambert?’ I asked the Chief.

‘He’ll be joining us presently.’

‘Usher means to kill him,’ I said. ‘I’m certain of it.’

The Chief took a pull on his cigar, and made a movement of his head that was both a nod and a shake.

‘Do you know who Usher is?’ he asked, putting one eye on me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

He put his cigar out just then, stamping on it with his patent shoe. He did not mean to answer the question. He meant to keep whatever he knew on important points muffled up.

I was looking the Chief’s tail-coat up and down.

‘Where did you get the suit, sir?’

‘This clobber?’ he said. ‘It belongs to the boy.’

‘Hugh Lambert? The one that’s about to swing?’

‘Twenty years of PT,’ said the Chief, looking over towards the terrace. ‘That’s the only reason I can get into it. Not bad going for a bloke of my age. Trousers are pinching a bit, mind you.’

The Chief must think it only fair that a man convicted of murder should have to forfeit his clothes as well as everything else.

‘You know Usher from the colours?’ I said. ‘He must be a decent fellow if he fought with you?’

I couldn’t let up with the questions.

‘Some of the biggest cunts I’ve ever known have been soldiers in the British Army, lad.’

Here was a flash of the Chief I knew, but his heart wasn’t in it.

‘He was in the same regiment, was he, sir?’

‘Same brigade, lad, same brigade. Usher was in the Royal Marines.’

‘Did his lot fight alongside your lot at Tamai?’

‘Tamai was a bit of a mess,’ said the Chief, ‘but that was the general idea, yes.’

He looked all-in, and I noticed that he wasn’t drinking, which was out of the usual.

I said, ‘The station master at Adenwold — chap called Hardy — he’s made a model of that battle.’

‘A model of it?’ said the Chief, still watching the terrace. ‘There were ten thousand fucking dervishes…’

‘Oh, he hasn’t included them,’ I said.

The Chief shook his head.

‘The fact that you and Usher were both at Tamai, sir — can’t you use it to get a leg in with him? Find out what’s going off as regards John Lambert? Have you seen Lambert at all yet? Seen all his timetables?’

The Chief dropped his cigar stub, and put his boot-heel on it.

‘You’re not to speak of any of it, lad,’ he said. ‘It’s a pretty delicate situation.’

It was not like the Chief to find anything delicate.

I said, ‘What can I speak of?’

‘Don’t talk,’ said the Chief. ‘Just drink.’

‘I’m half seas over as it is,’ I said.

‘I’ll put you straight about everything before long,’ he said, and the Chief was eyeing the right-hand stair to the rear of the terrace, which John Lambert was descending. Looking at him, my first thought was: Well, here’s another condemned man. In his dinner suit, he might have been dressed for his coffin. He was operating on habit alone as he came down those stone steps, to be greeted by the host and hostess, with Usher waiting behind them.

Looking on, I said, ‘Well, Usher can’t very well do for him at a party, can he, sir?’

‘’Course not, lad,’ said the Chief. ‘It’d be considered very poor form.’

And he walked slowly back towards the terrace.