Death on a Branch line

Chapter Twenty-Five

There were now three pointing guns in the room. My own was aimed at the Chief. Two days ago, I might have asked the man’s permission before going to the jakes and now I proposed putting a bullet in him.

‘You’ll put that fucking gun down at once,’ he said, but he seemed to be only trying the words out for size, hardly believing they’d be heeded.

‘I’ll fucking not.’

‘I’ll fucking not, sir!’ roared the Chief.

He took a step forward.

He might threaten to lag me for decades now, or offer me a glass of beer by way of alternative. I stood in exactly the same relation to him as the bank’s man had on Platform Five of York station, only not quite, for as I met the Chief’s gaze I drew back the hammer of the revolver.

‘Now you’re threatening to put me into a baddish temper,’ said the Chief.

‘Between the two of you,’ I said, ‘you put a bullet in John Lambert.’

Usher flashed a sidelong look at the Chief.

‘… And I can’t think of any reason why that might have been a lawful and right thing to do,’ I said.

A long beat of silence.

‘I’ve told Captain Usher a good deal about you this past day or two,’ said the Chief. ‘Your ears must have been buzzing.’

‘It’s more than his ears that’ll be buzzing in a minute,’ said Usher, whose pale-blue right eye looked along the level of his gun barrel.

‘ What did you tell him about me?’ I asked the Chief, indicating Usher.

‘That you were determined,’ said the Chief, ‘hard to put off.’

‘… Hard to put off, with an intact cranium,’ said Usher.

‘You were seen by the manservant coming back to the house with guns in your hands,’ I said. ‘Ten minutes before, two shots had been fired.’

Another beat of silence.

The Chief said, ‘You’ll only fire that thing once, you know — and there are two of us.’

I said to the Chief: ‘I don’t think I’ve been properly introduced to your confederate, sir.’

The Chief flashed a glance at Usher, who made a movement of his head that I could not interpret. Anyhow, Usher spoke next.

‘Why have you taken such a liking to the brothers Lambert?’ he asked, looking along the length of his gun. ‘Can you not see that one is a traitor to his country, and that the other is a member of the cult of — ’

‘Of what, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Of Uranus,’ said Usher, at which the Chief gave a great roar of something like fury and something like amusement, and walked three fast paces towards me with his gun still raised and ready to fire. I dashed down the revolver and he swung at me with his right fist; I swung back with my right and my left, and then he was bouncing strangely — hard bald head kept low. He was by repute a heavyweight of the rushing type, but before he could live up to that billing, I rushed at him and crowned him again, and his nose was changed by this. He came at me with his left fist raised, but it was the right that struck home, and the Chief had a very good right. A strongman might have picked me up by my boot-heels and swung my head through a full circle into an iron pole.

After an unknown interval of time, I came up to a sitting position with a feeling of having been swimming in heavy seas, a headache and blood in my mouth. The chief was on a level with me and grinning. His nose was like a sign indicating ‘left’ to all his features and his grin seemed to be directed that way, too. His knees were raised and his arms were around his knees. He sat like a happy boy at a camp fire. The Chief liked automatic machine guns and drinking beer under a very hot sun — awkward things — and he had enjoyed our scrap.

I looked at him, and he was all ablaze.

‘Go again?’ he said, like a man forty years younger. How could I have thought that he was ripe for superannuation? Behind him stood Usher, who was beyond speech, but who still had his shotgun trained on my chest. I did not fear him now, though.

The Chief held his hand over his nose. He seemed to be trying to push it back towards the right.

The revolver still lay on the floor, close to the lantern.

‘Why’d you give it up?’ the Chief said, indicating the revolver with his boot.

‘Because I knew the two of you were right,’ I said.

‘About what?’

‘About Hugh Lambert. It was something the wife said.’

She had asked me why I did not understand the man, hinting at missing knowledge.

‘I knew that if you weren’t lying about his…’

But I broke off, for the Chief was still adjusting his nose. It was somewhere about middle now but at the cost of a faster flow of blood. Usher walked forward with a silk handkerchief.

‘If you weren’t lying about that,’ I said, ‘then I knew you weren’t lying about not having killed John Lambert.’

‘I’m not sure we ever did deny it, did we, sir?’ the Chief asked Usher, who was lighting a cigarette.

‘I personally never deny anything,’ Usher said, shaking out the match.

‘But you didn’t do it,’ I said.

‘The limit,’ said the Chief, with the handkerchief still held at his nose, ‘the absolute fucking limit was when you said we’d taken two shots over it.’

The Chief was shaking his head, still with the handkerchief pressed to his nose.

‘Why were the shots fired?’ I asked.

‘Two warnings,’ said the Chief. ‘… Try and stop him as he raced into the woods.’

‘And how is he a traitor?’

The Chief flashed a look to Usher, who sighed and said, ‘It’s highly inconvenient that he was invited here tonight. I suppose he can sign the paper, but it’s up to you — he’s your man, and you know his qualities. By the way, do you think a whisky and soda might help that difficulty of yours, Chief Inspector?’

The Chief rose to his feet, gathering up the revolver; he looked at me, then down at it. He raised the revolver, grinning and levelling it at me, and then with the flourish of a conjuror he made the cylinder swing out and I saw the bullet chambers — saw clean through them, in fact.

It was not loaded.