Death on a Branch line

Chapter Thirty-Four

We walked along Whitehall in the rain. The black cabs came on and on like one long funeral. Tiny trees along the pavements; the buildings were grey cliffs and every man held an umbrella except for the Chief and me, and the two policemen in capes who happened at that moment to be lumbering along beside us like carthorses. We passed the entrance to Downing Street — one tradesman’s van was parked a little way along it with a white horse in the shafts.

‘Do you suppose Mr Asquith’s at home?’ I said.

The Chief made no answer, but looked at his watch.

‘We’ve an hour to kill,’ he said.

The letters on the side of the van read: ‘Williams of Pimlico’.

I said to the Chief, ‘You’d think they’d put “Williams of Pimlico: Suppliers of Bread to the Prime Minister”.’

‘Full of good ideas, you are,’ said the Chief.

He stopped and eyed me for a moment before adding, by way of making amends, ‘The Tories wouldn’t buy the bread if it was a Liberal prime minister and the Liberals wouldn’t buy if it was a Tory.’

‘Expect not,’ I said.

‘Shall we take a pint?’ said the Chief.

The pub was like a tiny baronial hall, with shields on the wall, and criss-crossed with high beams; and it reeked of past-food. As the rain streamed down the windows, and the Chief bought two pints on expenses, the man at the next table was talking about India. ‘Do you see yourself going out there?’ he kept asking the woman he was with. It was pretty bloody obvious enough that he wanted her to go out there, so why didn’t he just say so? Another fellow, steaming on the same bench as me, said to a man standing before him in a coat with a fur collar: ‘For the first time in years I’ve been able to do a bit of shooting,’ and as he spoke, the pub was filled with the sound of the Westminster bells, which were so deep-toned they might have been inside your head.

‘Care for another?’ the man at the table asked the woman.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

‘Well, I know I don’t fancy going out in that,’ the man said, contemplating the streaming windows.

Why must he go round the houses so? He put me in mind of the Adenwold bicyclist. The lengths that fellow had gone to just to get a fuck! He’d even made a show of taking the bloody machine to the blacksmith’s to get the wheel fixed. As if anybody had been interested! Well, I had been, and the wife, too; she’d always suspected him, just as though one bicyclist might prove as important in the whole business as the combined forces of the state.

The Chief was saying something about the fellow we were going to see — Major somebody or other. His name came in two parts: Henderson-Richards or some such hedging of bets. I imagined him as a man who couldn’t decide between Henderson and Richards, who considered them both good names and had determined to have the best of both worlds.

He was in the Special Police, or army intelligence, or both. It was the office for muffling-up, anyhow, and our meeting with him would mark the end of the business that had begun with the transfer of Hugh Lambert at York. It would all be laid to rest, and with no undue ceremony beyond my own name being put to a paper.

My name evidently counted for something in this — otherwise, why would they have called me down to London for the signing (even if it had taken them three months to get round to it), and that with a special first class travel warrant and with the Chief as chaperone?

‘Take another?’ asked the Chief, draining his glass and watching me over the top of it.

He was altered in his approach towards me since the Adenwold events — more watchful. I’d brought off something big, after all: Hugh Lambert had been released and pardoned, if that was the term. Usher had fixed it all after talking to Hardy and Mervyn — this in spite of his strongly held opinions against men of Hugh Lambert’s type. Lambert had evidently had a handshake from the governor of Durham gaol, a letter from the governor of Armley and an armful of money and a rail pass into the bargain.

This last he’d used to come up to York station in the middle of August.

As before, old man Wright and I had been the only ones in the office. Wright had a scar on his forehead — nothing to the Chief’s scars but very noticeable all the same. He’d slipped and fallen on his July week-end in Scarborough — taken a tumble down the steps from the Marine Parade to the beach. I couldn’t help thinking it was his own fault for having talked it up so much in advance.

Also as before, it was a day of unbreathable heat on Platform Four, and the sparrow had been outside the door, for I’d had my snap in front of me as on that earlier occasion. But this time Hugh Lambert had practically trodden on the poor thing — didn’t give it a glance. He’d marched up to me and put out his hand, and I was that shocked to see him that I forgot to stand. Old Wright did so, however, and sharpish, as if he’d seen a ghost, for he’d heard all about Hugh Lambert.

‘I owe you my life, Detective Stringer,’ Lambert said, and he sounded none too happy about it.

‘I’m sorry for what happened to your brother,’ I said. ‘I called to him at the wrong time. They thought the machine was being used to communicate on his behalf. It was just a… bit of a mix-up.’

‘A mix-up,’ he repeated, and he evidently didn’t think much of that way of putting it.

He then stood and eyed me for a while, looking down on me — I couldn’t help thinking — in more ways than one. He wore a boxy suit that didn’t suit him and he looked more out-of-sorts than he had before, but in a new way. After an interval of silence, he turned on his heel and quit the office.

Even Wright was put out on my behalf.

‘That was a bit rich,’ he said, coming up to me quickly as though I’d just been struck a blow. ‘… After what you did for him.’

Well, what had I done? I’d killed his brother, or as good as. Hugh Lambert’s own life was somehow of no account to him and this, according to the wife in our many hours’ conversation on the point, was a consequence of his father’s treatment of him. Because of the way he was, his father had undermined him (it was the wife’s word), and undermined he’d stayed.

This was the wife’s big theory: this business of the undermining. As for his brother’s death, this — according to Lydia — was none of my doing. It was Cooper who’d pulled the trigger. It was all out of my hands. I’d done my level best and should be proud.

I’d had this from the Chief as well, but with something added: I could tell the Chief was pleased by what I’d brought about. It had solved the problem of John Lambert, a man with all the mobilisation plans in his head, and a man who’d proved himself not to be trusted.

But what kept me awake at night was this: Hugh Lambert had told me in the police office that his brother would be in danger from people who would be in Adenwold ‘over the week-end’, and because of what he’d told me, I had become one of the people. I was one of the ‘they’; in fact, I was the very man.

The strangeness, the ghostliness of it…

As the Chief waited at the bar, a fellow came darting in out of the rain clutching some papers in a paste-board envelope, and he handed them to a bloke holding a glass of ale, who said, ‘Thanks, pal.’

‘No, thank you,’ said the other.

The one who’d received the papers was looking at the other fellow’s bowler, which was quite soaked.

‘You’ll need a new one now,’ he said, and the man with the wet hat laughed.

These two were government officials; they were engaged in conducting the business of the state, and seemed very happy about it — or not vexed by it, at least.

Wet hat dived back out into the rain, and the Chief was joined at the bar by the man who’d been sitting next to me, and this fellow had left his newspaper on the bench. From where I sat, I read the date: Tuesday, 7 November, 1911. The paper lay folded to reveal an article on the weather. Not the present weather — the dark clouds and warmish rain — but that of the late summer, which had broken all records and remained just as much a talking point in the papers as all the endless strikes and revolts among the workers. ‘Cuckoos and chaffinches were heard singing in September,’ I read, picking up the paper, ‘and chiffchaffs late into October… There have been curious approximations to the habit of nature in more torrid climates.’ The man whose paper this was did not seem to be buying a drink, but was talking loudly to another bloke at the bar and, as I looked on, he said, equally loudly, ‘Well, I’m going to the lavatory now.’

That meant I could look a little further into his newspaper.

I turned to the foreign pages and read the heading: ‘The New Franco-German Treaties’. They’d just been signed, or were just about to be. Germany would leave off hounding the French in Morocco, and in return would get Spanish Guinea with no objections. Taken all together, Germany had carried her point; or maybe the French had. Even the Times man didn’t seem to know. Underneath the report was something further about France. The heading read: ‘A Proposal For the Extension of State Control Over the Railways of France’.

I folded the paper and replaced it as the Chief returned with the drinks, and something about the way he put them down on the tables — a little carelessly, and with a slight spillage — told me we’d both end the day canned.

The War Office was just the other side of Downing Street — very handily placed for prime ministers wanting to start wars. The doors of it were guarded by ordinary coppers, who nodded at us as we went in. One of them gave me a particular look — not unfriendly — and I wondered whether he thought I was going in to collect a medal: a reward for all the sleepless nights.

The feature of Henderson-Richards’s office was a large and beautiful fireplace, which he was standing beside as we were shown in. There was a good blaze going, and he leant against the corner of the mantel-shelf watching it. He was a thin man with long hair that fell down over half his face like a grey curtain, and he wore the softest and lightest shoes, which made no noise as he walked towards us and shook our hands. He was not what I’d expected.

There were two seats ready for us before Henderson-Richards’s desk, and a single document on the desk. But he returned to the fireplace in order to address us.

‘I trust you gentlemen had a satisfactory journey down from Yorkshire?’

You’d have thought that Yorkshire was a foreign country, but he spoke pleasantly enough.

‘The broad-acred county…’ he said, smiling and lolling against the mantel-piece. ‘Quite a week-end you had of it, back in July, Detective Sergeant Stringer.’

He was still smiling, but I thought: He’s glad about what happened as well, and he has the confidence to show it.

‘You’ve read my report, sir?’ I asked him, which clashed with the Chief saying, ‘Detective Sergeant Stringer was a little overhasty in some of his actions, sir, but he is an excellent man as a general rule.’

We both continued to look forward — towards the desk of Henderson-Richards rather than towards the man himself, but I was thinking of the Chief as a sort of beer-smelling, tobacco-stained knight in shining armour.

Henderson-Richards now walked over, sat in his desk chair and addressed me directly, saying:

‘It doesn’t fall to everyone to save a man’s life, Detective Stringer.’

(Or to cause a death, I thought.)

‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me?’ he enquired.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What’s become of Hardy?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ said Henderson-Richards. ‘Hardy is in Bootham, the York mental hospital.’

That was a turn-up. Still, his confession had been believed, and that was the main thing.

‘Will he be charged with any crime?’

‘Not fit,’ said Henderson-Richards, shaking his head.

‘What about the porter, Woodcock?’ I said. ‘Have the police laid hands on him?’

‘Woodcock!’ said Henderson-Richards, suddenly galvanised. ‘What a dark horse he was! What couldn’t he have achieved with a man he respected over him?’

He was evidently expecting an answer to this out-of-the-way question.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what would he have achieved? What would have been the opportunities open to him? Station master of some hole-in-the-corner place?’

I was coming out pretty strongly for Woodcock. Well, he’d been straight enough in his own way.

A beat of silence; then I repeated my question: ‘Do you know his whereabouts?’

‘No,’ said Henderson-Richards.

‘As to Gifford…’ I said. ‘It was Cooper who… He’d somehow had sight of Gifford’s German documents, and he’d put two and two together and made…’

Henderson-Richards was giving me such a blank look that I quite feared for his health.

‘… five,’ I said.

Henderson-Richards was frowning, shaking his head.

‘Is he all right?’ I said. ‘Gifford, I mean?’

‘Quite,’ said Henderson-Richards.

He said it sharply. The upper classes said ‘Quite’ in that way when they meant shut up.

‘Cooper,’ I said. ‘Has he been disciplined for…’

‘What?’ said Henderson-Richards. ‘Who?’

Again he spoke sharply, but like an actor.

I got the message: Cooper did not exist.

‘John Lambert hadn’t made contact with anybody, had he?’ I said. ‘I mean, the mobilisation secrets were not disclosed?’

‘That’s a secret that will not be disclosed,’ said the Chief, but he looked pleased enough as he leant forwards and smartly swivelled the paper towards me. I saw something like: ‘The officer shall keep secret any information of a confidential nature obtained by him by reason of…’

‘Sign at the bottom, please,’ said Henderson-Richards.

I fished for my fountain pen, and Henderson-Richards sat back and half-smiled towards the Chief in a way that stayed in my mind throughout the railway journey back to York, as I sat in the first-class compartment with the Chief, and then later on in the dining car, and then in the compartment again as the sky darkened and the rain flew against the windows. I thought I now had everything pretty clear, although Gifford remained a bit of a mystery to me. The Chief knew all, of course; or nearly all. I had begun to think differently now of his absences from the office, his distracted way of talking. He was in on a whole lot of things he could never tell me about, and I wondered whether this was partly a question of age. Would I be in on a lot of unmentionable things when I was approaching retirement? I hoped so. It was important to take secrets with you when you died.

At York, the wife was waiting with Harry. I gave him the funny paper I’d bought for him at King’s Cross, and gave his cap a shove, which is my usual way of saying hello.

Lydia kissed me, and we made for the footbridge, with the Chief walking behind.

‘Want to speak about it?’ she asked.

‘Not over-much,’ I said, as we climbed the footbridge steps.

A long ‘up’ train was rolling along beneath the bridge.

‘Thanks for asking,’ I called over the racket, ‘but I’ve signed the paper, and I’ll say no more about the matter.’

‘Well, I’m very glad to hear it, Jim,’ said the wife, half-turning towards me and giving a grin.