Lost baggage porter

Chapter Seventeen

Sunday to Sunday

I had a week of waiting and clearing the broken-down pig sties out of the front and back garden. Meanwhile, the wife sat at her typewriter getting bigger by the day. She was in better spirits now though, Lillian Backhouse's bloodthirsty talk having seemed to galvanise her in some strange way. On the Monday, I cut the picture of Joseph Howard Vincent from the sixth Police Gazette, and sent it to the Chief. I had no word back until the Friday, when a telegram told me to report to the Police Office on Sunday morning at seven, later than usual on account, I supposed, of Sunday being a quieter day in the station therefore a safer one for me.

I left 16A on the Humber at six-thirty, wearing the bad suit, and with the glass-less specs in my top pocket. I had the Chief to see, and I was due at the Grapes in the evening, so I would make a day of it in town.

The smoke smell was thin in York station at seven o'clock, for there were long intervals between the trains. The bookstall was open, with the stout party still in place. It was weird, given his full figure, that those books he sold that were not about murder concerned the suppression of fat. There were about fifty souls in the station proper, every one of them on Platform Ten: an excursion party, heading for Scarborough most likely, for a bit of a blow. I wondered if it could possibly matter that some of them were looking on as I walked into the Police Office. I was not yet wearing the glasses, not yet Allan Appleby. The Chief was waiting at his desk with the Police Gazette photograph of Valentine Sampson or Joseph Howard Vincent before him. I saluted, and the Chief winced. There's no need to do that, you know.' he said. He sat back looking at me; he had a different suit on – a little better than his regular one, and wore a diamond stick-pin in his neckerchief. It seemed that he became half-gentleman come Sunday. But he was still too big and wild-looking, cut out for desperate deeds, not Sunday visiting. He moved forwards, saying: 'It's much like when you go into a Church of England service… You don't need to cross yourself.' 'Oh,' I said. 'But you do need to take your hat off.' 'What the heck's that got to do with it?' said the Chief, who seemed quite put out. He shook his head for a space before picking up the page I'd sent him. 'Now this scoundrel's been cropping up in the Gazette for donkey's years, always the same photograph, always the shooting of the two detectives mentioned. I think they put him in at slack times, fill up space.' He held up the page featuring the photograph for us both to see. 'I've spoken on the telephone to the right fellow at the Met,' he continued. 'And they know him only as Joseph Howard Vincent, not… whatever you said.' 'Valentine Sampson, sir,' I said, adding rather sharply: 'It's a hard name to forget.' The Chief gave me a warning look. 'How did they come by the picture?' I asked. 'It was taken by his fiancee.' 'Where?' 'Not known,' said the Chief. 'Some holiday ground. He's at the start of a pleasure cruise by the looks of it. The fiancee sent it to the police with a note: this is the fellow you want for that shooting at Victoria. She kept her name back but offered to make a statement, and so a time and a place was set, but she never turned up.' 'Why would she make an offer then withdraw it?' 'There can be no great mystery there,' said the Chief, kicking his chair back, and putting his arms behind his head, like a man preparing to go to sleep in a play. 'She knew he'd done it, perhaps witnessed the crime; he then chucked her over, which sets her thinking: blimey, he really is a rotter, this one.' The Chief shook his head. 'Stupid bloody cow,' he said. 'Why were the detectives after him in the first place?' 'Attempted robbery of a bank.' 'Is it known how he was attempting to rob it?' (Of course, I was thinking of the cylinder). 'Was there any machinery involved?' 'Yes,' said the Chief, 'a revolver.' 'Well, I think it's my man, and I'm going to meet him this evening at the Grapes on Tanner Row.' 'Convenient, is that,' said the chief. 'Why, it's just around the corner.' 'Convenient for an ambush,' I said. The Chief said nothing. 'Am I not to have any support from fellow officers?' I said, and I couldn't help but give a quick glance behind, through the open door towards the general office beyond, which was, as always, quite empty. 'If I get in much further with this lot' I continued, 'I'm going to have burnt my ships with the law.' 'How do you mean?' said the Chief, and I surprised myself by what I said next. 'I was given the shove by the Lancashire and Yorkshire' I said, 'but what happened wasn't my fault. I was always up to the mark with the work. Given a job to do, I'll do it well, whether it be firing an engine or robbing a bank.' The Chief was grinning at me. He seemed to like this talk. 'You want me to save you from yourself,' he said. He took out a cigar and lit it. 'You hungry?' he said. I knew straightaway that he meant to take me over to the hotel. 'I'd best change my suit,' I said, shocked. 'That's right,' said the Chief. 'Can't go in your knockabout clothes.' 'It's my disguise,' I said. The Chief nodded, mind elsewhere once more. I dashed off to Left Luggage (which had just opened for business), took out my best suit, changed into it in the gents, and replaced it with the bad suit, all at the cost of a tanner. 'Natty' said the Chief, when I returned to the office, and five minutes later we were aiming for the dining room of the York Station Hotel or rather, one of the three dining rooms. The one we were after lay on the second floor, and, as we approached along a corridor wide as a road, I heard a droning noise to the right: there was a housemaid, alone in a ballroom and pushing an electrical cleaner. The Chief grinned at me as we passed her, and the sound of the machine was gradually replaced by a mighty rising tingle-tangle. We turned a corner, and doors opened on to something resembling a great wedding feast or banquet: Sunday breakfast at the Station Hotel.

A man in livery approached us, and led us towards a bonny serving girl. She said, 'Do you wish to view the breakfast?' You'd have thought it was a work of art, and in fact it was – all laid out on three sideboards before the high windows overlooking the hotel pleasure gardens. I noticed for the first time that Sunday, 11 February had become a fine winter's morning, and this feast required nothing less. At the sideboards, well- to-do folk were eyeing bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, devilled kidneys, haddock, hams and cold meats and roasts, all on silver plates and warmed by spirit lamps. We took our seats, informed a waitress of our selections; she brought the preliminaries of coffee, toast, pots of marmalade, honey, unknown imported jams. She smiled often as she worked and it was a very good smile indeed; you didn't tire of it.

'This keeps you going until dinnertime, you know,' said the Chief, and his face could not contain his twisted, half- embarrassed smile. He was thinking of the morning he'd left me in the cold Police Office with nothing but a cold kettle. But I was wondering whether we ought to be in the hotel at all. It was the Chief himself who'd made all those rules about our not being seen together, after all.

'You're not a dog, lad,' said the Chief, as he poured coffee, 'a creature trained to absolutely obedience at all times. You must operate in two minds. What most folk – most policemen especially – don't understand about police work is that it's brain work of the most confoundedly difficult sort.'

As he said this, the swell sitting opposite a woman at the next table turned to face us, and it was like a field gun swinging on its pivot. He was a bastard – I could see that right away.

'You must go along with your bad lads,' said the Chief, 'but stop short before the point of no return.'

'And what then?' The Chief spooned a lump of marmalade on to his toast. It fell off. He spooned it on again. 'Remember,' he said, 'that you will not have brought the business to that point. It would have arrived there anyway, and when it does come, if there's no help to hand, you must do your best to face down 'Face down what?' I asked after a while, but the Chief was eating his toast and marmalade. 'Evil,' he said, when he'd finished. 'But I have no means of giving the alarm.' Our neighbour, the toff, was prodding at bacon with a fork. He seemed very down on the whole show. This was not a very good breakfast as far as he was concerned. He looked up at the woman sitting before him: 'Want fruit?' he said, in a dead voice. I did not hear her reply. The Chief picked up another bit of toast. It was fascinating to watch him eat, and also quite off-putting. I suddenly remembered what the Police Gazette had said about Howard or Sampson: 'Will probably be found in hotels'. 'Look,' said the Chief, 'we must net these lads, and we must net them finely. And that means an ambush, yes, but at the right time. At the moment what've we got? Theft of a cylinder of some sort?' Was the aristocratic misery alongside us listening? He was looking at the woman. It was hard to say. 'It'll be used to cut metal, sir,' I said quietly, 'as I've already mentioned.' 'Theft of a cylinder,' repeated the Chief, 'pick-pocketing within the station; an assault. Other minor matters possibly. It's very thin pickings, and yet you suspect this scoundrel – the number one man – of all sorts.' 'I'm sure he killed the Camerons' I said, in an under- breath. 'They were in his way somehow.'

'Add to that,' said the Chief, who continued loud, in spite of my whispers, 'the fact that you say the next meeting is not the actual doings, but more in the way of… plotting?'

I nodded, although I wasn't quite sure of that. As I tried to recall exactly what had been said on the cart coming away from the goods yard, a question came: why would Sampson want Allan Appleby involved in the planning of the great doing?

'We'll meet tomorrow in the Police Office at six in the morning,' the Chief was saying. 'No, meet at five. I've to be in Newcastle at half-past seven. We'll talk over whatever happens tonight and see if we have a better understanding of their final object.'

I asked the Chief: 'Any news on Richard Mariner?'

'Mariner?' said the Chief, a strange look on his face.

'The night porter here who did away with himself.'

'I asked about him. Spoke to the general manager. Nothing in it. The fellow always was a miserable sort – he'd had the morbs for years…'

The girl came up again, with the bacon and eggs and related matters. She served very daintily, but clumped off when she'd set it all out, which made her even more charming somehow. The Chief watched her as she walked away

'One curious thing about Mariner though…' the Chief continued. 'He'd worked in the housekeeper's office, later with the banqueting staff… knew all about glass, linen and silver.'

'That fits the bill' I said, and I thought of the riches of the Company. The glasses on our table, the cruet, the cutlery, the cloth – all carried the North Eastern insignia. I was sure that Sampson had got at Mariner somehow.

'I've hours to kill until I go along to the Grapes,' I said. 'Might I go back to the Police Office for another look at the particulars in the occurrences file?' 'There've been no occurrences since you last looked,' said the Chief. 'None in that line, I mean.' He appeared to be thinking; he pulled out his pocket watch, saying, 'It's eight o'clock turned.' He then took out of another pocket a silver key, which he handed to me. 'I want you out of there at eight-thirty sharp,' he said, passing me the key. 'Should I lock up when I'm finished?' 'Leave the door open and put the key in my desk,' he said, 'Shillito will be in at nine.' He was calling for more coffee as I walked away.