Lost baggage porter

Chapter Seven

It was bitter cold, and still raining as I walked over to the bike stand with my head down, revolving a new thought about the Camerons. I'd had a run-in with them, and been seen about it. The barmaid at the Institute was a watchful sort, and knew my name. It might come up in the investigation. A thought checked me: I might be suspected of having done it. That would be about right, for in becoming a policeman I wasn't really doing a job so much as working out a punishment.

I walked on, thinking that if the Camerons were all they'd seemed, there'd likely be a long queue of suspects ahead of me. One had worked in the goods yard, and there'd been crimes in the goods yard. He was the second Company man to meet a violent end. The first had been Mariner, the night porter at the hotel, whose throat had been slit – by him or others. The Station Hotel was our territory, but the cinder path by the goods yard… Well, it seemed to me that ought to be ours as well, for not much happened on that path that didn't have something to do with the movement of goods on the railway.

I had been ordered to keep away from the station in daylight hours, and I wondered whether that included the Lost Luggage Office. At any rate, I meant to collect my missing bag once again, if it hadn't been nicked. I also wanted for some reason to set eyes on the mysterious Lund again. I looked up towards the bike stand, and my portmanteau was there, not three feet from the back wheel of the Humber. A quarter of a minute slowly dragged itself out as I stood there in the rain staring at it. It couldn't have been there at 5.55 when I'd arrived. I'd have run straight into it. Then again I'd been in a tearing hurry, so might have missed it. I looked inside: the magazines were all there, the top one a little damp. I picked up the bag, and heard a smooth Yorkshire voice saying, 'The first article is described as a brown canvas bag, about three foot in length, corded, with "Nursing Sister Harper" printed on it in white letters. It contains a bed, one black mackintosh sheet, a pair of rubber boots, one rubber pillow, one ordinary pillow, one wash basin and one collapsible basin.'

It was the assistant Stationmaster, protected from the wind and the rain by his long black coat, and his silk topper. He was holding some papers, and reading from them for the benefit of Parkinson, the morngy lost-luggage superintendent, who wore his overcoat and bowler, and carried an umbrella, which he was fighting to keep still in the wind. He was looking sidelong as the assistant Stationmaster addressed him.

'I will have the porter make a special search, sir,' he said.

'See that you do,' said the assistant Stationmaster. 'It's the third letter I've had about this bag. Now,' he continued, shuffling the papers in his hand, 'listen to this.'

'Might we stand under the portico?' said Parkinson.

'It will only take a minute,' said the assistant Station- master, who began reading from a second sheet. 'The undermentioned luggage is missing. Large-sized wooden suitcase, brass studded, two side clips, centre lock, bearing label addressed "Williams, 60 Forest Walk, Scarborough." It may also carry labels for Chatham and Newhaven. Contents… Japanese gown, nightgown, tweed golf coat, black blouse and slip, felt hat, black straw hat, woollen hat, girl's dress, four pair stockings, grey silk scarf, black crepe scarf, comb, sponge, silver-backed brush, skunk fur for neck, opossum ditto, white circular jade pendant, tiger claw and chain…'

The rain redoubled, and Parkinson gave a sigh.

'Am I boring you, Mr Parkinson?' asked the assistant Sta- tionmaster.

'Not at all, sir,' said Parkinson.

'Two pair trousers,' the assistant Stationmaster continued, 'three petticoats, boy's shirts and vest, two nightdresses, child's war game, belt, leggings, Burberry, tennis shoes, walking boots, and toilet articles to wit toothbrush, face flannel, nail clippers, tweezers, soap times three, tube of Euthy- mol, hand cream… Have you seen this luggage?'

'No,' said Parkinson.

'Will you have the porter make a special search?'

'I will.'

Parkinson trudged on towards the Lost Luggage Office, and I watched him go, wondering: did he return my magazines to me? It was possible, since I'd come upon him standing so near to them. Set against that, though, was the thought that returning my magazines would have involved work, something Parkinson was evidently not over-keen on. And he had not acknowledged me or even looked in my direction while being lectured by the assistant Stationmaster.

I cycled off legs akimbo, with the portmanteau balanced on the crossbar of the Humber, for I could see my way clear to using it at the Garden Gate. If anyone had returned them to me, I thought, pedalling away in the direction of town, it had surely been Lund – making, perhaps, his early round of lost-property collections – rather than his governor, Parkinson.

I knocked about York all morning, fretting about the Camerons, Lund, the sharps at the station, and my prospects at the Garden Gate. At midday, I bought an Evening Press in Museum Street, and there were precious few details added to the story, only that the bodies might have been lying on the cinder track for a day or more before discovery. Otherwise it was all windy stuff: the case appeared to contain features of strong dramatic interest… a certain vicar meant to make mention of it in a sermon to be given in the Minster on the following Sunday. It was also pointed out that this was the first year in living memory in which two murders had occurred in the city. The previous year, there'd been none at all.I turned around and saw the West towers of the Minster, the great bull horns, black against the grey sky. The shilling novels on the station bookstall had three-colour wrappers, but there were only two colours in central York at that moment. I folded my paper into the pocket of my new suit. A metal panel was nailed to the scrap of city wall that overlooked Museum Street: it said 'Uzit: The Ointment for All Occasions'. Beneath it stood a rough-looking bloke, smoking a cigar in the rain, watching me. I turned tail and rode the Humber along past the rattling carts of Coney Street, turning at the end into High Ousegate, where I propped the bike beneath a board that stuck out from a tobacconists reading 'CIGARS', the letters going round almost in a circle. I was not interested in baccy but the sign signified the start of an alleyway at the bottom of which was the office of a coal merchant, and a tiny rag shop that was half underground. The sign above the window read 'Clark' in very small letters – whispered it. You walked through the door, and immediately down some steps, as if a floor was too pricey a luxury. Inside was a small old man who'd shaved only in parts. 'I'm after a suit' I said, since the old fellow had said nothing but just looked at me.

The place was dark and sour-smelling; the suits behind the man were like a pile of flat dead bodies.

'Suit for every day?' asked the old fellow, without removing the cigarette. Smoke came up with each word, so that he communicated by puffs of it, just as the Red Indians are said to do.

'Yes. The one I've got on is my Sunday suit,' I added, to make a straight story of it. 'Might I have a look?'

He turned away from me with his hands in his pockets, which was the signal that I should fall to on the clothes heap.

After a couple of minutes, I found a suit that was a sight worse than any I'd ever seen before. I put on the coat, and the old man turned back towards me, smoking out the words:

'Best class work, that is. You're well away with that. Couldn't ask for a better.'

I held the trousers up against my legs. The cost was sixpence, and as I paid the fellow, I leant into his smoke, and across some tins he kept full of dusty trinkets. One of these held a tangle of old spectacles. I picked out one pair, put them on.

'How much are these, mate?' I asked, standing before a fragment of looking glass that hung from the wall, but hardly able to see a thing.

The word 'tuppence' came in two puffs of smoke.

I handed over the coin, took off the eye-glasses, and pushed out the lenses. I put the specs back on, and my reflection came clear. It was a regular marvel: there was no difference between the look of glasses with lenses and glasses without. The old fellow, looking on, had at last removed his cigarette.

'More to your liking now, are they?'

'Aye,' I said.

'You're nuts,' he said, very firmly and definitely. Then the cigarette went back in.

I walked out of the shop with the glass-less glasses and the suit bundled into my portmanteau on top of the magazines. I walked towards the gentlemen's lavatory in Coney Street, down the steps to where the wash-and-brush-up man waited. I knew him to be a sensible fellow in a white coat (every one of the dozen or so hairs on his head very carefully Brilliantined), and he did not blink an eye at the sight of me in my spectacles. It was a test, and he – or I – had passed it.

I put a ha'penny in the door slot, and locked myself in one of the WCs, where I put the old suit on, laying my good one on top of the magazines in the bag. Then I pulled the chain for good measure. As I stood there amid the roaring York waters, I tried to tell myself: my blood is up; this is all quite a lark, and on better wages than I earned on the footplate. But I kept wondering: ought I not to have been given a police whistle or some other method of giving the alarm? I was too much at large in the world; I wanted the rules and protection of the railwayman's life.

I stepped out of the WC, and the wide looking glass was before me. The sight checked me for a second. I was Allan… Allan something, late of Halifax. Factory turns and work in the fields – that had been my lot; and a spell in the workhouse at Bradford. I saw myself as Allan, approaching York on foot from Leeds, alone in the wide fields, with a griming of snow on the soil. Plainly I was in want of a tattoo but otherwise I fancied I looked the part.

I now trudged miserably on, killing time around the narrow ancient streets, where the rain raced along the wide stone gutters, and the houses were kept up by force of habit alone. The York citizens, with their derby hats and celluloid collars, had the care of the city for a little while, but before long there'd be a new lot, with different hats and collars. I remembered a scrap of history about York from the schoolroom at Baytown: 'Here history is almost the history of Britain.' What were the deaths of two brothers when set against that?

I walked on, thinking about the wife at home typewriting behind the long garden with the washing line too high, like a telegraph wire. How could my work be kept secret from her? It seemed unimaginable, with her brains.

The stiff, damp suit wanted to walk in a different way to my way – or to lie down and die, just as its late owner had certainly done. At getting on for 3 p.m., I crossed over Lendal Bridge, went past the new North Eastern office – that great riverside stack of railway clerks – and through the arch in the Bar Walls towards the station. Walking through the portico, past all the shouting carters and cabmen, I thought: I should not be showing my face here. I was too close to the Police Office, base of my operations, but I had to stow my good suit.

This I did in the Left Luggage Office, a far brighter and cheerier spot than the Lost Luggage Office, full of whistling blokes and light. I made sure the warrant card and the Derbies were in the pocket of the suit I handed over; I held on to the Railway Magazines though. As I turned away from the office, clutching the ticket I'd been given in return for the suit, I saw the Lad, rushing along with his telegraph form. 'How do… Cheerio' he said, laughing as he shot past. I walked quickly off the platform. It was then that I saw, over on Platform Six, which was generally the one for Leeds, an engine belonging to my former employers, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, the black paint with red piping. It was a 0-6-0 Class, one of the Wigan Bashers, good for any kind of work, from pick-up goods to main line. The Wigan Basher had four coaches on, and it was heartbreaking to see it pulling away, not tied down to rain, cocoa smell and dreary York ways.

I took my dinner at the bargeman's cafe on the King's Staith, walked about a bit more; took a pint at the Ouse Bridge Tavern, then stepped out into lamplight and dark rain shine.

It was nigh on four o'clock when I struck out for Layerthorpe.