Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Six

Down to the sea, up again a little way, and I came to the other Whitby station: the Town Station. It overlooked the harbour. Two trains were in steam, but there were no takers for them. A line of footprints in the snow ran along the platform, and I followed them to a porter who was sitting on a barrow reading the Whitby Morning Post instead of scraping up the snow. I held up my warrant card to him, saying, 'How do? I'm cutting through to Bog Hall, all right?'

I wasn't really asking but telling him.

I stepped down off the platform and walked into a wide railway territory across which snow flew right to left, seawards. Here was the main line to York, running away through a mass of sidings and marshalling yards. Beyond lay the estuary of the river, where signals gave way to the masts of schooners. I was making for a mass of carriages by the river's edge when a tiny pilot engine moving under a great tower of steam checked my progress. The driver kept his face set forwards but the fireman turned and smiled down at me.

'Now then!' he called down.

'You wouldn't know the whereabouts of the yardmaster?' I said.

Just then a man stepped around the smokebox end of the engine, which straightaway began a fast retreat, the fireman grinning at me all the while.

'Who wants me?' asked the man. I explained what I was about and showed him my warrant card, and he gave his name as Mackenzie. He was a big bloke, and seemed to fairly roll over the rails and barrow-boards on our way to the farthest corner of the siding, where the railway land met the half-frozen river.

'Mothballed,' said Mackenzie, coming to rest, with his fingers in his waistcoat pockets, before a train of oddments. We were looking directly up at a dirty but good-class bogie carriage. It was in Company colours, but 'CTC' was written in gold on the side.

'Cleveland Travelling Club,' said Mr Mackenzie. 'Ran from Whitby to Middlesbrough and back every day for nigh on twenty years.'

'When was it decommissioned?'

'One year since,' he said. 'Fancy a look up? Pride of the line, this was,' said Mackenzie, hauling himself up towards one of the high doors. He was proud of it himself too, as it seemed to me.

He got the door open after a bit of struggle that cost him his perch on the footboard, pitching him on to the mucky snow beneath. He clambered up again, motioning me to follow.

The carriage smelt of past cooking, and it contained coldness: a special damp kind.

'Subscribing Club members only in here,' said Mackenzie. 'That was always the rule. No guests allowed - not even if they paid treble. You after taking pictures?'

He was pointing at the Mentor Reflex.

I shook my head. I was looking at a great boiler in a cubby-hole all of its own.

'Tea-making machine,' said Mackenzie, as he squeezed his way forwards.

'Galley's next,' he said, sliding back a door that gave on to a little dusty kitchen. Half a dozen dusty wine glasses in a basket; two cups rested on a short draining board. I picked one up.

'Gold trim,' I said.

I knew the design. Best Company china. I'd first come across it at the Station Hotel, York.

'Where's the rest of the service?' I asked Mackenzie, and his cheeks rolled upwards and outwards as he smiled. 'Tom Coleman's back parlour, shouldn't wonder.'

'Who's he?'

'Whitby Town stationmaster as was. Took superannuation nine months since. Took himself off to Cornwall 'n all.'

'That's handy,' I said. 'Who else would know about this show?' 'You might try the traffic department,' said Mackenzie. 'They supplied the Club tickets.'

'They'd be seasons, I suppose?'

'Aye,' said Mackenzie. 'Whitby-Middlesbrough annual returns. Specials, like.'

We were moving along the corridor again.

Mackenzie said, 'The Club never had a full complement of members, you know.'

'The club cars I've heard of,' I said, 'on the Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Midland and suchlike - there'd be twenty-five members or so. That amount was needed before the Company would lay out money for the carriage.'

'Well, this club was different,' said Mackenzie.

You'd have thought he was the Hon Sec or some such.

'Richer,' he added, after a space. 'Membership never overtopped five.'

We were moving along the corridor again, passing two compartments. Inside they were like a rare sort of First Class accommodation: wood panelling with walnut trimmings, fancy electroliers bunched up into railway chandeliers. Photographic views were mounted in glass frames above each of the dozen seats - all the photographs showed country houses instead of the usual waterfalls or whatnot. One of the window panes was cracked, and there was a single bootprint on one of the seats.

Mackenzie was shaking his head as we pushed along the corridor. 'It was fitted on to the morning Whitby-Middlesbrough train,' he said. 'Came back with the evening Middlesbrough-Whitby.'

The corridor now brought us into a saloon: a railway sitting room with two settees facing each other under another brace of chandeliers. The seats had their backs to the windows. At either end were more chairs: two rockers facing a third sofa, and this one with a drop-head, for lying back.

'You'd have your glass of wine on your way home from business,' said Mackenzie, 'and you'd drink it stretched out flat! Bit of all right, wouldn't you say?'

'But only one of them could do that,' I said.

'All right if you were that one, then -'

'I just can't picture the sort of men who might have rode up here waiting on the platform at Whitby Town every morning,' I said.

'The train ran from Whitby,' he said. 'They didn't. Nobody who rode up here boarded at Whitby as far as I know. They lived at different spots further along the line.'

'Where?'

'Wherever a good house was to be found. Places around Saltburn.'

Stone Farm was near Saltburn. Was this a Club of murderers?

'They lived closer to Middlesbrough than to Whitby, then?'

He nodded.

'It's an hour and a half all the way from Whitby to Middlesbrough. You wouldn't want to do that every day.'

'They all rode every day?'

He nodded.

They were not gentry, then; not county people but businessmen. They could run to the smaller sorts of country houses. They'd have carriages and half a dozen servants apiece, but were still obliged to turn up daily at their place of business.

'Who put the Club together?'

'Search me. One of the members?'

'How come you know so much about the club yet can't put a name to any of the members?'

He let this go by, saying, 'The one who put the Club together would be the same bloke who put in for this carriage.'

'Did you ever set eyes on any of the Club people?'

'Don't reckon so. The carriage was always empty when it left here, remember.'

'What about Tom . . . whatsisname?'

'Coleman.'

'That's it - Whitby SM as was. Might it be worth writing to him in Cornwall?'

'You'd be writing to a dead man,' he said.

'When did he die?'

'This summer.' 'Of what?'

Mackenzie shrugged.

'Heart.'

He was enjoying this: the back and forth, like a game of tennis.

'Why did the Club have the two compartments and the saloon?'

He shrugged again, saying, 'Why do some folk have sitting rooms and parlours? Comes down to brass.'

The wind was getting up, and the carriage shivered for a moment like one of the boats in the harbour, but Mackenzie held his footing.

'Where are all the members of this Club?'

'All gone,' he said, grinning.

'Gone where?'

He was shaking his head vigorously now, as though trying to shake off the smile.

'That,' he said, 'is not known to any of the blokes along the line.'