Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Ten

I paid the money over without a thought for the cost, and pulled first from the envelope the two negatives. Five men stood on a platform before a special carriage. It was the one I'd viewed at Bog Hall Sidings, Whitby. Above it was visible a part of the platform canopy, and I knew that right away for the broken one at Saltburn. The men's eyes seemed to be burning, and all about their boots was a mass of rough blackness - snow in reverse.

I then pulled out the prints. Going from left to right, the first man was clean-shaven and wore a silk hat (which he held in his left hand, along with his gloves) and a topcoat buttoned right up; there would be a smart black morning coat underneath, no doubt. He was handsome, and his hair went backwards in waves. His dashing looks put me in mind of fine copperplate handwriting.

He looked slightly sidelong at the photographer, as if to say, 'Photograph me, would you?' and his left arm somehow did not belong about the shoulder of the next man, number two, but that's where it was. Number two was perhaps half the age of number one. He had a friendly face and smiled straight at the photographer. He carried a folded copy of a newspaper, the name of which I could make out: it was the Whitby Morning Post, which served the whole of the coast of North Yorkshire. He wore a derby hat, and had a fine winter flower in his buttonhole, as did the next man, who was about of an age with the first; his rough, grey hair and beard were all of a piece with his tweed suit. He might have been an explorer, freshly returned from the Arctic Circle. The fourth had a round face (he was bareheaded and bald) and round glasses. He gave a cautious smile. The flower in his buttonhole did not suit him. It was too flowery. Number five was older than the rest. He wore a stovepipe hat, and had blind-looking eyes; he looked dirty and confused, but also rich. He might be Moody - the man who'd gone under a train, father of another Moody now living in Pickering. I looked them over again, thinking of them in turn as handsome fellow, young fellow, wild-looking fellow, bald fellow and old fellow.

The second print was more or less the same, save for the fact that the young man was looking down, and I saw immediately that this was the difference between a photograph that could be used in a picture paper, and one that could not. The prints themselves made an impression not very different from that of the negatives - and this, I believed, was on account of the strangeness of the snow light; I could not tell whether the picture had been taken in the morning or afternoon.

What had become of these men?

I had already been told that one was dead, and I knew this much: that there was only one way your fortunes could go once you'd attained the distinction of your own railway carriage, and that was down the hill. I found myself turning one of the prints over, half expecting the druggist to have written their names on the reverse. I looked at the man, now serving a cold cure to another customer. Smart shopkeeper like himself - he might know one of the Club gents; he might know all six. So might any man in Middlesbrough, come to that. . .

I had meant to take my trophy straight to Detective Sergeant Williams, but a new notion came to me as I exited the druggist's, and I struck out for the largest building in my line of sight: the Middlesbrough Exchange. I crossed a wide square that was filled with trams come to the rescue of the freezing citizens. In the cold darkness, the iron-making smell had descended on the middle of the town: the strange, out-of-the-way smell of burning sand.

One of the mighty double doors of the Exchange was being swung to as I approached, and the place was evidently closing up. A fossil in a gold-braided uniform watched me go in, as if to say, 'I won't trouble to ask your business; you'll be ejected before long in any case.' In the great hall of the Exchange, the remaining groups of buyers and sellers talked under clouds of cigar smoke. Wooden stands were placed at intervals, each one an island under its own electric light. Notices were pinned to the stands: the day's prices of coal, ironstone, iron, steel and ships, as I supposed - all the goods that had raised Middlesbrough from nothing to a city of a hundred thousand souls in less than a lifetime.

Some clerks remained at the counters that were set into the walls beneath a great gallery, but most were already shuttered. I walked towards one group of businessmen with my warrant card and the photograph held aloft. 'Detective Stringer of the railway police,' I said, and they turned to me as one. It cost them quite an effort to look civil, but the warrant card made them do it. What did they see? A thin, youngish bloke with a camera over his shoulder; topcoat a little out at the elbows. It was my work coat. A new one, in a better grade of cloth, would be served out to me if I gained my promotion. As they eyed me, I felt very strongly the want of that word 'Sergeant' - 'Detective Sergeant' would have testified to at least one promotion successfully secured. One of the men took the photograph and passed it among his fellows. The second one to clap eyes on it spoke immediately.

'It's Falconer,' he said, and he pointed to the rather wild-looking one, the explorer type.

The next man to take the photograph nodded, and he too said, 'Falconer.'

'How would I find the man?' I asked.

'How would you find him?' asked one of the men, in a wondering tone. 'Well, that's the question, isn't it?'

Another of the group was speaking:

'And that one's - why, that's Lee.'

'Which one?' I said, craning to see, and I was aware of not appearing to be a fellow of quite the right sort.

'This one,' said one of the men, indicating the bald-headed and spectacle-wearing gent, while another at the same time asked, 'Is some connection discovered between the two?' But in fact they were all speaking at once now, and their black-gloved hands were all over the photograph as they each sought a better look.

'It's a travelling club,' I said, but the remark was lost in the scramble.

One of the men was asking, 'You're on the Middlesbrough force and you've not heard of poor George Lee?' The first one to have spoken gave me a narrow look, saying, 'You seem to stand in need of some enlightenment.'

'I'm from the railway force,' I said, 'stationed at York.'

'You're operating independently of the Middlesbrough constabulary?' one of the men asked. He seemed to quite credit that I might be, and that this might be a rather clever notion. He looked a little more amiable than the rest, but the situation was too humiliating for words. I must break away.

'Does this represent some new line in the investigation?' asked one of the men as I reclaimed the picture.

'Yes,' I said.

'But isn't it a little late for that?'

Christ knew whether it was or no, but Detective Sergeant Ralph Williams would be the man to tell me. Reclaiming the photograph, I fairly sprinted towards the double doors but one of the group - the amiable chap - was keeping pace, and as we crossed the exchange floor, he held his gloved hand out before him as though grasping an imaginary cricket ball.

'George Lee,' he said, waving his cane enthusiastically. 'If I had in my hand a quantity of ironstone, he could tell me the percentage of iron in a trice. Not just a rough indication of quality. I mean, he'd shoot a verdict straight at you. "Thirty-five per cent," he'd say, which is a good deal, and in which case, of course, you were on velvet. Twenty-five per cent? Oh Lord, then you had a headache - do you sink your shaft or no for that grade of stone?'

He'd stopped in the lobby or vestibule of the Exchange before the great double doors, and he was pressing the question on me:

'For twenty-five per cent stone?'

'If you could mine the stuff cheaply . . .' I said, groping in the darkness, and the amiable man gave me a sort of wink at that. We were pushing on towards the tram-packed square, the man's cane ticking like a clock on the new-laid pavement.

'What were George Lee's origins?' I asked, reasoning that no disgrace ought to attach to ignorance on that point.

But the amiable man had his arm out, and was saying, 'This is me.'

A hansom had stopped for him, and it had whisked him away as I looked on.

Not three minutes later, I was in the warm police office, where Ralph Williams - who was also amiable, but steady and quietly spoken with it - was inviting me to sit down at his desk chair. He himself perched on the desk.

'Now you have some further questions as regards the dead photographer?' he said, once I'd explained the absence of my quarry Clegg.

'I've discovered his camera,' I said, indicating the Mentor Reflex, 'and I've found the pictures in it. Now it all comes down to the identity of these fellows -'

I took the photograph from its pasteboard sleeve. 'They're the Whitby-Middlesbrough Travelling Club - went every day from country stops along the line into this station.'

Williams seemed a good fellow, but I'd been hoping to stifle that grin of his, and in this I had succeeded.

'The shot was taken at Saltburn,' I said, 'by Paul Peters.'

'Well, this is a turn-up,' said Williams, eyeing the photograph.

I told him how I'd come by it.

'Now this man,' I said, pointing to the bald, spectacle-wearing one, 'is George Lee, mining engineer. Some blokes at the Exchange just told me.'

Williams nodded.

'I believe it is.'

'What's become of him?'

'Lee?' said Williams, still looking at the photograph. 'Why, murdered.'

'Like Peters,' I said, 'and this picture makes a connection between them.'

Williams might have frowned at that, but his pleasant face didn't suit frowning. I asked him, 'Was it known that Lee was in this Club?' 'The connection was certainly not made in court,' said Williams. 'I do not believe that the matter of this ... Travelling Club ... I do not believe it was brought in.'

Williams called to the old clerk at the far end of the room. 'Prosecution register please, Billy - the Lee case.'

Williams put the photograph on the desk between us.

'The case was prosecuted?' I asked him.

Williams nodded.

'Somebody swing?'

Another nod, and Williams slowly pronounced a name: 'Gilbert Sanderson.'

'And this one,' I said, pointing to the wild-looking explorer type. 'This is Falconer?'

'I was coming to him,' said Williams.

'Was he murdered as well?'

'Maybe,' said Williams, and for the first time there was shortness in his tone. 'Theodore Falconer was reported disappeared about this time last year; picture widely circulated at the time. You'll find his woodcut in the Police Gazette most weeks. Billy has papers on him.'

Billy was on hand, giving me a file marked 'Crown vs -' somebody - I couldn't make out the name. There was another piece of paper being passed over. 'Telephone message,' said Billy. 'Call came through ten past three.'

He was a marvel of organisation, this Billy. Thanking him, I read the note: 'Detective Stringer to telephone Mr Bowman. Urgent.' The number given was 2196 London EC.

Detective Sergeant Williams was putting his coat on. I'd rattled him with my discoveries, no question. Billy moved away, and returned with a second file, this marked simply 'Theodore Falconer'.

'How about the other three in the picture?' I asked Williams, and he shook his head.

'This one,' he said, pointing to the clean-shaven, handsome man in black. 'The face seems -'

But he shook his head again. He'd seemed to have the name on his tongue, as had the blokes in the Exchange. Williams, smiling again, said, 'You're at liberty to take those papers away for a little while. I'm booking off just now - I have the job of collecting the family Christmas tree on the way home. Do you have children yourself, Detective Stringer?'

'One boy,' I said.

'I've three girls.'

Well, a fellow could run to three on a detective sergeant's wages.

'They're each after a doll's house,' he said, reaching for his bowler, 'so we'll land up with a whole street in miniature.'

'My boy wants a toy aeroplane,' I said. 'One that really flies.'

And it seemed to be quite typical of Williams that he should have responded:

'Now I know just where you can get one of those. Brown's,' said Detective Sergeant Williams, backing through the door. 'On Corporation Road here, but there's a York branch, I believe.'

'But how does it fly?'

'Why, elastic,' he said, with a parting nod.

Billy wound the magneto for me at his end of the office, and handed me the instrument. Half the telephone talkers in London seemed to come and go in echoing waves, and then I was put in connection with a very sad-sounding man who might have sighed very loudly when I asked, 'Am I through to The Railway Rover}' or that might just have been the noise of the line. Anyhow, it was The Railway Rover, and Stephen Bowman had evidently just left the office in a tearing hurry.