Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Eleven

I nodded thanks to Billy, who said, 'Would you care to read those papers here? It's cold out.'

'Much obliged,' I said.

I sat down and he brought me a cup of tea, which I never touched because on turning to the prosecution file marked 'Crown vs Sanderson', it straightaway came to me that here was the business that had been known to York newspaper readers as 'The Lame Horse Murders'. The case had been tried in Durham nine months previously; I had forgotten that the defendant was called Sanderson, and the two victims were called Lee.

George Lee's wife was of superior rank to him. Lee himself had had no schooling to speak of and had started work in the iron mines at fifteen. He was a joiner at various places, rising swiftly to foreman joiner. He was good at his job; couldn't be beaten for energy and push. Aged thirty-one he was injured in a cage accident at New Mine, which was somewhere on the cliffs near Saltburn, for which he was handsomely compensated. He'd used the money to undertake a degree in mining engineering at Leeds University, obtaining a first-class certificate.

He then worked at a certain Marine Mine, and here he invented a whole new contraption for the mines: the Lee Picking Belt, which had put him in funds for life. His next move was to become a consulting engineer, employed at umpteen mines, and he'd also become an investor: shareholder here, seat on the board there.

In 1904, Lee had bought The Grange: a tidy-sized place a mile or so inland of Staithes, and so about a dozen miles south of Saltburn. Here, he'd set up as a country gentleman in a small way.

It was mentioned in the report that he 'travelled every working day to the office he kept in Middlesbrough', but it seemed to be nowhere stated that he had done so as a member of a travelling club. That had been my own discovery, and all of a sudden it didn't seem of much account.

I looked up just then to see the door of the police office opening.

A constable came in holding another man by the elbow. This second fellow was smartly turned out. He held a well-brushed bowler lightly decorated with snow, and had a pleasant lemony smell to him: good-class hair oil. He was being led off to the holding cell nonetheless. A couple of minutes later, the constable came by my desk again. Introducing myself, I asked whether he might be Robinson, the man who'd interviewed Peters about the theft of the camera, but he was not. At this, I wanted to get back to 'Crown vs Sanderson', but the constable, nodding towards the holding cell, said, 'Notorious fare-avoider, that bloke.'

'Caught him at it, have you?'

The constable nodded. He was holding a cup of tea, provided by Billy.

'Making for Scotland on a doctored ticket, he was.'

'Looks like he came along pretty quietly.'

'Like a lamb,' the constable said, draining his tea. 'He's wanted by the town police here on a number of other points besides.'

He just would be, I thought, as the constable returned his teacup to Billy, gave me good evening and quitted the room.

In that perfect police office, I turned back to the file.

Gilbert Sanderson, George Lee's murderer, had followed evil courses from an early age, and had practically grown up in the reformatory at Durham. It was believed he'd got his living mainly by burglary from then on, although he'd held some subordinate positions in some of the Cleveland iron mines, and had described himself on his marriage certificate of 1897 as a 'tinker'. Sanderson kept quarters at Loftus, in the heart of the iron-mining district, but he was of a roaming disposition, and travelled throughout the North Riding buying and selling, which is where the horse had come in. It was a white mare, an ex-Middlesbrough cab horse that had suffered a collision with a motor in Middlesbrough city centre and been ripped open along the flank. But the mare - name of Juliette - had been stitched and survived.

A year ago, the paths of Sanderson and Lee had crossed.

Sanderson broke into The Grange on 11 December 1908, and was stowing candlesticks in a haversack when the owner came upon him. Lee was stabbed through the heart. The wife came next into the room, and got the same treatment. Both died instantly; the manservant was blinded in one eye, and he was lucky at that, for the knife point had stopped just short of causing injury to the brain. The boy, who was seven years old at the time, survived the attack and now lodged with the late Mrs Lee's sister in London, with all the property held in trust for him.

It was the manservant's description that had done for Sanderson; that and the discovery of the horse in the garden. It had been found lame, with a crack in the right foreleg, and this was taken to be the reason for Sanderson having made his escape on foot. He was well known to the local police (having twice before got hard labour for burglary), and he was arrested the next day at his lodgings in Loftus.

Sanderson was hanged at Durham Gaol on 4 March 1909, and a newspaper account of the hanging was contained in the file. At the head of it was a woodcut of Gilbert Sanderson: he was a big, pug-looking man with a bald head and long side whiskers.

I bundled up the papers, together with the camera and the photographs. I walked out on to the platform. It was crowded, although the Whitby train that everyone was after wasn't due for a quarter of an hour. A lad walked the platform shouting, 'Papers, cigarettes, chocolates,' and I wondered which of the three offered the best defence against cold. I let the lad go by, even though the Middlesbrough Gazette was offering its seasonal 'Complimentary Calendar'. I ducked into the refreshment room, where there were even more black-suited businessmen than on the platform. A fire blazed at each end of the room, and the bar was in the middle, under a gas ring that was kept rocking by the opening and closing of the door, to the annoyance of the steward, who kept reaching up to steady it. All the Complimentary Calendars had been chucked anyhow across the floor, and were being trodden to bits beneath the boots of the drinkers.

Hot milk and rum was on the go, so I bought a glass (in spite of the long cost) and turned to the second set of papers: the 'missing' file on Falconer.

Theodore Falconer was the son of a well-to-do Whitby ship's master. At sixteen, he'd gone to sea himself in a small coaster, against his father's wishes, returning four years later with a pronounced stutter, which he never cured. He never spoke of this adventure, or gave out where he'd been except to say 'Northern waters'.

He had been welcomed back like the Prodigal nonetheless, and after attending Oxford University he in due course inherited certain interests in shipping that his father had acquired on his own retirement from the sea. He was first on the board of shipyards that had built half a dozen steamers at Whitby during the 1880s. He had then moved from building to owning, becoming a partner in a shipping line that ordered ships from certain yards in the North East. These they would use to trade, or sell on directly. Many of these vessels were bought by mine owners or iron traders for the export of iron and steel, chiefly from Middlesbrough.

In 1906, Falconer had reduced his involvement in the business. He had removed, at the beginning of his old age, to The Cedars, a big house in the country half a mile outside Saltburn. But like the ironman George Lee, he'd kept an office in the commercial district of Middlesbrough, where it seemed that he had played at ship- owning and investing rather than pursuing the business in earnest.

It appeared that Falconer was a man of modest habits. He employed only one part-time slavey; he had no stables, carriage or groom. It was speculated in the police report that he 'preferred to walk', for Falconer was a great outdoorsman, and was often striding out to the moor in his tweed breeches, in pursuit of botany, bird-watching and other interests.

Falconer had also founded the Cleveland Naturalists Club, which met four times a year in a timber hut in woods near The Cedars (that sounded a rum do, I thought), and was president of other fellowships of a similar tramping nature, and patron of the Whitby Seamen's Hospital. He was a churchman (Methodist), charitably inclined and therefore pretty well-liked despite being, according to the report, 'somewhat of a stubborn nature, not easy to manage'. He had been a bachelor lifelong.

A porter put his head around the door and announced the Whitby train. I left the refreshment room, and crossed the icy platform, still reading.

Taking my seat, I found the notice concerning Falconer that appeared in the Police Gazette. Going by the woodcut that accompanied it, he did not look like the sort of man who went missing, but the sort of man who came back: a strong man - a Shackleton of the moors.

The advertisement was headed 'Missing'; then came '£100 reward'. The meat of it was this:

Since December 2nd 1908,Theodore Falconer, aged sixty-five, afflicted by stutter.

Medium height, hair and beard grey and abundant, eyes blue, complexion pale, suit of grey

tweed, silver lever watch and chain, lace boots, black hard hat. Last seen walking towards his

house, The Cedars, Saltburn district, at six-thirty pm on December 2nd. The above reward

will be paid by John Mason, Solicitor, Flowergate, Whitby, to the first person information

leading to the giving whereabouts of Falconer.

I read the date again. He had last been seen the day before Peters had been deprived of one of his two cameras. All the dates were bunching up, but I could not make sense of them. Certainly, Falconer had been wearing what looked like a grey tweed suit in the Peters photograph. But no doubt he wore the same get-up every day.

What did I know? That Falconer was last seen on 2. December; that Peters reported the theft of the camera that contained a picture of Falconer and the Club on the 3rd; that some time shortly afterwards he'd visited Stone Farm for the second time, there to be done in, and to have his second camera not stolen but ransacked; that nine days after the last sighting of Falconer, Lee had been murdered by Gilbert Sanderson . . . Had Sanderson done for the lot of them? But he was a thief, and nothing suggested that anything had been stolen from Falconer - he had simply disappeared. And there was the old man, Moody, who'd 'gone under a train' after Sanderson had hung.

Perhaps Sanderson's friends or confederates had pursued the Club after his conviction. But the Club members had not given evidence against Sanderson, and in any event Falconer had disappeared before the robbery at The Grange had taken place.

Through the carriage window, I saw the world in fragments: a furnace in blast beyond Redcap lighting up a great circle of snow for half a mile around; the flash of an illuminated mine, rotary tipplers circling on wires. Saltburn came, and we reversed out as before. The Club members had been photographed at Saltburn. They were all up by Saltburn.

We next passed Stone Farm: nobody about on the platform, Crystal's passing loop lit up behind. At Loftus, where the murderer Sanderson had lived, I had a clear view through a window into a brightly lit hall where a silver band played. I could not hear them, though. The viaduct came, and we rolled slowly through the darkness a hundred and fifty foot up, the Flat Scar mine appearing as a lonely cluster of lights to the left and far below. As we neared the fishing village of Staithes, I leant towards the window again, trying to spy a homestead that might have been Lee's place, The Grange.

But the train was too fast, and the world was too dark.

Sanderson had argued that he had never visited The Grange; that at the material time he had been in the company of a man called Baxter. But this Baxter could not be found.

I sat back and thought again of the white horse, Juliette by name.

It was always likely that such a notable animal would be traced back to its owner, so why did Sanderson take the beast with him on the robbery? Sanderson's story was that the nag had been stolen from him a day or so before the robbery.

My thoughts suddenly shifted away from this head-racking business and towards the York office and Shillito. I had failed to do what he asked, and it struck me that he really might try to have me stood down. I turned again towards the window, but it was impossible by now even to tell the difference between land and sea.