Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Sixteen

I was walking back along Platform Four a couple of minutes later when I saw what I knew to be the Pickering train at a stand. It was waiting at the bay platform just north of the police office, and I was closing on it even before I saw Davitt, the fare evader, climbing up.

He had snow on his cap and coat, for the stuff was now coming down thickly, and I marvelled at how this bloke would go to any lengths to get out of his house and ride on a train without paying. But he gave me an excuse to go to Pickering - home of Club member Moody's son. After all, Shillito himself had told me to put the collar on Davitt.

The guard was now holding out his green flag. I broke into a run, and was only half-way to the train when the flag was waved.

'Wait!' I shouted, but you can't unwave a flag, and the train was off. My hurtling progress took me past the open door of the police office, from where I fancied that I heard a man shouting after me - it might have been Shillito, might have been Wright. But I ran on regardless. I leapt up on to the footboard of the rear carriage just as that carriage came out from underneath the glass roof, and into the flying snow. I wrestled with the door - the train was now making a good thirty miles an hour through a blizzard, and there was only six inches of timber between me and the sharp track ballast. We were out of the station bounds, and running along by the back gardens of the Bootham district by the time I managed to fettle the door and get in.

Inside the compartment, a fearful-looking man sat in the semi- darkness: Davitt. He nodded to me over the top of the Yorkshire

Evening Press that he was pretending to read. He was a small bloke in a dinty bowler - shop assistant type or junior clerk in looks, but he rode the trains so often that his work must have required him to do it. Perhaps he travelled in some line of goods or other, but he was never seen to carry anything except a newspaper.

'You had all on there ... Nearly lost your hat.'

I couldn't speak for a moment, but had to catch my breath, scattering snow on the compartment floor as I unbuttoned my topcoat. I took off my hat, and pushed my hand through my sodden hair, noticing as I did so that my coat sleeve had dried to a solid blue - just as if it had been patched with blue darning.

'I was just about to get up and let you in,' said Davitt.

Very likely, I thought. There was no doubt that Davitt knew me for a railway copper, but I fished out my warrant card in any case.

'Like to see your ticket, please,' I said and Davitt reached for his pocket book, looking pretty sick. I was just rehearsing the caution in my mind, when I looked down and saw that a great spray of black mud had been flung at my left trouser leg. I was fairly darted with the stuff - it must have come up off the wheel. Then came an even worse lookout, for I saw the ticket in Davitt's hand. I didn't need to take it from him; I could easily make out the date and the words 'Pickering' and 'Third Class'. (We were in Third Class, so even that was in order.)

'I'm obliged to you,' I said, and quit the compartment in double quick time.

I found an empty one three along, where I fell into a seat. What the hell did Davitt mean by travelling on a valid ticket? Had he turned square? I looked again at the mud on my trouser leg. I would let it dry, then try to brush it off before the wife's 'do'.

The train ran on quickly, past white fields, deep white lanes. It was express to Pickering: a mid-afternoon fast train to a town that slept through every day but market day. If anybody in the traffic office had given it a moment's thought, the service would have been struck from the timetable immediately. I took out the photograph. The snow had stopped by the time I stepped out of the station, but it had done its job. Pickering, which was in the beginnings of the moors, was all white. The town beck was frozen like a photograph. On the main street, I passed the ironmonger's shop - the pails outside it were full of snow. I walked past the post office - a white clock-face gazed through the glass, but not a soul was to be seen inside. I continued past the bike shop, where each bike stood outside had its load of snow. It was amazing how much snow would fit on one bicycle saddle. Why did they not take them in? I walked in a dream, wondering whether I might be given the boot directly on my returning to the office, and hardly caring either way.

And then a man riding a bike came round the corner from the little road that leads up to Pickering Castle. He had the trick of snow riding, even though the stuff was six inches thick in the road. He looked like a machine, leaning first to the left and then to the right as he pedalled, and never varying this rhythm. His Dunlops made a crunching noise as they cut through the snow. He was the one man alive in Pickering.

'Do you know where a man called Moody lives?' I called out.

'I do,' he said. 'Aye.'

And he carried on rocking, pushing on down the high street. I fell in with him (he wasn't going at much more than walking pace).

'Where then?' I said

'First left,' he said, still rocking, and not looking at me. 'Keep going till you're out of town; then it's first on your right, over the beck.'

'Ta,' I said.

I turned down the street he'd indicated.

Here was another frozen beck, with many pretty little bridges crossing it, each belonging to a big house. In my dateless state, I fell to wondering about the exact moment at which the beck had frozen. Midday? One o'clock? At that very moment, whatever it was, it had become a Christmas card. Moody's was the last house, and the biggest and oldest, and the sharp roof gave it the looks of a chapel. In the garden, I half-expected to see graves.

A maidservant answered my knock. I took off my hat and held up my warrant card - and I half-hoped I was doing it for the last time.

'Is the master of the house at home?' I said.

'Oh,' she said. 'Hold on.'

She wasn't very polite, for she left me dangling on the doorstep, and with a very tempting hallway before me: wide and firelit and with no furniture but two small, thin dogs in a basket. One stood and looked at me for a moment, but neither could be bothered to risk a cold blow by making a move in my direction. You couldn't blame them: they were just skin and bone the pair of them - two whippets.

The maidservant came back.

'Go up,' she said, still not polite.

The staircase had been wide, but the room she showed me into was small. Not much in it but a fire. It held a card table, an armchair and an empty bookshelf besides, but they didn't signify. It was a very clean house, considering the money came from chimney sweeping. I took the photograph from my pocket and looked at the oldest Club member: Moody. I must expect a man who looked something like him only twenty or so years younger. I walked over to the window, and looked out at the pretty road. I then heard a single loud slam, followed by a great roaring shout. Looking down, I saw a trap pulled by two horses and containing two muffled-up men come racing around the side of the house, along the drive and through the gate. It turned left into the road and flew, at full gallop, along the snowy road.

The maid came back a long while later.

'The master's not in,' she said.

'He was, though, wasn't he?' I said. 'I mean, he was in until he bloody left. He was in when I arrived.'

'He's been called away sudden,' she said.

She was quite bonny, but a good blocker.

'I am here on important police business. When is he coming back?'

She said nothing.

'Does he mean to return today?'

'He didn't leave word.'

We walked out into a corridor, where a manservant stood; he was closing a door behind him, but he didn't do it soon enough to stop me seeing that there was a world of whiteness inside this house as well as outside - white sheets over every article of furniture. He knew that I'd seen; and I could tell that he'd been told I was a copper. You can always tell when people know that.

'Does Mr Moody plan to remove?' I asked him.

'I think so, sir,' he said. 'We've all been given notice.'

I could feel the agitation of the maid without even giving her a glance.

'Since when?'

'A week since.'

The maid stepped in.

'You'd best talk to the master about that.'

The man said, 'If you leave a telegraphic address ...'

I wrote out the telegraphic address and the telephone number of the York police office, and gave it to the man, who was the more amiable of the two; or the more scared. The dogs and the two servants watched me go and, as I ambled along by the frozen stream, I turned and saw the two of them closing the great gates. I thought they were speaking to each other, but the frozen snow took away the sound.

Back in the high street, I saw that even the town hotel was called the White Swan, which seemed to be so in keeping with the whiteness of the place as to be ridiculous. I felt a powerful fancy for a pint of John Smith's, but I'd given my word to the wife, so I tramped on towards the station as afternoon changed to evening. All I was doing was sinking ever further into a kind of despairing dream; and all I had so far proved was that the Mystery of the Travelling Club certainly was a mystery. That house of Moody's was the sort of place in which a wealthy man saw out his days. It was the final prize for a lifetime of toil or luck. He ought not to be haring away from it at such a great rate in terrible weather on account of questions about his father. And who had been riding with him? Was the second fellow just the coachman? Or was he another member of the Travelling Club?

We stopped at the little town of Malton on the way back, making only a small disturbance in my tangled dreams.