Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Eighteen

The Ebor Hall was packed and very brightly lit. I'd have felt a little dizzy entering it even if I'd not had such a peculiar day and drunk the Rifle League's brain-dusters.

I could not see the wife, but I could see her hand in almost everything. The holly that hung from the gas mantles and all about the stage - that was her doing; and the piano was not in its alcove but at the side of the stage - so she'd managed to get that shifted. A lady was playing it, and ladies were in fact doing everything, especially collecting up papers or passing out cups of tea by the gross. I knew what was happening: the spelling bee had just come to an end. Half the ladies were sitting on clusters of chairs under gas mantles and half were moving about. All the ladies were talking, and it was all to do with the Movement and its stores.

'Have you seen the new York store? Plate glass and electric light to show off the loaves.'

'There are better things in the old store, I think.'

'We had a very nice visit to the warehouse ...'

I caught sight of one of the ladies looking at my suit and at my bandaged hand; she turned to point me out to the woman sitting next to her, but she was talking fourteen to the dozen with a third woman. I walked on through the hall; half wanting to see the wife, half not. I could trust myself to speak; the only trouble was that I was not as concerned about my appearance as I knew I ought to be . . . and the only other problem was that my head seemed a long way from my shoulders. As I looked about, the piano came to a stop, and that somehow left me feeling as though every woman in the place was eyeing me, and not in a way I would have liked; but in fact they were all now facing the stage, where a very well-spoken woman was calling for quiet.

She was bonny-looking, though fifty years old at least. I liked the way her grey hair set off her dark eyes. She was upper class, but a socialist - there were more of that sort about than you might have thought, and they were given to speech-making

She was making a speech now.

'Co-operation is not merely about buying goods at a community store, and then waiting for the dividend . . .'

'I wonder if she takes cock?' said a man who was suddenly alongside me. He lurched as I turned to look at him. He was a sight drunker than me, and had evidently been given up as a bad job by whatever woman had brought him.

'We must apply our principles of co-operation to every aspect of our existence . . .'

'Your missus in this show?' asked the drunk.

I nodded.

'Mine 'n all. She knows the price of grate polish in every Co-op in Yorkshire, but I say, "Buy the bloody grate polish; clean the bloody grate.'"

Behind him I saw another of the few men in the place, and after a moment of disbelief I realised that it was Wright, the police- office clerk. He must have a wife who was a Co-operator. He was coming up to me fast; and curious as usual.

'What the heck are you doing here?'

Before I could answer, he said, 'I've been hunting for you all afternoon. The man Bowman from London - he's been -'

But the wife had stepped in between me and Wright, and was blocking him out.

'Hello, baby,' I said.

She sort of slid away, and the woman who'd made the speech had replaced her. She was holding out her hand to me. In shaking hands, she had to touch the bloody bandage.

'Avril Gregory-Gresham,' she was saying. 'Lydia's told me so much about you.'

The wife, slightly behind her now, close to Wright, was looking murder at me. It made her look beautiful in a different way. But Mrs Gregory-Gresham didn't seem quite so bothered about the state of me. She was more like Wright - a curious type, and she frowned quite prettily as she said, 'You look rather -'

'Pardon my appearance,' I broke in; and it was as if a different man was speaking. 'I've been in a fight.'

The wife was still there; but I did not like to meet her eye. Mrs Gregory-Gresham was frowning more deeply.

'I am a policeman,' I explained

'Yes,' she said, 'I know that,' and she was leaning towards me, not away, which was good.

'The fight,' I said. 'It was much -'

I couldn't speak for a moment.

'Much of a muchness?' suggested Mrs Gregory-Gresham.

I had meant to say that what had happened had been much less bad than it looked or sounded - or something.

'Are you quite all right?' she said, and the fact of the matter was that she was trying to help. 'Forgive me, but you do smell rather strongly of -'

'Yes,' I said quickly, 'carbolic.'

'You were arresting a wrongdoer?' she asked, and I at least had enough off to say, 'That's just it. I am investigating a murder.'

'The man you arrested was a murderer? But this is fascinating.'

'The business was pursuant to a murder,' I said, or that's what I'd meant to say, but I'd never even tried to speak that word sober, so I suppose it came out wrongly. As Mrs Gregory-Gresham looked on, I fished in my pocket for the photograph of the Travelling Club. As it emerged, I saw that it had become quite crumpled after the adventures of the day, and I thought of it as being like the calling card of a man who travels in some goods that nobody much wants.

'Most of these men are certainly dead,' I said, 'and so is the man who took this picture. Nobody knows why.'

Least of all me, I thought.

'You think,' she said, taking the photograph, 'that one of them killed the others.' 'Yes,' I said,'- or that someone else did.'

There was quite a long pause, after which Mrs Gregory- Gresham asked:

'What is your surmise about the murderer?'

'That he did not want this picture seen, that he will stop at nothing ... that he is not a member of the Co-operative Movement.'

She laughed at that, but only for a second.

'But I know this man,' she said.

She was indicating the young man.

'Phoebe - that's my daughter - she knew him at the University. They had a jolly at the river; a day of . . . rowing, you know, and she introduced me to him.'

'What's his name?'

'I can't remember, but I know the face; oh, now I know it. He was from the north,' she said in a rush, 'Middlesbrough way - and he'd won a prize for speaking.'

'Speaking about what?'

'Anything. It's the hair that I recognise, and he was sweet on Phoebe, I distinctly had that impression. I also think she was rather taken with him, although of course she never let on.'

A long bar of silence; then the piano started up again, just as Avril Gregory-Gresham said, 'His family had a place in Filey - on the Crescent, and they would summer there. Well, we have a place there too, and Phoebe had been in hopes of seeing him over the -'

'Last summer?' I put in.

'Last summer, yes.'

'She looked in the register every week. It's a ridiculous thing, but any fairly well-to-do visitor is listed in the local paper there.'

'Did he not come?' I said, thinking how strange the words sounded.

Avril Gregory-Gresham shook her head.

'He did not. I will speak to Phoebe, and I will get his name to you directly. I will speak to the girl next week, and pass on the name to Lydia, who will give it to you.'

I took this to mean that she would after all be giving the job of secretary or typewriter to the wife, who for the present stood in the background, still looking very doubtful. A moment later there was a switch, and in the fast-changing strangeness of the Co-op ladies' social, the wife was before me.

'Well, Mrs Gregory-Gresham found you fascinating.'

More tea was being distributed.

'I found you drunk,' added the wife.

'Yes,' I said. 'Well, you're both right.'

There was a new Co-operator speaking from the stage.

'What's going off now?' I said.

The wife half-turned her head towards the stage.

'Blind man's buff,' she said. 'What do you flipping well think?'

More speeches were taking place.

'Some speak of the sections and districts of our organisation,' the woman was saying. 'I say we are the moon and the stars . . .'

They applauded that, did the Co-operative ladies.

'What happened to your suit?' enquired the wife. She was nearly but not quite angry.

'It's been a very long day,' I said. 'But I'll tell you this. I think you have secured your position.'

'I think you are right,' she said slowly; and she nearly smiled into the bargain.

I held the photograph in my hands, and she was looking down at it.

The woman on the stage was saying, 'Until the King himself hears our message . . .'

'I've got into a few scrapes on account of these chaps,' I said, indicating the photograph. 'It's murders in the plural, looks like, and I had a bit of a row . .. not with a man I was trying to arrest, as I said just now, but with another officer.'

'You were fighting with another policeman?'

'One blow started and ended the matter.'

'You should have told Mrs Gregory-Gresham,' said the wife. 'She's had many a fight with a policeman herself.'

'I daresay,' I said, nodding, for of course the Co-op ladies went all out for the women's cause.

'I had to take a drink with the Chief,' I said. 'I saw him this afternoon at the shooting gallery -' 'He was at a funfair, was he? I wouldn't put it past him, from what I've heard.'

'Shooting range,' I said, 'if you want to split hairs. It was necessary for me to take a glass of punch in order to keep in with him.'

'Does he take your part against the man you hit?'

It was a cute question, but I gave a nod, just as though the matter could not possibly be doubted.

'You must have your promotion, you know,' she said. 'Otherwise I will not be able to take up my own.'

Wright was signalling to me from behind her.

'I must see this chap,' I said, indicating Wright.

The crowds of ladies pressing in from all sides were threatening to part us in any case. I cut through to kiss the wife, and moved towards the old clerk, who looked very anxious at the strangeness of being overwhelmed in this way, and very curious.

'I didn't know your missus was in the Movement,' he said.

'Aye,' I said. 'Well, what's up?'

'The London friend - Bowman -'

Wright was eyeing my suit.

'He's been coming through on the line every hour.'

'I thought he was dead.'

'Not him. You look half-dead yourself. What's up?'

'I crowned Shillito.'

We were walking towards the door of the Ebor Hall.

'You crowned Shillito?' he repeated in a sensational whisper.

He'd repeated it twice more by the time we were out in Coney Street, with the Co-op ladies' piano becoming faint in the background.

'I gave him a damn good hammering,' I said.

Wright was fairly bursting with questions, and the one he eventually gasped out was: 'When?'

'Four o'clock time,' I said

'I was out of the office then,' said Wright, and I could tell he was cursing himself for that. He then started in on a hundred other questions, but I checked him with one of my own for him:

'Where are we going, mate?' I said.

'You're going to telephone this Bowman fellow. He told me he's stopping late in his office, and I said I'd let you know if I happened to run into you.'

I was going to telephone, and old Wrighty was going to listen.

Ten minutes later we were in the empty police office, and the snow was dripping off our coats as Wright wound his magneto. The cold air had sobered me somewhat, though I still felt queer as Wright passed me the mouthpiece and did not move away. We were elbow to elbow as I said into the instrument, 'Mr Bowman? It's Detective Stringer here.'

But he didn't quite take that.

'Jim?' he said. 'It's Steve here.'

He might have been moving fast on a train from the sound of him - an Underground train.

'There's been a bit of a turn-up over the Peters business,' he said. 'A man has been stationed outside my house every morning and evening for four days.'

'What's he doing?'

'Watching the place. Watching me.'

'All the time - morning and night?'

'Not quite. He comes and goes. He must've taken lodgings roundabout.'

'Do you know him?'

'Certainly not.'

'What does he look like?'

'Big, wide - not over-pleasant, strange stockings.'

'How do you mean?'

'Yellow. Nobody wears yellow stockings in Wimbledon.'

'How do you know it's touching on the Peters business?'

'Well, isn't it?'

The line went and then came back, swallowing what might have been a moment of fear on Bowman's part.

'Look,' he said, as the connection came back, 'this man's not your Wimbledon type, and it's a little anxious-making.'

Bowman was an intelligent man who was not at that moment in drink. He was speaking to me as though I was the same, and I was galvanised just as I had been at Stone Farm. Bowman was not an adventurous sort himself, but he brought adventure to me. Here was movement in the mystery, and I heard myself say, 'I'll come up to London directly - come and see you tonight.'

'Tonight?' he said.

But even as I spoke, I was thinking: I'll arrive in the early hours, too late for the Underground ... I didn't fancy the cost of a cab across London.

'Well, I've got to look into the timings - that might not be on. But I'll run up to London tonight, put up somewhere near King's Cross and meet you first thing in the morning.'

'Then come to the office. But it can't be first thing - it's press day, and there's a lot of copy to get off. We'll meet at midday underneath the big clock at the Royal Courts of Justice on Fleet Street. Do you know it?'

I did - from my Waterloo days.

'I could spare an hour before I'd have to be back here,' Bowman continued, 'but we can sink a few pints and I'll put you in the picture.'

'Scrub out the beer if it's your press day,' I said.

'No fear.'

'But now you're going to have to go through another night of being watched. You might contact the Wimbledon police.'

'I've thought of it, but that would mean alerting Violet, which I'd rather not - and then again, what do I have to complain of? There's a man standing in the street. Well, it's not my street.'

Wright stepped back and marvelled at me as I put down the receiver.

'What now, then?'

'He's being followed.'

'It's to do with your photograph, is it?'

'You're beginning to believe there's something in it, aren't you?'

'I didn't say that.'

Wright was holding the door of the police office open for me. We stepped out and he locked up behind us.

The cold wind of Platform Four was cutting like no other.

'You can't go to London,' said Wright, as he followed me into the booking hall where the timetables were pasted up.

The last London train was nine thirteen. I knew the one. The night stationmaster turned out to see it off, then everything went quiet until six in the morning. I had no need of a ticket; my warrant card would see me to London.

'You'll be for it, you know,' said Wright, as we walked back to Platform Four. He had evidently decided to wait and see me off, being in no great hurry to get back to the Co-op ladies.

I was looking in my pocket book: two fivers might be in there, or one and a quid. I couldn't bear to look. I had a bit of silver besides, but that was all I had until payday - if there would ever be another payday. And there was still Harry's aeroplane to be bought, amongst many other Christmas items.

'You know my missus, don't you?' I said. 'Will you go back to the Ebor Hall and tell her I've gone to London in connection with a case - with the case, for she'll know what you mean - and that I'll most likely be back tomorrow?'

'Most likely!' exclaimed Wright. 'You've belted your superior officer, and now you're making off without permission.'

There was nothing to say to that. Above our heads, the great minute-hand of the station clock shuddered to the mark of half past ten.

It was a shame I had to go to London with my suit in such a state, for they were all dapper dogs down there. Further along the platform, a lass in a cape stood singing 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'. I'd seen her on the station before; she sang with a toy dog on a decorated box at her feet with an upturned straw hat placed alongside. By rights she was loitering and liable to a forty- shilling fine. Wright looked on as I walked up to her and put a shilling in the hat.

'Why d'you do that?' he said, as I returned to where he stood at the platform edge.

'For luck,' I said

'I'd say you'll need it,' said Wright, as the London train came into view behind him.