Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Twenty-one

I ought to have guessed. What other ticket would have set someone back two quid? The man was approaching Platform One, coat swinging as he strode behind the tea wagon, feet splayed wide.

I looked at Bowman.

'The missus is not expecting you to go off on a jaunt, I suppose?'

He made no reply, but adjusted his specs in a nervous fashion.

We followed the man to Platform One; there was no ticket checker at the barrier but we were delayed by the people ahead - a party of a dozen or so, struggling with trunks and portmanteaus. When we stepped on to the platform, our quarry was gone from sight.

'Well, he's got to be on the train,' I said. 'You get us two seats and I'll walk along.'

Bowman was standing forlorn next to the little tank engine that had drawn in the rake of carriages, and was now continuing to simmer, pumping out the steam-heat for the carriages.

'Maybe he'll get off at Trent,' he said.

Trent was the first stop of the sleeper, not more than a hundred miles from London.

The first carriage was the dining car: there were only railway chefs in there, making their preparations. We climbed up into the next carriage - an ordinary Third Class marked, like most, for Edinburgh - and Bowman took a seat in an empty compartment. Telling him I'd return once I'd located our man, I carried on down the corridor.

I did not see the man in that carriage, so I walked on, pushing through the press of people boarding the train, gazing in at the compartments and trying to look like an interested tripper rather than a policeman. All were either Firsts or Thirds, for the Midland had dropped Second. Most of the passengers would sleep sitting down; there was only one carriage with bunks. It was First Class, and I came to it next. My footfalls were muffled, the red carpet being thick, hotel-like. A man stood in the open door of one of the sleeper berths, smoking in shirtsleeves. Inside, on the red blanket of the bed, his things were all a jumble - but it was an expensive jumble. He eyed me narrowly as I went past, as if to say, 'You're never First, clear off out of it.'

I approached the final two carriages with a fast-beating heart. Here, the labels pasted on the windows read 'Inverness'—a fresh engine would carry them to that far northern point from Edinburgh. I began walking slowly along the corridors of these, which were not bustling like those of the others.

He was there—in the last compartment of the last carriage. Nobody stranger would be joining him in there, I thought. He took up the best part of two seats, with stout legs spread wide, and yellow socks bristling. As before, he seemed to gaze at vacancy, with head tilted upwards. For all his size, he seemed to live on air. There was no food or drink with him, and he carried no bag. It was seven hundred miles to Inverness. Would he sit like that all the way?

I had just stepped beyond his compartment when a bang and a violent jolt sent me stumbling against the window. Righting myself, I stepped down once again, and saw that the train's engine had coupled on at the 'down' end, and an assisting engine was backing on to that. We would be double-headed to Edinburgh. The first of the two blew off steam as the second one hit, and the great white column was like a flag of distress. Snow flew about beyond the engines, beyond the platform glass, as if it too was in distress; but the line ahead was evidently clear.

I looked again at the engines. Two 4-4-0 compounds they were, fitted with both high- and low-pressure cylinders for fuel economy and better torque. They were handsome too: the 'Crimson Ramblers' to the Midland men. I saw the fireman of the first working the injector with what seemed like a look of fury, but when he saw me watching, he gave a grin. He wouldn't go all the way to

Edinburgh. There'd be an engine change at Leeds or thereabouts.

I walked back along the platform, glancing quickly into the last compartment. The man sat there as before, looking ahead. He didn't have to go as far as Inverness; he might have favoured that carriage simply because it was the emptiest. He was a very independent unit.

'Don't tell me,' said Bowman, when I re-entered our compartment. 'Inverness.'

'Bang on,' I said, sitting down.

'It's the law of sod,' said Bowman. 'And I'm sure he'd go further north if he could - just out of pure spite.'

'He might well be doing,' I said. 'Inverness is the connection for the Highlands, don't forget.'

'He's Scots, I suppose,' sighed Bowman. 'Something about those bloody socks of his should have told me that.'

'I can't see any Scottish connection in the whole business,' I said. 'I mean, Paul Peters wasn't Scottish, was he?'

'Londoner,' said Bowman, shaking his head. 'Born in some tedious spot like - I don't know - Pinner.'

Bowman had moved into the corridor, and was leaning out of the window, looking along the platform.

'Where's the dammed tea wagon?' he was saying.

'I'll fetch you a tea,' I said. 'I'm just off to the telegraph office.'

'You've called my bluff,' he said, turning around and almost smiling. 'I'm after a bottle of red, to be perfectly honest.'

There were fifteen minutes before departure. I jumped down next to a gang of porters who were all pasting labels on trunks and jabbering about the weather. The tea wagon was rolling up, so Bowman would have his wine.

I strode over to the telegraph office, where I took up a form and joined the queue. While queuing I wrote 'HAVE PROCEEDED TO SCOTLAND', but when my turn came for the clerk I realised that was ridiculous, so I changed it to 'GONE TO SCOTLAND'. I was going to add something, but the clerk was agitating for the form, and there were half a dozen people behind me so I handed it over as it was, together with the fee of one and six.

I climbed up into the Third Class Edinburgh car again, and Bowman said, 'Sent the wire?'

'Aye.'

'What did you put?'

'Gone to Scotland,' I said.

'Little peremptory,' he said. 'That was to your wife, I suppose,' he said after a space. 'Did you not telegraph your governor?'

I shook my head - but now that he'd mentioned it, I started fretting about whether I ought to have. Bowman had at last removed his hat, and he was now unbuttoning his topcoat. There was a certain delay in his movements, which told me to look about for a bottle of wine, and I spied it on the compartment floor, just below the window, with two glasses alongside and nearly half of the stuff already gone.

'You didn't get any grub?' I said.

'Dinner baskets available at Derby, apparently,' he said. 'And there's always the restaurant car.'

'I didn't cable the office,' I said, sitting down opposite Bowman. 'The fact is that I'm in bother with my governors. They haven't given me leave to be here.'

'Well...' said Bowman.

He seemed embarrassed for me; but then he was always red.

'My aim is to go back with the mystery of the Travelling Club solved,' I said. 'I must bring the killers to light. Nothing else will serve.'

Bowman took a long drink of wine, and then sat forward in a curious, hunched way, looking down at his boots, face flaming.

'Of course, it's odds on I will fail,' I added, 'and then I'll be on the stones.'

'Where does your office think you are?' asked Bowman, looking up.

'Well, since things aren't running on so smoothly for me just now, I daresay they think I've just - you know, bolted.'

I thought of the high brick wall at York, the word 'Workhouse' running along it.

The doors began to slam shut all along the train. On the platform, a new army of porters stood back from the carriages alongside a barrow piled with mailbags. They were waiting for the next train to come in. As far as they were concerned, we were ghosts, already gone.

At six-thirty on the button, the bell rang piercingly; our carriage seemed to lean towards the buffer stops for a moment, and then we swung forwards and we were off, gliding out from under the glass and into the snow.

Bowman sipped wine as we watched the house-backs roll away in the darkness, and we kept silence until Leagrave. I stood up as we drummed through that station.

'I'm off up front again,' I said. 'It's best we keep on the nose.'

I walked along. The narrow corridors were full of bustle: people talking, smoking, making ready for dinner, all full of Christmas plans. I did not walk quite as far as the last compartment of the last carriage, but stopped short of it so that I could just see the right side of the lower half of the man. I saw his right leg - the orange boots and yellow socks. It was quite still, but his right hand was moving. The hand was bringing something out of his coat pocket. He placed the object on the seat to his right, and reached out quickly to pull down the compartment blinds.

It was a revolver that had been in the man's hand.