Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Twenty-five

At first, I took the cottage we were approaching to be nothing but a wide stone wall. It was some way up a mountain, part of the grey blur beyond the snow.

'I know you're watching the chimney, Small David,' said Richie Marriott.

'Why's there nae smoke, laddie?'

'We're low on firewood and peats, Small David.'

'And ye're low on brains,' he said, but there was perhaps some affection there; these two were cronies, who conspired over the heating of the house.

'I can't manage that flue in the scullery, David, and that's all about it,' said the son.

Everyone jumped down; I followed. It was not so much a garden, more like an island in the sea of heather. Two rusty long-handled shovels leant against the low stone walls; a rain barrel stood at one corner, barely higher than the wall. You'd call it a one- storey house, only it was lower than that. As we approached it, the Scotsman nodded from me to Marriott, saying, 'He stays here the neet if ye insist, but then it's o'er the burran wi' him.'

The lawyer was walking the horse towards a broken-down barn a little further up the track that had brought us to the house. The house looked over a white, misty valley - threatened to roll down into it. Whether this was the same valley we'd run along in the train or another, I couldn't tell, for I could not see. I could just make out through the blizzard a steeper hill rising above the one on which we stood; black clouds flowed across the tops like a spillage of oil. The day was nearly done, and the world was closing down to this house and these men. The snow was a foot thick as I stepped out of the cart, and I knew that I was held prisoner by the weather as much as the revolver. I suddenly thought of my interview for promotion at Middlesbrough. I would not be there after all, and the fact was a very good demonstration of the strangeness of life.

Small David walked up to the door of the cottage, on which a note was pinned, reading: 'Shut this door after you. This means YOU', with the last word underlined.

He kicked it open with bullet-like force, and entered the house.

'What's "over the burran"?' I asked, following him in.

In the smoke-filled scullery we had now entered, he turned sharply about towards me:

'Ye spoke just now of Gilbert Sanderson,' he said. 'He's o'er the burran.'

'Steady now, David,' said Marriott, who stepped in behind the two of us, having settled the horse.

Small David was at the stove that squatted in the centre of the room, cursing to himself, and trying to fettle the fire. The lawyer held a pitcher of water; he stood at the stone sink - which was as big as a horse trough, and took up about a third of the room - washing his hands as thoroughly as circumstances permitted. Then he turned to me:

'I am currently negotiating to save your life, Detective Stringer.'

If nothing else, his beautiful lawyer's voice had survived whatever decline had brought him to this house.

'Negotiating?' I said. 'Who with?'

Bowman, now also alongside us, cut in, saying, 'With Rob Roy there, of course', while nodding towards Small David, who was still crouching at the stove. 'And I want you to know that I hope he succeeds.' He was addressing me in the haze of the cold kitchen, but not looking at me. He knew he had done a low thing. He had stopped short of friendliness ever since I'd known him; he'd always been cagey, and he'd been all wrong on the chase from St Pancras. If he'd been straight, he'd either have jibbed at the business or got keen on it; he'd done neither.

'I had no choice but to bring you here, you know,' he said, as though the whole disaster was somehow my fault. There was one small window in the scullery, and I craned to look through it. Seeing what I was about, Marriott said, 'Don't try a breakaway, Detective Stringer. Or Small David will be upon you in an instant.'

I remained at the window, but it was only a bluff: the glass was thick with ice and I could see nothing - and the sight of that blank- ness made me feel I could barely breathe.

I turned around, and saw that none of the company had removed his hat; yet all the hats scraped against the grimy roof beams that swooped low across the room, which was more like a cave than a room. Small David now opened a door leading to a sitting room of sorts, and it seemed that I was free to follow him in.

The stove was black and cold here too. The young man, Richie, was in the room already, lighting greasy, evil-smelling paraffin lamps at either end. It was a long, low place with several truckle beds pushed against the three stone walls away from the fire. Filthy tab rugs were placed anyhow on the floor; and stacks of papers, books and journals were placed around the fireplace, whether to be burnt or read, I could not say. Richie then began remaking the fire, and he proved a shocking bad hand at doing so. Instead of cleaning the grate, he poked at it with the tool, which constantly rang against the iron of the door, striking a high, unpleasant note. He had obviously lit it earlier on in the day, but it had gone out because the draught was not properly created. As he poked and prodded, I wondered whether he had ever lit fires before he came to this place. I doubted it of a man who was a barrister's son. He got a burn going eventually, but I could see that it might not last.

'The trick of keeping a slow burn,' I said, 'is to close the top flue a little more - the lever wants tipping another ten degrees.'

'And who're ye tae tell him?' Small David called out.

I had not seen him enter the room. He carried a bucket in place of the revolver. For all his size, I ought not to be held off by a man who wore yellow socks and carried a bucket, but my thoughts would keep going back to that revolver of his, evidently close at hand in one of his coat pockets.

'I'm trained up as a fireman,' I said.

'Fireman?' said Small David. 'Ye are a dirty polis.'

'I was first trained up as a railway fireman,' I repeated.

'But he was fired.,' said Bowman, who had also entered the room, and whose speech was now slurring.

'Sorry, Jim,' he added, as he sank down on one of the truckle beds. He'd got a bottle from somewhere, though I couldn't make out the contents.

The stove was warming up after a fashion - it would keep me at close quarters as surely as any manacle. I claimed for myself one of the beds, but Small David ordered me off - I guessed from what he said that it must have been his. He then quit the room, and a moment later, I thought I caught sight of him walking past the one tiny frosted window that served the sitting room. Bowman sat silent on his bed, perhaps asleep, while Richie occupied another of the beds, reading a paper. He had never passed a word to me, and come to that, I had not seen him speak to his father or to Bowman. He only ever seemed to speak to Small David, who had evidently taken the place of his father in his affections. He seemed very young for his years, this fellow, but he must be in - or rather he must have been in - employment himself, otherwise he wouldn't have been in the habit of riding up to Whitby with the Travelling Club.

We had all kept our topcoats on, and all sank into them; and the room was quite silent now, save for the crackling of the fire. I could hear no stream rushing by, but only the baaing of sheep, which were at very close quarters.

Why were they all here? My thoughts raced in a circus. They'd fled Yorkshire after the disappearance of Falconer and the murder of their Club confederate George Lee, but why had either been killed in the first place? Not for the few silver candlesticks that had been taken from Lee's house. I looked again through the tiny window, where I saw that the lawyer Marriott had joined Small David; they were holding a conference in the falling snow, which seemed to muffle up their words, but I heard my own name mentioned twice by Marriott.

He came into the room a moment later and stood before the stove for a warm. He had removed his topcoat, and he managed to cut a handsome figure even in that old black guernsey. He then moved over to one of the two vacant beds. This, I saw, was better ordered than the others, with the blankets properly folded, and the papers over there were in better order than in the other parts of the room. As far as I could see, they were mostly shipping-line brochures. He caught up one of these, and read it for a few minutes before impatiently leaving the room once more.

I turned to the son, Richie, and repeated my earlier question.

'What's the programme?'

He just gave a shrug, and went back to his reading matter. The arrangements of the mean lamps meant that the shadow of the page he read covered the whole wall behind him.

I glimpsed Bowman, who now stood in the doorway, watching me with bottle in hand. I glanced that way, and he turned on his heel and disappeared. He could not bear to be in my company, now that he had betrayed me. I looked down at the crumpled papers under my boots. They seemed to have come from a holiday agent: 'Winter in the Cornish Riviera'; 'Railway Map of the British Isles'; 'Bournemouth, the Land of Pines and Sunshine.'

'Can you see us in Bournemouth, Detective Stringer, taking tea in an hotel?'

It was Marriott, standing by me and looking down at my reading matter. The householders would keep coming and going, but much as they wanted to keep clear of one another, they were all drawn back to the fire before long. The lawyer held a small glass in his hands - quite dainty by the standards of the cottage. I imagined it might be valuable to him; an object saved from his earlier life. From the kitchen came the smell of food, and I wondered how many more meals would be left to me.

'I cannot bear to see the daylight lost as early as it is here,' Bowman said, moving towards the fireplace, 'and so a flight to the south is contemplated - but a good deal further south than Bournemouth.'

'A flight?' I said.

'The trip has been in prospect for some time, Detective Stringer, but I would not have called it a flight until I heard about you.'

Small David entered the room, saying, 'Where's yon bottle, man?' Receiving no answer, he called out, 'Hey, Bowman!' at which Marriott turned on him.

'Don't shout so, you fucking Scottish hooligan!'

I had never heard swearing in such refined tones.

'You see,' said Marriott, turning towards me again, 'I must get out of this quagmire . . . And I must make a satisfactory arrangement about you before I do so. I brought you here to save you, don't you see that?'

'Strikes me this is a good place to bring a fellow if you wanted to do him in.'

'Now Small David would disagree with you there, Detective Stringer,' Marriott said. 'He holds that the best place for that business is the Cleveland Hills.'

'You pitched Theodore Falconer down an old iron shaft,' I said.

But then another, and better, thought hit me like a thunderclap.

'No, you put him into a blast furnace. His body was never found, and that's because it was melted away to nothing.'

Small David was watching me from the doorway. Marriott kept silence. He stood before me with his arms folded - a good-looking man with too much on his mind.

'Richard's a good fellow,' he said suddenly, nodding towards his son.

The boy looked up at him. 'Stow it, father.'

'But he has a poor physique - a defect on his mother's side, I suppose, for she died young herself. Small David, now -'

Marriott indicated the Scotsman, who had sat down on the last remaining free bed.

'Small David is a practical man, if not a very great hand at conversation.'

The Scotsman muttered something, and Marriott made a show of cocking an ear.

'Did you get that, Detective Stringer?'

I shook my head.

'I didn't either. He's not a great one for talk, as I say.'

'Wi'oot me,' muttered Small David, picking up a newspaper, 'ye'd be deed - and ye stull could be.'

Marriott rolled his eyes at me, saying, 'I just can't help wishing that fellow was a little more - just ever so slightly English.'

Small David put down his paper, and closed on Marriott, saying, 'Haud yer tongue or I'll gie ye somethin' for yersel'—'

Marriott turned once more to me, saying, 'He is not a university man, you know.'

I had a quick impression of Marriott in the position of an old- fashioned boxer, with fists high and chin lifted for Queensberry Rules, but the scrap itself was a wild affair lasting not more than a few seconds.

And it was Marriott who was bloodied - and almost knocked on to the stove. Steadying himself against the wall, he again turned to me, saying, 'Small David was not on the Classics side, Detective Stringer, but then again he was not on the Modern side either. On the face of it a black mystery, until you remember this: Small David was not at the University.'

The Scotsman stood for a moment, as though deciding whether to give this latest provocation the go-by, and he evidently decided not to, for he clouted the lawyer a second time, sending him sprawling amid the newspapers and journals on the floor.

'Look, I know this is all fun, but can we drop it?' said Bowman, who'd had his hands over his glasses as the blows had been struck. Marriott was finding a shaky pair of legs, blood running freely from his nose. He did not look strong, being so thin, but there again he was not the sort of man you expected to see felled.

'I'm not a university man either, if it comes to that,' Bowman was saying. 'Not by a long chalk.'

The lawyer was now standing in silence before the stove, occasionally giving a flick of his head so as to send the blood from his nose away from his mouth. He would not raise his hand to it, for that would show weakness. He was all ablaze inside, but still no colour showed in his face, and he paid no heed as his son stood and walked out of the room, preferring, as I supposed, to sit in the poorly warmed scullery rather than hear more of his old man's ravings.

'The boy is not vigorous like me,' Marriott said, 'and he cannot scrap, as I can. I learnt to take a punch in the boxing club, Detective Stringer ... it was at the University.''

He shot another quick glance at Small David, who did not rise to the bait this third time, but sat back down on his bed. Marriott then removed the photograph from his coat pocket and looked it over, nodding the while.

'It proves you were all on the train that morning,' I said. 'The newspaper in your son's hand proves it.'

The lawyer turned and opened the stove door with the fire tool, placing the photograph carefully on top of the burning wood within.

'I have another print,' I said,'... and the negatives, of course.'

The lawyer looked at me and sighed, brushing his hair back once again. And now at last he raised a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

'You are not helping the case I am trying to make for keeping you above ground, Detective Stringer.'

At which the Scotsman, who had his head buried in one of the newspapers, muttered something like: 'Aye, that's right enough.'

'You killed Falconer,' I said to Marriott, 'but why?'

The lawyer looked at me fixedly as he dabbed at the blood - almost with real curiosity.

'You killed Lee as well,' I added, 'though I daresay not with your own hands.'

I turned towards Small David, who was still reading, and making such a great show of coolness that I almost believed he wasn't listening.

'Or did you pay him to do it?'

The Scotsman read on.

'You are of a questioning humour,' Marriott said, rocking on his feet before the fireplace, quite composed again. 'It is the mark of a good pleader. Have you considered the Bar? There's a good deal of reading to put in, much burning of the midnight oil with your Stephens's Commentaries, your Hunter's Roman Law, but it's quite a democracy, you know. There's no 'mister' at the Bar, still less any 'sir'. In fact, it's not at all such a toff's profession as you might suppose, Stringer ...'

I was plain Stringer to him now, which meant I had riled him, about which I was glad.

'Any man with brains might aspire even to the silk gown of the King's Counsel - army officer, actor, schoolmaster. A university training usually precedes the call, but not necessarily. Fluency of speech is the chief requirement, you see, thinking on one's leg - although of course you must also become fashionable, and in that, I confess, I never succeeded . . .'

'Now I winder why not?' put in Small David, looking up from his paper.

Marriott ignored him, saying, 'I did well enough for a time, mark you. Three or four cases a day was nothing to me - not all of them jury cases, of course, but still: seven guineas for a thirty-minute consultation . . . Five shillings to the clerk, yes, but even so . . . Unfortunately, I did not put in the hours flattering the important men of my acquaintance. Rather than dine with the benchers in my evening at the Temple, I would go off to the German gymnasium at King's Cross, Stringer.'

He kept saying my name. The man was speaking only for my benefit.

'I worked at my boxing night and day at that gymnasium,' he went on, at which Small David, turning the page of his paper, muttered, 'And much guid it did ye.'

I thought that the lawyer might fly at Small David for a second time, but instead he touched the handkerchief to his nose again, saying, 'Unfortunately, I did not generally like the judges. I knew many of them, Stringer, and I knew many that were inclined to hanging.'

At which he fell silent for a space, during which time I watched Small David turn two further pages of newspaper.

It was the Sutherland Gazette that Small David was looking over. Bowman, as far as I could make out, was now asleep, the bottle at his feet, but he righted himself a moment later when the boy Richie walked in with two bowls of steaming broth. He gave the first to his father, who began sipping from the bowl directly, and somehow doing so in a mannerly sort of way. The other bowl went to Small David - so that the two governors had been fed first.

The boy returned a moment later with a bowl for Bowman, who, after staring at the concoction for a while, said, '. . . Looks almost good enough to eat.'

The last bowl was given to me. A spoon rolled in the brownish stuff; a hunk of bread floated on it. I nodded thanks, and the boy nodded back - which was the first communication between us. I tasted the soup, which was like slow Oxo - Oxo slowed by flour and something that might have been potatoes. But I hadn't tasted food for hours, so it was nectar to me.

But just after I'd taken my second spoonful, something made me glance up towards Small David, who was eyeing me narrowly.

'Ye ken ye're gaun to dee, don't ye?'

Well, I could not believe it; I seemed to be living in a dream, as we all ate in the dimly lit room on the hillside, while the blizzard wind made a repeated low note, like the sound of a ship coming into harbour, as it blew across the chimney top. Presently, Richie went around the room again, this time collecting up the bowls. The lawyer drained whatever was left in his small glass, and put it on the mantelshelf. He did not seem in need of another dram. He watched after his son as the boy left the room, and turned towards me again. He seemed minded to talk, and I had the powerful notion that he wanted to tell me as much as I wanted to know.