Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Twenty-seven

We all stepped out into the blizzard for a piss. This seemed to be a nightly routine around the house, for each man went to his own wall nook to perform. Small David pointed his gun at me as I unbuttoned my fly and kept it on me as I tried to start.

'Y'are awfy slow at this,' he said.

'Fuck off,' I said.

'—as y'are at everythin' else,' he added, and as I cursed him again and turned towards the wall, I realised that I could see the outline of his wide shadow very clearly against the stones, and that the falling snow was lit by a grey glow.

The moon was full.

In the living room, Small David fed the stove again, and set the draught for a slower burn. He then walked into the scullery, and I could hear him locking the front door. He might then have had a sluice-down in the great sink, for I could hear the swishing of water. He returned to the living room and put out one of the two lamps. A moment later every man was lying in his bed - each, as far as I could make out, with all his day clothes still on.

Whether any man slept, I don't know, for there were constant shiftings and half-muffled groans that put a kind of electricity into the atmosphere of that terrible smoke hole. I thought of Marriott, and how he had lost all by one moment of anger. The cane had been there in his hand in the photograph at the start of the journey. He had made no attempt to hide it. This crime was made ridiculous by the simple fact that half an hour before, or in fact one second before it had occurred, it had not been meant to happen. There was a double shame to it on this account, it seemed to me, and I was sure that Marriott thought of it in the same way. His crime had not been a manly one; and now he and his son were members of a different club. It seemed that I had joined this one.

My mind raced on in the darkness, and I fell to thinking that it was highly convenient they should have had a spare bed for me, and I wondered whether it was meant for Moody, the chimney sweep made good, who had perhaps survived for a while after the first killings, but had then threatened to speak out. Perhaps his son in Pickering knew all.

But many mysteries remained. How had Bowman fallen into the clutches of the band? He was kept there, I knew, by fear of Small David, but how had the thing begun? The connection was Peters, obviously, but exactly how? And where had Marriott dug Small David up from? My guess was that he was somebody he'd defended in a court of law.

Small David had done a good job with the stove, and it came to me presently that J was properly warm for the first time in days. I thought of little Harry, and I hoped that he was warm. I thought of how he would stand in the road at Thorpe-on-Ouse for minutes on end, and then suddenly go skipping off, as if he'd at last got hold of the answer to some very troublesome question. He was eccentric, like his mother.

Well, they would go on in their own way. It was better that I should die in the course of an important investigation than lose my job through my own foolishness and leave them with a loafer at the head of the family. I turned over on the narrow bed many times, back and forth until finally I knew that sleep would come. I was certain on that point, and I believe I spoke out loud the words, 'I have lost all my doubts', but there must have been the complication of a dream somewhere, for I now heard those words repeated directly into my ear by another.

'I have lost all my doubts.'

I felt the firm press of a hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes to see Bowman leaning over me.

He was changed.

'We're going to make off,' he whispered; and for the first time since I'd known him, he smiled. If he'd had any hair to speak of, it would have been tousled; his glasses were askew on his nose, but I could see by the one remaining lamp that there was more purpose about him than ever there had been before. He wore his topcoat; he held his sporting cap tightly bundled in his hand.

'Collect up your boots,' he whispered as I rolled upright. 'I know where Small David stows the key.'

The other men were still rolling and groaning in the darkness, like a restless sea. I picked up my boots, and followed Bowman into the scullery, where the air was just as cold as if we'd been outside. As I stepped into my boots, I could just make out that Bowman was kneeling at the grate. He came up with the key in his hand.

'Still warm,' he whispered. 'He keeps it in the ash pan.'

He walked over towards the heavy front door, and there came a great cymbal crash as he did so. All the breath stopped on my lips, as I looked towards the other door, the one leading into the sitting room, which we had left ajar behind us. It did not move.

'Kicked the damned ash pan,' said Bowman, who now placed the key in the front door.

He was straining at it.

'Won't turn,' he said, a little too loudly.

I looked again towards the living-room door.

'Can't get the trick of it,' he was saying.

I went towards him, stepping carefully, for I didn't know where the ash pan had been kicked to. I motioned him aside, leant hard on the door and turned the key.

Nothing doing.

I pulled it towards me by the handle - again nothing.

'Take the key out and try again,' said Bowman.

I did so, and the key went in further this time - it had not been properly lodged by Bowman. But as I turned the key, the wrong door was moving. With every degree of twist that I gave it, the sit- ting-room door was moving inwards. The key gave a click as I continued to look over my shoulder, at the door behind. A figure stood there: Richie, the son. A blanket was around him like a cape, and he might have been sleepwalking, or he might have been thinking hard. Above the blanket, his face shone white in a new light. The key had done its work as I looked at him. Before me, the door was open, and the Highlands seemed to rise like a drop scene at the theatre: the valley falling away before me; white clouds moving across the tops in succession, like a train, and all lit by a magical grey light. The snow had stopped, for all its work was now done.

We were through the door, and crashing through the drenching, snowy heather in an instant. I looked back at the house. Richie Marriott had not emerged from it, and nor had anybody else.

We moved with long, comical strides, stepping out, and then down and nearly over-toppling at every stride. We could not afford to take the track by which we'd come up in the cart - that was too slow and twisty. 'Had to get out, and had to take you along,' Bowman was panting behind me. 'I couldn't dodge it, having brought you up here.'

He'd shown himself a man at last, and it gave him new life.

I looked back at the house - still no sign of life.

'I'm obliged to you,' I said.

We crashed on, but the ground did not play fair. The snow and heather sometimes hid black, brackeny water; we might at any moment be stepping on to heather that hid a twenty-foot rocky gulf, and there were many streams running down towards the one that had made the valley. Over the next five minutes of headlong descent Bowman fell over twice behind me. After the second fall, he said, 'Glasses gone.'

I turned around, and saw that his small eyes seemed to have sunk further into his head, as if in retreat from the job of looking out at the world unaided.

I felt around in the heather near his feet.

'Give it up,' he said.

'Try to step in my tracks,' I said, and we carried on.

'How's your boots?' I asked after a while.

'Pretty well sodden,' he said, and it struck me that he had said it happily.

'Good old moon,' he said, after a couple more falls.

'The boy saw us,' I said.

'He might not let on,' Bowman panted out behind me.

'He's great pals with Small David, though,' I said.

'Small David's taken a fancy to him,' said Bowman. 'I don't know how far it works the other way. The boy's the one I feel sorry for in all this - apart from myself, of course,' he added, laughing.

'What does he work as?'

'Solicitor - only been at it a couple of years.'

'Up in Middlesbrough?'

'That's it.'

'I think I have the matter straight now,' I said, as we battered on through the drenching heather. 'The rudiments of it, anyway.'

'Well, Marriott's given you most of the tale. He has some kink in the brain that makes him always talk of it.'

But it seemed to me that Bowman's own kink was straightened out.

He was fairly skipping down the hill, in between falls. And he was not juiced, either.

'Marriott crowned Falconer,' said Bowman. 'And of course the whole Club knew it directly. It happened in the saloon, and half of them saw it. The body was put off the train at a spot near Marske, which is a little way north of Saltburn - it was just pitched into the snow at trackside, but they were lucky over the weather because the stuff was coming down fast, and Falconer would have been covered over in minutes. It bought them time,' Bowman continued, righting himself after another tumble. 'Well, you can imagine the discussion that went on in that carriage as it neared Middlesbrough - the heat of it. I think it would have been like a courtroom on wheels, with Marriott making out that it had been an accident, that he didn't deserve to swing for it or do thirty years, or whatever the turn-up might be if the police were called in . ..'

Something was moving along the hillside towards us; like a great brown cloud, only it came with a fast and dangerous rustling noise. It stopped twenty feet off, and the picture composed.

'Deer,' I said.

We both stopped and watched the herd for a second. Their eyes shone like new shilling pieces.

'Rum,' I said. 'They're looking at us as if there's something wrong with us.'

'That's because we're not firing on them,' said Bowman.

We crashed on.

'Richie stood by his father,' Bowman was saying. 'It was his notion of honour, and would be a lot of other people's too. Moody -'

'The old chimney sweep.'

'He was just scared. Scared and greedy - rather like me, in fact, but we'll come to that presently. Marriott struck a deal with him immediately. Moody would keep silence in return for gold.'

'But they did for him too - pushed him under a train.'

'I'm not sure about that,' said Bowman, stopping briefly on the hillside. 'I believe the whole business affected the old boy very badly . .. He might've jumped, you know.'

He stopped on the hill behind me, getting his breath. The heather was up to his waist; the cottage, our late prison, out of sight behind him.

'I thought I heard something,' he said.

There was a hidden roaring, as though of something under the ground.

'We're near the river,' I said, and we carried on.

'George Lee was different,' Bowman said, as we moved off again,' . . . would not be bought. At the same time, he couldn't quite bring himself to go to the coppers. There were days of . . . negotiations, I suppose you'd say, during which the Club carried on. They carried on using the saloon for a good week after the murder of Falconer; I believe. But I think that Lee eventually got wind of what had happened to Peters, and that decided him to go to the police. He made the mistake of stating his intention, though.'

'But before Lee could split,' I put in, 'Marriott sent Small David after him.'

'Small David and the horse,' said Bowman, 'Gilbert Sanderson's horse. The plan was Small David's, I believe. Marriott resisted it at first, but Small David worked his will. You know, I sometimes wonder whether he went to the lengths of removing his yellow socks, the better to impersonate Sanderson. That would have been a big sacrifice for him, I think. After it was done ... well, the club was finished, of course. Moody gave out that he was simply retiring from his business. Marriott wrote to the railway to explain that as a result of an extraordinary series of misfortunes, the special carriage would no longer be required.'

'Where did Marriott find Small David?'

'It seems that Small David has a brother,' said Bowman, still stumbling along in my wake. 'You might want a go at hazarding his profession -'

'Villain,' I said.

'Lately released from gaol. He killed four men in a street fight in Newcastle and Marriott got him off the capital charge - sentence of ten years' hard instead of the drop. He argued that it was an accident - the same accident four times over. Didn't know his own strength, you know the line of contention ...'

'Small David was paying Marriott a debt of honour then?'

'It would be nearer the mark, Jim,' Bowman gasped out, 'to say that Small David immediately started robbing Marriott blind. He has nearly all his money now, and the less money Marriott has, the less power he commands in the whole set-up - I miss my specs,' he ran on breathlessly. 'It's not so much being able to see that I miss as taking them off to rub on my sleeve.'

He was alongside me now and he was all in: sodden, and quite white in the face, for once.

'It's interesting about Small David's brother,' he panted. 'He lives in Middlesbrough, or somewhere that way. Small David sees him pretty regularly but he'll never speak of him - not that he speaks of anything very much, of course. The brother's a maniac from what I can gather. You might say that of Small David too, but he's quite careful. You can see that in the yellow socks.'

'How do you mean?'

'The way they're always kept pulled up.'

'Well, he wears garters. There's no mystery there.'

'But he tries to cover his traces. Takes a professional pride in -'

I held up my hand to silence him.

I was listening again to the rushing noise . . . and now distinct sounds of human voices came with it. We were within sight of what must have been the road: a smoother run of snow under the changing grey light.

'The river's down there,' I said, pointing forwards, 'and the railway line hard by.'

'...which won't be operating,' said Bowman, catching his breath. The roaring was coming closer in the mysterious dawn, and the voices made real words. Then there came the sound of cartwheels too. It was Small David in the driving seat and I could make out, even in that explosion of snow, that his revolver was in his hand as he whipped on the frozen nag. He was alongside us in a moment, making mock of the three-mile stride we'd just completed.

'First ye're a traitor to hum,' he said, addressing Bowman and pointing the gun towards me, 'and then ye're after selling us doon the river. Well, it's awfy cauld, so here's somethin' to warm yer Sassenach guts -'

The gun had swung back to Bowman, and the bullet was loosed at that moment, but in the same instant I fancied that I saw a flash of Marriott in the old-fashioned boxer pose, and he and his son fell on Small David as he fired. Marriott and Small David fell to scrapping in the cart; I was right by the horse's head, and that beast looked at me while the vehicle rocked behind him, as if to say, 'Look what I have to put up with.'

Marriott was now standing in the cart, steadying himself like a man riding a raft over rapids, even though the cart did not move. His face was a wall of blood held up proudly to the floating snow (for the stuff was coming down again). He held the revolver in his hand, and Small David rolled in the well of the cart at his feet.

Marriott did not use words. He was beyond that; he spoke with the gun. He waved it to mean that Bowman and I should climb up; then once again to get Small David back in the driving seat. Even though he'd lost hold of the revolver, the Scotsman was in a better way than the lawyer. In fact, he looked just as he had done before the set-to, with his indestructible country suit, and his great calves smoothly enclosed in the yellow stockings.

He muttered a little to himself as he started us away, but did not seem too downhearted. He'd lost that particular round of the match, that was all. And we did not gallop; instead, the horse trotted along the track, as Marriott swabbed his wounds with a handkerchief, and Richie sat with head in hands, watching the bags belonging to the three rolling against his boots. There was more of blue in the Highland greyness now, and the tops of the hills were becoming clearer, just as though they had lately taken up their habitual place around us.

It was an alteration that passed for dawn on that day.

Bowman sat over opposite Small David; I in the same relation to Richie. We were going back the way we'd come the day before. Every turn of the wheels brought us nearer the railway station, and I was glad of that until I remembered that it would most likely not be working on such a day, and that it was not manned in any case. When we'd been riding for ten minutes, the lawyer spoke directly to his son for the first time in my hearing.

'Richard,' he said, 'you have the key, I take it?'

Richie removed his gloves and began hunting through the pockets of his topcoat, but he was shaking his head even as he did so.

'I don't believe so,' he said.

'But I told you to bring it.'

Richie shook his head very sadly.

'Nothing was said about it, father.'

Marriot was hunting through his pockets as he drove the cart.

'It's all right,' he said presently. 'I have it here.'

As I wondered what the key was for, Small David turned about, and I saw that he was grinning, even though the gun was on him.