Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Twenty-eight

We drove on through that white world, until the stone house with the antlers on the walls floated into view, and then I understood the talk of a key. The snow had drifted against the house's walls, and I could not make out the door. It looked the part of a prison, and that is what it would become.

Marriott ordered Small David down from the carriage, and he passed him the key.

Small David approached the house with the gun on him. On the way, he kicked a heather bush, shaking off the snow and disclosing a small yellow flower, which set him cursing anew.

He found the door, and opened it while looking in my direction.

'Polis!' he called. 'Dree yer ain weird.'

That's what it sounded like at any rate.

The gun in the lawyer's hand wavered my way, and I climbed down.

Small David called again, 'Ye'll bide here too, bottle man,' and Bowman followed me through the door, which Small David clapped shut behind us without further speech. I could not hear the cart rattle away, for the stone of the walls was too thick.

'Had a moment of alarm back there,' said Bowman. I could hear him but not see him in that freezing tank, for there was no light at all.

'Came within half an ace of being shot.'

'It's one bloody turn-about after another,' I said, not over- kindly. 'Where are you?'

'I don't know,' he said.

There was a strong, sweet smell of old hay - the place was something between a barn and a house. I crouched down. The floor was made of stone flags, horribly cold to the touch. As the darkness began to resolve, I made out a low line of whiteness to my right.

'Well, I've found the door again,' I said, making towards it.

'Always a useful preliminary to making an exit,' said Bowman, and I could somehow tell from his voice that he was sitting down. He spoke in a level voice - he was even amused by the fix we were in. Before, he'd been as nervous as a cat. Now he was a new man.

'Are we "o'er the burran"?' I asked him.

'No, no, that was Small David's scheme. This is Marriott's doing.'

'What is "o'er the burran"?'

'A stream in Scots is a burn. There's one near the cottage. Beyond it is a black bog. He meant to put you in there.'

'I wouldn't have liked that,' I said.

'I hardly think that would have influenced him one way or another - and there'd have been a bullet in your head in any case.'

'But Marriott stopped him, not having the stomach for a murder.'

'He doesn't have the stomach for another murder. It's a point of pride with him that he can achieve his ends without further killing.'

'And now they're off.'

'The object is to go to France. Dieppe. Do you know it? And then on. They have a passage booked for tomorrow night.'

'But first they have to get to Inverness.'

'You have found the flaw in the scheme.'

'Why doesn't Marriott see it?'

'He's living on hope. He thinks there might yet be a train that way today.'

'I'm going to have a run at this door,' I said.

'I doubt you'll succeed.'

I charged, shoulder first. The door barely gave an inch.

I did it again; and again.

I sat down on the stone flags, nursing a sore shoulder.

'They build a good ruin, these Scots,' said Bowman.

We sat in silence for a space, listening out for any passing cart or pedestrian.

'How do the Club come to have the key to this place?' I said, after a few minutes of frozen silence.

Bowman sighed.

'I'm going to tell you everything I know,' he said, and as we listened out for any passing cart, he disclosed most of the remaining mysteries, the tale beginning December last in Saltburn, the model seaside town that lies between Whitby and Middlesbrough. As Bowman began, I pictured the place in winter: the sea wind blowing through the wide streets; the few people about looking like so many tin miniatures, positioned about the place to show how the amenities of the town worked.

Bowman and Peters had booked into the Station Hotel - being required by the limited expenses available to share a double room - in late November 1908. Bowman had then taken up residence in the hotel bar, made miserable by the weather, and the failure of some plans he'd entertained to turn novelist. On 1 December Peters had made his breakaway, darting off in all directions in search of artistic interpretations of railway scenes. He'd been very taken by Middlesbrough railway station, and by the passing loop-cum-marshalling yard at Stone Farm, which had lately been illuminated, creating many interesting effects of light and shade.

He made his first visit to Stone Farm on the 2nd and there met the lad porter, who'd tipped him off about the Club train. He'd shot back to Middlesbrough, but missed the Club.

That night, back at Saltburn, he'd explained to Bowman the fascination of the lamps at Stone Farm and mentioned his pursuit of the Travelling Club. He'd discovered that they would be coming through Saltburn the next morning - the 3rd - and woke early on that day to take the photograph, about which the Club were quite happy, for the row over the window lay ten minutes in the future and a couple of miles down the line.

Peters was a dead man after that, for Marriott's story would be that Falconer had never boarded the train at his customary boarding place of Saltburn or anywhere else. But the photograph - and the newspaper in Richie Marriott's hand - told a different story.

The lie Marriott attempted was not as wild as it seemed, for Theodore Falconer generally walked alone from his house to the station, which was all but deserted on that bitter day. The Club did not use the services of a porter, and were not troubled by ticket inspections; no steward served their tea or champagne - they helped themselves from the supplies laid on. It was quite possible for their journeyings to go unnoticed by any railway servant, or by anyone save the other Club members.

That afternoon Peters was robbed of his camera by two station loungers of Middlesbrough. They did not want the photographs the camera held; they wanted to get bread. Peters reported the theft and returned to Saltburn, where he told Bowman of the day's occurrences.

The next day - the 4th - was Peters's last. He left Saltburn at mid-morning with the expressed intention of returning to Stone Farm and its viewsome siding. At midday Small David - having been discovered in Middlesbrough or thereabouts by Marriott - pitched up at the hotel reception asking for Peters. He was directed to the hotel bar, and to Bowman. A conference occurred.

At first, Bowman had refused to give any information about Peters. But Small David had been given the first of his wages by Marriott, and he was in funds. Bowman was offered ten pounds for information. He turned it down. He was offered twenty, and they closed on that. A condition of the deal was that he would let Small David search the hotel room that Bowman shared with Peters. Small David's tale was that he wanted to make sure of the identity of Peters with a certain party to whom he owed money.

'I blame Wimbledon,' said Bowman in the gloom of the stone tank. 'The wife had seen photographs of new villas there in some picture paper. Well, she had to have one, would not let up on the subject. I'd say, "What's wrong with the present place?" We were in East London at the time, nicely situated for walks in Victoria Park. Yes, the Great Eastern Railway ran along the bottom of the garden, but we had five shillings a week off the rent on that account. "And I'm a railway journalist," I would remind her, "so it's all grist to my mill.'"

After an interval of silence, Bowman continued, 'The money meant we could make the down payment on the new house in Lumley Road.'

Another pause.

'It is not near the railway line.'

I scrambled to my feet. The floor was too cold to sit on.

'I walked for hours about Saltburn when Small David had left the hotel,' Bowman was saying.

'Conscience,' I said.

'I was on the lookout for a pub.'

'They don't run to 'em there,' I broke in. 'The place is built on temperance lines.'

'I suspected some such infernal lunacy. I went back to the hotel and drank off half a bottle of whisky while staring out to sea.'

'You weren't to know they meant to harm Peters.'

'If you want to tell a man he's come into money,' said Bowman, 'then you don't need a fellow the size of Small David to do it.'

A long beat of silence.

'Peters was delayed setting off for Stone Farm that morning,' Bowman went on. 'He'd been buying film in Saltburn. He rode on the same 'up' train as Small David, who began talking to him; told him there was something of interest in the woods beyond the station. Small David went for the camera. Well, that camera was everything to Peters, so he fought back.'

Silence for a space, before Bowman added, 'He was killed as a consequence. Strangled, if you ask me; and then strung up to cover the traces. A clever notion, you'd have to agree. Small David's quite cute, you know. For example, he gave over the money to me right in front of the steward of the bar, making a big show of what he was about, and of course I was lost from then on: aider and abettor, accessory after the fact, accomplice - every damn bad thing beginning with A. If they were discovered, I was discovered.'

The rest of the tale came to me quickly across the few feet of darkness that separated us.

'Falconer's body was recovered from lineside - it ended in a blast furnace somehow,' said Bowman. 'Lee was done a little while later.'

Not many days after that, the Scot had pitched up outside the offices of The Railway Rover and taken Bowman to the Highland cottage, our late prison. Marriott had taken the place not so much to avoid the police as to avoid questions. It seemed he had the idea that, while the Middlesbrough railway police were not pursuing the matter, the town police might well do.

In the cottage, Small David had put the frighteners on Bowman, so as to make him see the sense of walking carefully. He had then been permitted to return to Wimbledon and Fleet Street, and to the pubs of both districts.

The two Marriotts stayed mainly in the Highland cottage; Small David came and went. He kept a place in Middlesbrough, where he was known in all the low places. Marriott had opened a banking account in Helmsdale, and Small David would accompany him there once a month so that he could receive the money directly it was withdrawn. He had already received most of Marriott's fortune for his part in the killing of Lee, for that had been dangerous work.

The first special edition on the North Eastern Railway having been abandoned, it had been Bowman's suggestion that The Railway Rover try again. Like Marriott, he had a kink that made him always return to the matter of the murder. He had been through Stone Farm on the train many times before the occasion of our meeting, horribly fascinated by the place, but never having the brass neck to get down and look about.

'That was all terrible enough,' said Bowman from his own part of the darkness, 'but it wasn't until I met you that matters began to really disintegrate.'

'Don't mention it, mate,' I said, moving towards the strip of light at the bottom of the door.

I took a flying kick at the door; then another.

Nothing happened, and the first inklings of a thirst were on me. I was hungry too, but that did not signify.

How long could a man survive without water?