Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Thirty-seven

Well, I was on velvet. My job was safe, and I had secured my promotion, which in turn meant that Lydia could take up the job of her dreams. Our money troubles were at an end. And the case seemed to have resolved itself beautifully. It was like a mathematical problem that had looked very involved but that, after a long, head-racking while, was discovered to come out at zero. Marriott had killed himself or been killed by Small David, and there was some justice in either outcome. If it had not been suicide then it would have been made to look like it, for Small David seemed to be a great hand at that. There need be no questions asked.

The inquest into Peters would return a verdict of suicide. It was a shame that Peters should be set down for ever as having done away with himself - but then, how could that ever have been disproved except by confession of Small David, which had never been likely?

As for Lee and Falconer - Lee was deemed to have been murdered and he had been. The wrong man had swung for it; but not, by all accounts, an entirely innocent man. Falconer was put down as disappeared, and no injury was done to his name and reputation as a result. It was perhaps a more dignified fate than the one that he had met in reality. Small David had got his deserts just as surely as Marriott himself, and the men who'd deserved to come out of it with unstained characters had done so: Richie Marriott was on the Continent, where he would no doubt remain, and only he and I knew of Bowman's involvement. We in fact were the only three who knew the cause of the Travelling Club's disappearance, and it seemed to me fitting that only three should know, for there was no rightness or dignity in the explanation. A word from my schooldays came to me: the business had been a shameful one from start to finish.

But it was now played out.

I walked in a happy haze about the snowy streets of central Middlesbrough, where the shops were all either full to bursting or closing early - nothing in between. I had half an eye out for the Middlesbrough Brown's. I would buy Harry a lead man to go with his clockwork loco - a guard with arm raised, forever giving the 'right away' to the little engine. It struck me that I could also run to a scarf to go with Lydia's gloves. Of course, the situation called for a pint as well, but it would be a risk to slip into a pub so close to Captain Fairclough's office. In the end, I decided to put it all off to York: I would take an early train back.

I hurried up the steps at the back of the station that gave on to the 'up' platform. In the parcels office they were still stamping and labelling like mad. At the platform ends, salt was going down, and I had a moment of alarm about the weather. If there'd been drifting, I might be kept on the coast for Christmas, and that really would be a calamity.

I could not stop thinking of all the things I might do being once again in funds and, happening to give a glance in the direction of the telegraph office, I remembered Bowman. It was half past midday. I had another ten minutes until train time, so I darted in to send a wire, which took longer than I'd expected because of a queue full of people sending their love to all points of the compass, whereas if they'd really meant it, they'd have posted Christmas cards long since or gone to see the love objects in question.

I climbed aboard the Whitby train with seconds to spare - no time to look at the engine. I fretted that it might be pushing a snow plough of some kind. We rocked away and, as Ironopolis came into view, I saw that only a few furnaces remained in blast, and that all the strange little wagons had been tidied away into sidings. Our train was only a quarter full; the light was fading already, and I felt that most people had already gone to their Christmas places. I had a compartment to myself, and I looked at first to the seaward side, where the holiday town of Redcar soon came up, with the black sea crashing beyond the lonely 'Tea' flag. A few minutes later, the snow was coming down slantwise again on Marske. There was a sudden crashing to my right, and I turned and saw a full-sized snow plough being taken on the 'down' line between two ordinary engines, as though the Company was trying to smuggle the thing through to Middlesbrough. We were in and out of Saltburn in very short order. The platform lights blazed, and I watched half a dozen muffled-up people hurrying away to Christmas.

For a moment there was nothing but the swinging station sign.

We pulled away and were soon flying through Stone Farm, where I thought I saw Crystal standing stock still on the platform and being snowed upon. I made a move towards the window, meaning to drag it down and call out 'Happy Christmas!' to the miserable old fossil.

Next thing we were in the town of Loftus, gliding along the high street in the same direction as the snow. From the platform there came nothing but a few throat clearances out of sight. We pulled away into the country and a seabird flew alongside the window - and then suddenly it was taken higher, as if yanked up on a wire.

I turned the other way and the door of the compartment opened. Small David sat down over opposite me with his tweed coat spread wide, a smile on his face and a revolver in his hand.

But it could not be Small David. Small David was shot.

'Are you . . . Sanderson?'

'Och, ye've sniffed me oot.'

He had addressed the top of my head, with his own great head tilted back.

But he couldn't be Sanderson either - Gilbert Sanderson was hanged.

There was some bloody complication: a mass of dried blood under his flat sporting cap - the cap was welded to the head by the stuff, and yet he was grinning. It was Small David all right; he hadn't crowned his brother. He had been crowned by his brother.

'I can see ye're thinkin' hard.'

I was thinking how the police had taken him for Sanderson, and now I had confused him with his brother, with the same disastrous consequences. He gave a glance towards the window: the white fields rolled on under the blackening sky. There were farms and what looked like farms but with flames rising above, farms on fire - and these were the mines.

'Yer brain's too wee, de ye ken that?' said Small David.

My mistake had arisen because I had not been able to think of him as suffering at the hands of another man, but only as the cause of suffering. I looked down at his yellow socks - there was blood on them too, and sweat and filth, and all the horrible leakage of his great body.

'Smart eh!' he said, and I saw that he had no teeth, just like a great baby. Had they been lately knocked away by his own brother? I saw through the window a summerhouse in a garden of snow coming fast by the window - that was all wrong. I turned again to face Small David.

He said, 'Ye'll alight the train in a wee while.' 'Willi?'

'Aye, ye wull.'

'It was the brother that was shot by the police -'

'Aye, gone for ever.'

'He gave you a good battering.'

'Och, he could nae batter a fish.'

'Why didn't you shoot him, Small David?'

'I was savin' the bullets for yersel'.'

'Where's Marriott?'

'Hum? Stull deed.'

'The son, Richie?'

'He's awae tae France.'

'But you've taken all of his father's money.'

'A guid deal of it, aye.'

He looked away from me and he looked back.

'My fair share,' he said.

We were both being rocked as the train slowed. I looked to the left and down. At Flat Scar mine, the endless rope still turned, sending the swinging buckets out towards the mine station, where a mineral train waited with a fuming engine at the head. The flywheel turned inside the wheelhouse, and the sea smashed against the little jetty beyond. It was Christmas for some, the telegram lad had said, but not for the blokes of Flat Scar, and not for me. Snow had been scraped away and piled up all around the mine, like so much white slag.

There came a fluttering from beyond the right-hand window, and I thought at first that another seabird was flying close by, but it was the rattling wind gauge that marked the start of the Kilton Viaduct. The train noise was different now, as we slowed and ran on to the viaduct, and it galvanised Small David, who rose to his feet, motioning with the revolver for me to do the same.

As I stood facing the man, I realised that I stood taller than him; but he held the gun. He drew open the door of the compartment and motioned me into the corridor, which was empty. I had the feeling that we were the only men aboard. Small David pushed the gun into me, indicating that I should walk along the corridor.

The corridor went on for ever, but we slowly closed on the carriage door. As we did so, he spoke:

'I was no quite comfortable while ye were left alive.'

'How did you know I'd be in Middlesbrough?'

'Yon bottle man told me.'

'Spoken to him recently, have you?'

'I have nae.'

I knew then what the telegram had been: a warning from Bowman that he had at some early stage let slip the fact that I had an appointment at Middlesbrough.

We were now at the door.

'I wull be calling upon the bottle man presently, but ye have the honour of being the first tae dee.'

Small David opened the door, and the snowy gravel was flowing along beneath our boots. On the other side of it stood the low wall of the Kilton Viaduct, and beyond that lay the long drop to the beck and the mineral line.

'Oot,' he said.

I jumped, and he followed directly after.

We were alongside the carriage bogies, and the wheels themselves were horrific and merciless when seen close to. The carriage walls towered above us, and they came on, and came on.

'Stir yersel,' said Small David. He meant me to walk to the middle of the viaduct, and there he would make me leap.

I leapt early.

One hand on the viaduct wall and I was gone. From the middle of air, I saw the mine, the endless rope turning under the darkening sky. My bowler was falling in advance of me; it was disloyal, abandoning ship. Well, a bowler was a ridiculous article in any case. My limbs were just so many floating things, and by slow degrees it seemed that my boots were becoming higher than my head. I wondered whether I would make a full somersault before I smashed. I was no detective sergeant; it was not meant to be. I was an engine man who had missed his way, and that was all about it.