Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Three

I stepped down on to the platform into a blizzard - no other word for it. The rough blokes were streaming away along the platform towards the 'up' end - the direction of Whitby - and their sacks held shovels and lanterns. Snow gang, that's what they were. I saw the train guard come running towards me. He was heading the opposite way to the blokes.

'Bad blockage is it?' I shouted to him.

He was making for the signal box - he would telegraph from there.

'Reckon not,' he said, still running. 'If it is, we'll work back to Saltburn.'

In that case, the Company would have to put us up - perhaps at the Zetland Hotel. Lydia would like that.

I turned to face the engine again, which was harder to do, since the snow blew from that direction. The engine driver and his fireman were holding a low conversation on the platform while a few feet beyond them stood a bloke in a waterproof cape. He would be the stationmaster. He was directing the snow gang to the site of the blockage, and they looked like a foreign army, trooping off in their long coats and no-shape hats. But I now saw that they were just ordinary railway blokes: men from every corner of the sheds at Middlesbrough and Saltburn who'd fancied a bit of overtime. I looked again towards the stationmaster. The cape threw me off a little, but there was something familiar about the man's brown bowleg snow-covered as it was.

'Fighting King Snow,' said a voice at my ear. It was Stephen from the compartment. He stood there in his topcoat, blinking in the snow and holding out a travel flask. The canvas case dangled from his shoulder, and I knew it now for a camera case.

I took a belt of the stuff in the flask.

'Much obliged,' I said, handing it back.

He poked his glasses to the top of his beak of a nose, and took another go on the flask. His hot little head looked stranger still when tipped back. I gave him my hand.

'Stringer,' I said. 'Jim Stringer.'

'Stephen Bowman,' he said. 'Call me Steve.'

He was holding out a business card; I read it by the train light.

'S. J. Bowman. Correspondent, The Railway Rover. Also author: Railways Queer and Quaint; Notes by Rocket: A Compendium; Holidays in the Homeland; &c.' The address given was not Wimbledon but 'Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C.', which I took to be the address of the magazine.

'We're running a special feature on the North Eastern company,' he said.

I could think of no real answer, so I said, 'Why?'

'We started one last year but it had to be called off.'

It was no answer, of course.

'I'm a detective on the Company force,' I said.

We were making for a little open-fronted shelter that lay just beyond the 'down' end of the platform.

'Your wife said you were a policeman,' he said, as we stepped under the wooden roof. 'How's the line, by the way?'

'Be cleared soon, by all accounts.'

The snow was finding its way through my boot soles, and I kept moving my toes, trying to recall them to life. Bowman was at his flask again. With head tipped back, he resembled a spectacle-wearing bird. Having despatched the snow gang, the stationmaster was staring along the platform at me.

'I know this fellow,' I said to Bowman, nodding in the direction of the man. 'His name's Crystal.'

'Know him from where?' said Bowman.

'Grosmont.'

'Never heard of it.'

'You wouldn't do, living in Wimbledon. It's not ten miles from here - a little way inland from Whitby.'

'"Twixt Moor and Sea",' Bowman said, prodding his glasses up his nose.

Crystal was approaching through the blizzard. The brim of his bowler was loaded with snow.

'Had my railway start as a lad porter there,' I said. 'This chap was my governor.'

As Crystal walked up, I felt sorry for him. He'd had hopes of becoming an assistant stationmaster at Newcastle, only to fetch up in a place that was a comedown even from Grosmont. Here was his allowance in life: the single line, the one small station, half a slice of moon and the black sea rolling away three fields off. The only point of interest was the passing loop that ran around behind the station building. Twelve mineral wagons waited there, loaded with ironstone and snow. They were illuminated by four lamp standards.

'Interesting fellow, is he?' said Bowman, now with notebook in hand. 'Think there's a paragraph in him?'

'A short one, maybe,' I said.

'I might write him up,' said Bowman. 'Life of a stationmaster at Sleepy Hollow - you know the sort of thing.'

'I wouldn't say that to him,' I said.

'Give me a line on the fellow,' said Bowman, as Crystal continued to approach. 'Sum him up in a sentence.'

'You could say he was a stickler for duty and detail,' I said, 'with working timetable and appendixes always to hand.'

'Appendices,^, said Bowman.

'Or you could say he was a complete bloody pill,' I added in an under-breath.

Crystal was now standing directly before us.

'You do know you're on trespass here, don't you?' he said.

His head was smaller than before. Or was it just that his moustache was bigger? Anyone could grow a bigger moustache.

'How do, Mr Crystal,' I said, and then he clicked.

'Stringer,' he said. 'What the blinking heck are you doing here?'

I recalled that Crystal was a regular at chapel - never gave a proper curse.

'Spot of business took me up to Middlesbrough,' I said. That I had failed in my business up there would have come as no surprise to him. Crystal had been down on me from the moment we'd met.

'I thought you'd gone south to learn footplate work.'

'I had a few adventures in that line, aye.'

'But you were found not up to standard, let me guess.'

The snow fell slantwise between us.

'I'm with the North Eastern Railway Police just now,' I said. 'Detective grade. This is Mr Bowman,' I added. 'Journalist with The Railway Rover.'

Crystal turned to Bowman. 'You're a journalist and he's a detective, but what I want here is another twenty snow gangers.'

'How's the line?' Bowman asked, and he nodded towards the snowy shadows of the 'up' end, into which the gangers had marched.

'Blocked right to Loftus,' said Crystal. 'Has been this past two hours.'

It was worse than the guard said, then. Or was this just Crystal being his miserable self?

'Important to have a good man in place here,' said Bowman, looking all about the station. He was trying to butter Crystal up for some reason.

Crystal nodded back at him, saying, 'The marshalling yard gives a deal of trouble - or would do to a chap lacking experience,' and he waved his hand over towards the abandoned mineral train.

Marshalling yard! It was nothing but a passing loop with siding attached. Over Crystal's shoulder, beyond the 'up' end of the platform, I could see the white bank that led up to the black edge of the woods overlooking that end of the station. It was lit up by the danger lamp of the signal standing at the foot of it. As I looked on, two of the gangers seemed to be fired out of those woods and began scrambling down the bank.

'Takes the worst of the weather, does this place,' Crystal was saying.

Under the red display, the two gangers tumbled fast down the incline, creating an explosion of snow.

'Quick judgment,' Crystal was saying. 'That's the leading requirement of a man in my place ...'

The first two had gained the 'up' end of the platform now, and here they started to run. Behind and above them, four more men came out of the woods, though at a slower pace than the first four; and these four slow men were carrying a cricket bag between them (that was my first thought, at any event) which they kept level as they came down the bank, boots first, in a controlled slide.

Crystal was saying, 'And of course, the rule book only gets you so far . . .'

The first of the running blokes was level with us now.

'Mr Crystal,' he panted, 'you've to send . . . You've to get . . . You've to get a wire ...'

The bloke was out of puff, couldn't get the words out. Crystal, about ready to blow up at this impertinence, was turning slowly towards him. The cricket bag was no cricket bag, but a horse blanket, and it was coming up fast behind Crystal like a dark wave.

The four men spread it before the stationmaster's boots, under the rushing snow: cricket stumps threaded through black broadcloth. That's what the body looked like. The suit coat was open, and beneath it was a yellowish stuff like pasteboard - the flesh of the man himself. There was no head, but then I saw the skull, resting by the waist. One of the blokes picked it up, set it down on the blanket at the top of the suit coat, and then stepped back to look, as if he'd just finished a jigsaw. The skull seemed too small: just a topknot, a tiny, dinted stone - something to be going on with until a more impressive object was found.

We all kept silence.

Mr Crystal's arms were tightly folded. I could not recall him standing like that before, but I knew what he was thinking: paperwork. He stared down at the body as the snow fell.

Paperwork by the armful.

Presently, one of the blokes said, 'Seen better days, that lad has.'

Crystal turned towards the nearest bloke:

'Why d'you bring it to me?'

'You're the governor, en't you?' said another of the blokes.

'Was it discovered inside station bounds?'

One of the four who'd carried the blanket jerked his thumb in the direction of 'up':

'Wayside cabin over yonder. Stowed under a load of stuff, he was.'

'What stuff?'

'Fire irons, coal, sacking - general railway articles.'

Crystal flashed into rage.

'That cabin's disused. It's for the old line that was taken up. What were you doing in there?'

'Tommy Granger -' said the spokesman, pointing to one of his fellows. 'He was hunting up a shovel.'

'Why did he not have his own shovel?'

'That doesn't matter,' I put in.

'Every man was specifically instructed to fetch his own shovel,' Crystal was saying, as I held up my warrant card in the view of everyone.

'Very likely a felony's been committed,' I said. 'I'll take charge.'

'A felony?' said Crystal. Then: 'You'll bloody not take charge' - and he'd cursed. He coloured up immediately, but carried on speaking. 'As stationmaster it falls to me to investigate all the circumstances, and make up a report for the line superintendent.'

I thought: I'm going to have to arrest the bugger. He'll lose his position.

'This falls under the head of "accident occurring on railway premises",' Crystal was saying, as I spied another man advancing through the snow at the platform end. He carried some object I couldn't make out.

I watched him for a while and then bent over the body, pulling the flap of the man's topcoat and making a search of his pockets. They were all quite empty. The last of the snow gangers was level with us now and, looking up, I saw that he held two objects. The first was a length of rope.

'Cut it down from the roof beam just above him,' he said. 'Bloke hanged himself,' he ran on, and he was looking at all of us as he spoke, making a kind of appeal.

The second object he held was a camera case of similar design to the one slung about the neck of Stephen Bowman. No - although weathered, it was the very spit.

'Found this half-frozen into the stream,' he said. 'Just on the edge, like. It was only a little way below the cabin -'

The man was shaking with cold. Everybody was eyeing him, and he didn't like it.

'I was making to step on it . . . use it as a stepping stone for crossing the brook . . . Then I thought it might be his -'

He pointed at the bones.

'What is this?' said Crystal, looking from the dead man's camera case to the one hung about Stephen Bowman's neck. 'A flaming camera club?'

Taking the case from the man, I turned about to look at Bowman, and the silver flask was in his gloved hand. I opened the carrying case and took out the camera, which was a black cube in fair condition, given where it had been. There were round switches more or less at the corners, so that it looked as though it was meant to move on wheels - a miniature wagon. Attached to the back of the thing were rusted clips that ought to have held another part of it. I moved a catch and a rubber pyramid rose up. You looked through that to take a picture.

I had my eyes on Bowman as I held the camera.

His words came slowly through the snow.

'The changing box is missing - the box that holds the slides.'

'That holds the . . . exposures?' I said.

The colour was all gone from Bowman's face.

Crystal stood stock still, his moustache collecting snowflakes at a great rate. Most of the snow gang had had enough, and were moving away towards the station house. It was that or become like the man in the blanket. This was not bad weather but something more - this stuff falling from the sky was out to bury us. I looked back at Bowman, and he was all wrong, could not hold my eye. I made a lurch towards the station buildings. I then heard a sound which was not snow falling, but a coloured spray flying from the mouth of Bowman. His hand wiped at his mouth as though he'd just eaten rather than done the opposite, and looking down at the pinkish stuff now lying on the whitened platform, I realised how beautiful the snow had been until that moment.