The Necropolis Railway

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Monday 4 January continued

I came out of St Thomas's on the Monday afternoon, and the wind from the river immediately started battering me. I turned a corner into the racing world of cabs and trams and horses, with their drivers in all combinations of moods, and thought: this is my home now. It was all the world of Waterloo. As I set off to Nine Elms, I resolved to take my first route, via the streets. But that would mean that Stanley had won, so I began to make my way by the side of the river, although I was not so brave as to chuck the whistle away.

In the Embankment gardens, a man was sitting completely still on a bench. He was leaning forwards and his high hat was tipped back. His hands were in his pockets, and I imagined that, in his head, he was flying through the air. I stopped and stared, and with the sight of him came a shuddering wonder at all I had been through.

I walked along the valley of the shadow of death, with the distillery and the gasworks on one side, the water on the other. A boat came swinging up, its black chimney bundling beautiful black clouds into the air, pumping out night-time. There was a man at the prow, a friendly looking sort, and this city sailor was making ready the ropes for landing. I nearly called out to him, in a cheery way, 'Cut that smoke out!' for I was happy in spite of my sutures.

Crook's eyebrows jumped at the sight of my stitches when I reached Nine Elms. 'I won't be booking on today, Mr Crook,' I said.

'Not at all, young Jim,' he said, 'not at all. Rest is what you need.' 'I want to walk around,' I said. 'You do that!' exclaimed Mr Crook. 'You take the air.' As I walked out of his place I realised this was by way of being a joke.

On entering the shed I was met with such a hail of hellos and how are you's that I grew dizzy giving my greetings and thanks in return. Barney Rose was there, gabbling cheerily about the faulty fielding of the Australians which had permitted some new victory for England, and suggesting that he was going off, and would I take a pint with him directly. Arthur would be at the Turnstile, and somebody called 'Tiger' would be along too. 'Who's Tiger?' I asked, still in a daze.

'Why, it's Vincent,' said Barney, and there he was, with Arthur alongside of him, and Arthur looked like an uncle and Vincent looked like a nephew as they never had before.

I had to say no to the offer of the drink, as I was still pretty done up and I felt a pint would have knocked me out, but they left me in no doubt that the offer stood for whenever I was ready to accept. As I walked away from the mouth of the shed, I saw Flannagan limping towards me, grinning all round his head, and I thought: he's a good, brave fellow to be able to smile like that with legs like his.

I returned to Lower Marsh still in excellent spirits. All had been put straight at Nine Elms: I was not a spy, Smith was gone, and all the men stood above suspicion on that score as well as all the others. Stanley was the one, and the only thing left to do was find him.

As I approached my lodge I was feeling a want of sleep and a sort of dreaminess that lingered from my injury, so I was not as surprised as I might have been to feel, upon opening that door, a singular sensation of travelling backwards in time, for I could hear my landlady saying, 'Well, it's a pound down.' As I slowly climbed the stairs, I continued to listen: 'Wash day is Saturday, and you are to leave out your laundry on the Friday, if that is quite all right?' There came the voice of a man, which I could not hear clearly. 'There is a good supply of cocoa in the kitchen' my landlady was saying as I reached the top of the staircase, 'or at any rate there will be presently, when I have a chance to arrange it, which is very beneficial on the cold mornings. You will notice that the ceiling is quite free from leaks.'

When I reached the top of the stairs I heard my landlady say, 'We have one other gentleman in the house. He works on the railways, not driving but cleaning the engines, yet he is keen to get on, and of a most amiable nature.' More fast words came from the man, but still I could not make them out. The two were in the unoccupied room, the one that was to be let. 'Might I ask your own occupation?' my landlady said as I moved along the upstairs corridor.

'Barrister-at-law,' said a light, fast voice. 'Advocate, that is. And yet the work is not of the common legal run but rather concerns the education of the public on matters touching -'

I seemed to stop him in his tracks as I stood in the doorway, for I was a dead man as far as he was concerned.

"This is Mr Stringer, the railway gentleman I was just mentioning,' said my landlady.

He was looking at the right side of my head, where the bandages held the gauze over the sutures. His eyes were orange, his face yellow and shining. He still wore the twisted greenish suit, but he had not shaved, and this time his papers were under his arm and he carried a cane.

'You were saying, Mr Stanley,' my landlady went on, 'that your work touched on…?'

'Interment,' he said, moving his gaze from my bandages to my eyes.

It was the cane, and the thought of it splitting my sutures, that was the main thing on my mind. At least it was at first, but then I looked at my landlady, who had suddenly somehow understood all. The fear on her face destroyed her beauty, but it was nothing to what this maniac might do to her.

'Every turn I take is a turn for the worse,' said Stanley, and then I heard a single, strange bird call. It was Stanley's cane, flashing through the air, and I somehow avoided it by taking a pace back. The next flash came, I ducked, and was upon Stanley, pummelling him about the face, wanting to hit harder but also wanting to hit faster, because I was like a man putting out a fire. For a moment he just seemed to take his beating, with the smell of old wooden halls rolling out of his mouth as he panted under the blows. He threw me off quite easily, though, as soon as he was minded to try, and I was more amazed by flying through the air than I was hurt by landing against the door, shutting it in the process. Stanley advanced upon me, slashed again, and I believed the tip of his cane stroked my eyelashes. He would have taken my eyes like somebody rubbing out a chalk line.

He came forwards again, and I could go no further back since I was already against the door. Stanley pulled back the cane again, readying himself for the next downward stroke, and as the cane climbed upwards, it made the same bird-call sound as before, except in reverse. He stood there with the cane held high in his hands, looking like a great, twisted tree, and began to bring it down fast, while starting up a slow roaring that contained the words 'You are all in darkness', or 'All is darkness': the cane was coming to snap my sutures this time without doubt. My landlady was moving towards Stanley from the side, slowly, prettily, with head held high. And then came a fearful explosion of wood.

I saw that Stanley was on the stone flags of the kitchen below, looking like a broken star, with his papers fluttering to the floor around him, for they were slower than he had been. His eyes were open, and the fire was rolling upward through them, while the waves of blood moved away from the top of his head and out towards the chimney piece and the boiler. One of his feet was facing the wrong way. 'The floor,' said my landlady, quite calmly.

It was no longer there. Half of it had gone, at any rate -Stanley's half – and my landlady and I remained standing on a sort of shelf over the kitchen. The door was on our shelf, and we were through it and down the staircase in a second.

My landlady was first into the kitchen, and on her knees with her hair in her eyes and a towel at Stanley's head. She had lost her straw hat on the way down, and as I blew the whistle I thought: how strange that she does not cry.

Stanley was quite dead by the time I had finished blowing the whistle, and my landlady was sitting on the floor beside him, staring into nowhere like a little doll. I began walking around the kitchen that had only half a ceiling, collecting the papers, and not being able to leave off reading them as I did so. I first collected a tiny advertisement from a newspaper: 'CASH ADVANCE' read the first, '?50 TO?5,000 ON NOTE OF HAND WITHOUT SURETIES OR SECURITIES'. Next I picked from off the smashed wood two longer items snipped from newspapers: 'COURT OF BANKRUPTCY', said one. Underneath these words was printed, in smaller type, 'before Mr Registrar Hope'. In larger type again were the words 'SCHEME OF ARRANGEMENT', and then the article began: 'His honour delivered judgement on the application made to the court to confirm the scheme of arrangement accepted by the creditors of Mr Adrian Stanley, late barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple. The scheme provides for the vesting of the estate in a trustee for the benefit of creditors.'

My landlady stood up and sighed. She told me to take my whistle outside and blow it again. I did so, getting some very queer looks, and when I returned there was a blanket over Stanley and my landlady's straw hat was back on her head.

From the grate, where it had drifted, I picked up an article headed: 'DIVORCE DIVISION', before Mr Justice Barnes and a special jury, 'EX-BARRISTER-AT-LAW A RESPONDENT'. It continued, 'Mrs Anne Stanley (nee Hedley) sought a divorce by reason of the alleged cruelty of her husband, Mr Adrian William Stanley, an ex-barrister-at-law, formerly of The Maples, Guildford, Surrey.'

There was a banging at the door, which I had left open; the constables had arrived, so I read on rapidly: Mr Clark, appearing for the respondent, said it was a shocking case… He asked Mrs Hedley: 'When did the cruelty begin?' and she replied 'With his anxieties at his chambers. He threw a pair of nutcrackers at me, later a carving knife that hit me on the third finger of my left hand. I was quite badly cut. Our servant gave him an egg that was not quite done; he cried out "Confound you!" and turned over the table. He would wander about the house at night, talking to himself; on one occasion I asked him to please stop because he had woken the children and he picked up a doorstop, saying, "I will give you such a knock on the head with this if you keep following me about.'" Three constables were now in the kitchen: one was talking to my landlady, one was over the body, and one was staring at the hole in the ceiling and saying, 'Strewth!'

I was reading the final article, headed 'AT BOW BEFORE MR KING': Mr William Adrian Stanley of The Maples, Guildford, was charged with assaulting Mr Grant Low. Mr Unstead, for the complainant, said that on the 15th of June, 1900, the defendant, a barrister-at-law, had taken the complainant, his clerk, to task over the bundling of a brief. The defendant remarked, 'It will be necessary for you and I to talk this over,' whereupon he struck the complainant twice about the head with a large vase. After hearing witnesses, Mr King said there was no question that the complainant had been assaulted. The defendant must pay a fine of forty shillings, with one pound costs. Mr Stanley is to be proceeded against by the Bar Council. It was some time later that I read the final three documents, which I found in the boiler after the constables and the Captain, who came on later to ask more questions, had all gone. The first two seemed to be rough drafts of letters. They were written in a very agitated hand, with many crossings out, capitals, underlinings. They had not been dated or addressed, but I had them down as some part of his plan to obtain higher wages for giving the address. I could make out nothing more than a few fragments from the two letters: After the service that I have given… in view of my being required to go FAR beyond the common run of obligation that any employee however conscientious might owe to an employer… the mere continuation of the Address will not in itself be found sufficient… it will be noted that I adhere to gentlemanly language, and make free with such words as 'please' and 'I beg', but patience is short, and it is well if it is remembered that I am by profession a barrister-at-law, in short a master of many things pertaining to… This ended with a word I could not make out except for the 'e' at the beginning.

The last of Stanley's papers was another advertisement from a newspaper: 'Unusually excellent furnished bed and sitting room offered to respectable person. Garden view. Thirty seconds from Waterloo Station. No servants kept. Every comfort and convenience. Very moderate terms.'

'But floorboards not of the best,' I said quietly. My landlady, however, lying beside me on my truckle bed, was fast asleep.