The Sprouts of Wrath

4

Ted McCready blew his whistle, waved his flag and watched with absolutely no interest at all as the early train pulled out of Brentford Central. He was precisely sixty-six days from his Gold Watch And Retirement Speech and he no longer gave a monkey’s. In fact, like many an old locoman who had gone before him, he had ceased to give a monkey’s with the passing of the age of steam. Ted could recall the young boys who clambered on to the footplates of the great locos, or lined the bridge parapets to be bathed in steam as one of the mighty King Class thundered beneath at full throttle, whistle blowing. But that had all gone now. The romance of railways was behind him and with it had gone the pride. No-one could honestly feel for an electric train. It had no personality, no being, no glory. It was just another carriage, but with a motor in it.

Half-heartedly, Ted offered a two-fingered Harvey Smith towards the departing train and shuffled away to his cosy office, his morning cuppa and the next chapter of Farewell My Window (a Lazlo Woodbine thriller).

Upon the platform a solitary figure remained, the only passenger to alight from the morning train. He was tall, gaunt and angular in appearance, clad in a Boleskine tweed three-piece. From his right hand hung a heavy pigskin valise, from his left a black Malacca cane with a silver mount. A small white ivory ring pierced the lobe of his left ear and a pair of mirrored pince-nez clung to the bridge of his long aquiline nose. A pelt of snow-white hair turfed his narrow skull. Such was the singular appearance of this solitary traveller and such it was that had put the wind up many a case-hardened veteran of the criminal fraternity. For this was none other than that doyen of detectives, that Nemesis of ne’er-do-wells — Let evil doers beware, let felons flee and varlets vanish, run the sound, roll the cameras, cue the action — enter Inspectre Hovis of Scotland Yard.

The man behind the mirrored specs turned his sheltered gaze upon Brentford Central. “You there!” His voice tore along the platform, striking Ted McCready, who was turning into his sanctum sanctorium, from behind.

“By the love of St Pancras!” The station master clutched at his palpitations and lurched about.

“That’s right, I mean you, porter chappy! Up this way at the trot, if you please.” A shaft of sunlight angling down through the ironwork of the footbridge held the great detective to perfection.

“You talking to me?” choked Ted, squinting towards his tormentor.

“That’s right, my man, at the double!” Hovis indicated his pigskin valise. “Let’s be having you.”

With bitter words forming between his lips, Ted humped the heavy case down the platform. He’d had a trolley once, but it had rusted away. He’d had a porter once, but he had been cut back. He’d had a hernia once … With his free hand Ted felt at his groin. He still had a hernia.

Ahead of him the spare frame of Hovis bobbed along to an easy stride. A voice called back across an angled padded shoulder. “Pacy pacy, Mr Porter,” it called. “Tempus fugit.”

Ted McCready stared daggers into the receding back. He was the first man in Brentford to encounter the great detective and by this token, the first man to really hate him. He would by no means be the last.