Murder At Deviation Junction (8 page)

    'Not
sure.'

    'When
did this happen?'

    'Couple
of days before I saw him for the last time. I must look at my diary, as I say.'

    And
he nodded again and moved off in the direction of the sea.

    Down
to the sea, up again a little way, and I came to the other Whitby station: the
Town Station. It overlooked the harbour. Two trains were in steam, but there
were no takers for them. A line of footprints in the snow ran along the
platform, and I followed them to a porter who was sitting on a barrow reading
the
Whitby Morning Post
instead of scraping up the snow. I held up my
warrant card to him, saying, 'How do? I'm cutting through to Bog Hall, all
right?'

    I
wasn't really asking but telling him.

    I
stepped down off the platform and walked into a wide railway territory across
which snow flew right to left, seawards. Here was the main line to York,
running away through a mass of sidings and marshalling yards. Beyond lay the
estuary of the river, where signals gave way to the masts of schooners. I was
making for a mass of carriages by the river's edge when a tiny pilot engine
moving under a great tower of steam checked my progress. The driver kept his
face set forwards but the fireman turned and smiled down at me.

    'Now
then!' he called down.

    'You
wouldn't know the whereabouts of the yardmaster?' I said.

    Just
then a man stepped around the smokebox end of the engine, which straightaway
began a fast retreat, the fireman grinning at me all the while.

    'Who
wants me?' asked the man. I explained what I was about and showed him my
warrant card, and he gave his name as Mackenzie. He was a big bloke, and seemed
to fairly roll over the rails and barrow-boards on our way to the farthest
corner of the siding, where the railway land met the half-frozen river.

    'Mothballed,'
said Mackenzie, coming to rest, with his fingers in his waistcoat pockets,
before a train of oddments. We were looking directly up at a dirty but
good-class bogie carriage. It was in Company colours, but 'CTC' was written in
gold on the side.

    'Cleveland
Travelling Club,' said Mr Mackenzie. 'Ran from Whitby to Middlesbrough and back
every day for nigh on twenty years.'

    'When
was it decommissioned?'

    'One
year since,' he said. 'Fancy a look up? Pride of the line, this was,' said
Mackenzie, hauling himself up towards one of the high doors. He was proud of it
himself too, as it seemed to me.

    He
got the door open after a bit of struggle that cost him his perch on the
footboard, pitching him on to the mucky snow beneath. He clambered up again,
motioning me to follow.

    The carriage
smelt of past cooking, and it contained coldness: a special damp kind.

    'Subscribing
Club members only in here,' said Mackenzie. 'That was always the rule. No
guests allowed - not even if they paid treble. You after taking pictures?'

    He was
pointing at the Mentor Reflex.

    I
shook my head. I was looking at a great boiler in a cubby-hole all of its own.

    'Tea-making
machine,' said Mackenzie, as he squeezed his way forwards.

    'Galley's
next,' he said, sliding back a door that gave on to a little dusty kitchen.
Half a dozen dusty wine glasses in a basket; two cups rested on a short
draining board. I picked one up.

    'Gold
trim,' I said.

    I
knew the design. Best Company china. I'd first come across it at the Station
Hotel, York.

    'Where's
the rest of the service?' I asked Mackenzie, and his cheeks rolled upwards and
outwards as he smiled. 'Tom Coleman's back parlour, shouldn't wonder.'

    'Who's
he?'

    'Whitby
Town stationmaster as was. Took superannuation nine months since. Took himself
off to Cornwall 'n all.'

    'That's
handy,' I said. 'Who else would know about this show?' 'You might try the
traffic department,' said Mackenzie. 'They supplied the Club tickets.'

    'They'd
be seasons, I suppose?'

    'Aye,'
said Mackenzie. 'Whitby-Middlesbrough annual returns.
Specials,
like.'

    We
were moving along the corridor again.

    Mackenzie
said, 'The Club never had a full complement of members, you know.'

    'The
club cars
I've
heard of,' I said, 'on the Lancashire and Yorkshire and
the Midland and suchlike - there'd be twenty-five members or so. That amount
was needed before the Company would lay out money for the carriage.'

    'Well,
this club was different,' said Mackenzie.

    You'd
have thought he was the Hon Sec or some such.

    
'Richer
,'
he added, after a space. 'Membership never overtopped five.'

    We
were moving along the corridor again, passing two compartments. Inside they
were like a rare sort of First Class accommodation: wood panelling with walnut
trimmings, fancy electroliers bunched up into railway chandeliers. Photographic
views were mounted in glass frames above each of the dozen seats - all the
photographs showed country houses instead of the usual waterfalls or whatnot.
One of the window panes was cracked, and there was a single bootprint on one of
the seats.

    Mackenzie
was shaking his head as we pushed along the corridor. 'It was fitted on to the
morning Whitby-Middlesbrough train,' he said. 'Came back with the evening
Middlesbrough-Whitby.'

    The
corridor now brought us into a saloon: a railway sitting room with two settees
facing each other under another brace of chandeliers. The seats had their backs
to the windows. At either end were more chairs: two rockers facing a third
sofa, and this one with a drop-head, for lying back.

    'You'd
have your glass of wine on your way home from business,' said Mackenzie, 'and
you'd drink it stretched out flat! Bit of all right, wouldn't you say?'

    'But
only one of them could do that,' I said.

    'All
right if you were that
one
, then -'

    'I
just can't picture the sort of men who might have rode up here waiting on the
platform at Whitby Town every morning,' I said.

    'The
train ran from Whitby,' he said. '
They
didn't. Nobody who rode up here
boarded at Whitby as far as I know. They lived at different spots further along
the line.'

    'Where?'

    'Wherever
a good house was to be found. Places around Saltburn.'

    Stone
Farm was near Saltburn. Was this a Club of murderers?

    'They
lived closer to Middlesbrough than to Whitby, then?'

    He
nodded.

    'It's
an hour and a half all the way from Whitby to Middlesbrough. You wouldn't want
to do that every day.'

    'They
all rode every day?'

    He
nodded.

    They
were not gentry, then; not county people but businessmen. They could run to the
smaller sorts of country houses. They'd have carriages and half a dozen
servants apiece, but were still obliged to turn up daily at their place of
business.

    'Who
put the Club together?'

    'Search
me. One of the members?'

    'How
come you know so much about the club yet can't put a name to any of the
members?'

    He
let this go by, saying, 'The one who put the Club together would be the same
bloke who put in for this carriage.'

    'Did
you ever set eyes on any of the Club people?'

    'Don't
reckon so. The carriage was always empty when it left here, remember.'

    'What
about Tom . . . whatsisname?'

    'Coleman.'

    'That's
it - Whitby SM as was. Might it be worth writing to him in Cornwall?'

    'You'd
be writing to a dead man,' he said.

    'When
did he die?'

    'This
summer.' 'Of what?'

    Mackenzie
shrugged.

    'Heart.'

    He
was enjoying this: the back and forth, like a game of tennis.

    'Why
did the Club have the two compartments
and
the saloon?'

    He
shrugged again, saying, 'Why do some folk have sitting rooms and parlours?
Comes down to brass.'

    The
wind was getting up, and the carriage shivered for a moment like one of the
boats in the harbour, but Mackenzie held his footing.

    'Where
are all the members of this Club?'

    'All
gone,' he said, grinning.

    'Gone
where?'

    He
was shaking his head vigorously now, as though trying to shake off the smile.

    'That,'
he said, 'is not known to any of the blokes along the line.'

    The
great tower of the cathedral, seen from the train, seemed to pin York to the
ground. The city had been about for ever, and would go on in the same way. It
was as cold as the coast but felt safer.

    It
was
too
safe, and the station police office seemed like a sort of prison
- one building trapped inside another. It stood between Platform Four (the main
down) and Platform Thirteen - a small bay platform used by trains from Hull and
nowhere else. The Chief was in the office on my return from Bog Hall, along
with two of the ten constables, Wright the chief clerk (who was also the only
clerk) and Langbourne the charge sergeant. Detective Sergeant Shillito had not
been present, which suited me, for it meant I could report direct to the Chief,
who took one look at me and ordered me home for a day's sleep, this even though
I had started in on the story of the dead body. Dead bodies were nothing to the
Chief. He had killed men, and not just in war.

    I did
not go home directly, but sent a telegram and wrote a letter. I then biked home
to Thorpe-on-Ouse, where I discovered that Harry had a low fever. There were so
many medicine bottles by his bed that he would play soldiers with them -
cod-liver oil, menthol, camphor - but none seemed to answer. Removal to a
temperate climate was recommended for chronic bronchitis by the
Home Doctor.
Meanwhile in York, snow threatened, and I biked through an icy wind without
gloves in order to book on at the office for Tuesday 14 December.

    Present
in the cold office at seven-thirty were Wright the chief clerk and two
constables: Crawford, who was at Langbourne's desk, and Baker, who was by the
fire. The constables didn't have desks, and the fact that I did was one of the
few privileges that I, as a detective constable, had over them.

    Wright,
who was pushing seventy, was eating an orange prior to distributing the mail on
to the desks. The orange was the only colourful item in the office, which was
cold and smoky - dirty green in colour. No Christmas cards stood on the
mantelpiece, nor were any likely to. A Hull train was simmering just beyond the
door. Wright ate a few pieces of the orange very noisily. Everyone watched.
After half a minute, he broke off, saying, 'I've got four of these oranges.'

    It
was like a threat.

    'Four
for a penny, they were,' he said.

    'One
for each of us, is it then?' enquired Baker.

    'Eh?'
said Wright, ripping at the fruit with his teeth.

    'I
can't stand oranges of any description,' said Crawford.

    'What
do you mean, "oranges of any description"?' asked Baker. 'All oranges
are the same.'

    'I
hear you struck a dead body on your travels?' said Wright, who might have been
old but was also very curious.

    'I
did,' I said.