Death on a Branch Line (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Come eight twenty-five by my silver watch, Lydia was standing by the door of our room in her best blue cotton dress. It was set off to a T by the high black belt, and the white fancy blouse that showed through at her neck and shoulders. She carried her little leathern bag that was half-bag, half-purse.

‘Look alive,’ she said, as I did up my bootlaces. ‘And remember that it is not fashionable to be intoxicated.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ I muttered, following her through the door.

I had her railway ticket in my inside pocket, but I knew I’d have a job to get her on the train, especially since I meant to go to the party myself. This would strike her as unfair. No self-respecting woman Co-Operator would stand for it.

We’d both slept a little in the early evening; then I’d lain on the bed making notes in my pocket book of the week-end’s events so far. Later, I’d kept station outside the pub with a pint in my hand watching for any sign of the Chief, but he’d not pitched up. Did he mean to stay at the Hall? And would he be at the beano?
Would
Usher be there?

I could have done with more than just one pint to set me up, but I supposed that a glass of wine would be put in my hand directly I stepped under the Chinese lanterns. You got wine directly on arrival at the Christmas party given by the Archbishop of York for the whole village of Thorpe-on-Ouse. There was no messing about there – the Archbishop was certainly going to be drinking, and he didn’t want to stand out.

Along the lane leading down from The Angel, a doorway in the
low, bent houses stood open and one of the old ladies stood by it, as though presenting the place for inspection. Lydia, walking ahead, gave her good evening but received no response. I tried the same, with the same results. She might be near-blind. She looked as though she could see, but only very far-off things. I then overtook the wife, and stood with arms folded in the station yard. She walked towards me shaking her head.

I indicated the station.

‘You’re off in there,’ I said. ‘The 8.35 is an “up”. It’ll take you to Pilmoor, and you’ll change there for York.’

‘That’s what you think,’ she said, standing before me on the dusty stones.

It was a good thing the village was empty, because we were all set for a scrap.

‘Here’s the return half of your ticket to York,’ I said.

‘What do you think I am? A consignment of goods?’

I could hear the beat of the approaching train.

‘There’s been a bad business here. A man is waiting to hang for it, but I don’t think he’s the guilty party. Gifford was nearly done in because of what he knew. There’s a man at the Hall threatened with death if he spills the beans. It’s no …’

‘Well,
you’re
not about to spill the beans,’ the wife cut in. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’

‘I’d have thought you might want a bit of moral support when you see that man Usher again.’

The beat of the train was loud now. It was approaching at a lick.

‘Harry will want to see you anyway,’ I said.

‘You know perfectly well that he’ll be having a lovely time with Lillian Backhouse and all her kids. She’ll have given them lemonade today, and they’ll all have gone swimming in the river.’

‘But you told her not to take them swimming in the river.’

‘But I know perfectly well that she will do, and that Harry loves going.’

‘Why did you tell her not to take him, then?’

‘Because it’s
dangerous
.’

The 8.35 was bustling through the woods, dragging its banner of smoke.

‘For once in my life I’ve been invited to a party at a grand house,’ said the wife, ‘and if you think I’m going to climb up into a filthy third-class carriage and ride to Pilborough with some lecherous old man eyeing me from the corner seat …’

‘It’s Pil
moor
, and there won’t be any lecherous old man.’

‘There will be. There always is. Ask any woman.’

‘It’s coming too fast,’ I said, turning.

The two of us looked up at the station, and the train was there, rattling and thundering; each coach was itself for a small second, and then … a shocking silence. It had run right through.

I ran across the yard, and onto the ‘up’ platform.

Woodcock the porter was on his high perch, turning and laughing. The signalman, Eddie, laughed back at him from his balcony. They hadn’t bargained on the train not stopping. Station master Hardy was in his doorway; he retreated into it, back towards the little soldiers, as I approached, asking, ‘Did you have a traffic notice about that?’

He shook his head like a little boy.

‘The lines are down,’ he said, ‘and no-one’s come by.’

‘Then the driver’s had orders from …’

‘Oh, from Pilmoor, most likely,’ Hardy said.

‘It was to stop anyone leaving,’ I said.

‘But no-one
wanted
to leave,’ he said, and he indicated the empty platform.

The 8.35 had left a smoky tang in the air. I looked up at the signals. Woodcock and Eddie were both smoking, looking down with the remains of smiles on their faces. Were they on the inside or the outside of events? Where had they been in the afternoon? Slacking in the village? The urge was suddenly strong on me to see whether John Lambert was still living, and to try my luck again with the Chief.

I walked through the wicket and back into the station yard where the wife stood waiting.

‘More mysteries?’ she said, as I approached, and she didn’t wait for an answer, but just said, ‘Come on, we’ll be late.’

It was getting dusk as we struck out along the lane indicated by the sign reading ‘TO THE HALL’. The wife was walking a little way ahead, and it seemed to me that she turned into the woods early.

‘Hold on,’ I called out.

She’d taken a woodland track we’d not seen before.

‘It’s this way,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the back of the house.’

‘That’s a bit out of it,’ I said. ‘We might as well be servants.’

After three minutes in the wood, we came to a tall gate, propped open.

‘Cap off,’ said the wife, as the Hall came into view.

The back of the house looked the same as the front but even handsomer, as I might have guessed, for the aristocracy would beat you all ends up. There was a stone pond immediately behind the house, and a very mathematical-looking garden had been made around this. Two stone staircases curled down from either side of this garden to reach the terrace, which was dramatic like a stage, except that it was sunken rather than high. Two wires were strung high across the terrace, and the paper lanterns hung from these. They held my attention, each like a little paper concertina: orange, red, green, and giving a beautiful soft glow, but one had got scorched and smoke was racing away from the top of it as the paper burned.

The lanterns were like toys, childish things, and yet the Chief stood underneath them. He was to the rear of the terrace and the sight of his clothes hit me like a station buffer.

The Chief wore an evening suit: trousers with braided seams, varnished shoes, white bow tie – and the hairs on his head were mustered into parallel lines and held down by Brilliantine. The perfection of the suit pointed up his natural imperfections, and I knew that I was for once seeing the Chief out of his element. The fellow he was speaking to, on the other hand, looked practically born to wear an evening suit, and he had one foot raised on a white iron garden chair which gave him a confident look. He was smoking a very white cigarette, and this made him seem to be
pointing all the time, saying, ‘Now look here, it’s like this,’ while the Chief listened and looked as though he
wanted
to smoke but daren’t.

This second man was Captain Usher.

A couple also stood waiting on the terrace and these I knew must be the Chandlers: the brother-in-law of the murdered man and his wife. Robert Chandler was a bald man whose head went in slightly at the middle like a peanut shell; his wife was a round and pretty woman in a lilac dress with a train. They were both somewhere in the middle forties, which made them about of an age with Usher.

Of John Lambert there was no sign.

‘But they told us not to dress,’ the wife was saying, in a tone of voice I’d not heard from her before, for it seemed to hold real fear. We were approaching two avenues made by dark firs that had been cut into cones like witches’ hats. Which one to choose? Would there be a right one and a wrong one? You could bloody well bet there would be.

But before we reached the trees, an advance party approached us: a chambermaid and a manservant of some sort – two servants kept back from Scarborough. Both carried trays holding bottles and glasses. They closed on us and then divided, the parlourmaid making towards the wife, the manservant heading my way.

I realised that he was the servant I’d seen that morning, the amiable one who’d directed me to the gardener’s cottage. He no longer looked horsy, but like an expert on wines.

‘Hock or claret, sir?’ he said.

I took a claret because it was nearest. But I felt I moved too fast, because the man said, ‘Or there’s champagne at the table, sir?’

Looking over, I saw a small table covered by a white cloth, and over-crowded with bottles and ice buckets. I had the notion that the four people standing around it and waiting for us were all adults, and that the wife and I were children. Evidently the four had all eaten supper, and we had received an invitation of an inferior sort after all, and I knew this would go hard with the wife. I knew also that her nervousness and embarrassment on this
account would far exceed in her any anxiety about any murderous doings.

We were not approaching the terrace by the two proper walkways, but had somehow ended up going haphazard over the grass. Having drunk off my claret, I found that I was now making towards the hosts with an already empty glass, which also didn’t seem quite etiquette. The wife, of course, carried no glass, since she was tee-total.

It was Chandler’s wife who was waiting to greet me at the margin of the terrace.
Do not on any account say, ‘I see that you do
yourselves pretty well here
,’ I told myself.
Do not say, ‘This is laying
on luxury
.’

She shook my hand, she might even have curtsied; she said something I didn’t quite catch and then, after a long beat of silence, I heard myself saying, ‘Lovely place you have here.’

Meanwhile Lydia was being greeted by the host, who said, ‘It is lovely to see you again,’ and the two ‘lovelys’ seemed to clash.

From the rear of the terrace, I heard a laugh from the Chief as he spoke to Usher, and it was not quite natural, not quite
him
. Had Usher got him under the gun? Had he bested him as he had bested me?

And where had the Chief got his bloody dinner suit from?

The hostess, who stood before me, was looking down at the ground. Beneath the folds of her dress, she moved one of her feet, as though testing the bricks beneath. She looked up again, and a ruby necklace rose on the slopes of her white bosom as she took a deep breath. I had the idea that she was at once very distant and very near, and that she was a little squiffed. She then spoke all in a flurry:

‘We had such a friendly talk earlier on at the village with your wife, Mr Stringer. She said she was absolutely just dying to see some Chinese lanterns, and – anything to oblige!’

She turned and smiled with arm outstretched, presenting the lanterns of which there was now one fewer, the scorched one having burnt right out. I looked from it towards the Chief, who had certainly noticed me, but had not yet given me any acknowledgement. Mrs Chandler, spotting the direction of my glance, said,
‘You won’t believe it but those two are talking about camels.’

As the manservant poured more claret for both of us, Mrs Chandler said something about how the two men had been in Africa, so what could you expect? There was practically nothing in Africa
but
camels. Then the host, Robert Chandler, came over with his arm in Lydia’s.

I looked at Lydia’s white-gloved hand, and there was a glass of champagne there, and the sight was so all-of-a-piece and so elegant that for a moment the shock did not register. As I looked on, she drained off the rest of the glass and shot me a look that clearly said, ‘You put away gallons of alcohol every week, so why shouldn’t I take a glass now and again?’ I understood straightaway that it was the shame of not being invited to the meal that had made her do it, but the sight of the glass so knocked me that I said to the host:

‘By the way, Mr Chandler, where is John Lambert?’

‘John?’ he said. ‘Well, we hope to see him here. But I think he is a little over-strained just at present.’

‘That’s what everyone says,’ I said.

‘Do they?’ said Mr Chandler, and he looked put out. ‘I was rather congratulating myself on my – y’know – insight. He’s not a very forward party exactly, and he’s been conferring with Captain Usher all day, so I expect he’s pretty worn out. Now that sounds as though I’m being rude about Usher when in fact he seems a perfectly pleasant chap who knows a very great deal about camels and horses and dogs and things like that. Tell me, do you know that fellow that runs The Angel? What’s wrong with him?’