The Lost Luggage Porter (34 page)

The bullet had notched a rib, and my chest was strapped. I was put on a low diet, and the next little while was all gruel, beef tea, and darkness followed by the swelling light at the shuttered windows. I would cough some blood from time to time, but it was always quickly wiped away by the nurse, as though it was an embarrassment over dinner and nothing more. I was in the room for head cases rather than lung cases, and here the rules were darkness, perfect quiet and regular dreams of Paris and babies.

After a while, I became more aware of York beyond the shutters: trotting horses in the far distance, faint cries of the drivers and church bells. The Chief came with two cigars, a bottle of John Smith's, a pen - the Swan - and with my report, which he said I might finish in due course. He would not speak about the manhunt that was going on across the city. It would agitate me too much. When he went away, the cigars were removed without a word by the nurse, although she opened the beer for me.

. .. But I couldn't face it.

A little while later, I drank it, flat, while sitting up and con­tinuing with the report, writing at a lick, and setting down all of Sampson's words just as I remembered them, and put­ting the confession of Lund quite out of my mind, except to wonder whether he had perhaps made it to The Chief him­self by now ... But the matter did not seem very pressing for it was now all in the same category as the dreams.

The wife returned at some point. She kissed me, and I gave her the report. She read it on my bed, the press of her body making me realise I needed a fuck.

'Firstly,' she said, when she'd finished, 'you can't spell.'

'Can't spell what?'

'Anything.'

'Can't spell
hardly
anything, you mean.'

'Second of all,' she continued, 'you must send the London police to the left-luggage place in Charing Cross Station because I'm sure he means to collect the money he left there.'

'We've already done that,' I said with a grin.

'Well then . ..' said the wife,'. .. I thought you would've.'

She coloured up (for she'd thought nothing of the sort).

It was night time, no light at the shutter edges, when the Chief came again. He looked sad, and placed a large brown paper sleeve on my bed. Inside was a photograph. I began to pull it free, and stopped halfway, but he nodded at me to continue.

The photograph showed a long white head sleeping in a hat box. It was turned a little to one side, just as if resting between the long spells of hard work that might be the lot of a head trying to make its way in the world without benefit of a body. Around it was blood, but not the
colour
of blood.

I sat upright, and stared at the Chief, who said, 'Three of his fingers were found in the hat box besides', at which the quan­tity of beef tea that had been set whirling within me sprang from my mouth. I had done this to Lund. As far as Sampson and Mike were concerned, he and I were in league. What had they asked and not been told three times? Had they, even with a manhunt going on, come by 16A and, finding it empty, tried to discover the house to which I had removed - the place where the ticket might be? Or where, failing that, the clean sweep might be made as a settling of accounts?

The nurse came and took away the stained top cover as the Chief waited with hands in his pockets.

'Can we get a nip of something?' he said.

She shook her head, walking away, adding that if we were to talk, we must do it in whispers.

As she moved off, the Chief muttered, 'I have my hip flask about me ...' before nodding at the photograph and continu­ing more loudly, 'The box was found on Platform Six yester­day, and carried over to the Lost Luggage Office by a porter.'

'Just as it was meant to be,' I said.

'Lund had been missing for three days,' said the Chief. 'Whether they came upon him at his home, about the station or somewhere in between, I couldn't say.'

'He put me on to the whole investigation,' I said, 'out of conscience at what he'd done.'

The Chief said nothing.

'. . . He killed the Camerons,' I went on. 'He let on to me, but I kept it back because I didn't want to see him swing.'

I repeated all of Lund's confession to the Chief, and he lost interest by degrees as I did so. He was looking down at his boots as I added: 'There ought to have been a guard for Lund, but I wanted him kept out of the whole .. .'

The Chief looked up.

'Sampson, or Joseph Howard Vincent, was taken this morning at the Charing Cross Left Luggage office. The arresting officers found the pistol on him that shot the bullets into the Camerons.'

'That's because he took it off Lund,' I said.

'The Surete in Paris,' continued the Chief, 'have found a body, believed from the pocketbook to be an Englishman, on the railway lines by a spot called . . . Boulevard de la Chapelle.'

He could not say it right.

'That was Hopkins,' I said.

'No face left on him,' said the Chief, 'all smashed away. What'll happen over that I don't know, but I daresay it'll come to naught because you can't hang a man twice. Samp­son is to be sent back to us. We'll charge him for this ...'He indicated the photograph.

'. . . But if you ask me the magistrates will not commit. There was not a spot of blood on him when he was run in; we have nothing to connect the bastard to it.'

'You'll have the evidence of Parkinson,' I said. 'He knew what Lund was about.'

No reply from the Chief.

'And Mike,' I said. 'He makes a connection.'

'That bugger's scarpered,' said the Chief. 'But I en't both­ered because what will get past the committal is the charge of murdering the Camerons. We have the gun, we have the evidence of the goods clerk, Roberts; we have yours. They were vagabonds, that pair; they had a lot to say about any bad business - we have that from the Institute staff - and they'd turned copper in the past. ..'

I had twisted my body away from the Chief as he added, 'I mean to say ... they'd
inform
from time to time.'

The Chief sighed, out of sight.

'There's Sampson's motive, do you not see?'

He rose to his feet.

'Sampson'll swing for killing the Camerons,' he said, pick­ing up the photograph, 'and you'll be commended to the Super at headquarters.'

By killing Lund, Sampson had removed the one obstacle between himself and a capital charge. It was another new thought; another new sickness. And everything marched in the direction of death. As I closed my eyes in an attempt to go directly to sleep, the Chief chucked something heavy onto my bed.

'Here, lad,' he said. 'Medicine.'

Dad shut the door of his house at the top of Baytown, after a good deal of palaver over closing all the curtains in the front room.

'I always close the curtains so as not to fade the dining room carpet’ he'd said to the wife, who had immediately turned and whispered to me, 'I swear he has that from the "Ladies' Column".'

But the sun
was
strong as Dad came up to us, and we all turned to face the sea. The wife was carrying little Harry, for the steep cobbled streets didn't suit the baby carriage that Lillian Backhouse had given us.

A ship was heading north on the sparkling blue water, moving over small, friendly waves of the sort you see paint­ed in a seaside theatre. Dad took the baby off the wife - which he did at every opportunity, even going so far as to walk without his cane in the hopes of having a carry. He pointed young Harry out to face the sea and the ship, saying to him: 'That's ballast for Hartlepool,' at which the wife burst out laughing.

She was walking on ahead, making towards the little row of houses at upper Bay that were always called 'Two Hous­es', even though there were three of them. We were twisting and turning down the little streets - not so much streets as steps - that led on to Main Street, where the first shop was the sweet shop, the window half blocked out with advertise­ments for 'Cleeves Toffee'. Dad showed the baby the sweet­meats in the window, saying, 'Thee and me'll be going in there regular, Harry.'

'When he gets his teeth,' called the wife from up ahead.

'... When you get your teeth,' said Dad, 'we'll be calling in for...'

'Hard Spanish!' called the wife, and she stood waiting for me as I walked slowly down the cobbles. She put out an arm for me, because I was still a semi-invalid, given to shortness of breath, and a ticklish cough at nights.

Bob Langan, son of the Baytown Stationmaster was com­ing up as we went down.

'How do, Jim?' he said, as I nodded at him. I knew him from my schooldays in Bay, just as I knew half the town for the same reason. He'd learnt all about my adventures in the
Whitby Gazette,
and from Dad too, of course.

'Afternoon, Mr Stringer,' he said, as he went past my dad.

I turned and looked at Bob Langan, and saw that he was looking back at me. A gunshot case was a new thing at Bay, where a lifeboat rescue was the more common run of heroics.

We were going past Barraclough's now; this was the bot­tom Bay butcher, whereas Dad had kept the top Bay butch­er's shop. As usual, he had a long hard look in the window, reading out one of the advertisements in a doubtful tone: 'Prize-Winning Beef from Ruswarp'. Didn't think much of Barraclough's, didn't Dad, and it had been noticed in Bay that if he wanted a nice tongue - which he was particularly partial to - then he went to Whitby on the train to get it rather than call in at Barraclough's and strain to be pleasant.

A cart was coming up, bringing fish for the afternoon train, and we all had to stand aside. As we did so, I thought how Baytown put me in mind of the number one courthouse at York assizes: the 'Two Houses' . . . that was where the judge sat; the dock was the Independent Chapel, tallest of the buildings on Main Street, while the witness box was the post office over opposite. The sea, low, wide and changeable
...
that was the jury box, and the public gallery was the dry­ing ground out along the cliffs, where a dozen white sheets leapt away in the summer sea breeze. The next thing to do was to picture Sampson in the dock, making him bigger than the Independent Chapel, making a giant of the man. The real courthouse had been sunlit too, just as Baytown presently was, with the sunbeams streaming down from the high win­dows for - what with all the many remands - the trial had not begun until a fortnight after Easter.

Sampson had been arraigned for the murder of the Camerons only, the evidence not being up to the mark regarding the killing of Lund, although the Chief had done his best to bring it about. Parkinson, the lost-luggage super­intendent, had given evidence before the magistrates to show that Lund had found himself in the way of harm from the Sampson lot through his (Parkinson's) own actions. It was quite white of him, I thought, to make no bones of the fact that he'd spoken to Mr Five Pounds, the bent copper of Tower Street, who was now awaiting his own trial.

We were walking past the Independent Chapel now, and I saw Smith, the organist darting in, followed by the little fel­low who was the organ blower. We were at the lowest level of Bay within another half-minute, directly outside the Bay Hotel.

'The Sunday dinners in there have a very good name, you know,' Dad was saying to the wife.

'A good name where?' said the wife.

'Why, here in Bay,' said Dad.

I was the chief prosecution witness at the trial of ValentineSampson, although Roberts, the goods clerk, had run me close. His hands had been made small by the burning metal, like an old maid's and he had been brought to court every day from the infirmary at Armley Gaol.

Looking on from the police seats at the Assizes, I had gen­erally avoided Sampson's eyes, but had snatched a few glances, as for example on the opening day, when he turned in the dock to face the falling sunlight, as though to take strength, and - later - as he smoothed his beard and shook the hands of his brief after the verdict we in the police seats had all been banking on was given.

We went down the steps to the beach, where the wife spread out a blanket, and Dad lowered the baby onto it. We all watched the sea, but little Harry was trying to raise him­self and so, taking pity on the lad (I remembered being the only one not able to stand on Platform Four) I picked him up. As usual when I did this he looked set fair for a cry, so I put him down again sharpish, recalling as I did so that there had been one further eye-connection during the judge's sum­ming up, when Sampson had smiled across to me, and made the sleeping sign: two hands together as in prayer, head rest­ed against hands. He had done the same on the train to Dover.

From the Independent Chapel I could hear choir practice, and a hymn I knew: 'Now The Day is Ended', the sound sent out across the sea from the chapel door. I stood a while and listened, then turned sharply to my right - the wife was bringing the baby to me once again.