Read Death on the Last Train Online
Authors: George Bellairs
Death on the Last Train
THE LAST TRAIN
By GEORGE BELLAIRS
This work contains language that some readers may find offensive, but has been reproduced in its original form to accurately reflect the era in which it was written. There may be attitudes to race, gender, religion or sexuality in this work that are no longer acceptable. Any such views expressed are not shared or supported by the publisher.
“
To move horror skilfully, to touch the soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wear and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit â¦
”
CHARLES LAMB.
Chpater II. The Chief Constable Feels Guilty
Chpater III. The Back of Beyond
Chpater V. The Day of the Inquest
Chpater VI. Four Men and a Girl
Chpater VII. The Man who Took to Drink
Chpater IX. Startling Developments
Chpater X. The Man who Played the Trombone
Chpater XII. The Old Man's Darling
Chpater XIII. The Sorrows of Lambert Hiss
Chpater XVII. The Man with a Bad Heart
Chpater XIX. Murder for Nothing
Detective-Inspector Thomas Littlejohn, New Scotland Yard.
Detective-Sergeant robert cromwell, of the same.
Rev. Bernard Beaglehole, L.Th., Vicar of St. Stephen's, Salton.
Timothy Bellis.
Bessie Emmott, his Lady Friend.
Guard, Driver and Fireman of the 10.55 to Salton.
Station Staffs and Signalmen at Mereton and Salton.
Harold Claypott, a Drunkard.
Tarrant, Manservant to Timothy Bellis.
Kenneth Forrester, Chief Constable, Salton County Police.
Dr. Henry Cooper, Police Surgeon.
An Anonymous Commercial Traveller.
Alice Bryan, Niece of Bessie Emmott.
Harry Luxmore, her Boy Friend.
Mrs. Beaglehole, J.P.
Leah and Constance Claypott, Sisters of Harold.
Willie Smith, a Schoolboy.
Lambert Hiss, Ticket Collector at Mereton Station.
Ada Scattermole and a number of luving women from Mount Horeb Chapel, Mereton.
Humphrey Godwin, a Tortured Parent.
Basil Godwin, his Torture, aged 6 months.
Mrs. Bindfast, a Soothsayer.
Solomon Binns, Cousin of Bessie Emmott.
Priscilla Binns, his Wife.
Ted Eaves, Steward of the Union Club, Mereton.
Archibald Manners, Owner of the Little Wonder Stores, Mereton.
Bert Hood, a Bus Conductor.
Albert Blaze, Stationmaster at Mereton
Sir Gilbert Drawbell, the Eminent Conductor.
Dr. Flanagan, Physician, Mereton.
A Musical Critic in Harris Tweeds.
Travellers on the Last Train, Porters, Policemen, Women in Queues.
The Last Train
Littlejohn left Euston at nine o'clock in the morning. Bright October sunshine outside and leaking in through gaps in the dark roof.
“Change at Willesfield,” they told him. “The through coach was taken off last week.”
He was on his way to Ellinborne in connection with the imminent trial of a forger who had once crossed his path. Mrs. Littlejohn had given him a packet of sandwiches to see him through. Optimistically, he ate the lot at noon and then they ran into fog at Crewe. At nine o'clock the same evening, Littlejohn stood in the waiting room at Willesfield. It was raining like mad. He felt fagged out, for he had hardly slept the night before, owing to an alarm in the small hours.
“Next train goes at ten forty-one. It's in the bay there. You can sit in it if you want.”
The bilious-looking porter poked the fire, but rain falling down the chimney had damped it down, and it vomited a final cloud of smoke and soot into the room and then gave up the ghost.
“No refreshment room here?”
“Closed down when war broke out. Nearest place is Willesfield town, mile an' a nalf along the road ⦔
The porter looked out at the deluge falling beyond the open doorway and gave a malevolent chuckle. Littlejohn made for the waiting train.
Ellinborne lies at the end of a small branch line from Willesfield, through Mereton and Salton. The train consisted of three rickety wooden coaches in disgraceful condition. The three first-class compartments were dirtier than the thirds. The lighting was of the kind introduced at the outbreak of war when a glass globe covering a small
bulb in the middle of the roof was blacked all over and then the light allowed cautiously to percolate through a glorified pinhole. The whole sorry contraption was drawn by an aged tank locomotive with steam leaking from every joint.
J. H. loves C. B. Sez you
!
Someone had written the declaration on the partition in letters six inches high, and the response was scrawled in a different hand. Littlejohn kept reading it over and over again automatically.
In case of air raids close the windows and pull down the blinds ⦠Don't leave the compartment. . . Imminent danger: lie on the floor. â¦
Dreamily Littlejohn pictured a compartment full of them. One on top of another like a rugger scrum and the bottom man grovelling among the trampled fag ends, spit and tobacco ash â¦
He must have fallen asleep for the next he remembered was a violent tugging and jolting. The train was off. He looked at his watch. 10.41. Right on time. He was hanging hungrily out of the window as the train tottered into Mereton.
There were three porters on the platform waiting to pack up and go home. The lamps on the down line side had already been extinguished and one of the men was expectantly holding a long pole with a hook on the end of it, to repeat the performance on the up line platform as soon as the train was off.
“Mereton
,” bawled one of the three, and the other two repeated it in different pitches, like a trio of singing waiters starting a song. “
Salton and Ellinborne Train. ⦠Zon Elbun Dray ⦔
As if in response, some cattle spending the night in a siding began to moo.
There was no refreshment room at Mereton either, but an old woman sold meat pies, buns and bottles of ginger beer in one corner of the general room. Conscientiously she kept open her shop until the last train had left, and
was now packing her market basket with unsold confectionery and stowing the minerals away in a cupboard. One of her legs was shorter than the other, and she wore a surgical boot with a sole six inches thick. Tap-thud-tap-thud ⦠She brought the Inspector two meat pies and a bottle of pop. Littlejohn hung out of the window eating his supper. The pies contained some kind of sausage meat and were very tasty. He brightened up and watched the scene on the station as he ate them.
The station-master had already changed his official jacket for one of shabby grey, and a raincoat, and replaced his peaked cap by a bowler. He had a fat body, a small head, no neck, and trousers extremely narrow in the leg. Like a tadpole. ⦠He regarded with sleepy eyes the crowd on the platform.
There had been a Sunday School outing during the afternoon and the waiting room and platform were littered with the pips and skins of the latest allocation of oranges, as well as food bags and toffee wrappings. Rained off from their country walk the excursionists had settled down on the station until the next train home.
Some members of the Antidiluvian Order of Good Samaritans had been paying a fraternal visit to their brethren of the Mereton lodge and wet through, but full of good cheer and poor beer, they were trying to brighten the dismal station with a sentimental song in varying harmonies.
There's an old mill by the stream, Nelly Dean,
Where we used to sit and deream, Ne ⦠ehly Dean, (Yes, Nelly Dean â¦)
The vicar of Mereton, the Rev. Marmaduke Ropewalker, B.A., author of that monumental work “The Life and Death of Tiglath Pileser,” was seeing off his clerical neighbour, the Rev. Bernard Beaglehole, L.Th., of St. Stephen's, Salton. The latter, a little nondescript fellow with a round red face, a button nose and sandy hair and
eyebrows, had been addressing the Mothers' Union at his colleague's church and they had afterwards secretly consumed several bottled beers together in Mr. Rope-walker's study and talked a lot of scandal which their cloth forbade them to turn over to anyone but a fellow vessel of grace. They giggled and twittered and Mr. Beaglehole, inspired by unaccustomed quantities of alcohol, felt rising within him a fount of inspiration for many sermons. He grew eager to get in the train and scribble down a few ideas on an old envelope before they left his mind.
“Come again, B.B.” Ropewalker was saying. He was fat and shabby, and thinking of the cold pie and another bottle of beer waiting for his supper.
“S'been a wonderful evening, M.R.,” answered his friend, and the noise of the train drowned what followed, which seemed to cause more sniggering and handshaking.
Heat was allowed in the carriages, but the connections leaked copiously and steam poured from beneath and every now and again enveloped the train in a damp white mist, cutting off Littlejohn's view of the pantomime on the platform. Nobody seemed in a hurry. Littlejohn wondered when he'd get to Ellinborne.
The driver and fireman were Ellinborne men and this was the last trip of their shift. They were eager to be getting off to park their train at the terminus and seek supper and bed. They leaned from the driving cab, one black face above the other, lips red, whites of eyes rolling, like a couple of coons. The engine blew off steam and drowned every other noise.
The train seemed to be waiting for regular customers, for the stationmaster kept an eye on the steps from the bridge across the line down to the platform. At length appeared a man and woman. He was stocky with a short grey beard, anxious bloodshot eyes and shabby clothes which Littlejohn, watching him as he ate his second pie, guessed had sometime been good. His companion was a large blonde, bold, middle-aged, with sumptuous curves
and dressed in a fur coat which had seen better days. It was Mr. Timothy Bellis, of Salton, and his lady friend, Miss Bessie Emmott. He clung to her arm and she inclined towards him protectively. At the sight of them the sandy parson turned his head and began to gabble to his friend. Mr. Bellis had, in a manner of speaking, fallen among thieves, so Beaglehole passed by on the other side.
The couple made for Littlejohn's compartment, but seeing him, changed their minds and chose the empty one next door. Mr. Beaglehole took the remaining non-smoker. The latter bore no indication to that effect, but a small red patch on the window, overlooked by whoever had taken the trouble to scrape off the label, was sufficient for him.
“Oi!” called the station-master to a group of late-shift munition workers also steering for Littlejohn's carriage. “You haven't got first-class tickets, 'ave you?”
“Fust clawse,” jeered one of their number. “More like cattle trucks.” Littlejohn mentally agreed with him. Some vandal had even slashed the upholstery in long, jagged rents and there was a cushion missing. The workmen sought compartments covered by their fares and slammed the doors angrily.
Timothy Bellis seized the handle of the carriage door, winced, and dropped it like a hot coal.
“There, there,” Littlejohn heard the woman say compassionately. “You was forgettin' it again.”
With a quick twist of the wrist she opened the door. She was like a mother protecting her one child. She lowered the window, too, and her companion, entering the compartment, closed the door and leaned to her as she stood on the platform.