Murder At Deviation Junction (13 page)

    Williams
called to the old clerk at the far end of the room. 'Prosecution register
please, Billy - the Lee case.'

    Williams
put the photograph on the desk between us.

    'The
case was prosecuted?' I asked him.

    Williams
nodded.

    'Somebody
swing?'

    Another
nod, and Williams slowly pronounced a name: 'Gilbert Sanderson.'

    'And
this one,' I said, pointing to the wild-looking explorer type. 'This is
Falconer?'

    'I
was coming to him,' said Williams.

    'Was
he murdered as well?'

    'Maybe,'
said Williams, and for the first time there was shortness in his tone.
'Theodore Falconer was reported disappeared about this time last year; picture
widely circulated at the time. You'll find his woodcut in the
Police Gazette
most weeks. Billy has papers on him.'

    Billy
was on hand, giving me a file marked 'Crown vs -' somebody - I couldn't make
out the name. There was another piece of paper being passed over. 'Telephone
message,' said Billy. 'Call came through ten past three.'

    He
was a marvel of organisation, this Billy. Thanking him, I read the note:
'Detective Stringer to telephone Mr Bowman. Urgent.' The number given was 2196
London EC.

    Detective
Sergeant Williams was putting his coat on. I'd rattled him with my discoveries,
no question. Billy moved away, and returned with a second file, this marked
simply 'Theodore Falconer'.

    'How
about the other three in the picture?' I asked Williams, and he shook his head.

    'This
one,' he said, pointing to the clean-shaven, handsome man in black. 'The face
seems -'

    But
he shook his head again. He'd seemed to have the name on his tongue, as had the
blokes in the Exchange. Williams, smiling again, said, 'You're at liberty to
take those papers away for a little while. I'm booking off just now - I have
the job of collecting the family Christmas tree on the way home. Do you have
children yourself, Detective Stringer?'

    'One
boy,' I said.

    'I've
three girls.'

    Well,
a fellow could run to three on a detective sergeant's wages.

    'They're
each after a doll's house,' he said, reaching for his bowler, 'so we'll land up
with a whole street in miniature.'

    'My
boy wants a toy aeroplane,' I said. 'One that really flies.'

    And
it seemed to be quite typical of Williams that he should have responded:

    'Now
I know just where you can get one of those. Brown's,' said Detective Sergeant
Williams, backing through the door. 'On Corporation Road here, but there's a
York branch, I believe.'

    'But
how does it fly?'

    'Why,
elastic
,' he said, with a parting nod.

    Billy
wound the magneto for me at his end of the office, and handed me the
instrument. Half the telephone talkers in London seemed to come and go in
echoing waves, and then I was put in connection with a very sad-sounding man
who might have sighed very loudly when I asked, 'Am I through to
The Railway
Rover}'
or that might just have been the noise of the line. Anyhow, it
was The Railway Rover,
and Stephen Bowman had evidently just left the
office in a tearing hurry.

    I
nodded thanks to Billy, who said, 'Would you care to read those papers here?
It's cold out.'

    'Much
obliged,' I said.

    I sat
down and he brought me a cup of tea, which I never touched because on turning
to the prosecution file marked 'Crown vs Sanderson', it straightaway came to me
that here was the business that had been known to York newspaper readers as
'The Lame Horse Murders'. The case had been tried in Durham nine months
previously; I had forgotten that the defendant was called Sanderson, and the
two victims were called Lee.

    George
Lee's wife was of superior rank to him. Lee himself had had no schooling to
speak of and had started work in the iron mines at fifteen. He was a joiner at
various places, rising swiftly to foreman joiner. He was good at his job;
couldn't be beaten for energy and push. Aged thirty-one he was injured in a
cage accident at New Mine, which was somewhere on the cliffs near Saltburn, for
which he was handsomely compensated. He'd used the money to undertake a degree
in mining engineering at Leeds University, obtaining a first-class certificate.

    He
then worked at a certain Marine Mine, and here he invented a whole new
contraption for the mines: the Lee Picking Belt, which had put him in funds for
life. His next move was to become a consulting engineer, employed at umpteen
mines, and he'd also become an investor: shareholder here, seat on the board
there.

    In
1904, Lee had bought The Grange: a tidy-sized place a mile or so inland of
Staithes, and so about a dozen miles south of Saltburn. Here, he'd set up as a
country gentleman in a small way.

    It
was mentioned in the report that he 'travelled every working day to the office
he kept in Middlesbrough', but it seemed to be nowhere stated that he had done
so as a member of a travelling club. That had been my own discovery, and all of
a sudden it didn't seem of much account.

    I
looked up just then to see the door of the police office opening.

    A
constable came in holding another man by the elbow. This second fellow was
smartly turned out. He held a well-brushed bowler lightly decorated with snow,
and had a pleasant lemony smell to him: good-class hair oil. He was being led
off to the holding cell nonetheless. A couple of minutes later, the constable
came by my desk again. Introducing myself, I asked whether he might be
Robinson, the man who'd interviewed Peters about the theft of the camera, but
he was not. At this, I wanted to get back to 'Crown vs Sanderson', but the
constable, nodding towards the holding cell, said, 'Notorious fare-avoider,
that bloke.'

    'Caught
him at it, have you?'

    The
constable nodded. He was holding a cup of tea, provided by Billy.

    'Making
for Scotland on a doctored ticket, he was.'

    'Looks
like he came along pretty quietly.'

    'Like
a lamb,' the constable said, draining his tea. 'He's wanted by the town police
here on a number of other points besides.'

    He
just
would
be, I thought, as the constable returned his teacup to Billy,
gave me good evening and quitted the room.

    In
that perfect police office, I turned back to the file.

    Gilbert
Sanderson, George Lee's murderer, had followed evil courses from an early age,
and had practically grown up in the reformatory at Durham. It was believed he'd
got his living mainly by burglary from then on, although he'd held some
subordinate positions in some of the Cleveland iron mines, and had described
himself on his marriage certificate of 1897 as a 'tinker'. Sanderson kept
quarters at Loftus, in the heart of the iron-mining district, but he was of a
roaming disposition, and travelled throughout the North Riding buying and
selling, which is where the horse had come in. It was a white mare, an
ex-Middlesbrough cab horse that had suffered a collision with a motor in
Middlesbrough city centre and been ripped open along the flank. But the mare -
name of Juliette - had been stitched and survived.

    A
year ago, the paths of Sanderson and Lee had crossed.

    Sanderson
broke into The Grange on 11 December 1908, and was stowing candlesticks in a
haversack when the owner came upon him. Lee was stabbed through the heart. The
wife came next into the room, and got the same treatment. Both died instantly;
the manservant was blinded in one eye, and he was lucky at that, for the knife
point had stopped just short of causing injury to the brain. The boy, who was
seven years old at the time, survived the attack and now lodged with the late
Mrs Lee's sister in London, with all the property held in trust for him.

    It was
the manservant's description that had done for Sanderson; that and the
discovery of the horse in the garden. It had been found lame, with a crack in
the right foreleg, and this was taken to be the reason for Sanderson having
made his escape on foot. He was well known to the local police (having twice
before got hard labour for burglary), and he was arrested the next day at his
lodgings in Loftus.

    Sanderson
was hanged at Durham Gaol on 4 March 1909, and a newspaper account of the
hanging was contained in the file. At the head of it was a woodcut of Gilbert
Sanderson: he was a big, pug-looking man with a bald head and long side
whiskers.

    I
bundled up the papers, together with the camera and the photographs. I walked
out on to the platform. It was crowded, although the Whitby train that everyone
was after wasn't due for a quarter of an hour. A lad walked the platform
shouting, 'Papers, cigarettes, chocolates,' and I wondered which of the three
offered the best defence against cold. I let the lad go by, even though the
Middlesbrough
Gazette
was offering its seasonal 'Complimentary Calendar'. I ducked into
the refreshment room, where there were even more black-suited businessmen than
on the platform. A fire blazed at each end of the room, and the bar was in the
middle, under a gas ring that was kept rocking by the opening and closing of
the door, to the annoyance of the steward, who kept reaching up to steady it.
All the Complimentary Calendars had been chucked anyhow across the floor, and
were being trodden to bits beneath the boots of the drinkers.

    Hot
milk and rum was on the go, so I bought a glass (in spite of the long cost) and
turned to the second set of papers: the 'missing' file on Falconer.

    Theodore
Falconer was the son of a well-to-do Whitby ship's master. At sixteen, he'd
gone to sea himself in a small coaster, against his father's wishes, returning
four years later with a pronounced stutter, which he never cured. He never
spoke of this adventure, or gave out where he'd been except to say 'Northern
waters'.

    He
had been welcomed back like the Prodigal nonetheless, and after attending
Oxford University he in due course inherited certain interests in shipping that
his father had acquired on his own retirement from the sea. He was first on the
board of shipyards that had built half a dozen steamers at Whitby during the
1880s. He had then moved from building to owning, becoming a partner in a
shipping line that ordered ships from certain yards in the North East. These
they would use to trade, or sell on directly. Many of these vessels were bought
by mine owners or iron traders for the export of iron and steel, chiefly from
Middlesbrough.

    In
1906, Falconer had reduced his involvement in the business. He had removed, at
the beginning of his old age, to The Cedars, a big house in the country half a
mile outside Saltburn. But like the ironman George Lee, he'd kept an office in
the commercial district of Middlesbrough, where it seemed that he had played at
ship- owning and investing rather than pursuing the business in earnest.

    It
appeared that Falconer was a man of modest habits. He employed only one
part-time slavey; he had no stables, carriage or groom. It was speculated in
the police report that he 'preferred to walk', for Falconer was a great
outdoorsman, and was often striding out to the moor in his tweed breeches, in
pursuit of botany, bird-watching and other interests.

    Falconer
had also founded the Cleveland Naturalists Club, which met four times a year in
a timber hut in woods near The Cedars (that sounded a rum do, I thought), and
was president of other fellowships of a similar tramping nature, and patron of
the Whitby Seamen's Hospital. He was a churchman (Methodist), charitably
inclined and therefore pretty well-liked despite being, according to the
report, 'somewhat of a stubborn nature, not easy to manage'. He had been a
bachelor lifelong.

    A
porter put his head around the door and announced the Whitby train. I left the refreshment
room, and crossed the icy platform, still reading.

    Taking
my seat, I found the notice concerning Falconer that appeared in the
Police
Gazette.
Going by the woodcut that accompanied it, he did not look like the
sort of man who went missing, but the sort of man who
came back:
a
strong man - a Shackleton of the moors.

    The
advertisement was headed 'Missing'; then came '£100 reward'. The meat of it was
this: