Murder At Deviation Junction (14 page)

Since December 2nd 1908,Theodore
Falconer, aged sixty-five, afflicted by stutter.

Medium height, hair and beard grey and abundant, eyes
blue, complexion pale, suit of grey

tweed, silver lever watch and chain, lace boots, black
hard hat. Last seen walking towards his

 house, The Cedars, Saltburn district, at
six-thirty pm on December 2nd. The above reward

will be paid by John Mason, Solicitor, Flowergate,
Whitby, to the first person information

leading to the giving whereabouts of Falconer.

    I
read the date again. He had last been seen the day before Peters had been
deprived of one of his two cameras. All the dates were bunching up, but I could
not make sense of them. Certainly, Falconer had been wearing what looked like a
grey tweed suit in the Peters photograph. But no doubt he wore the same get-up
every day.

    What
did I know? That Falconer was last seen on 2. December; that Peters reported
the theft of the camera that contained a picture of Falconer and the Club on
the 3rd; that some time shortly afterwards he'd visited Stone Farm for the
second time, there to be done in, and to have his second camera not stolen but
ransacked; that nine days after the last sighting of Falconer, Lee had been
murdered by Gilbert Sanderson . . . Had Sanderson done for the lot of them? But
he was a thief, and nothing suggested that anything had been stolen from
Falconer - he had simply disappeared. And there was the old man, Moody, who'd
'gone under a train'
after
Sanderson had hung.

    Perhaps
Sanderson's friends or confederates had pursued the Club after his conviction.
But the Club members had not given evidence against Sanderson, and in any event
Falconer had disappeared before the robbery at The Grange had taken place.

    Through
the carriage window, I saw the world in fragments: a furnace in blast beyond
Redcap lighting up a great circle of snow for half a mile around; the flash of
an illuminated mine, rotary tipplers circling on wires. Saltburn came, and we
reversed out as before. The Club members had been photographed at Saltburn.
They were all up by Saltburn.

    We
next passed Stone Farm: nobody about on the platform, Crystal's passing loop
lit up behind. At Loftus, where the murderer Sanderson had lived, I had a clear
view through a window into a brightly lit hall where a silver band played. I
could not hear them, though. The viaduct came, and we rolled slowly through the
darkness a hundred and fifty foot up, the Flat Scar mine appearing as a lonely
cluster of lights to the left and far below. As we neared the fishing village
of Staithes, I leant towards the window again, trying to spy a homestead that
might have been Lee's place, The Grange.

    But
the train was too fast, and the world was too dark.

    Sanderson
had argued that he had never visited The Grange; that at the material time he
had been in the company of a man called Baxter. But this Baxter could not be
found.

    I sat
back and thought again of the white horse, Juliette by name.

    It
was always likely that such a notable animal would be traced back to its owner,
so why did Sanderson take the beast with him on the robbery? Sanderson's story
was that the nag had been stolen from him a day or so before the robbery.

    My
thoughts suddenly shifted away from this head-racking business and towards the
York office and Shillito. I had failed to do what he asked, and it struck me
that he really might try to have me stood down. I turned again towards the
window, but it was impossible by now even to tell the difference between land
and sea.

    I
slept for a while, and when I woke up, a man was sitting over opposite in the
compartment. He was reading the
Middlesbrough Gazette.
There was the
blather about the calendar on the front page of the paper - 'Beautiful
illustrations, showing the locality in all seasons' - and something else told
the readers it was a red letter day, for the words 'Complimentary Calendar'
were written in each of the top two corners of the front page. The two Cs were
intertwined in an artistic way.

    I
stood up and reached for my topcoat, which lay on the luggage rack, and removed
from the pocket the photographs of the Travelling Club. The youngest man held
the
Whitby Morning Post,
a newspaper published in the next sizeable
place south of Middlesbrough (leaving aside the middling-sized town of
Saltburn). He held the paper folded, but I could see one of the two top
corners. The artistic Cs were there as well.

    The
Whitby Morning Post
had served Baytown (where I'd grown up, and which lay only
eight or so miles south of Whitby), and I recalled that it too had published a
complimentary calendar annually. It was at about the time when dad's shop (he
was a butcher) began to take in the Christmas fowl - an exciting sign that
Christmas was coming, along with the annual visit of my Uncle Roy, dad's
brother, who always came over from the Midlands a couple of weeks before
Christmas. Uncle Roy was a worried-looking bachelor, and it was as though he
thought he'd better get his Christmas visit in early, before anything terrible
might cause the
cancellation
of it. He would always bring me sugar
balls.

    
Was
the Whitby Morning Post
connected to
The Middlesbrough Gazette?
I
did not think so, but they used the same design for the advertising of their
calendar.

    Whitby
West Cliff station appeared out of the darkness; I must change here for the
Town station in order to make the connection for York. Sometimes the carriages
were shunted down through the streets from West Cliff to Town station, which
lay in the middle of Whitby. Whether that was about to happen this time, I did
not know, but I climbed down, and made a walk of it in any event.

    Whitby
was cold and old: the streets were filled with grimy snow, and the harbour was
packed with empty boats, as though everyone had given up on the outdoor world
for the present.

    The
office of the
Whitby Morning Post
perched on the harbour wall, and as
soon as I hit the waterside, I saw the lights blazing inside. I was in luck,
but barely, for there was only one man left in the office at that late hour.
Freezing though it was, he worked with the door propped open; seemed to keep
open house. I walked straight in and pulled off my cap.

    'Evening,'
I said.

    There
were three model boats on the low window ledge that overlooked the harbour, and
the office was ship-like: low, and with a great deal of well-varnished wood.
And it was as if the ship had listed slightly, for all the desks seemed a
little out of kilter. The man - a journalist, as I supposed - sat on a revolving
chair with his feet up on a desk. He was actually reading the
Whitby Morning
Post,
just as though he was an ordinary citizen who'd had no hand in its
making.

    He
nodded back, and put down the paper.

    'You
looking for work?' he said, eyeing the camera that hung from my shoulder.

    I
showed him my warrant card, and said, 'I'm looking into certain events of late
last year. To make a long story short, it'd be quite handy to know when you
came out with your Complimentary Calendar for 1908.'

    'Early,'
said the man immediately, 'so as to beat the competition.'

    He
did not rise, but pointed towards a table that ran along one wall, where lay a
great mountain of past
Morning Posts.
The whole purpose of the office
was to add to that pile.

    'See
for yourself,' said the man; and he went back to reading his own paper.

    The
papers were all slightly damp, from being kept so close to the sea, as I
supposed. The one at the top of the first pile was dated 12 March of the
present year. I pulled it and the ones below aside and kept going until I
reached December 1908. I proceeded slowly through these until I came to the
edition in which the usual top- corner advertisement for Bermaline Bread gave
way to the intertwined Cs of 'Complimentary Calendar inside today'.

    It
was dated 3 December. This was the same edition held by the young man in the
photograph taken by Peters; Falconer was shown in that photograph, and yet the
last sighting of Falconer was supposed to have occurred on 2 December. I brought
to mind the dates I knew. I turned to the journalist, saying, 'I'm obliged to
you, mate.'

    He
barely grunted in response, being still lost in the doings of Whitby and
district as described by the
Whitby Morning Post.
It said a lot for both
town and paper, I decided, as I set off for the station and my York connection.
But then again, I was in good spirits anyway, for I felt that I'd had a pretty
good day of it.

    At
York, the police office was closed, but the parcels office was all go with the
Christmas traffic, and two great stacks of parcels waited outside for booking.
Under the gaslights of the forecourt, delivery vans waited: a dozen horse-drawn
and two motors. They all trembled in the cold. I slung the Mentor Reflex over
my shoulder, pushed the police papers into my inside coat pocket and pulled the
Humber from the bicycle rack. My frozen hands were only good for a certain
number of movements, so I did not trouble to light the lamps, but set off
directly, half-pushing, half-riding the bike through the snow.

    There
was a mile of snowy darkness between the end of York's lights and
Thorpe-on-Ouse, but the village itself was a deal livelier than usual. The
windows of the church were all lit, and the door stood open. The wife, I knew,
had planned to spend the afternoon in there with Harry, Christmassing the nave
with holly and mistletoe. The Church and the housewifely socialism practised by
the Women's Co-operative Guild were her main interests in life, and I often
felt that Harry and me came a poor second. She loved that boy, but I felt on
occasion that she'd board him out if she could - just for the odd time or two.
Pushing the bike under the lights on the main street, I saw that the snow was
on the left side of everything, including the sign of the Fortune of War, the
pub that stood over opposite our cottage. Its curtains were closed, but I knew
the place was packed, and wondered whether it was share-out night for the goose
club. We were not in the goose club; we were to have a chicken, and the bird
was to come from the Co-operative Stores.

    I
stowed the bike in the woodshed, and walked into the parlour, where the wife
had her hair down before the glass. She was trying out new styles for the
Co-operative Women's Guild party, which would take place the following evening,
and which she had undertaken to organise. She'd been paid a pound on top of her
usual part-time wages for doing so, and this had evidently not been enough
since - to listen to the wife - the organising of this beano had made the
Labours of Hercules seem like a few small errands.

    'You look
all in, our Jim,' she said, when I kissed her. 'Did you bring the man in this
time?'

    'No,'
I said, moving over to the fire. In preparation for the festive season, she had
black-leaded half the grate and cleaned the stains off some of the crockery -
just the spoons, perhaps. I knew that some sort of mixture was on the go in the
kitchen, but no Christmas fare had so far appeared in a finished form.

    'Well,'
she said, 'you're keeping the railway in business at any rate, with all your journeys
up there. Why did you not fetch him this time?'

    'He's
innocent.'

    The
wife turned about, both hands holding her hair, and frowned at me. She looked
more fetching than a person ought when frowning.

    'How's
Harry?' I said, thawing my hands by the fire. 'I'll go up and see him.'

    'Leave
him be,' said Lydia. 'He's just nicely got off.'

    Her
typewriter had been moved off the top of the strong table, and placed
underneath to make way for some sprigs of holly, ribbons and her best bonnet
and coat. There were also some papers, including one headed 'Terms for hire of
the Ebor Hall'.

    The
Co-op ladies' party was to be held at the Ebor Hall, the Cooperative Hall in
York having been reserved months since for a lot of men's parties, some
completely unconnected - according to the wife - with the high aims of the
Co-operative Society, such as York and District Rugby Club.

    'Are
you sure the Ebor Hall is big enough?' I said.

    No
answer. She continued at the mirror, her back to me. I looked again at the
paper.