Murder At Deviation Junction (26 page)

    After
Helmsdale we were rocking along in a valley by a fast black river - one-sided
trees and tumbledown cottages, all snow- covered. It seemed a great
impertinence for the engine, which was green, and its carriages, which were
greener still, to intrude upon this white world, which was a kind of fairyland,
not real, not Britain. I could not believe they had the Royal Mail here; or
even newspapers. There were telegraph poles and wires, but they were all askew
and snow-loaded.

    We
stopped at a place called Kildonan, and hastened down on to the platform. I
needed a piss, and there was no WC on the train.

    A man
in railway uniform stood before the station house.

    'Good
day,' I said.

    (That
was a laugh, with the wet snow flying at us.)

    'Could
I use the jakes in the station house?' I continued.

    'The
whit?'
he said, making the sound of a cane going swish through the air.

    'The
station lavatory,' I said.

    'Aye,
aye,' he said, and jerked his thumb at the open door behind him. It was half
booking hall, half living room with a good fire going and three pot dogs on the
mantelpiece. The lavatory was in a door leading off. I pissed and came out,
lingering by the fire. I then turned, nodded at the man and climbed up into the
train as he blew his whistle. The ministers had gone, and Bowman was standing
up at his seat.

    He
was talking in low tones to the man we had been pursuing.

    The
stationmaster slammed the door behind me, and the train jerked into motion as
the man we had been pursuing turned towards me, gun in hand. With perhaps the
beginnings of a smile, he motioned me towards him, motioned me into my seat. He
sat down opposite me, and Bowman sat down beside him.

    Bowman
would not meet my eye.

    He
was in on it.

    'In
five minutes, ye'll alight the train,' said the man.

    'Will
I now?'

    'Aye,
ye wull,' he said, with a glance down at the revolver in his hand.

    Juggins
like us, Bowman had said. Juggins like
me.
The business of the
photograph was never meant to come to any good, and I should never have taken
it up. Shillito had been right. I knew hardly anything, but it was too much for
this Scotsman. Was he Sanderson? Had Sanderson been Scottish? I asked him
outright:

    'Are
you Gilbert Sanderson?'

    'Sanderson's
deed,' he said. Again, the half-smile came. He had the smooth kind of Scottish
accent, making the most of the Rs.

    Down
below us to the left, the black water seemed to be in a panic as it rushed
towards two mighty boulders. We and it were the only things moving in the
valley. Looking up at the mountains, I thought for some reason of hymn-singing
in church, the search for the Beyond. This was an almost heavenly,
life-after-death place where everything was different. I would not see my wife
and child again, and all that was left was curiosity.

    'Where
is this place?' I said, and it was Bowman who answered, looking down and away.
It took me a while to make out what he'd said, which was: 'Strath of Kildonan'.

    Well,
it sounded like a place in a book.

    I
looked back at Bowman, but he could not meet my eye.

    The
train began to slow, and a station rolled into view, but there had been no
bell, and there were no people.

    'Oot,'
said the Scotsman, and I stood up. We climbed down,

    Bowman
slamming the door behind us, and then immediately huddling up into his coat
again. The train went on. This was not a station, but a halt. The place was not
named. The platform was of wood, like a theatre stage, and there was no station
building, but only the two pointing arrows for 'Inverness' or 'Thurso and
Wick'. The Scotsman must have requested the stop miles since.

    I
could not keep my eyes open in the floating snow, but I knew that the
clattering river was near by, that mountains rose all around; and that a
high-wheeled dog cart stood waiting at twenty yards' distance.

    'Tae
yer left', said the Scotsman, and I could not make out the words.

    I
turned in the snow towards Bowman. The lenses of his spectacles might have been
painted white. He looked like a red-faced blind man.

    'He
means you to go to your left,' Bowman said.

    The
snow-covered heather leant across the path so that, as I came up to the cart,
my trouser legs were soaking. It wasn't weather for a forty-shilling lounge
suit.

    Two
men waited in the cart. Their collars were up, and their hats pulled low, but I
knew them. They had stepped from the photograph in my pocket and up into the
vehicle. They were the barrister known to the Chief and called Marriott, and
the youngest man of the five, the one who'd been missed in Filey over the
summer. Had I run them to earth, or they me? The young man was speaking to the
Scotsman in what seemed like a friendly way, but the barrister, who was in the
driving seat, stared straight ahead at the miserable horse. I was placed on one
bench; the young man, the Scotsman and Bowman sat facing me. The revolver lay
in the Scotsman's hand. He did not wear gloves; the gun would freeze before
that hand of his did. He was made for this weather, born to it.

    'Ye've
the photograph about ye?' he said, and I gave it over.

    Marriott
the lawyer cracked the whip, and we started to roll as the Scotsman said to the
young man, 'Would you no say I was better to look on than yon Gilbert
Sanderson, Richie?'

    The young
man said something I didn't catch.

    'Aye,
he's the same high foreheed as me,' said the Scotsman, 'I'll grant ye that.'

    Again
a remark from the young man that I did not hear, to which the Scotsman said,
'Nay, nay, he was
bald -
I'm towsy-haired compared to the leet
Sanderson.'

    He
pulled off his cap to show his smooth brown skull; there was not a hair on it.
He didn't crack a smile, but he was jesting with the younger man, who smiled a
little uneasily. The Scot seemed to have a liking for that young man, who
looked maybe a couple of years shy of my own age.

    Of
course, the Scotsman's identity of appearance with Sanderson had been the key
to the whole scheme. He had stolen Sanderson's horse and lamed the beast in the
garden; he had then entered the house to do the murder, made sure he was seen
by a servant and made off on foot. Was the Whitby-Middlesbrough Travelling Club
a band of robbers then? I could not believe it.

    The
young man, evidently called Richard, stood in need of a shave, and there was a
deep red cut on his forehead. He had come a long way from garden parties at
Filey. The road was rising up above the railway line now. We were passing a
broken-down stone house, and a sign reading 'DANGER', warning travellers off
the land at certain times when shooting would take place. I glanced up again at
the mountains, but could not make out the tops. On the hills were four-pointed
shelters, like crossed swords.

    I
looked across at Bowman. He had found the horse's blanket and wore it over his
shoulders, so that he looked like an old woman. Had he made the plan to net me?
Who was the true governor here? The Scotsman? Or the man in the driving seat -
the silent lawyer?

    A
thought came: I had been the one to suggest giving chase when the Scotsman had
walked away up Bouverie Street. How could Bowman have known I would do that?
But it was not really a mystery. Bowman had been on the point of making the
suggestion himself. He had played with the window of the magazine offices. There
had been no reason to open it on such a day of cold; instead, it had been the
signal to the Scotsman to set off.

    I
looked up at this fellow who had led me such a dance.

    'What
are you
called
?' I asked him.

    'Haud
yer tongue,' he said, head tilted back. He was still staring as Bowman
muttered, 'He's called "Small David".'

    'Why
are you called Small David?' I asked the man.

    'Dae
ye have any objection to the name?'

    'It
is not accurate.'

    We
were coming to a fork in the road.

    'You're
about the largest man in this cart,' I said, and again the half-smile seemed to
develop underneath that moustache.

    A
white cottage marked the junction; deer antlers hung on the end wall. The
Scotsman did not give a glance, but continued staring at me.

    'He's
called "Small" because he's big,' Bowman said.

    'It's
humour,' said someone; and I realised that the lawyer in the driving seat had
at last spoken up. Having done so, he evidently thought he might as well
continue.

    'County
Sutherland,' he said, half-turning around towards me. 'A country very different
from the levels of the North Riding, Detective Stringer.'

    He
was as handsome as he had looked in the photograph, but strangely rigged out:
half poor farmer in looks, half gentleman. Beneath his ulster he wore a good
black suit, but with a dirty black guernsey under
that.
At his throat,
he wore a black comforter and a green silk necker. And he had the wrong boots
on for this place: town boots of thin leather. His face put me in mind of
somebody. I looked quickly between him and the young man, Richie.

    The
lawyer was the father of Richie.

    Beyond
the white cottage, we turned on to a higher road. A white cloud was rising
slowly behind the mountains ahead as the snow came down fast. The railway was
out of sight below, but I knew it must be blocked by now.

    A few
seconds beyond the house, we had to pull into the hedgerow to let another cart
by that contained another lot of muffled-up men. They looked respectable
enough, but none of us raised our hat. The way was now becoming rougher; the
stones rolled under our wheels, and underneath the snow.

    After
another few minutes of being shaken to bits in the cart I realised that the
Scotsman, Small David, was staring at me again. I said, 'Why are you looking at
me like that?' In reply he spat out something that sounded like: 'Why are
ye?'
'What's the programme?' I asked the company after another long
interval.

    No
reply from anyone.

    At
first, I took the cottage we were approaching to be nothing but a wide stone
wall. It was some way up a mountain, part of the grey blur beyond the snow.

    'I
know you're watching the chimney, Small David,' said Richie Marriott.

    'Why's
there nae smoke, laddie?'

    'We're
low on firewood and peats, Small David.'

    'And
ye're low on brains,' he said, but there was perhaps some affection there;
these two were cronies, who conspired over the heating of the house.

    'I
can't manage that flue in the scullery, David, and that's all about it,' said
the son.

    Everyone
jumped down; I followed. It was not so much a garden, more like an island in
the sea of heather. Two rusty long-handled shovels leant against the low stone
walls; a rain barrel stood at one corner, barely higher than the wall. You'd
call it a one- storey house, only it was lower than that. As we approached it,
the Scotsman nodded from me to Marriott, saying, 'He stays here the neet if ye
insist, but then it's o'er the burran wi' him.'

    The
lawyer was walking the horse towards a broken-down barn a little further up the
track that had brought us to the house. The house looked over a white, misty
valley - threatened to roll down into it. Whether this was the same valley we'd
run along in the train or another, I couldn't tell, for I could not see. I
could just make out through the blizzard a steeper hill rising above the one on
which we stood; black clouds flowed across the tops like a spillage of oil. The
day was nearly done, and the world was closing down to this house and these
men. The snow was a foot thick as I stepped out of the cart, and I knew that I
was held prisoner by the weather as much as the revolver. I suddenly thought of
my interview for promotion at Middlesbrough. I would not be there after all,
and the fact was a very good demonstration of the strangeness of life.