Murder At Deviation Junction (27 page)

    Small
David walked up to the door of the cottage, on which a note was pinned,
reading: 'Shut this door after you. This means YOU', with the last word
underlined.

    He
kicked it open with bullet-like force, and entered the house.

    'What's
"over the burran"?' I asked, following him in.

    In
the smoke-filled scullery we had now entered, he turned sharply about towards
me:

    'Ye
spoke just now of Gilbert Sanderson,' he said. '
He's
o'er the burran.'

    'Steady
now, David,' said Marriott, who stepped in behind the two of us, having settled
the horse.

    Small
David was at the stove that squatted in the centre of the room, cursing to
himself, and trying to fettle the fire. The lawyer held a pitcher of water; he
stood at the stone sink - which was as big as a horse trough, and took up about
a third of the room - washing his hands as thoroughly as circumstances
permitted. Then he turned to me:

    'I am
currently negotiating to save your life, Detective Stringer.'

    If nothing
else, his beautiful lawyer's voice had survived whatever decline had brought
him to this house.

    'Negotiating?'
I said. 'Who with?'

    Bowman,
now also alongside us, cut in, saying, 'With Rob Roy there, of course', while
nodding towards Small David, who was still crouching at the stove. 'And I want
you to know that I hope he succeeds.' He was addressing me in the haze of the
cold kitchen, but not looking at me. He knew he had done a low thing. He had
stopped short of friendliness ever since I'd known him; he'd always been cagey,
and he'd been all wrong on the chase from St Pancras. If he'd been straight,
he'd either have jibbed at the business or got keen on it; he'd done neither.

    'I
had no choice but to bring you here, you know,' he said, as though the whole
disaster was somehow my fault. There was one small window in the scullery, and
I craned to look through it. Seeing what I was about, Marriott said, 'Don't try
a breakaway, Detective Stringer. Or Small David will be upon you in an instant.'

    I
remained at the window, but it was only a bluff: the glass was thick with ice
and I could see nothing - and the sight of that blank- ness made me feel I
could barely breathe.

    I
turned around, and saw that none of the company had removed his hat; yet all
the hats scraped against the grimy roof beams that swooped low across the room,
which was more like a
cave
than a room. Small David now opened a door
leading to a sitting room of sorts, and it seemed that I was free to follow him
in.

    The
stove was black and cold here too. The young man, Richie, was in the room
already, lighting greasy, evil-smelling paraffin lamps at either end. It was a
long, low place with several truckle beds pushed against the three stone walls
away from the fire. Filthy tab rugs were placed anyhow on the floor; and stacks
of papers, books and journals were placed around the fireplace, whether to be
burnt or read, I could not say. Richie then began remaking the fire, and he
proved a shocking bad hand at doing so. Instead of cleaning the grate, he poked
at it with the tool, which constantly rang against the iron of the door,
striking a high, unpleasant note. He had obviously lit it earlier on in the
day, but it had gone out because the draught was not properly created. As he poked
and prodded, I wondered whether he had ever lit fires before he came to this
place. I doubted it of a man who was a barrister's son. He got a burn going
eventually, but I could see that it might not last.

    'The
trick of keeping a slow burn,' I said, 'is to close the top flue a little more
- the lever wants tipping another ten degrees.'

    'And
who're ye tae tell him?' Small David called out.

    I had
not seen him enter the room. He carried a bucket in place of the revolver. For all
his size, I ought not to be held off by a man who wore yellow socks and carried
a bucket, but my thoughts would keep going back to that revolver of his,
evidently close at hand in one of his coat pockets.

    'I'm
trained up as a fireman,' I said.

    'Fireman?'
said Small David. 'Ye are a dirty polis.'

    'I
was first trained up as a railway fireman,' I repeated.

    'But
he was
fired.,'
said Bowman, who had also entered the room, and whose
speech was now slurring.

    'Sorry,
Jim,' he added, as he sank down on one of the truckle beds. He'd got a bottle
from somewhere, though I couldn't make out the contents.

    The
stove was warming up after a fashion - it would keep me at close quarters as
surely as any manacle. I claimed for myself one of the beds, but Small David
ordered me off - I guessed from what he said that it must have been his. He
then quit the room, and a moment later, I thought I caught sight of him walking
past the one tiny frosted window that served the sitting room. Bowman sat
silent on his bed, perhaps asleep, while Richie occupied another of the beds,
reading a paper. He had never passed a word to me, and come to that, I had not
seen him speak to his father or to Bowman. He only ever seemed to speak to
Small David, who had evidently taken the place of his father in his affections.
He seemed very young for his years, this fellow, but he must be in - or rather
he must have
been
in - employment himself, otherwise he wouldn't have
been in the habit of riding up to Whitby with the Travelling Club.

    We
had all kept our topcoats on, and all sank into them; and the room was quite
silent now, save for the crackling of the fire. I could hear no stream rushing
by, but only the baaing of sheep, which were at very close quarters.

    Why
were they all
here?
My thoughts raced in a circus. They'd fled Yorkshire
after the disappearance of Falconer and the murder of their Club confederate
George Lee, but why had either been killed in the first place? Not for the few
silver candlesticks that had been taken from Lee's house. I looked again
through the tiny window, where I saw that the lawyer Marriott had joined Small
David; they were holding a conference in the falling snow, which seemed to
muffle up their words, but I heard my own name mentioned twice by Marriott.

    He
came into the room a moment later and stood before the stove for a warm. He had
removed his topcoat, and he managed to cut a handsome figure even in that old
black guernsey. He then moved over to one of the two vacant beds. This, I saw,
was better ordered than the others, with the blankets properly folded, and the
papers over there were in better order than in the other parts of the room. As
far as I could see, they were mostly shipping-line brochures. He caught up one
of these, and read it for a few minutes before impatiently leaving the room
once more.

    I
turned to the son, Richie, and repeated my earlier question.

    'What's
the programme?'

    He
just gave a shrug, and went back to his reading matter. The arrangements of the
mean lamps meant that the shadow of the page he read covered the whole wall
behind him.

    I
glimpsed Bowman, who now stood in the doorway, watching me with bottle in hand.
I glanced that way, and he turned on his heel and disappeared. He could not
bear to be in my company, now that he had betrayed me. I looked down at the
crumpled papers under my boots. They seemed to have come from a holiday agent:
'Winter in the Cornish Riviera'; 'Railway Map of the British Isles';
'Bournemouth, the Land of Pines and Sunshine.'

    'Can
you see us in Bournemouth, Detective Stringer, taking tea in an hotel?'

    It
was Marriott, standing by me and looking down at my reading matter. The
householders would keep coming and going, but much as they wanted to keep clear
of one another, they were all drawn back to the fire before long. The lawyer
held a small glass in his hands - quite dainty by the standards of the cottage.
I imagined it might be valuable to him; an object saved from his earlier life.
From the kitchen came the smell of food, and I wondered how many more meals
would be left to me.

    'I
cannot bear to see the daylight lost as early as it is here,' Bowman said,
moving towards the fireplace, 'and so a flight to the south
is
contemplated - but a good deal further south than Bournemouth.'

    'A
flight?' I said.

    'The
trip has been in prospect for some time, Detective Stringer, but I would not
have called it a flight until I heard about you.'

    Small
David entered the room, saying, 'Where's yon bottle, man?' Receiving no answer,
he called out, 'Hey, Bowman!' at which Marriott turned on him.

    'Don't
shout so, you fucking Scottish hooligan!'

    I had
never heard swearing in such refined tones.

    'You see,'
said Marriott, turning towards me again, 'I must get out of this quagmire . . .
And I must make a satisfactory arrangement about you before I do so. I brought
you here to save you, don't you see that?'

    'Strikes
me this is a good place to bring a fellow if you wanted to do him in.'

    'Now
Small David would disagree with you there, Detective Stringer,' Marriott said.
'He holds that the best place for that business is the Cleveland Hills.'

    'You
pitched Theodore Falconer down an old iron shaft,' I said.

    But
then another, and better, thought hit me like a thunderclap.

    'No,
you put him into a blast furnace. His body was never found, and that's because
it was melted away to nothing.'

    Small
David was watching me from the doorway. Marriott kept silence. He stood before
me with his arms folded - a good-looking man with too much on his mind.

    'Richard's
a good fellow,' he said suddenly, nodding towards his son.

    The
boy looked up at him. 'Stow it, father.'

    'But
he has a poor physique - a defect on his mother's side, I suppose, for she died
young herself. Small David, now -'

    Marriott
indicated the Scotsman, who had sat down on the last remaining free bed.

    'Small
David is a practical man, if not a very great hand at conversation.'

    The
Scotsman muttered something, and Marriott made a show of cocking an ear.

    'Did
you get that, Detective Stringer?'

    I
shook my head.

    'I
didn't either. He's not a great one for talk, as I say.'

    'Wi'oot
me,' muttered Small David, picking up a newspaper, 'ye'd be deed - and ye stull
could be.'

    Marriott
rolled his eyes at me, saying, 'I just can't help wishing that fellow was a
little more - just ever so slightly
English.'

    Small
David put down his paper, and closed on Marriott, saying, 'Haud yer tongue or
I'll gie ye somethin' for yersel'—'

    Marriott
turned once more to me, saying, 'He is not a
university
man, you know.'

    I had
a quick impression of Marriott in the position of an old- fashioned boxer, with
fists high and chin lifted for Queensberry Rules, but the scrap itself was a
wild affair lasting not more than a few seconds.

    And
it was Marriott who was bloodied - and almost knocked on to the stove.
Steadying himself against the wall, he again turned to me, saying, 'Small David
was not on the Classics side, Detective Stringer, but then again he was not on
the Modern side either. On the face of it a black mystery, until you remember
this: Small David was
not at the University.'

    The
Scotsman stood for a moment, as though deciding whether to give this latest
provocation the go-by, and he evidently decided not to, for he clouted the
lawyer a second time, sending him sprawling amid the newspapers and journals on
the floor.

    'Look,
I know this is all fun, but can we drop it?' said Bowman, who'd had his hands
over his glasses as the blows had been struck. Marriott was finding a shaky
pair of legs, blood running freely from his nose. He did not look strong, being
so thin, but there again he was not the sort of man you expected to see felled.

    'I'm
not a university man either, if it comes to that,' Bowman was saying. 'Not by a
long chalk.'

    The
lawyer was now standing in silence before the stove, occasionally giving a
flick of his head so as to send the blood from his nose away from his mouth. He
would not raise his hand to it, for that would show weakness. He was all ablaze
inside, but still no colour showed in his face, and he paid no heed as his son
stood and walked out of the room, preferring, as I supposed, to sit in the
poorly warmed scullery rather than hear more of his old man's ravings.