Murder At Deviation Junction (28 page)

    'The
boy is not vigorous like me,' Marriott said, 'and he cannot scrap, as I can. I
learnt to take a punch in the boxing club, Detective Stringer ... it was at
the University.''

    He
shot another quick glance at Small David, who did not rise to the bait this
third time, but sat back down on his bed. Marriott then removed the photograph
from his coat pocket and looked it over, nodding the while.

    'It proves
you were all on the train that morning,' I said. 'The newspaper in your son's
hand proves it.'

    The
lawyer turned and opened the stove door with the fire tool, placing the
photograph carefully on top of the burning wood within.

    'I
have another print,' I said,'... and the negatives, of course.'

    The
lawyer looked at me and sighed, brushing his hair back once again. And now at
last he raised a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

    'You
are not helping the case I am trying to make for keeping you above ground,
Detective Stringer.'

    At
which the Scotsman, who had his head buried in one of the newspapers, muttered
something like: 'Aye, that's right enough.'

    'You
killed Falconer,' I said to Marriott, 'but why?'

    The
lawyer looked at me fixedly as he dabbed at the blood - almost with real
curiosity.

    'You
killed Lee as well,' I added, 'though I daresay not with your own hands.'

    I
turned towards Small David, who was still reading, and making such a great show
of coolness that I almost believed he wasn't listening.

    'Or
did you pay
him
to do it?'

    The
Scotsman read on.

    'You
are of a questioning humour,' Marriott said, rocking on his feet before the
fireplace, quite composed again. 'It is the mark of a good pleader. Have you considered
the Bar? There's a good deal of reading to put in, much burning of the midnight
oil with your Stephens's
Commentaries,
your Hunter's
Roman Law,
but it's quite a democracy, you know. There's no 'mister' at the Bar, still
less any 'sir'. In fact, it's not at all such a toff's profession as you might
suppose, Stringer ...'

    I was
plain Stringer to him now, which meant I had riled him, about which I was glad.

    'Any
man with brains might aspire even to the silk gown of the King's Counsel - army
officer, actor, schoolmaster. A
university
training usually precedes the
call, but not necessarily. Fluency of speech is the chief requirement, you see,
thinking on one's leg - although of course you must also become fashionable,
and in that, I confess, I never succeeded . . .'

    'Now
I winder why not?' put in Small David, looking up from his paper.

    Marriott
ignored him, saying, 'I did well enough for a time, mark you. Three or four
cases a day was nothing to me - not all of them jury cases, of course, but
still: seven guineas for a thirty-minute consultation . . . Five shillings to
the clerk, yes, but even so . . . Unfortunately, I did not put in the hours
flattering the important men of my acquaintance. Rather than dine with the
benchers in my evening at the Temple, I would go off to the German gymnasium at
King's Cross, Stringer.'

    He
kept saying my name. The man was speaking only for my benefit.

    'I
worked at my boxing night and day at that gymnasium,' he went on, at which
Small David, turning the page of his paper, muttered, 'And much guid it did
ye.'

    I
thought that the lawyer might fly at Small David for a second time, but instead
he touched the handkerchief to his nose again, saying, 'Unfortunately, I did
not generally like the judges. I knew many of them, Stringer, and I knew many
that were inclined to hanging.'

    At
which he fell silent for a space, during which time I watched Small David turn
two further pages of newspaper.

    It
was the
Sutherland Gazette
that Small David was looking over. Bowman, as
far as I could make out, was now asleep, the bottle at his feet, but he righted
himself a moment later when the boy Richie walked in with two bowls of steaming
broth. He gave the first to his father, who began sipping from the bowl directly,
and somehow doing so in a mannerly sort of way. The other bowl went to Small
David - so that the two governors had been fed first.

    The
boy returned a moment later with a bowl for Bowman, who, after staring at the
concoction for a while, said, '. . . Looks almost good enough to eat.'

    The
last bowl was given to me. A spoon rolled in the brownish stuff; a hunk of
bread floated on it. I nodded thanks, and the boy nodded back - which was the
first communication between us. I tasted the soup, which was like slow Oxo -
Oxo slowed by flour and something that might have been potatoes. But I hadn't
tasted food for hours, so it was nectar to me.

    But
just after I'd taken my second spoonful, something made me glance up towards
Small David, who was eyeing me narrowly.

    'Ye
ken ye're gaun to dee, don't ye?'

    Well,
I could
not
believe it; I seemed to be living in a dream, as we all ate
in the dimly lit room on the hillside, while the blizzard wind made a repeated
low note, like the sound of a ship coming into harbour, as it blew across the
chimney top. Presently, Richie went around the room again, this time collecting
up the bowls. The lawyer drained whatever was left in his small glass, and put
it on the mantelshelf. He did not seem in need of another dram. He watched
after his son as the boy left the room, and turned towards me again. He seemed
minded to talk, and I had the powerful notion that he wanted to tell me as much
as I wanted to know.

    'As I
say, the boy and I are not constructed at all on the same lines,' Marriott began.
'For example, I do not take a constitutional, Detective Stringer ...'

    (Perhaps
the supper had put him in better humour. At any event, I had regained my
title.)

    'I do
not take a constitutional,' he repeated, 'and never let it be said that I take
a stroll. I
walk,
Detective Stringer, and I would walk with Theodore
Falconer for quite hours - right over the tops and all about Whitby. Do you
know Whitby at all, Detective Stringer? A very fine old seaport, beautiful
ships ... Do you know about ships? The parish church at the top of the steps is
quite exceptional, and Falconer and I would make a wide circuit from there on
Sunday mornings in all weathers. I was in fact a member of his rambling club
for a spell, and a very strange grouping they proved to be. They met in the
woods, you know - an almost pagan confederacy.'

    'I
had met Falconer at the University,' he continued, again looking keenly at
Small David, hoping to reopen the quarrel, but the Scotsman read on, so
Marriott continued addressing me. 'We were not of equivalent rank, socially
speaking, but fell in with each other while tramping on Christ Church Meadow.
Almost every Sunday for two years, we'd tuck into our mackintoshes and have a
blow. He'd enjoy that, and the rougher the weather, the better he liked it. We
continued in the same way when I removed, with Richard, to the Middlesbrough
district - to the village just south of Saltburn, which was Falconer's home
territory. We rode into town in the Club car, and on Sundays we tramped. High up
on the tops—he would never keep to the paths but would battle his way through
the heather singing Methodist hymns and booming on about the wonders of
nature.'

    And
he nearly smiled, adding, 'Quite the fresh air fiend was Falconer.'

    Small
David was looking up from the
Sutherland Gazette.

    'We've
come to' t now!' he said in a strange, fluting tone.

    'The
virtues of fresh air are well attested,' Marriott went on, 'and the cramped,
stifling rooms of the suburban house are to be deprecated . . .'

    He
spoke with agitation, fairly shaking now, and not from the cold. I knew that
the truth was approached as Small David, leaning further forward on the edge of
his truckle bed, said, 'Spit it oot, man, spit it oot!'

    The
lawyer seemed in a daze now, gazing at vacancy and shaking his head. In an
under-breath that I had to crane forwards to hear, he spoke the words:

    'But
to open the window on a day of heavy snowfall -'

    'There
y'are, it's oot!' cried Small David, rolling backwards on his bed, as the
lawyer continued to shake his head, speaking a Latin phrase whose meaning I did
not take at the time, for I am not well up in the language:

    
'—that
was the
reductio ad absurdum
.'

    The
Scotsman was falling back on his bed, cackling, saying over and over, 'It's
oot, it's oot!'

    
What
was out?

    Bowman
was looking directly at me, red face at boiling point.

    'Don't
you see? Falconer opened the window in the saloon, and caught his death as a
result.'

    The
lawyer went on, in the same head-shaking, sorrowful way. 'It was against the
rules of the Club.'

    Richie,
the son, was standing in the doorway now; he gave a cough.

    The
truth was coming to me by degrees.

    'Falconer
opened the window in the Club carriage -' I said, eyeing Marriott, 'and you
murdered him for it?'

    'Yon
dunderheed's got there in the eend!' came the cry from the

    Scotsman's
bed, and it was followed by a long bar of silence. Then Marriott spoke up
again.

    'He
drew down the window, Detective Stringer. I put it up again; he drew it down a
second time; and I struck out - one blow of the cane, Detective Stringer. I did
not mean to kill. The word on the indictment would have been "manslaughter".'

    The
Scotsman snorted.

    'But
others have gone the same way,' I said. 'He was not the only one killed.'

    The
boy Richie was in the doorway.

    'The
kitbags are packed and stowed on the cart, father,' he said. 'All ready for the
morning . . . but we must leave your books behind.'

    Small
David was drawing the bed that the boy had sat on closer to the stove; he then
did the same with his own. He opened the door of the stove, and began putting
on logs. There seemed to be a deepening of the darkness beyond the window.

    'You're
pushing off tomorrow?' I said to the room in general.

    'Aye,'
said Small David at the stove, 'and so are ye.'

    'Planning
on taking me with you, are you?'

    The
Scotsman paused about his work.

    'A
little o' the way, aye.'

    'Another
big snow's coming, you know?' I said, and Small David rotated his wide body to
face me.

    'It'll
nae matter either way to yersel',' he said.

    We
all stepped out into the blizzard for a piss. This seemed to be a nightly routine
around the house, for each man went to his own wall nook to perform. Small
David pointed his gun at me as I unbuttoned my fly and kept it on me as I tried
to start.

    'Y'are
awfy slow at this,' he said.

    'Fuck
off,' I said.

    '—as
y'are at everythin' else,' he added, and as I cursed him again and turned
towards the wall, I realised that I could see the outline of his wide shadow
very clearly against the stones, and that the falling snow was lit by a grey
glow.

    The
moon was full.

    In the
living room, Small David fed the stove again, and set the draught for a slower
burn. He then walked into the scullery, and I could hear him locking the front
door. He might then have had a sluice-down in the great sink, for I could hear
the swishing of water. He returned to the living room and put out one of the
two lamps. A moment later every man was lying in his bed - each, as far as I
could make out, with all his day clothes still on.

    Whether
any man slept, I don't know, for there were constant shiftings and half-muffled
groans that put a kind of electricity into the atmosphere of that terrible
smoke hole. I thought of Marriott, and how he had lost all by one moment of
anger. The cane had been there in his hand in the photograph at the start of the
journey. He had made no attempt to hide it. This crime was made ridiculous by
the simple fact that half an hour before, or in fact one
second
before
it had occurred, it had not been meant to happen. There was a double shame to
it on this account, it seemed to me, and I was sure that Marriott thought of it
in the same way. His crime had not been a manly one; and now he and his son
were members of a different club. It seemed that I had joined this one.