The Lost Luggage Porter

Andrew Martin grew up in Yorkshire. He has written for
the
Guardian,
the
Daily Telegraph,
the
Independent on Sunday
and
Granta,
among many other publications. His highly
acclaimed first novel,
Bilton,
described by Jon Ronson as
'enormously funny, genuinely moving and even a little scary',
was followed by
The Bobby Dazzlers,
which Tim Lott hailed as
'truly unusual - a comic novel that actually makes you laugh'.

In praise of
The Necropolis Railway,
the first Jim Stringer
adventure, the
Evening Standard
said 'the age of steam has
rarely been better evoked', while the
Mirror
described the
book as 'a brilliant murder mystery'. This was followed by
The Blackpool Highflyer
and
The Lost Luggage Porter.
The next
books in the series
Murder at Deviation Junction
and
Death on a
Branch Line
were shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical
Novel Award and in 2008, Andrew Martin was shortlisted for
the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. The sixth book in the
series,
The Last Train to Scarborough,
was acclaimed as
'thoroughly engaging and entertaining' by the
Sunday
Express.

Praise for the 'Jim Stringer, Steam Detective' series:

'The best sleuth that 200 years of the railways have ever produced.'
Indepen­dent on Sunday

'Superior potboilers.'
London Review of Books

'Finely honed crime novels with plotting as precise as a Swiss watch.'
Daily
Express

'Page-turning, confidently written - this series is, er, really building up a
head of steam.'
Observer
by the same author

Bilton
The Bobby Dazzlers

In the 'Jim Stringer, Steam Detective' series

The Necropolis Railway

The Blackpool Highflyer

The Lost Luggage Porter

Murder at Deviation Junction

Death on a Branch Line

The La
st Train to Scarborough Junction

LOST
LUGGAGE
PORTER

A Novel of Murder, Mystery and Steam

Andrew Martin

faber and faber

First published in 2006
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House, 74-77 Great Russell Street
London
wcib 3da

This paperback edition first published in 2007

Typeset by Faber and Faber Limited
Printed in England by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon

All rights reserved
© Andrew Martin, 2006

The right of Andrew Martin
to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be
lent, resold, hired out or otheriuise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A CIP record for this book
is available from the British Library

isbn
978-0-571-21904-9

6 8 10 9 75

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank PC Kevin Gordon of the British Trans­port Police (who would certainly not approve of some of the
police behaviour here described); Mike Ellison of the North
Eastern Railway Association; Nick Wellings, Marine Steward
of The Brighton Circle; Michael Sanders; James Freedman
'The Man of Steal' (stage pickpocket); Peter Cox of the UK
Immigration Service; Andy Hart of the SNCF Society; the left
luggage staff at York station; Steve Earl; Dr P. Nockles of the
Methodist Archive Centre at the University of Manchester;
Mr M. G. Stewart; Ron Johnson and Clive Groome, train
drivers.

All departures from historical fact are my responsibility.

The Twinkling Wanderer

Author's Note

This book is a work of imagination. No reference is intended
to anyone who worked on the North Eastern Railway in
1906, or who lived in York or Paris at that time or any other.

In York Station, the gas lamps were all lit.

It was a wide, grand place. Birds would fly right through
under the mighty span, and that roof kept most of the rain
out too, apart from the odd little waterfall coming down
through gaps in the glass.

I was on the main through platform on the 'up' side -
number four, although it was the number one in impor­tance, and crowded now, as ever, and with a dark shine to
all the polished brass and the black enamel signs, pointing
outwards like signals as you walked along: 'Gentlemen's
Waiting Rooms First Class', 'Ladies' Waiting Rooms First
Class', 'Refreshment Rooms', 'Left Luggage', 'Station Hotel'
and 'Teas'.

No
lost-lu
ggage place in sight, however, although I knew
that York, as the head station of its territory, did boast one,
and that practically any article left on any train in the county
came through it.

Wondering whether it was on the 'down' side, I stepped
on to the footbridge, into the confusion of a hundred fast-
moving railway clerks, all racing home towards supper and
a glass of ale. A goods train was rumbling along beneath. It
was a run-through: dirty, four-coupled engine with all sorts
pulled behind. I leaned out from the footbridge to take the
heat and the smoke and steam from the chimney: the soft

heat, and the sharpness of the smell
...
I'd heard of blokes
who gave up the cigarette habit but one whiff of the smoke
and they were back at it.
.

Half a dozen banana vans came towards the end, the rain­water still rolling off them, and finally the guard, leaning out
of his van like a man on a boat. A telegraph boy came trotting
over the bridge, and I put a hand out to stop him, thinking
he'd know me as a Company man like himself but of course
he didn't, for I was in ordinary clothes. The kid pulled up
sharpish all the same.

'Any idea where Lost Luggage is, mate?' I asked.

'Down there, chief,' he said.

But he was pointing to
Left
Luggage - the one on Platform
Four.

'No,' I said.
'Lost.
. .
Lost
Luggage.'

The lad took a step back, surprised.

'Lost Luggage is out of the station, chief’ he said.

'Not too far, I hope,' I said, mindful of the teeming rain.

'Over yonder,' he said, putting his arm out straight in a
south-easterly direction. 'Out the main exit and turn right.
What have you lost, chief? I'll keep my eyes skinned.'

'Oh, nothing to speak of.'

'Right you are,' said the kid, who was now eyeing me as if
I was crackers, so I said:

'Fact is, I'm down a quantity of
Railway Magazines
. .
.
Brought 'em in on a train from Halifax, then left the buggers
on the platform, I think.'

'Railway Magazines?'
said the lad, 'Blimey! I should think
you
do
want 'em back!'

Evidently the kid is a train-watcher, I decided, not just an
employee of the railways, but keen on 'em too. I nodded to
him, then walked out of the station and turned right, going
up Station Road, which went over the lines that had run into
the
old
station, the trains proceeding through the arch that
had been cut into the city walls. The building of those lines
had been like a raid on the city made forty years since, but
York was a tourist ground, an
Illustrated Guide
sort of place;
jam-packed with the finest relics of old times. It had its looks
to consider, and had fought back against the dirty iron mon­sters, with the upshot that the new station had been made to
stand outside the city walls, with its fourteen platforms, its
three hundred and fifty-odd trains a day, the great hotel with
its two hundred rooms hard by.

From the highest part of Station Road, I looked at the miles
of railway lines coming out of the station to north and south,
spreading octopus-like. For a moment there in the rain blur,
the scene looked just like a photograph, but then one goods
engine out of dozens began crawling through the yard to the
south, proving it was not. The engine rolled for ten seconds,
then came to a stand. It had been like a move in a chess
game, and now the rain came down and everybody on the
North Eastern Railway fell to thinking out the next one.