The Lost Luggage Porter (6 page)

'You didn't follow 'em in?'

He shook his head.

'Taken the pledge, like.'

'Well’ I said, 'I might get across there tomorrow ... That's
my starting day on the force.'

'Garden Gate, Carmelite Street’ said Lund, before being
overtaken once again by his cough.

I walked over the footbridge, heading for the bike stand at
the front of the station. My way took me near to the Police
Office and sure enough it was shut for the night. A notice on
the door asked any passenger in distress to contact the night
station manager. I'd been in the Police Office once before,
very briefly, on the day I was sworn.

At the bicycle stand, the Humber was waiting. I took the
lamp out of the saddle bag. There was water in the top all
right but I was rather low on carbide. I pulled the little han­dle that set the water dripping on to the powder, opened the
front of the lamp, lighted a match and put it in. The rain in
front of the lamp now fell through white light. I fixed the
lamp to the front fork and set off for home.

I cycled up Railway Street with a trace of acetylene smell
coming to me from the lamp. It had been a twenty-third
birthday present from the wife, and at five bob was worth
more than the bicycle. I was glad of it, of course, but while
beforehand I'd thought of every subject going during my
cycle rides, I now thought of only one: the bloody lamp. It
would keep going out, and it
would
keep falling off the
bracket.

Along Thorpe-on-Ouse Road new, white-brick houses
were going up. In the ones already occupied, light burned
brightly, as if for swank: look at us, nicely settled with electric
light, running water upstairs and all modern conveniences
laid on. I thought of the Camerons, and then I thought of
Edwin Lund. He had a down on the pickpockets of York
station ..
.
But why were they any concern of his?

Beyond the building line, I was flying past the racecourse
when the gas gave out in the lamp, and so I went on just as
fast, but with a little nervousness. I came along by St
Andrew's Church. The field in front was like the night
stretched out and laid flat on the ground. One minute later I
was skirting the gates of the Archbishop's Palace and skid­ding into Thorpe-on-Ouse Main Street, which was really the
only
street, separating the two rows of trim cottages set in
nearly straight lines. Johnson, the bootmaker, faced Scholes,
family butcher; Lazenby's post office faced Daffy, newsagents;
the Grey Mare public house faced the Fortune of War public
house, and if one shop or business should close down, it was
like a tooth knocked out of a mouth. And so it had long been.

No man in Thorpe-on-Ouse supped in both the Grey Mare
and the Fortune of War. It would be like bigamy. The Mare
had
its
lot and the Fortune its own. I was for the Fortune of
War, but I couldn't have said why. I looked across to the front
bar. No noise from there and no movement behind the lace
curtains. I could hear a horse shifting in the stables behind,
but that didn't mean it wasn't asleep and dreaming. I stood under the street's one gas lamp, listening to the
River Ouse rolling on out of sight past the eastern edge of the
village. You could hear the river at any time in Thorpe, but
you needed to work at it. It came to you if you paid attention.
I looked up at the sky, trying to make out the planet Mercury
- the Twinkling Wanderer, the
Yorkshire Evening Press
had
called him. There were a few stars staring straight back.
Nothing twinkling. Over the road and along, I saw an
Evening Press
placard propped outside Daffy's newsagent
and seeming to glow somewhat. I could not make out the
words, but I knew they would be 'York Brothers Slain', the
news blaring out though the shop was long since shut.
Would the placard be there the next day? For John and Dun­can Cameron would still be dead then.

I opened our garden gate. The cottage we'd taken at five
bob a week was just over from the Fortune of War, cut away
from the road with a long garden in front and another
behind. It was number 16A, as though squeezed in at the last
minute between numbers 16 and 17. The people who'd had
it before had risen to pig keeping, and there were makeshift
sties to front and back. It was only as I approached the front
door that it struck me I was without the portmanteau and its
magazines. 'Buggeration!' I said out loud. Where had I left
the bag: on Platform Fourteen or at the bike stand?

I opened the door, which gave directly on to the parlour,
and there was the wife, sitting at the strong table by the fire,
and going at her typewriter as usual - fairly racing at it.
Whereas some women took in dress-making, the wife took in
typewriting from an agency in York, and that by the armful.

'How do?' I said, kissing her.

'Did you get your magazines then, our Jim,' she said, not
stopping typewriting.

'I got 'em, but then I lost 'em again’ I said.

'You 'aporth,' said the wife, clouting the lever that slid the
typewriter carriage. We had the machine on hire; it was a
Standard, and the wife said it was worn to pieces but it
seemed to serve pretty well.

'I collected it from Lost Luggage all right, but then I left it
near the bike stand, what with all the palaver of ...'

It was unfair to blame the lamp, so I stopped there. I fettled
up the fire a bit, saying: 'How's t' babby today?' and giving a
grin. The wife didn't like these Yorkshire speaks.
Between her and the typewriter was her belly under the
maternity gown. She had all on to reach the keys.

'I'm too busy to be thinking about that,' she said, and I
looked across at the page in the machine: 'Thank you for
yours of 14th inst. ..'

'That kid's going to be born writing letters,' I said, walking
through to the kitchen where I found a bottle of beer in the
pantry.

'Oh I was forgetting. There's a telegram for you!' the wife
called.

I hurried back into the living room with the bottle
unopened - news of a telegram could make you do that.

The wife was pointing at the mantle shelf, at an envelope
addressed: 'Detective Stringer, 16A, Main Street, Thorpe-on-
Ouse, York'. It was a shock to see myself called a detective in
print. The form read: 'REPORT TO POLICE OFFICE 6 A.M.
TOMORROW'. My instructions had been to book on for my
first day's duty at eight, so this was a turn-up. But it was the
name at the bottom that really knocked me: Chief Inspector
Saul Weatherill.

It had to be concerning the Camerons. What police busi­ness in York could
not
be just at that time?

The wife had stopped typewriting, and was looking at me.

'It's from the Chief Inspector,' I said to the wife. '. . . Top
brass.'

'What's he say?'

'He wants me in at six.'

'In where?'

'The police station.'

'Where
is
that, exactly?' said the wife, going back to her
typewriting, only more slowly.

'It's at the railway station.'

The wife frowned over the keys, saying:
'So you're stationed at the station?'

Was she the one person in the vicinity of York who knew
nothing of the murder? Ought I to tell her? She'd pushed me
towards police work, and she ought to see what it meant in
practice . . . But she was not in the condition to receive
shocks.

'There must be something on,' I said, dropping the
telegram into the firewood basket.

'We had a letter as well,' said the wife. 'Your dad . . . He's
coming here on Sunday.'

No smile came with these words. My dad and the wife did
not get on. Dad had turned out in all weathers to listen to the
Conservative chap in the late election, and the wife . .. Well,
the wife was a suffragist.

'If he's coming, he's coming,' I said, sitting down on the
sofa.

'Yes,' said the wife, still typewriting. 'The train service
between Bay town and York is unfortunately excellent.'

'On the day,' I said, 'you are to make a big tea.'

The wife was like a cat on hot bricks whenever the subject
turned to cooking. Cheese, bread, cocoa, yes: anything more,
a fellow had to fight for it.

'I will make a
tea,'
she said carefully.

We had many more hot dinners out than other couples
similarly placed, and ate a sight more from tins than was
probably good for us. Then again, the wife earned money
typewriting, and a good deal of that went on the housekeep­ing.

'When he comes,' I said, standing up and walking over to
the fire, 'will you try to avoid a set-to?'

'How am I to do that?'

'Just don't bring up the subject of votes for women as soon
as he steps through the bloody door.'

I crushed a speck of coal that had flown out on to the
linoleum. I could not sit down when having these discus­sions with the wife.

'Is it my fault if your dad suffers from sex prejudice?' said
the wife.

'He's sixty-five’ I said. 'He didn't know what sex preju­dice was until you showed up.'

'Well then’ she said, 'I'm only too happy to have been of
assistance to him.'

I looked about the room.

'Where's the sewing machine?' I said.

'It's in a safe place, where it will not get in the way.'

Or used, I thought.

Dad had bought the wife a sewing machine, sent together
with a note suggesting that she might make a layette for the
baby. But the wife meant to
buy
a layette for the bairn, and
that was all about it. He'd also taken to sending her "The
Ladies' Column", snipped out from the
Whitby Gazette.
It
was all recipes and household hints. The wife had read the
first one only. 'I don't believe it's written by a woman at all’
she'd said, before pitching it into the fire.