Andrew Martin - The Somme Stations

The next morning, I offered to sign for Brewster the special bail undertaking that required me to keep to the house and grounds and that he had not got round to asking me to sign up to that point. He said, ‘We might amend it to include the path up to the Wells, or shall we just take it as read?’ He seemed as amiable as ever, but later on that morning, while walking past the office of the Matron, Oldfield, I heard him say to her, that if I made it up to the White Wells, it could be safely concluded that I was fit enough to go to gaol. Oldfield replied something to the effect she’d be glad to be shot of me.

That afternoon, I went all the way up to the White Wells in falling snow. The sky was the colour of… I would say the dirty white of a young swan – the colour of a signet – and it made a pleasant change to see something soft coming down from it. The white cottage that housed the Wells was closed, and the stone bench before it was covered in snow. I waited a while beside this bench, then returned to ‘Ardenlea’ when the cold began to hurt my new-set bone.

At four o’clock the next day, with darkness closing in, I cleared the snow off the bench, leant my crutches against it, lit a cigarette, and sat down. I surveyed the lights of Ilkley, which were somewhat subdued on account of the Zeppelin threat, giving the effect of many small points of gold under a purple sky. Presently, a man came across the Moor from my left, and sat down by me on the bench. It wasn’t the man I’d expected – not quite.

‘Some leave finally came through, then,’ I said to Oliver Butler.

‘Well, I’m not deserting , Jim,’ he said, and he took in the view for a while, before saying, ‘… sailed home a week ago… and it’s back to France tomorrow.’

I offered him a cigarette; he shook his head.

‘Well, you got to him in the end,’ he said. ‘I knew you would. He was questioned… let me see… the day before yesterday by your governor, Weatherill.’

‘That was on account of letters I’ve sent from here,’ I said, indicating the low lights of ‘Ardenlea’. ‘I put Chief Inspector Weatherill in the picture.’

‘You’re proud of the fact, and that does you credit, Jim. You’ve a brass neck… amongst other things.’

‘You gave us the green light against orders.’

‘Those orders were more confused than you might think, Jim. Remember, this is the British Army.’

‘It surprised me because it seemed to me at the time you ought to have let the boy live. Roy had overheard the conversation – most of it – that I’d had with Tinsley on the train back from Amiens, so you would have known that the kid was about to come clean over what happened on Spurn. Thackeray would have called off his investigation, and that’s what you’d been hoping for all along, given that the twins were always the likeliest suspects on the face of it. So you’d a reason to see Tinsley live; trouble was, you’d obviously been given a better reason to see him killed – him and me both, in fact. That’s why you gave us the green light to go along the dangerous stretch at Flers. What could that reason be? I revolved it all the way back in the hospital train, thought of everything I knew about Tinsley. Well, it didn’t amount to much. He was a railway nut… and then there was your friend.’

‘Not my friend really , Jim.’

‘Tinsley’s hero, Tom Shaw, bicycled into the engine shed over muddy lanes, yet he always kept clean. He lived in a place that had a railway connection to York. Naburn fitted the bill in both cases. And he looked a nasty bastard from his picture.’

‘You worked it all out from that ?’

I shook my head.

‘Going over that chat between me and Tinsley on the train from Amiens, one sentence rang out clear. “He’s capable of anything, is Tom Shaw.” The train wasn’t going over points just then, you see, and it struck me – in recollection – that it had been going over points during every other part of our talk that touched on Shaw. So it seemed to me that Roy wouldn’t have heard those parts – which were all to do with how, if Shaw wanted to arrive early at a station, he’d just go ahead and do it. Tinsley was making out that he was bloody-minded as an engine man, not saying he was a killer. But that would have been lost to Roy in the jangling of the points. He’d have heard Tinsley’s account of the Spurn business – we’d run clear of the points by then – but all he would’ve picked up on the matter of Shaw was that Tinsley believed him capable of anything.’

In Ilkley, all the lights showing in the window of a mill went off in an instant. More snow was coming down.

‘Somebody struck a match just after Tinsley said that. It was Roy, and he was lighting up because he was worried. It was the first time you or him had heard of the connection between Tinsley and Shaw. It had just always fallen out that you were elsewhere when Tinsley mentioned him. It might have struck you, when you were getting off the train, that we’d been keeping the connection secret from you, having found out about the killing of Matthew Waddington. I mean to say, you knew I’d been curious about Naburn Lock. You probably knew I’d looked into what had gone on there, having seen the way you and your brothers reacted to seeing one of the little Somme stops named after it. And in Albert you’d seen me in conference with the Chief.’

Oliver Butler gave a kind of snort, and moved position on the bench. ‘So you didn’t know?’

‘Tinsley didn’t know what Shaw had done, and nor did I – not then: not on the train back from Amiens. I wasn’t sure that Shaw existed, and I didn’t know for certain until I wrote to the Chief from here asking him to look up him.’

Butler was removing an item from his greatcoat pocket.

‘You wanted to silence Tinsley and me,’ I said, seeing that it was a revolver he held, ‘because you thought we knew Tom Shaw had killed Matthew Waddington, about which you were wrong. But why would the matter be of any concern to you in the first place? Why would you fight Shaw’s battles? It could only be that you were involved… I don’t believe you personally had a hand in killing Waddington.’

‘Good of you to say so, Jim.’

‘Killing’s not really your way of going on.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that.’

‘You’ve got too much to lose.’

‘That’s debatable.’

‘I’m thinking of your wife.’

‘So am I, Jim.’

‘So it must have been your brothers.’

Butler inspected the gun – a revolver; he set it on his lap.

‘They’ll be questioned in due course,’ I said. ‘The Chief said he might get Thackeray on the job, only it’s a crime committed in civvy street. Shaw’s already let on to the Chief that he knew Andy and Roy. Pair of head cases, he calls them – makes out they had it in for Shaw for some reason. He’s starting to cough, no question. When the Chief puts the blocks on a fellow, that’s generally the result. They’ll swing at the end… all three.’

Some of this was true; some of it wasn’t, as I believed Butler knew. I couldn’t really claim the credit for what he came out with next…

‘Matthew Waddington owed Shaw money,’ said Butler, seeming to address one particular illuminated street corner in the town below. ‘Waddington was a tough customer. Shaw’s a little bloke, and he wanted back-up when he confronted him at the lock. He paid the boys a pound apiece… Well, it’s a lot of money to them.’

‘You pay those boys to do a job, they do it well. The Army found that out.’

‘Saved your life on July 1st,’ Butler put in.

‘True enough,’ I said. I’d forgotten about that – how the twins had saved my life by their digging.