Andrew Martin - Death on a Branch line

The boy was calming the dog — and so also the ferret — as I spoke up.

‘Do you know of a John Lambert?’ I asked him.

The boy nodded.

‘Stops up at…’

‘Where?’

‘Up at t’ all.’

‘The Hall? Is he the squire, so to speak?’

Mervyn Handley frowned.

‘Well… there’s t’ new man.’

But surely, I thought, John Lambert — being the eldest son — would have inherited the house? He would be the new man. But this might be a rather complicated matter. I tried a different tack.

‘John Lambert’s father died, didn’t he?’

‘Aye, mister,’ the boy said, and he looked at me levelly. After an interval, and still eyeing me, he said, ‘Shot to death.’

‘And who shot him?’

Silence for a space. Then the boy said:

‘His son. Master Hugh.’

‘He’s about to swing, en’t he?’

The lad nodded.

‘Why did it take so long to come to a hanging?’

‘Master Hugh made off. France, and all over.’

‘When did they lay hands on him?’

‘Last back end.’

‘And you knew the man accused — Master Hugh?’

A long beat of silence.

‘I knew him, aye.’

I was going in strong here. I knew the kid didn’t want to be asked, but then again I knew he would answer. So I kept on.

‘What did you think of him?’ I asked, and he shot back the answer directly: ‘Liked him.’

The wife was pacing about near the fire; she had entered the clearing only a few seconds after me, so she’d been privy to the whole conversation. I began to hear the sound of a river rolling past.

‘ Why did you like him?’

No sound but the rushing river.

Mervyn said:

‘He’d give me presents.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like a dormouse,’ said the kid, this time fast, and he turned his head once again to the side. ‘There now,’ he said, and nodded two or three times.

The wife cut in to spare the lad more of my questions:

‘What’s your dog called, Mervyn?’

‘Alfred,’ he said.

‘Is it safe to stroke him?’ she asked.

‘It’ll be safe for you,’ he said, which put the wife in a fix, leaving her no option but to go over to the animal.

The wife was stroking the dog, which seemed more bored than anything else by the attention.

She asked, ‘What is this place, Mervyn?’

‘This?’ he said, looking about him. ‘It’s t’ set-up.’

‘The set-up?’

Mervyn coloured up at hearing his name for the place repeated, but Lydia’s more amiable questions gradually put him at his ease, and it all came out.

The set-up was his seat of operations against rabbits, or a place he’d come to eat his snap after a morning’s toil in the fields or at the inn. He was half pot boy at the inn, half farmer’s boy, for he would do turns at all the local farms, helping at harvest and threshing, picking thistles in summer and stones in winter. The Handleys had once farmed land leased from the Hall, but the man later murdered — Sir George Lambert — had turned them out and given them the pub instead. When I asked why, the boy said, ‘Not rightly sure.’

Anyhow, Mervyn did not seem especially down on the late Sir George Lambert. The boy described him to us as a great man for hunting and cricket — a very loud and hearty gent from the sound of it, but ‘all right’.

‘Would you like to manage an inn when you’re older?’ Lydia asked Mervyn, and I could see she was taken with the boy, even though he spoke the broad Yorkshire she was forever trying to lead our Harry away from. Mervyn shrugged.

‘Or you might think of the North Eastern Railway,’ I said. ‘The present lad porter at Adenwold’s not up to much, I’ll tell you that.’

Mervyn kept silence. Having laid down his shotgun and given the fire a kick, he was moving towards the river.

‘Lad at t’ station?’ Mervyn said as he walked. ‘… I steer clear.’

‘What’s his name?’ I called after him.

But he didn’t seem to hear.

I indicated by a nod of the head to Lydia that we should follow the boy over to the river.

‘Don’t press him so,’ she said, as we followed in his wake. But I knew she was as keen as me to find out more.

‘What about the station master?’ I asked Mervyn when we were all at the river bank.

‘’Im?’ he said, ‘’im wi’ t’ little men?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘The model soldiers in the booking office.’

Mervyn was drawing what looked like a great rubber bag from out of the river. It had been tethered to the bank like a fisherman’s keep net. He upended it and… well, it was like watching a whale vomiting out dead rabbits, for the rubber bag held half a dozen of them.

‘He’s a weird one all right,’ said Mervyn, flinging away the bag. I looked over to the wife; her face was a picture.

‘Hold on,’ I said to Mervyn. ‘What’s all this?’

‘Keeps the rabbits cold,’ he said.

‘It’s an old mackintosh, I suppose?’ put in the wife.

Mervyn shook his head.

‘Cover for an invalid mattress,’ he said. ‘At least that’s what me mam says.’

‘Where d’you find it?’

‘In t’ wood. Soon as I saw it, I knew it’d come in.’

‘It’s a clever use of it,’ said the wife.

‘It does,’ said Mervyn in a modest sort of way.

He told us that the village carter, a fellow called Hamer, would give him tuppence for each rabbit and then sell them on to the butcher in East Adenwold. There was no butcher in Adenwold itself.

‘Why do you have a fire going, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.

‘In case I pull summat out o’ there,’ he replied, indicating the river.

‘You can take a fish by hand?’

‘At odd times, aye.’

He was stuffing the rabbits into the sacking.

The wife asked, ‘Have you ever been to Scarborough, Mervyn?’

‘I ’ave not.’

‘It’s only an hour’s train ride,’ I said.

‘I don’t ’old wi’ t’ railway.’

‘Why not?’

‘It did for all t’ farms round ’ere.’

Railways were bad for farms. They brought cheap food from abroad.

‘There’d be no lemons here without the railway,’ I said.

‘Well then,’ said Mervyn, ‘I don’t like lemons.’

The wife asked him: ‘Do you never use the railway to get about?’

He shook his head.

‘I just walk over t’ fields.’

‘It sounds a very nice way to travel, I’m sure,’ said the wife.

‘Aye,’ said Mervyn, ‘it is.’

I asked him: ‘Mervyn, who were the villagers beating on the rabbit shoot? When Sir George was shot, I mean.’

‘I’ve no notion,’ he said, eyeing me.

I nodded, saying, ‘Where’s the Hall from here, Mervyn?’

And he stood pointing.

‘And now?’ I asked the wife, as we walked fast through the woods.

The boy’s talk of the murder had flicked her imagination. I could tell that by her silence.

‘We’re not going to call, you know,’ said the wife.

We were not in the habit of leaving cards. We did not have any cards to leave. If I became a solicitor then we would do.

‘We’ll just have a peep at the place,’ I said.

We were moving now along a wider track. There seemed a whole roadway of tracks in the woods, with great junctions under the branches but never any people.

We came to an edge of the trees, and there was the Hall. There were seas of corn to left and right, and pasture directly before it, across which two telegraph wires were carried towards the house by a line of poles that seemed to originate in the woods. A long drive ran through the pasture and ended bang at the front door. It was dead straight but went up and down a good deal, like a long sheet being shaken out. The drive seemed longer than the house required. It was only a moderate-sized mansion, but made up for that in handsomeness.