Andrew Martin - Death on a Branch line

It struck me that the vicar might be looking on because he’d seen us stop by Sir George’s grave. Did he think we were discussing the murder?

‘That’s the fellow was murdered,’ I said to Gifford, indicating the grave.

‘I know,’ he said, which surprised me. ‘It’s a queer spot this is, just the place for a murder. Gives me the jim-jams, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Do you not find it peaceful and quiet?’ asked the wife.

‘The quieter a place is,’ he said, ‘the noisier it is. You hear every little thing. Here now, I meant to have a word with you,’ he continued, addressing me particularly. ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you? Railway police.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘How do you know?’

He stopped dead; all the life went out of him. But he rallied after a few seconds, saying, ‘I don’t rightly know. Just something about you, I suppose. Something about your looks.’

‘And a railway policeman looks different from the ordinary sort, I suppose?’ the wife cut in.

He’d been in our room all right.

‘What did you want a word about, anyway?’ I asked. ‘Something touching on the murder?’

‘I believe so,’ he said, thoughtfully, but before he could answer, there came a cry from the vicarage.

The Reverend Ridley was standing in the doorway and hailing Gifford.

‘God help us, he’s changed his mind!’ said Gifford. ‘He’s seen the sense of going for the single-driver.’

The vicar called again.

‘I’ve half a mind not to go to him,’ said Gifford.

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ I said.

‘Are you nuts?’ said Gifford, and he was off, bag in hand, calling ‘Just coming, sir!’ to the Reverend Ridley.

‘What did you want to tell me?’ I shouted after him.

‘Speak to you at the inn,’ he called back. ‘One o’clock suit?’

‘Well, that’s that as regards him,’ said the wife, looking on as he was taken into the vicarage.

‘How do you mean exactly?’ I asked her.

‘He’s not a spy.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t believe he is.’

‘We ought to see John Lambert again,’ she said. ‘Really have it out with him once and for all.’

I reminded her that there was the complication of the man in field boots.

‘Oh, I don’t care about him,’ she said.

We’d followed the finger-posts to the Hall, which had taken us, by a new route, to the gates at which we’d earlier discovered John Lambert. We’d walked through these and were now passing between the great globe-like trees, approaching the house with its dozen windows staring down at us.

I’d meant to wait for the arrival of the Chief before braving the Hall again. I’d been warned off the place both by Lambert and (in a roundabout way) by the man in field boots, and with every step I expected some alarm, shout, objection to be raised. Most particularly, I expected some gun to be fired. Over against that, I was a police officer about my duty.

As for the wife, she just seemed entranced by the house.

‘It’s middle Georgian,’ she said. ‘Very simple.’

Many green plants stood in tall urns across the white gravel of the carriage drive. These and the green door, the brown bricks and the great heat bearing down somehow put me in mind of the Roman Empire.

I said to the wife, ‘What’s the programme?’ and I thought: Now hold on, Jim, you can’t be asking her.

A man came walking fast round the side of the house, and he wore knee-length boots, but not field boots. He was a footman or groom or some such — had a horsy look about him.

‘Where’s the gardener’s cottage?’ I asked him, and he said, ‘Follow me round.’

We crunched over the dazzling white gravel to the left side of the house, and there stood a lot of stables and out-buildings of one sort or another, the lot of them looking Roman to me, like temples or villas. We walked through the maze of these for a while, passing dark farm machinery standing in open doorways, until the horsy bloke pointed to a very plain cottage standing amid burnt brown grass fifty yards off.

‘That’s you,’ he said.

‘I’m obliged to you,’ I said, and we set off in that direction.

The groom called out:

‘You’re with Captain Usher, are you?’

‘Don’t answer him,’ said the wife, in a low tone as we walked on. ‘He’s a servant, so you don’t have to.’

She wouldn’t as a rule have said that, but in her mind she was established as mistress of the house. The notion made her headstrong — not that she wasn’t already, and for the first time the notion composed in my mind: I wish I hadn’t brought her along.

The man in field boots was Captain Usher. That was no surprise. He had a martial air, he had the boots, and he had the firearm somewhere about him, I was sure. But he was nowhere to be seen as we closed on the gardener’s cottage, which was a small, plain building, newer than the rest and with its own territory — a garden within a garden — bounded by low hedges. Beyond the cottage, on a yellow hillside a quarter-mile off, I saw a harvester pulled by four bullocks, the whole arrangement tilted so far to one side that it threatened to topple over.

But the gardener’s cottage now came between us and that vision. The curtains were closed but the door was on the jar. As we crossed the garden, I cut in front of the wife — which was by way of reminding her that I was the certificated detective.

I tapped on the door, and John Lambert was just inside it.

He stood smoking a cigarette, in a living room that had been put to use as a study in the place that he preferred to the Hall. There were two desks, one either side of the dead, dusty fireplace, and these two desks seemed to signify great effort, like a double-headed train. Lines of bright light leaked through the closed curtains, and they showed up twirling clouds of dust. There were papers everywhere, covering all the means of ordinary living: papers on top of the sofa, on the carpet, all about the hearth and the hearth rug. They were scrawled with both letters and numbers, and some of them were maps, and some were maps of the sea; and where there weren’t papers there were railway timetables.

John Lambert looked disappointed to see us, but only moderately so.

‘You’re still living, then?’ I blurted, all my rehearsed speech going by the board.

‘I can’t deny it,’ he said, breathing smoke, ‘… in the face of all the evidence.’

He looked over-strained, as he had the day before — but no worse. His beard, growing in the shadow of his hollow cheeks, still looked as though it had not been intended. Instead, it was a mark of decline. His white suit was of a good cloth, but did not stand close scrutiny.

‘A man has arrived to see you,’ I said. ‘A Captain Usher.’

He nodded once, touched his spectacles and looked at me shrewdly.

He said, ‘How do you know?’ But he seemed only moderately curious on that point, and as to the reason for my interest in the matter.

‘He came by train,’ I said. ‘Not many people do, so it’s easy to keep cases on the arrivals.’

John Lambert nodded again.

‘Usher has been here once today already,’ he said. ‘And is about to return. I wouldn’t be here when he does if I were you.’

‘Is he the one you’re in fear of?’ the wife put in.

(I would allow her that one question.)

‘I’m not in fear of anyone,’ Lambert replied. And he kept silence for a moment, before adding: ‘That said, I do not much expect to see out the day.’

‘And you won’t say why?’ I enquired, in horror.

‘I will not. It is all a secret — a profound secret.’

‘And do you know the identity of your father’s murderer?’