Andrew Martin: Death on a Branch line

‘Prisoner under escort,’ I said.

The first of the two blokes standing directly before me gave me the evil eye. He would’ve denied it if he could.

‘Who is he?’ I said, indicating the prisoner, who was now being fairly dragged towards us by his guard.

The boggly-eyed man looked at me, and I watched his eyes. It was like waiting for Bob the fireman to chuck up his guts.

‘Now that’, he said, indicating the man under escort, ‘is what you might call perishable goods.’

Pending the arrival of a new fireman, the prisoner was stowed in the holding cell of the station police office. The hard-looking Met man stood smoking on Platform Thirteen along with the guard who’d brought the prisoner down from the train. They both stood within hailing distance of the boggle-eyed man, who was evidently junior to both of them. He stood in the doorway of the police office, which Wright had now vacated.

I was the only man in the office, and I sat at my desk looking at the bread and cheese. It was a quarter after five. The question of the time seemed to press on me rather; had done all day. The hot weather was like a clock ticking.

‘His name’s Lambert,’ said the boggle-eyed man, turning in the doorway and entering the police office. ‘Hugh.’

He meant the prisoner, of course.

‘From the quality he is,’ he went on. ‘Brought up in a country mansion — old man lord of the bloody manor. Adenwold. Heard of it?’

I nodded.

‘Went to all the best schools, Cambridge University — nothing wanting at all, and then what does he go and do?’

He took out a leathern wallet and began making a cigarette out of the stuff inside it.

‘Shoots his old man.’

He eyed me over the top of a cigarette paper.

‘Ungrateful,’ he said.

‘He’s for the drop, then,’ I said.

‘Monday morning,’ said the boggle-eyed bloke. ‘Eight o’clock sharp.’

Holding up the baccy pouch, he looked a question at me.

‘… Obliged to you,’ I said, and he lobbed the whole thing over, whereas I’d been banking on him rolling me one.

As I caught it, I said, ‘Hold on — this is the Moorby Murder.’

Moorby was immediately south of the Yorkshire Moors, and a place just waiting for a murder to happen so that all the papers could speak of ‘The Moorby Murder’, which rolled so easily off the tongue, and looked eye-catching in print. But Adenwold, which was near to Moorby, was where it had actually happened. I had read of the trial, which had been held about three months since, down in London — a regular Old Bailey sensation. But I could not recall the details of the case beyond the striking fact that a son had killed his father.

‘I don’t understand why you’re shifting him,’ I said, as I set to work with the baccy. ‘It en’t regular to move a condemned man.’

(It’s adding insult to injury, I thought, that’s what it is.)

‘Well now,’ said the boggle-eyed man, ‘we’re taking him to Durham. Reason being, the scaffold at Wandsworth nick’s busted. The drop mechanism…’

And he violently mimed the pulling of what might have been a signal lever.

‘… It’s packed up, and there’s no prospect of fixing it in time.’

‘Is it on account of the heat?’ I asked.

He folded his arms.

‘Why would it be on account of the heat?’

‘Well, it’s playing bloody murder with everything else,’ I said.

He shook his head, while unfolding his arms.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s just busted. They need to get a blacksmith to it. Gas torch. But that ain’t the only reason we’re shifting him,’ he ran on, blowing smoke. ‘There’s another, more important.’

And now he really started boggling at me.

‘What’s that, then?’ I said.

More boggling.

‘It’s confidential, mind,’ he said.

I nodded, and struck a Vesta for my cigarette.

‘Governor at Wandsworth,’ he said, ‘he don’t think he did it. Won’t hang him.’

I took this in, smoking.

‘Won’t have it on his conscience,’ said the bloke.

‘But the gallows either is bust or it en’t?’ I said.

‘Well then,’ said the boggle-eyed bloke, ‘it’s not.’

Through the opened door, I could hear trains coming and going, and it all seemed so vulgar and unmannerly with a bloke in the holding cell having only one week-end left to live.

‘Did he not appeal?’ I asked the boggle-eyed man. He shook his head, and I thought about the time I’d seen a fellow hung at Durham gaol…

The execution had not arisen from a railway police case, but from a stabbing in the Durham workhouse. It was just after I’d had my promotion that the Chief had taken me north, and he’d eyed me throughout the proceedings. He’d said, ‘It’ll fix you, lad. A copper who’s not seen it happen is floating about in a dream world.’

But the business itself had been like a dream — both fast and slow like a dream. The prisoner had been marched through thick fog across the yard, and this had happened in a sort of relay. He’d set off in company with four wardens, the governor, the vicar and the doctor — all blokes who might have been looking out for him, who might in some way have been on his side; but they gave him over to the hangman and his assistant, who definitely weren’t. The Chief and I had waited in the shed that held the gallows, and which normally contained the prison van. We’d stood alongside the High Sheriff of Durham or some such gentry.

The place smelt of oil and horse droppings, and the absence of the van was the most terrible thing about it. When the prisoner came in, it was all movement and no words. The High Sheriff had whipped off his top hat at the exact moment of the drop, and I thought he should have done it sooner.

The man was left hanging in what seemed to be a great weight of silence, and it came to me only then that the whole thing had happened in the time it took the prison clock to strike eight.

And that silence, and the fog, had seemed to stay about us for the rest of the day.

The boggle-eyed man was now looking at the photographs in the police office; his suit coat was over his arm.

‘He’ll be roasted in that cell, you know,’ I said.

‘Bring him in here if you like,’ he said. ‘He’s not the sort to attempt a breakaway.’

The condemned man had on a good-quality flannel suit, and a loose white necker that was rather bandage-like. He’d been permitted to carry a roll of papers, and these he stuffed into his suit-coat pocket as I opened the cell door and said, ‘You can wait up in the office if you’d rather.’

‘It is a little close in here,’ he said.

He was well-spoken, and my own accent was a little ‘out’ when next I addressed him, as it usually is when I try to accommodate to upper-class pronunciation.

‘You can sit here,’ I said, indicating my own desk.

Boggle-eyes was not giving us the benefit of his distinctive expression but lounging in the doorway with his back to us. He’d collected up his baccy, I noticed. As we entered the room, he gave us only a brief backward glance before stepping out onto the platform and falling in with his two confederates.

Lambert nodded at me as he sat down, and then looked all about the room. It was a young man’s curiosity and he was young — about of an age with me: late twenties, not more. He had very wide dark eyes, and he looked like an author. Not just any author, but a particular one: the fellow that wrote Treasure Island. I’d seen his photograph on the first page of a copy of that book, but I couldn’t just then lay hold of his name.

Hugh Lambert blew gently upwards, and his long hair lifted.