Andrew Martin - The Necropolis Railway

'Number one,' I said, and I was in high force even before they were settled in their seats, for here was a chance to show my mettle, which I had not been able to get through railway work. 'Number one is Mr Stanley. He looks like a man in want of money, and that is exactly what he is. He speaks on interment for pay, and no other reason, but he was not paid enough. They agreed to keep his address weekly, even though the audiences were so poor, but he wanted more money. I heard him say at the address he gave on the day of Mr Smith's funeral that he had not been in the cemetery for almost four months, and he changed the subject double-quick afterwards. This would have put him there in August, and, I believe, on the afternoon of Wednesday 12 August Mr Stanley did travel to Brookwood – probably not on the funeral train which was running that day, but on a service of the common run from Waterloo.' 'Stopping train to Bournemouth?' said the Captain, and he looked across at the Governor, who just nodded, and who I could tell was anxious on account of the greyness mixed in with the red of his face.

"The week before,' I continued, 'he had asked the board of the Necropolis Company by letter for an increase in pay, but he was refused.'

'How did you know this?' said the Captain, who'd been smiling and smoking a cigar all along and seemed, unlike the Governor, to be a man without a care.

'Because I went into the room at the Necropolis where the minutes are kept.'

'Regular spit-fire of self-dependence,' mumbled the Governor, then, more loudly to the Captain: 'No wonder Mr Smith brought him on!'

'It wasn't lawful to read the Necropolis minutes, though!' said the Captain, but his smile only widened as he did so, and the eye into which the smoke was streaming slowly closed -which I took to mean that I should go on.

'Sir John Rickerby, the chairman, had gone down on the funeral train, and Stanley, I suppose, knew that. Sir John made a habit of walking in the cemetery during his trips down there.'

'Ornithologist?' said the Captain, and he was delighted with that word, which I did not know the meaning of. He was not like a policeman at all. "The trouble being that he was a creeping Jesus.'

The writer looked up at this, but immediately went back to his scribbling.

'He walked with a stick, I mean,' I continued. 'So Mr Stanley could smash his head… I mean the head of Rickerby… and it would look…' I did not like this talk of head-smashing that was coming from me, and the Captain could see it. He stood up and went away, returning with another glass of beer for me, which I drank while the writer, very mysteriously, continued to write. Maybe he had been so far behind that he needed all of my drinking time to catch up.

'Stanley smashed the head of Rickerby against a tombstone' I continued, 'knowing it would look as though he'd fallen.' The writer wrote; the Governor looked at the Captain. 'On the stone'1 said, 'were written the words "Thy Will Be Done.'"

The writer looked up again at this and I put him down as a church-goer. 'This we do know', said the Captain.

'Number two' I continued, 'Henry Taylor. Henry Taylor was at the cemetery on that same day.'

I looked at the Governor, who nodded and said, 'Rode out on the Red Bastard with Arthur Hunt and Vincent.'

'It is possible that he took a walk in the cemetery, because Hunt had given him a scolding. He liked the cemetery – Mike told me that – and Arthur Hunt was always chucking people off his engines.'

'You've told me all about this fellow Hunt' said the Captain to the Governor. 'Socialist' said the Governor, nodding.

'Here is the important connection: I believe Stanley saw Henry Taylor watching him doing the murder of Rickerby, or that's what Stanley thought; Taylor may very well have seen nothing.'

'Carry on' said the Captain, and the smile was gone now. The Governor's I had not seen for some time.

'Taylor was killed a week later, and I reckon Stanley must have followed him about a fair bit before the right moment came along. He left his lodge, which is my lodge now Looking at the Governor here, I couldn't tell whether this was a new one on him. 'He left the lodge but never got to the shed. I think Stanley followed him, and got him somewhere along the river. There are some lonely spots behind the gasworks.'

The beer had made me sleepy, and my head was hurting. My sutures might have been of the finest silk but they did give me gyp. "The next one was Mike' I said.

'Is this number three?' asked the writer, although he did not look up this time.

I nodded at him, thinking Mike ought to have a number to himself. 'Stanley had seen Henry Taylor and Mike together around Waterloo or Nine Elms. Well, they were always together, best of friends. One foggy day he followed Mike to Nine Elms. By rotten luck, Barney Rose was under orders to let Mike take the Jubilee off-shed that morning, and he was alone on it for a while.' 'What's a Jubilee?' said the Captain.

'An 0-4-2 tender engine,' said the Governor in a thoughtful voice. 'Very fine motors.' For some reason the writer looked up at him on hearing this.

'Number four,' I said, which made the writer get back to writing, 'Mr Rowland Smith. A number of reasons here for Stanley to get him. He was not the new chairman of the Necropolis or even a director, from what I could see, but he was holding the purse strings at the time, and when Stanley again asked for more pay – and his second and third requests went into the meetings at the start of November and the start of December – it was Smith he blamed for saying no. Smith also wanted to sell Necropolis land; that was known, but he set about it at an amazingly fast rate, and maybe it began to look to Stanley as though in time he'd get rid of the whole show, leaving no call for an address at all. Finally, Stanley might have got wind that Mr Smith was set on finding out what had happened to Henry Taylor and Mike, and he was set on it. That was one of the reasons he'd brought me on – to be his eyes and ears on the half-link.'

'He wrote to you, didn't he?' said the Governor. 'He meant to ask what light you could cast on all this?'

I nodded, and then apologised to the Captain, for I had quite forgotten to show the letter to the police.

'We found a copy at the flat,' said the Captain. 'Some of his papers were in a safe that survived the blaze.' He glanced at the Governor, and continued: 'I've heard a good deal from Mr Nightingale of the way Mr Smith pitched you in at the deep end… Now, is it your belief that Stanley started the blaze at Mr Smith's flat?'

'With paraffin,' I said. "There's no shortage of it at any railway place.' 'A new sort of exploit for him, then, wasn't it?' 'Oh, I expect he bashed him on the head first.'

'I wonder', said the Captain, 'what gave Mr Smith the idea, up there in Yorkshire, that you would make such a great hand at detecting?'

I thought of Grosmont, Crystal's flowers, the hot waiting room, Rowland Smith's boots…

'I guessed that he was bound for London,' I said. I could not help but add, however, "There again, he was on the up.'

'Maybe he'd forgotten about up and down,' said the Governor. 'Mr Smith has… He had, I mean, many good points, but he did not have the railways in his blood.'

'Above all,' I concluded, 'Stanley killed Smith because he knew Smith was trying to find out what had become of Henry Taylor.

You see, it is my belief Rowland Smith liked Henry Taylor.' I looked at the Governor and I looked at the Captain, and as I did so they both finished off their glasses of beer and I couldn't immediately bring to mind the word that Vincent had used of Smith. Then it came to me: Tommy Dodd. I did not speak it out loud, but said in a half yawn, although quite firmly, to the writer, 'Number six.'

Number six was me, and it turned out the longest, even though I was beginning to tire. I told them all about how each man in the half-link had had his knife into me. They thought I was Rowland Smith's man, just like Taylor, and that I would split on them. I was a bit careful about saying what I might split on them for: I mentioned Hunt's socialist ways, but not the mutual improvement class or the trade-union letters I'd seen. I said that Barney Rose 'perhaps seemed a little casual about his business', rather than go any further towards speaking of drink. Drunkenness, I was sure, had set in after the Salisbury smash that Vincent had mentioned, and his boozing had led to his mistakes, one of which had been seen and reported to the Governor by Taylor. As to Vincent, well, he covered up for both of them.