Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

He nodded back, and put down the paper.

'You looking for work?' he said, eyeing the camera that hung from my shoulder.

I showed him my warrant card, and said, 'I'm looking into certain events of late last year. To make a long story short, it'd be quite handy to know when you came out with your Complimentary Calendar for 1908.'

'Early,' said the man immediately, 'so as to beat the competition.'

He did not rise, but pointed towards a table that ran along one wall, where lay a great mountain of past Morning Posts. The whole purpose of the office was to add to that pile.

'See for yourself,' said the man; and he went back to reading his own paper.

The papers were all slightly damp, from being kept so close to the sea, as I supposed. The one at the top of the first pile was dated 12 March of the present year. I pulled it and the ones below aside and kept going until I reached December 1908. I proceeded slowly through these until I came to the edition in which the usual top- corner advertisement for Bermaline Bread gave way to the intertwined Cs of 'Complimentary Calendar inside today'.

It was dated 3 December. This was the same edition held by the young man in the photograph taken by Peters; Falconer was shown in that photograph, and yet the last sighting of Falconer was supposed to have occurred on 2 December. I brought to mind the dates I knew. I turned to the journalist, saying, 'I'm obliged to you, mate.'

He barely grunted in response, being still lost in the doings of Whitby and district as described by the Whitby Morning Post. It said a lot for both town and paper, I decided, as I set off for the station and my York connection. But then again, I was in good spirits anyway, for I felt that I'd had a pretty good day of it.

Chapter Thirteen

At York, the police office was closed, but the parcels office was all go with the Christmas traffic, and two great stacks of parcels waited outside for booking. Under the gaslights of the forecourt, delivery vans waited: a dozen horse-drawn and two motors. They all trembled in the cold. I slung the Mentor Reflex over my shoulder, pushed the police papers into my inside coat pocket and pulled the Humber from the bicycle rack. My frozen hands were only good for a certain number of movements, so I did not trouble to light the lamps, but set off directly, half-pushing, half-riding the bike through the snow.

There was a mile of snowy darkness between the end of York's lights and Thorpe-on-Ouse, but the village itself was a deal livelier than usual. The windows of the church were all lit, and the door stood open. The wife, I knew, had planned to spend the afternoon in there with Harry, Christmassing the nave with holly and mistletoe. The Church and the housewifely socialism practised by the Women's Co-operative Guild were her main interests in life, and I often felt that Harry and me came a poor second. She loved that boy, but I felt on occasion that she'd board him out if she could - just for the odd time or two. Pushing the bike under the lights on the main street, I saw that the snow was on the left side of everything, including the sign of the Fortune of War, the pub that stood over opposite our cottage. Its curtains were closed, but I knew the place was packed, and wondered whether it was share-out night for the goose club. We were not in the goose club; we were to have a chicken, and the bird was to come from the Co-operative Stores.

I stowed the bike in the woodshed, and walked into the parlour, where the wife had her hair down before the glass. She was trying out new styles for the Co-operative Women's Guild party, which would take place the following evening, and which she had undertaken to organise. She'd been paid a pound on top of her usual part-time wages for doing so, and this had evidently not been enough since - to listen to the wife - the organising of this beano had made the Labours of Hercules seem like a few small errands.

'You look all in, our Jim,' she said, when I kissed her. 'Did you bring the man in this time?'

'No,' I said, moving over to the fire. In preparation for the festive season, she had black-leaded half the grate and cleaned the stains off some of the crockery - just the spoons, perhaps. I knew that some sort of mixture was on the go in the kitchen, but no Christmas fare had so far appeared in a finished form.

'Well,' she said, 'you're keeping the railway in business at any rate, with all your journeys up there. Why did you not fetch him this time?'

'He's innocent.'

The wife turned about, both hands holding her hair, and frowned at me. She looked more fetching than a person ought when frowning.

'How's Harry?' I said, thawing my hands by the fire. 'I'll go up and see him.'

'Leave him be,' said Lydia. 'He's just nicely got off.'

Her typewriter had been moved off the top of the strong table, and placed underneath to make way for some sprigs of holly, ribbons and her best bonnet and coat. There were also some papers, including one headed 'Terms for hire of the Ebor Hall'.

The Co-op ladies' party was to be held at the Ebor Hall, the Cooperative Hall in York having been reserved months since for a lot of men's parties, some completely unconnected - according to the wife - with the high aims of the Co-operative Society, such as York and District Rugby Club.

'Are you sure the Ebor Hall is big enough?' I said.

No answer. She continued at the mirror, her back to me. I looked again at the paper.

'Arr you having a plain tea or a meat tea?' I asked her, looking at the scale of charges. 'A plain tea's half the price, but it is Christmas after all, so I would hope you'd be having a meat tea.'

'I know perfectly well that you're trying to make me anxious,' she said, 'so I'm ignoring you. I had a run-in with the manager of the hall today,' she ran on. 'A horrible man, and very well named: Hogg.'

'A row over what?'

'As you will see from their terms, no charge is made for use of the piano.'

'I don't see what there is to complain of in that,' I said, taking off my coat, and sitting down in the rocking chair.

'Today, Mrs Appleyard, who is to play the piano on the evening, came in to test it. She said it is out of tune to the extent of being quite unplayable. I passed on the news to Hogg, who said, "Well, the instrument comes free," and suggested that by discovering the fact of its being out of tune, we were, as he put it, "looking a gift horse in the mouth". I told him that a piano out of tune is worse than none at all, and would he pay for it to be tuned, or at least split the cost of tuning. He said we must bear the cost entirely; that the piano had been tuned only recently, but that the cold weather made it go out. I told him that rather suggested that the room had not been kept properly warmed.'

'And is that right?'

'Don't get me on the subject of the heating. It makes me absolutely livid. I will not discuss it. . .'

'The heating,' the wife continued a couple of seconds later, when she was back at the mirror, 'is provided by two radiators, which is not enough; and you can quite clearly see where there used to be a third - just by the door.'

'Do you suppose they removed it just to spite you?'

'I brought this up with Hogg, and he said they'd had to remove that radiator in order to fit the piano into its alcove. I said, "So we've lost a heat source in order to accommodate a piano we can't play because of the cold.'"

'And what did he say to that?'

I was standing now, lifting the net curtain to look across at the Fortune of War.

'He said nothing to it, but had the nerve to remind me that proceedings will be stopped by the caretaker if there is any sign of damage to the fixtures and fittings or other violent or disorderly behaviour. I said, "We are the Women's Co-operative Guild - are we likely to behave in a violent or disorderly way?" He said, "I don't know what you get up to, but there'd better not be any rough stuff, that's all.'"