Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

When she turned round, she was grinning.

'How's that?'

'Beautiful,' I said.

'But you are looking at my hair. It is the skirt that's new.'

'Oh,' I said, 'that's equally good. I was a bit thrown because you've spent the past five minutes fixing your hair.'

'I'm only doing that to see how it sets off the skirt.' She glanced at me a little guiltily as she added, 'It's part of a suit, but Lillian Backhouse is making some adjustments to the jacket for me.'

'You bought it today?'

'I simply could not settle on an outfit... Look on it as an investment,' she ran on. 'My post is not secure, you know. Some of the ladies on the committee would be very happy to block the appointment if this party doesn't go like clockwork.'

'But your wearing a new outfit won't make the party go any better,' I said.

'It will,' she said simply.

She was looking at the papers I'd put on the tabletop, and now she caught up the photograph of the Travelling Club.

'Who are these men?' she said.

'A travelling club.'

'They look as if they do themselves pretty well,' she said.

'Yes,' I said, 'but they've very likely all been murdered -'

'Oh no,' said the wife, but whether this was in connection with the photograph, or the sound of Harry's voice that came at that moment from the room above, I wasn't sure.

'I'll go up to him,' I said.

He was sitting up in bed, just as though he'd woken from a good night's sleep. The fire burned low in his bedroom grate - he had a fire in his bedroom for most of the year, which was another expensive going-on.

He looked better, but coughed a little as I approached, so I gave him another spoonful of compound linseed, which was the cure-all of the moment. After taking it, he coughed some more, saying with a cackle, 'It must be working, Dad.'

He had the fixed idea that cough medicine was meant to make you cough, about which he was perhaps right. I tried to settle him on his pillows. Then Lydia took his hot bottle, to top it up with boiling water in the kitchen, and I looked at the window to make sure it was not iced. In cases of bronchitis, it is recommended that windows be kept slightly open. The used-up air must be removed.

He said, 'What's it like out on the moors, Dad?'

'There's been a great snow,' I said. 'The gales have blown it into huge mounds, and conditions are very dangerous.'

'Good,' said Harry. 'How high are the mounds?'

'About as tall as four men - no, taller. Mountainous. Thirty feet, I should say, getting on for.'

'Thirty feet - get away!' said Harry.

'At least,' I said. 'Nearer forty.'

'And how are the trains going on?'

I thought of a phrase I had heard during my firing days.

'Some difficulty may be experienced in locomotion,' I said, and Harry liked that, I could tell. He was pretty sleepy, and he'd drifted off again by the time I turned down the night light and left the room. Back in the parlour, a supper of pork pie, pickle and a cup of cocoa waited for me on the strong table. Lydia was stirring the fire. 'You'll be coming straight from work tomorrow, will you?' she asked.

'Aye,' I said.

I was required to show my face at the Co-operative women's party.

'And you will be in your good suit, won't you?'

'I will.' 'It starts at seven with a spelling bee,' she said, for the umpteenth time.

'. . . and you mustn't take a drink beforehand,' she added.

'I know,' I said.

'That's because I'm going to introduce you to Mrs Gregory- Gresham.'

'I know,' I said.

Mrs Avril Gregory-Gresham was the head of the York Co-operative Women. She did not drink.

'. . . and she might smell it on your breath.'

'So you keep saying, love,' I said, through a mouthful of pork pie.

I was contemplating again the photograph of the Travelling Club. The wife hadn't thought it worth pursuing the question of whether or not they'd all been lately and brutally murdered; or perhaps my reference to this likelihood had gone clean out of her mind, what with the big party coming up. It suddenly struck me that Detective Sergeant Williams had also shown very scant interest in it, all things considered, not even asking to keep a negative. Everyone lived in their own little world, and that was all about it.

'The thing about the spelling bee,' I said, rising to my feet having finished off the pie and pickle, 'is that I'm actually a much better speller after a few drinks. Three or four pints and I come into my own as an intellect -'

'No, Jim,' she said, 'you are not to.'

I picked up my coat, kissed her and said, 'I'm just off over to the Fortune. I reckon it might be the night of the goose club share-out.'

'But we're not in the goose club.'

'I know,' I said.

In the pub, I saw Peter Backhouse, with a great heap of holly branches on the table before him. His wife Lillian was the wife's best friend in the village. Backhouse had a ridiculous quantity of children - about nine - and he avoided them by practically living in the smoking room of the Fortune. Outside pub opening hours, he was verger at St Andrew's and dug the graves. He was meant to be distributing the holly about the village, but he'd never got beyond his first drop, the Fortune of War, although he told me as I sat down that he might yet deliver a load to his second drop, which happened to be the other pub in the village, the Grey Mare.

I asked Backhouse the news, and he said that the boiler had bust in the church school, causing the inkwells to freeze and a half-holiday to be given. But then the vicar, who had wanted the school kept open, had spied Tom Barley, who was the headmaster of the school, walking into the Fortune at two o'clock in the afternoon. Backhouse reckoned there'd be bother over this, but I was thinking of the dead men, and of Shillito, who I had to face the next morning. For the second time, I had failed to arrest Clegg. There was going to be a row all right, and a bigger one than that in prospect between the vicar and Tom Barley.

Chapter Fourteen

In the police office at nine the next morning, I was in the jakes draining off the remains of the beer from the night before when there came a fearful pounding at the door.

'Get a move on there!'

It was Shillito, just arrived in the office. In my agitation, I put the bung in sooner than I ought to have, and consequently pissed a few drops down my leg as I fastened up my fly. This annoyed me particularly, for I had on my good suit, of best blue worsted with turned-up trousers. I was also wearing my stiffest and deepest collar, which had been cricking my neck since seven in the morning. It was all on account of the wife's party to come that evening.

I glanced in the glass before quitting the jakes. I looked respectable enough, but I was no man for letting Shillito torment me. At any minute, he would want to see my notebook, and hear my account of the second encounter with Clegg.

When I stepped back into the office from the jakes, Shillito was writing at his desk, his big body all bundled up with the effort of it. With him in the office, I could not ask Wright to telephone through to Bowman for me. I had already tried to do so myself at eight-thirty, but the connection had been lost, and I doubted that Bowman would have been in the office at that sort of time in any case. Wright was saying, 'There ought to be a pound of tea maintained at all times.'

'Yes, but who's to maintain it?' said Constable Crawford, who was lounging at the mantelpiece, watching the fire smoke.

'Whoever finds the caddy short,' said Wright.

'But that's always me,' said Crawford. 'Whenever I go to make a pot of tea there's none left, and I have to go to the stores for more, which sets me back a tanner.'

'If you're the one who most often finds it empty,' said Constable Baker, who was leaning against the wall near the open door that gave on to the Chief's room (he wouldn't have been doing that if the Chief had been around), 'then that proves you must drink the most.'