Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

I turned to the son, Richie, and repeated my earlier question.

'What's the programme?'

He just gave a shrug, and went back to his reading matter. The arrangements of the mean lamps meant that the shadow of the page he read covered the whole wall behind him.

I glimpsed Bowman, who now stood in the doorway, watching me with bottle in hand. I glanced that way, and he turned on his heel and disappeared. He could not bear to be in my company, now that he had betrayed me. I looked down at the crumpled papers under my boots. They seemed to have come from a holiday agent: 'Winter in the Cornish Riviera'; 'Railway Map of the British Isles'; 'Bournemouth, the Land of Pines and Sunshine.'

'Can you see us in Bournemouth, Detective Stringer, taking tea in an hotel?'

It was Marriott, standing by me and looking down at my reading matter. The householders would keep coming and going, but much as they wanted to keep clear of one another, they were all drawn back to the fire before long. The lawyer held a small glass in his hands - quite dainty by the standards of the cottage. I imagined it might be valuable to him; an object saved from his earlier life. From the kitchen came the smell of food, and I wondered how many more meals would be left to me.

'I cannot bear to see the daylight lost as early as it is here,' Bowman said, moving towards the fireplace, 'and so a flight to the south is contemplated - but a good deal further south than Bournemouth.'

'A flight?' I said.

'The trip has been in prospect for some time, Detective Stringer, but I would not have called it a flight until I heard about you.'

Small David entered the room, saying, 'Where's yon bottle, man?' Receiving no answer, he called out, 'Hey, Bowman!' at which Marriott turned on him.

'Don't shout so, you fucking Scottish hooligan!'

I had never heard swearing in such refined tones.

'You see,' said Marriott, turning towards me again, 'I must get out of this quagmire . . . And I must make a satisfactory arrangement about you before I do so. I brought you here to save you, don't you see that?'

'Strikes me this is a good place to bring a fellow if you wanted to do him in.'

'Now Small David would disagree with you there, Detective Stringer,' Marriott said. 'He holds that the best place for that business is the Cleveland Hills.'

'You pitched Theodore Falconer down an old iron shaft,' I said.

But then another, and better, thought hit me like a thunderclap.

'No, you put him into a blast furnace. His body was never found, and that's because it was melted away to nothing.'

Small David was watching me from the doorway. Marriott kept silence. He stood before me with his arms folded - a good-looking man with too much on his mind.

'Richard's a good fellow,' he said suddenly, nodding towards his son.

The boy looked up at him. 'Stow it, father.'

'But he has a poor physique - a defect on his mother's side, I suppose, for she died young herself. Small David, now -'

Marriott indicated the Scotsman, who had sat down on the last remaining free bed.

'Small David is a practical man, if not a very great hand at conversation.'

The Scotsman muttered something, and Marriott made a show of cocking an ear.

'Did you get that, Detective Stringer?'

I shook my head.

'I didn't either. He's not a great one for talk, as I say.'

'Wi'oot me,' muttered Small David, picking up a newspaper, 'ye'd be deed - and ye stull could be.'

Marriott rolled his eyes at me, saying, 'I just can't help wishing that fellow was a little more - just ever so slightly English.'

Small David put down his paper, and closed on Marriott, saying, 'Haud yer tongue or I'll gie ye somethin' for yersel'—'

Marriott turned once more to me, saying, 'He is not a university man, you know.'

I had a quick impression of Marriott in the position of an old- fashioned boxer, with fists high and chin lifted for Queensberry Rules, but the scrap itself was a wild affair lasting not more than a few seconds.

And it was Marriott who was bloodied - and almost knocked on to the stove. Steadying himself against the wall, he again turned to me, saying, 'Small David was not on the Classics side, Detective Stringer, but then again he was not on the Modern side either. On the face of it a black mystery, until you remember this: Small David was not at the University.'

The Scotsman stood for a moment, as though deciding whether to give this latest provocation the go-by, and he evidently decided not to, for he clouted the lawyer a second time, sending him sprawling amid the newspapers and journals on the floor.

'Look, I know this is all fun, but can we drop it?' said Bowman, who'd had his hands over his glasses as the blows had been struck. Marriott was finding a shaky pair of legs, blood running freely from his nose. He did not look strong, being so thin, but there again he was not the sort of man you expected to see felled.

'I'm not a university man either, if it comes to that,' Bowman was saying. 'Not by a long chalk.'

The lawyer was now standing in silence before the stove, occasionally giving a flick of his head so as to send the blood from his nose away from his mouth. He would not raise his hand to it, for that would show weakness. He was all ablaze inside, but still no colour showed in his face, and he paid no heed as his son stood and walked out of the room, preferring, as I supposed, to sit in the poorly warmed scullery rather than hear more of his old man's ravings.

'The boy is not vigorous like me,' Marriott said, 'and he cannot scrap, as I can. I learnt to take a punch in the boxing club, Detective Stringer ... it was at the University.''

He shot another quick glance at Small David, who did not rise to the bait this third time, but sat back down on his bed. Marriott then removed the photograph from his coat pocket and looked it over, nodding the while.

'It proves you were all on the train that morning,' I said. 'The newspaper in your son's hand proves it.'

The lawyer turned and opened the stove door with the fire tool, placing the photograph carefully on top of the burning wood within.

'I have another print,' I said,'... and the negatives, of course.'

The lawyer looked at me and sighed, brushing his hair back once again. And now at last he raised a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

'You are not helping the case I am trying to make for keeping you above ground, Detective Stringer.'

At which the Scotsman, who had his head buried in one of the newspapers, muttered something like: 'Aye, that's right enough.'

'You killed Falconer,' I said to Marriott, 'but why?'

The lawyer looked at me fixedly as he dabbed at the blood - almost with real curiosity.

'You killed Lee as well,' I added, 'though I daresay not with your own hands.'

I turned towards Small David, who was still reading, and making such a great show of coolness that I almost believed he wasn't listening.

'Or did you pay him to do it?'

The Scotsman read on.

'You are of a questioning humour,' Marriott said, rocking on his feet before the fireplace, quite composed again. 'It is the mark of a good pleader. Have you considered the Bar? There's a good deal of reading to put in, much burning of the midnight oil with your Stephens's Commentaries, your Hunter's Roman Law, but it's quite a democracy, you know. There's no 'mister' at the Bar, still less any 'sir'. In fact, it's not at all such a toff's profession as you might suppose, Stringer ...'

I was plain Stringer to him now, which meant I had riled him, about which I was glad.

'Any man with brains might aspire even to the silk gown of the King's Counsel - army officer, actor, schoolmaster. A university training usually precedes the call, but not necessarily. Fluency of speech is the chief requirement, you see, thinking on one's leg - although of course you must also become fashionable, and in that, I confess, I never succeeded . . .'