Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

I came out of the cafe and watched the river blokes take a load of coal off a barge until they began to shoot me queer looks, at which I went off into the middle of town.

Should I make a report on my investigation? Bowman wanted me to drop it. He felt he was owed this, having rescued me from the house at Fairy Hillocks. But I would at the least be required to give an account of where I'd been if I wanted to keep my job.

I pushed on. The shop blinds were rolling up, like the weary opening of a person's eyes on a day of cold. The narrow streets were full of the delivery drays, and the shouts of the early morning men. In St Helen's Square, a great consignment of Christmas trees rested against the front of the Mansion House.

I would be willing to put the thing on ice, but for Small David. There were more murders left in him, and that was a certainty. He had to be run in.

I looked up. I had found my way to Brown's, the toyshop that lay just off St Helen's Square. I walked through the door and the ceiling seemed to be sagging, but it was only the hundreds of paper chains stretched across. I turned and saw a great multi-coloured house. It had been built from Empire Bricks. All around it were boxes of same, and some of the smaller ones contained only half a dozen bricks, but I didn't care to look at the price ticket even on these. Beyond the books were dolls - and they were all lying down, so that their part of the shop looked like a mortuary. Then came the narrow spiral staircase that led up to more toys. This was the feature of Brown's: it was helter-skelter-like, almost a toy itself, and it was now all wrapped in green tinsel. I climbed it, feeling an ass at having to turn so many times in order to go up such a little way.

The second floor of Brown's seemed at first one great parade ground of miniature soldiers. A man moved along fast by the far wall - he looked almost guilty at being full-sized. I walked on and the soldiers gave way to trains. The clockwork engines were in the North Eastern style - well, they were painted green at any rate. Small, leaden railway officials stood among them. The engines had keys in their sides, and some were much smaller than the key that operated them, and looked ridiculous as a result. I put my hand on the smallest engine that was not dwarfed by its key, and looked at the price: seven and six. Many a York citizen kept house for a week on that. I took out my pocket book and fished out one ten- bob note. I knew it was the last, but I still had some silver in my pocket and that might make another ten bob.

I paid for the engine, and then walked to Britton's in Gillygate. I stood under the sign looking in the window for a while. The sign read: 'Britton: Coats, Skirts, Furs', and it worried me that the gloves in the window were only draped about to offset the articles mentioned on the sign, and were not really of any account in themselves. But only the gloves had prices in shillings rather than pounds. Besides, the wife had especially mentioned that she wanted a new pair. I went inside and asked the assistant about one particular pair, and they were ten bob exactly. I pulled all the loose change out of various pockets, and it turned out I had enough, although I coloured up in the process of bringing it to hand.

'I'm sure the lady will enjoy them, sir,' said the assistant, and I thought there was something a bit off in that 'sir'. A gentleman ought not to buy his wife a present out of loose change.

For some reason, when the gloves were all wrapped up and ready to be taken away, I asked the assistant, 'What are they made of, by the way?'

'Deerskin, sir.'

Well, I couldn't take them. It was seeing that herd in the Highlands that had done it; and then dreaming about them. I had to take a calfskin pair, which cost another bob again.

I walked back to the station, picked the Humber off the bicycle stand and rode to the edge of York, and then past the six wide fields to Thorpe-on-Ouse. As I walked along the garden path, I heard the wife typing in the parlour, and so left the gloves in their parcel in the saddlebag while pocketing the clockwork engine. I opened the front door and the wife's greeting rang out. She was happy. She'd got the job, I was certain of it. The two telegrams I'd sent were on the mantelpiece, together with some Christmas cards, and a letter in an envelope addressed to the wife - there was nothing from John Ellerton at the Sowerby Bridge shed.

We kissed, and the wife, looking at my sodden suit, said, 'It's rained just in time for Christmas' - adding, 'Mrs Gregory- Gresham has written to confirm the appointment.'

'Very good,' I said. 'How's Harry?'

'Much better. He's gone back to school.'

It was all very good, but again I felt strongly my own unimportance. I produced the little engine from my pocket.

'He'll adore that,' said the wife. 'He'll think he's got the moon.'

He would have a few other things besides, but not much: a top, a ball, a bag of chocolates. We walked through to the kitchen now, where a pot of tea was on the go. A seed cake stood on the table in brown paper.

'That looks an expensive item,' I said.

'The Archbishop's man brought it,' said the wife.

The Archbishop of York had his palace at Thorpe-on-Ouse. At Christmas, one of his servants went around the village houses in a coach delivering cakes and sweetmeats cooked in the Palace kitchens. Given that we didn't have any money to speak of, this felt a little too much like receiving charity.

'You don't mind taking it?' I asked the wife.

'I like the Archbishop,' she said.

'Why? You wouldn't have charity from any other sort of gentry.'

'The Archbishop is different.'

'How come?'

'Because he's religious ... well, sort of.'

She grinned at me. I liked that; she looked smaller when she grinned.

'Did you trace out any murderers in Scotland?'

'Several,' I said.

'But did you find who'd killed the men in the picture?'

'Yes.'

'Then you will have your promotion ...'

'There are complications,' I said.

'Such as?'

'None of the guilty men has yet been taken into custody, for one.'

'Where are they then?'

I shrugged.

'They're all over the shop.'

She looked at me narrowly.

'But you made progress?'

'Yes. Do you want the detail of it?'

'No,' she said, walking over to the larder and pulling back the thin curtain that hung there.

'I've been quite housewifely over the past two days,' she said.

There were some new items in the larder: in pride of place were about a dozen plums and four tins of pineapple rings. The wife explained that the plums were all for Harry. A vegetarian diet was recommended for a weak chest. Everything that cost money was recommended for it

'As for the pineapple,' said the wife, 'I thought we'd have it on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after Boxing Day. What do you think of that as a plan?'

'I would like them with custard,' I said.

She ignored that (for she couldn't make custard, and refused ever to learn), saying instead, 'I'm dead set on making jam roly-poly.'

I pictured her about it. She would start enthusiastic, and then turn silent. It was best to be out of doors when the wife cooked. She was looking at me.

'You're all in, our Jim. You'll have to go to bed.'

'I don't think I'll get off,' I said. 'I've too much on my mind.'

She was still smiling. She had no inkling that I might be out of a job by the end of tomorrow.

'I'll bring you up a bottle of beer if you like.'

'I'll tell you what - I haven't had a fuck for a little while,' I said.

'I should think not,' said the wife. 'You've been in Scotland for a little while.'

She stepped back and leant against the cold kitchen wall, saying, 'What were the women like up there?'