Andrew Martin: Murder At Deviation Junction

The train motion sent the ladies' heads rocking, and Household Words slipped to the floor between them, but we hadn't made more than another half-mile before we stopped again. The banks of a cutting enclosed us on either side, and I was ready for the jerk of the applied brake, for something was certainly amiss. We creaked on past a lineside cottage that looked tumbledown, and with a badly smoking fire. Then came a high signal box followed by brighter lights rising to meet us, and we were into a station. There came more shouts, the sound of running boots along the platform.

The Wimbledon woman was awake.

'Where is this?' she said, just as we came to rest with the station sign conveniently filling our compartment window: Stone Farm.

The snow was flying at the words as Harry said, 'It's like Christmas here.'

He always woke up just as though he'd never been asleep.

'Are we booked to stop here?' asked Lydia.

'No,' I said, 'and not much ever is.'

I'd suddenly had enough of the compartment, and all the uncertainty brought on by the weather.

'I'm off for a scout about,' I said. 'See what's going on.'

The rough-looking blokes were moving along the corridor.

'We mustn't be stuck here for all hours,' said the wife. 'Harry wants his bed.'

'Do not,' he said, but he said it quietly, which proved he did. The mysterious Stephen watched me go as I pulled the door closed behind me. The fellow hadn't put pen to paper since Saltburn.

Chapter Three

I stepped down on to the platform into a blizzard - no other word for it. The rough blokes were streaming away along the platform towards the 'up' end - the direction of Whitby - and their sacks held shovels and lanterns. Snow gang, that's what they were. I saw the train guard come running towards me. He was heading the opposite way to the blokes.

'Bad blockage is it?' I shouted to him.

He was making for the signal box - he would telegraph from there.

'Reckon not,' he said, still running. 'If it is, we'll work back to Saltburn.'

In that case, the Company would have to put us up - perhaps at the Zetland Hotel. Lydia would like that.

I turned to face the engine again, which was harder to do, since the snow blew from that direction. The engine driver and his fireman were holding a low conversation on the platform while a few feet beyond them stood a bloke in a waterproof cape. He would be the stationmaster. He was directing the snow gang to the site of the blockage, and they looked like a foreign army, trooping off in their long coats and no-shape hats. But I now saw that they were just ordinary railway blokes: men from every corner of the sheds at Middlesbrough and Saltburn who'd fancied a bit of overtime. I looked again towards the stationmaster. The cape threw me off a little, but there was something familiar about the man's brown bowleg snow-covered as it was.

'Fighting King Snow,' said a voice at my ear. It was Stephen from the compartment. He stood there in his topcoat, blinking in the snow and holding out a travel flask. The canvas case dangled from his shoulder, and I knew it now for a camera case.

I took a belt of the stuff in the flask.

'Much obliged,' I said, handing it back.

He poked his glasses to the top of his beak of a nose, and took another go on the flask. His hot little head looked stranger still when tipped back. I gave him my hand.

'Stringer,' I said. 'Jim Stringer.'

'Stephen Bowman,' he said. 'Call me Steve.'

He was holding out a business card; I read it by the train light.

'S. J. Bowman. Correspondent, The Railway Rover. Also author: Railways Queer and Quaint; Notes by Rocket: A Compendium; Holidays in the Homeland; &c.' The address given was not Wimbledon but 'Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C.', which I took to be the address of the magazine.

'We're running a special feature on the North Eastern company,' he said.

I could think of no real answer, so I said, 'Why?'

'We started one last year but it had to be called off.'

It was no answer, of course.

'I'm a detective on the Company force,' I said.

We were making for a little open-fronted shelter that lay just beyond the 'down' end of the platform.

'Your wife said you were a policeman,' he said, as we stepped under the wooden roof. 'How's the line, by the way?'

'Be cleared soon, by all accounts.'

The snow was finding its way through my boot soles, and I kept moving my toes, trying to recall them to life. Bowman was at his flask again. With head tipped back, he resembled a spectacle-wearing bird. Having despatched the snow gang, the stationmaster was staring along the platform at me.

'I know this fellow,' I said to Bowman, nodding in the direction of the man. 'His name's Crystal.'

'Know him from where?' said Bowman.

'Grosmont.'

'Never heard of it.'

'You wouldn't do, living in Wimbledon. It's not ten miles from here - a little way inland from Whitby.'

'"Twixt Moor and Sea",' Bowman said, prodding his glasses up his nose.

Crystal was approaching through the blizzard. The brim of his bowler was loaded with snow.

'Had my railway start as a lad porter there,' I said. 'This chap was my governor.'

As Crystal walked up, I felt sorry for him. He'd had hopes of becoming an assistant stationmaster at Newcastle, only to fetch up in a place that was a comedown even from Grosmont. Here was his allowance in life: the single line, the one small station, half a slice of moon and the black sea rolling away three fields off. The only point of interest was the passing loop that ran around behind the station building. Twelve mineral wagons waited there, loaded with ironstone and snow. They were illuminated by four lamp standards.

'Interesting fellow, is he?' said Bowman, now with notebook in hand. 'Think there's a paragraph in him?'

'A short one, maybe,' I said.

'I might write him up,' said Bowman. 'Life of a stationmaster at Sleepy Hollow - you know the sort of thing.'

'I wouldn't say that to him,' I said.

'Give me a line on the fellow,' said Bowman, as Crystal continued to approach. 'Sum him up in a sentence.'

'You could say he was a stickler for duty and detail,' I said, 'with working timetable and appendixes always to hand.'

'Appen dices, , said Bowman.

'Or you could say he was a complete bloody pill,' I added in an under-breath.

Crystal was now standing directly before us.

'You do know you're on trespass here, don't you?' he said.

His head was smaller than before. Or was it just that his moustache was bigger? Anyone could grow a bigger moustache.

'How do, Mr Crystal,' I said, and then he clicked.

'Stringer,' he said. 'What the blinking heck are you doing here?'

I recalled that Crystal was a regular at chapel - never gave a proper curse.

'Spot of business took me up to Middlesbrough,' I said. That I had failed in my business up there would have come as no surprise to him. Crystal had been down on me from the moment we'd met.

'I thought you'd gone south to learn footplate work.'

'I had a few adventures in that line, aye.'

'But you were found not up to standard, let me guess.'

The snow fell slantwise between us.

'I'm with the North Eastern Railway Police just now,' I said. 'Detective grade. This is Mr Bowman,' I added. 'Journalist with The Railway Rover.'

Crystal turned to Bowman. 'You're a journalist and he's a detective, but what I want here is another twenty snow gangers.'

'How's the line?' Bowman asked, and he nodded towards the snowy shadows of the 'up' end, into which the gangers had marched.

'Blocked right to Loftus,' said Crystal. 'Has been this past two hours.'

It was worse than the guard said, then. Or was this just Crystal being his miserable self?