Andrew Martin: Murder At Deviation Junction

The cabin was soundly built, and there were three roof beams at a good height for hanging. Toppled over on the floor of the shelter was an old wooden chair. Had the man stepped on to it while fixing the rope, and then kicked it away? There was a mix-up of rusted tools, railway line catches and clips and baulks of timber on the floor. The body had lain amid this stuff, having fallen away from the noose when the rot set in. It was a queer kind of comfort to know that a man could not remain hanged for ever.

On my return to the station, a loco had run up light engine from Saltburn to take away the snow gang. Every man had stood on the footplate, most with beer bottles in hand.

It was now three-thirty a.m. I closed the doors that gave on to the platform, and poked the fire in the little room that made shift as the Stone Farm booking hall. Through the ticket window, I could see Crystal counting coppers in the ticket office, attending to the business he'd been kept from by the arrival of our train. The body was in there with him, stretched on a table top, and muffled in the blanket. Those bones were Crystal's property, and he growled like a dog if anyone came near. This didn't bother me overmuch: I'd sent two telegrams from the signal box - one to the Middlesbrough office of the railway police, one to the local force, whose nearest office was at Loftus, five miles down the line. And I'd kept my hands on the length of rope and the camera. Nothing would happen until morning, and I had no desire to be at close quarters with Paul Peters in the meantime.

That was the fellow's name. I'd had it from Steve Bowman, who'd also decided to stay at Stone Farm. After seeing the body, and chucking up on the platform, he'd seemed in a great state of nervous tension, wandering about in a daze. He'd said it was the shock of realising that he'd known the dead man; and it was certainly a strange turn-up - far too strange to be explained by coincidence, in my view.

Bowman had got sensible at about midnight, though - which was about when he'd been able to lay his hands on some strong waters. He'd then found his tongue, and told his story to Crystal and myself.

Peters was a photographer. He'd been sent north with Bowman this time last year to tour interesting spots on the North Eastern Railway and get articles from it. They'd put up at the Zetland Hotel in Saltburn for a week in order to look at the easterly parts of the Company's territory. It had been snowing heavily then as now. Peters had kept going off on his own, taking the train at all hours over the Middlesbrough—Whitby stretch. Night photography, weird railway scenes in the half-light or strange weather—it was the coming thing, and he was a demon at it. Peters was a young lad, barely seventeen, and Bowman had known he ought to accompany him. It had troubled his conscience at the time, and was doing so with compound interest just now.

'There'll be an investigation of some sort, I take it?' Bowman said, from the booking-hall bench. He would keep asking that.

'It'll go to the coroner,' I said, for the umpteenth time. 'But what I want to know is: why wasn't more of a fuss made when he went missing?'

Bowman kept silence, taking another go on a beer bottle. He'd been doing excellent justice to a crate of John Smith's - a consignment without a label - that Crystal had given over in exchange for the pair of us staying out of his way. I could see Crystal now through the ticket window. Having got the gist of Bowman's story - which seemed to have fairly bored him - he'd retreated to his desk and begun counting coppers.

'It wouldn't do for the magazine to give the impression it didn't know where its own men were,' Bowman said at length. 'Not that he was on the staff. He had an arrangement with the editor; that's all.'

Silence for a space.

'Peters was a free agent,' Bowman continued. 'Not married - parents dead, if I remember rightly.'

His camera was in its box at his feet. He stared at a poster of Whitby and sighed. Everything he said seemed to come with a sigh.

'Was he the sort likely to make away with himself?'

Bowman nudged his spectacles again.

'Well, he wasn't very amiable,' he said. 'Not much conversation. Taking photographs was everything to him.'

'But was he the sort to kill himself? The nervous sort, I mean?'

Bowman looked down at the floor, looked back up again.

'He didn't like it if you said, "Take a pot - go on, take a pot of that engine." That would annoy him.'

'But you wouldn't say he was at breaking strain?'

Bowman took a long go on his beer bottle.

'The boy took postcard views for Boots - that was how he really got his living. He'd go to any town and make it look interesting: cathedral or castle if the town ran to one, or failing that, a fine view of the bloody fish market. He was only a kid but he did pretty well by it.'

Bowman raised the bottle to his lips again. He was queer-looking all right: thin legs, little pot of a belly, head too small, nose too big. He might have been built from bits of several other men.

I said, 'You take your own pictures now, I see.'

He tipped his little head up towards me, pushed at his specs.

'The editor was minded to make economies, as he is in every matter except those touching on his own salary and expenses. He said, "You go roving about so much - it costs fortunes to have you always accompanied. Take your own pictures.'"

He leant forward towards the fire, staring into it as he warmed his hands.

'Not to boast, Jim, but I am The Railway Rover. Apart from anything else, I'm the only one who ever leaves the bloody office. As regards the pictures, I do just take a pot, you know, and it seems to work.'

He was reaching into the valise he'd carried off the Whitby train.

'I've a mind to stop writing altogether, and go all out on photography. It's a good deal quicker - at least, it is the way I do it. There's one of mine here, if you'll just hold on a second.'

He took out a journal, and I had my first sight of The Railway Rover. Bowman leafed through it for a while, before handing it over kept open at a certain page.

'What's your opinion?'

The article was entitled 'Some Drivers and Their Engines', words and pictures by S. J. Bowman. The photograph in question showed a smart o-8-o at some station or other.

'It seems a first-rate picture to me,' I said, 'but -'

'Be straight now,' said Bowman, giving a twisted little grin.

'Well - that telegraph pole does appear to come straight up out of the locomotive chimney.'

Bowman sighed, sitting back again.

'But that's down to the driver stopping directly in front of the telegraph pole.' 'He's stopped there for a signal, or for whatever reason,' I said. 'Aesthetics don't come into it.'

'Well, I was damned if I was going to ask him to move the engine,' said Bowman. 'Peters would do that, you know. He'd go up to the driver, and he'd say, "Could you just reverse out of this shadow that you're presently standing in?" and the chap'd say, "Reverse out of this what ?" Couldn't believe it.'

He shook his head and looked away as I said, 'But if you'd moved .. .'

He was back at his bottle; back to gazing at vacancy.

I dragged my own bench closer to the fireplace, leafing through The Railway Rover as I did so. 'Notes by Rocket' came at the back. They were light items: 'In a trade supplement recently appearing in The Times newspaper, an article on "New Railway Locomotives of the Midland Railway" gives prominence to a picture of a z-6-o engine of the GWR. As any schoolboy knows, this is not an Atlantic, is not new and does not belong to the Midland. Otherwise, we can have no complaints whatever as to the accuracy of the representation.'

It was well-turned, I supposed; a little fancier than the common run of railway writing.