‘I have my own boy,’ said Hardy.
‘You have a son?’
‘Here,’ said Hardy, and his fat finger shook as he pointed at one of the figures on the board: the drummer boy. ‘He was the hardest to paint, you know.’
‘Why?’ I said, although I was thinking of the cut wires. Was it possible that the Chief and Usher had restored them?
‘Oh,’ said Hardy. ‘Well… because he’s the smallest.’
No, I thought, the Chief and Usher would not have restored the connection, with John Lambert still at large and threatening to communicate with foreign agents.
I eyed Hardy.
‘Did you hear us talking in the woods to Mervyn this morning? Did you shoot his dog?’
He shook his head, which set his cheeks wobbling.
‘Why do you have these soldiers?’
‘To set an example,’ he said. ‘Help me play a brave man’s part.’
He sighed.
‘To bring me up to — ’
‘A confession?’ I put in. ‘Well, you’ve left it rather late, but will you own to it now? The boy will stand to what he saw in court, you know.’
(Would he really? I hadn’t put the question to Mervyn, and he evidently went in terror of police and courts.)
‘I’d have been on the stones, you see,’ said Hardy. ‘Sir George said I was helpless to manage, and that I ought to go.’
Hardy moved as he spoke — wobbled a little way to the left — giving me a view of the clock on the wall. Five to five.
‘A man like that can get what he wants, and he meant to have me dismissed no matter what.’ Hardy breathed a shuddering breath: ‘And I couldn’t stand Woodcock down — there was never any question of it. He’d made himself a devil to me as things were.’
‘And he came to know you’d done it?’
‘Oh, he knew,’ said Hardy.
‘You told him yourself, I shouldn’t wonder — thinking to put the frighteners on him, make out that he’d get the same treatment… Only you were under his thumb from then on.’
I advanced a little way into the booking office.
Hardy was at the wall cabinet.
‘I’ll come along with you,’ he said, ‘but let me find my greatcoat.’
He opened the door, turned and there was a rifle in his hand.
‘Oh,’ he said, facing me, as though surprised to find himself holding the thing. ‘This is the same as the lads have.’ He indicated the board with a nod of his head. ‘It’s a Martini-Henry.’
The gun looked ridiculous compared to the inch-long ones on the display — just as if Hardy’s gun was over- sized rather than the others being under. But he levelled it at me, and his fat hands weren’t shaking as he did so, either. I listened to the rain, which seemed to come down with hysterical heaving breaths — a whole summer’s worth falling all at once. Why had I not brought Mervyn’s shotgun out of The Angel? An evil voice came from the doorway behind me.
‘In a fix now, en’t you, copper?’
Woodcock. He’d come down from his crib in the signal box. I ought to’ve known he’d be somewhere about. I’d seen him in the pub earlier and there’d been no train to take him away. Still under the gun, I half-turned to him. He was making some motion with his hand in the region of his fly-hole.
‘What’s your game?’ I asked, at which Hardy gasped out, ‘No talking now.’
‘What’s my game?’ repeated Woodcock. ‘I’m scratching me fucking love apples — any objection?’
There was a beat of silence.
‘I swear there’s fucking fleas in that bench,’ Woodcock said.
He’d perhaps been kipping in the waiting room then, not the signal box.
‘Didn’t think you were a journalist,’ he said. ‘ They’re quite clever.’
I said, ‘Lambert hangs at eight.’
‘Here,’ said Woodcock, ‘do you know why the trains ran through? Why were the wires cut?’
I made no answer.
‘In the end,’ said Woodcock, ‘I just thought I’d see how it fell out. I’m in the clear anyhow.’
‘The boy knows you were in on it,’ I said, ‘… covering up a murder. That’s why you shot his dog — warn him off. How do you know he won’t speak against you?’
I indicated Hardy.
Silence in the booking office.
‘Now look here…’ I began again, but Woodcock cut me off, saying, ‘Shut it, I’m thinking.’
Another beat of silence, and then Woodcock looked at me as if to say: I’ve made my decision.
He took his hands out of his pockets, and began moving forward, coming past me, advancing on Hardy.
‘Give that over, you soft bugger,’ he said.
Hardy stared at him for a moment, then handed him the rifle just as though he’d been mesmerised. There was now a good deal of shuffling of boots on the wooden floor as Woodcock took Hardy’s position before the clock, and Hardy — wheezing away — skirted the military display and eased out into the rain, with Woodcock calling after him: ‘That’s right, clear off, you double-gutted bastard.’
Woodcock put the shooter on me.
‘It is loaded, you know,’ he said. ‘Old Father Hardy kept it ready at all times. Know why? He meant to blow his own lamp out, only he couldn’t screw himself up to it, so he was in a bind: too scared to live and too scared to die. The wonder is that he ever pulled the bloody trigger in the first place. Do you know what I think?’
‘I don’t give a fuck what you think.’
‘I reckon he was canned.’
Woodcock turned and, still keeping the shooter on me, opened the cupboard from which it came. I had a clearer view of it this time, and saw small tools, paint pots, coils of wire, company manuals of various kinds and a shelf given over to bottles of spirits.
‘An innocent man’ll be dead not three hours from now,’ I said.
‘Innocent,’ said Woodcock. ‘Now that’s putting it a bit strong. Wasn’t friend Lambert a bit of a…’
‘What?’
He hesitated.
‘… Down in London, like. It is a crime, you know.’
Still keeping the gun levelled at me, he reached into the cupboard, and brought down one of the spirit bottles. He pitched it across to me.
‘After you,’ he said.
I unscrewed the cap, and took a belt. It might have been whisky, might have been rum; I don’t touch spirits as a rule.
‘Here we are,’ said Woodcock, ‘two railway blokes who like a bit of a drink. If we can’t come to an understanding I don’t know what… Just put the bottle on the table, if that’s quite all right.’
I did so. There was no sound for a moment but the ticking of the clock, and the seething of the rain.
‘ You want Lambert to be spared the noose, so you need to get a wire off sharpish — only the lines are down so you’re a bit stumped. I want you to leave me out of account when you come to write up this whole bloody business.’
‘You mean you’ll help me send a wire in return for immunity?’
‘You’ve got the drop on it just nicely.’
‘What about Hardy? He’s the guilty man, and you’ve sent him on his way.’
‘Where’s he going to go, you fucking bonehead?’
I looked again at the clock. The hands seemed to be making leaps. Ten after five.
‘Straight now,’ said Woodcock. ‘Do we have an agreement?’
