Murder At Deviation Junction

by now.

    A few seconds beyond the house, we had to pull into the hedgerow to let another cart by that contained another lot of muffled-up men. They looked respectable enough, but none of us raised our hat. The way was now becoming rougher; the stones rolled under our wheels, and underneath the snow.

    After another few minutes of being shaken to bits in the cart I realised that the Scotsman, Small David, was staring at me again. I said, 'Why are you looking at me like that?' In reply he spat out something that sounded like: 'Why are ye?' 'What's the programme?' I asked the company after another long interval.

    No reply from anyone.

Chapter Twenty-five

    At first, I took the cottage we were approaching to be nothing but a wide stone wall. It was some way up a mountain, part of the grey blur beyond the snow.

    'I know you're watching the chimney, Small David,' said Richie Marriott.

    'Why's there nae smoke, laddie?'

    'We're low on firewood and peats, Small David.'

    'And ye're low on brains,' he said, but there was perhaps some affection there; these two were cronies, who conspired over the heating of the house.

    'I can't manage that flue in the scullery, David, and that's all about it,' said the son.

    Everyone jumped down; I followed. It was not so much a garden, more like an island in the sea of heather. Two rusty long-handled shovels leant against the low stone walls; a rain barrel stood at one corner, barely higher than the wall. You'd call it a one- storey house, only it was lower than that. As we approached it, the Scotsman nodded from me to Marriott, saying, 'He stays here the neet if ye insist, but then it's o'er the burran wi' him.'

    The lawyer was walking the horse towards a broken-down barn a little further up the track that had brought us to the house. The house looked over a white, misty valley - threatened to roll down into it. Whether this was the same valley we'd run along in the train or another, I couldn't tell, for I could not see. I could just make out through the blizzard a steeper hill rising above the one on which we stood; black clouds flowed across the tops like a spillage of oil. The day was nearly done, and the world was closing down to this house and these men. The snow was a foot thick as I stepped out of the cart, and I knew that I was held prisoner by the weather as much as the revolver. I suddenly thought of my interview for promotion at Middlesbrough. I would not be there after all, and the fact was a very good demonstration of the strangeness of life.

    Small David walked up to the door of the cottage, on which a note was pinned, reading: 'Shut this door after you. This means YOU', with the last word underlined.

    He kicked it open with bullet-like force, and entered the house.

    'What's 'over the burran'?' I asked, following him in.

    In the smoke-filled scullery we had now entered, he turned sharply about towards me:

    'Ye spoke just now of Gilbert Sanderson,' he said. 'He's o'er the burran.'

    'Steady now, David,' said Marriott, who stepped in behind the two of us, having settled the horse.

    Small David was at the stove that squatted in the centre of the room, cursing to himself, and trying to fettle the fire. The lawyer held a pitcher of water; he stood at the stone sink - which was as big as a horse trough, and took up about a third of the room - washing his hands as thoroughly as circumstances permitted. Then he turned to me:

    'I am currently negotiating to save your life, Detective Stringer.'

    If nothing else, his beautiful lawyer's voice had survived whatever decline had brought him to this house.

    'Negotiating?' I said. 'Who with?'

    Bowman, now also alongside us, cut in, saying, 'With Rob Roy there, of course', while nodding towards Small David, who was still crouching at the stove. 'And I want you to know that I hope he succeeds.' He was addressing me in the haze of the cold kitchen, but not looking at me. He knew he had done a low thing. He had stopped short of friendliness ever since I'd known him; he'd always been cagey, and he'd been all wrong on the chase from St Pancras. If he'd been straight, he'd either have jibbed at the business or got keen on it; he'd done neither.

    'I had no choice but to bring you here, you know,' he said, as though the whole disaster was somehow my fault. There was one small window in the scullery, and I craned to look through it. Seeing what I was about, Marriott said, 'Don't try a breakaway, Detective Stringer. Or Small David will be upon you in an instant.'

    I remained at the window, but it was only a bluff: the glass was thick with ice and I could see nothing - and the sight of that blank- ness made me feel I could barely breathe.

    I turned around, and saw that none of the company had removed his hat; yet all the hats scraped against the grimy roof beams that swooped low across the room, which was more like a cave than a room. Small David now opened a door leading to a sitting room of sorts, and it seemed that I was free to follow him in.

    The stove was black and cold here too. The young man, Richie, was in the room already, lighting greasy, evil-smelling paraffin lamps at either end. It was a long, low place with several truckle beds pushed against the three stone walls away from the fire. Filthy tab rugs were placed anyhow on the floor; and stacks of papers, books and journals were placed around the fireplace, whether to be burnt or read, I could not say. Richie then began remaking the fire, and he proved a shocking bad hand at doing so. Instead of cleaning the grate, he poked at it with the tool, which constantly rang against the iron of the door, striking a high, unpleasant note. He had obviously lit it earlier on in the day, but it had gone out because the draught was not properly created. As he poked and prodded, I wondered whether he had ever lit fires before he came to this place. I doubted it of a man who was a barrister's son. He got a burn going eventually, but I could see that it might not last.

    'The trick of keeping a slow burn,' I said, 'is to close the top flue a little more - the lever wants tipping another ten degrees.'

    'And who're ye tae tell him?' Small David called out.

    I had not seen him enter the room. He carried a bucket in place of the revolver. For all his size, I ought not to be held off by a man who wore yellow socks and carried a bucket, but my thoughts would keep going back to that revolver of his, evidently close at hand in one of his coat pockets.

    'I'm trained up as a fireman,' I said.

    'Fireman?' said Small David. 'Ye are a dirty polis.'

    'I was first trained up as a railway fireman,' I repeated.

    'But he was fired.,' said Bowman, who had also entered the room, and whose speech was now slurring.

    'Sorry, Jim,' he added, as he sank down on one of the truckle beds. He'd got a bottle from somewhere, though I couldn't make out the contents.

    The stove was warming up after a fashion - it would keep me at close quarters as surely as any manacle. I claimed for myself one of the beds, but Small David ordered me off - I guessed from what he said that it must have been his. He then quit the room, and a moment later, I thought I caught sight of him walking past the one tiny frosted window that served the sitting room. Bowman sat silent on his bed, perhaps asleep, while Richie occupied another of the beds, reading a paper. He had never passed a word to me, and come to that, I had not seen him speak to his father or to Bowman. He only ever seemed to speak to Small David, who had evidently taken the place of his father in his affections. He seemed very young for his years, this fellow, but he must be in - or rather he must have been in - employment himself, otherwise he wouldn't have been in the habit of riding up to Whitby with the Travelling Club.

    We had all kept our topcoats on, and all sank into them; and the room was quite silent now, save for the crackling of the fire. I could hear no stream rushing by, but only the baaing of sheep, which were at very close quarters.