Murder At Deviation Junction

    I turned towards Small David, who was still reading, and making such a great show of coolness that I almost believed he wasn't listening.

    'Or did you pay him to do it?'

    The Scotsman read on.

    'You are of a questioning humour,' Marriott said, rocking on his feet before the fireplace, quite composed again. 'It is the mark of a good pleader. Have you considered the Bar? There's a good deal of reading to put in, much burning of the midnight oil with your Stephens's Commentaries, your Hunter's Roman Law, but it's quite a democracy, you know. There's no 'mister' at the Bar, still less any 'sir'. In fact, it's not at all such a toff's profession as you might suppose, Stringer ...'

    I was plain Stringer to him now, which meant I had riled him, about which I was glad.

    'Any man with brains might aspire even to the silk gown of the King's Counsel - army officer, actor, schoolmaster. A university training usually precedes the call, but not necessarily. Fluency of speech is the chief requirement, you see, thinking on one's leg - although of course you must also become fashionable, and in that, I confess, I never succeeded . . .'

    'Now I winder why not?' put in Small David, looking up from his paper.

    Marriott ignored him, saying, 'I did well enough for a time, mark you. Three or four cases a day was nothing to me - not all of them jury cases, of course, but still: seven guineas for a thirty-minute consultation . . . Five shillings to the clerk, yes, but even so . . . Unfortunately, I did not put in the hours flattering the important men of my acquaintance. Rather than dine with the benchers in my evening at the Temple, I would go off to the German gymnasium at King's Cross, Stringer.'

    He kept saying my name. The man was speaking only for my benefit.

    'I worked at my boxing night and day at that gymnasium,' he went on, at which Small David, turning the page of his paper, muttered, 'And much guid it did ye.'

    I thought that the lawyer might fly at Small David for a second time, but instead he touched the handkerchief to his nose again, saying, 'Unfortunately, I did not generally like the judges. I knew many of them, Stringer, and I knew many that were inclined to hanging.'

    At which he fell silent for a space, during which time I watched Small David turn two further pages of newspaper.

    It was the Sutherland Gazette that Small David was looking over. Bowman, as far as I could make out, was now asleep, the bottle at his feet, but he righted himself a moment later when the boy Richie walked in with two bowls of steaming broth. He gave the first to his father, who began sipping from the bowl directly, and somehow doing so in a mannerly sort of way. The other bowl went to Small David - so that the two governors had been fed first.

    The boy returned a moment later with a bowl for Bowman, who, after staring at the concoction for a while, said, '. . . Looks almost good enough to eat.'

    The last bowl was given to me. A spoon rolled in the brownish stuff; a hunk of bread floated on it. I nodded thanks, and the boy nodded back - which was the first communication between us. I tasted the soup, which was like slow Oxo - Oxo slowed by flour and something that might have been potatoes. But I hadn't tasted food for hours, so it was nectar to me.

    But just after I'd taken my second spoonful, something made me glance up towards Small David, who was eyeing me narrowly.

    'Ye ken ye're gaun to dee, don't ye?'

    Well, I could not believe it; I seemed to be living in a dream, as we all ate in the dimly lit room on the hillside, while the blizzard wind made a repeated low note, like the sound of a ship coming into harbour, as it blew across the chimney top. Presently, Richie went around the room again, this time collecting up the bowls. The lawyer drained whatever was left in his small glass, and put it on the mantelshelf. He did not seem in need of another dram. He watched after his son as the boy left the room, and turned towards me again. He seemed minded to talk, and I had the powerful notion that he wanted to tell me as much as I wanted to know.

Chapter Twenty-six

    'As I say, the boy and I are not constructed at all on the same lines,' Marriott began. 'For example, I do not take a constitutional, Detective Stringer ...'

    (Perhaps the supper had put him in better humour. At any event, I had regained my title.)

    'I do not take a constitutional,' he repeated, 'and never let it be said that I take a stroll. I walk, Detective Stringer, and I would walk with Theodore Falconer for quite hours - right over the tops and all about Whitby. Do you know Whitby at all, Detective Stringer? A very fine old seaport, beautiful ships ... Do you know about ships? The parish church at the top of the steps is quite exceptional, and Falconer and I would make a wide circuit from there on Sunday mornings in all weathers. I was in fact a member of his rambling club for a spell, and a very strange grouping they proved to be. They met in the woods, you know - an almost pagan confederacy.'

    'I had met Falconer at the University,' he continued, again looking keenly at Small David, hoping to reopen the quarrel, but the Scotsman read on, so Marriott continued addressing me. 'We were not of equivalent rank, socially speaking, but fell in with each other while tramping on Christ Church Meadow. Almost every Sunday for two years, we'd tuck into our mackintoshes and have a blow. He'd enjoy that, and the rougher the weather, the better he liked it. We continued in the same way when I removed, with Richard, to the Middlesbrough district - to the village just south of Saltburn, which was Falconer's home territory. We rode into town in the Club car, and on Sundays we tramped. High up on the tops—he would never keep to the paths but would battle his way through the heather singing Methodist hymns and booming on about the wonders of nature.'

    And he nearly smiled, adding, 'Quite the fresh air fiend was Falconer.'

    Small David was looking up from the Sutherland Gazette.

    'We've come to' t now!' he said in a strange, fluting tone.

    'The virtues of fresh air are well attested,' Marriott went on, 'and the cramped, stifling rooms of the suburban house are to be deprecated . . .'

    He spoke with agitation, fairly shaking now, and not from the cold. I knew that the truth was approached as Small David, leaning further forward on the edge of his truckle bed, said, 'Spit it oot, man, spit it oot!'

    The lawyer seemed in a daze now, gazing at vacancy and shaking his head. In an under-breath that I had to crane forwards to hear, he spoke the words:

    'But to open the window on a day of heavy snowfall -'

    'There y'are, it's oot!' cried Small David, rolling backwards on his bed, as the lawyer continued to shake his head, speaking a Latin phrase whose meaning I did not take at the time, for I am not well up in the language:

    '—that was the reductio ad absurdum.'

    The Scotsman was falling back on his bed, cackling, saying over and over, 'It's oot, it's oot!'

    What was out?

    Bowman was looking directly at me, red face at boiling point.

    'Don't you see? Falconer opened the window in the saloon, and caught his death as a result.'

    The lawyer went on, in the same head-shaking, sorrowful way. 'It was against the rules of the Club.'

    Richie, the son, was standing in the doorway now; he gave a cough.

    The truth was coming to me by degrees.

    'Falconer opened the window in the Club carriage -' I said, eyeing Marriott, 'and you murdered him for it?'

    'Yon dunderheed's got there in the eend!' came the cry from the

    Scotsman's bed, and it was followed by a long bar of silence. Then Marriott spoke up again.

    'He drew down the window, Detective Stringer. I put it up again; he drew it down a second time; and I struck out - one blow of the cane, Detective Stringer. I did not mean to kill. The word on the indictment would have been 'manslaughter'.'