Murder At Deviation Junction

anything in your notebook to show for it?'

    'Not in my notebook, no.'

    'Why not?'

    'Because I didn't set anything down in my notebook.'

    'Why not? No pen to hand?'

    'That's not why.'

    'You had a pen to hand?'

    'I carry two at all times.'

    'Indelible?'

    'One indelible; one - whatever is the opposite of indelible.'

    'Can you give me one good reason why a young detective should carry any pencil other than an indelible one?'

    'Trust, sir,' I said,'. . . that's what it all comes down to. If I was trusted more, then I could write in normal pencils, but I am not trusted.'

    ''If I were trusted more' I believe is the correct English.'

    'That proves my point exactly, sir.'

    'To return to the notebook,' he said, lighting another cigar. 'You didn't make a note ... because nothing happened?'

    'Because too much happened.'

    'Do you want to have been on leave?'

    I couldn't make him out.

    'It is not a good idea to frown at me in that way,' said the Chief. 'Do you find the question unclear?'

    'You're saying I don't have to tell you what happened.'

    'That's it.'

    I thought it better to leave a moment of silence before giving my reply.

    'I accept.'

    My difficulties were falling away at a rate of knots, but the fact that I had been let off the need to explain what I'd been about in Scotland did not mean that I would be allowed to keep my position.

    'Am I to be stood down?' I asked.

    'Shillito means to speak to you about your future,' said the Chief, rising to his feet.

    It was not the answer I had hoped for.

Chapter Thirty-four

    I walked into the main office and Shillito was waiting there, holding a leathern notecase under his arm. There was a mark on his forehead that I'd made. He watched me come out of the Chief's door, and motioned me towards my own desk. Wright was looking on from his corner - the best ringside seat.

    Shillito sat at his own desk, which was directly opposite mine, and he began to eye me. Was he going to ask for my notebook? As he continued to stare, Wright sharpened a pencil without looking at it. His eyes were on me. A great train was leaving from Platform Four, and the noise made my heartbeat begin to gallop.

    Just then, the Chief came out of his own room and quit the office without a look back. It was all no good; I was for it.

    Now Shillito was speaking.

    'As a body of men we must stand together, would you not agree, Detective Stringer?'

    'I would, sir.' (I found I didn't object to calling him 'sir' as long as I fixed my eyes on that mark that I'd made.)

    'We're up against it on all fronts,' he said.

    I nodded. The train had gone, leaving only the steady, slow scrape of Wright's pencil-sharpening blade.

    'We do not have the privileges of the ordinary public detectives,' Shillito ran on, 'and the travellers are frequently against us.'

    I nodded again.

    'They chaff us, will not give up their tickets when asked.'

    I was tired of nodding.

    'And do you know what the other classes of railwaymen call us?'

    'The pantomime police.' 'Just so.'

    (He hadn't reckoned on me knowing that.)

    'We must stand together, then.'

    'I have already agreed to that.'

    I was pushing it with Shillito, but I seemed to have decided that it was all up for me in any case.

    'Very well then, try this: we must not deal each other blows'

    Whatever reply I made to that, he wasn't listening, but was standing up, removing some papers from the notecase.

    'You want to get your promotion - there it is.'

    He dashed the papers down on my desk.

    'Now I'm overdue at home,' he said, and he strode out of the office without another word.

    There were half a dozen pages, torn from a magazine, a railway journal - not The Railway Rover or the Railway Magazine or anything I'd heard of, but some little journal out of the common. I caught them up, and looked across at Wright, who was still scraping away at the pencil.

    'What the hell's going off?' I said.

    'You did yourself a good turn when you clouted him,' said Wright.

    He put down the pencil, sat back and folded his arms.

    'It's Christmas,' he said. 'Do you want an orange?'

    There was no sign of any orange, so this might have been a sort of bluff. I thanked him and said that if he was after doing me a good turn, he might record in the log book that I'd gone out on the search for Davitt, the fare evader. I then quit the office and walked under a sky that threatened more snow, to the Punch Bowl in Stonegate, which was known for its twopenny pints of ale. It was a secret-looking pub with many small, half-underground rooms that got smaller the further back you went from the street, so that it was like drinking in a coal mine. In the very furthest snug from the street, I began to read the bundle of papers that Shillito had given me. It was a very strange return for having hit him; in fact, the papers were strange all ends up.

Chapter Thirty-five

    On Christmas Eve morning, Harry was up at half past five, setting a marker, I supposed, for the next day. I came downstairs at six in Peter Backhouse's funeral suit; the wife passed me a cup of cocoa and said, 'It fits to a tee.'

    The suit was in fact blue. I had mentioned this to Backhouse over a pint in the Fortune of War, and he'd said, 'Don't say that. It's meant to be mourning black. I'll lose confidence at the funerals if I think it's blue.' But I wasn't over-concerned, since Peter Backhouse didn't have any confidence to begin with.

    After breakfast, I opened the front door, and was fairly blinded by the whiteness. The sight of all the new- fallen snow made Harry break out into a kind of hopscotch in the warmth of the kitchen. On the doorstep, the wife passed me my topcoat, which she'd given a good brushing. She then gave me a special kiss of the sort normally