Murder At Deviation Junction

    I leapt early.

    One hand on the viaduct wall and I was gone. From the middle of air, I saw the mine, the endless rope turning under the darkening sky. My bowler was falling in advance of me; it was disloyal, abandoning ship. Well, a bowler was a ridiculous article in any case. My limbs were just so many floating things, and by slow degrees it seemed that my boots were becoming higher than my head. I wondered whether I would make a full somersault before I smashed. I was no detective sergeant; it was not meant to be. I was an engine man who had missed his way, and that was all about it.

Chapter Thirty-eight

    It ended neatly enough, for I landed in a perfect grave - a grave of snow. I lay in it, and thought about what had happened. The fall had not ended with the smash, but had continued for a little while after with a sort of dark, burning roar, and the notion that the word 'Chute!' was being shouted very loudly into my ears.

    Above the top of my snow-grave I could see the side of the viaduct. I had leapt from the point at which it began, and fallen perhaps only thirty feet on to the top of the valley side. I began an upwards crawl out of the snow, and my hands seemed small and very red, and my back was ricked. It was easier to move to the left than to the right. But I came out all right, and stood up, a little bent over. A sea wind was coming up at me; it blew the snow through the legs of the viaduct. The sky had a look of dangerous dark blue against the whiteness all around, and I knew this was the coldest day I had seen, but I could not feel it. The snow was my friend now, even though I had fought it all my life.

    I seemed to be very high as I stumbled forwards. I was on a high ridge of snow - it had been made when a track to my left had been cleared. The track ran down to the beck, and the zigzag mineral line. The mine itself lay far below, and an echoing rattle was coming up the valley from there. The mineral train was leaving the mine station, or attempting to do so. The ironstone wagons were all hitched. The train was jerking back and forth, as if it was trying to unfreeze itself.

    I climbed the bank side for a little way, and was quickly underneath the viaduct at its lowest point. I moved underneath it. My back was all right as long as I held it in a certain position, but I had to move a little way crabwise. I climbed on to the eastern side of the viaduct top (whereas I had jumped from the western side). I crouched against the viaduct edge, and the wind gauge was there: one small, mad windmill. No, it was like a trapped bird, and it was frightening to be near it. The thing's arms turned at a furious rate, and the thing itself was spinning bodily. Small David stood fifty yards beyond me, and on the opposite side of the single track. In the gathering dark, he was peering over the western viaduct wall, looking down at the zigzag line where the iron train had stopped - looking for me. I began walking towards him. I did not care if he saw me. I did not know what would happen if he did, because I was not thinking. Instead, I walked, with the line beside me. No trains would come, I knew that - we were quite safe from interruption.

    Small David was now moving along a little way - going away from me. But I kept up my steady, bent-over advance. There was now a steadier clanking coming from below the viaduct. The mineral train was moving.

    I veered to my left and gave it a glance. It was coming up to the legs of the viaduct. Small David looked down at it too, but he did so from a stationary position in the middle of the viaduct. I looked to the right. It hurt to do it, but there was the Rectory Works. The fires leapt from the kiln tops, more beautiful than any Christmas decoration, and it was the strength of purpose that made them so.

    In the middle of the sound of the sea, and the sea wind, and the clanking train, I stood to the rear of Small David. He was leaning over the viaduct wall. It was hardly decent, but I reached forwards and took hold of the tweed of his topcoat where it lay over his arse. I lifted it and I pitched him away into the wind. I had done with him.

    I leant over and watched him go.

    In the middle of air Small David looked like a frog I had once seen making a leap: too thick about the middle, arms and legs of no account, although these did move about a little as he flew. He hit a middle wagon of the iron train, and then - thank Christ - he stopped moving. I could not have stood the sight of him squirming on the ironstone, but then again, what would have happened if that sight had indeed met my eyes? I looked along the viaduct wall to the wind gauge. It operated a signal that checked trains in any really strong blow, and it was still thrashing away for all it was worth, not aware that the disaster had in fact already occurred.

    I turned about again and looked at the kilns of the Rectory Works. A strange red spirit crawled upwards from the top of each one. On the gantry that ran along the tops stood a single man. I remained for an hour on the Kilton Viaduct, and I watched every wagon from the train rise to the point where it was tilted by automatic process. Sometimes the gantry man was visible in his upper world, sometimes not. He came and went from a metal shack attached to one end of the gantry platform. Whatever he was about up there, he did not pay attention to what was being pitched into the kilns. Anything that came up with those wagons was for burning and no questions asked.

    Presently, a train came along the viaduct. It would be at about five p.m. - I could not have said at the time. I stopped it with my hand. I believe that I made the driver aware of my warrant card, but it may be that he'd said, 'Let's have you in, mate,' before seeing it.

    I was taken up on to the footplate, and I took up a position directly before the fire, causing the fireman, as I seem to remember, to curse all the way to the terminus. But I believe that I was magnetised by that fire, for the driver had to shift me bodily away from it at Whitby West Cliff, explaining that here they must pitch it away, having reached the end of their turn.

Chapter Thirty-nine

    I made my way out of the station with my new, bent walk, but I felt that I was straightening up by degrees.

    The town of Whitby was freshly covered in snow, which was ruffled by great gusts coming in from the sea. The black water was low in the harbour, and the ships and boats were all a little skew, as if drunk, which their owners very likely would have been at that moment. The pubs and hotels around were all ablaze with light as I walked first around the grand new buildings on the west side.

    I was trying to walk off the effects of having killed a man.

    A car was turning outside the front of the Metropole, and half the guests - in their finest clothes - had turned out to watch the manoeuvre. They looked like the most innocent people in the world.

    I went across the harbour bridge to the east side, and walked along the road on which stood the offices of the Whitby Morning Post. They were closed now, and I squinted inside at the heap of back numbers on the long table. Old papers made a litter. You ought not to look back. But still I turned - or was it the wind racing in from the sea that made me turn? - towards the Bog Hall sidings, spread out beyond the station, where all the wagons and carriages were arranged in neat lines for their Christmas rest. One of them had been something special once, for the saloon built to the instructions of the Whitby- Middlesbrough Travelling Club was doubtless still in there. The wind rose again, stirring the boats and lifting the snow crystals from all the rooftops, and the high graveyard of St Mary's church. I didn't quite like to look towards the church, for I had hardly turned the other cheek back there on the viaduct.

    I looked instead towards the town of Whitby in general, Amid the flying white particles, I saw a softer, rising whiteness from beyond the station roof. It was Christmas Eve, and the men at the controls of that steaming engine would be anxious to be away. I made towards them.

    I boarded the last train of the evening for York with seconds to spare. Another man came into the compartment just as I had settled myself. He was a tall, pale man and wore a good, fur-trimmed topcoat. He leant over my outstretched legs and yanked down the leathern strap that controlled the window. He knew it was not