down in the book as 'Major Argent'. Beneath was written: 'The minutes of the last meeting were read and declared to be correct,' and then came notes as to business such as: 'The secretary reported that the tenant of the bungalow New Copse, viz Samuel Welch, had become a bankrupt and it was ordered that he be served with a notice to quit… '; 'It was resolved that the request of the Woking Golf Club for a small alteration of the boundary on the south side could not be agreed to…'; 'In the matter of the payment over to the Company by the South Western Railway Company of the compensation for the removal of the offices, Messrs Long and Simmons are authorised to assist.'
The Necropolis station had been moved from York Street to its present, smaller site only two years before, which I took to be another sign of the decline in its business. But as I turned the stiff pages of the great book, I at first found very little -aside from some regretful remarks on the poor health of Sir John Rickerby – to cast light on the various riddles before me, and I became quite tired of reading of the minutes being 'read and declared to be correct', wishing that just once they might have been read and declared to be correct.
I turned to the second volume and, in the minutes of the meeting held on Monday 6 July of that year, read: 'It was moved, seconded and carried unanimously that Rowland Smith Esquire be hereby appointed Agent of the Company.' There was then some difficult stuff over the next few lines as to what Smith was being brought on to do, and it boiled down to this: making economies. He had set about his work quickly, for in the minutes of the next meeting, held on Tuesday 4 August, I read for the first time of cemetery lands being sold: 'It was ordered that the seal of the Company be affixed to the conveyance of sixty-four rods at Brookwood to Mr P. Everett (builder) for? 200…' and 'seventy-eight and a half rods to Mr Humphrey Warden (builder) for?220.' In all, there were above half a dozen sales reported in that month alone.
At the meeting of Thursday 3 September, the death of Sir John Rickerby on Wednesday 12 August, at Brookwood, was recorded, the directors expressing their deep sorrow and regret that he had been unable to enjoy the years of well-earned repose that would have been so amply merited by his long service to the company, and so on. Later in September there was a further meeting – this one of a special sort – at which it was 'moved, seconded and carried unanimously that Mr Erskine Long be elected Chairman of the Company.'
The smoothness of these words at first prevented me from seeing the sensational fact, but it came to me after half a minute: 12 August, the date on which Sir John Rickerby had stumbled at Brookwood, was also the date on which Henry Taylor had ridden out to the cemetery with Arthur Hunt and Vincent.
I scribbled in the back pages of my diary. All doubts were gone now. In high excitement I turned to the pages recording the meeting of Monday 5 October. Further sales were recorded, and my eye got another jolt by news of the biggest sale of the lot: 'It was ordered that the seal of the Company be affixed to the conveyance of 300 rods to Mr Roger White-Chester (Company Director) for?650.' In the minutes of the meeting held on Monday 9 November, more sales were recorded – little else but these, in fact. All the sales so far amounted to but a tiny amount of the whole cemetery, but still, Smith was going at a fair lick. I turned to the minutes of the December meeting, the last in the volume, which occurred on Friday 4th, and here, among details of further sales, I came upon a queer little remark. 'The Secretary read a letter dated 2nd inst from Mr Adrian Stanley, and it was voted to decline the request therein.'
This set off a kind of echo in my head, and I flipped rapidly back through the pages until I landed once again on the first page of the minutes of the 9 November meeting, and there it was again, almost word for word: 'The Secretary read a letter dated 3rd inst from Mr Adrian Stanley, and it was voted to decline the request therein.' I went back further, to the minutes of the meeting held on 4 August. There again it was written that Mr Stanley had made a request, and that it had been declined.
I picked up my own diary and made marks against dates as to the events that concerned me. What it totted up to was this: Stanley, the funny little fellow who gave the address, made a request to the directors at the meeting that took place early in August. The request was declined, and Sir John Rickerby died on 12 August at Brookwood; Henry Taylor was there, and he was first noticed missing from Nine Elms later in the same month.
Stanley made another request of the directors at the meeting that took place in early November. The request was again declined, and Mike came to grief on 30 November. Stanley made a third request at the meeting held in early December, and was once more turned down. Smith was burned at his flat on 11 December. In September and October there had been no suspicious deaths, and no requests from Stanley either. But what of it?
I had no notion of whether Stanley had actually been at any of the possible murder sites, whereas I had now learnt that Arthur Hunt and Vincent had been in Brookwood on the day of Sir John Rickerby's death. Hunt and Rose, I also knew, had certainly been at Nine Elms when someone put the kybosh on Mike, and close at hand to the Jubilee he'd been riding on to boot. These were big black marks against the half-link to set alongside all the others, including hatred of Mike and Rowland Smith. But now Stanley, that strange-eyed jack-in-a-pulpit, was in the picture too, and as I sat there in the gloom of the Necropolis library, the idea of little Stanley being the one seemed to grow more horrible by the second, for it might mean that Arthur Hunt, who had driven expresses and was most definitely a fellow of the right sort, really had got over his suspicions that I was Smith's man, and had brought the rest of the half-link around to the same way of flunking, only for me to throw his offer of friendship and instruction in all footplate arts straight back into his face.
But then why had Vincent been banging his stick in that way on walking towards me through the Old Shed? Why had they come at me in that death march?
I used what remained of the light to fly back through the book looking for any other mentions of Stanley that I had missed. I came upon just one, during the June meeting: the Secretary had been requested to ask Mr Stanley to consider giving his Tuesday address on alternate weeks only, 'it having come to the attention of the Directors that the audience frequently consists of one or two people, and sometimes fewer' – but this, I knew, had not come about; the address had remained weekly.
I closed the book for 1903, and returned it to the shelf. I then stood before the fireplace and looked up at the pictures on the chimney breast, searching for some sign of curiosity in the faces of the Necropolis chairmen, but all that happened was that the clock ticked and the darkness grew.
Ten minutes later I was back on the tracks. The trains had not yet started up again but the lamps were on, showing me that the snow had been replaced by rain, which was coming down slowly. I could have gone into Waterloo in any old way but I marched in on the 'up' side so as to be quite correct, and to keep a little bit of order at least in my life. As I ran back along the great viaduct of Lower Marsh, I thought: I have solved nothing; all that has happened is that I have gone deeper into the mystery. I neared the ladder that would take me down to my lodge, and stopped. I was level with the roofs, and all about were the sleeping, streaming chimney pots, but there was a great clanging from somewhere.
It was only the work of a second to identify the cause and, sure enough, as I walked across to the ladder, the thing was shuddering in time with the clangs. I looked down and there was the human bell, chiming away. I thought: yes, people do like to hit metal with metal; there isn't necessarily any harm in it.
He was shocked to see me, because this was his ladder, after all, but he moved aside for me very meekly. I should have given him a 'Happy Christmas' as I climbed down, and would have done so had there not been so much on my mind and so much more to put in my diary, chiefly concerning Mr Stanley.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Friday 25 December – Tuesday 29 December
At midnight the trains started up, and it was as though the world started turning again, although I just kicked my heels in the lodge for the next three days, my only excursions being across the road to the dining rooms. What requests had Stanley made? What, if anything at all, did they have to do with the deaths that came hard upon those meetings to which the requests had been put? And were the questions in some way connected to the men of the half-link? There was only one way to find out, and that was to wait for the following Tuesday and ask.
At six in the evening on 28 December, the Monday, I walked from Hercules Court to the Necropolis station – by the usual route, this time – and there I saw the poster on the board propped outside the front: 'Extramural Interment: An Address'. It was to happen the next day at 8 p.m. Who wants to hear of cemetery schemes at Christmas? I thought, as I scurried back to my lodge, but it did not matter. I would be there, for one.
The Tuesday ought to have been the day I went back to work, but I did not return, for fear of more meetings
