Death on the Last Train (2 page)

The man looked uneasily at Littlejohn and then around him.

“Good night,” said the woman. “Remember what you promised. …”

Bellis bent and kissed her.

“Good night. I'll remember.”

“Tarrant'll be at the other end to meet you. You'll be all right.”

“I'll be all right, Bess love. Take care of yourself. You're all I've got. …”

Littlejohn turned away. What little sordid farce or tragedy lay behind it all?

The singing Samaritans were well under weigh again.

The guard was scuttering about like a sheepdog rounding up his flock. The station signal showed green and he was anxious to be getting home. He looked at his watch and blew his whistle in a series of short angry blasts.

“All aboard! Come on, come on!! Nay, dammit …”

The stationmaster raised his hand above his head and, in case the guard should not see it, the porters all did the same, and a number of hangers-on repeated the gesture, too. Whereat the guard, reassured, turned the slide of his lantern to green and waved it about.

Bellis kissed Bessie again. The two parsons exchanged unctuous greetings, calling each other “B.B.” and “M.R.” and clasping hands like two swearing a covenant.

There was a commotion on the stairs and loud shouts. The guard put on the brake in his van and the train jerked to a standstill and almost disintegrated with the shock.

Littlejohn saw two men appear helping an inert companion whom they bore like a sack of potatoes down the steps. This was a frequent performance for regular travellers on the 10.55. Harold Claypott being bundled, hopelessly drunk, into the last train. One of the drunkard's pals gave the guard a shilling. They carried Harold into the luggage van and bedded him down on the mail bags.

“Hand him out at Salton, ole man,” said one of them, hiccupped, and reeled to join his friend. Together they cakewalked back up the steps.

The guard waved his lamp once more. The wheels of the engine whizzed, whirled, but made no progress. The swearing fireman laboured at the lever controlling the sandbox. Finally, the train slowly moved, gathered speed and vanished gingerly into the night, the rear light feebly glimmering until it was lost in the distance.

The complicated business of getting the last train out of Mereton was over. The stationmaster went home to his meal and bed and the porter crept round the back of his favourite pub to try and dodge in a drink after hours.

Littlejohn dozed again whilst the drama of the last train was played out.

The man in the Mereton station cabin signalled to his mate at the Salton Cutting box that the 10.55 was approaching his block, and back came the answer on the bell accepting the train. The signalman at Salton Cutting pulled-off the home signal which stood outside the Mereton goods-yard to allow the train to enter his section.

“Oh, hell! What's up now?” said the fireman on the 10.55. The Cutting signal stood at red. The driver admonished him at the same time skilfully applying his brakes.

“No need to be blasphemous about it,” said Ted Drake. He was a churchgoing man and very sober and clean in his talk.

“Sorry, Ted.”

“So you oughter be …”

“I said I was sorry, didn't I. . .?”

All the same, Ted Drake was annoyed by the obstruction, too. He blew three irritated blasts on his whistle. These were shortly followed by the throwing open of a bedroom window of a house in Railway Terrace, Mereton, and the appearance of an angry tousled head.

“To hell with you and your whistle!” howled the householder, who had just got the baby to sleep after a three hours' tussle and now had to start all over again.

“What's up?” muttered Drake. “Can't be a goods. … Must be a block at Salton station. An' it's lamb'sfry
for supper, too. The wife works to the timetable and it'll be spoiled. . .”

Mrs. Drake's brother worked at the abbatoirs and kept them liberally supplied with offal. They fed on the inner organs of beasts every night when Ted got home. If it wasn't fried brains, it was stuffed heart; and if it wasn't stuffed heart, it was sweetbreads or black puddings. Ted stamped impatiently on the footplate and his mate began disconsolately to feed the fire again.

The man in the Cutting cabin peered into the night for the 10.55.

“What's up?” he asked the signalling apparatus and then made for the telephone in the corner.

“'as the 10.55 left yet, Joe?” he asked the Mereton Station box.

“Aye. Should be past you now. . .”

“Hasn't turned up. Not even in sight. Wonder what …?”

“Thought I heard 'im whistlin' …”

“Come to think of it, so did I …”

“I'll send a man from the sidin' to have a look-see.”

The guard anticipated the ganger from Mereton, however. He climbed down to the permanent way and walked to the engine.

“Funny,” he called to the driver. “Distant signal was off. Wonder what's up … 'ere, wot's this?”

He had been shining his lamp at the base of the signal and his startled exclamation brought Drake ponderously down from the footplate.

The wire from the Cutting box had been disconnected from the counterweight at the base of the signal, thus leaving it set at danger. But lest the lack of weight should arouse the signalman's suspicions when he pulled-off, a bunch of metal fish-plates, used for joining the rails, had been taken from a nearby pile and attached to the wire.

“Them blasted kids again,” swore the guard. “When they're not tearing th' upholstery or chuckin' lamp bulbs
through the winders, they're in mischief on th' line. They'll be an accident one of these days. . . Train wreckin', now. Well, it's the war. Got out o' control, that's wot they 'ave. Better draw up slowly to the Cuttin' box, Ted.”

Littlejohn heard all the commotion in a semi-doze. The halting of the train, the shouting voices, the tramping feet outside. He had gone through so much of it since he left Euston—was it yesterday or last week? He was impervious to the worst they could do. The dim light of the compartment and his own physical weariness filled him with a sad lethargy. The journey would end somewhere, some time.

There was a loud popping noise, like the bursting of a steam pipe—or was it a revolver shot? Littlejohn sat upright. Steam was oozing from beneath the seats. It must have been the apparatus giving up the ghost entirely.

The train began slowly to move again.

Guard and driver had mounted once more and the clanking contraption crawled painfully to the cabin, where, after a shouted consultation, the signalman give them the all-clear to Salton.

Salton station was cold and desolate, and the remaining staff bad tempered.

“Where've you been?” snarled the stationmaster as the train staggered to a standstill.

Ted Drake explained, not too graciously.

“Well, I'll be damned!” said the official. “What next? I never 'eard the likes of it. Well, come on. . . Get crackin'. Shut them doors and let's be seein' the last of you all.”

The Rev. Beaglehole was first off the train. The initial fine alcoholic rapture had worn thin, and he wondered what his wife would say at the late hour. . .

The munition workers held an inquest into the delay and, having wrung an explanation from the guard, cursed the railways, showed their passes and went into the rainy night. The Good Samaritans noisily dispersed after a
volley of “Good-nights.” Harold Claypott, shaken from sleep by the guard, seemed more sober and was able to make his unsteady way home under his own power. He was a bachelor, living with two maiden sisters. He was in a vile temper when he reached his destination and found them both in bed, and he took his usual mean revenge on them. Unsteadily taking a match from his pocket he lighted the fires laid ready for morning in the kitchen and dining-room and then, leaving his wet macintosh at the foot of the stairs, reeled up to bed and fell asleep in his underclothes and dirty shoes.

At Salton station Littlejohn again thrust out his head.

“Where are we?”

“Salton, sir. Ellinborne next stop.”

Sid Grimes, the porter, always made a point of looking in the empty first-class compartments before the train left. He had once found a shilling in one of them and, on another occasion, a half-crown thriller, so he kept up the habit with hope in his breast.

Grimes peeped in the hutch recently left by the Beaglehole and drew a blank. Then he opened the next door.

Sid reeled back a pace and broke into a run towards the stationmaster.

“Mr. Blades, Mr. Blades,” he panted. “Just come here. They's a dead body in the first-class. . .”

“Get away with yer,” replied his boss, tartly. “You been seeing things.”

But he followed Grimes, all the same.

Littlejohn was there already with the guard.

“Stand aside … stand clear,” shouted Mr. Blades officiously. He was a small, thin, emaciated man with codfish eyes, a huge moustache, loose limbs and enormous hands and feet. “Oo are you?” he asked Littlejohn.

Littlejohn explained and showed his warrant-card. Mr. Blades carefully perused the free pass given to Littlejohn by a friendly picture-house manager in Hampstead, contained in the other side of the warrant-case and, in the heat of the moment, seemed quite satisfied.

“Wot 'ad we better do, sir?”

“Send for the local police at once and hold the train until they arrive. Don't any of you touch anything.”

“Edward! Edward!!” bawled the stationmaster, as though beginning a popular and famous Scottish tragic ballad.

The booking clerk emerged from sorting and locking-up his tickets in his lair.

“Send for the police at once, Edward. Try to get Mister Forrester, the Chief Constable. Tell 'im we found a man shot through the 'ead on the eleven-four in … an' he's dead. Say that they's a Scotland Yard detective already on the case. Got that, Edward? Well, get cracking!”

And with a large paw Mr. Blades dismissed him like a football referee sending a guilty player from the field.

Timothy Bellis lay among the dirt and fag-ends on the floor of his compartment, with a revolver near his hand and a hole in his temple.

A thick-set, nautical-looking man suddenly arrived on the platform.

“That the eleven-four just in?” he said huskily, buttonholing Sid Grimes, who in the excitement of events was busy chasing his tail. “It
does
get in some time, then. I got so cold waitin' for the boss, I just nipped round to the back door of the
Navigation
for a warmer. . .”

The porter looked blankly at his questioner and then his face lit up.

“Eh, Mr. Tarrant, I'm glad you've come. Your boss 'as been found shot dead in the train. … Suicide, they say …”

Tarrant stiffened. Then he grasped the palpitating porter by the lapels of his jacket.

“Where is 'e? Where've they put 'im?” he breathed harshly.

“Still in the train. Waitin' fer the perlice. Scotland Yard's already on the job. . . An' you leave me alone, Tarrant. No need to shake me like that … I ain't done 'im in.”

But Tarrant was running along the platform like one demented.

“Suicide,” he called as he ran. “Suicide … To 'ell with that for a tale. They've got 'im at last … Murder. That's wot it is. Murder. Where is 'e?”

Two men had to hold him back to prevent him meddling with the body.

Littlejohn was intoxicated by fatigue and could hardly keep his eyes open. His brain refused to register all the Chief Constable was saying.

Captain Forrester was a tall, heavily-built man in his middle forties. Salton being a County Borough controlled its own police, and the Chief Constable was a hard-working officer who had risen in the ranks in other towns. In his official clothes and wearing his cap he looked his age, for he had bright blue eyes, a fresh complexion, a humorous mouth and a good carriage. Minus his cap, however, he seemed years older. He was completely bald on top with a fringe of fair, almost sandy hair all round a shiny pink dome. His record was unusually good and the force he controlled was efficient and contented.

Forrester had clutched at Littlejohn like a drowning man at a straw when he found him with the body of the dead man. He wanted his help badly. He would make it all right with Scotland Yard and give him every facility for completing his brief business in the neighbouring town of Ellinborne. Besides, the hotels in the latter town were all third-rate. Now,
The Laughing Man
, at Salton, was really tip-top. Why not stay there and be comfortable?

Littlejohn didn't need much persuading. They sent his bag to the hotel and booked a room for him. The
fatal railway coach was slipped from the train and after the police had carefully examined the compartment whence the body of Bellis had been removed, it was locked and put in the siding with a constable on guard. An excited statement was taken from Bellis's manservant, Tarrant, and a police car sent to Mereton to bring in Bessie Emmott. The police surgeon, Dr. Cooper, who in spite of the late hour seemed keen on his work, began an autopsy on the body right away.

Then Forrester took Littlejohn to the police station to explain why he was so anxious to enlist his aid.

It was a dismal sort of building, old, with little in the way of comfort and smelling strongly of disinfectant. Even the Chief Constable's office was bare and depressing. There was a big fire in the old-fashioned grate, but the desks were of plain wood and the chairs old and as hard as bricks. Defence regulations and police notices plastered the walls.

PORT OF SALTON.

CARRYING OF CAMERAS AND TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS.

It is forbidden to …

So Salton was a port, was it? Never heard of it, mused Littlejohn.