‘It’s not a job for the middle of the day in weather like this,’ said John Lambert. ‘The temperature touched ninety-five here this afternoon.’
‘Ninety-six in York,’ I said.
‘Well, York’s south of here,’ said Lambert. ‘It’s practically tropical. Who are you?’
And in the moment of asking that question, he did look like the squire of Adenwold. I decided that I would still keep back my occupation.
‘Stringer,’ I said, and he shook my hand, saying nothing.
‘I fell into a conversation with your brother at York station,’ I said. ‘He was changing trains there, being transferred to Durham gaol. I suppose you know he was transferred?’
He looked down at the timetable in his hand, then up at me.
‘How did you come to be speaking to him?’
‘I work at the station,’ I said.
He looked at me, as if to say: that’s no answer, and you know it.
‘Why did he come off the train?’ he asked.
‘There was a delay. The fireman was taken sick.’
‘Where?’
‘Shortly after Retford.’
‘At Doncaster?’ he asked sharply. ‘Selby?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said.
It was time to give him the hard word.
‘He told me there may be people who perhaps… mean to kill you.’
John Lambert suddenly tipped his head up, as though revolving this notion.
‘That may very well be,’ he said.
It was like finding that a dream of your own matched exactly someone else’s. He touched his glasses again, as though a defect in his vision was his main concern of the moment. Here’s a man who’s read too much, I thought. I longed to say the word ‘Ponder’ and see whether he started at it.
‘They may be here already or they may be arriving by train,’ I said.
‘Mmm…’ said Lambert, in a comical sort of tone.
He, like his brother, had a taste for grim humour.
‘Who are they?’ asked the wife from behind me. ‘And why do they want to harm you?’
I turned about. She looked strange saying that with flowers in her hand, and it was as though the man did feel the question impertinent, for he gave answer to me and ignored Lydia.
‘I am not at liberty to say.’
Lydia asked, ‘If they’re going to kill you anyway, then what do you have to lose by speaking out?’ and I was torn between annoyance at her cutting in like this and the thought that it was a good question.
But John Lambert kept silence.
I tried another approach:
‘Why do you not make off?’
‘Fatalistic disposition,’ he said with a shrug, and he nearly smiled again, adding: ‘Let me put the matter less whimsically…’
‘ Could you?’ said the wife from behind.
‘If I made off,’ said Lambert, ‘they would find me anyway.’
‘One “up” train stopped by request at Adenwold this evening,’ I said. ‘We came in by it, and a bicyclist got off as well.’
Lambert nodded, and he now seemed distinctly amused.
‘Sounds fairly benign so far,’ he said.
‘You’ve no reason to fear a bicyclist?’ I enquired.
‘We’ve all got reason to fear them,’ said Lambert. ‘They’ve no brakes at all, half of them.’
‘Then,’ I went on, ‘at 8.41, a scheduled “down” train arrived. A man from Norwood came in by it.’
‘Norwood?’ said Lambert.
‘It’s in south London,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘He carried papers written in German.’
I watched him for a reaction, and he watched me back.
‘There are three further trains tomorrow,’ I said.
‘The 8.51, the 12.27 and the 8.35 p.m.,’ Lambert cut in with a faint smile. It was as though the Bradshaw was not so much in his hand as in his very bloodstream.
‘And each of those also leaves,’ I said. ‘You might keep that in mind.’
I looked at the Bradshaw in his hand. There were a thousand pages in it. He might go anywhere.
‘The governor of Wandsworth gaol believes your brother to be innocent,’ I said.
‘I share the gentleman’s opinion.’
‘If he didn’t kill your father, then who did? Do you know? And do you plan to let on? Is that why you’re in danger?’
John Lambert just eyed me, and he seemed very remote behind those thin glasses of his. He was very likely remote from everyone.
‘My brother has sent me here to help you,’ I said. ‘And yet…’
‘And let me help you, Mr Stringer,’ he cut in. ‘As long as you are connected to me your life is in danger.’
Well now.
I wanted a little time to think in. I must send the wife away for one thing. And I ought to bring in the Chief.
‘You mean to save your brother from the gallows,’ I said at length, ‘but how?’
‘Mr Stringer,’ he replied, ‘I am sure that you have better things to do on a fine week-end like this than to fret over the private troubles of a stranger.’
‘We were on the point of going to Scarborough,’ said the wife, in a hollow sort of voice. ‘Just like most of this village.’
‘ Go to Scarborough,’ said Lambert, again addressing me.
‘All the hotels are full,’ I said flatly, and at that I saw a new and deeper complication in the man’s face — a sign of great trouble.
‘Mr Lambert…’ said the wife, and I knew that she had relented somewhat towards him in that moment. He looked directly at her for the first time, and nodded as though to thank her for the step she had taken but she seemed to hesitate on the point of speech. Lambert nodded at us both, turned on his heel and walked away. Ought I to have shown him the papers of his brother? They were in my pocket. I raised my hand to them. But instead I called after him one of the hundreds of questions I might have put:
‘What is your profession?’
He stopped, and half-turned towards me, saying, ‘I fill notebooks, Mr Stringer.’
Chapter Thirteen
We walked fast through the woods. The darkness was drawing down, but still the heat hung heavy in the wide, tree-made tunnels. In the light of John Lambert’s warning, the woods looked different. The trees either side of us were monsters — great spiders with even their highest branches swooping right down to the ground.
‘Do you believe it now?’ I asked the wife.
‘I think there’s something in it all,’ she said.
Whether she believed it or not, she would be leaving Adenwold in the morning, I would make sure of that. One murder had happened and another was coming, or at least an attempt, and I would have to put myself in the way of it. It struck me again that I ought to get the Chief over to Adenwold first thing in the morning. I knew he was generally in the office of a Saturday.
We came out of the trees and we were at Mervyn’s set-up, which was more than ever like the scene of an explosion in the woods. As far as I could make out, the lad had gone, and taken all the dead rabbits with him. We walked on, and struck the railway track, which we followed a little way, walking under the telegraph wires. The wife was ahead of me, stumbling now and then on the track ballast.
‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘we’re heading the wrong way.’
But she’d come to a stop in any case. The wires from the pole before us were down, and lay by the side of the tracks, all forlorn like a dead octopus. They ran on as normal from the next pole along, but of course one break was all that was needed.
Was this to prepare the way for the killers?
Or were they already in the village?
This doing would cut off the station’s telegraph office — very likely the only one in the village — from all points west, and it was odds-on the line would be cut the other way, too. How could I contact the Chief now, short of taking a train out in the morning? But if I did that, I would miss the ones coming in. And would the trains run? It was possible to operate a branch line without telegraphic connections, but special arrangements had to be put in hand.
The wife stood silent, with arms folded as she kicked at one of the stray wires. She said, ‘They have ordnance maps of the whole country-side, you know — the travelling agents, I mean. They’re picked up from time to time, but it’s all hushed up.’