I thought: if I had replied to Smith earlier he might still be alive.
Rose took out his pipe, sneezed, and said: 'Brilliant innings by Bosanquet yesterday.' Then I heard the Governor walking up, or rather I heard the sound of his cough. He asked me to come down from Twenty-Nine, and I followed him out over the glittering tracks, with Rose and Vincent no doubt staring after us.
There was a newspaper under his arm, and he passed it to me folded in such a way that I had a choice of two articles: 'NEW AMBASSADOR TO AMERICA', I read, 'CORDIAL SPEECHES' – that was the wrong one. The other was under a headline reading, 'IN THE CORONERS' COURTS'. 'In the Camden Court,' I read, 'Mr Laurence Drew conducted an enquiry with reference to the death by fire in his apartment of Mr Rowland Hubert Smith, aged thirty-nine, of Grenville Mansions, Dartmouth Park…'
So there were no letters after his name, and here was the proof. I continued to read: Mr George Collins, a doorkeeper, said that he had noticed smoke pouring into the lobby at 7 p.m. on Friday 11th of December. On rushing upstairs he determined that the smoke was coming from the apartment of Mr Smith, which was to the rear of the building on the lower floor, but the smoke was too dense and the heat too great for him to enter. After raising the alarm within the building, Mr Collins was able swiftly to alert the fire brigade at Kentish Town, the apartment block being equipped with a telephone. The brigade turned out shortly after, at 7.30 p.m., and they succeeded in dousing the flames at 8.30 p.m., having run their hoses into the garden of the apartments and directed them through the windows of the flat. Mr Smith was found on the remains of his bed, horribly burnt, and quite dead. Mr Collins stated that he had spoken a few words with the deceased on his arrival at the flat from his business. He had said that he was tired and in need of a good rest, but otherwise seemed to be in the best of spirits. Mr Collins also stated that Mr Smith was a prodigious smoker of cigarettes. He had never seen him without one in his hand. The coroner conjectured that he had lain down on his bed for a brief rest with a cigarette still in his hand, and that this had sadly caused the bed to catch alight. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.
When I'd finished the article, I told the Governor of the letter I'd received and the one I'd posted two days later, which Smith would have received on the day of his death.
He nodded for a while, and said, "The police think the fire might have had a bit of help.' 'A bit of help from what?'
The Governor took a box of cigars from his pocket. 'A can of paraffin.' 'That's not in the paper.' 'They don't let on that they know that kind of thing. He was done in' he said, taking a cigar from the box. 'Will there be a police investigation?' 'There will if I can help it' he said.
We strolled over the barrow boards, further away from Twenty-Nine. We both looked about to see whether Vincent and Rose were watching us, but Rose had gone underneath and Vincent was at his fire. There were engines coming off-shed all about us, and I had the sensation of many other men turning around on their footplates to keep me in view for as long as possible.
'Smith told me he believed Henry Taylor was murdered,' said the Governor. He lit the cigar, and neither one of us spoke for quite a while. 'He had the idea that you were a bright spark' he said, blowing smoke.
'I was sent here to be his eyes and ears,' I said quite suddenly. The Governor nodded once. 'Why didn't he tell me that's what he was about?' I said. 'I expect… Because then you would have known.'
Crook the gatekeeper was prowling past us. The Governor smoked for a little while longer, looking across to Twenty-Nine, which was doing the same. 'As from this morning,' he said, 'Vincent is firing on the half-link. I couldn't keep him off any longer.'
'Why were you keeping him off to begin with, Mr Nightingale?'
'Because I didn't like him; I was obliged to give him a few firing turns, but I wanted him in the shed as much as possible where I could watch him.' 'He's Hunt's nephew, isn't he?'
The Governor nodded. 'But Taylor and Mike were brought on by myself – well, it was Mr Smith's doing, really. He wanted to change the way things went on here, with any engine man thinking he could get a start for his own grandmother if he wanted. We were worried over what happened to Taylor, and told the investigators so, although we could never prove anything. But we also told them we were set on not going back to how things were. Any new lad corning in would have to be from outside, otherwise… well, they'd have won the day, wouldn't they?' 'So that's how I got my start.' 'I expect that now you know, it all seems a bit heartless,' said the Governor after a while. 'I was to be a sort of spy.'
'I was under instructions to watch out for you on-shed,' he said, 'but also to let you see as much as possible of the half-link off-shed, where their tongues might be a bit looser, so that meant getting you on a few trips with them. I knew Mr Smith had it in mind to quiz you, and when Mike got bashed he said it was going to be done directly, but I don't suppose he had the time until he came to write you that note.'
'How could Mr Smith control so much here, Mr Nightingale, after he'd left the South Western?'
'It was his aim always to come back. Our lot were only lending him to the Necropolis, so to speak.' 'Why exactly is Mr Hunt on the half-link?' The Governor drew on his cigar.
'Because he's a fucking socialist, and you've always got to watch out for those fellows.' He was smoking and smiling at the same time, which made a strange sight. 'Hunt ran the strike here in 1901, so they cut him down to size.' 'Who's they?'
'Who's they? Rowland Smith, giving orders to the District Locomotive Superintendent, with a little help from myself, I don't mind admitting.'
He gave me time to let all this sensational stuff sink in, then he said, 'Now look, the shed's not safe for you and I want you out. There's going to be a bit of a paper war over it, but I can get you a start in any station on the territory.' 'You mean I'll be back portering?' I said. 'Nothing's fixed up' he said.
One of the Atlantics came out alongside us under steam, sending out a mass of blackness. 'I'll have that bastard' said the Governor, eyeing the chimney.
Why did I not take the chance to flee? I did not want to go back to portering, but there again I could see the moving shadow coming for me, and present in my mind always was the cemetery, with the railway on hand to take me there on a one-way ride. It was better to be a porter imprisoned in a too-tight, over-decorated waistcoat than to take that trip before my time. But I now somehow knew that all these horrors had always been waiting for me, because becoming an engine man was no mere matter of book learning. Engine men, I could not deny, looked different from me, and they looked different because they had been through just such a thing as this. This was the life of London and the life of men, where threats and fears came, and they had to be stood down. 'I'd rather stick at the job' I said.
'All right' said the Governor. 'For now you can, but watch out.' He smoked, watching me for a while with a shrewd look. 'Can I go up with Rose and Vincent today?'
I thought there would be long odds against this, but the Governor just shrugged: 'Don't see what harm you can come to on a jaunt like that – the entire board of the Necropolis is going along from what I've heard. You'll need a ribbon, though.' He meant a black one. 1 can tear up some rag,' I said.
'I nearly forgot to ask' he called to me with smoke tumbling from his mouth as I set off for the rag store, 'have you got any notions about all this business?'
'No,' I called back, because it seemed the best answer at the time. 'I can't think who did for Taylor, Mike and Smith, and,' I added, 'I don't know who murdered Sir John Rickerby of the Necropolis Company either.'
Now it was the Governor's turn for a shock, and I fancied there was greyness mingled in with the redness of his face. 'Oh Christ, let's leave him out of it,' he said.