Murder At Deviation Junction Read Free

never missed. I led him along
to the front, and there stood an M1 Class 4-4-0. 'Outside steam chest - good
runner,' I said to Harry, although of course that went over his head. 'It's
eeeeenormous,' he said, which is what he almost always said. He then removed
his mitten, threw it down on to the snowy platform, and there in his palm was a
tiny tin engine.
        'I
got this today,' he said. 'I keep it in my hand.'
        'Where
did you get it from?'
        'Monster
lucky tub,' he said.
        'Which
shop?'
        'Don't
know.'
        'It's
a bobby-dazzler, that is,' I said.
        I was
glad he'd fished a locomotive out of the bran tub, even if he ought not to be
getting presents so close to Christmas. I fancied Harry might make an engineman
one day - succeed where I'd failed. But the wife wanted him educated to the
hilt, make an intellect of him. Even at a little under four years old, she
swore he had all the makings.
        Harry
was coughing again, so I whisked him back along the platform to where the wife
waited, and we climbed up. The steam heat was working in the carriage, but
Harry still coughed. He was on the mend from his latest bad go, but he had a
weak chest: at age two he'd had pneumonia. Three months in the York Infirmary,
pulse at a fever rate for days on end. Our sick club didn't cover the cost, and
most of our savings were gone.
        We
settled ourselves in an empty compartment, and I took out from my pocket the Middlesbrough Gazette for Monday 13 December 1909. A succession of
polar lows were moving south in an Arctic airstream. There had been much
freezing of water taps and gas mains, and now widespread snow was forecast for
the district.
        The
train was being quickly boarded: it was the main service of the evening down
the coast to Whitby. You could go by the country way, but I wanted to see the
sea. People clattered along the corridor, carrying snow on their shoulders,
shouting about the weather: 'Bad weather for thin boots, this is!'
        Harry
settled eventually, and the wife took out her library book - something on the
women's movement, probably with a dash of religion. She always had something
like that on the go.
        The
whistle blew and we were fast away. A moment later, a man and a woman walked
into the compartment, and Harry immediately fell to staring at them, which I
couldn't stop without drawing attention to the fact that he was doing it.
        They
were both small. The woman carried a big basket stuffed with parcels. As she
pulled the white fur mantle off her shoulders, I caught sight of Lydia's
flashing eye. It meant this was the fashionable kind of mantle, worthy of notice.
The woman sat down quickly, but took a long time settling herself. The man wore
wire- rimmed spectacles, a flat, snow-topped sporting cap, black suit and a
green topcoat of decent quality. The cap didn't belong, for he did not look the
sporting type.
        He
carried a valise and a canvas case about a foot and a half square. He looked
twice at the notice on the string rack over the seats: 'Light articles only'.
He took off his specs and blew on them, as though thinking about that sign.
Then he stowed the case on the rack anyway. He put his topcoat up there, and
whipped off the cap; he was bald, except for a line of hair that ran round the
perimeter of his scalp. It was just a memory of hair, marking the boundary of
where the stuff had been. His nose was queer as well. It was an arrow, coming
out sharply and going in again quite as fast. It was just right for supporting
his specs, though.
        Sitting
down, he gave me a quick nod, which made his red face turn redder still.
        As we
rocked away from Middlesbrough station he took some papers from the valise and
began leafing through them at a great rate, while occasionally making jottings
in a notebook. I looked out of the window. The iron district was to my left,
the mighty furnaces burning under the snow. The woman was