Read Online Death on a Branch Line by Andrew Martin - Free Book Online Page B

crossed, the clasp on the man’s bag gave way, and the goods inside spilled out onto the road. Four heavy-looking items in green cloth bags tumbled down, and a quantity of papers floated up and a little way away in the hot evening air. The wife closed on the man, and I was a little jealous of him for the speed with which she came to his aid. She almost knelt in the road to help collect up the papers. By the time I was level with them, everything was back in the bag.
    ‘You for The Angel?’ I asked, lifting my sporting cap.
    ‘I’m for the inn , anyhow,’ said the man.
    His accent was London.
    ‘It’s called The Angel,’ I said.
    The man removed his bowler to mop his brow. His hair was divided perfectly into two halves from neck to forehead as though he was just up from a swim.
    ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ said the wife.
    ‘Well, it is extremely oppressive,’ said the man, before remembering himself and adding, ‘but yes, it is lovely.’
    There was something artificial about his speech, as though he wanted to be better than he was.
    I said, ‘You’ve come up from …?’
    ‘Oh you know,’ he said, ‘London way … Norwood area,’ and then, in a kind of panic, he looked up at the sky, saying, ‘Not a cloud!’
    He had us down as people who could be fobbed off with talk of the weather. He nodded to us, turned on his heel, and marched on, but after a second he stopped again, and called to me: ‘I say, you ain’t Franklin, by any chance, are you?’
    ‘Name’s Stringer,’ I called up to him, ‘Jim Stringer.’
    He nodded and turned on his heel. He had not given out his own name. I ought not to have given him mine. Lydia stood next to me,and close enough for me to know that our late argument was at an end.
    ‘Why did you not say you were a policeman?’ she asked, when the man was out of earshot.
    ‘I don’t want him to bolt,’ I said.
    ‘You think he’s here to make mischief for this John Lambert?’
    ‘Well, he’s not here for a ramble in the woods, is he?’
    ‘I don’t suppose you’ve found out where this man Lambert is?’
    ‘He’s at the Hall.’
    ‘Which way is that?’
    ‘Don’t know just yet.’
    ‘Why not ask someone?’
    I looked at my silver watch: quarter to nine.
    ‘I don’t know who to trust. You don’t know who might be in with the bad blokes.’
    Lydia was grinning at me. I might almost have thought she’d taken a drink at The Angel, only she never touched a drop.
    ‘Fairly drowning in mysteries, aren’t we?’ she said.
    ‘What’s up?’ I said.
    ‘ Him ,’ she said, taking hold of my sleeve, and pointing up the road after the clerk.
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what about him?’
    ‘The papers he’s just dropped,’ she said. ‘Half were quite blank, and half were written in German.’
    ‘ German? ’
    ‘Your face, Jim Stringer,’ she said, grinning.

Chapter Eleven
    We were taking a turn through the woods, the wife occasionally giving a glance at my cap, and frowning. I had half an eye out for the Hall, but I was above all trying to develop a plan.
    The low sun seemed to track us through the trees, always keeping a wary distance. I revolved in my mind the events of the evening, while the wife talked fast. She was in good spirits in spite of my cap, and she picked wildflowers as she walked. She’d fallen into conversation with Mrs Handley, the landlady at The Angel, and taken a liking to her. ‘She’s a feminist, if she but knew it,’ Lydia said. ‘She’s perfectly well aware that she ought not to do as much work as she does, but she says that her mind runs on so if she doesn’t, and she’d rather have the work than the worry.’
    ‘Why was she crying in the garden?’
    ‘I’m sure that was on account of the work,’ said the wife.
    ‘Not the worry , you don’t suppose?’
    She gave me a quick glance, but made no answer.
    The wife had also been galvanised by a quick cold bath, and a glass of Mrs Handley’s lemonade. ‘It’s nectar, Jim,’