Free Death on a Branch Line by Andrew Martin Page B

all this?’
    ‘Keeps the rabbits cold,’ he said.
    ‘It’s an old mackintosh, I suppose?’ put in the wife.
    Mervyn shook his head.
    ‘Cover for an invalid mattress,’ he said. ‘At least that’s what me mam says.’
    ‘Where d’you find it?’
    ‘In t’ wood. Soon as I saw it, I knew it’d come in.’
    ‘It’s a clever use of it,’ said the wife.
    ‘It does ,’ said Mervyn in a modest sort of way.
    He told us that the village carter, a fellow called Hamer, would give him tuppence for each rabbit and then sell them on to the butcher in East Adenwold. There was no butcher in Adenwold itself.
    ‘Why do you have a fire going, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.
    ‘In case I pull summat out o’ there,’ he replied, indicating the river.
    ‘You can take a fish by hand?’
    ‘At odd times, aye.’
    He was stuffing the rabbits into the sacking.
    The wife asked, ‘Have you ever been to Scarborough, Mervyn?’
    ‘I ’ave not.’
    ‘It’s only an hour’s train ride,’ I said.
    ‘I don’t ’old wi’ t’ railway.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘It did for all t’ farms round ’ere.’
    Railways were bad for farms. They brought cheap food from abroad.
    ‘There’d be no lemons here without the railway,’ I said.
    ‘Well then,’ said Mervyn, ‘I don’t like lemons.’
    The wife asked him: ‘Do you never use the railway to get about?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘I just walk over t’ fields.’
    ‘It sounds a very nice way to travel, I’m sure,’ said the wife.
    ‘Aye,’ said Mervyn, ‘it is.’
    I asked him: ‘Mervyn, who were the villagers beating on the rabbit shoot? When Sir George was shot, I mean.’
    ‘I’ve no notion,’ he said, eyeing me.
    I nodded, saying, ‘Where’s the Hall from here, Mervyn?’
    And he stood pointing.

Chapter Twelve
    ‘And now?’ I asked the wife, as we walked fast through the woods.
    The boy’s talk of the murder had flicked her imagination. I could tell that by her silence.
    ‘We’re not going to call , you know,’ said the wife.
    We were not in the habit of leaving cards. We did not have any cards to leave . If I became a solicitor then we would do.
    ‘We’ll just have a peep at the place,’ I said.
    We were moving now along a wider track. There seemed a whole roadway of tracks in the woods, with great junctions under the branches but never any people.
    We came to an edge of the trees, and there was the Hall. There were seas of corn to left and right, and pasture directly before it, across which two telegraph wires were carried towards the house by a line of poles that seemed to originate in the woods. A long drive ran through the pasture and ended bang at the front door. It was dead straight but went up and down a good deal, like a long sheet being shaken out. The drive seemed longer than the house required. It was only a moderate-sized mansion, but made up for that in handsomeness.
    ‘It’s not so big that you couldn’t imagine living in it,’ I said, but the wife made no answer. Looking at the house, she was off in her own world.
    In the pasture stood a couple of dozen oak trees, set widely apart. Each looked like a green planet, and each had a white wooden railing around its base as if to say: this tree is special, not like that common lot in the woods. The cattle were all lying down and swishing their tails, worn out after their day of great heat, butthe house stood proudly. To the left side of it from our point of view stood a group of buildings like something crossed between churches and farm buildings. As we looked on, a man moved from behind one of the great trees. He had on a light white suit and seemed – even from two hundred yards’ distance – to be under some great strain. He held a book under his arm.
    ‘What’s he about?’ asked the wife.
    ‘It’s him ,’ I said, as the white-suited man approached.
    As he moved closer, I saw that he wore thin wire spectacles, also that the book he held was a Bradshaw, so that I immediately thought