Death on a Branch Line Read Online Free PDF Page A

He looked up at me and, indicating the bread left on my desk, said, ‘Mind if I …?’
    ‘Not a bit,’ I said, and he rolled a pellet of bread, and pitched it over towards the bird.
    ‘You’ve fed her before,’ said Hugh Lambert, as the bird took the bread. ‘She wouldn’t be there otherwise.’
    ‘She?’
    Lambert nodded.
    ‘A male sparrow has a grey crest.’
    ‘Well, you wouldn’t necessarily know,’ I said. ‘I mean, anything that comes in here ends up more or less black. There’s a robin that pitches up pretty regularly. He stands there and sort of demands to be fed … Makes me laugh – the sheer brass neck of it.’
    ‘The robin is the most English of birds,’ Lambert said in a dreamy sort of voice.
    Was this a good thing or bad as far as he was concerned? After all, it was England that would shortly be hanging him. He threw another bit of bread for the sparrow.
    ‘I saw a robin once at line-side,’ I said. ‘He was sitting on a ‘WHISTLE’ board.’
    ‘And was he whistling?’ asked Lambert, half-turning towards me.
    ‘He was.’
    Lambert grinned. In fact, it was more like a short laugh, and it showed pluck to laugh in his situation.
    ‘It was by Grosmont,’ I said. ‘Up on the moors yonder.’
    A beat of silence. Lambert threw another pellet.
    ‘You were with the railway up there?’
    ‘Porter,’ I said. ‘That’s how I got my start.’
    ‘Are you keen on railways per se ? Or is it just a job for you?’
    Perhaps this was his way of taking his mind off what was coming … by examining the minds of others? But before I could reply, he said:
    ‘My brother reads timetables for amusement. Can you beat that?’
    ‘Well, I’m a bit that way myself,’ I said, ‘or was as a lad, anyhow.’
    ‘I always liked the adverts in the Bradshaw,’ he said, and it was very worrying to hear him speak as if he was already dead.
    ‘Eux–e–sis Shaving Cream,’ I said, ‘and then the picture of the two men shaving: ‘“Eux–e–sis versus Soap”, and the man using soap is bleeding half to death.’
    I ought not to have used that last word, of course, but Lambert gave a grin, before saying, ‘I always liked the adverts for hotels at the back – to know that all those places would be happy to accommodate you. I found that very welcoming. You were at Grosmont, you say?’
    ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘ Your part of the world.’
    I wanted to get onto him. I felt I ought to give him a chance to say something because I had the notion that he wanted to speak up. He turned towards me but kept silence.
    I said, ‘Adenwold’s a pretty spot, I believe.’
    ‘Just now,’ he said, eyeing me levelly, ‘the hedges will be full of thrushes.’
    I nodded once.
    ‘Skullcap, tufted vetch, alder,’ he continued, in a tone now severe. His face was black and white: white skin, black eyes, black beard. His clothes were worn anyhow, but still with a rightness about them.
    ‘Have you been there?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t believe so,’ I replied, slowly.
    ‘Do you mean to go?’
    I looked towards the doorway, but the sparrow had made off. I was on the point of replying to Hugh Lambert when he asked, with great emphasis, ‘Could you see your way clear to going?’
    My boots creaked, and the wooden floor also creaked in theunbreathable heat as I moved towards the police office door. The three guards were talking by the platform edge. A high screeching of wheel flange on rail came from some far-off platform, and a single green locomotive was running light through the station, going fast and seeming to enjoy its freedom, like a child running home from school. I pushed the door until it was on the jar. I turned to Hugh Lambert.
    ‘What’s at Adenwold?’
    ‘My brother John,’ he said.
    ‘Will he not come up to Durham to see you?’
    Lambert shook his head, shook his hair. I supposed it was the privilege of the condemned man to be allowed to grow it.
    ‘My brother is a very intelligent man,’ he