But as it turned out, we shook Cooper off with no bother at all.
At just gone ten, he hailed us from behind.
‘Hold on there,’ he shouted. ‘I’m off behind a tree.’
He stepped away from the path a little and made water as I heard the first spots of rain on the leaves overhead; he’d seemed to bring it on by pissing. As Cooper stepped away from the path I took off my cap, which was prickling my head. The wife leant against a tree up ahead, kicking the trunk with her boot-heel.
The rhythm of her kicking was gradually drowned out by that of the 10.05, which was upon us a moment later. It had not stopped at the station but unlike the train of the night before, was coming on at a moderate pace, as though picking its way through the trees.
‘Look out there!’ the wife suddenly yelled, and Cooper stepped out from behind his tree with his hands on his fly buttons.
‘There’s a man just leapt up onto that train,’ said the wife. ‘I believe it was John Lambert.’
She’d had the same view of the train as I’d had, and no such event had occurred, but Cooper was flying again, white coat-tails streaming behind him. He could just about keep up with the high coaches, but he measured his pace until he was level with the guard’s van, which offered hand-holds. The guard was leaning out and looking down at him as he ran, as though admiring an athletic prodigy. But Cooper was screaming at the guard to stand back so that he could make his leap, and just as the train was picking up its pace, he did so.
It was a good leap, and he gained the handholds without difficulty, but one of his legs swung out, and clattered into a stout-looking tree branch. The guard pulled him into the van a moment later, and the train retreated from view, leaving great peacefulness and freedom, and the sound of dripping rain.
I eyed the wife.
‘Well, you might have thought you saw something,’ I said. ‘It might have been an honest mistake.’
‘I don’t think you’d have any difficulty persuading Usher that a woman had made a mistake,’ she said.
The rain came on, making the sound of many small creeping animals.
‘What now?’ I said.
‘Mervyn?’ she said.
I nodded: ‘His place in the woods — the set-up.’
We found the clearing, and the boy was there, amid the river sound, the fallen trees and the rusting foresters’ machinery. Raindrops came down at intervals, widely spaced, and the boy was placing what looked like small sticks on a fire. He stepped back from the flames as we came up. His shotgun lay on the ground, with the bill-hook hard by.
He wore breeches, and a coat that looked like moleskin. His head seemed small under the mass of his hair. Any man of middle years would have given worlds for hair like that. He said nothing as we approached.
‘Caught a fish, Mervyn?’ I enquired, for he’d given that as the reason for his fires.
‘I en’t,’ he said.
‘Then what are you burning?’
The wife hung back; Mervyn Handley looked at the fire, and I could see very well what he was about. He was trying to work himself up to a lie, but he could not do it.
‘Bones,’ he said.
The white sticks in the flames were bones.
‘Dead birds if you ask me,’ I said, looking into the flames, ‘and disappearing fast.’
I looked at Mervyn, and he gave a brief nod before looking away.
‘Pheasant?’ I said.
‘Moorhen,’ said Mervyn. ‘Moorhen and kestrel.’
‘Bagged ’em with that, did you?’ I said, with a glance at the shotgun.
‘I wouldn’t shoot a kestrel,’ he said. ‘ Couldn’t.’
‘Too fast, I suppose,’ I said, ‘and they fly too high?’
‘Not that one,’ said Mervyn, nodding down at the flames, which had now all-but consumed the bones. ‘’Alf-dead to begin with, he were.’
‘What happened, Mervyn?’ put in the wife.
‘Kestrel attacked the moorhen… Never would’ve done it if he hadn’t been half-starved… Pair of ’em scrapped in air, then they come down together like a stone.’
The kestrel was ‘he’; the moorhen ‘it’.
‘As they fought, they’d forgotten to fly,’ said the wife.
‘That’s it,’ said Mervyn, looking at her.
‘And you kept the bones,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ said Mervyn.
‘… Until now, anyhow,’ I said, and he made no answer to that. ‘Why until now?’ I asked, after a beat of silence.
‘Wanted shot of ’em,’ he said, moving his hair away from his eyes.
There came another fast, scuffling sound from the woods, and Mervyn Handley crouched down and took up his shotgun. I found myself taking a step back. He was armed, I was not. And what sort of kid was this anyway? The scuffling sound came again, louder this time. A rabbit flew into the clearing, and it was running for its life even before Mervyn levelled the rifle, took aim and blasted. A great flash of flame came from the gun; the rabbit somersaulted twice in the air and lay still. But Handley made no move towards it. Instead, he continued to eye me directly and levelly, as if to say, ‘ Now look.’
‘What do you know about the killing of Sir George, Mervyn?’ I asked him, as something scuttled in terror through the trees.
‘Nowt,’ he replied, and I was certain that I had finally driven him to a lie.
We walked back fast from the woods, without quite knowing why. The rain had stopped, and we came by the cricket pitch just as it was lit by a flash of sun. We gained the second green, and approached the hedge-tunnel, but we had to wait as the second charabanc of the week-end came into view. It contained the coppers from Scarborough. Most of them smoked, as did the motor, which was driven by a man who looked to be concentrating harder than he ought.
We walked on up the hedge-tunnel and past the station, which was silent and empty.
‘Who needs trains when a motor’s available?’ asked the wife, and I wondered whether it would ever come that there were road police to go alongside the railway force.
The Angel was fairly bustling, and as I stepped towards the bar — where Mr Handley was serving — I heard one fellow say, ‘Will’s been on cracking form in the nets,’ and realised that at least one cricket team was in, even though nobody had yet put on their whites. I also spied Woodcock and the signalman in the corner. Both wore rough suits, and twisted greasy neckers, and both might have been waiting to appear before the magistrates at any police court in the country. Of course, there was no question of me seeing Woodcock without him seeing me and he lifted up his glass in a sarcastic sort of way, saying, ‘Journalist!’
Of the Reverend Martin Ridley there was no sign, even though I had the idea that he was the keenest cricketer of the lot. He would no doubt be preparing for the game by drinking wine of a better vintage than was offered by The Angel.
The wife was craning to see all around the bar. She wanted to find Mrs Handley, I knew, and to talk to her about Mervyn.
‘Rain’s holding off, boys,’ said one of the cricketers, and his remark for some reason made me feel anxious. I put my hand in my inside pocket, and brought out the letters I’d taken from the Hall. I looked each one over quickly, before passing it on to the wife. They were written by Hugh Lambert, either to the man Paul, or to John Lambert. They’d been sent from London hotels or a house in Bayswater, London W. The dates were 1907 and 1908 — well in advance of the murder. They were about poems and parties; and some were about nature and country matters. As I was reading, I heard the wife say, ‘These are some of Hugh Lambert’s letters, Mrs Handley. Jim borrowed them from the Hall.’
The wife passed a couple of the letters across to Mrs Handley, who looked them over for a while. Then she handed the bundle back to Lydia, lifted the bar flap and moved towards the front door of the pub, saying, ‘I’ve something to show you.’
She came back a minute later, pushing her way through the cricketers, and holding a paper — another letter by the looks of it. She passed it first to Lydia, who read it over quickly before handing it to me. Well, after all the Mayfair hotels the address did come as a shock, for this dated from the time after his arrest for murder: ‘His Majesty’s Prison Wandsworth, Heathfield Road, London S.’ The letter was addressed to Mrs Handley. It began with thanks for a letter of hers, and ‘all the news of The Angel’. Hugh Lambert then fell to talking about the prison: There is a warder here called Parkhurst, which causes me to wonder whether there is a warder in Parkhurst Prison called Wandsworth. The man seems doubly displaced because he also bears a remarkably close resemblance to Dawlish, the chaplain at my old college. But he is much nicer than Dawlish. As you can already tell, this place is doing peculiar things to my mind, but I am otherwise perfectly content. Everything is wonderfully concentrated, and you have the whole world here in its distilled essence. The sparrows in the yard do duty for the Adenwold country-side; a cigarette after supper (or ‘tea’) is an evening in the bar of the Ritz, and as for ‘prisoners’ association’ — well, that’s a chapter from a Dickens novel. Please send my best regards to your husband, and tell Mervyn to look for a robin’s nest in the old plum tree in the graveyard. There are two holes in the trunk at the start of the branches. When I saw it last, the north-facing one was occupied by the family of robins; the other (west facing) was occupied by a family of flycatchers, and the robin parents fed the flycatchers and vice versa, which I found charming. Enclosed are two sketches for Mervyn. The first is a robin and a flycatcher side by side, the second (as I do hope you can tell) is of a mole. I don’t know why. Perhaps, in my present situation, I should turn mole. Do tell Mervyn, by the way, that if a mole were the size of a man he would create a tunnel his own width and thirty-seven miles long after a typical night’s work.