Presently, a fourth or fifth copper came up, saying: 'How about a spot of grub?' He gave me a menu chart, divided up according to different times of day. I looked up at the clock, thinking it was about six, when bread and butter and tea came to an end going by the chart, and pea soup started, but somehow it was quarter to eight, when hotpot was nearly finished; and the fan, although not turning, was quite fitted into the ceiling with the stepladder below it, and I knew then that I must have been asleep. Manchester had been so large, and now it was so smalclass="underline" just this police station and the question of the fan.
The pea soup was brought on a tray, with suet pudding and syrup and half a pint of tea. As I started to eat it my bandage, which I had tried to fix, came unwound again and dropped into the soup, so it became green, but it became sticky too, so that when I wound it back – which everybody in the copper shop saw me do – it stayed put.
The copper who came to collect the pots when I'd finished had a sideways sloping face, and teeth going backwards. I reminded him that I had a statement to make, and he said, with eyes to the floor: 'Yes, you've taken a funny turn, but we mean to get it down.'
But I did not believe him because he wouldn't look at me.
He finally took me into one of the writing rooms, using more pushing and shoving than I cared for. I said, 'I've had a fair wait, you know,' and he said, 'Well, we wanted to take a look at you for a while.'
'Why?'
'You seemed a bit steamed up… bit of a beer smell coming off you…'
He was looking away all the time, so there was no telling if this was the real reason.
'I have been running for miles,' I said. 'So I have taken a glass of beer.'
The policeman nodded.
More water came from somewhere, so I drank it. 'You boys must have had me down as loony,' I said, 'a loafer.' I knew you ought not to call policemen 'boys'. It was asking for trouble.
The policeman smiled very uncertainly while producing a pen and a ledger from the drawer in the desk. He said: 'All right now, you've come here on the train from Switzerland but you don't even have a coat…'
It was a long statement, starting with an explanation of the difference between Switzerland and Little Switzerland, which I became better at as I went along. I told the policeman all, and he wrote it down. Well, mostly. I told him about the stone on the line, and my notions concerning it, including that it could have been the first attempt by the runner of today to get Lowther, but even as I spoke, I remembered that nobody could've known Lowther would be on the train. I myself had seen him decide to get on it.
The copper came in with: 'Why would a fellow wreck a whole train on the off-chance of doing for one man on it?'
That was my question too, but I said: 'Well, it has been known.'
'When has it?'
I thought of all the Railway Magazines I'd ever read, all the reports of smashes and inquiries but nothing came of it.
'I couldn't say for certain' I said, feeling that this was throwing away all the work I'd put in to make him think I was of strong mind.
'What happened today' said the policeman (and I knew that he was thinking 'If it happened'), 'might very well have started out as an argument over a fare. Ticket inspecting can be a dangerous line to be in, you know.'
Yes, I wanted to say: if you were canned, or just the violent sort, you might crown a ticket inspector if your blood was up. But you wouldn't follow him on his private Saturday afternoon jaunts, when he was minding his business and not wearing his gold, and do him then.
The policeman ended by saying he'd be sending a letter to Hebden Bridge Police, and writing me out a chit that would see me from Manchester Victoria station back to Halifax.
Well, he had to get out of it all somehow.
When I walked out of the police station, Manchester was all aglow in the hot, soft darkness, and the river air was spreading, yet somehow I was feeling stronger. To stand at shoulder height like the statues in the streets would be nothing. As I approached the booking office with my chit, I wondered whether I needed to explain how I had come by it, or did they see a hundred roughy reds a day in possession of police 'specials'? Another fancy came to me as I approached the booking office: If the murder of Lowther was not to do with one ticket, it might very likely be to do with hundreds. George Ogden had told me tickets had gone missing. And George Ogden was on the fly.
Chapter Eighteen
When I came half stumbling through the door of 21 Back Hill Street, the wife was in the process of walking across the parlour, and my coat was lying on the sofa looking as though it was taking a rest in my place. I put it onto the floor and lay down.
'Are you all right?' she said, but she did not kiss me and continued on her way to the scullery. 'A man of your description was seen flying through Hebden Bridge,' she called out, while moving pots within the scullery, 'then leaping on a train to Manchester… Without a ticket, the booking clerk said.'
'If you knew I was going towards Manchester,' I called back from the sofa, 'why didn't you tell the police? Then they could have had men waiting.'
The movement from the kitchen stopped for a second at this, but soon started up again. The Erasmic Soap and the good towel were laid out for me next to the tub, and the tub was near the open window, which was the summer equivalent of in front of the fire. The first gas lamp of Hill Street gave a glow on the bath when set just there, and it was my favourite place for reading. But I was so tired that it seemed a long way from sofa to tub. There was a letter for George Ogden on the mantelshelf.
'So I knew where you'd gone,' the wife continued, walking back into the parlour, 'but I didn't know how you'd get back without your pocket book.' The wife picked the coat up from the floor and put it on the hook behind the door. Her face was very brown from the sun; her eyes darker, hair lighter.
The wife said cocoa was waiting in the stove cup – the tin cup – and that it 'ought to be just about right', which meant I was to fetch it from the stove because it would be too hot for her hands. When I walked into the kitchen there was food set on the table: a boiled egg, a pork pie, a parkin, a bowl of peach halves in syrup. The wife sat down opposite, watching me start on the egg, which meant she had something to say. Water was steaming in the boiler.
'Do you want to know what happened?' I said, crossly.
'A man suffered an injury at the Crags,' she said, 'and you chased another man to Manchester.'
'The fellow that died,' I said, 'was Martin Lowther, a ticket inspector who was on the excursion when we hit the stone. And I didn't chase "a man", I chased the wrecker.' But I was starting to doubt it once again.
'Well,' the wife said presently, 'did you catch the man?'
'You've asked at last,' I said.
She sighed. 'Are you not going to eat your peach halves?' she said.
'No,' I said. 'No, I did not catch him, and, no, I do not mean to eat my peach halves. I do not care for them. When you've been hard at it, trying to catch a murderer, you don't want fruit.'
'What do you want?'
'A bottle of beer.'
She stood up and took the peach halves away to the sink. She was still wearing the holiday dress, but the holiday was over. She turned around and looked at me for a little while longer.
'I daresay,' I said, 'from your look, that you think when a fellow sees murder done, he should just let the killer stroll off.'