End of the Line - short story-TPL Read online

  For a moment there was a silence as if this simple rendition had touched three hearts hard as leather, for this trio in their differing ways were well inured to the suffering of humanity at large.

  They served the law and the law takes no prisoners.

  ‘I read that one as well,’ said Mulholland, and the remark brought them all back to business.

  ‘The man kept meticulous account of his depredations,’ McLevy declared. ‘All his victims. Just referred to by initials mostly. Newspaper clippings as well. Two mysterious deaths. Birmingham. Manchester.’

  ‘Women of course,’ added Mulholland, ‘of a certain age. Respectable. ‘

  ‘Aye,’ McLevy scowled at his constable, ‘your lusty widow had a narrow escape.’

  ‘She’s not my lusty widow!’

  Queen Victoria frowned. Tempers were fraying.

  ‘Away and hunt out that address for me, constable,’ ordered McLevy, ‘and we’ll be on our way.’

  The tone was in no way meant to mollify, and an indignant Mulholland marched out to do his duty.

  Roach was never too unhappy when these two were at odds; normally they were thick as thieves and their superior the target for devious machinations. He looked at the letter again.

  ‘I could not bear the shame should my father find out what I have done . . .’ he read once more. ‘A sad tale such as you might find in a novel, eh?’

  McLevy thought he might as well try to change what was proving to be an exasperating subject.

  ‘Whit about your own literary dilemma, sir? The reading society – what is your decision?’

  A strange expression crossed over Roach’s face.

  ‘The offer was withdrawn,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The women spoke together last night and some felt that the . . . advent of a man might . . . upset the balance.’

  The inspector let out a loud, jarring laugh, and the semblance of a wintry smile appeared on the lieutenant’s countenance as he twitched his jaw.

  Then there was a long, sober silence.

  ‘So where do you go from here, James?’

  ‘Back to the beginning sir,’ answered McLevy. ‘All the way. Back to the beginning.’

  * * *

  Once more a sugar biscuit was dipped into tea, once more the soggy mess disappeared into a gaping maw.

  Mulholland sighed. It had been his idea to bring the gift; old ladies were, in his experience, notoriously sweet-toothed. What he had not anticipated however was that his inspector would commandeer the offering and proceed to stuff his face.

  ‘Very nice,’ said McLevy and licked his lips. ‘Mind you, I’m more of a coffee hand.’

  ‘I’m afeart we don’t do coffee,’ Jenny Dunlop observed in her most genteel tones.

  ‘Too foreign,’ Margaret commented wryly.

  They were all sitting in the small room which the old ladies shared. Two single beds, each in a recess, indicated it was both living and sleeping space, and the whole had a Spartan, monastic quality.

  ‘You keep it fine and neat here,’ Mulholland remarked as he glanced round. ‘My Aunt Katy always says that a tidy room betokens a Christian mind.’

  ‘We don’t cleave to possessions,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Just as well.’ Margaret’s lip twisted in a mordant smile. ‘Since we don’t have an option. Ye need money for possessions.’

  ‘Shared, this fifteen years,’ the other nodded.

  ‘Thick and thin.’ Margaret smiled almost fondly at Jenny, who often reminded her of a frugal wee sparrow.

  McLevy’s own domicile was like a midden, with halfpenny books, forensic papers, scientific journals and the detritus of bachelor existence scattered right left and centre. If this signified his mental state it was small wonder he needed another sugar biscuit.

  The inspector munched once more and, thus fortified, put forward a request.

  ‘The night of the murder. If you might relate events. From the very beginning?’

  ‘We’ve already told!’ replied Jenny.

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘The inspector likes a story,’ Mulholland said with no little trace of irony. In truth he did not know why they had returned to the cleaners unless it was one of McLevy’s slices of instinct. He also had the feeling that something recent had lodged in that strange morass of a mind and, as usual, it would only be revealed in the fullness of time.

  He often felt that there were in fact, two James McLevys. One, the belligerent, sardonic, wild-humoured individual, and the other a deeper, questing entity that Mulholland glimpsed only too rarely.

  While the constable had thus been wool-gathering, the old ladies had launched into their tale and so he tuned in just as they were approaching the site of murder.

  Margaret was in full flow.

  ‘Then Jenny saw a big black rodent and let out a hellish screech—’

  ‘I did. I don’t like rats,’ interrupted the other.

  ‘And I said Mister Pettigrew would see it far enough, and then—’

  ‘And then ye said, That’s funny!’

  Margaret stopped. ‘You’re right, Jenny,’ she said slowly. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Whit was funny?’ McLevy encouraged softly.

  ‘Nothing, I’m sure, but . . . the man was like clockwork.’

  A look passed between the two policemen before Mulholland leant in with an equally gentle enquiry.

  ‘Nothing, I’m sure, Margaret – but what was it, exactly?’

  Jenny put her head to the side, exactly like a sparrow, and Margaret squinted as if summoning up the exact image that had caused her to wonder.

  ‘Mister Pettigrew, ye could set your watch by him. Every night, he aye met us at the rear of the train but that night . . . he was down by the engine. At the front.’

  A thoughtful silence ensued.

  ‘Funny that,’ Margaret said finally.

  ‘Ach, his mind would be elsewhere, poor man,’ Jenny said, almost under her breath.

  ‘Poor man?’ McLevy made a sympathetic face and shrugged for enlightenment.

  ‘If whit they say is whit they say,’ said Jenny.

  ‘And what is that, ma’am?’ asked the equally concerned Mulholland.

  ‘Gossip,’ announced Margaret firmly. ‘Just gossip. The railway’s a terrible place for gossip.’

  ‘But we never repeat it, do we Margaret?’

  ‘And I never listen to it,’ McLevy concurred.

  Margaret was by far the sharper of the two old ladies and caught another look between the policemen.

  ‘A terrible thing, the gossip, inspector,’ she said gazing straight at him.

  ‘Indeed, Margaret,’ he replied.

  Then, at great sacrifice to himself, and for the sake of the investigation, McLevy pushed the plate of titbits towards the women and smiled like temptation itself.

  ‘Have a sugar biscuit,’ he murmured.

  * * *

  Small, precise steps sounded in the empty station as Thomas Pettigrew approached the rear carriage of the late train. Emptied of passengers, it awaited only the final rites of cleansing and inspection before resting for the night. He regarded the long, gleaming shape with obscure fondness. Its formal name was High Endeavour but it was known throughout the railway as Puffing Billy.

  Pettigrew smiled for a moment, then his face changed as he consulted his watch. They were late.

  ‘I told Margaret and Jenny to wait for a while,’ said a voice. ‘We have business first on hand.’

  The guard did not appear surprised to see the figures of McLevy and Mulholland looming in the mist of Waverley like inauspicious apparitions.

  The inspector’s face was grave – tired, even; it was the end of the chase, but he took no pleasure in it.

  ‘How is your daughter – Christina?’ he enquired.

  Pettigrew pondered.

  ‘She is well. Considering.’

  ‘Considering her condition, sir?’ Mulholland said.

&nb
sp; The little man nodded as if something long anticipated had been confirmed, and then walked towards them to continue his inventory of the train.

  The glistening body was on his right, the policemen on the left as they all walked at a slow pace while the guard scrutinised the giant machine in his keep.

  ‘I have made provision for her,’ Pettigrew said finally. ‘All of my savings.’

  ‘Buttressed by the money from the dead man’s wallet?’

  A moment’s silence greeted this observation from McLevy before Pettigrew nodded once more.

  ‘I thought it . . . appropriate,’ he replied. ‘No doubt it was come by dishonourably. I put it to another use.’

  His delivery was exact, without emotion, and as they proceeded, his focus never left the wheels and carriages as the company passed them by.

  ‘That night. How did you recognise him, sir?’ Mulholland asked.

  ‘My daughter had a photograph she treasured. Of them. In a happy moment.’

  For a second Pettigrew stopped and closed his eyes, then he snapped them open and continued his slow progress. ‘I found it in her belongings. By accident. I would not have you think me to be a nosey man.’

  ‘I am,’ McLevy responded. ‘Nosey as hell. The night of the murder, you were at the wrong end o’ the train.’

  ‘To put distance between you and the corpse,’ the constable added.

  ‘It seemed . . . a sensible precaution.’

  There was even a touch of graveyard humour in the little man’s voice, but it found no answering smile.

  ‘The dead man, in his secret case, had a letter from one Christina P.’ McLevy announced heavily. ‘We learned from Margaret and Jenny the rumours concerning your daughter, checked at her place of service and found that she had left under disgrace.’

  The inspector shivered suddenly.

  ‘Cold in this place.’

  ‘Midnight,’ Pettigrew said dryly, pausing to rest his hand against the side of a carriage as if he could sense a hidden life within. ‘The glass drops.’

  McLevy jerked his head almost irritably at Mulholland, who had been a silent observer for the most part.

  The constable took his cue.

  ‘So, sir – allow me to reconstruct events?’

  The guard nodded a grave permission and the constable, monitoring his steps so as not to leap into the lead, summed up for the prosecution.

  ‘Fate decrees that the man responsible for your daughter’s ruin ends up on your train, drunk as a lord, boasting of impending marriage. The train empties and there he is. Snoring like a pig.’

  ‘So, you helped the seducer on his way. To a deeper sleep,’ McLevy said quietly.

  Somewhere in the station a train let out a long, mournful cry like a lost soul. They were now at the front engine and it marked the end of the line.

  The inspector stepped up to face Pettigrew, his face sombre and even somewhat troubled.

  ‘I will not pretend to envisage the anger and hurt which burned in your soul at the callous betrayal of your own flesh and blood, causing you to commit an act beyond anything you could ever have imagined,’ he stated. ‘But I do know how you did it.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘That’s a fine silver whistle you wear.’

  Pettigrew’s hand moved to clasp the object where it nestled against the stiff front of his uniform.

  ‘A tribute for thirty years’ service,’ he affirmed.

  In fact McLevy had only noted this as they walked, but it made perfect if sad sense.

  ‘Hangs round your neck by a strong cord.’

  The guard nodded agreement. ‘Leather. Twined fast. My own making.’

  ‘And with such you strangled him.’

  ‘It seemed . . .’ said Pettigrew, ‘appropriate.’

  This final and formal acknowledgement of the murder seemed to release the tension, and all three men let out a puff of breath in unison.

  ‘The only thing I regret,’ the guard vouched, ‘was the blaming of Angus Dalrymple. It was meant to distract but . . . went too far.’

  ‘Aye – you led us to him and it was his words that part led me to you,’ averred McLevy. ‘Angus declared that when you arrived for the tickets, the man was boasting loud and rude of his coming nuptials. And yet you never made mention of that – just said he was civil enough. For a man as exact as yourself, I thought that peculiar.’

  ‘You would have found me in any case, inspector.’

  ‘And you, sir,’ Mulholland adjured solemnly, ‘must accompany us to the police station of Leith, where you will be formally charged.’

  ‘You also have a timetable,’ Pettigrew remarked with a curious glint in his eye. ‘That’s good.’

  He put his hand upon the engine beside him as if taking its temperature.

  ‘I know these creatures better than any human being – in fact prefer them. This fellow’s nickname is Puffing Billy. Would you care to know why?’

  Both policemen nodded, thinking the man was merely trying to delay the inevitable moment.

  ‘Because at this time of night,’ Pettigrew fingered his moustache and smiled, ‘near precise to the minute, the mechanism cools, but just before it shuts down it aye lets out . . . a last farewell.’

  As if he had summoned up a spirit, the engine suddenly belched out a huge blast of steam that enveloped the policemen where they stood. Both coughed and spluttered, flailing around till they finally fought their way out of the cloud of vapour.

  Then it cleared as if by magic. And also like a conjuring trick Thomas Pettigrew had disappeared.

  * * *

  As the two policemen searched round the vast cavern of the station like some frantic wanderers lost in a dream, McLevy yet found time for recrimination.

  ‘Ye should have kept on the qui vive,’ he accused his constable.

  ‘What about you?’ came the indignant answer.

  ‘I was attending to the larger concern – it is your function to look out for mechanical subterfuge!’

  Mulholland snorted at that but the inspector suddenly stopped; his sharp ears had caught a scrabble, a hint of movement in a constricted dark passageway by the booking offices.

  He put his finger to his lips, pointed to the possible refuge for a fugitive and signalled Mulholland to investigate the narrow confines.

  ‘Take your stick,’ he whispered. ‘Watch your neck.’

  ‘Why can’t you go?’ came the answering hiss.

  ‘Only room for one. And I am inviolate.’

  The constable shook his head at the obtuseness of his inspector, grasped his hornbeam stick and stepped off into the darkness.

  Indeed the whole episode was beginning to take the form of some awful nightmare where no matter what move was made an insidious feeling of failure loomed. The station itself seemed to have mutated into a malevolent entity, towering overhead like some hostile beast as jagged shafts of light played against the clawed iron girders.

  McLevy shook off these weird imaginings just as a sharp crack followed by a high-pitched shriek cut through the sepulchral silence.

  After a moment, Mulholland emerged looking a little shaken.

  ‘It was a big black rat. Went straight for my ankles,’ he reported.

  ‘It would be trying to escape,’ the inspector muttered.

  ‘I couldn’t take the chance—’

  The constable stopped. His eyes fixed upon something he had seen high up beyond McLevy’s abiding presence.

  ‘Turn round sir,’ he said softly. ‘Slow does it. Lift your eyes heavenwards.’

  The inspector did so, and on a high gantry by the girders, with the trains set out far below, he discerned a glimpse of white in the gloom. The pristine collar of Thomas Pettigrew in contrast to the dark of his uniform and the surrounding shadows.

  How he had got there God alone knows, but the man knew every nook and cranny of his station, so there he remained and it was a long way down.

  ‘Mister Pettigrew,’ McLevy called quietly. �
�You’ll do yourself a mischief.’

  ‘I intend to,’ came the firm response. ‘With my death you prove nothing.’

  ‘Whit about your daughter?’ the inspector probed.

  ‘As I said. Provided for.’

  Pettigrew looked over the expanse of his beloved station and the serried ranks of trains, their metal sides reflecting a dull gleam in the shafts of light.

  A smile of pride came upon his face.

  ‘I shall count to five,’ he called. ‘Five is a godly number, Calvinists have aye thought it so.’

  He began the enumeration. One, two, three.

  ‘You’ll mess up the timetable, sir!’ Mulholland shouted desperately.

  ‘A black mark upon your worksheet!’ bawled McLevy. ‘And whit about God – he’ll take it amiss, surely?’

  ‘I am a good and faithful servant,’ came the unconcerned response. ‘I shall be forgiven. Four . . . five!’

  Pettigrew put the whistle to his lips and blew.

  * * *

  ‘We found him on the roof of the engine,’ McLevy said, gulping down the fragrant brew. ‘Arms round the smoke-stack, neck broken.’

  Jean shivered at the singular end to a strange tale.

  ‘A sad business,’ she remarked.

  She had noted that he was better dressed than his usual state, shaved and by the smell of it, pomaded under the low-brimmed bowler. For a moment she wondered if it was for her benefit.

  ‘I’ve just been tae the funeral,’ the inspector announced. ‘I thought I’d take my chance.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘That ye wouldnae let fire at me with small-shot.’

  ‘Oh, that?’ Jean sipped her coffee delicately, in contrast to the awful sleuchin’ noise he made. ‘Business is thriving. I’m in a good mood.’

  For a moment their eyes met, and the curious feeling of deep intimacy that sometimes crept upon them unawares washed gently at the shore of their separate islands.

  McLevy slurped his coffee. She winced.

  ‘The daughter was there. Hefty lump of a lassie.’

  ‘That would be her predicament,’ Jean observed.

  ‘Big boned. Make a good mother.’

  ‘That’s your criterion, is it?’

  He ignored the waspish comment.

  ‘Seemed well enough. Two aunties with her.’

  A comfortable silence fell between them while the peacocks strutted around the lawn being fed by Hannah Semple who, despite her best intentions, had become quite fond of the glaikit creatures.