The Northern Echo lay spread out on the dining table, the headline screaming about a murder on a local train: ‘THE RAILWAY CRIME!’
All the talk in the accountant’s office today was about the killing, and the robbery of the pitmen’s wages. More than £300 in cash was stolen and the poor colliery clerk carrying the money was shot dead in one of the carriages. Kitty picked up the newspaper and began to read as Mum came in with her best steak and kidney pie. Harry was busy at the other end of the dining room with his homework. He was more studious than most twelve-year-old lads and enjoyed getting his nose into a good book, thanks to Mum being a teacher.
‘Honestly, the pair of you would eat words rather than my cooking if you could,’ she tutted. ‘Kitty, put the paper down, will you?’
Kitty did as she was asked. Mum nodded in the general direction of the front-page story and added, ‘And don’t go talking about that in front of your little brother, please, it’s a dreadful affair.’
It was indeed a shocking thing. The clerk had been shot five times in the face. His wife only lived down the road in Heaton and she had waved to him as the train went through the station on the way up to the colliery at Stannington, just as she did every week when he delivered the miners’ wages. But when the train arrived at its destination, he was dead – murdered – and his body had been shoved under a seat in one of the carriages. It sent a shiver down Kitty’s spine to think that anyone could do such a thing.
Harry looked up from his algebra homework. He was oblivious to everything once he got his head stuck into numbers.
‘Harry, go and wash your hands before you eat,’ said Mum, bustling off to the kitchen to bring the vegetables, as Kitty hurriedly got the silver knives and forks and some freshly ironed napkins from the drawer and laid the table.
Dad liked things to be done a certain way, and supper was part of their family tradition. Most Newcastle folk had tea at five o’clock but Dad liked to make the distinction that they were white-collar workers and so they had supper – a cooked meal – closer to six o’clock, with the table laid properly.
Kitty heard his footfall on the stairs and shooed Harry out to wash his hands, just as Mum had asked. Dad appeared in the doorway, the ends of his neat moustache freshly waxed and his dark hair swept back from his forehead. He’d been into the city on some business. He didn’t ever go into much detail about what he was working on, mainly because Mum didn’t like him talking about the part of his job that involved placing bets for his main client, who was a wealthy coal merchant. Being a bookkeeper was illegal – Mum and Kitty knew that – but it wasn’t something that Harry was really aware of and Mum preferred it that way. He patted Harry on the head as he strode past him into the kitchen.
Dad had eager little hazel eyes which had just a hint of mischief about them. ‘Have you been putting the world to rights at work with the other lasses again, our Kitty?’
‘No, Dad,’ she laughed. ‘Just listening to the men talking nonsense all day long, as usual.’
That made him roar with laughter. ‘Oh, you would give that Mrs Pankhurst a run for her money. You’re worse than your mother!’
Kitty went to help Mum with the plates and they were just sitting down to eat when there was a knock at the door.
Dad sighed and put down his knife and fork. ‘I’ll get it.’
He was wearing his favourite brown leather slippers, the ones Mum liked to warm for him in front of the fire every evening, and so his walk was more of a shuffle. Dad pulled the dining room door shut as he left the room, to keep the heat in; the first daffodils were coming up in the garden, but Newcastle could be cold in summer, never mind the springtime, and so the fires had been lit.
There were murmured voices in the hallway for a few moments and then Dad appeared, ashen-faced. He spoke directly to Mum, as if Kitty and Harry were no longer there.
‘There’s a policeman here,’ he said, his jaw set firmly. ‘There’s been a terrible mistake. It’s to do with this train business. I don’t want you to worry. Keep my supper warm for me, I’ll be back soon.’
Mum’s mouth gaped in shock. She was suspended for a moment, half in, half out of her chair as his words registered and then she ran to him, throwing her arms around him. ‘What on earth do they want with you, Jack?’
‘Just some questions,’ said Dad. ‘It’s a mix-up, that’s all. A few questions and I will have everything answered and then I’ll be back here in no time, you’ll see.’
He took off his slippers and Harry ran to get him his boots.
‘Good lad, that’s right,’ said Dad, beaming at him. ‘You make me proud, son. Just carry on the way you are, and look after your sister and your mother while I’m out.’
He lowered his voice to a stage whisper: ‘Because the women think they are in charge in this house, Harry, but we know it’s us men, don’t we?’
And with that, he ruffled Harry’s hair and turned to go.
Kitty went out into the hallway, where a tall, thin gentleman, with cheekbones as sharp as razor blades, was waiting, idly blowing smoke rings from his cigar and gazing around him. When he saw Kitty, he smiled and tipped his bowler hat to her. She didn’t smile back.
Dad gave her a peck on the cheek as he made his way towards the front door. ‘I won’t be long.’
They stood at the front gate, all three of them, as they watched Dad walking down Lily Avenue, away from their home, as the policeman fell into step beside him.
Mum spent ages getting Harry to go to sleep, reading to him until he finally dropped off, while Kitty waited patiently at the front gate for Dad to return.
Just as it was beginning to get dark and Kitty was getting cold, she saw half a dozen policemen in uniform, led by another man – short with his hair clipped high above his ears – marching down the street.
Kitty ran back into the house to tell Mum, as the whole lot of them made their way up the front path. Mum greeted them on the doorstep with her arms folded.
‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’ she said. ‘It’s night time and this is a family home! I have a child asleep upstairs.’
‘I’m Superintendent John Weddell, and I have a search warrant,’ said the short man, waving a piece of paper. ‘And we need to come in. I must also inform you that your husband has been arrested in connection with the murder of John Nisbet and he will be brought before magistrates at Gosforth police station tomorrow. You are welcome to attend. Now, can I come in?’
Kitty grabbed Mum by the arm to steady her as the policemen entered. Mum retreated to the kitchen, where she sat, mute, watching as half a dozen pairs of hands tore her home apart.
It wasn’t long before the noise of the police rootling through drawers and Dad’s bureau, lifting carpets, opening and closing cupboards and stamping around woke Harry, who stood at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas, clutching his reading book, fighting back tears.
‘Come on,’ said Kitty, running upstairs to embrace him. ‘Let’s all go into the kitchen and have some cocoa.’
She raised her voice loud enough for the superintendent to hear, anger swelling inside her. ‘They won’t find anything because there is nothing to find in our home. Our dad is innocent and these charges against him are an outrage.’
As she did so, the discordant clatter of musical notes emanated from the dining room as the piano was dismantled in the search for clues.
The following morning all the newspapers in the city carried full reports about Dad’s arrest.
Kitty hurried back from the corner shop with a sheaf of papers tucked under her arm, avoiding stares from their neighbours. Word carried fast and before long, a little gaggle of people had gathered on the other side of the street. Kitty drew the front curtains to stop them peering in.
Mum kept Harry off school so that he could see his father, but he was tired after being woken last night and he didn’t really understand what was going on. He played marbles up the hallway and when that got on their nerves, he went into the back garden and thwacked a stick aimlessly against a tree.
‘It’s as if they have convicted him already!’ cried Mum, once Harry was out of earshot. Neither she nor Kitty had slept a wink after the policemen had finally left in the early hours. The house looked like it had been turned upside down but that was the least of their worries; they’d sat up in the parlour downstairs, talking over what Dad was doing on the train in the first place.
They knew he’d been up at one of the collieries – Stannington – on business yesterday, but that wasn’t unusual. He often went up there to speak to coal merchants and businessmen who had an interest in sinking new pit shafts. Dad had an intricate knowledge of the mining industry because of his previous job as a secretary to the Morpeth Colliery Company. He also acted as an agent for speculators and placed bets for them on the side as well as at the races to make a bit of extra cash. Dad had talked about having a few run-ins with some of the gangs controlling the racecourses, as well as the Bigg Market lads, who’d try to take a slice of winnings sometimes, but there’d never been any serious trouble and never with the police.
‘He’d never hurt anyone,’ said Mum, over and over, wringing her hands. ‘How could anyone even suggest such a thing?’
The morning newspapers didn’t seem to share that view and they were certainly having a field day with the latest twist in the tale: ‘MAN DETAINED AT NEWCASTLE IN CONNECTION WITH TRAIN MURDER’
Kitty’s heart sank as she read, word for word, what her father told the police. It was all there in black and white.
He admits that he travelled on the same train. He denies, however, that he was in the same compartment as the murdered man, stating that he was travelling on business in connection with a small colliery between Stannington and Morpeth.
The worst bit was the description of the identity parade that happened. Two other men who’d travelled on the train with the murdered clerk had picked Dad out of a line of a dozen men, and one of them said, as he pointed the finger of blame, that although he wasn’t ‘absolutely sure if it is any one of these, it is he.’ They were wages clerks, just like the victim, John Nisbet, and they knew him by sight, but they worked for the Netherton Coal Company and the murdered man worked for a different firm. The men, Percival Hall and Thomas Spink, said that they had seen Mr Nisbet get into a compartment with another man, while they had got into a carriage further down the train. That seemed a bit strange to Kitty because she’d pored over every detail in the papers and the train guard at Newcastle station, who knew the victim well, said that he’d watched him getting into a train carriage on his own.
‘They are making him look guilty!’ cried Mum. ‘I won’t have it!’
Later that afternoon, Mum picked out her best skirt and jacket, in a light fawn tweed, and carefully pinned her favourite black straw hat, adorned with green feathers, into place. Dad had bought it for her and he always said she looked beautiful in it.
They walked the mile or so to Gosforth police station, with Kitty holding Harry’s hand the whole way. ‘I want to see Dad,’ he kept saying. ‘Why have they taken him?’
Mum turned to him and smiled, with such love in her eyes that Kitty almost burst into tears. ‘You shall see him today, pet, I will make sure of it. This will all be sorted out very soon and you are not to worry because your father has told you not to and we must do as he asks.’
But when they got to the police station on Hawthorn Road, a crowd of men and women had gathered outside the front door. They were rough-looking types, dockers and their wives. ‘Come to see the murderer?’ said one bloke. ‘’Cos they won’t let you in.’
‘I’d like to give him a good hiding,’ said another. ‘They’re burying poor Nisbet down at Jesmond later. No man deserves to die like he did.’
Mum glared at them as she ushered Kitty and Harry through the heavy wooden doors and into the building. ‘You shouldn’t presume a man is guilty of a crime. Shame on you.’
The next hour passed in a blur. The policeman at the front desk was more than civil – he offered them tea and biscuits – and Mum went off to speak to the superintendent while Kitty and Harry waited in a side office. Eventually she came back and explained, quietly, that she would be allowed to sit through the hearing in which Dad would be charged but they would have to stay put. Kitty covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a gasp so as not to alarm Harry but she couldn’t contain her anguish. ‘They can’t charge him with anything,’ she said. ‘You have got to stop them, Mum!’
Harry looked at the floor and Kitty saw that he was crying.
Mum kneeled down before him and said, ‘We have to be strong. Your father is innocent and we all know that. The truth will come out but there is nothing we can do now to stop them charging him. We have to be calm. That is what your father and I want.’
She glanced over at Kitty. ‘Do you both understand? It is very important that we behave properly. We are a decent family. Dad has done nothing wrong. He was on that train going to the colliery on business and a court hearing will clear everything up. There is no other way. Can you see that now?’
They both nodded and Mum smiled at them, before she stood up, smoothed her skirts and left the room.
Kitty peered through the office window as official-looking men in sombre suits swept into the building with briefcases in hand and were directed to another room, down a long corridor with cream tiles on the walls. Mum waited by the front desk for a moment.
Then, a horde of scruffier-looking men swarmed in, waving notebooks and chattering incessantly. The press had arrived. Kitty heard her mother’s voice ring out, clear as a bell, across the foyer. ‘You do not have my permission to take any pictures of either me or my husband. Do I make myself clear? And I won’t have any sketches made either.’ Then she swept off down the corridor with about a dozen journalists trailing in her wake.
When she returned, thirty minutes later, she had shrunk visibly, and her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. ‘Righto,’ she said with enforced jollity. ‘Dad is waiting to see you both, so come along with me.’
All the pressmen had gathered in the foyer and as Kitty and Harry walked past, she heard one murmur, ‘That’s his kids! Look at the boy, he’s the image of him!’
Kitty put her arm around her little brother protectively and hurried him along.
They were shown into a side room. Dad was there, still wearing the same suit he had left Lily Avenue in the previous evening, but he was pale as a ghost. The room was bare apart from a wooden table and chair and the worst part was, it had bars on the windows. He got up as they entered, and they fell into his arms and hugged for what seemed like forever. Harry started to sob, before a policeman coughed loudly and said, ‘That’s enough now, leave the prisoner be.’
Kitty could barely believe her father was being called a prisoner. She wanted to scream, but instead, she shot the policeman a pitying glance, as if he was just a fool who had no idea what he was saying.
‘Come on, son,’ said Dad, placing his hands briefly on Harry’s shoulders. ‘No tears. I will be home very soon, but now I need you to be brave.’ He sat back down and Mum kissed him goodbye.
He smiled at Kitty. ‘We will get through this. Be there for each other.’
The policeman stepped forward and opened the door, and motioned for them to go through it. They walked down the corridor and back to the entrance hallway in silence.
As they stepped into the street outside, a few of the men who were still loitering about came up to them, their caps pulled down low, and one of them spat on the ground, right in front of Kitty.
‘Murderer’s child!’ he said.
‘No,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘I am my father’s daughter.’
As she spoke, she knew that whatever the future held, life would never be the same again.