The Enginemen, Chapter 18/1

Chapter 18: December 1962

Philip Doig bumped into George Munday outside his office at the end of the first week of December.

“George, I’m glad to see you – it saves me putting in a special call for you. I had Inspector Cresswell on the phone this morning. They’re dropping the Mytton death case. They don’t believe Peplow’s account but they can’t prove their suspicions. Any case would have to be based on the circumstantial evidence of the inspectors and signalman and on the evidence of Barnett on the newspaper run. He thinks any half decent defence lawyer would deal swiftly with such evidence, so unless Peplow confesses during our disciplinary hearing, they’ll not pursue it further but let his death go forward to a coroner’s hearing. That means that we’d better chase Peplow to get it set up. He’ll not have any commitments so it’s down to you. What are you rostered for on Thursday?”

“I’m booked to the 9.10 Wolverhampton.”

“I’ll have a word with Frank to check he’s got spare cover. At that time of day it should be no problem. I’d like you to be with me when we hear Peplow’s response to the charge sheet, in case he says anything we may feel we should report to the police.”

“That means, Mr Doig, that if he appeals against any punishment you set, I’ll not be able to represent him at any appeal hearing.”

“That’s okay with me, though it might not be to Peplow’s taste. There aren’t many others who’d give him the time and support that you’ve done. Provided Frank gives me the nod, I’ll get Higginson to ring him this afternoon and set the disciplinary hearing up for Thursday morning at ten o’clock.”

“Fine by me, boss. Can you leave me a note for when I book off duty today? I’m Bristol and back on the 11.15.”

When George booked off that evening, he found the note from the Shedmaster. It confirmed the time of the disciplinary hearing and that cover had been found for George, but attempts to confirm the appointment with Peplow had failed. There had been no answer to the phone, and he’d sent a messenger to the man’s house with the letter demanding Peplow’s response and confirmation, but the messenger reported back that the house was locked and the next door neighbour hadn’t seen him for at least three days. He’d put the message through the letterbox and had scrawled on the back that ‘confirmation he’d received it’ was required by phone as soon as he’d read it.

On the Thursday morning they’d still not heard from Peplow so George Munday took up his booked job and a messenger was sent again to Peplow’s house with a similar negative response. “We’ll give him a couple more days’ grace. If I haven’t had a response from him by Monday, I’ll ask the police to go round to his house and see if they can trace where he is.”

The following day two boys slipped out of school.

“Pitters, are you coming spotting to Old Oak tonight? There may be some new ‘Westerns’, we haven’t been for over a week. We saw D1010 and D1012 last time. There may be some more new ones.”

“Maybe. Is Boulden coming too? I don’t like him. I’ll come if it’s just you and me.”

“Okay. I won’t tell him. He’s alright really. He showed me some really good pictures yesterday, I don’t know where he gets them from. He says his Dad lets him cut them out from magazines, but I don’t know if I believe him. My Dad wouldn’t let me see pictures of naked women like that, let alone cut them out for myself. I’m sorry if he upset you last week. He thought you’d like to know what the big boys do and we could both teach you. I won’t do anything if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll come tonight then just to see the engines. As long as I’m home by five o’clock. Me Mum gets livid if I’m late for tea.”

The boys walked along the canal towpath and stopped outside the gap in the fence. They couldn’t see anyone in the depot, so they slipped through the gap and clambered down the bank. They walked beside the condemned engines and found a further ‘King’, 6028, had been added to the row.

“Let’s cab it,” said the older boy and they both swarmed up agilely to the footplate and messed around with the controls for a couple of minutes. The younger boy pretended to be the driver, opened the regulator and made engine noises. “Okay, smart arse,” said the older boy, “let’s see if that old geyser who shouted at us last time left anything for us on his engine. He said he’d got something, though I didn’t trust him at all.”

“He won’t be there, will he?” said the younger boy in some alarm.

“’course not,” replied the other, “he’d have yelled at us by now if he’d seen us coming.”

“You go up first, I’ll follow,” exclaimed the bigger lad and shoved the small boy’s bottom up the cab steps of 5008. He was half way up when the younger boy suddenly screamed and came back to the cab opening, gibbering in fright.

“What’s up?” shouted the second boy halting in mid step.

“There’s a body on the floor. I think it’s dead. Let’s go home. I’m frightened.”

“Stand back and let me see.” The older boy clambered up the last two steps and pushed the boy he called ‘Pitters’ aside to have a look for himself. He went over to Peplow’s corpse lying curled in the corner and gave it a tentative kick. It didn’t move. He kicked it harder. It still didn’t move.

“It’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s a stiff. Haven’t you seen a dead body before? They took me to see my Grandpa once when he’d died. He looked odd all glassy and in his best suit. I’d never seen him poshed up like that before. Come and touch him, he won’t hurt you. He’s all cold, see, and stiff. See, you can’t move him. Look, I’m pushing his arm and it won’t move. They’ve got some fancy name for that. It means he’s been dead for a long time.” He added in a voice increasing in excitement, “perhaps somebody murdered him!”

“Let’s go home quickly. I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

“We ought to report it. Perhaps we’ll get a reward.”

“No, we’ll get into trouble.”

“Don’t be so childish, Pitters. If we report it we’ll get to ride in police cars and get our names in the papers. We’ll be heroes at school. Boulden and his mates will be jealous, they’ll respect us then. He won’t make fun of you any longer, I promise you. I’ll tell him you discovered the body first!”

The young boy looked doubtful about this, but was persuaded by his friend. They climbed down from the cab of 5008 and went to look for someone. They walked quickly towards the Factory but the doors were already closed. They turned left into the shed, the smaller boy even now jotting down the numbers of a couple of 28XX and a 9F, before they ran into a scruffy looking labourer. “There’s a body in the engine up there,” said the older boy, but the guy just said, “you’d berrer be gawn, you two”, in an accent so thick that they only got the gist of what he’d said. But instead of running away, the boys marched on into roundhouse No.1 and past 7027 and 7029 straight up to the lobby window. The clerk saw them and shouted “You clear off before the gaffer sees you”, but one of the lads said, “There’s a body on one of your engines. You’d better get the police!”

This time, the clerk looked hard at the boys and decided he’d better take them seriously. “Wait there a minute, while I fetch someone,” he said, and a moment later came back with an older man. He came out and confronted the boys.

“What are you two lads doing here? You don’t have a permit do you? I think you’d better go home before I call the police.”

“Please, sir, there’s a body on one of your engines”.

“Perhaps you should call the police,” said the other boy. “Do you want me to show you?”

“This had better not be a joke,” said the foreman. “If it is, I’ll tan your hides and then call the police.”

“We’re not joking, there really is a body. It’s very stiff, it’s been dead a long time.”

“Where is this body you’ve seen?”

“It’s on an engine behind the place where you repair engines. I think it’s a scrapped one, it has no nameplate, but there’s a number chalked on the engine, it’s on 5008.”

“Oh my God, it’ll be Peplow, that was his engine. Hang on, I’ll call the boss and we’ll go up there together.”

Doig came out of his office and accompanied Frank and the two boys to the side of 5008.

“It’s up there,” said the older boy pointing, and Doig climbed into the cab. He took one look at the huddled body on the cab floor and saw immediately that it was Peplow and he was dead. He came straight to the cab window an shouted down,

“Call the police. It’s Peplow all right. And dead for some time by the look of him.”

The Shedmaster climbed back down to the ground and turned to the boys.

“You shouldn’t really have been here, but we’ll say nothing more about that, okay? You’ll have to wait until the police get here, because they’ll want a statement from each of you about when you found the body and what you did. It’s nothing to be frightened about.”

The younger boy spoke up. “Please sir, I need to get home for tea. Mum expects me to be home by five o’clock or I’ll get into trouble.”

“We’ll get a message to her, sonny, don’t worry about that. But you’ll have to wait, the police won’t be long.”

In fact a police car drew into the driveway to the depot less than ten minutes later and two uniformed men got out and came towards the group. They were taken to the body on 5008, observed for themselves that the man was dead and confirmed his identity with Philip Doig who gave his name and that of the foreman. Then he turned to the police and said,

“These boys actually found the body.”

“What are your names, lads, and how old are you?”

“I’m Robert Griffin and I’m twelve.”

“I’m John Pitts, and I’m eleven, sir.”

“And what were you doing here? How did you come to find the body?”

“We were trainspotting after school. And we saw these engines, there was nobody about, so we decided we’d cab them.”

“Were you trespassing?”

The Shedmaster interrupted the policeman. “No need to go into that, constable. It’s not important. Kids come through the hole in the fence by the canal. As fast as we get it repaired, kids break it again. These boys shouldn’t have been here, but I doubt if they broke the fence. And there’s little harm they could do on that row of dead engines. I’d be more worried if they were climbing over engines in steam in the main shed.

The police took down statements from the boys, and to their thrill, took them home in the police car before returning with a forensic team and the Detective Inspector to carry out a detailed examination of the cab of 5008. Apart from the empty bottles of brandy and aspirin, and the brandy stains on the footplate, they found nothing of further interest. They searched the pages of the torn ‘Trains Illustrated’ which was lying on the edge of the firehole door, half expecting to find a suicide note tucked inside, but found nothing. The body was removed to the mortuary for a post mortem, but Cresswell expressed his opinion that it was clearly a case of suicide, and that the reason was almost certainly guilt over the death of Alec Mytton and fear of the consequences.