'Who cooked the meal?' I asked.
'The boy of course, Jim,' said Vaughan, draining his glass. 'When supper was over, I asked the fellow if he'd care for a pint, and so we walked over to the Two Mariners, just as you and I did, Jim. Well, it was a bit of a washout in the pub. The fellow hardly said a word, and I came back with him at about ten past ten, barely half an hour after we'd set off. I'd forgotten my key so had to ring the bell. Howard here answered the door and let us in.'
Fielding nodded at me, confirming this.
'Blackburn then went straight up to his room,' said Vaughan, 'and Fielding joined me in here, and we had a bit of a chat about the lad: Adam, I mean. I'd seen him earlier in the day, a little before Blackburn turned up, acting in a rather queer fashion in this room, Jim. It was just as darkness was falling, and he was standing by the window there with no gas lit, and waving ...'
'A shrimp net?' I put in, and Vaughan frowned.
'No, Jim, not a shrimp net. Why would he be waving a shrimp net? He was waving an oil lamp about.'
'Waving it out to sea?' I said. 'Signalling?'
Vaughan nodded.
'I thought so, Jim.'
'Perhaps the gas had run out, and he'd needed the lamp to see by.'
No answer from Vaughan; he was staring up at the ceiling. Behind Fielding, the wind was getting up, becoming unruly by degrees, and you just knew it would end badly. If that sea had been a bloke in a public bar you'd have moved into the saloon. With head cocked, Fielding watched me watching it, as if to say, 'Why are you surprised? Any man worth his salt ought to know the ways of the sea.'
Chapter Twenty-Two
'Hand over the gun,' I said to the kid.
With the revolver in my hand I would take my chances with the Captain and the Mate, wherever they'd got to. If I couldn't get it off the kid, I'd go over the side. This was the programme. I didn't believe the kid would shoot, and he might not have the chance. The other ship would overhaul us in a couple of minutes' time, which gave me about thirty seconds' leeway - thirty seconds to leap while in full view of their bridge. 'If you hand it over,' I said to the kid, 'I'll see the judge lets you off with a talking-to - got that?'
He shook his head very decidedly, but he was shivering.
'Hold on to it, and you'll be lagged for most of your life. Fire it, and you'll fucking swing.'
'Come off it,' said the kid. 'Nobody on land knows you're here.'
That couldn't be right. Somebody knew - somebody in the Paradise guest house knew. The kid was facing me, but watching the other ship with the tail of his eye. He was in a funk all right; the gun hand was shaking, but he now cocked the hammer with his thumb. It cost him quite an effort, and he had to steady the thing with his other hand, but now I had the answer to my question: it was a single action revolver, and I was halfway to being dead.
'What are you, son?' I asked him. 'Ship's cook? Captain's boy?'
'You fuck off,' he said, and from somewhere aft I heard, floating over the waves and the wind and the engine beat, the voice of the Captain. He was speaking more loudly than he ever had done to me, and with more anger, although this anger was directed more at himself, as I believed, than at any other party. 'I don't see it,' I heard him say. 'I just don't see it.'
The kid heard it too, and perhaps he wanted to talk to drown it out.
'You needn't worry about me,' he said. 'You ought to be looking out for yourself.'
'You think I'm a stowaway,' I said to the kid. 'It's customary at sea to shoot stowaways, is it?'
The kid nodded slowly.
'Stowaway,' I repeated. 'What do you think I am? Hell bent on a free ride to the bloody gas works? That's it, isn't it, son? We're on a run to Beckton with a load of gas coal. You'll come back empty, will you? Or with a load of coke? Where've we come from, eh, son? The Tyne? Dunston Staithes?'
'You're nuts, you are,' he said, but there wasn't much force behind the words. He was hatless, and his hair blew left and right. In the weak light of the dawn, I could see clear through to his scalp. He'd be quite bald in five years' time; he was wasting his best years at sea.
I pictured the great wooden piers at Dunston where the coal was pitched from railway wagons into the colliers day and night under a black cloud that rolled eternally upwards. That was the main starting point for the coal-carrying vessels. But the ship gaining on us carried a clean cargo; it had a smart red hull. I saw now that two blokes stood on the foc's'le, facing each other and still as statues. Was there a hand signal for 'Come alongside'? I ought to have paid more attention to thesuper-annuated skipper who had given talks on seamanship to the Baytown Boys' Club.
The kid had one eye in that direction too.
'How do I know you're a copper?' he said.
How was I to prove it without my card? My mind raced in a circus.
'Do you know York station?' I said.
'No. And what's that got to do with it?'
I could hear the throbbing engines of the other ship now, quite distinct from the roar of the sea.
'... Because I'm a railway copper,' I said, 'and that's where I work. The police office on Platform Four.'
'Come off it,' said the kid.
I tried to recollect the words on my warrant card but could not, perhaps because of whatever had happened to me. There was some stuff on it about the directors of the railway company. It was more about them than it was me, and very wordy and over-blown.
'Just you take my bloody word for it,' I said, and the kid almost laughed. Well, I couldn't blame him for that.
I put my hand out for the gun, saying, 'Give it over,' but he made no move. I'd seen the Chief take a gun off a man. He did it by force of character - and by shouting abuse. You could scare a man by shouting even if he was armed and you were not.
I glanced down at the restless waves; a wind blew up from them. The sea was waiting for me to come in - then there'd be some fun. Only you were liable to be killed outright if you jumped straight into freezing water. Your heart would attack you in revenge for the shock. I looked over again to the other ship, where the faces of the blokes on the foc's'le showed white.
They were looking our way. They contemplated us calmly, and their vessel was swinging closer.
The kid watched them too.
'Witnesses,' I said. 'I can read the name of that ship. I can hunt up those blokes later on, and they'll testify to what they saw ... Hand over the shooter.'
But I couldn't read the name. It was something foreign. However, it appeared that one of the two mannequins on the foc's'le was fitted with a moving arm, for he saluted us just then.
'They see us,' I said. 'I reckon they're coming alongside.'
I put my hand out again for the gun.
'You won't like it in gaol, son.'
'It'll be just like here,' he said, and the gun was in my hand.
I tried to look as though I had expected this development. I held the gun; I commanded the ship - the whole of the seas.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I held up my glass of Spanish sherry as though trying to decide whether it agreed with me or not. It looked like cold tea, and tasted like cold, very sweet tea.
'Vaughan left me at quarter after eleven, Mr Stringer,' said Fielding, with the black sea boiling behind him. 'I then remained here, reading, until half past, when I decided I'd better take my boots down to the boy. He's generally in the kitchen at that time, and one of his last duties is to clean the boots.'
'And as you were coming back up, you saw Blackburn going down with his boots,' Vaughan put in.
'That is correct,' said Fielding slowly, as though not over- keen on the fact having been mentioned. 'We crossed on the bottom stairs.'
'How did he seem?' I asked.
'How did he seem?' Fielding repeated, cocking his head. 'Rather morose. He barely gave me good night.'
'So the last person to see him would have been the boy?'
'Or our landlady,' said Vaughan. 'She'd been in the kitchen when you'd taken
your boots down, hadn't she, Howard?'
'I believe that she had been,' said Fielding, 'but she'd gone up to her room by the time I got there.' He turned to me, explaining: 'It is the Lady's habit, Mr Stringer, to read articles from the newspapers to her brother, last thing.'
'And to drink wine,' added Vaughan.
I felt the urge to defend Amanda Rickerby against this slur, and immediately felt guilty on that account. A man ought to have feelings like that only for his wife. But then again my wife smiled at Robert Henderson, and yet every time I met him while walking, the bastard cut me dead.
A strange kind of flat boat was putting out from the harbour. It looked like a brightly lit, floating station platform with three men waiting for trains on it, and it was bucking about pretty wildly. Fielding saw me eyeing it.
'It works in combination with the Scarborough dredger,' he explained. 'They scour out the harbour approach every few weeks.'
'We think we know what happened to Blackburn, Jim,' Vaughan said. 'We think he jumped into the sea.'
'Why would he do that?'
'Well, he was pretty cheesed off about something,' said Vaughan, 'and that's fact. I often worry whether it was something I said to him after supper. You see, he'd been quite bright at supper.'
'You're advertising for railway men again,' I said, 'or at any rate, Miss Rickerby is.'
'Is she?' said Fielding, and he frowned. It wasn't like him not to know something.
'That's why I'm here,' I said.
'Of course,' said Fielding, with a single rapid nod of the head.
'The house is still on the North Eastern list,' I said. 'Any lodge within five minutes of the station is eligible, although strictly speaking, I don't think this is within five minutes.'
'It is if you run like mad,' said Vaughan. 'I'm off to the toilet,' he went on, rising from the couch.'... Toilet then bed.'
'Won't do, won't do,' said Fielding, shaking his head. 'You are not "off to the toilet". You are going to the lavatory, and we do not wish to know.'
'Please yourself,' said Vaughan, who gave us both good night before quitting the room.
Fielding said, 'I have tried my best to bring that young man on, Mr Stringer, believe me.'
I wondered whether this was how he saw Vaughan, as somebody to be brought on, much as the wife regarded me.
'I'm pleased that the fate of poor Blackburn didn't put you off coming here,' he said.
'I have his same room as well,' I said.
'As well as what?' he said, smiling. 'Won't you have another sherry?'
'All right then,' I said. 'I'm obliged to you.'
He twinkled his way over to the piano and brought the tray to the occasional table, where he filled my glass, passing it to me very daintily. I took it from him in the same way.
'In so far as I've known them,' he said, 'I've found engine drivers and firemen rather a rough class, but you conduct yourself in a very gentlemanly way, if I may say so.'
I nodded, thinking: Is he onto me? I touched my pocket book, through the wool of my suit-coat. It was there all right, the warrant card within it. Fielding couldn't possibly have had sight of it. Anyhow, he was smiling at me in a sad sort of way that made me think the compliment genuine.
'Did you find that Blackburn was like that?' I asked him.
'He was rather tongue-tied,' said Fielding, sitting back down in his accustomed seat. 'A big fellow but carried his size well. A dignified man ... handsome ...' 'Do you know what he and Vaughan talked about on their walk after supper?'
'Well,' Fielding said, 'I can make a hazard.'
'Rare one for the fair sex, isn't he?' I said. 'Mr Vaughan, I mean.'
'He's a rare one for pictures of the fair sex,' said Fielding. 'He showed you some of his samples, I suppose.'
'Yes,' I said. 'One.'
'Was it the naked lady on the trapeze?'
I shook my head.
'It was the naked lady holding the bicycle.'
'It is the same ... artiste,' said Fielding with a sigh.
He was evidently pretty well acquainted with the cards himself, even if he didn't approve of them.
'Made out he knew her,' I said.
'He'd like to know her,' said Fielding, 'I don't doubt that. He's minded to set himself up as a photographer in that line, you know.' He shook his head for a while. 'It's my fault in a way. I mean, I brought him into the post card world.'
There came a noise from the doorway, and Miss Rickerby was in the corridor with her brother.
'Tell me, Mr Stringer,' Fielding was saying quite loudly, 'how do you manage to spot all the signals while rushing along the line? I believe the North Eastern is the most densely signalled railway in the country. Sixty-seven on one gantry at Newcastle alone.'
He was trying to cover up the subject of our conversation.
'Well,' I said, 'each man has his own pet way of remembering where the signals are. Speaking for myself, I...'
'They're like gladioli,' said Amanda Rickerby, coming into the room looking rather pink about the face but none the less fetching for that.
'How are they?' I said.
'That's what they look like,' she said. 'When there's more than one, I mean. I find them quite pretty but it frightens me when they change because nobody's near by and suddenly they move!
Her brother came into the room behind her, and I thought: You could say the same for him. He brought the paint smell with him, and there were specks of white-wash on the backs of his hands.
'Boots,' he said.
'Come again?' I said, because he was looking my way.
'Do yer boots,' he said, almost panting.
'We have our boots on,' said Fielding, not to the boy but to Miss Rickerby, who was of course eyeing me. 'You can't very well clean them now.'
For the first time I looked back boldly at Amanda Rickerby, and even though both of us were smiling it was obvious in that moment of honesty that neither one of us was exactly what you might call happy.
'It's just gone eleven,' her brother said. 'I clean t'boots from eleven on.'
'But the hot supper has thrown us all late,' said Fielding, and again he was appealing to our landlady rather than addressing the boy.
'The gentlemen will take them down to the kitchen in the next little while if they want them doing, Adam,' said Miss Rickerby. 'And you have something for Mr Fielding, don't you?'
The lad took a note from the front pocket of his apron, marched up to Fielding, and handed it to him.
'What's this?' said Fielding.
'If you read it,' said the lad, 'then yer'll know!
'Put through the letter box, just now,' said Miss Rickerby. 'I hope you don't mind, but I had to look at it to see who it was for. It's from your recorded music people.'
'Yes,' said Fielding, now glancing at the note. 'It's just a reminder about the meeting.'
'Mr Fielding is the chairman of the Scarborough Recorded Music Circle,' Miss Rickerby said to me, 'which is pretty good going considering he doesn't have a gramophone.'
'It is a little irregular,' said Fielding, colouring up, 'but...'
'He won't tell you that they pleaded with him,' said Miss Rickerby. 'Modesty forbids. He is also in the Rotary, Townsmen's Guild etc., sidesman at St Mary's church, and I half expect him to come in for tea and say he's been made Mayor - only he'd never let on. I'd just find this funny hat and big golden chain while straightening his room.'
Fielding was making a sort of waving away gesture with his right hand, as if to say, 'All this is nonsense', but he'd been fairly dancing about with pleasure at the landlady's compliments. She now leant in the doorway with folded arms, smiling and giving Fielding a sad but very affectionate look which made me a little jealous that for once her eyes were not on me.
'Miss Rickerby,' said Fielding, 'my dear Miss Rickerby, won't you...' For a moment I thought he was stuck for words, but he finished:'... give us something on the piano.'
'No, Mr Fielding,' she said, smiling, but privately now an
d looking down at her shoes. 'No, I most certainly will not.'
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fielding said good night, walked along to his bedroom, and closed the door. Standing just outside the sitting room I watched him do it, which was easy enough as his bedroom was on the same floor (and faced the right way to have the sea view). There were two other doors on that floor. One stood open, giving onto a fair-sized bathroom, all white with gas light burning. The other was closed. I walked over to it and knocked, and there was no answer. I was alone on the silent landing. I turned the handle and opened the door a fraction, gaining a view of a large, pale blue room that smelt of talcum powder. I saw a dressing table with triple mirror, and a nightdress was thrown over the bed like a dead body. A low fire burned in the grate, and there was a paraffin heater hard by that was turned up to the maximum judging by the stifling heat. This was Miss Rickerby's room.
She's like a cat, I thought - luxuriates in the heat. I closed the door as gently as possible, and I heard a rattle from behind me. It was Fielding's door opening. He wore a night-shirt, dressing gown, and his hair was all neatly combed; but he was only tripping his way across to the bathroom.
I turned and walked up the stairs towards the floor being decorated. My own bathroom was on this landing somewhere. Most of the wallpaper had been stripped from the landing walls but some remained in patches, showing the green stripes that still survived upstairs. The gas jets roared, giving a shaking white light, and I wondered whether they kept going all night. I stopped next to a dangling strand of the green wallpaper and felt minded to pull it away. I was reaching out towards it when the roaring of the gas gave way to the roaring of water - a whole waterfall seemed to have been set in motion somewhere out of sight beyond the walls. A door flew open along the corridor, and Vaughan appeared in shirt sleeves, with braces dangling and the seething din of the flushing lavatory behind him.
'Is that the bathroom?' I said.
'It is, Jim,' he said, 'but I haven't had a bath. When you've had a heavy supper, I always think it's best to ...'
The Last Train to Scarborough Page 14
