'Yes’1 said, 'but of course it's the ventriloquist himself who's making the jokes.'
Monsieur Maurice was frowning at me. 'Of course it is,' he said.
'Henry Clarke's all right if you like that sort of ventriloquism,' I said.
'Yes’ said Monsieur Maurice with another sigh, another sip of his strange cordial. 'Yes he is. We've been sharing bills at Blackpool, and they've lately put him top, over me.'
He looked down and looked up and there was a heaviness in his eyes.
'Henry Clarke's a pleasant fellow,' said Monsieur Maurice, 'but why do you think they would put him up to top of the bill?'
I could see that he really wanted to know.
'I couldn't say,' I said, 'I work on the railways. I'm pretty often firing trains to Blackpool...'
There was no flicker in the face of Monsieur Maurice, just a deepening sadness.
'For this reason,' I went on, 'I am pretty often in Blackpool, and I saw you on at the Seashell only a few weeks ago. All I can say is that I thought you a good deal better than Henry Clarke, who's more of a droll, as you say.'
'By Jove, did you?' said Monsieur Maurice, and he brightened a little. 'I sometimes feel,' he said, 'as I walk across the stage with the figure, that if there ever was another cry of...' He began to shake his head. 'I don't quite follow,' I said.
'Oh, at the Seashell once . . . There was a big fellow sitting on the front row . . . Blackpool's a vulgar sort of place as I expect you know, and all the vulgarity had come together in this fellow, who was with his girl because ... Well, you know, they're never alone, the ones that call out.'
'What did he call?'
Monsieur Maurice looked down at his empty glass, then at the door at the back of the room, and I heard the fish frying once again; more fish this time, in hotter oil, and now with words mixed in: 'Monsieur Maurice, Monsieur Maurice ...'
He turned back to me, and said: 'I am being called from that door.'
I looked at the dead figure and the door behind.
'Front-of-house business,' said Monsieur Maurice; 'I really must attend to it; I am so grateful for your interest.'
He bundled me out through the other door, and I was back in Horton Street, double-quick time, with a very choice expression on my face.
Monsieur Maurice had not put the stone on the line. The world was moving away from him at a great rate, which he knew; and he also knew there was nothing to be done about it. I was thinking of the vulgar fellow who had called out the word that Monsieur Maurice had not been able to bring himself to repeat. I doubted that it would have been anything out of the way. 'Rubbish!' - that would probably have been it. Or 'Get off!' I could imagine George Ogden giving such a cry.
And nobody went alone to Blackpool, as Monsieur Maurice had almost said.
I began to run.
Chapter Thirty-four
As I ran, I glanced back, seeing a line of people trooping steadily up Horton Street with boxes and bags in the evening sun, and I thought: it's finished. They're coming back.
On walking into the house, I saw the wife sitting on the sofa.
'Where's the bag of quicklime?' I said.
'We're shot of it,' she said.
I should have known not to ask her to leave it alone.
'What did they bring it for?' she asked, looking at the bandage on my head.
'Put the frighteners on,' I said.
'How?'
'Made out they were going to dash it into my eyes.'
'Was one of them the man you chased to Manchester?'
'No. It's all connected with Lowther, though. They visited him at the Infirmary, or tried to. Couldn't get in, but the names they gave damn near finished him off.'
'Well that's as clear as mud,' said the wife.
'Now they're after George,' I said. 'He's not been back, has he?'
'No.'
'He's flitted,' I said.
I climbed the stairs to George's room once again and opened Don Quixote. Inside it was a photograph of George. He was in his high collar and fancy waistcoat as usual, but was sitting inside a flying boat. You could tell he was off the ground, for his hair had all been knocked to one side by the wind.
The wife was looking over my shoulder. 'It's the flying machine at Blackpool,' she said.
She was looking all around the room now, saying, 'Why ever did he not water these plants?'
I turned the photograph over. On the back were the words, 'I told you there was nothing to it, silly C. Love from Big G.'
I caught up some fragments of dried flowers, which I'd scattered about the room and were on the very point of becoming nothing at all. 'What's this?' I asked the wife.
'Forget-me-not.'
'When do forget-me-nots come out?'
'I forget,' said the wife, and then she laughed, saying: 'All I know is they're Cicely Braithwaite's particular favourites.' Then she stopped laughing.
I looked at the wife, then around the room. There was something else besides the books. Curtains, damask curtains, thrown anyhow onto the floor under the window.
'They're so viewsome,' I said in an under-breath. It was the strange saying that Cicely had come out with on seeing the forget-me-nots at Hardcastle Crags.
The picture came into my mind of George running in order to get his letter posted in the box on the tram. He'd said the letter was to his best girl, and that she was out in Oldham. What better way to get rid of the whole question of a sweetheart? The young lady's out at Oldham. There's something about the word 'Oldham' that checks all questions.
'Is Cicely walking out with anyone that you know of?' I asked the wife.
'She is not,' said the wife.
'And was she keeping company at all before?'
'There was someone before I knew her. But she had to chuck him over.'
'The name was never mentioned?'
The wife shook her head. 'If you ask me she's rather sweet on Michael Hardcastle.'
"The traveller for Hind's?' I said.
The wife nodded.
Cicely had mentioned him on my first visit to the Mill, and coloured up as she did so. I thought of the man trying to keep next to Cicely in the crowd under the Blackpool Tower when the Hind's lot had come spilling out after their tea. Was that the fellow? 'Do you know where she lives, off hand?' I said.
'I don't,' said the wife. 'Somewhere over Savile Park way. The address is written down at the Mill, of course, but you'd have to wait until Monday for that.'
'There's no way round it?' I said.
'Not short of marching through the streets bawling out her name’ said the wife.
'I must speak with her,' I said.
'What you're trying to make out,' said the wife, 'is that George Ogden wanted to wreck the train so as to kill Michael Hardcastle?'
'He was on the Whit excursion then was he?'
The wife nodded. 'On both excursions,' she said.
'No,' I said, 'I don't think that was his reason.'
'Well you're right there’ said the wife, 'because nobody could have known there was anything going between them back at Whitsuntide - they barely knew it themselves.'
'I think it's odds-on he was out to get Cicely’ I said.
'Oh’ said the wife, and she sat down on the truckle bed.
'But how will you ever prove it? And what would you do if you could prove it?'
'Put salt on him,' I said.
'But still we don't know, do we?'
'Oh no,' I said. 'It's all just thinking on. Did you never mention to Cicely that you had a lodger here called George Ogden?'
The wife went red, which you didn't often see.
I looked out of the window, and down: at Halifax. The sky was dark blue. The gaslights were all coming on, and more of them inside the houses than for the past six days. The strange thing was that, even though it was getting on for seven o'clock, I was breaking out in a sweat. Wakes was over, but the glass was rising still. 'You know I'm not over-proud of taking in lodgers’ said the wi
fe, at last.
'Well, I'm off now’ I said. 'Off where?'
'Down to the Joint. I've to catch a train.'
Chapter Thirty-five
The clock was striking seven as I half ran down Horton Street, against the waves of excursionists that were rolling up towards me. The next day, Sunday, I had a six o'clock go on with Clive. We were to collect from Southport twice over, and the turn would be a bugger: a ten-hour touch at least.
As I ran, I didn't know exactly why I was running. I wasn't really trying to catch a train; I was trying to catch the station, more like.
Seven o'clock had gone, so I had missed the chance to see whether George had kept his engagement with his mother at 54 New Clarence Road, Bradford. He wasn't a great one for keeping his word, and he'd had a lot on, what with being hounded by Don and Max. I wondered why he had given the address of his mother as being the address of the cream biscuit-machine factory when I'd first gone up to the cigar factory with him. Most likely because he didn't write off for replacements, as he'd said, but stole the deliveries as they came in. There was a biscuit scheme as well as a ticket scheme, but the ticket scheme was the bigger one. Then again, it wasn't railway tickets that had made George Ogden a killer.
If George had been at 54 New Clarence Road in Bradford, he might be lying dead at this very moment, or be a hospital case at least. Why did Don and Max want him?
They were in on the ticket scheme with him.
It wasn't so hard to tease it all out. Don, the little, clever fellow, the angelic-looking one who was a tough nonetheless . . . He was a ticket collector at Blackpool, although he hated the work. His job would be to put his hands on as many as possible of the stolen Blackpool singles that had been sold on illegally by George at the Joint. Those, when collected, would be put out of sight of the ticket brass, or the auditors, or whoever it was checked over spent tickets.
Max, the big-headed fellow, the mate of Don's . . . Well, I wasn't quite sure where he came in.
As I sped on past the empty warehouse in Horton Street, I saw that a new bill had been pasted over 'CONDY'S BATH FLUID', which had in turn replaced 'A MEETING TO DISCUSS QUESTIONS'. I caught a glimpse of the new one as I went flashing past: 'A DIRIGIBLE FLIGHT', I read and, underneath, 'Balloon v. Motor Car'.
Down at the Joint, the trains were coming in at a great rate, and the excursionists were climbing out, looking red in the face and morngy. There were stacks of bags and boxes like little mountains here and there on the platform. All the porters' faces were shining with sweat in the white and green gaslight. I dashed about without a ticket, and then I heard a shout go up from one of the deputy stationmasters. The shout was 'Preston train!' and my plan was made. I ran along to it and climbed up, bumping into a ticket inspector immediately. He was miserable all right, just like all that sort, but he let me buy a ticket off him. It was not a ticket for Preston, though. I was only going to change there. The ticket I bought was for a place a couple of stops beyond: Kirkham.
The stone had stopped the Highflyer between Salwick and Kirkham, the two villages in the fields before Blackpool. If George had been the wrecker, he would have needed to get the stone to the line. He would have needed a turn-out of some sort. In my last visit to the wife's office at Hind's Mill, I had looked in the 'Trades' part of the Kelly's directory for East Lanes, searching for fly proprietors, jobmasters or livery-stable keepers at Salwick or Kirkham, and had turned one up at Kirkham. I'd made a note of the address in my pocket book, but the name was easy enough to remember: The Wrong Way Inn.
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There wasn't much to Kirkham: shadowy, empty cattle pens near the station, and the place had one mill to its name. The Wrong Way Inn was at the end of Wrong Way Lane: a dusty track between tall hedges that were fairly seething with life in the darkness. Big red berries glowed in the hot night; moths and small mysterious flying things swooped about before me.
The Wrong Way Inn looked like a mansion given over to the hoi polloi. There were fires blazing in all the rooms. There was an arch going clean through the front of the inn, and this led to a courtyard with stables and a hot, sweet, hay smell and all kinds of carts and carriages about the place. The horses were just dark movements inside the stalls. A fat man was standing in the middle of all. He wore a leather apron and had a very red nose - the colour of something that by rights should have been part of his insides not his outsides. I knew right away that he was a horseman or jobmaster, happier to be out with his nags than inside the inn.
I stood before him for a second, trying not to look at his nose, while he looked at my bandage.
'What are you after then mate?' he said.
'I'm not quite certain,' I said.
'I see. Want the whole stable trotted out, do you?' He smiled, which came as a relief. I think it went in my favour that I was not canned, for sobriety must have been at a premium during Saturday nights at the Wrong Way Inn.
'I'm a fireman on the Lanky,' I began; 'the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, I mean.'
His smile fell a little at that. Horsemen did not as a rule like railways any more than railwaymen liked motorcars.
'Railway business is it, then?'
I nodded. 'I wondered if you might be able to say whether somebody had hired a dog cart or something of that kind on Whit Sunday last.'
'Oh aye?'
'I have a notion of who it might have been,' I went on. 'He would've been a youngish fellow, quite well turned out, with a very particular sort of waistcoat. He was also quite ...'
I looked at the horseman. He wasn't half fat.
'He was quite, ah ... well, quite a chubby sort,' I said.
The jobmaster grinned. 'Well, you know what they say,' he chuckled, 'fat and happy!'
'He tried to wreck the engine I was firing along the stretch just near here.'
That checked the horseman's good humour.
'He did it by placing a grindstone on the line.'
'Jesus Christ, did he?' said the jobmaster, and he turned about in a circle as though looking for somebody or something. When he was facing me again, he said: 'A fellow we had here a few weeks back ... I don't say it was Whit because I don't recall, and I wasn't the one looking after him ... He was seen to by a lad who's not here presently. Now this character took a pony and cart for the day, and he had a grindstone off us 'n' all. The bloody thing was lying about in the yard here. Too bloody smooth, you see? No use to man nor beast, but the lad as works here let this fellow have it for a bob, helped him load it up too.'
'Well then,' I said.
'You make out the bloody thing was used to wreck a train?'
'It was an attempt,' I said. 'It didn't come off, but we had to clap the brakes on so hard that a lass on the train tumbled over in a carriage and was killed. Have you not had the coppers here, asking questions?'
'We have not.'
'And would the lad remember this grindstone fellow? Would he make a witness, I mean, if it came to it?'
'I'm bloody certain he would. He was full of it afterwards. Acted like a lord, the bloke did. Then off he went, with his little pony and worn-out grindstone.'
I nodded.
'Where's this bloke now?' asked the jobmaster.
'That's just it,' I said. 'I've no notion.'
Chapter Thirty-six
Sunday, we had the Southport turns to work.
We ran the first engine out there empty, and came back with umpteen chuffed-off excursionists. Then we did the same again. The engine - which was a rotten steamer - would only go right when the fire was just so. It was another unbreathable day and I'd taken off the bandage. When Clive asked about the stitches, I said I'd fallen, which he did not believe, but it was simpler than starting on a story that was not yet finished.
Clive, as usual, was looking the very glass of form, and I wondered again about what he'd been up to in Scarborough, and whether he was making love to the stationmaster's wife, but if my notions about George were right, it hardly mattered.
A
s we booked off at Sowerby Bridge, Clive said: 'See you tomorrow at six,' for that was the time of our go-on. I nodded back, but I knew he'd be booking on alone.
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The next morning I walked to Hind's Mill with the wife.
The whole of the town was going back to work and the mood was black. We fell in with the Hind's lot inside the tunnel that runs under the Joint. It was filled with the sound of clanging clogs, but no voices. Before clocking on, there was Halifax's steepest hill to be climbed in roasting heat, for the sun didn't know the holidays had ended.
Cicely Braithwaite's was the first happy face I saw. She was sitting on the wall by the mill pond waiting for the buzzer to go, and when she spotted the wife, she called, 'Clog on, Lydia! I've so much to tell you about goings-on at Blackpool!'
But when she saw me, her face turned puzzled.
The wife said: 'Cicely, my husband would like to ask you something.'
Not 'Jim' but 'my husband'. It was the kind of talk you come out with when there's been a death. Well, there had been a death - three, all told.
I knew the wife would have worked out the wording beforehand. It was her way of saying: I have nothing to do with this myself, her way of trying to keep up a friendship that my questions were well-nigh certain to end.
I said, 'Cicely, was a fellow called George Ogden courting you?' I looked up at the mill chimney: the smoke was already racing out of it and Cicely was going from white to red. I felt bad about the effect the question had on her, then glad about it, then bad again.
'He did,' she said, standing up. 'He was, I mean. How do you know him?' It was a new, sharper Cicely: the weaver- turned-clerk. It's not so easy to make that jump after all.
'He was our lodger,' I said.
The Blackpool Highflyer Page 30
