The Last Train to Scarborough (16 page)

'Old Jim and I are just off for a
quick pint, Miss R,' he said.

'We keep a barrel of beer in the
scullery so that the gentlemen don't have to bother,' Miss Rickerby said,
addressing me directly as before.

'But it's the Two X,' said
Vaughan, putting on a brown bowler, 'and I generally go for the Four. Besides,
I like a smoke
with
my glass of beer.'

'I don't mind smoking in the
least,' said Miss Rickerby, again addressing me even though it was Vaughan
who'd spoken. 'I like to watch it.'

It wasn't a coat that Vaughan was
putting on, but an Inverness cape, and he'd acquired from somewhere a paper
package.

'Shall I hold that for you?' said
Miss Rickerby, indicating the package. 'That way you'll be able to use your
arms.'

Vaughan clean ignored her, but
just carried on wrestling with the cape.

'What about the lifeboat?' Miss
Rickerby asked him.

'They've got it into the water,'
he said, the cape now positioned about his shoulders.

'Well,' said Miss Rickerby, 'I
suppose that's a start.'

She was responding to Vaughan,
but she addressed the remark, and the accompanying smile, at me. With the cape
on, Vaughan looked like a cross between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
Theatrical, anyhow. He was trying his best to stuff the package into the pocket
of the cape, but it wouldn't go. Meanwhile Miss Rickerby had taken a step
towards me. I thought: There's nothing for it but to reach out and touch her.
Begin with the hair. It was a little way in her eyes. Move it aside. That would
be only polite ...

'Goodbye, you two,' she said,
reaching out and opening the door for us. 'Don't be late back.'

And in spite of that word 'two',
she'd again looked only at me.

We turned right at the top of
Bright's Cliff, and were soon walking along the narrow cobbled lanes of the
Scarborough Old Town. The gas lamps showed lobster pots, upturned boats and
other bits of fishing paraphernalia at every turn, as though the sea had lately
washed over and left these items behind. The sea wind came and went according
to which way we turned in the narrow streets. Vaughan walked leaning forwards
with his hands in his pockets and the mysterious paper parcel under his arm.
Directly on leaving Paradise, he'd blown his nose on a big blue handkerchief,
and this had left a trail of snot hanging from his moustache.

'Are there any other guests in
the house apart from you, me and Fielding?' I enquired.

'Just at present? No, Jim. There
was a chap in a week ago. Ellis.'

'What was he like?'

'He sold galoshes, Jim, and I
don't think there was a great deal more to him than that.'

'How old was he?'

'Old.'

'Did you take him out for a pint?'

Vaughan stopped and looked at me
as though I was crackers.

'Well, you're taking
me
out.' 'Different matter entirely, Jim,' he said, walking on.

'Did he stay in my room, the top
one?'

'No, Jim. He was on my floor.'

'But that's all being decorated?'

He explained, under questioning,
that there were four guest rooms in total on that floor, including his own,
which was not being decorated, and there were no plans in hand to do so. As of
last week, Adam Rickerby had only got round to whitewashing two of the other
three, so there'd been one spare for Ellis.

'Wouldn't you like your own room
done?' I said.

'I like it just as it is, Jim.'

'It's a pretty good house, isn't
it?' I said, cautious-like, because it only
was
pretty good at best. Then again, it might have been a palace to Vaughan.

'It's the best house in
Scarborough at the price, Jim,' said Vaughan. 'They don't leave off fires until
May; glorious views; and then you have Miss Rickerby into the bargain. What I wouldn't
give for a rattle on the beach with her,' he added.

So that was
that
out of the way.

'How long have you been there?' I
enquired, looking sidelong at him and rubbing my own 'tache, in the hope that
he'd do the same, and discover the dangling snot.

'Oh, since last summer,' he said,
not taking the hint but just striding on.

That would comfortably put him in
the house at the time Blackburn disappeared, but I would reserve my questions
on that front. Instead, I asked about the house, and he gave his answers
without reserve, or so it seemed to me.

The Paradise lodging house was
run by Miss Amanda Rickerby and her brother Adam, who was, according to

Vaughan, 'a bit touched'. Their
father had bought the place two years since, dying immediately afterwards, his
life's aim completed. He'd been a coal miner; he was a drinking man and pretty
hard boiled, but evidently a man determined to take his children away from the
life of a South Yorkshire pit village. He'd saved all his life, and Paradise
was the result. It was now in the hands of his beautiful daughter and her odd
brother. There was one other son and another daughter, but they'd 'cleared out
entirely', not being able to stand the father.

Vaughan at that moment discovered
and swiped away the snot in a way that suggested he was very used to finding
the stuff just there, and equally used to dislodging it. Miss Rickerby herself,
he went on, 'suffered from lazyitis' and was 'over-fond of port wine'.

'But the house is fairly well
kept,' I said.

This, it appeared, was partly on
account of the brother, who was a good worker in spite of being a half wit, and
had no other interest in life besides cleaning and maintaining the house. He
wasn't up to much as a cook and Vaughan believed that the hot supper we had in
prospect would be nothing to write home about. But the lad had help every day
in the season from a maid called Beth who was quite a peach in her own right
apparently. And a Mrs Dawson came in year round. She was a great hand at all
housework, and, being an older woman, was practically a mother to the two
Rickerbys. In the off-sea- son, Vaughan said, she came in only on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays.

'So I'll see her tomorrow?' I
enquired, and at this Vaughan stopped and looked up at some clouds riding fast
and ghostly through the black sky.

'Yes, Jim, you will,' he said,
walking on. 'Sorry about that, I was just thinking about something else that's
happening tomorrow.'

'I wouldn't have thought you
could buy a house like Paradise on a miner's wages,' I said, 'even if you
did
save all your life.'

'I don't know about that, Jim,'
said Vaughan.

'Where was the pit village
exactly?' I asked, as we came up to a pub called the Two Mariners.

'Search me,' he said. 'Somewhere
near
coal!
And he fell to thinking hard, and frowning. '... Somewhere up Durham way, I
believe it was, Jim.' He pushed open the pub door, saying, 'I like it here of a
Sunday. It's quiet and you can talk.'

Talk about what?
I
wondered, as we stepped into a wooden room with pictures of sea-going men all
around the walls, both painted and photographed, but not a single live person
of any description to be seen. Somebody must have been in the room lately
though, for a good fire was burning in the grate and two oil lamps were doing
the same on the bar top. There was a door open behind the bar, which was quite
promising, and Vaughan was evidently confident that
someone
would turn up and serve us a drink because he placed the paper package on a
table near the fire, took off his cape, and pitched it over a chair, removing a
pipe and a tin of tobacco from one of the pockets in the process. He left his
muffler about his neck, and this in combination with the pipe made him look
like a university man, which perhaps he had been.

He walked over to the bar, and
shouted, 'Rose!'

A woman came through the door
behind the bar: she was small, brown and stout.

'How do, Mr Vaughan?' she said.

'Two pints of the Four X please,
Rose,' he said, and only as the pints were being pulled did he call over to me,
'Four X all right for you, Jim?'

He turned back to the barmaid.
'Bit quiet . . . even for a Sunday.'

'All gone to bed,' she said.
'Most of our lot will be at sea come sunrise.'

'We've yet to have our supper,'
he said.

'Well, that's Miss Amanda
Rickerby for you,' said the barmaid.

Theo Vaughan brought over the
pints, and placed the package between us. He then lit his pipe, which went out
directly, and placed his feet up on a stool, so that he was quite relaxed, only
I had the idea that it cost him more effort to keep his feet up on the stool
than otherwise.

'Cheers, Jim,' he said, and we
clashed glasses.

He was very forward indeed. From
the way he acted you'd have thought he knew me of old, but that was quite all
right by me.

'I'm bursting to see inside that
package,' I said, and he picked it up with his yellowy fingers and took out a
quantity of picture post cards. The top one showed trains unloading at a
dockside.

'Old Fielding and I are connected
through the railways,' said Vaughan. 'We ran a little business: post card
publishing. Well,
he
did. The
Fielding Picture Post Card Company - had a little office in Leeds. Armoury
Road, I don't know if you know it, Jim. I had high hopes that it might one day
become "The Fielding and
Vaughan
Picture
Post Card Company", but as long as it went on, I was Fielding's employee.
Commercial agent, do you know what that means?'

'Not really.'

'It means nothing, Jim. But it
was all right. I mean, he
is
all right,
old Fielding. Bit stuck-up, bit of an old maid, and a bit weird in some of his tastes,
but decent enough to work for and he struck lucky with the business for a
while. We'd done a few runs of cards for some of the big hotels up and down the
coast, and to make a long story short some of these caught the eye of a bloke
called Robinson, who's the publicity manager of your lot: the North Eastern
Railway. I expect you know him pretty well?'

'You're wrong there, Theo,' I
said.

'I'm pulling your leg, Jim,' he
said, sucking on his dead pipe. 'Robinson gave Fielding the contract -1 should
say one of the contracts - for stocking the automatic picture post card
machines you see on the station platforms.'

'Oh,' I said.

He looked again at his pipe.

'You know, I think I prefer
cigars, Jim. At least a fellow can get them
lit!

'You smoke cigars, do you?'

'On occasion, yes.'

'Anyhow, that was me for a year,
Jim: third class rail pass in my pocket, and I'd go about re-filling these
machines with the cards we'd commissioned.'

I knew the machines. They were in
most of the bigger stations. You put in a penny, and pulled out a little
drawer that contained a card with ha'penny postage already on it. Some showed
North Eastern Railway scenes: interesting spots in the system. Others might
show Yorkshire views in general. Vaughan pushed the top-most card across to me.

'Is that Hull?' I said.

'Might be,' he said. 'It was one
of the winter series.'

For all his build-up, he didn't
seem very interested in it. The card was from a painting, and there was writing
across the top of it:
The Industrial Supremacy of
North East England. The Secret of Success: Cheap Power, Labour Facilities and
Raw Materials.
Then, in smaller type:
For information as to sites and special advantages apply to the commercial
agent, North Eastern Railway, York.
It was hard to imagine anyone
wanting to receive it through the post. I looked at Vaughan. He seemed to want
me to say something about it.