The Last Train to Scarborough (23 page)

'Shouldn't wonder,' he said.
'He's cracked.'

'But you've never seen him do
it?'

'I've seen him on the point of
blowing up - then I've made myself scarce.'

'When did you find out about his
accident?'

'Oh, that all came out when the
police started asking questions. They could see he was nuts, and wanted to
know why. Miss Rickerby told them, and then she told us all.'

'You don't suppose he did for
Blackburn, do you?'

'Blackburn jumped into the sea,
Jim,' said Vaughan, who was now kneeling down and fishing about inside the
trunk.
'...
Or that's
what we all tell ourselves in this house. I mean, none of us likes to think
we're sharing lodgings with a murderer.'

He lifted a book out of the
trunk, and rifled through the pages, as if to make sure they were all properly
bound in.

'Well,' I said, 'no-one can say
what happened.'

Vaughan stowed the book back in
the trunk.

'The lad's got a hell of a job on
with that decorating,' I said.

'Well, he's making an apartment,
Jim. It's Fielding's idea, and he's persuaded the lady of it. Eliminate the
rough element.'

I looked upwards again, following
the pipes with my eye.

'Where do they go?' I said,
indicating them.

'Up into the floorboards. Up into
your room, I expect.'

'But there's only an oil lamp in
my room.'

'Well,' he said, 'perhaps there
was gas once.'

There
had
been. The painting in the dining room showed my room the brightest.

'Why would it be stopped?'

'Economy,' said Vaughan with a
shrug, and he was now at my side.

'Here's our little friend again,'
he said, and he passed me a post card showing a woman - the bicycling woman.
Only now she was painting a picture. You couldn't see it because the easel
faced away from the camera but you could see everything
else.
The
card came from a new envelope, lately fished from the trunk.

'Who
is
this bloody woman, Theo?' I said.

'Yorkshire lass,' he said, and he
passed me another card.

'Told you she was game,' he said,
and she was now sitting on a gate before a meadow and dangerously close -1
would have thought - to a country road. Vaughan said, 'You can tell it's a
windy day, can't you?'

'Why put these sorts of picture
on post cards?' I said. 'I mean, it's not as if you can post 'em, is it?'

'For collectors,' he said. 'And
you can post 'em in envelopes, Jim.'

I glanced over towards his bed.
There was a tin of something there. At first I'd taken it for a tin of
lozenges, but I now read 'Oglesby's Pilules', and, underneath, 'Oglesby's Pilules
are a Certain Cure for Blind and Bleeding Piles'.

'Do
you
have piles, Jim?' he enquired, seeing where I was looking and holding out
another post card. 'Sometimes I can't walk around town. Rather fancy studio
shot. I presume that swan is stuffed,' he added, passing me the card.

'Look here,' I said, 'why are you
showing me these?'

He stepped back, offended.

'What's the matter, Jim?' he
said. 'Has old Fielding warned you off?'

'Warned me off what?'

'Business connection,' he said.

'Eh?'

'You can have the choicest
selection from the choicest range. A hundred cards for a quid, Jim.'

'Why would I want a hundred?'

'You can have
two
hundred if you want. To be perfectly honest, I'm keen to sell the whole stock,
hence the special rate. Of course, you're a chum as well - that's the other
reason.'

He moved over to the fire, leant
on the mantel-shelf, and looked shrewdly at me, or at least I supposed that was
the idea.

'But maybe you think rather
narrowly of me for bringing them out.'

'You mean me to buy them and sell
them on?' I said.

He nodded quickly.

'They go like hot cakes in any
engine shed,' he said. 'Sixpence a piece. I've blokes on the Great Northern and
the Hull and Barnsley, and they're getting rich at this game, Jim. When the
samples are first shown there's a bit of a frost, I'll not deny it. Blokes are
shy, as I can see you are, Jim; they're married men, and it's on their
conscience a little, but I promise you that after a couple of weeks, when they
think back to what they've seen, and turned it over a little in their minds,
why ...
there's a regular rush, Jim.'

'The cards are not legal though,
are they?'

'Where?'
he
demanded, still with the shrewd look.'
Where
are they not legal? They're jolly well legal in France.'

But then he relented a little.

'The coppers can be a nuisance,'
he said. 'But it's small apples to them, Jim. I know that from experience.
Would you care for a bottle of beer?'

'Well,' I said, 'what time is
it?'

'Quarter to midnight,' he said.

I grinned, for it was a crazy situation.
It seemed about a week since I'd come into Scarborough station with Tommy
Nugent.

'It's nearly midnight, Jim!' said
Theo Vaughan, laying the card package down on the bed. 'I'm not going to mince
words! I believe in plain speaking!'

I was curious to see where he'd
go for the beer, and in the end - after a bit of head scratching on his part -
it was the portmanteau. The bottle opener he found at last in the bottom of the
closet.

'I don't run to glasses,' he
said, handing over the bottle. 'But you're not the sort to bother. Try giving
old Fielding a bottle and no glass and just
see
what happens!'

'What
does
happen?' I said.

'Nothing,' said Vaughan. 'But
it's the look he gives you.'

'He'll drink it then?'

'He'll drink it all right.'

Vaughan took a pull on his beer,
and fell to eyeing me for a while.

'I should just think he will,' he
ran on. 'What's the old devil been saying about me? But go on, Jim, I can see
you want to question me. Get straight to it. Honesty and trust and plain- dealing
- that's the start of any business connection.'

'Did you show your cards to
Blackburn?' I said.

That knocked Vaughan, I could
tell, for he asked,
"What
cards?' and
went back to his shrewd look.

'Well,' I said, taking a pull of
beer, 'the ones presently under
discussion.
The ones you've just asked me to question you about.'

At this, Vaughan might have
nodded, but it was done too fast for me to be certain.

'The coppers want to know every
detail of my dealings with the man, which amount to this: sitting next to him
at one supper, during which he was more or less silent; going with him to the
Two Mariners, beginning in hopes of conversation and ending in
complete
silence.'

'But on the walk - in the pub -
you did show him the cards?'

'I
suppose
so.'

Vaughan was pacing now, beer
bottle in hand.

'And he didn't take to the
cards?'

'You should have seen him when I
took 'em out, Jim. Face like bloody yesterday and he said, "I shall be
mentioning this to Miss Rickerby.'"

'Oh,' I said.

'Next development, Jim,' said
Vaughan. 'The coppers - the Scarborough lot - made a search of the house -
well, they've made several - and they turned up a few of my choicest cards in
one of them. I had them stowed away in two places in this room, and they
evidently found both. No action was taken. They just gave me a bit of a rating,
you know. They were quite decent about it really. I think they knew it was a
bit unsporting, the way they came upon them, and to be honest I think they
rather enjoyed the experience. Bit of light relief. Now I knew that Blackburn
had threatened to split on me to the Lady, and I didn't know whether he had
done, or whether she'd told the coppers. So I thought it best to come right out
with it, and let on that I'd shown Blackburn a couple of samples.'

He took a long pull on his beer
before continuing:

'But
if I thought that would bring an end to the matter I thought wrong, Jim. Three
times in the past five months I've been called in to the copper shop on Castle
Road.'

'I
can't imagine the Lady splitting,' I said. 'She seems pretty free and easy -
she'd just think those cards were a bit of a laugh.'

Vaughan
seemed quite bucked by the thought. He nodded and said, 'I can just see her in
a series of her own, Jim. She'd be shown all day about her normal activities
only without a stitch on. You're getting pretty hot at the thought, I can see
it, Jim.'

'No,
no, I'm just, you know ... rather
hot.'

'Mind
you,' he continued, 'what you'd end up with would be a lot of photographs of
the Lady drinking glasses of wine.'

'If
the cards drew the interest of the coppers,' I said, 'and they've been all over
this house, how come you've still
got
all the
cards?'

'I
haven't nearly as many as I once had,' said Vaughan. 'They've had some of the
best ones off me, and I generally keep the few I do have in a little hidey hole
outside this house.'

'Where's
that then?' I asked, taking a pull on my beer.

'Just
now, Jim,' he said, 'it's the left luggage office at Scarborough station.'

I
finished my beer, and put the bottle on the mantel-shelf.

'I'm
off to get my boots cleaned,' I said, 'if the lad's still about.'

'You
back at work tomorrow, then?' asked Vaughan.

'If
they've fettled the engine,' I said, opening the door, 'then yes. But I've got
a feeling I'll be stuck here another night.'

No
railway man was ever required to wait two nights for an engine. It made no kind
of operating sense, but I had decided that I was on the track of something.
Besides, Vaughan showed no sign of thinking anything amiss. I turned in the
doorway, and took a last look at the room.

This
was the real meaning of the term 'bachelor's lodgings'. The phrase was meant to
mean something different but this was it in practice.

'We'll
talk about a business connection tomorrow, shall we?' said Vaughan, and I
nodded in a vague sort of way.

'You
look about ready to move out of here,' I said.

'I've
always got an eye out. After all that's gone on here I'm a bit sick, but then
everyone's under the gun because of this bloody never-ending investigation.'

'Even
Fielding?' I said.

'Him
most of all,' said Vaughan.

'How
come?'

'I
shan't say, Jim. I'm sworn to silence.'

But
I didn't doubt that he'd let on eventually, and here was another reason for
staying on at Paradise.

"Night
then,' I said.

On
quitting Vaughan's room I needed a piss, and so stepped into the bathroom he'd
earlier come out of.

The
cabinet by the side of the toilet stood open. Inside was a mass of razor blades
in paper wrappings, a length of elasticated bandage, a big bottle of Batty's
Stomach Pills, something called Clarke's Blood Mixture, Owbridge's Lung Tonic,
some ointment for puffed-up feet, Eczema Balm ('the worst complaint will
disappear before our wonderful skin cure'), and a red paste-board packet with a
picture of a dead rat on it. Rat poison in the bathroom cabinet: 'Fletcher's
Quick-Acting Rat Poison', to be exact. The ingredients were printed on the
back: 'Lampblack, Wheat Flour, Suet, Oil of Aniseed, Arsenious Acid'. This last
came from arsenic, and it struck me that there was a whole murder kit in this cabinet.
But the investigating officers had obviously not thought so - otherwise they'd
have taken the stuff away. I wondered whether it was Vaughan's stuff, or
whether it belonged to the household in general. I unbuttoned my fly, and I was
just slacking off, playing the yellow jet spiral-wise in the toilet bowl and
thinking on when the door opened behind me. It was Vaughan again. It was less
than a minute since I'd seen him last.