The Last Train to Scarborough (34 page)

All
the trinkets in those drawers of Fielding's, too neatly stored in boxes: they
signified a lack of love. Oh, he had the friendship of Vaughan all right, and I
pictured the two of them in the ship room, smoking silently: Vaughan lying flat
on the couch, Fielding sitting daintily, periodically crossing his legs in a
different way. But anyone could have the friendship of Vaughan: he was like a
spaniel, and about equally given to cocking his leg in public. The love of
Amanda Rickerby was a different matter. Ray Blackburn, a handsome, well set-up
man of marriage-able age, had been the beneficiary of her love, and she had
kept the company badge as a token of it. He had been to Scarborough several
times before the fatal night, although never before to Paradise. I saw the two
of them about the town, falling into conversation in the railway station
perhaps. She sees him coming along the platform, his dark face further darkened
and made more impressive by coal dust, and she chooses to ask him, rather than the
funny-looking little platform guard, the time of the train. Where would she
want to go to? Hull, Stockton, York, Leeds? It did not matter; the trip would
only be a vague plan, anyhow. They would find that they had walked and talked
for the entire length of the platform, that they had gone together through the
station gates... and then they had the whole of Scarborough in which to walk
and talk. I did not put it past her to have been drawn by his sober character,
which came out of his strong religion. He might keep her on the straight path.

Later
on, Blackburn would have been torn. He could not resist the opportunity to
travel to Scarborough and to stay at Paradise when the chance arose in the
course of his work. I supposed that he'd passed some of the night in Amanda
Rickerby's bed. I saw the two of them there, sweating under the sheets in the
hot talcum smell of the lavender room, and Fielding lying in his own bed just
across the landing and
knowing.
Why? Because he had been
listening for it. Had he seen them about the town beforehand? •

It
would make a married man feel strange to be in that lavender room, at least in
the moments before and after the event, the prospect of which had drawn him
there. Blackburn had gloomed about the house throughout his stay, which was
down to guilt, and his own serious-minded nature.

Earlier
on, Vaughan had showed him the special cards, which was just exactly the wrong
thing to do to a man of Blackburn's mind. I pictured the two of them walking
through the Old Town in the evening: the lobster pots rocking in the wind; the
flashing of the lighthouse showing by modern means all the oldness of the Old
Town. Blackburn would wonder what he was doing there, with this strange,
unmannerly fellow loping along too close-by his side.

Blackburn
had
no doubt blown up at Vaughan, who had taken stick from the
coppers ever since for an act he was only now beginning to think of as
shameful. But it might become less shameful every time it was repeated. I
believed he half hoped I would walk into the copper shop on Castle Road to say
he'd shown me the cards as well, but that it had only been in fun and nothing
had come of it.

As
to Vaughan's whereabouts on that Monday ... Well, he was a man under pressure
and he was in funds. It would not have surprised me if, between Mallinson's and
the luncheon- that-never-was, he had paid for something different from what the
cards brought him to - some advance on that action. He certainly knew where the
accommodating ladies were to be found. I pictured him walking down the
alleyways - those alleyways in the shadow of the Grand Hotel, the ones that
echoed to the sound of rushing rainwater - and looking in at every doorway in
turn. Or were those women to be found on the main streets, above the shops
selling trinkets for trippers? It was a sea-side town after all, a place of
pleasure. As he stood next to me in the gentlemen's he might have been nerving
himself up to asking me to accompany him. I supposed that he often resorted to
the Scarborough night houses - resorted to them even during the day - for
Vaughan was not an attractive fellow and this was his usefulness as far as
Fielding was concerned. He was no rival for the affections of Amanda Rickerby.
Fielding made no objection to ugly or old men staying in the house - or
families, hence the push to make family apartments. He objected to single
young men, such as Armstrong, the fellow who'd collected seaweed.

You
might think Fielding a nancy but once you knew different it was obvious that
he loved Miss Rickerby. I saw him fairly springing about with pleasure when
she had complimented him in the ship room, the whole black sea behind him,
utterly forgotten. He coloured up when she addressed him; and he never made any
of his little cracks at her expense. But he did not stand an earthly with her,
being twice her age and nothing to look at, and while he was not a pauper he
was a failure in business and a gaol bird into the bargain. But for a while
he'd tried. You
might
say that he'd tried bribery. He was paying for the
redecoration of the house; he hung his pictures about the place; laid in cigars
and Spanish sherry, and he gave her the benefit of his business advice. The
more profit the house turned, the less chance of Miss Rickerby selling up and
leaving. But he mustn't have been thinking straight when he recommended that
she bring in railway men, for the law of averages said that a marriage-able one
would land on the doorstep eventually. Having dealt with one, he had another on
his hands directly. But he had read the signs wrongly in my case.

At
first, she had given me her smiles and flirtatious glances wholesale,
especially in the company of Fielding. But they had been replaced by thoughtful
silences when she'd discovered what she needed to know: that he was jealous. I
recalled the ways he had tried to take me away from her when she was being
over-friendly. At dinner, he had lured me to the ship room with the promise of
a cigar; he had done the same at the luncheon that never was, practically
ordering me from her presence on that occasion. Late at night in the kitchen he
had urged me to go up and look at the waves. The following morning he'd been
keen that I should go off to the station to reclaim my engine. And I believed
that his hatred of me - and his jealousy - were made plain to Amanda Rickerby
when I'd said that the white wine 'went down a treat', and he'd exclaimed,
'Just so!' in a sarcastic way, unable to keep his feelings in check. I saw
Amanda Rickerby's face turning quickly, the sight of her face in profile - the
sudden sharpness of it. She would have seen him then for the murderer of
Blackburn, and known he might try something similar on me.

'I
do not say that your sister is a party to murder,' I said to the Captain, 'or
complicit in any way. No charge against her would stand. Her behaviour was ...'
And a convenient phrase came to me from my law studies:'... It was too
remote
from the crime. She couldn't know for certain that Fielding
would try anything. It might have seemed tantamount to slander to have confided
her suspicions, you know. In the end she settled for telling me to lock my
room.'

The
Captain eyed me for a while, perhaps not keen on the sight of a fellow trying
to get himself off the hook. At the same time, he was weighing some further
plan, I knew.

'And
he just dropped the body into the harbour?' he enquired. 'That would be a risk,
wouldn't it?'

'I
believe your brother, Adam, may have helped him get rid of the body,' I said,
and the Captain did not flinch but just glanced sidelong to the Mate, who
enquired, '
How
,
would you say?'

'I
don't mean the lad was involved in murder. It would be just tidying up to him.
He was neat-handed, and he had a boat. He was also clever enough to know that
this business might bring the house down, so to say. Paradise was everything to
him, so he perhaps did Fielding's clearing-up for him. Whether he believed that
Blackburn had been killed or made away with himself I don't know. Fielding might
have told him anything, threatened him with God knows what. They never spoke
again, anyhow.'

'You
think they brought Blackburn to us?' the Mate cut in.

'No,'
I said, 'Adam brought
me
to you knowing the movements of
your ship, and knowing the times it passed Scarborough at no great distance
from the shore. But Blackburn .. . what would be the point? The boy would just
pitch him into the sea a good way out.'

'You're
dead wrong,' said the Captain, eyeing me. 'Fielding killed Blackburn, but Adam
Rickerby was not involved in any way.'

He
continued to use the surname when speaking of his brother, as though the youth
was a stranger to him.

'Well,'
I said, 'that's as maybe.'

I
had to admit that I could not imagine Adam Rickerby lying to the police, or to
anyone. It was his sister who'd invented the story of the mining accident. All
he had to do was keep quiet on the subject. Amanda Rickerby had done it for the
boy's own protection: it would not do to seem to have a grievance against the
North Eastern Railway Company in light of what had happened to Blackburn, as
Fielding had no doubt discovered for himself when questioned.

'I'd
give a lot to know how you brought me up on board without the rest of the crew
seeing,' I said.'... Hauled the boat up on the windlass, I suppose, and if
anyone asked you'd say your brother was paying a visit, bringing a present of a
sack of potatoes perhaps.'

'You
think you know everything, don't you?' said the Captain, rising to his feet.

I
eyed him levelly. I knew a good deal but I had not fully understood the actions
of Amanda Rickerby when we'd stood alone in the ship room. Why had she taken my
hand? Where did that fit in with the game she was playing? Had she heard the
approaching steps of her brother, and mistaken them for the approach of
Fielding, wishing to test him further, to really bring him to the point of
murder? Well, she'd been half drunk, and was perhaps more than that later in
the evening - knocked out by the stuff - which, I preferred to think, was why
she'd let me take my chances against Fielding with the protection only of a
locked door. She hadn't even bothered to protect
herself-
not that
she could have known he'd go for the whole bloody house.

As
I spoke - giving something of this to the Captain and the Mate - a voice in my
head said, 'Leave off, Jim. Face facts, man: she ran rings around you.' And I
fell silent.

'We
now show you something you don't know,' the grey Mate said. 'Come and follow
me.'

The
Captain came too, with pistol in hand. We descended to the room below the chart
room, and then we were out on the mid-ships ladder. Again I could see no crew,
and could not get a good view of the rear of the ship.

'What's
aft?' I enquired, as we descended.

'A
red flag,' said the Mate, setting foot on the deck. 'Some coal. Nothing for
you.'

'Where
are the crew?'

'Mostly
ashore,' said the Captain. 'So think on.'

He
meant that he had a free hand with me; might do what he liked. I supposed that an
unloading gang of some sort remained on board, since it seemed likely that we
were about to put off the coal at the gas works.

It
was still dark. I still saw the lights on the cranes before the cranes
themselves. But the world was stirring. More cranes turned and talked to their
neighbours; a train wound through the streets before the flat, moon-like gas
works. Every wagon was covered with white sheeting, and the sheets were numbered
at the sides - giant black numbers, but they were not in order, so that it
looked as though the train had been put together in a hurry. The gas works
still seemed to slumber, and the line of dark, sleeping ships of which we were
a part remained as before waiting patiently. Yet the factories that commanded
the streets were gamely pumping out smoke, making the black sky blacker,
keeping it just the way they liked it; and the air was filled with a constant
clanking noise, as though great chains were being dragged in all directions.

'Your
sister's in the clear and so is your brother,' I said to the Captain as we
descended onto the deck, 'even though he rowed me out to this bloody tub. But
I'll tell you this for nothing: you'll be in lumber if you don't put me off
directly.'

No
answer from the Captain; he had collected a lamp from the railing at the foot
of the ladder.

'Young
Adam would have been banking on you doing the sensible thing,' I said. 'You've
still the chance to come right - just about.'

We
had remained in the shadow of the mid-ships, and we now stood before the
hatchway of a locker new to me. The Captain held up his lamp for the benefit of
the Mate, who was removing a padlock from the catch of the iron door. The door
swung open, and the Captain stepped forward, holding the lamp to show me a
quantity of brushes of all descriptions: long-handled paint brushes, brooms and
mops, buckets made of wood and iron, paint tins, a quantity of ropes, a stack
of folded oilskins, a hand pump of some sort, a length of rubber hose, and Tommy
Nugent in his shirt sleeves. He sat against the far wall, with legs
outstretched before him and crossed in a civilised way, as he might once have
crossed his legs while leaning against a tree trunk and eating a picnic.