The Last Train to Scarborough (36 page)

Beyond
the window, Retford had been replaced by flying fields. I stretched out my
legs, loosened my tie, and thought about doing a spot of reading. Beside me on
the seat was a copy of the previous day's
Yorkshire Evening Press,
which struck a happy, holiday note in some of its articles, the Easter week-end
being in prospect: 'Great Rush to the Sea-side Predicted'; 'Everybody on
Pleasure Bent'. All the regiments of the York garrison would be marching
through the streets in aid of a recruitment drive, and there would be the
showing of a film,
The British Army Film,
at the Victoria Hall in Goodramgate. It
promised 'some very wonderful pictures of bursting shrapnel, of quick-firing
guns springing out shells at the rate of thirty a minute'. Also, Constable
Flower had arrested a 'drunk and incapable' on one of the far platforms of the
station. He'd taken him into the cells in the police office by means of a
luggage trolley, and this news had caused laughter when, later on in the day,
it was announced in the police court.

Beside
the
Press
was the latest number of the
Railway

Magazine
opened towards the back of the
paper with the page headed 'What the Railways Are Doing' uppermost. This was
the classified section of the magazine, and always carried the notices
announcing meetings of the Railway Club, who were really a London lot, but whose
meetings were open to anyone taking the trouble to write to the secretary for a
ticket. At seven o'clock that day - the announcement was circled in my copy of
the magazine - Mr A. K. Chambers would be reading a paper entitled 'The New
Atlantics with Special Mention of the North Eastern Class Z', and I had the
ticket for it in my pocket.

In
the office, old man Wright, who distributed the post, had handed me the letter
in which it came and I had made a point of satisfying his curiosity by opening
the envelope in his presence and letting him see the ticket for himself. The
meeting was to be held at the Railway Club's premises: 92 Victoria Street,
London SW, and Wright had said, 'You've booked a day of leave for
that
?' Then, later, when he'd thought about it a bit more, 'Seems
a long way to go just to hear about trains,' at which I'd reminded him that he
was in fact in the
railway
police and so ought not be taking that tone.

It
was quite in order to josh with Wright. His wife, Jane, would not be coming
back to him as she had made plain both to Wright and to my own wife during a
meeting of the Cooperative ladies. But he had developed a plan in response:
firstly, he would no longer buy his groceries from any of the Co-operative
stores, his wife and her new man, Terry Dawson, being employees of the
Movement. This went hard with Wright because the Co-operative stores were much
the cheapest, and he was a right old skinflint, but it was the principle of
the thing. (The Co-operative slogan, 'The Friendly Store', now rang very hollow
in his ears, he told me.) Second of all, he would leave work early twice a week
to attend the dancing classes given in the room over the Big Coach public house
on Nessgate. Once up to snuff with the two-step and the waltz and whatnot, he
would go along to the Saturday afternoon tea dances that were held in many of
the hotels of central York, and were known to attract the widows of the City.

'The
best one's at the Danby Lodge on Minster Walk,' Wright told me one day in the
police office. 'I'm going to try my luck there first.' 'You'll need a
lot
of luck,' Constable Flower had said, in an under-breath, and
whether Wright heard it or not, he certainly wasn't put off. He seemed very
confident about his plan, and I wondered whether the end of his marriage might
not be the making of him.

Of
course Wright, being so nosey, had had a field day on my delayed return from
Scarborough. Lydia had been into the office twice to ask where I'd got to, the
second time in tears. His fixed opinion, he told me later, was that I'd been
done in. 'Of course, I didn't say that to her,' he told me, 'or not in so many
words', and I dreaded to think what he
had
said for he
was not the sort to play down any drama.

On
the Thursday morning, three days after Adam Rickerby put me onto the
Lambent Lady,
the Chief himself had gone to Scarborough, making
straight to Bright's Cliff to see what had become of me. There he'd found a
bloke from the council sent to board over the window I'd smashed when I'd
pitched the chair through it. That had been quick work. Someone else in the
street had gone into the council offices to complain that the house, having
evidently been abandoned, was now a magnet for vagrants and burglars. The
Chief told me that the bloke from the council had posted a bill for the work
through the letter box before leaving.

It
seemed very unlikely to me that the bill would ever be paid.

The
Chief had broken into Paradise in company with some of the Scarborough coppers.
There were signs of people having left in a great hurry, although the gas had
been turned off. It was the Chief himself who'd come upon the body of Fielding,
which was just as well since he was well equipped to stand that kind of shock.

I'd
returned to Bright's Cliff a few days after with the Chief, some coppers from
Scarborough and Leeds, and the Scarborough coroner, a Mr Clegg. By then Theo
Vaughan had turned up, having walked into the Scarborough copper shop to make a
clean breast
of...
well, not much. He'd staggered back to the house at three in the morning on
Tuesday, 17 March, and found it empty. The smashed window and the gas reek had
terrified him, and - knowing that he was still under suspicion over the last
bit of bad business in the house - he'd taken a few of his belongings
(including, I didn't doubt, the remainder of his Continental Specialities) and
fled the scene.

I'd
talked to Vaughan in the coroner's court and had given him the whole tale over
a cup of tea during an adjournment in the inquiry. I asked him whether he'd
known that Fielding was sweet on the lady of the house.

'Not
in that way, Jim,' he said, 'not in that way.'

He
was every bit as familiar as he had been before, despite the fact that he now
knew me for a policeman. When I told him how I'd come upon the special post
cards in Fielding's bedside drawer, he said, 'He must have had 'em away from my
room, Jim. I tell
you
...
no man can resist.'

He
then leant towards me, with droplets of cold tea dangling from his 'tache, and
might have been on the point of again offering to sell me some at a knockdown
price. I believe he was only put off by the clerk of the court coming up to me
at that moment and addressing me as 'Detective Sergeant Stringer'.

Mr
Clegg had praised me before his court, and the Leeds and Scarborough coppers also
seemed to think I'd done a good job. It came down to this: I'd made myself the
mark, and I'd cracked the mystery - and it
was
cracked all
right, papers amounting to a confession to the killing of Blackburn having been
discovered amongst Fielding's belongings. He'd known Blackburn as soon as he
turned up at the house; had seen him about in Scarborough on earlier occasions
with the Lady. He had observed them buying oysters on the harbour wall, later
walking in Clarence Gardens. It was perhaps there that Blackburn had made her a
present of the North Eastern badge that she so much admired.

In
exposing Fielding I
had
left two dead bodies in my wake,
but this seemed to be taken quite lightly by everyone in authority: one of the
dead was a man who would have swung anyway, and that went down as quick and
violent justice of the sort the Chief and many another favoured. But as regards
the death of Tommy Nugent, I
blamed
the Chief.
He'd been too reckless from start to finish, and I meant to have it out with
him.

During
the visit to the house in company with the Leeds and Scarborough men, I saw a
different side to the man. He knew he'd made a bloomer over sending Tommy
Nugent with me, and he acted accordingly. I believe that 'chastened' is the
word. He'd liked Tommy Nugent, was saddened by his death, and seemed to take
the responsibility for it, but that wasn't enough for me.

We'd
all (the Leeds and Scarborough coppers, the Chief and me) gone off to the Two
Mariners after inspecting the house, and I'd given the story, which was fast
becoming a party piece, over a few pints. As when addressing Captain Rickerby,
I'd played down my infatuation with the Lady of the House, although I think one
of the Scarborough coppers guessed at it; he'd questioned her over the disappearance
of Blackburn and had evidently half fallen in love with her himself. When we
coincided in the gentlemen's halfway through our session in the Mariners, he
congratulated me on saving her life by the smashing of the window, for that was
the supposition - theirs and mine: that she had survived the gas, and made off
with her brother to avoid being taken in charge over the killing of Tommy.

'She
was a peach, wasn't she, that one?' the Scarborough copper said. 'I wouldn't
have minded tomming her myself.'

He
told me that he was circulating her and Adam's descriptions in the
Police Gazette
as being wanted for questioning over the death of
Tommy Nugent. 'But I'll tell you this,' he added, buttoning up his flies, 'I
half hope we never find her.'

'I
don't suppose you ever will,' I said, which might have been taken as rather
rude, but I was the star turn that day and could have got away with anything.
As I told my tale, one of the Leeds blokes kept saying, 'Well, who'd have
thought it?' and 'What a turn-up'. He might have been a stooge, paid to boost
me.

The
Chief had kept silence as I gave my account, even when, towards the end - and
made brave by my three pints - I'd eyed him and said in front of everyone,
'Tommy Nugent ought not to have been sent. He was gun crazy - out for any
opportunity to loose off a bullet.'

Later,
on the train back to York, as I sat with the Chief in a smoking compartment we
hardly spoke a word, and I knew that for the first time in our acquaintance
this was
my
silence rather than one of his. I'd been stirred up by my
success in the pub, and I now felt I had the measure of the Chief. I would let
him stew before I said my piece.

He
smoked and I sat over-opposite, looking sidelong.

'Will
you have a cigar?' he enquired, just after we'd come out of Seamer.

'I
reckon not,' I said.

'It
is
a smoking compartment, you know.'

'Yes,'
I said, 'but that doesn't mean it's obligatory, does
it...
sir?'

'Obligatory,'
he muttered under his breath.

A
silence of twenty minutes followed that exchange.

'I
want to say something about this case,' I said, as we flew through Rillington.

'Fire
away,' he said.

'You
sent me into that house unprepared.'

'Correct.'

I
was a bit knocked by that but I ploughed on: 'Unprepared in the following ways:
number one ...'

'No,'
said the Chief, who had now turned and was looking through the window.

'Eh?'

'Don't
put numbers to it. I'm liable to get a bit cross if you do that. Put it
shortly.'

'I
had no sight of the case papers,' I said. 'Well, I had the witness statements,
but none of the reports. I had no account of the personalities in the house.'

The
Chief was still looking through the window.

'Firstly,'
he said,'... Christ, you've got me at it
now ...
you had all
the papers that were to hand. The others were missing and have never turned up
since.'

'That's
a bit funny, isn't it?'

'Well,
you don't seem to be laughing about it. And even if more papers had been to
hand, do you think those Leeds and Scarborough blokes are up to writing an
account of anyone's
personality
⁷
.'
He fairly
spat that word out. 'What do you think they are? A bunch of fucking novelists?'

'...
And you gave me no advance
warning of the job,' I said. 'Well, one day - not enough.'

'I
didn't want you shitting yourself for a whole week, did I? It might have been bad
for your health.'

'I
wouldn't have been shitting
myself.. .
sir. I
would have been developing a plan of action.'

'I
didn't want you to develop a plan of action.'

'Why
not?'

'Because
it would have been crap.'

'Thanks,'
I said, and the Chief stood up. He suddenly looked big - too big for Malton
station, which we were just then pulling into.

'Where
are you off to?' I said.

'The
next carriage,' said the Chief, blowing smoke.