The Last Train to Scarborough (20 page)

'What's the work going on here?'

'...
Making an
apartment.'

'Why?'

He looked sidelong, looked back.

'Bring in a different sort.'

'A different sort of guest? What
sort?'

'The sort that likes apartments.'

Holiday apartments were more
expensive than holiday rooms, and I supposed that the difference would repay
knocking down walls to create them.

I believed that I had got as much
as I would get from Adam Rickerby.

'I'm off downstairs just now,' I
said. 'I'm off to smoke a cigar.'

Under the steady gaze of the
over-grown schoolboy, and with mind racing, I turned and quit the
apartment-to-be.

Approaching the ship room, I
fancied for the second time that I heard muttering from behind the door, which
stopped directly upon my opening the door and entering. I saw the black sea
tracking endlessly past the tall, delicate windows. If Fielding and Vaughan had
been speaking, they'd been doing so without looking at each other. Vaughan lay
flat on the couch and again smoked towards the ceiling. Fielding sat in his armchair
facing the tall windows. In that warped, wide room the fire was too small, the
fireplace smaller still, and yet the room was too hot.

The gas was noisy here, as in the
rest of the house. It sounded like somebody's last breath, going on for ever.
Was it the gas that made the room hot or thoughts of the landlady that made
me
hot in it?
Something had changed about the few sticks of furniture in the room. None of
these quite belonged. It was as if they'd been meant for a different room, and
I fancied that if somebody struck up on the piano, it might crash through the
ancient floorboards. I noticed for the first time an alcove set into the wall
beside the piano, with two bookshelves fitted into it. Each held half a dozen
books, all - at first glance - about ships or the sea, or paintings of same,
and I took them all to be Fielding's.

Set between his armchair, and
Vaughan's couch, was the second armchair. The small bamboo table had been
pushed towards it, and a cigar, already cut, rested on a little saucer that
made shift as an ash tray. Beside it was a box of long matches: wind vestas. As
I sat down at my chair and took up the cigar, Vaughan rolled a little my way,
blowing smoke. His reddish, down-pointed moustache looked odder still when set
on its side. Fielding also altered position somewhat, so that his gaze was now
midway between me and the sea.

'I'm obliged to you,' I said to
Fielding after lighting the cigar and shaking out the match. I was glad to have
got my smoke going first time, for there'd only been one match left in the box
- which seemed to sum up the whole house. Fielding nodded courteously in my
direction, and crossed his legs, which he did tightly, in a fashion rather
womanly. Vaughan watched me for a while, then rolled back to his former
position.

'It makes a cracking cigar divan
does this,' he said.

'And it will be fit for nothing
else once you've smothered it in ash,' said Fielding. 'The Lady will not like
it.'

No, I thought, but she won't be
the one who cleans it.

'You have lots of books on ships,'
I said to Fielding.

'About
ships, I
think you mean,' he replied. 'I assure you that none of them are
on
ships. I have many about railways as well, and quite a fair number of novels.'

'He's got enough books to start a
bookshop,' said Vaughan, 'and that's just what he means to do.'

An interval of silence, and then
Fielding leant a little my way, like a man about to pass on a confidence.
'There's a good lock-up shop on Newborough, Mr Stringer,' he said. 'If it falls
into my hands, it will be re-fitted throughout and will indeed become a
bookshop as Vaughan says ...'

'Second-hand books,' said
Vaughan, nodding at the ceiling, as though he thoroughly approved of the idea.

'Antiquarian
,'
corrected Fielding.

He seemed to have the ability to
start and finish businesses just like that; seemed to have the capital to do it
as well - and to buy new books.

'Theo ...
Mr Vaughan
here ...
was showing me some of your
cards for the platform machines,' I said. 'Just my sort of thing, they were.'

'But you take a close interest in
the railways, Mr Stringer,' said Fielding, cocking his head and smiling at me.
'The average passenger does not, or so Mr Robinson of the North Eastern company
assured me.'

'Robinson's a pill,' said
Vaughan.

'He told me', Fielding ran on,
still smiling, 'that as a supplier of images I lacked the common touch.'

'Bloody nerve,' said Vaughan,
who'd already mentioned to me this famous saying of Robinson's.

'Told me to my face,' continued
Fielding, 'and do you know
...
he was putting
on a silk top hat at the time.'

It was impossible to tell from
his expression how angry he was, if at all.

'You must be pretty mad at the
Company,' I said.

'I should just think he is,'
Vaughan said.

He would keep putting his two
bob's worth in. Again, it was hard to work out if Fielding minded very much.

'Pretty mad?' Fielding repeated
coolly. 'From their point of view they acted logically. I admit that I rode my
own hobby horses a little too hard.'

'The straw that broke the camel's
back', Vaughan put in, 'was Sunderland station.'

'I produced a card showing
Sunderland station at night,' said Fielding, blowing smoke in the direction of
the
sea,'...
illuminated by the new system of
oil lighting supplied by the Kitson Company. On the rear of the card was given
the number of lamps, also the cost of oil and mantles, installation and
maintenance. It came out at three farthings per lamp per hour.'

'Cheap,' I said.

'Decidedly,' said Vaughan, who
was trying to blow smoke rings.

'But Robinson didn't care for it,'
Fielding continued. 'He told me, "It's meant to be a post card not a
company report," and suggested instead a card showing holiday makers at
Sunderland. I then made the mistake - as I now see in retrospect - of
venturing to suggest that only a certified lunatic would take a holiday in
Sunderland, which does not have any beach to speak of.'

'Factories
,' said
Vaughan, 'that's what Sunderland has.'

'Where were the pair of you
living when you had the card business?' I enquired.

'Leeds,' said Fielding. 'I was
rather shaken after the collapse of the business. I moved here last summer - a
sort of convalescence, I suppose.'

'Then he wrote to me saying I
might like it,' Vaughan added.

'Where were you in Leeds? If you
don't mind my asking?'

'Central,' said Fielding,
uncrossing his legs, and I wondered: Is he being short with me?

'Both in the same digs?'

'Howard was at the better part of
town,' said Vaughan, blowing smoke.

. Blackburn had lived at
Roundhay; I wanted to work it in.

'I know a spot called Roundhay,'
I said. 'You weren't there by any chance?'

'We were not,' said Fielding, and
he cocked his head at me, as if to say: 'Now why ever did you ask that?'

Vaughan was eyeing me too.

'You two must like having this
place to yourself in the winter,' I said presently.

No reply from either of them.

'Do you ever come here in summer,
Jim?' Vaughan suddenly enquired. 'I mean, do you fire the excursions?'

'I'm usually rostered another
way,' I said. 'Half the time I'm running into ...' And I revolved the towns of
Yorkshire for a while:'...Hull.'

'Ah, now Hull is the plum,' said
Fielding, rising from his chair and carrying his cigar stub towards the fire,
where he dropped it carefully into the flames; he then brushed the ash from his
fingers and briefly inspected his fingernails. 'One of our cards showed the
electric coaling belts on the Riverside Quay,' he added, returning to his seat.

'Shown on a day of heavy rain,
they were,' said Vaughan.

'Good job old Robinson never saw
that one or he'd have put the mockers on sooner than he did.'

He was examining his own cigar,
which, like mine, had a little way to run. 'Sound smoke, wouldn't you say,
Howard?'

'A little dry,' said Fielding,
speaking as though his mind was elsewhere.

'I wonder why that is?'

'We should keep a little pot of
water in the cedar-wood box.'

I was about to try and get the
conversation back to the winter visitors, as a way of returning to the subject
of Ray Blackburn, when Fielding unexpectedly saved me the bother.

'Yes,' he said with a sigh, 'it
was my suggestion that the Lady advertise for railway men. Well, she was in
rather low water then as now. But then, you see, the first one we had in went
missing.'

'I know,' I said, somewhat
alarmed in case I had revealed my true identity, and perhaps too fast, for
Vaughan propped himself up on his couch while Fielding rose once more from his
seat, and stood before me with arms folded and one little foot tapping away.

'Of course,' I said, 'Ray
Blackburn was Leeds and I'm York, so I didn't know the fellow personally. But I
know what happened.'

'You
know!
'
exclaimed Fielding with half a smile.

'Disappeared in the night,' said
Vaughan. 'Spirited away in the dead of bloody
night,
Jim.'

'To obtrude a fact or two, Mr Stringer,'
said Fielding, 'Mr Blackburn went to bed at about eleven-thirty, and was
nowhere to be seen when the boy went up to him with a cup of tea at seven the
next morning.'

I didn't much care for that,
since the boy had promised to bring
me
tea at seven as well. I was certain that I'd been installed in the room
Blackburn had occupied, and it was beginning to seem as though I'd stepped into
his very boots.

'Were you both in the house when
it happened?' I enquired.

'Oh dear,' said Fielding, 'you
sound like the gentlemen in blue.'

He was down on the coppers then,
and that was unusual for a respectable sort like him.

'Same people in the house then as
now,' said Vaughan, 'which is why we've all been on the spot these past weeks. How
many police teams would you say we'd had, Howard? Past counting isn't it?'

'Not quite,' said Fielding.
'We've had three visits from the Scarborough men, two from the Leeds. A little
potation?' he enquired of me, nodding towards the sideboard.

'But we're right out!' exclaimed
Vaughan.

'I took the liberty of
replenishing the supply,'

'Spanish sherry?' said Vaughan,
rising to his feet.

'It's in the usual place,' said
Fielding, and he nodded significantly at Vaughan.

Well, that place was evidently
outside the room, for Vaughan went quickly out of the door and returned after a
few moments - in which Fielding kept silence while smiling at me - carrying a
tray on which stood a bottle and some small glasses. He set this down on the
top of the piano and began to pour, slopping the stuff about rather as he did
so, perhaps because the piano top was too high for the operation.

'Really, Vaughan,' said Fielding,
looking on, 'it will not do; it will not do at
all...
I'm sorry it's not decanted,' he
said, turning my way.

'Don't worry on my account,' I
said, chalking up another idiotic remark.
Was
Fielding taking the rise out of me?