paint smell with him, and there were specks of white-wash on the backs of his hands.
'Boots,' he said.
'Come again?' I said, because he was looking my way.
'Do yer boots,' he said, almost panting.
'We have our boots on,' said Fielding, not to the boy but to Miss Rickerby, who was of course eyeing me. 'You can't very well clean them now.'
For the first time I looked back boldly at Amanda Rickerby, and even though both of us were smiling it was obvious in that moment of honesty that neither one of us was exactly what you might call happy.
'It's just gone eleven,' her brother said. 'I clean t'boots from eleven on.'
'But the hot supper has thrown us all late,' said Fielding, and again he was appealing to our landlady rather than addressing the boy.
'The gentlemen will take them down to the kitchen in the next little while if they want them doing, Adam,' said Miss Rickerby. 'And you have something for Mr Fielding, don't you?'
The lad took a note from the front pocket of his apron, marched up to Fielding, and handed it to him.
'What's this?' said Fielding.
'If you read it,' said the lad, 'then yer'll know!
'Put through the letter box, just now,' said Miss Rickerby. 'I hope you don't mind, but I had to look at it to see who it was for. It's from your recorded music people.'
'Yes,' said Fielding, now glancing at the note. 'It's just a reminder about the meeting.'
'Mr Fielding is the chairman of the Scarborough Recorded Music Circle,' Miss Rickerby said to me, 'which is pretty good going considering he doesn't have a gramophone.'
'It is a little irregular,' said Fielding, colouring up, 'but…'
'He won't tell you that they pleaded with him,' said Miss Rickerby. 'Modesty forbids. He is also in the Rotary, Townsmen's Guild etc., sidesman at St Mary's church, and I half expect him to come in for tea and say he's been made Mayor – only he'd never let on. I'd just find this funny hat and big golden chain while straightening his room.'
Fielding was making a sort of waving away gesture with his right hand, as if to say, 'All this is nonsense', but he'd been fairly dancing about with pleasure at the landlady's compliments. She now leant in the doorway with folded arms, smiling and giving Fielding a sad but very affectionate look which made me a little jealous that for once her eyes were not on me.
'Miss Rickerby,' said Fielding, 'my dear Miss Rickerby, won't you…' For a moment I thought he was stuck for words, but he finished:'… give us something on the piano.'
'No, Mr Fielding,' she said, smiling, but privately now and looking down at her shoes. 'No, I most certainly will not.'
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fielding said good night, walked along to his bedroom, and closed the door. Standing just outside the sitting room I watched him do it, which was easy enough as his bedroom was on the same floor (and faced the right way to have the sea view). There were two other doors on that floor. One stood open, giving onto a fair-sized bathroom, all white with gas light burning. The other was closed. I walked over to it and knocked, and there was no answer. I was alone on the silent landing. I turned the handle and opened the door a fraction, gaining a view of a large, pale blue room that smelt of talcum powder. I saw a dressing table with triple mirror, and a nightdress was thrown over the bed like a dead body. A low fire burned in the grate, and there was a paraffin heater hard by that was turned up to the maximum judging by the stifling heat. This was Miss Rickerby's room.
She's like a cat, I thought – luxuriates in the heat. I closed the door as gently as possible, and I heard a rattle from behind me. It was Fielding's door opening. He wore a night-shirt, dressing gown, and his hair was all neatly combed; but he was only tripping his way across to the bathroom.
I turned and walked up the stairs towards the floor being decorated. My own bathroom was on this landing somewhere. Most of the wallpaper had been stripped from the landing walls but some remained in patches, showing the green stripes that still survived upstairs. The gas jets roared, giving a shaking white light, and I wondered whether they kept going all night. I stopped next to a dangling strand of the green wallpaper and felt minded to pull it away. I was reaching out towards it when the roaring of the gas gave way to the roaring of water – a whole waterfall seemed to have been set in motion somewhere out of sight beyond the walls. A door flew open along the corridor, and Vaughan appeared in shirt sleeves, with braces dangling and the seething din of the flushing lavatory behind him.
'Is that the bathroom?' I said.
'It is, Jim,' he said, 'but I haven't had a bath. When you've had a heavy supper, I always think it's best to…'
'I know,' I said, cutting him off.
'I've been twice in the past ten minutes,' he said, which made me worried again about the food we'd eaten, even though I felt all right.
'This is me,' Vaughan said, indicating a closed door. 'Care for a peek?'
He proudly occupied the worst room I'd seen so far in the house. It had the green and less-green wallpaper on three walls, and the dried-blood roses on the fourth. The effect was of two rooms that had crashed into each other. The roses were singed and discoloured behind two copper gas pipes that rose up either side of the fireplace. These ran up to little pale green shades that made the whole room look sickly. On the mantelshelf a pipe stand had spaces for a dozen pipes but held just one. The small fireplace was dead, but Vaughan too had a paraffin heater going. It was directed at the wall, like a child being punished for naughtiness in a school form room.
'A few damp spots there,' he said as I looked at it.
Vaughan had evidently been lying on his bed, and right next to the pillow end was a portmanteau stuffed with clothes, and a pile of copies of Sporting Life. The only furniture besides the bed and washstand was a wicker chair and a cabinet with the door open. A black trunk marked, for some reason, 'WELLINBROUGH' in white painted letters stood alongside the cabinet. There were no pictures at all on the walls. The flimsy curtains were drawn, but Vaughan too would have overlooked the sea. He was sitting on the wicker chair and removing his boots. I thought: I've got to get out of here before he takes off his trousers.
'You an early riser, Jim?' he said.
'Do you call seven o'clock early?' I said.
'I call it bloody ridiculous,' he said. 'Have a care tomorrow, will you, old man? I can hear most of what goes on up there.'
I looked up.
'But you heard nothing the night that Blackburn disappeared.'
'I was half cut then, Jim… And you know, there might have been something… something about two, something again about four. A sort of rumbling.'
'Did you mention it to the coppers?'
He shook his head.
'Not certain of it, Jim… not certain. You don't go in for physical jerks, I hope?' he added as I looked at the gas pipes, noting that they continued rising beyond the two shades, disappearing into the ceiling… and yet there was no gas plumbed into my room.
Vaughan, having thrown one boot towards the cabinet, now threw the second in a roughly similar direction.
'I should take these downstairs for the lad to clean,' he said.
'And will you?'
'Doubt it,' he said. 'I give that youth a wide berth.'
'Does he ever fly off about anything?' I enquired. 'He always seems liable to.'
Vaughan frowned.
'Shouldn't wonder,' he said. 'He's cracked.'
