'No,' I said, 'but there was only one fitter at the shed and… Well, if it comes to it, I might have to stop here another night.'
'Why not?' he said. 'Make a holiday of it!'
Amanda Rickerby read on, but then none of this was news to her.
'If you do come back, you'll have the infinite pleasure of meeting Mrs Dawson,' said Fielding, passing his plate to Adam Rickerby.
I remembered about the daily woman.
'She's due at ten,' said Amanda Rickerby, still with her eyes on her book, 'thank God.'
I thought again of the wife who, being the religious sort of suffragette, never said 'thank God', and who only read books in bed, being always on the go when she was not in bed.
'Porridge,' said Adam Rickerby, and it was by way of being a statement of fact.
As I stared at the porridge that had been put before me, Fielding gave a general 'Morning!' and quit the room.
I began to eat; Amanda Rickerby read, and sipped her tea.
I'd almost finished my porridge when she looked up, and said, 'I hear you've been asking about Mr Blackburn.'
Silence for a space. I watched her brother at the range. Who'd told her of my questions? She was not smiling.
'We believe it was a case of suicide,' she said.
'Yes,' I said.
'Some event seemed to have thrown a great strain on him.'
'Kipper,' said Adam Rickerby, putting it next to my porridge. He retreated to the range, from where he enquired: 'Kipper all right?' 'I haven't started it yet,' I said.
'What a time that was,' said Amanda Rickerby. 'The police all over the house – it does nothing for business, you know.'
There was a hardness in her eyes for the first time, and I thought: This is what you'd see perhaps quite often if you were married to her. She was still beautiful, but in spite of rather than because of her eyes.
'I thought it would be a miracle if we ever got another railway man in,' she said.
'Yes,' I said, contemplating the kipper, 'I can quite see that.'
And when I looked up she was smiling and her eyes were shining again: 'You are that miracle, Mr Stringer.'
PART FOUR
Chapter Thirty
On the lower level of the Promenade, a man at a road works was making hot gas, seemingly for his own amusement. No- one was about. The beach was like black glass. I could make out a couple of dog walkers on the sand, a few hundred yards in the direction of the Spa. They minded the sleeting rain; the dogs didn't. It was nine- thirty, and I had half an hour to kill before I met Tommy Nugent at the station. Facing the sea on the lower Prom was the iron gate leading into the Underground Palace and Aquarium. It was padlocked, and there was a poster half slumped in a frame alongside it. 'Great Attractions of the Season', I could just make out: 'Voorzanger's Cosmopolitan Ladies & Gentlemen's Orchestra, 21 in number including Eminent Soloists, will give a Grand Concert Every Sunday at 8'.
But not in winter, they wouldn't.
'Swimming Exhibitions', I read lower down: 'In Large Swimming Bath by Miss Ada Webb and Troupe of Lady Swimmers, and High Divers at Intervals'.
I walked on towards the harbour: the sea water baths were closed, and never likely to re-open by the looks of it. I climbed the wet stone steps to the higher Prom. The ships in the harbour were huddled tight at all angles. A fishing boat approached, bucking about like mad, and I was surprised the blokes walking the harbour walls weren't looking on anxiously. But I soon saw the value of those walls, for the boat steadied the instant it came between them.
I wound my way up towards the shopping streets. The Scarborough citizens had the sea, the cliffs, the great sky and the Castle to themselves, but all was black. I saw a broken bathing machine in a back yard. Because Scarborough was a happier place than most in summer, it was a more miserable one come winter. I walked up Newborough, heading the opposite way to most of the trams, which thundered down the road from the railway station as though they meant to hurl themselves into the sea when they reached the bottom.
According to the station clock tower it was dead on ten when I walked through the booking office and onto Platform One. The station was still guarded by the moody coal trains. It was biding its time until summer, and there was hardly a soul about. The station bookstall stood like a little paper encampment, and the magazines hanging by clothes pegs from it fluttered in the wind that blew along Platform One. Tommy Nugent was buying a paper – The Scarborough Mercury. He hadn't seen me yet. The two kit bags were at his feet, and he was having a laugh with the bloke who ran the stall.
'Bloody hell,' he said, when I walked up to him, 'I'm surprised to see you. I thought you'd be dead.'
'Well, you didn't seem too upset about it,' I said, as we walked away from the bookstall. 'Where did you put up?'
'Place called the Rookery or the Nookery, or something.'
'Did you have a sea view?'
'Did I fuck. Anyhow, I was hardly in the room. I came by your place twice in the night, you know. First at midnight, then at five.'
'Five o'clock? Not with the guns?'
'Of course.'
'I appreciate that, Tommy. But there was no need.'
'The house was all right then, was it?'
He seemed quite disappointed.
'It was very interesting,' I said. 'Now I'd better see if the Chief's sent the case papers.'
'I have 'em here,' said Tommy.
He'd evidently collected the envelope from the station master just before I'd arrived. It had come up in the guard's van on the first train of the day from York, and the Chief had marked it, 'For the Attention of Nugent and Stringer, York Engine Men'. It was better than seeing 'Detective Stringer' written there, but then again the Chief hadn't troubled to seal the envelope, and it turned out that it held no case report but just witness statements from the residents of Paradise. This was the Chief all over: rough and ready, not letting a fellow relax.
Til have a read of these later,' I said.
'Aye,' said Tommy, 'we've to collect our engine. It's all ready according to the SM.'
'It might be,' I said, 'but I'm staying on.'
'But you said the house was all right.'
'Well, it is and it isn't.'
'I'm coming back with you, then.'
'No, Tommy.'
'Why not?'
'They've no more rooms going today than they had yesterday,' I said, and he began protesting and questioning me over the sound of a train that was materialising out of the rain beyond Platform One. Behind Tommy, pasted onto the station building that housed the ladies' and gents' lavatories, was a poster showing what had been on at the Floral Hall six months before. Alongside it was a post card machine. I must've seen it
