Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

'Look here,' I said, 'why are you showing me these?'

He stepped back, offended.

'What's the matter, Jim?' he said. 'Has old Fielding warned you off?'

'Warned me off what?'

'Business connection,' he said.

'Eh?'

'You can have the choicest selection from the choicest range. A hundred cards for a quid, Jim.'

'Why would I want a hundred?'

'You can have two hundred if you want. To be perfectly honest, I'm keen to sell the whole stock, hence the special rate. Of course, you're a chum as well – that's the other reason.'

He moved over to the fire, leant on the mantel-shelf, and looked shrewdly at me, or at least I supposed that was the idea.

'But maybe you think rather narrowly of me for bringing them out.'

'You mean me to buy them and sell them on?' I said.

He nodded quickly.

'They go like hot cakes in any engine shed,' he said. 'Sixpence a piece. I've blokes on the Great Northern and the Hull and Barnsley, and they're getting rich at this game, Jim. When the samples are first shown there's a bit of a frost, I'll not deny it. Blokes are shy, as I can see you are, Jim; they're married men, and it's on their conscience a little, but I promise you that after a couple of weeks, when they think back to what they've seen, and turned it over a little in their minds, why… there's a regular rush, Jim.'

'The cards are not legal though, are they?'

'Where?' he demanded, still with the shrewd look.' Where are they not legal? They're jolly well legal in France.'

But then he relented a little.

'The coppers can be a nuisance,' he said. 'But it's small apples to them, Jim. I know that from experience. Would you care for a bottle of beer?'

'Well,' I said, 'what time is it?'

'Quarter to midnight,' he said.

I grinned, for it was a crazy situation. It seemed about a week since I'd come into Scarborough station with Tommy Nugent.

'It's nearly midnight, Jim!' said Theo Vaughan, laying the card package down on the bed. 'I'm not going to mince words! I believe in plain speaking!'

I was curious to see where he'd go for the beer, and in the end – after a bit of head scratching on his part – it was the portmanteau. The bottle opener he found at last in the bottom of the closet.

'I don't run to glasses,' he said, handing over the bottle. 'But you're not the sort to bother. Try giving old Fielding a bottle and no glass and just see what happens!'

'What does happen?' I said.

'Nothing,' said Vaughan. 'But it's the look he gives you.'

'He'll drink it then?'

'He'll drink it all right.'

Vaughan took a pull on his beer, and fell to eyeing me for a while.

'I should just think he will,' he ran on. 'What's the old devil been saying about me? But go on, Jim, I can see you want to question me. Get straight to it. Honesty and trust and plain- dealing – that's the start of any business connection.'

'Did you show your cards to Blackburn?' I said.

That knocked Vaughan, I could tell, for he asked, "What cards?' and went back to his shrewd look.

'Well,' I said, taking a pull of beer, 'the ones presently under discussion. The ones you've just asked me to question you about.'

At this, Vaughan might have nodded, but it was done too fast for me to be certain.

'The coppers want to know every detail of my dealings with the man, which amount to this: sitting next to him at one supper, during which he was more or less silent; going with him to the Two Mariners, beginning in hopes of conversation and ending in complete silence.'

'But on the walk – in the pub – you did show him the cards?'

'I suppose so.'

Vaughan was pacing now, beer bottle in hand.

'And he didn't take to the cards?'

'You should have seen him when I took 'em out, Jim. Face like bloody yesterday and he said, "I shall be mentioning this to Miss Rickerby.'"

'Oh,' I said.

'Next development, Jim,' said Vaughan. 'The coppers – the Scarborough lot – made a search of the house – well, they've made several – and they turned up a few of my choicest cards in one of them. I had them stowed away in two places in this room, and they evidently found both. No action was taken. They just gave me a bit of a rating, you know. They were quite decent about it really. I think they knew it was a bit unsporting, the way they came upon them, and to be honest I think they rather enjoyed the experience. Bit of light relief. Now I knew that Blackburn had threatened to split on me to the Lady, and I didn't know whether he had done, or whether she'd told the coppers. So I thought it best to come right out with it, and let on that I'd shown Blackburn a couple of samples.'

He took a long pull on his beer before continuing:

'But if I thought that would bring an end to the matter I thought wrong, Jim. Three times in the past five months I've been called in to the copper shop on Castle Road.'

'I can't imagine the Lady splitting,' I said. 'She seems pretty free and easy – she'd just think those cards were a bit of a laugh.'

Vaughan seemed quite bucked by the thought. He nodded and said, 'I can just see her in a series of her own, Jim. She'd be shown all day about her normal activities only without a stitch on. You're getting pretty hot at the thought, I can see it, Jim.'

'No, no, I'm just, you know… rather hot.'

'Mind you,' he continued, 'what you'd end up with would be a lot of photographs of the Lady drinking glasses of wine.'

'If the cards drew the interest of the coppers,' I said, 'and they've been all over this house, how come you've still got all the cards?'

'I haven't nearly as many as I once had,' said Vaughan. 'They've had some of the best ones off me, and I generally keep the few I do have in a little hidey hole outside this house.'

'Where's that then?' I asked, taking a pull on my beer.

'Just now, Jim,' he said, 'it's the left luggage office at Scarborough station.'

I finished my beer, and put the bottle on the mantel-shelf.

'I'm off to get my boots cleaned,' I said, 'if the lad's still about.'

'You back at work tomorrow, then?' asked Vaughan.

'If they've fettled the engine,' I said, opening the door, 'then yes. But I've got a feeling I'll be stuck here another night.'

No railway man was ever required to wait two nights for an engine. It made no kind of operating sense, but I had decided that I was on the track of something. Besides, Vaughan showed no sign of thinking anything amiss. I turned in the doorway, and took a last look at the room.

This was the real meaning of the term 'bachelor's lodgings'. The phrase was meant to mean something different but this was it in practice.

'We'll talk about a business connection tomorrow, shall we?' said Vaughan, and I nodded in a vague sort of way.

'You look about ready to move out of here,' I said.

'I've always got an eye out. After all that's gone on here I'm a bit sick, but then everyone's under the gun because of this bloody never-ending investigation.'

'Even Fielding?' I said.

'Him most of all,' said Vaughan.

'How come?'

'I shan't say, Jim. I'm sworn to silence.'

But I didn't doubt that he'd let on eventually, and here was another reason for staying on at Paradise.

"Night then,' I said.

On quitting Vaughan's room I needed a piss, and so stepped into the bathroom he'd earlier come out of.

The cabinet by the side of the toilet stood open. Inside was a mass of razor blades in paper wrappings, a length of elasticated bandage, a big bottle of Batty's Stomach Pills, something called Clarke's Blood Mixture, Owbridge's Lung Tonic, some ointment for puffed-up feet, Eczema Balm ('the worst complaint will disappear before our wonderful skin cure'), and a red paste-board packet with a picture of a dead rat on it. Rat poison in the bathroom cabinet: 'Fletcher's Quick-Acting Rat Poison', to be exact. The ingredients were printed on the back: 'Lampblack, Wheat Flour, Suet, Oil of Aniseed, Arsenious Acid'. This last came from arsenic, and it struck me that there was a whole murder kit in this cabinet. But the investigating officers had obviously not thought so – otherwise they'd have taken the stuff away. I wondered whether it was Vaughan's stuff, or whether it belonged to the household in general. I unbuttoned my fly, and I was just slacking off, playing the yellow jet spiral-wise in the toilet bowl and thinking on when the door opened behind me. It was Vaughan again. It was less than a minute since I'd seen him last.