Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

On the top of the chest of drawers lay an ebony tray with hair brushes and a shoe horn. I reached out with two hands, and pulled open the top drawer to its fullest extent. A smell of coal tar soap came up. The drawer contained a quantity of Howard Fielding's under-clothes neatly folded, and many little boxes. With Fielding, it seemed that almost everything came in boxes. There were several round collar boxes, and I quickly lifted the lids of two. They contained collars. I then lifted the lid of a green velvet-lined one. The inside of the lid was white silk, and the words 'Best Quality' were written there. It held solitaires and cuff links. A tortoiseshell one held more cuff links and Fielding's collection of stick pins and tie clips.

I shut the drawer and opened the next one down: comforters, socks, under-shirts, ties… and more boxes. I opened the biggest box, made of wood. It held candles and matches. Another wooden one held a tangle of alberts. Next to this was a felt bag with a drawstring. I pulled at the string with two hands, and looked down on half a dozen straight razors with pearl handles. The biggest box was leather covered. I opened it and saw a vanity set, with scissors, nail-shaper, toothbrush all held in place on red velvet – and two twenty pound notes folded in half on top. I shut the drawer, and stood still, listening to the house. Did I hear a door slam downstairs?

I marched up to the sea picture: 'Wreck of a Brig off Whitby', it was called. It showed a ship being rolled over in high seas; two men looked at the brig from the beach, and they were evidently a gormless pair. Why didn't they do something about it?

But I felt the same. I had discovered nothing. Well, nothing except the money, and what did that signify? It was a good amount, but a fellow was entitled to keep forty pounds cash in his bedroom after all. I was still half drunk, and my head was pounding as I inspected the rest of the room. I threw open the first of the closets, releasing a smell of mothballs. Fielding hung his coats up all right – Adam Rickerby would have approved. The two had neatness in common, although they'd hardly exchanged a word since I'd been in the house. I moved over to the bookshelves. Novels, collected numbers of Notes and Queries, a digest of The Railway Magazine, Famous Sea Tales, Marine Painters of Britain, A Catalogue for the Collectors of Post Cards, The Literary Antiquary; some volumes on book collecting, some guides to Scarborough. I walked to the little bedside table, opened the drawer set into it, and here was not a box but an envelope. On the front was written: 'Railway Selection – Line-side Curiosities & C'. The flap of the envelope was tucked into place but not sealed. I lifted it up, and there were two post cards: the first showed a woman in a riding hat sitting side saddle on a white horse; the second showed her sitting astride the horse. She was quite naked in both.

I froze, listened to the house; watched the door. There came faint voices from below, nothing besides.

The overall picture was now composing, but the light of day was also fading, and Fielding's room was half enclosed in darkness as I replaced the cards – for there'd been half a dozen in the envelope, all of the same sort – and walked smartly out of his room and into the corridor. Here, I listened again before I approached the opened door of Miss Rickerby's bedroom.

It was not exactly blue but lavender – her colour. The paraffin heater roared faintly as before. In combination with the low burning fire, this made the room too hot, also as before. I made first for the dressing table and opening the top-most drawer I did not care for the look of my face in the triple mirror (which seemed to give all the angles of the photographs in a criminal record card). The drawer held a great mix-up of buttons, buckles, beads, chains, lockets. I pricked my finger on the pin of a butterfly brooch. The stones on the brooch and on the chains and pendants were not precious as far as I could judge, and it made me feel sorry for the owner.

There was some silver there however – just pitched in anyhow with everything else. I saw a decorated paper fan. I caught it up, and opened it out, bringing to life a sea-side scene: a long promenade with happy bicyclists, and strollers with parasols and sun hats. I could not make out the words at the top, so I held it towards the seething blue flame of the paraffin heater and read: 'Eastbourne, Sussex'. She liked Eastbourne. I knew that already.

I tried the second drawer. It held some mysterious bundles of cotton and muslin that I knew I ought not to look at, two folded corsets; also a pair of small binoculars, another jumble of jewellery and some documents pinned together. I removed the pin. The first paper was a clipping from a magazine: 'Are You Troubled by Poor Eyesight?' An optician's advertisement – and I felt a surge of love for Miss Rickerby. The next paper was a handwritten letter, and I could hardly read a word of it; there were a couple more in the same shocking hand. I stared at the final page of the final one, and swung it in the direction of the blue light. At length, I made out 'a compass – only a trinket but it works'. The document that came after was type-written, perfectly clear… and all the breath stopped on my lips as I read the heading that had been underlined at the top: Re: Your Claim Against The North Eastern Railway Company. The letter began:

Dear Mr Rickerby, please find enclosed a letter we received on the 5th inst. from Parker and Wilkinson of York, the solicitors acting for the North Eastern Railway Company in this matter.

The letter offers compensation in the sum of one hundred and twenty pounds and payment of your costs in full and final settlement of your claim. We believe this offer to be reasonable in view of the danger of a finding of contributory negligence against you should the case be pursued and taken into court.

As you will see from the letter, this offer stands for the next sixty days …

I returned to the top of the letter. The address was that of Messrs Robinson, Farmery and Farmery of Middlesbrough, and carried the date 11 March, 1910.1 supposed they would have known that Adam Rickerby was unable to read, and that the business would be dealt with on his behalf by his sister. She, at any rate, had been the one who'd kept the letter, and it proved that Adam Rickerby had not been made strange by the collapse of a pit prop. He'd tangled with a train, and it was odds-on that the money paid over as a consequence – and paid through the agency of the firm that I would shortly be working for – had bought the Paradise guest house.

I could make nothing of the other papers. I replaced the pin, and my eye fell on the one box in the drawer. It was about three inches square, the lid decorated with sea shells. I lifted the lid, and saw a small silver compass set into a miniature replica of a ship's wheel. But it was the object lying alongside it that I picked up. In the half light I saw the crest of the City of York, the Leeds crest, the sheep, the ears of corn. Here was the badge of the North Eastern Railway, and I was quite certain that it had once belonged to Ray Blackburn.

I stepped out of Amanda Rickerby's room and walked along the dark corridor to the top of the staircase, where I heard the sound of rainfall. The front door was open, but it closed as I looked down. Fielding appeared at the foot of the stairs. His gramophone club business evidently concluded, he was putting on his coat in the hall, under the gas chandelier. I had not seen his coat before. It had a velvet collar.

'You look tired,' I called down, for he did, and I wanted to appear mannerly, not like a burglar. He looked up the stairs and nodded his head a few times.