Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

As to Vaughan's whereabouts on that Monday… Well, he was a man under pressure and he was in funds. It would not have surprised me if, between Mallinson's and the luncheon- that-never-was, he had paid for something different from what the cards brought him to – some advance on that action. He certainly knew where the accommodating ladies were to be found. I pictured him walking down the alleyways – those alleyways in the shadow of the Grand Hotel, the ones that echoed to the sound of rushing rainwater – and looking in at every doorway in turn. Or were those women to be found on the main streets, above the shops selling trinkets for trippers? It was a sea-side town after all, a place of pleasure. As he stood next to me in the gentlemen's he might have been nerving himself up to asking me to accompany him. I supposed that he often resorted to the Scarborough night houses – resorted to them even during the day – for Vaughan was not an attractive fellow and this was his usefulness as far as Fielding was concerned. He was no rival for the affections of Amanda Rickerby. Fielding made no objection to ugly or old men staying in the house – or families, hence the push to make family apartments. He objected to single young men, such as Armstrong, the fellow who'd collected seaweed.

You might think Fielding a nancy but once you knew different it was obvious that he loved Miss Rickerby. I saw him fairly springing about with pleasure when she had complimented him in the ship room, the whole black sea behind him, utterly forgotten. He coloured up when she addressed him; and he never made any of his little cracks at her expense. But he did not stand an earthly with her, being twice her age and nothing to look at, and while he was not a pauper he was a failure in business and a gaol bird into the bargain. But for a while he'd tried. You might say that he'd tried bribery. He was paying for the redecoration of the house; he hung his pictures about the place; laid in cigars and Spanish sherry, and he gave her the benefit of his business advice. The more profit the house turned, the less chance of Miss Rickerby selling up and leaving. But he mustn't have been thinking straight when he recommended that she bring in railway men, for the law of averages said that a marriage-able one would land on the doorstep eventually. Having dealt with one, he had another on his hands directly. But he had read the signs wrongly in my case.

At first, she had given me her smiles and flirtatious glances wholesale, especially in the company of Fielding. But they had been replaced by thoughtful silences when she'd discovered what she needed to know: that he was jealous. I recalled the ways he had tried to take me away from her when she was being over-friendly. At dinner, he had lured me to the ship room with the promise of a cigar; he had done the same at the luncheon that never was, practically ordering me from her presence on that occasion. Late at night in the kitchen he had urged me to go up and look at the waves. The following morning he'd been keen that I should go off to the station to reclaim my engine. And I believed that his hatred of me – and his jealousy – were made plain to Amanda Rickerby when I'd said that the white wine 'went down a treat', and he'd exclaimed, 'Just so!' in a sarcastic way, unable to keep his feelings in check. I saw Amanda Rickerby's face turning quickly, the sight of her face in profile – the sudden sharpness of it. She would have seen him then for the murderer of Blackburn, and known he might try something similar on me.

'I do not say that your sister is a party to murder,' I said to the Captain, 'or complicit in any way. No charge against her would stand. Her behaviour was…' And a convenient phrase came to me from my law studies:'… It was too remote from the crime. She couldn't know for certain that Fielding would try anything. It might have seemed tantamount to slander to have confided her suspicions, you know. In the end she settled for telling me to lock my room.'

The Captain eyed me for a while, perhaps not keen on the sight of a fellow trying to get himself off the hook. At the same time, he was weighing some further plan, I knew.

'And he just dropped the body into the harbour?' he enquired. 'That would be a risk, wouldn't it?'

'I believe your brother, Adam, may have helped him get rid of the body,' I said, and the Captain did not flinch but just glanced sidelong to the Mate, who enquired, 'How, would you say?'

'I don't mean the lad was involved in murder. It would be just tidying up to him. He was neat-handed, and he had a boat. He was also clever enough to know that this business might bring the house down, so to say. Paradise was everything to him, so he perhaps did Fielding's clearing-up for him. Whether he believed that Blackburn had been killed or made away with himself I don't know. Fielding might have told him anything, threatened him with God knows what. They never spoke again, anyhow.'

'You think they brought Blackburn to us?' the Mate cut in.

'No,' I said, 'Adam brought me to you knowing the movements of your ship, and knowing the times it passed Scarborough at no great distance from the shore. But Blackburn… what would be the point? The boy would just pitch him into the sea a good way out.'

'You're dead wrong,' said the Captain, eyeing me. 'Fielding killed Blackburn, but Adam Rickerby was not involved in any way.'

He continued to use the surname when speaking of his brother, as though the youth was a stranger to him.

'Well,' I said, 'that's as maybe.'

I had to admit that I could not imagine Adam Rickerby lying to the police, or to anyone. It was his sister who'd invented the story of the mining accident. All he had to do was keep quiet on the subject. Amanda Rickerby had done it for the boy's own protection: it would not do to seem to have a grievance against the North Eastern Railway Company in light of what had happened to Blackburn, as Fielding had no doubt discovered for himself when questioned.

'I'd give a lot to know how you brought me up on board without the rest of the crew seeing,' I said.'… Hauled the boat up on the windlass, I suppose, and if anyone asked you'd say your brother was paying a visit, bringing a present of a sack of potatoes perhaps.'

'You think you know everything, don't you?' said the Captain, rising to his feet.

I eyed him levelly. I knew a good deal but I had not fully understood the actions of Amanda Rickerby when we'd stood alone in the ship room. Why had she taken my hand? Where did that fit in with the game she was playing? Had she heard the approaching steps of her brother, and mistaken them for the approach of Fielding, wishing to test him further, to really bring him to the point of murder? Well, she'd been half drunk, and was perhaps more than that later in the evening – knocked out by the stuff – which, I preferred to think, was why she'd let me take my chances against Fielding with the protection only of a locked door. She hadn't even bothered to protect herself- not that she could have known he'd go for the whole bloody house.

As I spoke – giving something of this to the Captain and the Mate – a voice in my head said, 'Leave off, Jim. Face facts, man: she ran rings around you.' And I fell silent.

'We now show you something you don't know,' the grey Mate said. 'Come and follow me.'

The Captain came too, with pistol in hand. We descended to the room below the chart room, and then we were out on the mid-ships ladder. Again I could see no crew, and could not get a good view of the rear of the ship.

'What's aft?' I enquired, as we descended.

'A red flag,' said the Mate, setting foot on the deck. 'Some coal. Nothing for you.'

'Where are the crew?'

'Mostly ashore,' said the Captain. 'So think on.'