The Blackpool Highflyer

Hind Senior didn't look as though he'd ever been a great talker, and nor did his gentleman's gentleman, but this fellow had to call out, for otherwise he would have been in league with the dead body at his side.

'Hi!' he yelled. 'Are you two down from Hind's?'

'I work there,' called the wife. 'Drive up there, and ask for Cicely. She'll let you telephone from the office.'

'What happened?' I called out.

'He was ninety-nine, Jim,' the wife whispered.

'Motorcar,' the man in the trap was saying, 'it was the bloody motorcar finished him off.'

Chapter Seventeen

Cicely Braithwaite was waiting for us outside the front of the Joint, with all the cab drivers eyeing her. She kissed the wife, saying: 'It was you sent him up to the mill, wasn't it dear?'

'It was,' said the wife.

'Of course, you know what did for the old man?' she said to us both. 'His heart.'

'Go on,' I said.

'Well,' said Cicely, 'it stopped.'

'And it was on account of a motorcar, wasn't it?' I asked her.

Cicely nodded. 'Frightened the life out of the old man,' she said, and then she coloured up. 'You know, it's the first time I've said that when it's actually been true.'

'Did the motorcar do anything?' I asked.

Cicely shook her head. 'Barley, that's the old man's man… He said it just came too close as it passed by… and it was going at a fair rate of course, as they all do.'

I could hear Knowles, the stationmaster, shouting at a porter: something about an out-of-date auction poster and how it wanted taking down sharpish. I looked at the clock over the station. 'If I nip up fast for our tickets,' I said, 'we should be in time for the one thirty-two – stopping train for Blackpool. Hebden's first stop.'

'Does he have Bradshaw off by heart?' Cicely said to the wife, as I climbed the steps to the ticket office.

As I waited at the ticket window, I thought about motorcars. The one that had run alongside us before the smash had looked like a giant baby-carriage, and so had the one on Beacon Hill. And so did they all, except for a certain other kind that looked like boats. I'd asked the wife, and she'd said that her Mr Robinson owned a motorcar.

The Courier was always going on about how they were the terrors of the countryside, I knew that much, and it was said they should be taxed. I didn't believe the Socialist Mission could run to one, even though old Hind might have been in their sights as an operator of wage slavery.

Dick served me at the ticket window. I could see Bob in the office behind him. I tried to remember the difference between them. Dick was the one who could write with two hands; Bob was the one that couldn't.

'George about?' I asked.

He was not; day off.

'I can't understand Bradshaw's,' Cicely was saying, as I returned. 'Whenever I find the train I need, I look down the page and there's a note saying "Only on Weekdays", and it never is a weekday that I want to take a train.'

'There's worse than that,' said the wife. 'Only go on Thursday afternoons, half of them.'

The train came in on time, pulled by one of Mr Aspinall's 060s, but that was lost on the ladies. We found an empty compartment in Third. I sat next to the wife on one side, Cicely sat on the other. As the whistle was blown, Cicely said, 'I suppose Mr Hind will have to break off his sailing holiday. He'll be awfully cut up to hear the news.'

'Rubbish,' said the wife, and Cicely frowned as the engine started away.

'Well, it's a shame that the poor old -'

'Fossil,' put in the wife.

'The poor old gentleman', said Cicely, 'did not get to a hundred, because then you receive a telegram from the… Oh, now that reminds me.' And Cicely began telling a story about Hind's Mill. 'Before he went off sailing, Mr Hind asked me to take a letter, which always gets me in a tiz. He's so fast, it's very hard to take him down verbatim, although I'm sure you can do it, love.' She touched the wife on her knee.

'He usually writes out the letters he wants me to send,' said the wife. 'I've only taken one from him verbatim.'

'How did you get on?'

'I asked him to talk more slowly.'

Cicely went wide-eyed and forgot all about her story for the moment, looking the spit of Young Leonard, the doll of Henry Clarke. 'Well he must be dead keen on you then,' she said, 'or you'd have been stood down in a moment.'

The wife was smiling, looking out of the window and kicking her foot, smiling at the flashing sunshine and the smokeless Saturday-afternoon mills going by. I pulled down the window strap and lit one of the last of the 'B's that I'd bought with George Ogden. A man went past in the corridor, and I thought: now by rights he'll be envious seeing me sitting here with two beauties. Though I'd lain awake most of the night as usual, trying to make a connection between the death of old Hind and all else, I was now feeling a little better about things: I would just go on searching until I knew the name of the person who'd put the stone on the line. Meanwhile I was dead set on having a pleasant afternoon.

'Do carry on with your story, Cicely,' I said, and I put on a bit of a swell's voice for that, so the wife gave me a funny look.

'Mr Hind had me into his room,' Cicely went on, 'and after a bit of doing his usual -'

The wife was frowning at her; we were rattling past Sowerby Bridge.

'You know,' Cicely said, 'the funny…'

'Funny what?' I said, puffing out smoke.

'The funny-osity. He never says anything, but just puts his hands -'

The wife shook her head, as if to say: not in front of a man, which was a shame, because I'd have liked to hear more about the funny-osity.

'Anyway,' Cicely continued, 'Mr Hind said, "I would like you to take a letter." I said, "Who to, Mr Hind?" and he said, "To the King!'"

'He never did!' I said, and the wife gave me another look.'I've not told you this, dear,' said Cicely, grinning all around her head, 'because I was saving it up for today. Anyway it was a very long letter, and it was to go with six suits that we were sending His Majesty.'

The wife rolled her eyes.

'The letter was saying, you know, please find herewith six suits, only in a smarter way, and was all about how they were made from the finest woollens. I never knew this, but Hind's Mill has been sending the Royal Family six suits for the staff at Balmoral every year for forty-seven years, and when we send off the fiftieth lot of six, we're to be in the Halifax Courier, Mr Hind says.'

'You'd think he'd want to keep quiet about such a daft scheme,' said the wife.

'Why six?' I said.

'I don't know,' said Cicely. 'Nobody knows.'

'To think what it must cost,' said the wife, 'and Hind laying people off in their dozens over the light suiting.'

'The letter was to go to the King's Secretary,' Cicely continued, 'who's the Right Honourable Lord… something, with a lot of letters after his name – more letters after his name than in it. I have the letter by heart if you want to hear.'

She looked across the carriage at the two of us; again she was dividing us, because I wanted to hear, and the wife, I knew, didn't care to.

'Go on, Cicely,' I said, blowing smoke.

'My Lord,' said Cicely. 'We would be grateful if His Majesty would be so gracious -'

'Makes you quite sick,' said the wife.

'- so gracious,' Cicely continued, frowning at the wife, 'as to receive this gift of six suits for the royal staff at Balmoral.'

But such a frost had been created by the wife that Cicely just said, 'Eee, Lydia,' and gave a very Yorkshire sort of sigh. Then she perked up, saying: 'Oh, talking of letters…' And she passed an envelope over to me.

I didn't have time to picture my worst fears before they were actually there on the page. It started straight in with: 'I saw you yesterday at the mill with Cicely, who says your wife is the new one in the office. This letter is in case you want to know more about Maggie Dyson, the lady you killed.'