She was looking at me with an expression of wonderment.
'Would you like a cup of tea?' she said, seeming to come out of a trance. 'Or would you rather see the room first?'
At the back of the hallway, to the right of the stairs, I could see the man who'd answered the door. He now wore some species of dressing gown over his suit. It was perhaps a smoking jacket – not that he was smoking, as far as I could make out, but just generally taking it easy. He too held a cup of tea. He nodded as I looked at him.
My coat was over my arm. A coat tree stood in the hallway, beside a small bamboo table on which stood an ornamental tea pot, a dusty circle of sea shells, some framed views of Scarborough, and a black album of some sort, closed. I reached out towards it, thinking it might be a visitors' book, that Blackburn's name might be in it, but something in Miss Rickerby's look checked me. However, after eyeing me for a moment, she said, 'Open it.'
I did so. It held more views of Scarborough.
'The sea from Scarborough,' observed Miss Rickerby of the first one I turned up. 'Scarborough from the sea,' she said of the second.
'I thought it might be a visitors' book,' I said, closing it again. 'I thought I might have to sign it.'
'We do have a visitors' book, but it's in the kitchen. I'm going through it just now.'
I nodded, not really understanding.
'You see,' she explained, 'I write to the visitors asking if they'd like to come back – the ones I want back, that is.'
I should've thought they'd all want to come back, looking at her.
I glanced up, and the man had gone from the side of the stairs.
'It's hardly worth keeping it out this time of year,' the landlady said.
'You've not been busy then?'
She smiled, eyeing me strangely.
'We had a Mr Ellis last week.'
'An engine man, was he?' I enquired, and it seemed my investigation had begun sooner than I'd bargained for.
She shook her head.
'He travelled in galoshes, if you see what I mean. Now… tea or room?'
'I'd rather see the room, I think,' I said.
'Quite right,' she said, 'because you might just hate it. What did I put down about it on the notice at the station?' she asked, turning towards the staircase.
'You said all the rooms were excellent,' I said, and she made a noise like 'Ha!'
I thought of the wife, who'd been a landlady when I first met her – my landlady in fact. She had a good sense of humour, but it would not have done to rib her about the rooms she let out. Being so keen to get on, she never saw the funny side of anything touching business or money.
Miss Rickerby carefully moved her teacup aside with the toe of her boot, and began climbing the stairs. Without looking back, she said, 'Follow me.'
I did so, with my coat over my arm, and of course it was a pleasure to do it, at least as far as the view of Miss Rickerby's swinging hips went. But the stair gas burnt low. The paint smell increased; the stair carpet seemed to deteriorate with every new step, and the green stripe wallpaper became faded, like a sucked humbug. We came to the first landing: black floorboards with a blue runner, none too clean. It led to closed doors.
'The sitting room is on this floor,' Miss Rickerby said, indicating the nearest closed door.
The staircase narrowed still further as we approached the second landing: a dark corridor where one bare gas jet showed tins of white-wash and rolls of wallpaper leaning against the wall.
'These are all the rooms you can't have,' said Miss Rickerby – and this was evidently why Tommy Nugent had been turned away.
'Decorating,' I said.
'You're very quick on the uptake, Mr Stringer.'
I followed her up another, still narrower staircase, and we came to a short corridor, running away ten feet before ending in the slope of the house roof. A gas bracket – unlit – stuck out of the wall to my left. A little further along, also on the left, was a small white-painted door with a sloping top to accommodate the roof – evidently a cupboard or store room. Immediately to my right was a somewhat bigger white-painted door, with a low, reddish light coming out from underneath. The landing being so small, I was rather close to Miss Rickerby who smelt of talcum, perhaps, but also something out-of-the-way. She made just as good an impression close to, anyhow.
She said, 'You haven't asked the price.'
I said, 'No, that's because…'
'… You're stupendously rich.'
She took a small match box from her sleeve, turned the gas tap on the bracket, and lit the mantle, allowing me to see that the wallpaper was a faded green stripe alternating with an even more faded green stripe.
'It's because in your notice,' I said, breathing in Miss Rickerby, 'you put down "economical rates for railway men".'
'And because the North Eastern company will refund you,' said Miss Rickerby… which was what I should have said.
'Two shillings,' she said, and she reached for the handle of the bigger door, pushed it open and retreated.
The room was practically all bed. The head of it was just alongside the door, while the end fitted neatly under the win- dowsill. The window itself was about three feet with a wide ledge and red velvet curtains, which had perhaps once been very good, but now showed bald patches, and were parted, so that the whole window was like a tiny theatre stage. I went in, shuffled along by the edge of the bed, and looked out and down. There was a kind of staircase of dark house roofs to either side, but directly below was the Prom (which was deserted), then the lights of the harbour, with its cluster of cowardly boats, unable to face up to the wild black sea beyond.
'That's a grandstand view all right,' I said.
But Miss Rickerby had most unexpectedly – and disappointingly – gone, so I continued my inspection of the room alone.
Well, it was like a ship's cabin, or some sort of viewing booth: you'd sit on the bed with your feet up, and marvel at the scene beyond your boots. I took off my great-coat, set my kit bag down on the counterpane, and sat on the bed in the manner just described. The room was tolerably well-kept, although I fancied it wouldn't do to look too closely. On the hearth, I could see fire dust that a brush had passed too lightly over.
At my left elbow, as I sat on the bed, was the door, and there was a key in the keyhole. To the left of my left leg was a wardrobe with, as I imagined, just enough clearance between it and the bed to allow for the opening of the doors and barely any between its top and the ceiling. Beyond my boot soles was the window. To the right of my right boot was a small table covered with a tartan cloth. On the table was a box of long matches, a red-shaded oil lamp, with the wick burning low – as though in expectation of a tenant – and instructions for the lighting of the lamp. There was also a black book.
To the right of my right knee was a small fireplace, not laid for a fire but with kindling and paper ready in one scuttle, and coal in another. At my right elbow was a wash stand on a scrap of red and black tab rug, which ran partly under the bed as any rug in that room would have to do. For the rest, the floor was black-painted boards.
I sat and watched the black, brooding sea and listened to the wind rising off it, which periodically set the window clattering in its frame. I then leant forward and picked up the book that lay by the side of the lamp. It was Ocean Steamships by F. E. Chadwick and several others, and the owner had written his name on the inside page: 'H. D. R. Fielding'. Who's he when he's at home? I thought, and I settled down on the bed with it. Turning to the first page, I read: 'It is a wonderful fact in the swift expansion of mechanical knowledge and appliances of the last hundred years that while for unknown ages the wind was the only propelling force used for purposes of navigation…'
At that, I put the book back on the table and picked up the directions for the lamp. 'Sunshine at Night,' I read. 'The "Famos" 120 Candle-Power Incandescent Oil Lamp. The management of the lamp is simplicity itself…' Tucked into the pages of the little booklet was a handwritten note evidently meant for guests at Paradise and left over from the summer: 'Please note that teas can by arrangement be served on the beach. Please place requests with Mr Adam Rickerby.'