The Last Train to Scarborough

'Did three years on that,' he said, 'clerking in the sorting carriages and… well, I saw the quantity of cards being sent.'

'As a misprint in The Times once had it, Mr Stringer,' Fielding put in, 'the down postal leaves London every evening with two unsorted letters and five thousand engines.'

I grinned at him.

'Did you quit?' I enquired, turning back to Vaughan.

'Chucked it up, yes. Didn't care for the motion of the train, Jim; gave me a sort of sea sickness.'

'Mai de mer,' said Fielding, and everything stopped, as though we were all listening for the sound of the sea coming from just yards beyond the wall of the kitchen. Everything stopped, that is, save for Adam Rickerby, who had been put to chopping parsley with a very small knife, and was evidently making a poor fist of it. Mrs Dawson was eyeing him. I knew she was going to step in, and I wondered whether he'd really fly into rage this time – and with knife in hand. But there was something very kindly about the way she took the knife from the lad, saying, 'Let's do the job properly. You're worse than me, love.'

With Mrs Dawson looking on, and the parsley chopped, Adam Rickerby then lowered the haddock into a big pot, poured in some milk, and set it on the range. At length, the room began to be filled with a sort of fishy fog. Theo Vaughan had finished his wine, and was now helping himself from the beer barrel on the table, saying 'You sticking with the wine, Jim?'

In-between doing bits of cooking in consultation with Mrs Dawson, Adam Rickerby was trying to make things orderly in the kitchen. He was forever shifting the knife polisher about on the table, and presently took it away to the sideboard. Amanda Rickerby, disregarding her pen and paper, was now sipping wine at a great rate and saying things such as, 'I do like it when we're all in, and it's raining outside.' She then turned to me, enquiring, 'Tell us all about trains, Mr Stringer. Have you ever eaten a meal on one?'

Adam Rickerby eyed me as I revolved the question. As a copper, I'd quite often taken dinner or luncheon in a restaurant car, usually with the Chief and at his expense. Would an ordinary fireman do it? Had I ever done it when I'd been an ordinary fireman, leaving aside sandwiches and bottled tea on the footplate? No.

'Do you count light refreshments in a tea car?' I said.

'Yes!' Amanda Rickerby said, very excited. 'Is there one running into Scarborough?'

'In summer there is,' I said.

'And might they do a little more than a tea? Not a joint but a chop or a steak?'

'I think so.'

'And a nice glass of wine? When does the first one run?'

'May sort of time,' I said, and she shut her eyes for a space, contemplating the idea.

'Cedar-wood box after luncheon, Mr Stringer?' Fielding called over to me.

I nodded back. 'Obliged to you,' I said.

Miss Rickerby was standing, leaning forward to pour me more wine, and she threatened to over-topple onto me, which I wished she would do.

'Care for another glass?' she enquired, sitting back down.

Vaughan gave a mighty sniff, and said, 'You ought to have asked that before you filled it, Miss R… strictly speaking.'

But she ignored him in favour of eyeing me.

'Well, it goes down a treat,' I said.

'Just so!' said Fielding, and Aijianda Rickerby turned sharply about and looked at him.

'Are you married, Mr Stringer?' she said, facing me again – and I knew I'd failed to keep the look of panic from my face.

'Well…' I said again.

'Three wells make a river and you in the river make it bigger,' said Mrs Dawson from the pantry, where she was making a list. It was an old Yorkshire saying, but what did it mean, and what did she mean by it?

'You either are or you aren't,' said Amanda Rickerby. 'I mean, it ought not to require thought.'

I was fairly burning up with embarrassment. But Mrs Dawson had hardly looked up from her pencil and note pad while making her remark; Fielding was taking the corkscrew to another bottle; Adam Rickerby was stirring a pot; Theo Vaughan was biting his long thumbnail while reading, and the one little pointer on the gas meter that moved around fast was moving around just as fast as ever.

'No,' I said, 'I'm not,' and the cork came out as Fielding said, 'Oh dear.'

'What's up?' said Vaughan, looking up.

'It's corked,' said Fielding.

'It was,' said Vaughan, 'but now you've taken the cork out.'

'No, I mean the cork has crumbled,' said Fielding.

'What's the harm?' said Vaughan, turning the page of the paper. 'You weren't thinking of putting it back in, were you?'

'You don't seem to understand,' said Fielding.

I had betrayed Lydia my wife: our eleven years together, our children… I told myself I'd done it in order to keep in with Miss Amanda Rickerby. I had done it for the sake of the investigation, and no other reason. She was on the marry and it was important for me to keep her interest in me alive in order to acquire more data. Amanda Rickerby was grinning at me, and I believed she knew. Yes, she knew all right.

I drained my glass, sat back and said, 'You say that Blackburn jumped into the sea, but would that really have killed him? Just to jump in off the harbour wall?'

'I'll tell you what it wouldn't have done, Jim,' said Vaughan, still looking over Sporting Life. 'It wouldn't have warmed him up:

'Lucifer matches, Mr Stringer,' said Amanda Rickerby. 'You can suck the ends and then you'll die. Perhaps he did that.'

'While he was bobbing about in the sea, you mean?' asked Vaughan. 'And you have to suck every match in the box, you know.' 'My dad', said Miss Rickerby, 'did it by drinking a bottle of spirits every day for forty years.'

'Yes, and you think on about that, Amanda dear,' said Mrs Dawson. 'I don't like to see wine on the table so early in the day.'

'It's a special occasion, Mrs Dawson,' said Amanda Rickerby, and she rose to her feet. With a special smile in my direction, she said, 'Won't be a minute,' and quit the room.

Theo Vaughan was still sticking his finger into the tin of Golden Syrup.

'I like treacle,' he said.

'Evidently,' Fielding put in.

'I like it on porridge,' said Vaughan.

'That would be sacrilege to the Scots,' said Fielding.

'If you put it into porridge,' said Vaughan, 'it allows you to see into the porridge.'

'Very useful I'm sure,' said Fielding.

'It goes like the muslin dresses of the ladies on the beach when the sun is low. They're sort of.'…'

'They are transparent, Vaughan,' said Fielding.

'Noticed it yourself, have you?'

'I have not!

'Mr Vaughan, please remember there are ladies present,' said Mrs Dawson. But in fact she herself was the only one in the room at that moment, and she was putting on her coat and gloves, at which I saw my opportunity.

'I'll show you to the door, Mrs Dawson,' I said. Once out in the hallway, I said, 'Very good house, this. It's a credit to you – and to the boy.'

'He's a bit mental, the poor lamb,' Mrs Rickerby said, fixing her wrap, 'but he does his best.' 'I'm thinking of trying to help him in some way. I know he has a strong interest in railways…

She eyed me. The clock ticked. I couldn't keep her long, since she was evidently over-heating in her coat and wrap.

'I know he likes to read about them,' I said, 'or to be read to about them.'

'I've read to him on occasion,' said Mrs Dawson, 'when we've done our chores of a morning.'

'About what exactly?'

She kept silence for a moment, reaching for the latch of the door. I opened the door for her.

'Youth cut to death by express train,' she said. 'Collision in station, engine on platform. Driver killed, fireman scalded. Car dashes onto level crossing as train approaches… He knows his letters well enough to spot a railway item in the newspaper, and then everything has to stop while you read it out.'