Of course Wright, being so nosey, had had a field day on my delayed return from Scarborough. Lydia had been into the office twice to ask where I'd got to, the second time in tears. His fixed opinion, he told me later, was that I'd been done in. 'Of course, I didn't say that to her,' he told me, 'or not in so many words', and I dreaded to think what he had said for he was not the sort to play down any drama.
On the Thursday morning, three days after Adam Rickerby put me onto the Lambent Lady, the Chief himself had gone to Scarborough, making straight to Bright's Cliff to see what had become of me. There he'd found a bloke from the council sent to board over the window I'd smashed when I'd pitched the chair through it. That had been quick work. Someone else in the street had gone into the council offices to complain that the house, having evidently been abandoned, was now a magnet for vagrants and burglars. The Chief told me that the bloke from the council had posted a bill for the work through the letter box before leaving.
It seemed very unlikely to me that the bill would ever be paid.
The Chief had broken into Paradise in company with some of the Scarborough coppers. There were signs of people having left in a great hurry, although the gas had been turned off. It was the Chief himself who'd come upon the body of Fielding, which was just as well since he was well equipped to stand that kind of shock.
I'd returned to Bright's Cliff a few days after with the Chief, some coppers from Scarborough and Leeds, and the Scarborough coroner, a Mr Clegg. By then Theo Vaughan had turned up, having walked into the Scarborough copper shop to make a clean breast of… well, not much. He'd staggered back to the house at three in the morning on Tuesday, 17 March, and found it empty. The smashed window and the gas reek had terrified him, and – knowing that he was still under suspicion over the last bit of bad business in the house – he'd taken a few of his belongings (including, I didn't doubt, the remainder of his Continental Specialities) and fled the scene.
I'd talked to Vaughan in the coroner's court and had given him the whole tale over a cup of tea during an adjournment in the inquiry. I asked him whether he'd known that Fielding was sweet on the lady of the house.
'Not in that way, Jim,' he said, 'not in that way.'
He was every bit as familiar as he had been before, despite the fact that he now knew me for a policeman. When I told him how I'd come upon the special post cards in Fielding's bedside drawer, he said, 'He must have had 'em away from my room, Jim. I tell you… no man can resist.'
He then leant towards me, with droplets of cold tea dangling from his 'tache, and might have been on the point of again offering to sell me some at a knockdown price. I believe he was only put off by the clerk of the court coming up to me at that moment and addressing me as 'Detective Sergeant Stringer'.
Mr Clegg had praised me before his court, and the Leeds and Scarborough coppers also seemed to think I'd done a good job. It came down to this: I'd made myself the mark, and I'd cracked the mystery – and it was cracked all right, papers amounting to a confession to the killing of Blackburn having been discovered amongst Fielding's belongings. He'd known Blackburn as soon as he turned up at the house; had seen him about in Scarborough on earlier occasions with the Lady. He had observed them buying oysters on the harbour wall, later walking in Clarence Gardens. It was perhaps there that Blackburn had made her a present of the North Eastern badge that she so much admired.
In exposing Fielding I had left two dead bodies in my wake, but this seemed to be taken quite lightly by everyone in authority: one of the dead was a man who would have swung anyway, and that went down as quick and violent justice of the sort the Chief and many another favoured. But as regards the death of Tommy Nugent, I blamed the Chief. He'd been too reckless from start to finish, and I meant to have it out with him.
During the visit to the house in company with the Leeds and Scarborough men, I saw a different side to the man. He knew he'd made a bloomer over sending Tommy Nugent with me, and he acted accordingly. I believe that 'chastened' is the word. He'd liked Tommy Nugent, was saddened by his death, and seemed to take the responsibility for it, but that wasn't enough for me.
We'd all (the Leeds and Scarborough coppers, the Chief and me) gone off to the Two Mariners after inspecting the house, and I'd given the story, which was fast becoming a party piece, over a few pints. As when addressing Captain Rickerby, I'd played down my infatuation with the Lady of the House, although I think one of the Scarborough coppers guessed at it; he'd questioned her over the disappearance of Blackburn and had evidently half fallen in love with her himself. When we coincided in the gentlemen's halfway through our session in the Mariners, he congratulated me on saving her life by the smashing of the window, for that was the supposition – theirs and mine: that she had survived the gas, and made off with her brother to avoid being taken in charge over the killing of Tommy.
'She was a peach, wasn't she, that one?' the Scarborough copper said. 'I wouldn't have minded tomming her myself.'
He told me that he was circulating her and Adam's descriptions in the Police Gazette as being wanted for questioning over the death of Tommy Nugent. 'But I'll tell you this,' he added, buttoning up his flies, 'I half hope we never find her.'
'I don't suppose you ever will,' I said, which might have been taken as rather rude, but I was the star turn that day and could have got away with anything. As I told my tale, one of the Leeds blokes kept saying, 'Well, who'd have thought it?' and 'What a turn-up'. He might have been a stooge, paid to boost me.
The Chief had kept silence as I gave my account, even when, towards the end – and made brave by my three pints – I'd eyed him and said in front of everyone, 'Tommy Nugent ought not to have been sent. He was gun crazy – out for any opportunity to loose off a bullet.'
Later, on the train back to York, as I sat with the Chief in a smoking compartment we hardly spoke a word, and I knew that for the first time in our acquaintance this was my silence rather than one of his. I'd been stirred up by my success in the pub, and I now felt I had the measure of the Chief. I would let him stew before I said my piece.
He smoked and I sat over-opposite, looking sidelong.
'Will you have a cigar?' he enquired, just after we'd come out of Seamer.
'I reckon not,' I said.
'It is a smoking compartment, you know.'
'Yes,' I said, 'but that doesn't mean it's obligatory, does it… sir?'
'Obligatory,' he muttered under his breath.
A silence of twenty minutes followed that exchange.
'I want to say something about this case,' I said, as we flew through Rillington.
'Fire away,' he said.
'You sent me into that house unprepared.'
'Correct.'
I was a bit knocked by that but I ploughed on: 'Unprepared in the following ways: number one…'
'No,' said the Chief, who had now turned and was looking through the window.
'Eh?'
'Don't put numbers to it. I'm liable to get a bit cross if you do that. Put it shortly.'
'I had no sight of the case papers,' I said. 'Well, I had the witness statements, but none of the reports. I had no account of the personalities in the house.'
The Chief was still looking through the window.
'Firstly,' he said,'… Christ, you've got me at it now… you had all the papers that were to hand. The others were missing and have never turned up since.'
'That's a bit funny, isn't it?'
'Well, you don't seem to be laughing about it. And even if more papers had been to hand, do you think those Leeds and Scarborough blokes are up to writing an account of anyone's personality7.' He fairly spat that word out. 'What do you think they are? A bunch of fucking novelists?'
'… And you gave me no advance warning of the job,' I said. 'Well, one day – not enough.'
'I didn't want you shitting yourself for a whole week, did I? It might have been bad for your health.'