The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Thirty-four

As I ran, I glanced back, seeing a line of people trooping steadily up Horton Street with boxes and bags in the evening sun, and I thought: it's finished. They're coming back.

On walking into the house, I saw the wife sitting on the sofa.

'Where's the bag of quicklime?' I said.

'We're shot of it,' she said.

I should have known not to ask her to leave it alone.

'What did they bring it for?' she asked, looking at the bandage on my head.

'Put the frighteners on,' I said.

'How?'

'Made out they were going to dash it into my eyes.'

'Was one of them the man you chased to Manchester?'

'No. It's all connected with Lowther, though. They visited him at the Infirmary, or tried to. Couldn't get in, but the names they gave damn near finished him off.'

'Well that's as clear as mud,' said the wife.

'Now they're after George,' I said. 'He's not been back, has he?'

'No.'

'He's flitted,' I said.

I climbed the stairs to George's room once again and opened Don Quixote. Inside it was a photograph of George. He was in his high collar and fancy waistcoat as usual, but was sitting inside a flying boat. You could tell he was off the ground, for his hair had all been knocked to one side by the wind.

The wife was looking over my shoulder. 'It's the flying machine at Blackpool,' she said.

She was looking all around the room now, saying, 'Why ever did he not water these plants?'

I turned the photograph over. On the back were the words, 'I told you there was nothing to it, silly C. Love from Big G.'

I caught up some fragments of dried flowers, which I'd scattered about the room and were on the very point of becoming nothing at all. 'What's this?' I asked the wife.

'Forget-me-not.'

'When do forget-me-nots come out?'

'I forget,' said the wife, and then she laughed, saying: 'All I know is they're Cicely Braithwaite's particular favourites.' Then she stopped laughing.

I looked at the wife, then around the room. There was something else besides the books. Curtains, damask curtains, thrown anyhow onto the floor under the window.

'They're so viewsome,' I said in an under-breath. It was the strange saying that Cicely had come out with on seeing the forget-me-nots at Hardcastle Crags.

The picture came into my mind of George running in order to get his letter posted in the box on the tram. He'd said the letter was to his best girl, and that she was out in Oldham. What better way to get rid of the whole question of a sweetheart? The young lady's out at Oldham. There's something about the word 'Oldham' that checks all questions.

'Is Cicely walking out with anyone that you know of?' I asked the wife.

'She is not,' said the wife.

'And was she keeping company at all before?'

'There was someone before I knew her. But she had to chuck him over.'

'The name was never mentioned?'

The wife shook her head. 'If you ask me she's rather sweet on Michael Hardcastle.'

"The traveller for Hind's?' I said.

The wife nodded.

Cicely had mentioned him on my first visit to the Mill, and coloured up as she did so. I thought of the man trying to keep next to Cicely in the crowd under the Blackpool Tower when the Hind's lot had come spilling out after their tea. Was that the fellow? 'Do you know where she lives, off hand?' I said.

'I don't,' said the wife. 'Somewhere over Savile Park way. The address is written down at the Mill, of course, but you'd have to wait until Monday for that.'

'There's no way round it?' I said.

'Not short of marching through the streets bawling out her name' said the wife.

'I must speak with her,' I said.

'What you're trying to make out,' said the wife, 'is that George Ogden wanted to wreck the train so as to kill Michael Hardcastle?'

'He was on the Whit excursion then was he?'

The wife nodded. 'On both excursions,' she said.

'No,' I said, 'I don't think that was his reason.'

'Well you're right there' said the wife, 'because nobody could have known there was anything going between them back at Whitsuntide – they barely knew it themselves.'

'I think it's odds-on he was out to get Cicely' I said.

'Oh' said the wife, and she sat down on the truckle bed.

'But how will you ever prove it? And what would you do if you could prove it?'

'Put salt on him,' I said.

'But still we don't know, do we?'

'Oh no,' I said. 'It's all just thinking on. Did you never mention to Cicely that you had a lodger here called George Ogden?'

The wife went red, which you didn't often see.

I looked out of the window, and down: at Halifax. The sky was dark blue. The gaslights were all coming on, and more of them inside the houses than for the past six days. The strange thing was that, even though it was getting on for seven o'clock, I was breaking out in a sweat. Wakes was over, but the glass was rising still. 'You know I'm not over-proud of taking in lodgers' said the wife, at last.

'Well, I'm off now' I said. 'Off where?'

'Down to the Joint. I've to catch a train.'