Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness. -- Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

By the time the train — the third train he'd been on this afternoon! — pulled into Blackpool Central, Yo-han felt like he was living in a snowglobe and someone had just shaken it violently. A confusing mass of names, dates and places fought for attention in his head. Half of them were related to cases he had solved years ago. He forced himself to think clearly. He was here to meet Colman. An was on his trail. He had sent proof of Avington's treachery to the police and the papers. An was on his trail. An was probably less than an hour behind him.

Yo-han got up, picked up his suitcase, and stumbled out into yet another unfamiliar town.

As he stepped down onto the platform he looked around for Colman. He didn't expect to see him — Yo-han himself hadn't known which train he'd arrive on, or from where, and it was asking too much for Colman to wait at the station all evening. So he wasn't surprised that there was no sign of him.

Colman had wired his address when he first arrived in Blackpool two weeks ago. Yo-han could only hope he hadn't decided to move without telling him.

~~~~

It took an hour before Yo-han got to Colman's lodgings. From what little he'd seen of Blackpool, it was one of the most depressing places he'd ever been. Colman, thank god, had the good sense to find a room to let in a small detached house on the outskirts of the town, well away from all the noise and lights.

He rang the doorbell and prepared to face the landlady. Was she the sort of person who would object to a foreigner showing up at her house? Would she ask awkward questions?

Quick footsteps approached. A key rattled in the lock. Yo-han reached for his hat.

"Good evening," he began, then froze.

He'd fallen asleep on the train. That was the only explanation. There was no possible way Phil could be standing in front of him.

"Yo-han!" Phil exclaimed.

She took his arm and led him inside. Yo-han was still too stunned to react. Was this real? His dreams were never this vivid. His dreams never included a cuckoo-clock hanging in the hall. His dreams certainly never included the smell of... what was that smell, anyway? It was like cinnamon, but with an unpleasant acridness.

Yo-han came to the conclusion he was awake. Therefore, this was real. Therefore, Phil was somehow, in defiance of all logic and rules of propriety, in Leopold's lodgings.

As she led him down the hall Yo-han darted a glance at the coat-hanger. Leopold's coat and hat were there. So was Phil's coat. No one else's. A landlady would have asked who the visitor was by now. He drew the obvious and even more startling conclusion: there was no landlady. Leopold had rented the whole house, and Phil was here with him alone.

She had talked practically non-stop since opening the door. This was out of character all on its own. Yo-han's knowledge of English deserted him and he hadn't understood a word.

"What?" he managed to gasp as Phil practically dragged him into the dining room.

Phil was saying, "The tea's on the stove." Her tone became wry, "We would have had baked pears, but Leo burnt them."

"Moulded pears[1]," Leopold shouted from the kitchen. "And they're not burnt! Not badly."

Yo-han sank into the nearest chair. Today had already been so stressful that this latest shock was the most unsettling of all. He marshalled his scattered wits and demanded an explanation. "Miss Patton! Why are you here?"

Phil had been about to head to the kitchen. She paused in the doorway. She turned and folded her arms. "Have you not listened to a single word I've said?"

The temptation was strong to make a sarcastic reply. He settled for the more diplomatic, "I didn't quite understand it all."

"Really, you call yourself a detective and you haven't even noticed my wedding ring?"

If she had thrown a punch at him it would hardly have surprised him more. That increasingly familiar feeling of being in a dream came back. "...Wedding?"

Phil fidgeted with the ring in question. "Yes. When Leo told me he was staying here, I decided I'd come in case you needed help. And obviously I couldn't stay here without getting married. So I got on a ship to Scotland, wired Leo to come and meet me, and we got married[2] five days ago."

Yo-han took a deep breath. The burnt smell caught in his throat and assured him this was reality. "You mentioned tea?"

Phil took pity on him. "I'll get it."

~~~~

The pears turned out to be edible. Slightly charred and much sweeter than Yo-han liked, but that paled into insignificance after the day he'd had.

"It's a good thing I haven't sent you any telegrams lately," he said after a cup of tea. "I would have sent them to Enniskillen."

Phil had the grace to wince. "I arranged to have all telegrams sent on to me here. It was all very sudden."

Leopold, trying and failing to cut an especially burnt pear into bite-size chunks, nodded emphatically. "The first I heard of it was the day she arrived in Scotland."

Why, of all the times they could have picked for this whirlwind romance and elopement, did they have to pick the time when a murderer was chasing them? Yo-han couldn't understand it at all. He was tempted to put it down to foreigners behaving bizarrely. Then he remembered a previous case in Busan involving a similar hasty marriage. In that case the bride was wanted for bank robbery in five countries.

"An Ji-hun is on his way here. He won't find me immediately. He still doesn't know about either of you. We need to make him come to a place without any innocent bystanders. So, where's the most deserted place around here?"

There was a pause while Phil and Leopold exchanged suggestions and contradicted each other's ideas. Finally they came up with an answer that pleased both.

"This neighbourhood on a Sunday morning," Leopold said. "The people who live here are respectable, well-to-do families. They wouldn't dream of missing church for anything short of the end of the world. Of course," he added, "it's just as quiet on an ordinary weekday afternoon. Everyone's working or shopping."

A plan sprang fully-formed into Yo-han's head. Trick An Ji-hun into following Yo-han here. Make him think Yo-han didn't know he was watching. He would try to break into the house. There were two possibilities then: tell the police to be waiting, or get Leopold to hide somewhere nearby with a gun.

"I have a plan," he said.

~~~~

Traipsing all over a foreign country was not most people's idea of a good time. An Ji-hun, on the other hand, was having the most fun he'd ever had. Not even murder was as good as this. Following vague clues, working out his enemy's plans in advance, hunting him down like a wolf stalking a rabbit... It would almost be a pity when Seo was dead.

He encountered his first real set-back when he got to Blackpool. From the minute he heard Seo had left London for Birmingham, he had thought he understood exactly what his plan was: get to Liverpool by stages, then get on a boat. Now he discovered that, unless Seo had left Blackpool on foot, he was still somewhere in the town.

Finding one Korean in an English town might not sound like a difficult task. Unfortunately, as Ji-hun discovered, it was the start of the holiday season. And Blackpool was a holiday resort for people too poor to afford fashionable seaside towns. That description included a surprising number of Chinese immigrants. Almost a hundred of them, more than half of whom were single men from Liverpool, all staying in the same general area. And to most English people, every East Asian was Chinese.

On his first day in Blackpool he tried the Chinese restaurants. He kept up his old story of looking for his brother. He got nowhere.

After the fifth failure he ran out of patience. It was time to try more drastic measures.

~~~~

The next day the Blackpool Gazette included a notice in the classified section. Most people took it as a joke in very poor taste, probably to promote the amusement park. Four people knew it was deadly serious: its sender, and its targets.

IF DETECTIVE DOESN'T COME TO ROLLERCOSTER TOMORROW I WILL TAKE ONE PASSENGER AND SEND YOU THEIR FINGERS.

"What do we do?" Phil asked calmly. Much more calmly than any of them felt, to be honest.

"It's a bluff," Leopold suggested.

Yo-han shook his head. The ghastly memory of opening the package and seeing Eun-a's finger haunted him. "We can't risk it. I'll do exactly what he says. I'll go to the fair and wait by the rollercoaster."

Leopold and Phil exchanged worried looks.

"He doesn't give a time. You can't wait there all day."

"I'm not going to. I'll go there, get on the rollercoaster, then come back here. He can't be stupid enough to want a fight in the middle of a fair, and he'd be too conspicuous to stand around all day. I think he'll come in the evening, ask if I was there, and then..." Yo-han trailed off as he realised he simply didn't know what a serial killer was likely to do next.

"If we want to lure him out here on Sunday we'll have to do more than that," Phil said.

~~~~

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time Yo-han got to the amusement park. There were too many children shrieking on the rides. There were too many parents clustered around the merry-go-round. There were too many couples walking hand-in-hand. There were, in short, too many people and far too many places to hide.

From the minute he walked through the gates he kept an eye out for Ji-hun. He might as well have been looking for a needle in a haystack.

The rollercoaster towered overhead. Yo-han wasn't normally afraid of heights. Looking up at that thing made him feel like he'd just stepped off a dock onto a rickety raft, and the water was choppy.

Nine people were already waiting. Yo-han did a double take when he realised one of them looked Korean. Then the man turned his head, and Yo-han saw he was at least ten years older than Ji-hun.

The ticket-man in the booth was busy arguing with his co-worker.

"That'll be a penny," he said, barely looking at Yo-han. "I'm telling you, it was rigged! And the other team were in on it! There's your ticket. I saw him pretend to fall with my own two eyes!"

Yo-han took the ticket and joined the queue.

The car shot along the tracks overhead. Its passengers screamed. Yo-han watched it careen wildly around the bends. He wished himself a million miles away.

What am I doing here? What good will this do? he asked himself as the car briefly turned upside down.

The answer came quickly: I'm saving someone's life. But only if An knows I'm here.

He looked over his shoulder. A group of elderly ladies were walking slowly past, gossiping at the top of their lungs. Who was that lurking behind the fortune teller's tent? The man lit his cigar and raised his head. He was English.

The rollercoaster car stopped. Its current passengers disembarked in various stages of excitement and terror. The line began to move.

Yo-han approached the car with more reluctance than he'd felt at many crime scenes.

~~~~

Fifteen minutes later, and Yo-han had never been so glad to stand on solid ground. Once he was safely away from the rollercoaster and the queue waiting to get onto it, he stopped and sat down on a bench. He took out his watch and pretended to adjust it. Partly he wanted to see if anyone was watching him. Mostly he needed to let his head stop spinning.

A loiterer stopped beside the funhouse. He lit a cigarette. He kept his head down so the brim of his hat concealed his face. Something about him set alarm bells ringing in Yo-han's head.

Yo-han recovered enough to stand up. Slowly he made his way towards the exit.

He casually looked over his shoulder. The loiterer was looking up now.

An Ji-hun leant against the wall. He raised the cigarette to his mouth once more. Then he dropped it and ground it out with his shoe. He moved away from the wall in a deceptively aimless way. And he never took his eyes off Yo-han.

~~~~

The council had thoughtfully provided benches outside the amusement park. Anyone sitting there had a good view of the sea straight ahead, and the piers off to the right. The tower was still visible above the other buildings, to Phil's annoyance. She would have gladly done without that eyesore[3].

Really, why had anyone felt the need to build a replica of the Eiffel Tower? The original was ugly enough.

When she and Leo had first sat down here to wait, Phil had felt awfully conspicuous. She'd almost expected someone to stop and question them. Surely someone would notice Leo's gun. He had it hidden under his jacket, carried in a holster that went over his shoulders instead of around his waist.

For that matter, surely someone would notice Phil's pistol concealed in her handbag. It was a very small pistol. (A present from Davit Altounian, of all people; he'd found it among the late Mrs. Lennox's possessions and given it away as soon as possible. His exact words were, "I don't want any weapons in our house." Phil had to wonder what he did about cutlery.)

She had learnt how to shoot mainly so the gift wouldn't go to waste. She'd also been mildly apprehensive about Yo-han paying another visit just in time for another murder — which was close enough to how things had turned out. She'd brought her gun when she left for Scotland in case she stumbled across Mr. An.

The look on Leo's face when he discovered the gun ranked as one of funniest sights Phil had ever seen. They'd had dinner in a hotel after their wedding, Phil had forgotten her handbag on her chair, Leo had helpfully picked it up, then he'd felt the gun and done a double take.

Phil had to suppress a giggle at the memory.

Leo was engrossed in the latest Sherlock Holmes story. He looked up from time to time to make sure Yo-han hadn't returned. Phil pretended to be watching the seagulls while keeping an eye out for Mr. An.

If anyone had told Phil two months ago that she'd be married to Leo, on honeymoon in Blackpool, and helping to set a trap for a serial killer, she'd have phoned the nearest asylum and had them taken away in a straitjacket.

From where they were sitting, they had a clear view of the amusement park's entrance reflected on the glass of the bus-stop across the road.

"Here he comes," Leo said.

Distorted though the reflection was around the edges, Yo-han was still recognisable as he approached the gate. Phil only saw him briefly before her attention was fixed on something behind him.

She had never seen An Ji-hun before. She had only heard a vague description of him. But when she saw a Korean man with longish hair following Yo-han, it was easy to draw conclusions.

She nudged Leo.

"I see him," he said in an undertone.

Yo-han crossed the road and waited at the bus stop. He carefully didn't look in their direction. Leo turned a page in his book and held it out as if showing Phil something. She pretended to be very interested in the first paragraph her eye landed on — which was about Sherlock Holmes believing oysters were going to overrun the world[4]. When this was over she would have to borrow that book just to find out what it was about.

Mr. An crossed the road too. Phil's blood ran cold. For a minute she fully expected him to attack Yo-han in broad daylight, on a busy street, common sense by damned. Leo would be a good enough marksman to shoot him without hurting Yo-han. Phil didn't trust her own skills that far, but she might be able to scare An off. And then they would have a lot of explaining to do at the police station. Someone would probably recognise Leo...

Her fears were temporarily quieted. An didn't go to the bus stop right away. He bought a newspaper from the stand a few yards from it. Then he went to the bus stop, sat down, and began to read. Yo-han stood at the other end of the stop. He never looked in An's direction. Two elderly ladies and a middle-aged couple with their three teenage children separated them.

Leo nudged Phil. "Here comes the bus."

It was still a good distance away, only just leaving the last stop on the line. Leo closed his book. He stood up and offered Phil his arm. She took it. They crossed the road and joined the group in the bus station.

The youngest of the children was complaining loudly. "You told me I could buy what I wanted! It's my money!"

"That was the ugliest hat I've ever seen," her mother said.

The girl, a sullen brat of about twelve or thirteen, pointed quite unexpectedly at Phil. "Her hat is uglier!"

"Pauline!" the girl's parents exclaimed in unison.

Phil was so taken aback that she couldn't decide whether to laugh or be offended. Leo was more decisive. He glared at the girl.

"It's a perfectly nice hat, you little blot on the landscape!"

Oh dear. They were meant to be inconspicuous. The whole plan hinged on An not realising they were associated with Yo-han until they had him trapped. Off-hand Phil couldn't think of anything that would make them more conspicuous than Leo fighting with a child.

"Leo!" she hissed.

She kept her head turned away from Yo-han in case she accidentally caught his eye. On the other side of the bench, An was watching with a very nasty sneer.

Thank god, the bus arrived at that moment. Yo-han was the first on-board. Phil turned just in time to see him take his ticket and disappear inside. The elderly ladies were behind him.

The commotion continued as everyone queued up.

The girl's mother snapped, "Pauline, apologise to that woman!"

"Sorry," the girl said, making it sound like an insult.

One of the elderly ladies was deaf. "What's that? Speak up, young man!"

"Gynn Square is almost twenty stops away," the driver yelled at her.

"I'm sorry," the girl said sullenly.

That was the best Phil was likely to get. Her main concern was them getting safely on the bus without making a bigger spectacle of themselves. She elbowed Leo in the ribs. He looked at her blankly. She tried to communicate by way of raising an eyebrow and nodding in the direction of the family behind. A-pol-o-gise! she mouthed.

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, all right." To the girl he said, "I shouldn't have called you a blot on the landscape."

Finally the old ladies had sorted out their tickets. They headed into the seating area. Phil and Leo had a return ticket to the stop that was just before where their house was. Leo handed the ticket to the driver. He checked it and nodded. They took seats on the lower level.

A quick glance showed Yo-han had gone to the upper level. So much the better. The family with the rude child also went upstairs. Phil smoothed down the skirt of her dress while trying to surreptitiously eavesdrop on what An was saying to the driver. She couldn't catch it.

The last thing they needed was for him to see them watching him. She turned to Leo.

"That story you were reading. What's it about?"

When An went upstairs, he would have seen only a young couple deep in conversation.

~~~~

The closest stop to their house was at the end of the street. That was the stop Yo-han — and presumably An too — would get off at. That was why Leo and Phil had gotten on the bus at a different stop. They left it there too.

Arm in arm they sauntered down the street until the bus was out of sight. Then they broke into a run. Leo darted down the side of a house. Phil followed, holding her skirt out of her way with one hand. Someone had hung their washing along this alleyway. They ducked under a line of children's dresses. Leo got tangled in a woman's apron. He shoved it aside. His hat went flying in the struggle. Phil caught it and handed it back to him.

They emerged into the street beyond as if they were competing in a race with a £1000 prize. It was still early afternoon. Most people were either at work or in town, or preparing a meal if they were at home. A woman walking her dog had stopped to talk to a woman pushing a pram. They both stared as Leo and Phil raced past them.

Even after a week in Blackpool, Phil had a very poor grasp of its geography. She was dimly aware this street ran parallel to one that led to their street. How they would get from here to there — without going through someone's house — was beyond her. For now she did her best to keep up with Leo, and hoped he at least knew where he was going.

He had two advantages, even with his book in a pocket inside his jacket. He was used to running, and he wasn't wearing an ankle-length skirt, a petticoat, and a corset. Phil ran as fast as she could, but she still fell behind.

Leo looked back, saw her lagging, and paused to let her catch up. Then he took her arm and hurried her along.

"We've got to get there before the bus," he panted.

Phil didn't answer. She was developing a stitch in her side.

He led her down another laundry-filled alley between houses and out onto the street they'd left. They were in time to see the end of the bus as it turned onto their street, about five houses further down.

Leo slowed to a walk. They crossed the road sedately, then turned left and continued their mad dash.

Phil could just imagine what someone looking out their window would think — and worse, do. Her mind conjured up an image: a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Aunt Rachael going to the nearest shop and asking to use the phone. "Hello, officer. I wish to report two suspicious characters. They looked like they were running away from somewhere. Any burglaries reported lately?"

She giggled in spite of herself.

"Almost there," Leo gasped.

He pulled her down yet another alley. It had a washing line, but this one was empty. They darted across someone's garden. This was the first house with a garden they'd seen so far. That meant they were getting closer to home.

They had to stop to open the gate and close it behind them.

"How do you know about this way?" Phil asked now that she had her breath back.

"I always find every way in and out of places," Leo said. "Come on! It's just on the other side of that house across the road."

The house he pointed at was the last one on this road. The road itself continued, but it became a country lane rather than part of the town.

They walked the last stretch. When they rounded the side of the house they got their first glimpse of the back of theirs. It was partly obscured by the trees that clustered behind their house and by the side of the road. But they had a clear enough view to see what was happening.

His head and most of his body was hidden, but his left arm and hand were visible.

Someone was picking the lock on their kitchen door.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] This was a real dessert in the Victorian era (a recipe is included in Mrs. Beeton's Dictionary of Every-Day Cookery, published circa 1865), so it would probably have still been common in the 1910s.

[2] Scotland, unlike the rest of the UK, didn't require banns or a marriage license before a wedding. Until 1940 almost anyone could conduct a wedding ceremony as long as there were two witnesses present.

[3] Phil isn't just being snarky here. Blackpool Tower became so badly corroded in the 1910s that there was talk of demolishing it. The owners decided to restore it instead, but the work didn't begin until 1920.

[4] Leo is reading The Adventure of the Dying Detective, which was written and first published in 1913. Phil is wrong in calling it the latest Sherlock Holmes story, but it was republished as part of a book (His Last Bow) in 1917, which was the latest Sherlock Holmes collection.