Dark Waters (2 page)

‘Good God!' said Fidelis. ‘Look who it is.'

We all drew closer, and there was a murmur of recognition from the women. I knew the man better even than the others and, for a moment, was so disconcerted I could not speak. Not only did I well know his identity, I knew also that the contented impression conveyed by the corpse was false. For these were the mortal remains of poor Antony Egan, landlord of the Ferry Inn and the sadly troubled uncle of Elizabeth, my own sweet wife.

‘Did you close the eyes, or were they like this when you found him?' Fidelis asked Crane.

‘No, Doctor, staring open they were. I closed them.'

As a simulacrum of sleep it made the man look at peace, with the impression reinforced by the hands being arranged comfortably over the swollen stomach.

I knelt down on one knee beside him, opened his sodden coat and went through the pockets. They were empty except for a tobacco pouch, a few coppers and his watch, its chain securely attached to a waistcoat buttonhole. Then I stood again and looked at Fidelis who was on the other side of the corpse.

‘He has his watch,' I said.

‘He wasn't robbed, then.'

‘When do you think he went into the water?'

‘I doubt it was long he was in there.'

‘Did he drown?'

‘Let's see. Mr Crane, would you and your men kindly turn him over for me, and bring him round so his head's over the river.'

The dead man was placed, according to Luke's instructions, on his stomach with head and shoulders over the stream and arms trailing in it – the posture of one who throws himself down to drink, or a boy attempting to tickle a trout. Luke then crouched beside him and placed both hands palms down, with fingers spread out, flat on his back.

‘Look at the mouth, Titus, while I palpate.'

I placed myself on the other side of the body and sank down on one knee, leaning a little over the water to see the profile of Antony's head. Luke sharply pressed his hands down three or four times in a kneading motion just below the ribcage and immediately water gushed up and out of the mouth, like water from a parish pump. Luke stood up.

‘You saw it?' he asked. ‘Lungs full of water. He sucked it in trying to breathe. It means he was alive when he went into the river. He died by drowning.'

I rose from my genuflection and considered for a moment. The cloud cover was disintegrating and patches of freshly minted blue sky had opened up over our heads. Then, in the east, the morning sun broke free and shafts of light set the swollen river surface glittering.

‘Well, Luke, I have a ten-minute walk upstream ahead of me. It's a fine day. Will you come along, or have you other business?'

He said he had no patients to see immediately and would be glad to go with me. I asked Crane to get some sort of conveyance, and use it to transport Egan's body along the bankside path behind us.

‘There will be an inquest but I see no reason why he can't lie at home, and be viewed there by the jury. There've been inquests at the Ferry Inn before. It's better that I go ahead, to break the news to his daughters. They will need time to prepare.'

Luke and I set off briskly to walk to the inn. It stood half a mile above the salmon traps, rather less than midway to the big stone bridge at Walton-le-Dale that bears the southern way for Wigan and Manchester. A road of sorts branched from that road to connect with the ferry stage, and for uncounted centuries traffic from the south had been transported across the stream in competition with the bridge. The Ferry Inn, lying on the southern bank, had served the needs of those waiting to cross, and a good business it had been, for the reason (which was really unreason) that, while a ferry crossing was cheaper than the bridge toll, many of those waiting to use it were happy to spend the saved money on drinking, eating, card playing and, sometimes, a bed for the night. So business had come to the inn as naturally as fish got into the salmon traps.

But under Egan its prosperity had progressively dwindled, to such an extent that for the past few years the inn had been hesitating on the edge of ruin. It seemed to keep going only by the tenacity and good sense of his twin daughters Grace and Mary-Ann.

‘Poor Egan,' said Luke as we trudged along the bankside. ‘I was drinking at the Ferry only last week, on my way back from a patient.'

‘I hadn't seen him for a month or more,' I said. ‘We see his daughters, of course, because they're Elizabeth's cousins. But we gave over inviting Antony two or three years ago. It had become impossible. What condition was he in – on the day you were there?'

‘Same as always – no better, no worse.'

‘I don't think he'd enjoyed a waking hour of sobriety for five years.'

‘Is
enjoy
the right word, Titus? I enjoy a drink. But men like that can do nothing without a drink. Drunkenness is their sobriety. Their accustomed condition.'

‘If so, what is their drunkenness?'

‘Unconsciousness, I think. Oblivion.'

‘Well, now poor Antony has found an eternity of that.'

‘What made his life take the turn it did? Was he always a sot?'

‘No. Once he was the model of moderation.'

‘Then what happened?'

‘The son that he cherished above all other creatures deserted him, and went south, without ever writing or sending word. And then, when word came at last, it was that the boy had died. His father took to drink because he could not bear to remember it.'

By now we had left the water meadows behind and reached the ferry's landing stage, on the northern side of the river. From here we had to cross to the inn on the far bank, which meant waiting for the ferry. We could see the flat, raft-like conveyance labouring towards us, fighting the flood as two men turned the great winching wheel that hauled the craft along the fixed rope stretched from bank to bank. A short distance upstream, smoke was rising from the chimneys of the inn, which stood among a small cluster of houses and trees known as Middleforth Green. The day had started at the inn as it did every day. There was no sign yet that this might not be one like any other.

The ferry made land with a crunch and lowered its ramp. Half a dozen passengers came off, and with them a cart laden with leeks, sparrowgrass, watercress and other market vegetables. The ferryman Robert Battersby, a fellow famous for his bad grace, tied off his ropes and came ashore with his son and crewman, Simeon, a muscular boy of seventeen. As they ambled towards the wooden hut in which they sheltered from rain and sold tickets between crossings, I stopped them and said we required immediate transport over to the Ferry Inn. He muttered something about his timetable but I cut him short, saying it was coroner's business and that as soon as he had transported me and Dr Fidelis, he was to return and await the arrival of a body from downriver, for bringing across after us.

When he heard this, a smile broke across young Simeon's face, and he began jiggling up and down.

‘Another one gone in, is it?' he said, his voice lifting with sudden delight. ‘Another sacrifice to the water? Oh, aye. She's a cruel one is the river goddess.'

‘Shut it and don't be daft,' said the father savagely to the son, then turned back to me. ‘Pay no mind, Mr Cragg. His head's full of nonsense. We'll take you now. It'll be tuppence.'

I gave him the money, and a warning.

‘Let's have a little reverence when the body comes after, Mr Battersby, if you please.'

Chapter Two

T
HE
F
ERRY
I
NN
presented a battered appearance, the thatch unkempt and the wooden frame seeming to sag from exhaustion. Inside, the stone flags undulated from wear, and the plaster of the unpanelled walls was cracked and darkened by decades of tobacco smoke. Going in, we found all the early-morning things that they do at inns being done now. The coppers were being scrubbed and the brass polished; barrels and milk churns rolled, pint pots clunked together in tubs of soapy water and birch besoms set about yesterday's floors, while sacks of new sawdust stood by, ready to give fresh covering. Windows were flung open and carpets were flogged. Backyard chickens squawked as they were pitched off the nest to give up their eggs.

In the hall we met a dull-witted boy, Toby, with disproportionately large feet. He was carrying a couple of long-handled warming pans, one tucked under each arm. I asked him if we could see either of his mistresses, but before he could spit out a reply one of them, Mary-Ann, came tripping down the stairs. She was a stringy, bony girl with the straightest hair you ever saw, and a markedly sharp nose. Yet she was as strong and capable a twenty-two-year-old as any in the world, and she had a musical voice, with the timbre of my favourite woodwind instrument, the oboe.

‘Hello, Cousin Titus,' she cried when she saw us. ‘And Dr Fidelis. You'll take a glass of something. Have you had your breakfasts?'

‘Your father—' I began.

‘Never seen him yet this morning,' said Mary-Ann. ‘Hogging his bed till late, as he does every morning. Business, is it? You and the doctor go into the parlour. It's empty but for the last of last night's guests having his breakfast, and his man has already carried down his luggage, so he'll be on his way. I'll send Toby up to root Father out – though whether you will get any sense out of him at this hour is doubtful.'

‘It's not him but yourself and your sister I've come to see. Can she be found?'

‘You want to see me and Grace together? But what for?'

By now we had walked ahead of her into the parlour, where the guest she'd mentioned was sitting alone with what remained of his meal, looking through some handwritten documents. A man of about thirty, with a mass of curly red hair, he nodded his head at us, but said nothing, while Mary-Ann turned back to tell Toby to fetch her sister. Then she came in, crossed to the guest's table and whipped the plate, knife and napkin away from under his nose, leaving him in little doubt that it was time to pay what was due, collect his traps and stretch his legs in the direction of the ferry stage. Abrupt was Mary-Ann, and always busy. It would be impossible to break my news until she became quiet and composed.

She paused a moment while the guest obediently drained his mug, gathered his papers and stood, then she bustled him out and across the hall to her business room. Overlaid by sounds from the kitchen, and the carpet beater's thuds, Fidelis and I could hear their conversation about the reckoning only as a mumble. We were standing together at the parlour window. The outlook was of the riverbank, with patches of scrub and a few willows, that sloped away from us down to the river itself, and of shallow tongues of shingle protruding out into the surging brown water. Beyond that we had a clear sight of the patchwork of gardens and orchards patterning the land on the other side as it rose to the line of roofs and smoking chimneys along the ridge – the houses of our town.

‘How will they take this news?' murmured Luke as he scanned the view with only half of his attention. ‘They think he is sleeping soundly in his room. This will hit them like a thunderbolt.'

‘I don't know,' I whispered back, ‘except that the man was already much despaired of by his family.'

I had heard Grace's voice, higher and lighter than her sister's, in the hall. A moment later we were turning to greet her.

How is it possible for sisters to be so alike, by which I mean such unmistakable sisters, and at the same time so different? Where Mary-Ann was angular, Grace was curved and charming; where the first was brown haired and had flawless skin, the latter was fair and carried a light but distinct strawberry mark across her lower face and neck. This is not to say either of them was more agreeable than the other; in character I liked them both equally, though in different ways. They were salt and sweet: Mary-Ann forthright and trustworthy, Grace shy and lovable. It was a twin-ship of complementary opposites, not of peas from the pod.

Grace greeted us happily, with a guileless smile for me, and (if I was not mistaken) the hint of a blush for my handsome friend.

‘We are so glad to see you, Cousin, and Doctor. My sister says you have some affairs to discuss here. If so, you know you're better advised talking to Mary-Ann than to me. She has the brain for business. It's not much good saying anything to our poor father, either. He is very much reduced.'

I was able to let this remark go by without comment as Mary-Ann now came in, having taken her guest's money and seen him on his way.

‘It's wonderful how some people will haggle over a penny while they shovel out their shillings,' she said. ‘Last night that man paid a crown for a bottle of our best port wine. This morning he baulks at a penny farthing for the bootblack.'

She sat on one of the fireside settles and with a sideways movement of her head signalled her sister to sit beside her. Grace did so while Fidelis and I took our places on the settle opposite.

‘Now,' Mary-Ann went on, ‘my father is not in his room, Toby tells me. Happen he's gone out to the privy. So we can rely on being undisturbed for a few minutes.'

I cleared my throat in a lawyerly way.

‘I am afraid your father hasn't gone to the privy.'

‘Oh! How do you know that, Cousin?'

‘Because we have just come from the townside riverbank, downstream by the salmon traps. He's been found there.'

‘Eh?' broke in Grace. ‘What is he doing there, at this hour?'

But Mary-Ann had more accurately picked up my tone of voice.

She said, ‘What do you mean, he was
found?
'

‘They pulled him out of the river. I'm very sorry.'

At once the hands of both girls went to their mouths like sprung traps. After they had exchanged a look, Mary-Ann was the first to remove hers.

She whispered, ‘So is he…?'

‘Yes, he's drowned, Mary-Ann. Dr Fidelis has confirmed it. I am truly unhappy to bring you this news.'