Dark Waters (3 page)

I studied their faces. Mary-Ann's eyes were wide, but her face was otherwise expressionless. Grace's was beginning to twist and crumple as the emotion took hold. The next moment she had pressed it into the palms of both hands and lowered both hands and head almost to her lap. She was whimpering.

‘Oh, my poor father! Poor, poor Father!'

After a short interval, during which Grace cried and Mary-Ann sat immobile except for clasping and unclasping her fingers, I gave them the facts as far as I knew them. Then Fidelis told them how we had laid the dead man on his front and the water had gushed from his mouth, showing he had tried to breathe while submersed in the river.

Finally I said, ‘They're bringing him back here now, to lie at his family home. And I'll be calling an inquest to sit on the matter tomorrow. I'm sorry to trouble you with this at such a time, but this is the only usable place for the hearing. We'll need your largest room. The dining room?'

‘Yes, of course,' said Mary-Ann. ‘I'll see to it.'

A silence followed between us. Grace reached out and seized her sister's hand, gripping it tightly, as the two women cast down their eyes and thought about this change to their existence.

‘You know,' said Mary-Ann at last, ‘there's something fitting about it. He loved the river, my father. He adored it, I think, almost as much as he loved a drink.'

‘He didn't, Mary-Ann!' Her sister was indignant, and suddenly shrill. ‘I mean, he didn't
love
to drink at all. He hated it, because it had taken hold of him and wouldn't let go.'

She turned to Fidelis, her face pinched with distress.

‘You understand that, don't you, Doctor?'

Fidelis nodded.

‘Yes, I do, Grace. I've seen it very often.'

Grace gave an emphatic sniff.

‘He couldn't stop, and it turned his brains to mush.'

‘It did that!'

This was Mary-Ann again, taking her turn to break in. She'd allowed Grace's interruption without complaint, except to shake her head slowly, like a person walking into cobwebs. Now she threw off her dullness and was as animated as her sister.

‘You know what he did every night of his life, Cousin Titus?' Her voice had tightened now into something like anger. ‘He waited till the last customer'd been packed off, or gone up to bed, and we were well into clearing the tables. He'd watch us for a bit, then he'd put down his pint pot, he'd wipe his mouth with a napkin, and he'd drum the table for a bit with his fingers. Then his face'd light up as if he'd just had a new idea and he'd say, Oh! I think I'll take a turn outside.'

‘Every night, you say?'

‘Yes, and often as not, if you objected in some way, for instance that it was damp out, he'd say he wanted to see if the moon was shining in the water. Even with it cloudy, or on a new moon and not a sliver of it to be seen. He would find his way out – because
I
wasn't going to help him – holding the furniture as men do in a ship at sea. And he'd stay out till God knows when before finding his way back in. We'd often not see him till morning. That's how mushy his brains were.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘the moon in the water! It's an odd preoccupation, but harmless enough.'

Mary-Ann shook her head.

‘But it wasn't harmless, was it? Just see what happened!'

Fidelis leaned forward, suddenly interested.

‘So he was out looking for the moon in the water last night?'

‘Course he was.'

Fidelis glanced in my direction. ‘What time was that?'

‘Quarter or a half after midnight,' said Mary-Ann. ‘It always was. When you run an inn you have to keep regular hours. We serve no customers after twelve.'

‘So he was out after midnight last night.'

‘As I said, every night he was. Ask John.'

John was the ancient night porter at the inn.

‘Of course, John. He would have seen your father last night, going out?'

‘You must ask him.'

Mary-Ann's voice had tightened up, as if this conversation was becoming too much to bear. So I turned from her to her sister.

‘And where exactly would your father go in his search for the moon in the water?'

‘Down to the ferry stage, Cousin. He got a clear view of the water from there.'

‘Did you not worry about him wandering out that way, inebriated?'

‘He knew it as well as the way from his hand to his mouth. We thought—'

‘We thought he could come to no harm,' butted in Mary-Ann, ‘like you just said, Cousin Titus. We know better now, but too late.'

As they sometimes do, and in this case appropriately, the words ‘too late' sounded like a funeral bell. We sat quietly for a while, feeling their resonance.

‘He will miss the election, too,' said Grace, sighing deeply. ‘He had plans. He spoke of going up in fellowship with a gang of folk from Middleforth Green and Walton, to do their voting. He would have so liked it. Oh, well.'

She sighed again. I got up softly and reached for my hat.

‘We must go back to town ourselves now, Cousins, and be about our business. But I am sure Elizabeth will be down for a visit as soon as she hears the sorry news. I wish we had not been the bearers of it.'

In farewell, Luke kissed both the young ladies' hands. I am not sure if this was, in etiquette, the correct gesture, but it worked its magic. Mary-Ann smiled and Grace's cheeks again faintly reddened.

‘About the inquest,' I said, ‘we'll begin at noon, I think. And don't worry, I'll tell them not to expect too much in the way of victuals … the jury, I mean.'

But Mary-Ann stood and fixed me with an intense, beady look. She had recovered some of her fight.

‘Cousin, we'll victual them royally, if that is what they require. We are glad of the business, aren't we, Sister?'

With a momentary smile and nod, Grace tearfully concurred.

‘And I will come over a little before,' I went on, ‘to speak with both of you and also any of your staff, especially John, who might have information about what happened last night. That way we can get the whole thing over and done. You will be able to bury him on Wednesday.'

*   *   *

The ferry stage was 70 yards downstream of the inn, along a continuation of the road from Walton. This road carried on westward along the riverbank to the riverside settlement of Penwortham and then, by a looping course, south towards Liverpool. It was a pitiful road, more like a lane, and the going was both rutted and potted.

‘For a very drunk man in the dark this might be a challenging walk,' observed Fidelis.

‘Antony must have been driven by a strong desire to come out here every night.'

‘Is desire the right word, Titus?'

‘I can't think of another.'

‘I can. He was in an unhappy state at the end. “Mush” was his daughter's interesting word to describe his mind. But has “mush” desire, reasoning – will, even? No. Mush doesn't drive a man to do anything. It can't make plans, it can't look forward. But daily living requires these things. There must be some kind of structure in the mind, I think, or life collapses.'

Once Fidelis got hold of a theme, the jaws of his intellect bit so hard that they could not easily let go.

‘Well,' I floundered, ‘Antony got by because … I don't know … others – such as his daughters – made the frame of his life for him, maybe.'

‘To an extent they did. But I am talking about something more fundamental than that. A person needs an inner skeleton to keep its shape, or it too becomes inchoate and falls apart. A suit of armour, say, worn on the outside won't stiffen it at all. We are not snails.'

‘The brain is a bit like a snail, don't you think?'

Fidelis laughed.

‘That's amusing, but inaccurate. I am not speaking of the brain, but the mind. That requires an intrinsic skeleton of ideas to keep its shape. For most of us this consists of hope, looking forward, schemes and projects and reasonable optimism. Without these, what remains?'

I had no idea what he was getting at.

‘Mush?' I hazarded.

‘Exactly. Mush.'

Still no wiser, I took him back to his original proposition.

‘So what was it, in your opinion, that did cause Antony to come out here night after night to chase a delusion? I mean, if not that he just wanted to.'

‘Habit, Titus. Habits were all he had left. He drank, he sat in the same chair, he said the same things, he went out to look at the reflection of the moon at the same hour. A hopeful, self-projecting man has no need of such repetitions, but the chronically unhappy can keep going only in that way.'

‘He was certainly miserable, I can vouch for that. His son's death, then his wife's. But he had a few sparks of spirit left in him. You heard what they said – his plans for the election…'

‘They'd have come to nothing, Titus, and you know it. His feeble thread of life was so reduced he had nothing but habits left to him, with not a sensible thought in between.'

‘That is not a charitable estimate of my wife's kinsman, Luke. Though it may be true.'

‘Of course it's true. The man was a helpless sot, was he not?'

With a sigh I let this go.

We came to a break in the left-hand hedge, on the opposite side of the track to that of the river, where there was a cottage standing a little back from the road. At the gate, leaning with a pipe in his mouth, was the cottager himself. His name was Isaac Satterthwaite and he was the local rat catcher. Isaac was sixty-five years old and fully bearded, but neither withered nor bent. Long ago he had been a soldier serving under the Duke of Marlborough himself, and even now his back was straight and military, his cheeks full, and his grey hair abundant enough to be drawn back and worn as a pigtail at the nape.

We stopped to talk to him.

‘How do, Isaac,' I said. ‘You've heard what's been found?'

‘I have that,' he growled. ‘Antony Egan's fell in the water and drowned himself. It's only a wonder it took him so long.'

‘You didn't see him last night, by any chance? In the lane here, on his nightly walk?'

‘No. Not last night I didn't.'

‘Did you sometimes? He took the same walk every night, I'm told.'

‘Aye, we've seen him out late before now, down by the landing, or in the lane. Always drunk.'

‘Did you ever speak to him?'

He swivelled his head and spat.

‘Before, I might have. Not now.'

‘Before what?'

‘A disagreement, a year or more since.'

‘You fell out?'

He turned his head, this time the other way, and spat again.

‘There was little to fall out of. We were neighbours, like, and sometimes I took a mug of beer at the inn. But he considered himself above a man in my line of trade, though he had not much cause to, when you looked at him. And then there was what they said about my granddaughter, who used to work for them. Well and good they could give her the sack, but to say … what they said.'

He straightened up and knocked out his pipe.

‘Well, I must go in. Good day to you, gentlemen.'

Fidelis and I walked on.

‘What was Maggie dismissed for?' Fidelis asked.

‘I don't know. I heard nothing about it.'

‘They must have given her a bad character. The old man took umbrage badly over it.'

I shook my head.

‘I don't know. From what I've heard she's a winsome enough young girl.'

We arrived at the ferry stage, and found it deserted, the last of the market traffic having now gone across. I looked for the curly-haired guest who had earlier departed the inn, but Battersby had evidently transported him while we were in conference with the sisters. So Fidelis and I stood together alone on the slipway. It was here that the ferryman lowered his ramp to land carts, horses and livestock. Here too the southern end of the shore-to-shore rope, along which the ferry travelled, was attached to the top of a heavy post whose base was sunk deep into the riverbed. The wind was still gusting and the sunshine patchy. I looked across to the far side of the river, where one momentary patch illuminated the area near Battersby's hut. A knot of people had gathered there, watching four men who hurried towards them carrying a litter along the bankside.

The slipway was built of two parallel stone walls, 10 feet apart, which diminished in height as they sloped down to, and into, the river. The space between them was filled by earth and gravel to form a short but wide pathway into the water.

‘I suppose he slipped off the side here,' I said. ‘The water's deep. He got too near the edge and his feet went from under him, or he lost his balance.'

Fidelis crouched down, examining the edge of the walling.

‘Could he swim?'

I almost laughed.

‘Like a bag of nails. He wouldn't have lasted long.'

Fidelis moved to the other side of the slipway and inspected the retaining wall on that side. ‘There are no traces to support your theory, Titus. He went into the water wearing iron-shod clogs, did he not? If it was from here he slipped, as likely as not we'd be seeing fresh scrapes somewhere on the parapet to show where his feet went out from under him. There are none.'

Having assured himself of this, Fidelis rose and joined me in watching the business on the other bank. The bearers had loaded the litter onto Robert Battersby's craft, then retired to the bank. But one of them immediately saw that they would still be needed on our side of the river, to carry the litter up to the inn. At this point they all re-embarked. Battersby wasn't happy. He argued with them, waving his arms and seemingly asking for their fares. None were paid and after a while Battersby realized he would be better off bringing the bearers across, but without tickets, than he would with no bearers and the need to make his own arrangements for the corpse when he got to this side. So at last, with bad grace, he cast off and he and his son began winding the travel rope. Antony Egan was coming home.