Not Safe After Dark (12 page)

He looked at me with pity and contempt, then shook his head and said, ‘You don’t understand.’

I looked down into the water, its foam tipped with moonlight. ‘Did you kill him?’ I asked. ‘Did you kill Richard Ellerby because you blamed him for Florence’s
death?’

He said nothing for a moment, then gave a brief, jerky nod. ‘There he were,’ he said, ‘standing there in his finest coat, drinking and laughing, while my Florence were rotting
in her grave.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘I told him he were no better than a murderer, buying up wool that kills people. I mean, it weren’t the first time, were it? He said it weren’t his fault, that nobody
could’ve known. Then, when I told him he should take more care, he said I didn’t understand, that it were just a hazard of the job, like, and that she should’ve known she were
taking a risk before she took it on.’

If Richard really
had
spoken that way to Jack, then he had certainly been guilty of exhibiting a gross insensitivity I had not suspected to be part of his character. Even if that was the
case, we are all capable of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, especially if we are pushed as far as Jack probably pushed Richard. What he had done had certainly not justified his
murder.

‘
How
did it happen, Jack?’ I asked him.

After a short pause, he said, ‘I waited for him on the towpath. All the way home we argued and in the end I lost my temper. There were a long bit of wood from a packing crate or summat by
the bushes. He turned his back on me and started walking away. I picked it up and clouted him and down he went.’

‘But why the weir?’

‘I realized what I’d done.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘It’s funny, you know, especially now it doesn’t matter. But back then, when I’d just done it, when I
knew I’d
killed
a man, I panicked. I thought if I threw his body over the weir then people would think he’d fallen. It weren’t far, and he weren’t a heavy
man.’

‘He wasn’t dead, Jack,’ I said. ‘He had water in his lungs. That meant he was alive when he went into the water.’

‘It’s no matter,’ said Jack. ‘One way or another, it was me who killed him.’

The water roared in my ears. Jack turned towards me. I flinched and stepped back again, thrusting my arm out to keep him at a distance.

He shook his head slowly, tears in his eyes, and spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him. ‘Nay, Doctor, you’ve nowt to fear from me. It’s me who’s got summat to fear
from you.’

I shook my head. I really didn’t know what to do, and my heart was still beating fast from the fear that he had been going to tip me over the railing.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘all I ask is that you leave it till morning. One more night in the house me and Florence shared. Will you do that for me, at least, Doctor?’

As I nodded numbly, he turned and began to walk away.

•

Early the following morning, after a miserable night spent tossing and turning, grappling with my conscience, I was summoned from the hospital to the works office building,
attached to the west side of the mill. I hurried down Victoria Road, wondering what on earth it could be about, and soon found myself ushered into a large, well-appointed office with a thick
Turkish carpet, dark wainscoting and a number of local landscapes hanging on the walls. Sitting behind the huge mahogany desk was Sir Titus himself, still a grand, imposing figure despite his years
and his declining health.

‘Dr Oulton,’ he said, without looking up from his papers. ‘Please sit down.’

I wondered what had brought him the twelve miles or so from Crows Nest, where he lived. He rarely appeared at the mill in those days.

‘I understand,’ he said in his deep, commanding voice, still not looking at me, ‘that you have been enquiring into the circumstances surrounding Richard Ellerby’s
death?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, Sir Titus.’

‘And what, pray, have you discovered?’

I took a deep breath, then told him everything. As I spoke, he stood up, clasped his hands behind his back and paced the room, head hanging so that his grey beard almost reached his waist.
Though his cheeks and eyes looked sunken, as if he was ill, his presence dominated the room. When I had finished, he sat down again and treated me to a long silence before he said, ‘And what
are we going to do about it?’

‘The police will have to be notified.’

‘As yet, then, you and I are the only ones who know the full truth?’

‘And Jack himself.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Sir Titus stroked his beard. I could hear the muffled noise of the mill and feel the vibrations of the power looms shaking the office. It was a warm day, and
despite the open window the room was stuffy. I felt the sweat gather on my brow and upper lip. I gazed out of the window and saw the weir, where Richard Ellerby had met his death. ‘This is
not good,’ Sir Titus said finally. ‘Not good at all.’

‘Sir?’

He gestured with his arm to take in the whole of Saltaire. ‘What I mean, Dr Oulton, is that this could be very bad for the village. Very bad. Do you have faith in the
experiment?’

‘The experiment, sir?’

‘The moral experiment that is Saltaire.’

‘I have never doubted your motive in wanting to do good, sir.’

Sir Titus managed a thin smile. ‘A very revealing answer.’ Another long silence followed. He got up and started pacing again. ‘If a man visits a public house and becomes so
intoxicated that he falls in a river and drowns, then that is an exemplary tale for all of us, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I would, sir.’

‘And if a man, after visiting a public house, is followed by a group of ruffians who attack him, rob him and throw him in a river to drown, then again we have an exemplary – nay, a
cautionary –
tale, do we not?’

‘We do, sir. But Richard Ellerby wasn’t robbed.’

He waved his hand impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I know that. I’m merely thinking out loud. Please forgive an old man his indulgence. This place – Saltaire – means
the world to me, Dr Oulton. Can you understand that? The
world
.’

‘I think I can, sir.’

‘It’s not just a matter of profits, though I’ll not deny it’s profitable enough. But I think I have created something unique. I call it my “experiment”, of
course, yet for others it is a home, a way of life. At least I hope it is. It was my aim to make Saltaire everything Bradford was not. It was designed to nurture self-improvement, decency, orderly
behaviour and good health among my workers. I wanted to prove that making my own fortune was not incompatible with the material and spiritual wellbeing of the working classes. I saw it as my duty,
my God-given duty. If the Lord looks so favourably upon me, then I take that as an obligation to look favourably upon my workers. Do you follow me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And now this. Murder. Manslaughter. Call it what you will. It disrupts the fabric of things. It could destroy any trust that might have built up in the community. No doubt you remember
the troubles we had over anthrax some years ago?’

‘I do, sir.’ In 1868 a man called Sutcliffe Rhodes had garnered much support from the village in his campaign against anthrax, and Sir Titus had been seriously embarrassed by the
whole matter. ‘But surely you can’t expect me to ignore what I know, sir?’ I said. ‘To lie.’

Sir Titus smiled grimly. ‘I could never ask a man to go against his beliefs, Doctor. All I ask is that you follow the dictates of your own conscience, but that you please bear in mind the
consequences. If this issue surfaces again, especially in this way, then we’re done for. Nobody will
believe
in the goodness of Saltaire any more, and I meant it to be a
good
place, a place where there would never be any reason for murder to occur.’

He shook his head in sadness and let the silence stretch again. Above the noise of the mill I suddenly heard men shouting. Someone hammered on the door and dashed into the office without
ceremony. I couldn’t be certain, but my first impression was that it was the same shadowy figure I had seen in the ‘spy’ tower.

‘Sir Titus,’ the interloper said, after a quick bow, ‘my apologies for barging in like this, but you must come. There’s a man on the mill roof.’

Sir Titus and I frowned at one another, then we followed him outside. I walked slowly, in deference to Sir Titus’s age, and it took us several minutes to get around to the allotment
gardens, from where we had a clear view.

The man stood atop the mill roof, full six storeys up, between its two decorative lanterns. I could also make out another figure inside one of the lanterns, perhaps talking to him. But the man
on the roof didn’t appear to be listening. He stood right at the edge and, even as we watched, he spread out his arms as if attempting to fly, then he sprang off the roof and seemed to hover
in the air for a moment before falling with a thud to the forecourt.

It was a curious sensation. Though I knew in my heart and mind that I was witnessing the death of a fellow human being, there was a distant quality about the event. The figure was dwarfed by the
mill, for a start, and just in front of us, a dog scratched at the dirt, as if digging for its bone, and it didn’t cease during the man’s entire fall to earth.

A mill hand came running up and told us that the man who had jumped was Jack Liversedge. Again it was an eerie feeling, but I suppose, in a way, I already knew that.

‘An accident and a suicide,’ muttered Sir Titus, fixing me with his deep-set eyes. ‘It’s bad enough, but we can weather it, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?’ There
was hope in his voice.

My jaw tensed. I was tempted to tell him to go to hell, that his vision, his
experiment
, wasn’t worth lying for. But I saw in front of me a sick old man who had at least tried to do
something
for the people who made him rich. Whether it was enough or not was not for me to say. Saltaire wasn’t perfect – perfection is a state we will never find on this earth
– but it was better than most mill towns.

Swallowing my bile, I gave Sir Titus a curt nod and set off back up Victoria Road to the hospital.

•

In the days and weeks that followed, I tried to continue with my work – after all, the people of Saltaire still needed a hospital and a doctor – but after Jack
Liversedge’s pointless death, my heart just didn’t seem to be in it any more. Jack’s dramatic suicide lowered the morale of the town for a short while – there were long
faces everywhere and some mutterings of dissent – but eventually it was forgotten, and the townspeople threw themselves back into their work: weaving fine cloths of alpaca and mohair for
those wealthy enough to be able to afford them.

Still, no matter how much I tried to convince myself to put the matter behind me and carry on, I felt there was something missing from the community; something more than a mere man had died the
day Jack killed himself.

One day, after I had spent a wearying few hours tending to one of the wool sorters dying of anthrax, I made my decision to leave. A month later, after sorting out my affairs and helping my
replacement settle in, I left Saltaire for South Africa, where I eventually met the woman who was to become my wife. We raised our three children, and I practised my profession in Cape Town for
thirty years. After my retirement, we decided to move back to England, where we settled comfortably in a small Cornish fishing village. Now, my children are grown up, married and gone away, my wife
is dead and I am an old man who spends his days wandering the cliffs above the sea watching the birds soar and dip.

And sometimes the sound of the waves reminds me of the roar of the Saltaire weir.

More than forty years have now passed since that night by the weir, when Jack Liversedge told me he had killed Richard Ellerby; more than forty years have passed since Sir Titus and I stood by
the allotments and saw Jack’s body fall and break on the forecourt of the mill.

Forty years. Long enough to keep a secret.

Besides, the world has changed so much since then that what happened that day long ago in Saltaire seems of little consequence now. Sir Titus died three years after Jack’s fall, and his
dream died with him. Fashions changed, and the ladies no longer wanted the bright, radiant fabrics that Sir Titus had produced. His son, Titus junior, struggled with the business until he, too,
died in 1887, and the mill was taken over by a consortium of Bradford businessmen. Today, Saltaire is no longer a moral experiment or a mill workers’ Utopia; it is merely another
business.

And today, in July 1916, nobody believes in Utopias any more.

He had only
gone out to the convenience store for cigarettes, but the park across the intersection looked inviting. It seemed to offer a brief escape from the heat and
dirt and noise of the city. Cars whooshed by, radios blasting rock and funk and rap into the hot summer night. Street lights and coloured neons looked smeared and blurry in the humid heat. A walk
among the trees by the lake might cool him down a little.

He knew he shouldn’t, knew it was dangerous. What was it the guidebooks always said about big city parks?
Not safe after dark
. That was it. No matter which park they talked about
– Central Park, Golden Gate Park – they were always
not safe after dark
.

He wondered why. Parks were quiet, peaceful places, a few acres of unspoilt nature in the heart of the city. People took their dogs for walks; children played on swings and teeter-totters. Parks
provided retreats for meditation and the contemplation of nature, surely, not playgrounds for the corrupt and the delinquent.

There was more danger, he thought, among the dregs of humanity that haunted the vast urban sex and drug supermarkets like Times Square or the Tenderloin. There you got mugged, beaten up, raped,
even murdered, for no good reason at all.

Hoodlums and thugs weren’t into nature; they were happier idling on street corners harassing passers-by, starting fights in strip clubs or rock bars, and selling drugs in garbage-strewn
alleys. If they wanted to mug someone, they had more chance downtown, where the crowds were thick and some fool always took a short cut down a dark alley. If they just wanted to scare and hurt
people for the fun of it, crowded places like shopping malls guaranteed them both the victims and the audience.