A Bridge in Time

by A Bridge in Time (retail) (epub)

  ‘Because of the maid?’ asked Tim in bewilderment.

  Sydney shook his head. ‘Nothing so simple as good old healthy lust, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’ll go and see him straight away. He can’t keep his place in our squad if he’s not going to pull his weight,’ snapped Tim.

  In Major Bob’s the stove was burning brightly and there was a pleasant smell of new-baked bread. Sydney sniffed the air and said to Tim, ‘She’s been baking – that means she’s sober. It’s amazing, she’s been sober for five days now but really I think I prefer her drunk. When she’s sober the hut’s clean and the food’s good, but she talks all the time. If I hear another word about the marvellous Major Bob I’ll have to hit the bottle myself. At least when she’s drunk, she’s silent.’

  When an irreproachably clean and tidy Major Bob saw Tim she greeted him like a prodigal son but he cut into her transports of delight with a curt question. ‘Where’s that idle young sod Jimmy?’

  She nodded her head grimly. ‘Him! He’s up at Bullhead’s – that’s where he spends his time now, and that’s what’s got him into all this trouble. He’s got delirious terminus, you know,’ she said sagely, adding in explanation, ‘That’s a disease you get when you drink too much.’

  ‘Really?’ said Sydney, suavely raising one eyebrow. ‘Did you know about delirious terminus, Black Ace?’

  But Tim was in no mood for jokes. ‘I’m going to find Jimmy,’ he said, and strode out of the hut.

  Squint Mary didn’t want to let him into Bullhead’s hut but he unceremoniously lifted her up and set her aside. Then he stood in the doorway and yelled, ‘Jimmy-The-New-Man, I want to see you straight away. Come out this minute.’ Through the reek made by the smoking stove he saw a weaving figure heading towards him and went out into the open air where it was easier to breathe. When Jimmy emerged he looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and half-closed, his mouth hanging slack like the slobbering mouth of a lunatic. ‘What have you done to yourself?’ demanded Tim. ‘You should be ashamed. You can’t stay on my squad unless you pull yourself together.’

  Jimmy swayed on his feet and gave a convulsive sob. ‘Aw, Black Ace, I’m sorry. I’m a terrible sinner – I’ve done awful things. God’s going to punish me, I know it.’

  ‘I’ll leave that to Him,’ said Tim. ‘What’s worrying me is if you’re not able to do your work. I don’t carry passengers. I took you on because you were strong and willing – and you’ve let me down. Are you going to pull yourself together or not?’

  Jimmy was weeping, knuckling his red-rimmed eyes. ‘I’m a lost soul. I don’t know what to do.’

  Tim had seen men taken over by religious mania before, especially when drunk. ‘For God’s sake, don’t burble on like that. You used to be a sensible laddie. I don’t want to see you going to the dogs. If I throw you off the site, you’ll be in prison in a week.’

  Jimmy was anguished. ‘Don’t throw me off, Black Ace. I’ll try harder.’

  Tim screwed up his face in disgust. ‘If you’re not at work tomorrow, you’re off my gang!’

  He was about to leave when Bullhead came storming out of the hut waving his fists and shouting, ‘Let the lad alone. Why are you bothering him? He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

  Tim swung round on him and rapped out: ‘It’s you I blame for this. He was a good lad before he got mixed up with you.’

  Bullhead was pushing Jimmy back into the hut, saying, ‘In you go, there’s a bottle in there for you.’ Jimmy disappeared without a backward glance.

  Next morning, the lad did not turn up for work and with a deep feeling of disappointment, Tim sent Panhandle up to Bullhead’s hut with the possessions Jimmy had left at Major Bob’s. ‘Tell him he’s off our squad and out of the hut,’ was all he said.

  When Panhandle came back he told Jimmy’s old workmates, ‘Bullhead says it doesn’t matter that Black Ace’s got rid of Jimmy. They’re both moving out of our camp and going to join one of Jopp’s gangs up at Maddiston. Jimmy’s as drunk as an organ-grinder’s monkey so he’s no loss.’

  Snow fell again that night but it was a typical late-winter storm that carpeted the ground for two days and then disappeared completely, a symbolic end to winter. Like a jack-in-the-box popping up for the second time, spring returned and this time it stayed. On the anniversary of the first day she’d seen surveyors walking along the hedge behind her house, Tibbie Mather stood again in her garden with daffodils budding at her feet and thought about everything that had happened. A huge new bridge was rising at the edge of the village, the once-contented community around her was split and quarrelling among themselves about the railway, and her daughter Hannah was the wife of an Irish navvy with a baby soon to be born to them. All in twelve months! She could hardly believe so much had happened in such a short time.

  She looked up at the nearest guardian hill and saw sheep and lambs grazing on the lower slopes. They had just been let loose from the in-bye fields where they had been kept all winter until they lambed. Now they were free to roam miles of wild hill country and would not be gathered in again till autumn. As she stared, she saw the figure of a shepherd with two dogs walking among his flock. It was the Duke of Allandale’s shepherd, whom she knew well by sight. Her keen eyes followed him till he disappeared over the saddle between two of the Three Sisters and then she turned to go indoors and put on the kettle in anticipation of Hannah’s daily visit. Had she stayed out and watched a little longer, she would have seen the man and his dogs come running down the hill again and head for Rosewell, for he had made a grisly discovery.

  The Rosewell policeman had a little office in a narrow road that led from the Square to the Abbey Hotel. He was sitting there with his feet on the fender and his pipe in his mouth when the Duke’s shepherd came tumbling in the door, gasping, ‘There’s a body on the hill, Johnny!’

  The policeman removed his pipe and asked, ‘What kind of a body?’

  ‘I think it’s a woman. It’s got yellow hair and it’s wearing a gown.’

  ‘How do you mean, you “think”? Is it a woman or isn’t it?’

  ‘My God, man, it’s been half-eaten by foxes, and it’s been up there for a while from the look of it. Och it’s a terrible sight. My dogs came on it – if it wasn’t for them I’d never have seen it. It’s been stuck under a big whinbush.’

  ‘There’s naebody missing from Rosewell as far as I ken. This’ll hae something to do wi’ these damned navvies, mark my words,’ said the policeman, moving ponderously across the floor towards the door. ‘Come on, I’ll get some men and a stretcher. Show us where it is.’

  Two hours later, the remains of what had once been a woman lay on the floor of the police office, below an old blanket donated by the officer’s wife. The finders stood around and scratched their heads. ‘I’d better get Doctor Stewart to have a look at it before I write my report,’ said the policeman. He was very much out of his depth because there had not been a mysterious death like this in Rosewell during his whole tenure of office, some seventeen years.

  Summoned from his luncheon table, the doctor screwed up his face in distaste at the sight of the corpse. ‘It’s a woman all right and she’s been dead for months, I’d say. Her head’s bashed in and her ribs are broken, so’s her left leg. The foxes have made a bit of a job of her, though. You’ll have to try to identify her from her clothes.’ He lifted a scrap of green cotton between finger and thumb and asked, ‘Was this all she had on?’

  The policeman reached behind him and lifted down a man’s black jacket. ‘This was over her when Allandale’s man found her,’ he said.

  ‘Have you looked in the pockets?’ asked the doctor.

  The policeman shoved his hand in two deep side pockets and found nothing. Then he turned the jacket inside out and at last cried, ‘Here, what’s this?’

  Like many navvies, Tim Maquire had been a dandy in his bachelor days. He liked to buy good clothes and patronised the best tailor in any town where he was working. In Preston,
where he’d had this jacket made, the tailor was a craftsman with an eye for detail. When he stitched on his own label, he also sewed under it the name of his client in delicate stitches of scarlet thread. Mr T. Maquire was what he’d sewn.

  The policeman and the doctor read the name with interest. ‘Maquire, an Irish name – a navvy, I’ll be bound,’ they said in unison.

  Tim was up on the embankment when the policeman arrived looking for him. ‘Are you called Maquire?’ he asked.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’d like you to come with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To assist me in establishing the identity of a body we’ve found.’

  ‘What sort of a body?’

  ‘A woman’s body.’

  Tim went green. ‘It’s not Hannah? It’s not my wife?’ he gasped.

  The policeman shook his head. ‘I don’t know whose wife she is. She’s been dead a while. We’re hoping you’ll be able to tell us something about her.’

  Tim felt his heart steadying. He’d seen Hannah only half an hour before. ‘All right, I’ll come with you,’ he said, though he was baffled as to what this was all about. As he strode off up the road with the policeman, a blaze of gossip and suspicion spread out behind him.

  In the police office a gang of hangers-on were waiting around the body. The policeman looked at Tim and said, ‘I hope you’ve a strong stomach.’

  ‘Pretty strong,’ was the reply, but even Tim tasted bile in his mouth when the blanket was flung back and what was left of Mariotta was revealed.

  ‘Your jacket was over her when she was found. Who is she?’ asked the policeman.

  Tim wiped his face with his hand and said, ‘Her name’s Mariotta. I recognise her hair, really. It’s hard to tell from anything else.’

  ‘Mariotta what?’

  ‘I don’t know. She used to be married to a man called Benjy but he died and then she took up with Bullhead. He might know what her full name is.’

  ‘How did she come to be found with your jacket on her?’

  ‘Because I gave it to her one night. She was going off to sleep in the wood and I put it on her for fear she’d die of cold. You’d better ask Bullhead how she came by her death. I’ve a strong suspicion he’ll know something about it.’

  ‘Where’s this Bullhead then?’

  ‘I’ll take you to him,’ said Tim. He was filled with a terrible burning anger, for he was sure that the brute of a man had killed Mariotta.

  * * *

  Bullhead was a pulley-man on the line out of Maddiston. When the police party found him he was hauling on a thick rope pulling barrow-loads of earth up from a cutting that was sunk deep in the side of a hill. The Rosewell policeman looked with apprehension at the muscles of the man’s huge arms as he asked, ‘Are you the one who has – had – a wife called Mariotta?’

  The answer was a grunt. ‘No wife, woman.’

  ‘Do you know where she is now?’

  ‘Don’t know and don’t care. The bitch took off with my money and if I find her I’ll tan her hide.’

  This was the first mention Bullhead had made of Mariotta stealing money, and when Tim opened his mouth to say something about it, the policeman silenced him with a glare. He asked Bullhead, ‘Were you in the habit of striking her?’

  The navvy dropped the rope and his load hit the ground with an earth-shattering thud. ‘What’s all this about?’ he growled.

  ‘We’ve found a body that’s been identified as your woman Mariotta and we’re trying to find out who killed her.’

  ‘How do you know she was killed?’

  ‘Because her skull was smashed in.’

  Bullhead showed no emotion. ‘Useless bitch,’ he said, lifting the rope again. Then he turned his bullet head and added, ‘I’d nothing to do with it. She took off one night with my money and I’ve not seen her since.’

  His protests did not stop him being marched back to Rosewell, however, where both he and Tim were locked in the only police cell. They sat on opposite benches, staring at each other but saying nothing. Outside, the news of their arrest spread like wildfire. When Hannah heard, she went running into Rosewell. At the police-station door she met Christopher Wylie. Grabbing his arm she sobbed, ‘Oh, sir, they’ve arrested my Tim! They think he killed Mariotta. I know he didn’t.’

  He patted her hand soothingly. ‘Of course he didn’t, and I’m going in there now to tell them so. Calm down, my dear. Come in with me and we’ll speak to the officer. There’s been a terrible mistake of some sort.’

  Their protestations on Tim’s behalf were listened to with sympathy by the policeman, who knew Hannah well, but eventually he held up a hand and said, ‘I’ve got to keep him here because his jacket with his name in it was found wrapped round the body.’

  Hannah sobbed in relief. ‘Is that all! But he gave it to her one night when she was going to sleep in the wood and he was afraid she’d freeze to death. He came home and told me. She said to me afterwards that she’d bring it back but she never did.’

  ‘Can you remember when that happened?’ asked the policeman. For a miracle Hannah could remember exactly. The progress of her pregnancy had made her very time-conscious, and she had got into the habit of marking off the days on a wall calendar. Sometimes she wrote events on it, too, and she had marked down the day she had invited Mariotta to tea.

  When she told the policeman this, he grinned. ‘That’s grand, Hannah.’ He’d already been told that the day of the big fight was the last time anyone could remember seeing Mariotta.

  Wylie interrupted, ‘In that case, you’ve no reason to hold Maquire, have you? I’ll stand surety for him. He’s an honest and honourable man. He’d never do a thing like this.’

  But they could not secure Tim’s release until the policeman had conferred with the town magistrate and the doctor, so they were told to wait outside the office while this conference was going on. Wylie stood on the doorstep holding Hannah’s hand and trying to reassure her while inside, the powers of the town were in deep discussion.

  ‘We’ve no witnesses to anything except when she was last seen. No one’ll admit to knowing anything about her, though it seems to have been fairly general knowledge that her man beat her up – but that’s not unusual among the navvies,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Has anyone said they actually saw him beating her?’ queried the magistrate, but the policeman shook his head.

  ‘No, sir, but they saw her with black eyes and bruises, things like that. This man Bullhead says she got the injuries from other men. She was a prostitute, apparently. His theory is that she got involved in the fight in the camp and then crawled off up the hill to die.’

  ‘With a cracked skull, broken ribs and a broken leg?’ asked the magistrate sceptically.

  Stewart was studying his elegantly-buffed fingernails, and he said in a bored voice, ‘She’s not been much of a woman, by all accounts – a prostitute, living with a man without being married to him and a heavy drinker into the bargain. She’s no great loss to humankind. I think we should just write it off as accidental death and forget all about it.’

  Which is what they decided to do. The cell-door was unlocked and the men inside were told, ‘Off you go, and don’t come back. The quicker you and your women are out of this town the better. We don’t like your sort.’

  ‘What about Mariotta?’ asked Tim.

  The policeman was not an unfeeling man and he looked shamefaced as he said, ‘The town’ll bury her. The doctor thinks she must have crawled up the hill to die. There’s no way of proving anything else.’

  Bullhead gave a little snort of agreement at this and Tim turned on him. ‘I know you did this, you bastard. Even if they can’t prove it, I’m sure you did it, and one day you’ll pay for it,’ he vowed bitterly.

  Smartly the policeman stepped between them. ‘Now, now, none of that. You two had better keep the peace if you don’t want to get into more trouble – and don’t try to bolt either because I’ll go on asking questio
ns about this. I’m not really satisfied myself.’

  When he pushed them out of the door, Hannah and Christopher Wylie rushed up to Tim. He reached out and hugged his wife to him, but Bullhead gave a jeering laugh. Stepping out of punching distance, he shouted, ‘Does your lassie know what went on between you and Mariotta? Have you told her why you’re so worked up? There was more between you than a jacket, wasn’t there?’

  When Tim looked at Hannah he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes and he spoke vigorously. ‘It’s not true, Hannah – it’s not true. He’s lying. I was sorry for her when Benjy died. She wanted me to take her but I wouldn’t. I was already in love with you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I thought it was bad enough that we were in her house.’

  She shuddered. ‘Poor Mariotta. How awful she must have felt about me. I wish I’d known it all. You should have told me everything.’

  While they were talking, Wylie turned and walked away. It was best to leave them to themselves at such a time, he reckoned.

  In confusion and anguish Hannah looked around the familiar street as if she were seeing it for the first time, and then a thought struck her. ‘The children! What about her children? They’re living up there with Mrs Rush.’ She pointed to the narrow opening of the East Port. ‘Someone’ll have to tell Nanny Rush what’s happened,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Tim grimly. Together they walked to the dame-school door and knocked.

  Mrs Rush answered, but her ready smile faltered as she saw the stricken expressions of the two people who looked back at her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s about Mariotta. Are her children with you just now?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Yes, they’re in the back room,’ said Mrs Rush, pulling the door closed behind her to shut out the sound of their voices.