Skin Like Silver

by Chris Nickson

  For the first month the entries were quite long, almost half a page each day. How she felt stifled by her life and her husband. How he dismissed the idea of women wanting to vote.

  He calls it stupidity and frivolite. He says we are not ready and that we may never be ready. He says a woman can niver have the reason of a man and no matter how I talk and persuad him, he will not be moved.

  In public, he treated her well, polite and attentive. But once they were alone, it would begin: the hurtful remarks, his satisfaction at leaving her in tears. Sometimes the blows. As Harper read on, the entries became sparse. A line or two, then days with nothing.

  If I dont leave, I might die.

  After that she’d written nothing for a fortnight. When she began again, she was in her new life. A little about her job, the room with Mrs Timothy. Everything matter-of-fact. From there, it was mostly notes about meetings and work, a speaker who’d inspired her. But some lines jumped out at him.

  I feel like I can breathe again.

  I feel as if I can stand tall for the first time in years.

  He read on. There was no mention of a life beyond her job and the work she did for her cause. A small, compacted life. But that was the sense that came through the whole diary. A mouse of a woman. Alone, no friends. Maybe she’d always been that way. His sense was of a woman who’d vanished into herself.

  At least she seemed more content after leaving. Her life might be small, but it was her own. He turned the pages, then suddenly stopped.

  I thought I saw him tonight, walking along the street outside my window. Then he was gone again.

  It was dated two weeks earlier. Just that, nothing more. A few days later she wrote:

  I am not certin, but I believe I saw him standing by the gas lamp on the street tonight. Then I blinked and he had gone. Perhaps I imagined it. I pray to God I did.

  He looked at it again. He? Carr? Harper flipped through it all urgently. There was just one more entry, from the night before Catherine Carr was murdered.

  It is him out there. He stepped back and I saw his face. But I will not be afraid.

  He stared at the words for a long time then examined the rest of the book. No more words hidden away, no pieces of paper tucked between the pages.

  It is him out there. He stepped back and I saw his face. But I will not be afraid.

  Who?

  Harper sat for a long time, gazing at nothing. Images came into his head. Catherine Carr, lying under the debris of the railway station with her skin turned to silver. The tiny baby on Dr King’s table. Nightmares just waiting for darkness to visit again.

  ‘Anything much in there?’

  The inspector jerked his head up. Dammit. He’d never heard Reed come in.

  ‘Someone was watching her.’

  ‘Who?’ The sergeant sat at the other desk. He looked older, Harper thought, but happier somehow. The restlessness that tormented him for so long had gone. He seemed comfortable in his skin.

  ‘I don’t know. She only says he.’

  ‘The husband?’

  It was a few seconds before he answered. ‘I can’t see it.’ With his walking sticks he seemed too frail. But he’d need to find out. He sighed. ‘What did Miss Worthy have to say?’

  ‘Hardly worth the time. The job was a favour for Miss Ford. Mrs Carr was an excellent employee.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But Miss Worthy never gets close to her employees.’ He shrugged.

  ‘What about the other girls in the shop?’

  ‘She kept herself to herself.’

  ‘Didn’t even talk politics?’ the inspector asked.

  Reed shook his head.

  ‘Not allowed. It’s as if she hardly had a life, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harper agreed thoughtfully as he looked at the diary. ‘Come on, Billy, I’m in the mood for a cup of cocoa.’

  The Golden Cup stood halfway down Lower Briggate, its name painted on the roof in gilt letters. The place was already busy, most of the tables filled with women gossiping or men conducting business.

  The inspector ordered two cups and sat back, studying Reed’s face until they were served. ‘Why are we here?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Because I need to say a few things. Better here than at the station.’

  ‘What?’ His chin jutted forward.

  ‘If we’re going to work together properly, we need to clear the air.’

  ‘I thought we had,’ Reed said sharply.

  ‘Come on, Billy. You’re not a fool. I can use your help on this, but I don’t want to feel like you’re begrudging me your time every day.’

  ‘There are plenty of good detectives on the force.’

  ‘Yes. But none of them are you.’ The sergeant opened his mouth to speak but Harper cut him off. ‘That’s not flannel. I was wrong before. I know that. I’m sorry. But I’d do it again. I can have Dick Hill transfer you back, if that’s what you really want. I’d like you to stay, though. This is going to be hard, I can feel it. I just can’t have you acting like you’re doing me a favour every time I give you an order. Understood?’

  Reed glared, taking a cigarette from the packet and making a production of lighting it.

  ‘Understood,’ he agreed finally. Harper extended his hand. This time the sergeant shook it.

  ‘Good.’ The inspector sipped his cocoa. ‘You’re right, it’s like Katie Carr was barely there. You know what I learned reading her diary?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Not a damned thing. I still don’t have any sense who she really was. What made her laugh or cry. She just seemed to exist.’

  ‘Maybe she was scared to have anyone close after her marriage.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Harper agreed. ‘Read it for yourself. She talks about her husband and how he treated her. Social engagements. That’s it. It’s as if she was walking through her life.’

  ‘People do, you know. What now?’

  ‘I want you to dig into her. Find out where she’s from, what she did before she worked for the Carrs. Her family. And find out about Mr Carr, too. He’d been married before. What did his wife die of? He said his son runs the business now. How well is it doing? Are there other children? But keep it quiet. I want ammunition, but I don’t want him to know I’m gathering it.’ He saw the sergeant quietly smiling. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s only been a few months, Tom. I haven’t forgotten how to do the job. It’s probably Carr who murdered her. Nine times out of ten it’s the husband.’

  ‘But it’s the tenth that’s the problem? And I don’t know …’ He drained the cup and wiped his mouth. ‘I just have the feeling that there’s more to this than we’re seeing.’

  ‘And sometimes the obvious answer is the right one,’ Reed told him. ‘Remember? You taught me that when I started.’

  ‘Maybe I’m making a molehill into a mountain. But there’s something about this that feels wrong. How the hell did she end up in the Arches? It’s not somewhere she’d be likely to go with anyone.’ He ran his hands down his face. ‘I just want something that feels like an answer and not another bloody question.’

  ‘Then we’d better get to work. I still think we can close this quickly.’

  ‘Tell the super. He’ll be happy to hear it.’

  The information from Catherine Carr’s death certificate had been added to the papers in the folder. God only knew where they’d found everything – her husband, Reed supposed. She was listed as a shop assistant, murdered. The date she left the world, and the date she came into it.

  Catherine Jane Sugden had been born in Leeds on July 9, 1847. Forty-four years old when she was killed.

  He had two facts. Now he could find more.

  The recorder’s office was in a musty corner of the Town Hall, tucked away down a corridor, far from the marble stairs. There was light from the window, but the three clerks inside still had the gas mantles burning as they worked. The only sound in the room was the rapid scratch of nib on paper.
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br />   ‘I need to see her birth certificate,’ the sergeant said as he showed his identification. The man vanished into a back room, returning with a heavy ledger. He checked the date, going through the pages to find the entry, then nodded to himself. Delving into a deep cabinet, he finally brought out a piece of paper, blinking through thick spectacles to be sure it was correct. Then he laid it on the counter.

  ‘This is it, sir. No one ever asks to see these things.’

  Her mother had been called Margaret Emma, her father James William. Married, living in Leeds. He was listed on the paper as a painter and decorator. A catch-all, a label for a man who’d turn his hand to anything.

  ‘I’d like to know if the parents are still alive, whether there were any other children, and if they’re living.’

  The man pursed thin, bloodless lips.

  ‘I suppose I can find that,’ he agreed after a little thought. ‘I’ll need some time.’

  ‘An hour?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ the clerk promised.

  He walked down the steps, between the lions in front of the building, and into Victoria Square. The Indian summer was going to break; there was the sharp scent of rain in the air and clouds building off to the west, and around him he heard people with bronchitic coughs. A girl ran down the street, her legs bowed with rickets.

  An hour. Time to walk back to Millgarth. Or to go over to New Station and look at the killing ground again.

  Teams of men were clearing rubble and loading it on to carts. Already the place looked completely different, daylight streaming through the space where the platforms had been, paths cleared through the debris below. For a moment he could only stare in wonder at the work. Another day or two and all this would be empty space.

  The trains were still running on the three remaining platforms, steam gushing, the passengers queueing warily. Business had to go on. There were schedules to keep and money to be made.

  The Arches were nothing more than a blackened ruin. Wooden gangplanks crossed the river. Workers with kerchiefs around their mouths pushed wheelbarrows filled with rubble. There was dust everywhere, men coughing and spitting as they worked.

  A hand tapped him on the shoulder. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Sergeant Reed, Leeds Police. Fire Brigade, most of the time. You know about the woman murdered the other night?’

  The man nodded. He was young, cheeks still shiny from that morning’s shave, with curly, pale hair and a small, fair moustache.

  ‘Eric Shaw,’ he said and stuck out a hand. ‘I’m an engineer with the railway. We don’t want people coming in and staring. It’s still dangerous enough as it is.’

  He seemed impossibly young for such a job. ‘Are those other platforms really safe?’ the sergeant asked. ‘I was here fighting the fire.’

  Shaw nodded eagerly. ‘I inspected them myself. Not a worry in the world.’ He looked around the gangs of labourers. ‘This is all a mess, though. It’s going to cost a fortune to rebuild.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll leave you to look at what you need, Sergeant. Just be careful. If you want anything, come and find me.’ He strode away quickly.

  Reed wandered along, looking at the ground and dodging men as they bustled quickly around. He hadn’t found anything when he searched before. Now he could barely guess where the body had been. There was no sense of the madness from the fire, only the determination all around to sweep everything away and start again.

  ‘What have you managed to find?’ he asked the clerk in the records office.

  ‘Here you go, sir.’ The man gave a satisfied smile as he handed over several brown, curling pieces of paper.

  ‘Thank you.’ The sergeant laid them out along the counter. Death certificates for James and Margaret Sugden. His from 1857, the cause listed as injuries from a fall. Catherine would have been just ten, probably already in service somewhere. Margaret Sugden had lasted another two decades before consumption took her when she was fifty.

  The clerk had been thorough. There was a marriage certificate for the Sugdens from 1846, with an address in Hunslet, and birth and death certificates for three children, none of them living past the age of three. But no more heartbreak than many families endured.

  He came to the final sheet. Stanley Arnold Sugden. Born August 20, 1856. His father would have been dead before the boy ever knew him.

  ‘He must still be alive,’ the clerk explained. ‘I can’t find anything else on him.’

  ‘You’ve done a good job.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The man beamed. ‘If the police are looking for someone in their records division …’

  ‘I’ll be sure to tell them.’

  So Catherine Carr had a brother, he thought as he walked back to Millgarth.

  Sergeant Tollman stood behind the desk. He’d been in the same place on Reed’s first day as a copper. Now the man looked older, greyer, his belly larger as it bulged against the wood. But he was the one they turned to, the one with remarkable recall. Give him a name and he knew the offence they’d committed. All too often the sentence they’d been given, too.

  ‘Stanley Sugden,’ Reed said. ‘Does it mean anything?’

  ‘It might, sir,’ Tollman answered after a long while. ‘We’ve had someone like that. It’s a fairly common name, though.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  The sergeant stroked his bushy side whiskers as he thought. ‘Robbery with violence, as I recall. The judge gave him ten years, I remember that.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Must have been in ’84 or ’85,’ he replied after a moment.

  ‘Did he go to Armley?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Can you telephone to the governor there? I’d like to know if he’s still inside.’

  Harper sat in the office, reading through Catherine Carr’s diary once more. It was a sad document. Lonely. He wondered how much joy the woman had ever known in her life. There was certainly none of it on the page. Even once she was on her own, every day seemed to be duty; no thought of pleasure.

  Tonight he was meeting one of the union men who guarded the suffragist meetings. He’d arranged it through Tom Maguire. Maybe he’d learn something, a description, a name, anything useful.

  Ash had gone back to Chapel Allerton and talked to the servants again. Mr Carr rarely went out at night. Sometimes he’d go and dine with his son, but that was all. He’d been at home the night his wife was murdered, and for several before that, suffering from gout.

  Now Ash had gone to talk to the residents on Tramway Street. Half an hour earlier he’d talked to the constable who walked the night beat there.

  ‘The sergeant said you wanted to see me, sir.’ He looked young and nervous. A thin growth of moustache sprouted over his upper lip, trying to make him appear older. The uniform hung baggily where he hadn’t grown into it yet. His eyes darted around the room.

  ‘Sit down, Constable?’

  ‘Smith, sir. Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ Harper said kindly. ‘Tramway Street is your beat, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Started there eleven months ago.’

  Inside, the inspector smiled at the lad’s exactness.

  ‘Do you know Mrs Timothy’s rooming house?’

  ‘Course I do, sir.’ He grinned. ‘She’s not the easiest to get along with. Like a hedgehog, if you know what I mean. But she has a good heart.’

  ‘How often do you go by?’

  ‘About every hour and a half. Never much trouble round there.’

  ‘Have you spotted anyone loitering?’ the inspector asked. ‘Had to move anyone on?’

  ‘Not really, sir.’ He stopped himself. ‘There was one thing, though, the night before the big fire.’

  Harper leaned forward, elbows on the desk. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I turned the corner and I saw someone running off.’

  ‘A man or a woman?’

  ‘Man, sir, definitely. He was wearing a bowl
er hat, I saw it when he passed under a gas lamp.’

  ‘What else?’

  Smith shook his head. ‘That’s it, sir. I didn’t get much of a glimpse, he was running away from me. Should I have gone after him? There didn’t look to be anything out of order around there.’

  ‘No,’ Harper assured him. ‘You didn’t have a reason.’

  ‘As soon as I saw everything was fine, I put it in my notebook and carried on.’

  ‘Did you know Mrs Carr?’ the inspector asked. ‘One of Mrs Timothy’s tenants.’

  ‘Can’t say as I did, sir. I read about it in the papers, of course. Do you think this might be connected?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Thank you.’

  But he did know. The feeling, the clench in his stomach like a fist. Catherine Carr hadn’t imagined someone watching her. The man had been very real.

  ‘She has a brother,’ Reed announced as he came in. ‘Stanley Sugden. Sent to Armley a few years ago.’

  ‘Still inside?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘Tollman’s checking.’ He read from the notes he’d made during the morning. ‘That’s all I have so far.’

  ‘Good work, Billy. I’ll take everything you can find.’

  ‘You still want information on the husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said after a little thought. Carr might not have wielded the knife, but he wasn’t ready to eliminate him as a suspect just yet. ‘The whole bloody family. Right now we have three possibilities. It could be this man she saw on her street at night. It could be her politics—’

  ‘Those could be related,’ Reed pointed out, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed. ‘Or it could be family. We need to follow up on them all.’

  There was a tap on the door and Tollman entered.

  ‘At the jail they said that they moved Sugden to the asylum out at Menston last year, sir. He’s a lunatic. A violent one. I took the liberty of asking about the next of kin. It’s a Mrs Carr.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Mr Hardaker? Thank you for meeting me.’ Harper shook the man’s hand and they took a table in the Pack Horse. Hidden away in an old court off Briggate, the sounds of the town were muted, just the soft rumble of trams passing on their metal tracks. ‘Mr Maguire said you keep a watch at the suffragist meetings.’