Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Morley. ‘Let’s get a couple of photographs of the excavations and then we’ll pick up Miriam and bid the place farewell.’

  We pulled over in the car, next to a trench where men were manhandling a rotten, rust-eaten pipe up out of the ground.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Morley, clambering down into the trench, which could accommodate quite a crowd.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I wonder if we might take a couple of photographs and ask you about your work?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said one of the men.

  I clambered down into the trench also.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Morley.

  ‘We’re the Gas,’ said the man.

  ‘And we’re the Water,’ said another, not a few yards away. ‘And him down there’ – he pointed a few feet further down the trench – ‘they’re the Electric.’

  ‘The full complement!’ said Morley. ‘Working together in perfect harmony for a better Colchester!’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said the Gas man.

  ‘Trouble is, we hit one of theirs,’ said the Water man, ‘and then they hit one of ours, and we have to start all over again.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morley.

  ‘The whole thing’s taking months,’ said the Gas man.

  ‘It’ll take years,’ shouted the Electric man.

  ‘And when are the works scheduled for completion?’ asked Morley.

  ‘No idea,’ said the Water man. ‘You can ask the foreman.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Mr Campbell.’

  ‘And where is Mr Campbell?’

  ‘I don’t know, mister, but you can be sure he’ll find you before you find him.’

  And sure enough, a ferocious-looking Mr Campbell was in fact bearing down upon us at that very moment.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing in my hole?’ he shouted down at us.

  Morley used his charms to placate Mr Campbell, explaining why we were in his hole and our purposes in writing a book about Essex – and Mr Campbell proved to be as kind and helpful as anyone we’d met. ‘The key to all human interaction,’ Morley often advised me, ‘is simply to ask others about themselves. Nothing else matters – and everything then follows.’

  ‘How did you end up as foreman on the works?’ asked Morley, taking his own advice, after having persuaded Mr Campbell to allow us to take as many photographs and as many notes as we liked.

  ‘I’d been quarrying for years,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘And then I left and started working the roads.’

  ‘Ah. And where were you quarrying, in Essex?’

  ‘It was Marden’s quarry, out on the Lexden Road.’

  ‘Marden, as in Arthur Marden?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s still there?’

  ‘Most of the land’s been sold now.’

  ‘And so you left.’

  ‘I left before that.’

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘It was a long time ago now, sir. Twenty or more years. We were working at the bottom of a pit, me and Harry Ball, beneath a big sloping bank of sand and gravel – thirty foot or more it must have been – and we were in this hole that was maybe six foot deep. And there was a sort of a crack and this wall of earth came down like, hit poor old Harry, trapped him up to his neck.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Morley.

  ‘And so we were trying to get him out but we couldn’t do it. He was choking, you see.’

  ‘Choking?’

  ‘On all the dirt and sand and gravel. He went blue in the face, and that was it.’

  ‘Dear me.’

  ‘I tell you what, sir, I was in the war with the Essex Regiment, but that was the worst thing that ever happened to me, God’s honest truth.’

  ‘That is awful,’ said Morley.

  ‘It was. And worst of it was, the borough coroner said he thought the pit was safe, and so poor Billy and his mother never got a penny but of course Marden went from strength to strength—’

  ‘This is Arthur Marden?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The mayor? Who died last week?’

  ‘Indeed. Some people might say it was a sort of comeuppance, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you say Billy Ball?’ I asked. ‘Was he the son of the man who died in the quarry?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who’s Billy Ball?’ said Morley.

  ‘He works at the jeweller’s,’ I said. ‘I met him at the Oyster Feast. Miriam’s met him.’

  ‘Miriam’s met him?’

  I didn’t explain under what circumstances Miriam had met him.

  ‘Harry’s son,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘He’s turned out all right.’

  ‘Did you say you met him at the Oyster Feast, Sefton?’

  ‘Yes. He was serving, and he helped me when I cut my hand.’ I held up my hand, in evidence. ‘I was opening an oyster.’

  ‘I see. And he helped you how?’

  ‘He got a dressing for my hand.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Just shortly before Marden died.’

  Morley’s eyes widened, his moustache twitched, his weskit throbbed from within. I’d seen it before. He suddenly sprang up out of the trench like a mountain goat ascending the Matterhorn.

  ‘We need to go,’ he said.

  I clambered up out of the trench after him.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Campbell,’ said Morley. ‘You have been most helpful.’

  We got back in the Lagonda, drove as quickly as was possible under the circumstances and parked outside the George Hotel.

  ‘I just need to check something,’ said Morley.

  ‘Right-o,’ I said.

  He went not to the hotel but to the Town Hall.

  I smoked a cigarette.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, when he returned.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘To the toilets, Sefton, of course.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And now for your friend at the jeweller’s.’

  CHAPTER 26

  JUMBO

  AS WE ARRIVED AT HOPWOOD’S jewellers and pawnbrokers it began to rain outside. (But of course it did. It could hardly rain inside. In one of his most famous and most frequently reprinted articles, ‘The Rain Inside’, first published in a short-lived little magazine called Babel in 1931, Morley corrects and disciplines a number of what he called ‘lazy’ idioms and phrases, including ‘burning fires’, ‘safe havens’ and ‘wept tears’ – rather ironically, since he was himself utterly devoted to all forms of redundancy and repetition in both his speech and in his writing. ‘Hate the pleonasm, love the pleonast,’ he sometimes liked to say in his defence.)

  ‘I wonder if we could have a word with Mr Ball?’ asked Morley of the man who had greeted me on Saturday, and who I assumed was Mr Hopwood himself.

  ‘Mr Ball. Yes, of course, sir. Excellent timing.’

  ‘Is it?’ Morley consulted his watches.

  ‘Just in out of the rain, I mean.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘And indeed you’re just in time to catch Billy.’

  ‘Just in time?’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s leaving us.’

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘Yes. Today’s his last day. Going off on his travels. Taking off on his motorbike, apparently. You know what these young fellows are like! Full of dreams of adventure.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morley.

  ‘But when you get to our age, of course! A different matter. Pipe and slippers.’

  Morley looked utterly nonplussed. His life was one perpetual adventure. He was on a never-ending tour.

  ‘We’re going to miss him here, I have to say. A highly valued member of staff, our Mr Ball.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Indeed. Very popular. In fact, usually if an employee asks to leave we have to insist that they go immediately – for obvious reasons. You can’t keep someone on in a jeweller’s if you know they�
��re intending to go!’

  ‘Of course. And when did he decide to leave?’

  ‘Oh, a few weeks ago. But he didn’t decide until Friday that he’d be leaving us today.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He’s been with us for so long and he’s so popular with everyone, such a trusted member of staff. I really don’t know what we’re going to do without him.’

  ‘I see. I wonder if we might have a word?’

  ‘Of course.’

  And so Mr Hopwood absented himself and Billy soon appeared from behind the curtain, as he had done before. He was looking surprisingly fresh and refreshed, dressed in shopwear and no longer done up in his dashing Wall of Death outfit.

  ‘Mr Sefton,’ he said, nodding to me with not a hint of shame.

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘How can I help you this morning?’

  ‘Billy, this is Mr Swanton Morley,’ I said.

  They shook hands.

  ‘Mr Morley is Miriam’s father.’

  Billy blanched. ‘I see.’

  ‘You’ve met my daughter, I understand,’ said Morley.

  ‘That’s correct, sir,’ said Billy hesitantly. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. Yes, we didn’t come to talk about Miriam!’ said Morley.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Billy, cheering considerably.

  ‘She can speak for herself,’ said Morley.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Billy. ‘Well, how can I help you gents this morning? Do you need some more help with your valuation, Mr Sefton?’

  ‘Your valuation, Sefton?’ asked Morley.

  ‘It was just something I was thinking of getting valued,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, a rather fine and rare lady’s cigarette case,’ said Billy.

  ‘We’ll leave that for another time,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Morley. ‘We shall. Our visit this morning concerns not so much how you might help us but more how we might be able to help you.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, I should perhaps start at the beginning. I was lucky enough to be a guest at the Oyster Feast last week. I understand from Sefton here that you were serving on the night?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The night that Arthur Marden died.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll have heard all the rumours that are flying around, of course.’

  ‘I try not to take any notice of rumours, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Morley. ‘In a small town. Unwise. And quite quite ludicrous, many of the rumours, as rumours so often are: “a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures and of so easy and so plain a stop that the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still-discordant wavering multitude, can play upon it.”’

  ‘Yes,’ said Billy hesitantly.

  ‘Henry IV, part II,’ said Morley, in clarification. ‘I certainly don’t think Marden was murdered, for example,’ he added.

  ‘No?’ said Billy, with great relief.

  I wasn’t quite sure where the conversation was going, so what Billy made of it goodness only knows.

  ‘No,’ said Morley. ‘I think it was an entirely natural death. I think Arthur Marden simply choked on an oyster.’

  ‘Choked?’

  ‘Yes, like a little bit of grit in the engine,’ said Morley. ‘Like in a car.’

  Billy’s face remained impassive.

  ‘You see, when we saw Marden leaving the Moot Hall on the night of the Oyster Feast I think we all naturally assumed that he was … well, that he was going to use the toilet.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But I don’t think he was answering a call of nature, Mr Ball.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Indeed not, sir. I think it was a matter of survival. Of self-preservation. I think he was dying. I think he was choking. I think he made his way to the toilets, panicking, in shock. I think perhaps an item of food the size of – let us say – a native no.2 oyster, had lodged at the top of his trachea, and his windpipe had closed around it and gripped it.’ Morley mimicked what one might imagine to be the windpipe gripping at a native no.2 oyster. ‘Swift action might have saved him, at that point. If someone was there. Someone who knew what was happening.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes. And I think you were that person, Billy.’

  ‘Me?’ He looked genuinely shocked and confused.

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘You think I was there when Marden was choking?’

  ‘To death,’ said Morley.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘You were with my assistant here, Sefton, I understand, in the kitchens of the Town Hall, but at a certain point you excused yourself and left him.’

  ‘I went to go and get a dressing for Sefton’s hand.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. From the first-aid kit, which is kept of course – as I’ve just discovered – in the gentlemen’s toilets at the Town Hall.’

  Billy no longer looked confused. He looked defiant.

  ‘You can’t prove that I did anything.’

  ‘No, that’s right. But I think we could prove that you did nothing, Billy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you watched Arthur Marden die, choking to death.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Why indeed? Perhaps because your own father had been suffocated all those years ago in Marden’s quarry? Choked to death on dirt. Were you seeking to kill Marden that night, I wonder, or was it merely an opportunity that presented itself? An opportunity to do nothing, that you thought would solve everything?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I have never heard such nonsense in my life,’ said Billy, having edged his way back towards the curtain behind the counter.

  ‘“And Saul went in to cover his feet,”’ said Morley.

  ‘What?’ said Billy.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Morley?’ I said.

  ‘It’s 1 Samuel 24:3, isn’t it? David is hiding in a cave from Saul when Saul comes in to evacuate his bowels. And so God delivers Saul into David’s hands.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Similar situation here, in many ways.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Sefton!’

  But it was too late. Billy had taken the opportunity during Morley’s moment of biblical exegesis to turn suddenly and disappear behind the curtain.

  I followed him through the back of the shop, through the workshop, apologising to Mr Hopwood, through the storeroom and out onto the streets of Colchester, where the wind and rain had picked up and the sun was hidden by cloud: it could have been night-time and for half a moment I remember thinking, some places look better in the grey and the rain – almost as if they’re varnished, or had been varnished a long time ago, in their heyday, and now were visible only through the blur. The rain, I thought, suited Colchester – a town no longer anything like a capital, a town of soldiers and civilians uneasily at peace. It was the perfect weather for a chase, and the perfect place.

  Billy had mounted his motorbike. According to the police report, he headed through the town, onto Sir Isaac’s Walk, and then onto Head Street, past Headgate Street, through the churchyard of St Mary’s and around the old Roman wall towards the Balkerne Gate, which was by chance exactly where I was running towards. It was one of the only places in town I knew.

  As I was running towards the gate, to my astonishment, Billy came riding towards me, swerved and came skidding to a halt at the bottom of Jumbo, the vast water tower that loomed over the town.

  Jumbo – as readers of The County Guides: Essex will be aware – consists of a massive central tower and four supporting columns of red brick, of which more than a million were used in its construction, at a cost of £11,000 to build, to support a water tank with a capacity of over 200,000 gallons to supply the town with water, and that at its peak stands over 130 feet above ground level, and with a room at the top named Wicks’ Folly, named after the councillor who saw through its const
ruction. But readers will not know, perhaps, that there is a spiral staircase running up the central tower, or indeed what it feels like to run up that staircase, the rain coursing down the brick like flowing blood, and nothing but the sound of feet rattling on metal, and pigeons, and the sound of your heart hammering in your ears.

  Wicks’ Folly is a room with windows on all sides, affording a magnificent view of the whole of Colchester and far beyond, even in the thick varnishing rain. There were blankets neatly piled on the floor, tins of food stacked under the window, a few candles, a hurricane lamp, everything required for a little hideaway.

  The three of us filled the space: me, Billy Ball and a young woman I recognised instantly from the newspaper at Edward Mountjoy’s: Arthur Marden’s daughter, Florence.

  ‘Now, we haven’t done anyone any harm here, Mr Sefton,’ said Billy, gasping, standing between me and Florence, once we had both just about recovered our breath.

  ‘I’m sorry but I think you have, Billy,’ I gasped back.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Florence asked. And then more panicked, ‘What’s he doing here, Billy?’

  ‘It’s OK, Florence,’ he said.

  ‘It’s OK, Florence,’ I said. ‘I’m here to help.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Billy, pushing Florence further behind him.

  ‘Have you told her about Arthur?’ I asked.

  ‘Father? What about Father?’ said Florence.

  ‘Have you told her, Billy?’

  ‘Why? What?’ Florence was becoming increasingly agitated. ‘What’s happened to Father?’ She was pulling at Billy’s arm from behind.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Billy. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Do you want to tell her, Billy, or shall I?’

  ‘What’s he talking about, Billy?’

  ‘If you don’t tell her, Billy, I will.’

  Billy shook his head – at me, at Florence, at everything that had come to pass.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘Dead?’ said Florence.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘He’s lying,’ said Billy.

  ‘Billy, Billy!’ said Florence, violently tugging at Billy’s arm. ‘Who is this man? What’s happening?’

  ‘You really haven’t told her, have you?’

  ‘He’s lying,’ repeated Billy.