The Drowning Pool

by Syd Moore

  I was grateful.

  Alfie had gone down easily, for once, and been fast asleep for a good hour now so I was able to turn up the stereo and aim a speaker at the garden, though the night was cooler than it had been for weeks.

  I had given Sharon the date of Sarah Grey’s death after Andrew had gone to Scotland. She’d wasted no time in knuckling down to some serious investigation and when she phoned me, on Saturday morning, exclaimed that she had found out ‘a shit load’.

  As they wobbled through the kitchen, Sharon insisted that the music must change. She didn’t want the ‘foreign Latino crap’ and demanded something more recent. I pointed her in the direction of the CD stack, took Corinne by the elbow and guided her down to the chairs in the garden.

  ‘I’m not pissed,’ she said. ‘Not at all.’ But there was a distinct slur to her voice that was ever so slightly gratifying: Corinne was usually able to drink a horse under the table. Well, Sharon anyway – quite a feat in itself. Indeed, my other, far drunker friend had sat herself in front of the stereo and was methodically going through my collection, tossing any CD that didn’t appeal over her shoulder. The silver discs piled up behind her like a shiny two-dimensional beehive spread over the floorboards.

  ‘So,’ I said to Corinne, over a glass of warm fizz. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Family thing.’

  The two had known each other since they were five. Their parents had been great friends and Sharon and Corinne, being roughly the same age, both attended the same infant, junior and senior school.

  The stereo blared into action. For some reason that I’ll never fathom Sharon put on a Christmas hit, Sleigh Run, and came bounding down the garden pretending to be a reindeer.

  Corinne and I fell about in fits until the reindeer demanded a fire and I obligingly went into the shed and dragged out my makeshift fire pit – an old washing machine drum on a stand. It didn’t look much but it did the trick. Within minutes the three of us had gathered enough twigs to start a small fire. Sharon complained it wasn’t hot enough so I fetched a barbecue tin and emptied the contents into the pit. It immediately put the flame out, forcing us to spend another half hour resurrecting the glow. Finally we settled in around the fire like old timers making camp.

  Sharon rummaged in her bag and brought out a notebook.

  ‘Sarah Grey. My findings!’ she said with a flourish, and unfolded a couple of neatly typed A4 sheets. ‘I’ve put it all down here. It’s complicated so I’m happy to go over it with you when I’m sober. But, man! That chick had a hard life.’

  Corinne drew closer and warmed her hands. Her face flickered amber and brown. ‘They often did, back then. It’s easy to look at the Old Town and get nostalgic but life was terrible if you were poor, which most people were. There was a workhouse, you know. An old cottage on Billet Lane.’

  I shuddered at the thought of it. ‘How very Dickensian,’ and turned to Sharon. ‘Did she go into it? The workhouse?’

  She put on a pair of reading spectacles and squinted at the sheets, moving them back and forth till the text came into focus. The glasses totally altered her look from woozy floozy to rather academic. I liked it. and had a brief insight into her highly paid work life: Sharon could do serious when she wanted to.

  ‘No, she didn’t.’ My friend traced her index finger over the notes. ‘She had descendants, who I assume cared for her as she aged. Well, one hopes. There were lots of them. In fact that was half the problem. She got saddled with a hell of a lot of kids during her life. Her husbands kept kicking the bucket.

  ‘You know,’ she looked up at Corinne and me, ‘I’ve always thought that Sarah probably wasn’t a witch at all but some poor widow with a hump back and a stoop, that got picked on by the rest of the town because she looked like a witch, poor moo. She probably did mutter curses under her breath because everyone was so horrible to her. I would. Although I guess it’s quite nice that she is now immortaliszed in her hometown.’

  Corinne nodded sagely. ‘There used to be that picture of her on the pub sign. Do you remember? She was all bent over in black, shuffling past a field with that great witch’s bag.’

  ‘That large bundle on her back,’ Sharon glanced back at her notes. ‘That was how laundresses carried laundry to and from the place where it was washed. I bet it was carrying all that laundry that gave her the stoop. She probably ended up gnarled and twisted. And skint, though she didn’t start off like that, mind. I think she was born a Sutton, daughter of a linen draper. A wholesale cloth merchant. Her dad would have been regarded as a respectable tradesman. She wouldn’t have been too educated but she might have been quite a good marriage proposition. But she ends up married to a Robert Billing in 1823. That is, I think she’s married in that year. According to my calculations she would have been in her early twenties then. I think Robert Billing was older and already a widower with kids so it’s quite surprising that she went for that. I mean, I wouldn’t and actually, she was in a good situation. Perhaps a little old, but she would have been a fair prospect.’

  My mind had gone back to the scene from that dream the night of the storm. The one in the doctor’s room: that loathsome rich man and his stocky companion. ‘Maybe she was forced to marry him,’ I suggested.

  Corinne turned to me and shrugged. ‘Why would she be forced to marry someone? Arranged marriages were the realm of the wealthy. They were about property and dynasty. That wouldn’t have been an issue for her.’

  ‘Perhaps she was pregnant? Child born out of wedlock and all that,’ I said slowly. I had seen the man place a hand on her stomach. ‘I could remove it,’ he’d told her. ‘And then no one would know.’

  Sharon was looking at me with a quizzical expression. ‘Then she would have likely married the father. The upper-class Victorians were very proper but the lower classes let their hair down a little bit more. That sort of carry on wasn’t completely unheard of.’

  But there had been desperation in Sarah’s face. I had seen it quite clearly. She had felt trapped. ‘What if she couldn’t marry the father?’ My voice was rising. Corinne and Sharon exchanged a glance.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re romanticizing this all a bit, Sarah?’ It was Corinne in no-nonsense mode.

  Sharon answered for me. ‘I think it’s fair to say that the choice was unusual for the daughter of a linen draper at that time. Unless she was really ugly!’ She laughed.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to counter that suggestion but I held it back and Sharon continued.

  ‘I haven’t found the marriage certificate yet but she certainly had a baby that year, William. He dies nine years later. Then in 1827 she has Alfred, then Sarah in 1832, but little Sarah junior doesn’t make it into childhood, dying one year later. In 1834 she has Eliza who, thankfully, lives and goes on to marry one of the Deals. In 1836 she has Mary Anne.’

  ‘Then in 1839 Robert Billing dies, leaving her with five kids, three of her own, two of his. That must have been hard. In 1845 she’s married to John Grey, another widower. I found her living with some of the Greys in the 1841 census so I think she might have been cohabiting for a while out of wedlock – another reason she may have been ostracized. But then again, with no husband, no income and five children to support you have to wonder how she managed to get that far. Anyway, in 1841 you can see that Alfred has taken Grey’s name, as has Sarah, probably an attempt at some form of propriety. I doubt they had much money to spare for a wedding. After all John’s got George, John Junior, Harriet and Ector. Sarah takes them all on. That’s nine children! Imagine that!’

  Corinne sighed loudly. ‘You just can’t really, can you? It would have been like living in an orphanage!’

  Sharon nodded in agreement. ‘Anyhow, at some point over the next couple of years, John makes an honest woman of her and she becomes a Grey officially. Then things start to go downhill. In the 1849 cholera outbreak her husband dies. So do John junior and George and also Mary Anne, Sarah’s real daughter. A couple of months after Mary Ann
e, Beattie and Freddie Billing, her step-children from her first marriage, also die. So, in just a couple of months she’s widowed again, bereaved, her family’s practically halved and she’s left alone to provide for four kids, with only Alfred and Eliza of her own blood. You have to feel sorry for her.’

  ‘I do,’ I said quietly.

  Sharon sniffed. ‘Her burial date is 1867. I expect she was totally knackered by then.’

  Something in the bushes stirred. The leaves of the rose bush fluttered. Out in the street a moped backfired.

  I processed Sharon’s findings for a moment then thanked her for her work.

  ‘No worries,’ she replied. ‘It was fun. I enjoyed it and I’ll carry on. See if I can root out any more info. The whole story though, as it unfolded, was gutting. I’m sure all the witch stuff has been exaggerated … her daughter, Eliza, goes on to marry well.’

  ‘God, yeah,’ chimed Corinne. ‘If they really thought her mother was a witch, I’m sure Eliza would have been tarred with the same brush. And let’s face it, Sarah herself appears to have married at least twice.’

  ‘Not sure about that,’ said Sharon. ‘Robert Deal, who married Liza, was a newcomer to the town. He may have dismissed the myths about his mother-in-law as hearsay. Especially if he met her and thought that she was OK. Love can have that effect.’ She sighed. ‘Or so I’m told. And also, Robert Deal became a successful man. Money and success are a powerful tool when it comes to changing reputations: tongues become quietened and success tends to attract people who want to bask in some of the glory.’

  ‘So,’ I asked, ‘do you think Sarah’s story, the one that we know, that we talk about today is made up of myths? Loose connections with the Drowning Pool?’

  Corinne was getting practical again. ‘Perhaps. She may not have been a legend in her lifetime. Maybe mothers would tell their children that the ugly lady who used to live down the road was an old sea-witch, who would curse them from beyond the grave if they didn’t behave themselves, and it just took off from there.’

  ‘Not fair really, is it?’ It was my turn now. ‘She wasn’t ugly at all.’ The young Sarah, who had appeared twice, had not been buckled. On the contrary, there was a haunting loveliness to her pale features. It was only the elder Sarah who was weatherworn and bent.

  Corinne jumped. ‘Oh, have you found a portrait?’

  Oops. A slip-up. How did I get out of this one?

  Sharon and Corinne leant forwards in expectation.

  I came up with this. ‘An artist’s impression.’

  ‘Contemporary?’ Corinne asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No, later. 1950s.’

  Corinne sneered. ‘As good as useless then.’

  Happy she was letting it go, I sank back into my garden chair and poked the fire with a long stick. One of the twigs let out a hiss. ‘Something bad did happen to her though, I’m sure.’

  ‘You don’t really think she had her head cut off, do you?’ Sharon hugged herself to suppress a shudder.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and decided it was time to share the new information that Andrew had given me.

  They listened with interest. Sharon took out her writing pad and jotted down some notes.

  ‘So the Reverend Eden …’ Corinne outlined the new information when I had finished.

  ‘Who,’ I added, ‘at that time was the Primus of Scotland.’

  ‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘Came down after the letter?’

  I repeated what I had just told them, more slowly this time so they could follow me. ‘It was strange though. Andrew wouldn’t tell me any more. Said I had to see it for myself. But he did say Eden carried on referring to his guilt, throughout the rest of the journals, for his life.’

  ‘But you haven’t read it?’ Corinne downed her fizz.

  ‘Not yet. Hopefully he’ll bring it at the end of the week.’

  ‘Interesting.’ She reached for the bottle and topped up Sharon’s and then her own glass. ‘Another?’ She held it out to me.

  ‘No. I’m fine thanks.’ Both the light and the evening’s jollity were fading.

  Sharon had fallen silent over the past twenty minutes.

  Corinne was still intrigued. ‘I’m speculating here but do you think the legend might have some basis in fact? That she might have been murdered and her death covered up? But why?’

  Sharon looked up and sighed. When she spoke her voice was taut.

  ‘Why would anyone want to cover up any death? Because they had a hand in it, of course.’

  Corinne darted a glance at her and shook her head lightly. ‘But why would anyone want to kill Sarah Grey? A poor old woman with a tragic life. What would be the motive?’

  I had this one nailed. ‘You really want to know?’

  They both nodded, so I nipped into the kitchen and returned with my own notebook. ‘There are quite a few suspects,’ I told them, and read out my list:

  ‘OK, first up. The parents of the babies that were “poisoned” by her herbal cures. It’s obvious that if the babies had cholera they weren’t likely to survive. I don’t imagine all the parents blamed Sarah for the death of their children but some of them may have. Five babies died in twenty days. But that was September 1850. Sarah’s not dead and buried till 1867, seventeen years later. Would the parents wait that long for vengeance?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Corinne nodded. ‘Death was all around them back then. Infant mortality was so high it was almost commonplace. I think they would have just got on with things.’

  ‘Well, I’ve put them down anyway,’ I said. ‘Then there’s the parents of the child she was alleged to have set on fire with sparks from her eyes – Jane Tulley. That was 1852.’

  ‘Ditto,’ said Corinne. ‘Too much water under the bridge for them to murder her in 1867.’

  ‘But,’ it was Sharon now, wobbling an angry finger at us, ‘a lot of murder is opportunistic. People grab their chance when it presents itself. When they think they can cover their tracks.’

  Corinne shot me a look I couldn’t interpret and urged me on, in a sort of quick harsh voice. ‘I can see more names on your list. Who else?’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, going back to the parents, I would say I’d agree with you, Corinne. One of the parents was the town crier. Not sure they’d want to get involved with anything untoward. They were too prominent.’

  ‘Who else?’ Corinne asked again.

  ‘Of course there’s the most obvious suspect – the captain of The Smack. He’s totally fingered in the legend.’

  ‘And that’s it so far?’ Corinne had counted them on her fingers. ‘That’s about fifteen, sixteen people if you go for two parents per dead child.’ She was so matter-of-fact.

  ‘Well, I wonder if I shouldn’t add the Primus of Scotland, the Reverend Eden, or Canon Walker King? There’s something going on there. I can feel it. St Clements is part of this. Or was part of it. I don’t know. I guess I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Until I read the journals.’

  ‘You absolutely must let us know, Sarah,’ Corinne was sincere now. ‘You really think one of them might have murdered her?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Something happened. Something which won’t …’ I stopped myself from saying let her rest in peace. ‘I mean, something that still blackens her name. I need to find out what that was and who was responsible for it.’

  In a garden somewhere up the street a young man and woman were arguing. The breeze tugged snatches of their heated exchange to us.

  ‘So much anger. So much death,’ Sharon said, although neither myself nor Corinne were too aware of her at that point. ‘Always death,’ she said, and stood up. ‘Loo.’ Then she stumbled into the house.

  ‘Interesting project,’ Corinne said. ‘Not much to go on though.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m getting further than I thought I would.’

  ‘And what are you going to do with your findings?’

  ‘Sleep easy once more’ was on the tip of my tongue but I just told
her I didn’t know.

  Corinne poked the fire and I went to get another bottle of wine. As I was coming back I heard a grunt from the sofa. Sharon had spread herself across it, and was now unconscious. She had found a blanket and pulled it up to her chin. Her head rested on a pile of silk cushions. Light snores punctuated the music. She looked as vulnerable and as untroubled as a baby and suddenly the memory of my phone conversation with Corinne came back to me and my heart went out to my sleeping friend.

  I bent down and brushed a tangle of hair away from her lips, then moved to her feet. She murmured faintly as I took off her shoes. I shushed her and turned the music down.

  In the garden I informed Corinne that Sharon had retired. On my couch.

  Corinne smiled with the affectionate sadness of a long-term friend. ‘She’s been drinking since three. We had cocktails at her cousin’s place to celebrate her mum’s birthday. They do it every year. Sometimes it’s a real knees-up, other times she gets maudlin. Death and family have that effect, I find.’

  ‘She’s not unusual in that respect,’ I said, and took my place on the chair beside Corinne. ‘What were you saying the other day about the “other stuff” that was going on back then?’ I was being nosey more than anything else.

  Corinne looked a bit put out but was drunk enough to go with it. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes, I’m just curious. It’s just it was a long time ago and if she hasn’t got over it now …’ I thought of Josh and wondered if I would still be grieving for him in twenty years. I guessed I probably would. Though perhaps not with Sharon’s heartrending gusto.

  ‘One of their friends upped and left a couple of days before Cheryl, Sharon’s mum, died.’

  ‘One of Sharon’s friends?’

  ‘No. One of my mum’s and Cheryl’s. It was all a bit scandalous at the time. You know how Leigh folk love to gossip.’ A soft breeze lifted the hair from Corinne’s face, revealing an expression that was a mixture of reflection and irritation.

  ‘Who was it?’

  Corinne started swinging her leg. ‘Well, that was the thing that got Sharon going. But to be honest she was half nuts with grief. It was Doctor Cook’s wife, Veronica. The three of them were virtually inseparable. I guess a bit like we are now. Always in each other’s houses for tea and a chat. Regularly off to the cinema together. They never confided in us. We were too young for that kind of relationship but we picked up things from overheard conversations: Veronica wanted to leave her husband. I don’t think Cheryl wanted her to. I can’t be sure, but I remember there were some pretty heated discussions. Veronica obviously didn’t listen because one day she just upped sticks.’