No Stone Unturned (28 page)

Barry made a strange choking noise and pulled at his collar.

‘Good lord, man, are you all right?' demanded Sir Francis. ‘You've turned a very odd shade.'

‘Am I all right?' sputtered Barry. ‘No, I'm not all right. How can I be? I'm the architect of one of the country's greatest buildings, yes. But at what cost?'

Irritation flashed across Sir Francis's face. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and checked his fob watch.

Barry waved his hand at the MP dismissively. ‘Yes, yes, it's late. It's been a long day. I think you'd better take your leave. I'm sure you want to start putting your plan into action. And I've heard as much as I can stomach. Goodnight to you, Sir Francis.'

As soon as Sir Francis had left the room, Barry cast his eyes to the ceiling. He had never felt under such pressure. The weight of it was sitting heavily on his chest, like a vice tightening his rib cage, restricting every breath. He lurched across the room to the circular marble table positioned in the recess of the large bay window. Sitting upon it was a perfect, small scale model of the Palace of Westminster. Almost falling across it, Barry swept the model onto the polished wooden floor, letting out a roar of frustration as the model splintered into hundreds of tiny pieces.

The old man began to sob, his breaths becoming gasps as once again he grappled with his collar. The pain in his chest was unbearable now and was shooting down his left arm. Paralysed by it, Barry collapsed onto the floor amid the pieces of the building which had been his greatest dream.

By the time his beloved wife Sarah found him, Sir Charles Barry's body was stone cold.

PART 7

Chapter 35 – April 1861

T
he weather on the morning of Alice's final goodbye to her son was much as it had been on that dreadful day, six months earlier, when the train had struck him down. The rain was falling in slate-grey sheets and the bottom of Alice's skirts, as she crossed the grass of the churchyard, were sodden and rimmed with mud. The small bunch of daffodils she carried, hand-picked from the garden at Stone Pit Cottage and tied with a blue ribbon, was already battered and bruised from the unforgiving wind which had swept Alice along as she walked down through the village to the church.

Arriving at the grave, Alice paused to read the verse that she, Sarah and the other wives had chosen for the headstone, its true meaning known only to their families, before crouching down in front of the last little footstone in the row of four. She pulled away the clumps of long grass which had already began to swallow the three carved initials, and placed her bouquet down next to the space she had cleared.

She traced the letters with her index finger and swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. W. T. D. No one but Alice and her father knew that the William who lay beneath the cold soil was her beloved son. Her Billy. Her rock.

As the tears spilled down her cheeks, scenes from that terrible day flashed up in front of her eyes. Her shock at seeing her husband hanging from the roof beam like a grotesque marionette in the dark, musty shed had turned to anger as she realised that William had taken the easy way out. Everything had fallen into place then. She had known for certain that the body they had scraped off the track was that of her precious son. And William had discovered that too. He had risen from his drunken slumber too late to prevent poor Billy from taking his place—from being killed in his place. William was to blame for everything. She had known it, and he had known it. But rather than face up to what he had done, William had left her to cope with her grief on her own. Just as her father had always predicted, William had brought shame on her and her family. Yet even her father, who had despised William from the moment he met him, could never have imagined the deplorable means by which he would accomplish it.

Time after time, she and Billy had stood up for William in the face of her father's criticism. He had not deserved their loyalty. And now the shame that he had brought upon her with his drinking had been compounded in his death by suicide. How could she ever forgive him for that? No, she had decided, she wasn't going to let him tarnish her family's name with this scandal. He had taken enough from her already.

That was when Alice had made the decision. No one would know.

As she knelt by her son's grave, Alice recalled the struggle to cut down her husband's body with the saw she had found inside the shed, then drag it to the disused well outside. She had found the strength, drawing on her grief and her anger, and thankful for the slipperiness of the rain-soaked grass beneath his back. She had stuffed his pockets with rocks from the piles waiting nearby to be crushed into ballast, and had heaved his corpse over the side of the well, trying not to look upon her husband's shocking purple, bloated face. Then she had let him fall, breathing heavily yet strangely calm as she watched his body disappear down into the darkness.

After the initial heavy splash, Alice had waited until she could no longer hear any more ripples gently lapping against the sides of the well. Then she had prayed that the Lord would forgive her and allow his body, and the nature of his shameful death, to remain a secret in those cold, dark, murky waters.

Alice was happy for the initials on the stone to read W. T. D. William was her son's full name, after all. They had only begun calling him Billy when he was a baby to make life easier. She and her father had told everyone that they had sent Billy away straight after the accident, to stay with family in Cornwall. The sea air would be good for him, they had said, and it was wise to put some distance between the poor lad and the horror of what had happened. Alice had claimed she was in no state to look after him, and who would question a grieving widow?

Six months is a long time when you are shrouded in grief. By now Alice was desperate to put some distance between herself and Wilmcote. Certainly there was nothing left for her in the village besides her father, and Alice was finding it increasingly difficult to live with his look of self-righteousness every time he spoke of his late son-in-law. She had been unsettled by the relish with which he had received the news of William's death. How could he feel that way about something so intrinsically linked to the loss of Billy? Alice found her father's thinly-veiled joy distasteful and un-Christian in equal measure.

But rather than leaving right away, Alice held on for the inquest. She needed to know that her secret was safe, even while part of her wished that the truth could come out and that the world could know of the brave and loyal thing that her son had done. She prayed that the railway company would be forced to admit fault and explain to the world why her darling Billy, and those three poor men, were working in the path of an oncoming train. Everyone knew that procedures had not been followed, and that the railway company had agreed to transport Greenslade's stone before the line was completely safe.

But the shareholders had closed ranks and used gold to tempt the families into silence. And so it was that the four bodies lay in a grave with only initials to mark their memory, and an epitaph that set in stone the families' pledge never to complain and made no mention of what had caused such a great loss.

Alice hadn't told her father of her plans. She knew he would try to stop her leaving. But she needed a fresh start. So she had bought herself a passage on the Castle Eden sailing to Adelaide from London in two days' time, and in eighty-eight days she would be on the other side of the world. Her money from the settlement with the Stratford-upon-Avon Railway Company should be enough to rent a home, start a little business maybe. Ironic that the first part of her long journey to a new life would be on the railway line that saw her old life change for ever.

She ran her hand around the cold, smooth curve of the top of the footstone. ‘Goodbye, my brave sweet boy,' she whispered. ‘Rest in peace. I may be on the other side of the world, but you will always be with me.'

Chapter 36 – September 2012

Y
ou can't come this time, Tyson. I'm sorry.' Kelly stepped down from the caravan ready to head off to Ben's for supper.

Tyson wagged his tail even harder, as if hoping he could change her mind.

Kelly gave him a hug. ‘No, you daft dog. You stay here and be a good boy.'

‘Call us when you want picking up, love,' called her dad from inside.

‘Okay, I will. Thanks Dad. I can walk down to the main road if you like, save you coming all the way up the track to Ben's cottage. Unless you want to meet Ben's parents?'

‘Yes. Maybe I will. Anyway, it'll be too dark to go wandering down any track. I'll come up to the cottage. It's the same turning off the main road as the one to Stone Pit Farm, did you say?'

‘That's the one. I'll see you later then.' Kelly smiled as she set off through the campsite gate. She was thinking how far they had all come in the past year, since she started at The Shakespeare Academy. Her parents seemed so different now from the two people who used to fuss over her every move and refused to mix with the other parents in the primary school playground.

As she walked along the path towards Stone Pit Farm, Kelly went over everything she needed to share with Ben. She would soon be ready to start writing up her notes. She was just wondering whether Mr Walker would mind if she and Ben wrote the project together, when she came to the end of the footpath at the bottom of the lane that linked the farm house to the main road. If she had followed Ben's directions properly, the turning down to Stone Pit Cottage was further along, past the farm house.

She had never been this way before, so she slowed her pace as she passed the surprisingly grand set of metal gates that formed the front entrance to Stone Pit Farm. Kelly wanted to have a good look. This had been the home of the quarry owner, all those years ago, and he would have been an important figure in the community. Wealthy too. Kelly could see that the farm house was still very impressive—an imposing, red-brick building with large sash windows and a wide porch, set behind a sweeping, gravelled courtyard with a circular fountain in the centre.

The farmer who lives there now must be doing well
, she concluded, for the house was in pristine condition.

Kelly carried on along the lane, thinking that she was probably walking in the footsteps of all the quarrymen who would have come this way to and from the stone pits each day.

The sun was already low in the sky. In just a week or so everyone would be turning their clocks back and it would be too dark to come over the fields much after school. Kelly sighed. It had been a great summer. One of the best. She was so glad that she had met Ben.

Kelly reached the bend at the end of the lane and suddenly realised how excited she was about seeing Ben's cottage at last. She wondered what his parents would be like and hoped that they liked her. A flutter of panic ran through her. She had forgotten to ask Ben if he had told his mum and dad that she was a Traveller. She wasn't going to hide it. She was proud of where she came from. But you could never tell how other people would react.

However, all Kelly's worries about the kind of the reception she would get vanished when she turned the corner at the end of the narrow track and Stone Pit Cottage finally came into view.

She stopped dead and looked around her, confused. Had she got the directions right? Was this really it, or had she turned down the wrong track?

‘No,' she said to herself. ‘Ben said there was only one track leading off to the left. This must be it.'

The cottage before her had clearly not been lived in for a very long time. Its grey-blue stone work was almost completely covered in ivy, which had encroached upon the dusty old windows to such an extent that Kelly was certain barely any light could pass through. The front door showed only a hint of its original bottle green colour, the paint was so faded and peeling, and the wood was splintered and rotten.

A dense covering of weeds had run rampant in the tiny front garden so that Kelly could hardly make out where the path to the door began. Looking up, she could see tiles missing from the roof and one of the panes of glass in the largest upstairs window was badly cracked.