The Body at the Tower (6 page)

“And don’t you go nowhere but the Blue Bell; other pubs is dearer.” He sounded for all the world like a frugal housewife giving instructions to a servant.

She bit back a smile. “Can’t Harky smell the rum? How can he not?”

“Dunno. He’s never said nothing, though, and I been on the tea round for months.”

No bell tolled, but precisely on the hour, the labourers downed tools and began to drift towards the “tea table” – a broad plank balanced between a pair of carpenter’s horses. Harkness was first in the queue, by common consent. Mary was still feeling the effects of the rum, not only in her throat, but in a slight tipsiness that made her feel extremely conspicuous. She was quite sure that her cheeks were flushed and that she smelled of drink. Yet Harkness seemed not to notice.

As he returned to his office, the men clustered about the tea station in earnest. Oddments of food – slabs of bread-and-butter and hunks of cold boiled meat, the occasional pastry – appeared in their hands as if from nowhere, along with their own thick, glazed mugs. Despite the differences in costume and context, Mary couldn’t help thinking back to the last time she’d helped pour tea at a social gathering: beside Angelica Thorold, in Chelsea. This time, she made sure to hold the enormous teapot in an awkward grasp. Tea-pouring was a feminine technique, so she tried not to look too practised as she filled the mugs half-way with weak black tea. Jenkins then topped them up with rum.

With Harkness gone, the general mood should have lifted. After all, what was likelier to produce gossip and levity than food, drink and a change of pace? Yet for the most part, the labourers remained silent and solemn. A few of them chaffed her:
Not too much of that there tea, lad; don’t you know it’s the devil’s drink?
Then, to Jenkins:
Go on, give us a drop more rum; don’t be stingy now, son.
Or,
You’re a pretty pair, you with your black eye and him with that bloody nose
. But once they had their tea, the men retreated into clusters that reflected their trades: glaziers with glaziers, stonemasons with stonemasons. And they drank their illicit rum without much relish.

“Ain’t no one talking,” muttered Jenkins.

So she hadn’t imagined the tension. “Why’s that?”

“Cor, you don’t know nothing, do you?”

“Tell me then, if you’re so clever.”

Jenkins glanced about furtively. They’d served all the builders by now and were nowhere near any of them. All the same, he spoke barely above a whisper. “One o’ them brickies, chap named Wick, offed himself the other night. His body was right over there.”

A jolt shot through Mary. “He
killed
himself?”

“That’s what I said,” hissed Jenkins. “He jumped off the tower.”

“How d’you know?”

Jenkins glanced around. “’S plain. He were up there at night, and the police ain’t done nothing. If he got pushed, the Yard – ” he pronounced this nickname with over-casual pride, “the Yard’d nick somebody for it.”

“They might still be looking.”

Jenkins made a scoffing noise. “Not Scotland Yard. If they ain’t found no one, ain’t nobody to find.”

Mary looked at him thoughtfully. She’d initially dismissed the lad as a bit dim: why else would he pick a fight he had no chance of winning? But now she wondered. He was sharp enough to make the tea round into a profitable venture. He had a reasoned theory as to Wick’s death. She’d have to watch the lad – and watch her own behaviour around him. He might be totally uncritical of the police, but he was clever enough to catch any slips she might make in the role of Mark Quinn.

If Wick had in fact thrown himself from the tower, there had been no conflict and there was no killer. But there was still the question of motive. What would drive a man to kill himself? Despair? Debt? And what of his choice of method? Many suicides chose the river, from sheer familiarity, or poison, for its swift neatness. But jumping from a tower was a dramatic final gesture. Had he intended something by that? It could even have been a message to his employers…

“Time to clear up.” Jenkins raised the rum-pot aloft and tipped the last few drops from the spout directly into his mouth.

She glanced about. There was indeed a general dispersal of the labourers. “What should I do with this cold tea?”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Mary nodded. In a well-run household, spent tea leaves were either used to clean carpets, or sold to a rag-and-bone man. Here, however, the nearby Thames served as sink, sewer, bathtub and well, all in one.

When she returned, Jenkins was sniffing cautiously at the chipped milk jug. “Go halves?”

Mary shook her head. It was probably out of character to decline free food of any sort, but there were little curds of solid milk clinging to the edges of the pitcher, and the fluid itself was a funny bluish grey. She just couldn’t bring herself to drink it.

He knocked that back, too, then pulled a face. “Phew. Bit past it, that.”

Mary grinned. She could remember a time when she’d have choked back the milk, too. “I’ll put all this away. Then what?”

“Back to work, if you’s such a goody-goody.”

“And if I’m not?”

“’Up to you, isn’t it?”

Six

“B
it slippy out here,” said the coachman as he unfolded the carriage steps. He held out his arm, much as he would to a lady.

The boots that swung out of the carriage were distinctly male, as was the hand that waved him away. “I’m perfectly able to descend three steps unassisted, Barker.” To prove it, he climbed down quickly and slammed the carriage door himself. He was far from old – his hair was dark, unmixed with grey, and his face was unlined – but he didn’t move like a young man. There was something stiff about his gait.

Barker was unperturbed. “Very good, sir.”

The gentleman scanned the building site, a deep frown drawing his brows together. The Palace, still unfinished after all these years, loomed over the workers like an ungainly child squatting over an anthill. “You may go; I’ll get a cab when I’m done.”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll wait. It may be difficult to find a cab in these parts.”

Difficult to find a taxi, in front of the blasted Houses of Parliament? His head swivelled sharply towards the coachman. “George told you to wait?”

Barker didn’t even have the grace to look sheepish. “Yes, sir.”

He sighed. There was no point in making a scene now. But once he got hold of his infernal, domineering, bleating nanny of a brother, he would create such a stinking row that no one would doubt he was entirely recovered. “I’ll be no more than half an hour.”

“Very good, sir.”

The young-old man stood on the pavement, taking in the scene. It was strange to be back on an English building site. In the smoggy London daylight the workmen looked pale and drawn, their tools dull. It was a chalky light, a light that greyed everything it touched. For a moment, despite all that had happened in India, he found himself longing for the hectic tropical sunshine that polished objects to brilliance and made colours glow. He hadn’t fully understood the meaning of “illumination” until he’d gone east.

He shivered automatically, then glanced over his shoulder to see if Barker had noticed. As well as being grey and sooty, London was damp. Although he would never admit it to George, he was perpetually cold these days, even in his winter suits. Never mind. He straightened, walked through the site gate with a firm, even step, and rapped twice on the door-frame of the flimsy office shed.

“Young James Easton! My dear fellow!” Philip Harkness sprang from his chair and shook his hand enthusiastically. “How absolutely delightful to see you once more. How long has it been?” He was talking very loudly, in the way people often do to the elderly.

James knew he was rather altered since he’d last seen Harkness, but the man’s look of pity was still disheartening. “Hello, Harkness. I believe it’s been a little more than two years.”

“Yes, yes – I believe you were engaged in an Oriental venture until quite recently!”

This was disingenuous; the man knew very well what had taken him abroad, and why he was back in England. It was probably why Harkness had asked him to call; everyone wanted to hear the tale first-hand. “For less than a year.”

“Then you’d had enough, hey?”

He’d not oblige. “They got what they needed from me.”

“I heard about the malarial fever. Bad luck, old chap – all that nasty swamp air, was it?”

“I don’t know, really. But I’m quite well now – fully recovered, in fact.” He paused. “You’re looking, ah, prosperous.” Since James had seen him last, Harkness had gone bald and grown distinctly fat. It wasn’t a rosy, jolly-country-squire type of fat, but a pasty, bloated look – a rim of extra face framed his features, and his neck overflowed his boiled collar. His complexion was as grey as the London sky. Stress, James supposed, from this cursed job. That intermittent twitch could be put down to the same cause.

Harkness laughed over-heartily and pushed the sole chair towards him. “Do sit down, dear boy. You’re looking rather peaky, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

He did mind. “I feel fine, thank you. I’ll lean on this desk.” Perhaps it had been a mistake to call upon his father’s old friend. In years past, Philip Harkness had been a regular visitor to the Easton household. But since their father’s death, James and George had rather lost touch with him. Harkness seemed awkward and blustering today, quite unlike the kind, competent man James remembered from his childhood.

“And how’s your dear brother?”

Awkwardly, they navigated the basics of the missing years: James’s education and apprenticeship, past projects, George’s interests, the brothers’ personal lives. James was eager to question Harkness about the site: how had he come to accept the job? What were its challenges? And, most tantalizingly, why the hell was it twenty-five years behind schedule? As soon as he turned the conversation, however, Harkness’s tension doubled. He stammered, talked around questions and fidgeted with his elegant new fountain-style pen until his fingers were stained with ink. The more James persisted, the more evasive Harkness became, until pity finally curbed James’s curiosity. Obviously, Harkness’s nervous condition was directly related to this disaster of a building site.

He checked his watch. He’d been with Harkness only a quarter of an hour, but it felt much longer. “I had better not keep you,” he murmured, taking a step towards the door.

Harkness jumped up eagerly, holding out a restraining hand. “So soon? Why, I’d expected to take you to luncheon. At my club, you know. They do a rather decent roast.”

James’s face froze. Kind as the offer was, he couldn’t imagine anything he’d like less. “Er – well, you must be absurdly busy. A site like this…”

Another forced laugh. “That’s precisely what I want to talk to you about, my dear young man. A site like this, indeed!”

If the site was such a challenge, how could the man think of taking a protracted luncheon? Such negligence was unworthy of Harkness – or, at least, of the man his father had esteemed. Today’s visit had definitely been a mistake. “Perhaps another day,” he parried. “Or come to dinner sometime. George’d be delighted to see you.”

Harkness leapt towards the doorway, blocking his exit. “Actually…”

Forced to a halt, James stared at him blankly.

“I’d like to suggest – well, not to put too fine a point on it – I’ve a proposition for you.”

“A proposition.”

Another of those dreadful chortles. “Sit down, sit down, my dear young man. No need to look so suspicious!”

James sat with great reluctance. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Harkness made a few false starts but eventually managed to say, “Well, then. You know about the dreadful accident that occurred last week…”

James nodded. There had been a sentence about it in
The Times
. “A bricklayer fell from the tower, after hours. No witnesses.”

Harkness flinched. “Er – yes. Tragic accident. The man was young, had a family… It’s been ghastly.” He mopped his forehead with a large, crumpled handkerchief. “Absolutely ghastly.”

James waited a few moments, but Harkness didn’t go on. “Is there to be a review or an inquiry of some sort?” he guessed.

Harkness grimaced. “You were always a bright young chap. The First Commissioner of Works wants an independent engineer’s report as to the safety conditions on site. He gave me to understand that no blame attaches to me,” he added hastily, “but the Committee of Works wants the matter to be absolutely clear. If the man was there after hours, and the equipment was all safe… You see what I mean,” he finished.

James did see. If they could prove that the man had died of his own carelessness, it cleared Harkness and the Committee of responsibility. That was the critical point, and it should have been obvious even to a child. Yet he could also understand Harkness’s agony, and why he should dance around the subject. A man was dead; while one wanted desperately not to be at fault, one could hardly go about proving one’s own innocence. The only useful report was that of a neutral and qualified inspector. “Whom have they appointed?”

Harkness tittered nervously. “My dear fellow, they’ve left the appointment in my hands!”

“But that’s a conflict of interest! How could such a report ever be deemed impartial?” James realized he’d jumped up and was pacing the length of the tiny office. He was slightly out of breath, which annoyed him greatly.

Harkness looked pained and that little muscle below his eye began jumping so vigorously he was forced to still it with his hand. “I was an idealist at your age, too.”

And now what are you?
James repressed the sneer: too cheap, too obvious. Harkness clearly considered himself a realist – although, from the look of him, this exerted an unhealthy strain on his conscience.

After a minute, Harkness spoke again, choosing his words slowly. “The Commissioner has made it clear that from his perspective, and that of the Committee of Works, I am not to blame for this man’s unfortunate death. But the Commissioner wishes to confirm that the death was, in fact, an accident. A most tragic accident, but an accident none the less.” As he spoke, Harkness’s voice gained conviction. “He is also under a great deal of pressure to begin an inquiry immediately. There simply isn’t time to appoint an engineer through the Committee – so many meetings, so much discussion, you understand. And time is pressing on.”