The Wench is Dead (6 page)

On the morning of Saturday, June 11th, 1859, Joanna Franks, carrying two small trunks, bade her farewell to Mrs Russell in Runcorn Terrace, and made her way by barge from Liverpool to Preston
Brook, the northern terminus of the Trent and Mersey Canal, which had been opened some eighty years earlier. Here she joined one of Pickford & Co.’s express (or ‘fly’)
boats
¹
which was departing for Stoke-on-Trent and Fradley Junction, and thence, via the Coventry and Oxford Canals, through to London on the main
Thames waterway. The fare of sixteen shillings and eleven pence was considerably cheaper than the fare on the Liverpool–London railway line which had been opened some twenty years
earlier.

Joanna was an extremely petite and attractive figure, wearing an Oxford-blue dress, with a white kerchief around her neck, and a figured silk bonnet with a bright pink ribbon. The clothes may
not have been new; but they were not inexpensive, and they gave to Joanna a very tidy appearance indeed. A very tempting appearance, too, as we shall soon discover.

The captain of the narrow-boat
Barbara Bray
was a certain Jack ‘Rory’ Oldfield from Coventry. According to later testimony of fellow boat-people and other acquaintances, he
was basically a good-natured sort of fellow, of a blunt, blustery type of address. He was married, though childless, and was aged 42 years. The fellow-members of his crew were: the 30-year-old
Alfred Musson, alias Alfred Brotherton, a tall, rather gaunt figure, married with two young children; Walter Towns, alias Walter Thorold, the 26-year-old illiterate son of a farm-labourer, who had
left his home town of Banbury in Oxfordshire some ten years earlier; and a teenaged lad, Thomas Wootton, about whom no certain facts have come down to us beyond the probability that his parents
came from Ilkeston in Derbyshire.

The
Barbara Bray
left Preston Brook at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, 11th June. At Fradley Junction, at the southern end of the Mersey Canal, she successfully negotiated her passage through the
locks; and at 10 p.m. on Sunday, 19th June, she slipped quietly into the northern reaches of the Coventry Canal, and settled to a course, almost due south, that would lead down to Oxford. Progress
had been surprisingly good, and there had been little or no forewarning of the tragic events which lay ahead for the
Barbara Bray
, and for her solitary paying passenger – the small and
slimly attractive person of Joanna Franks, for whom such a little span of life remained.

A
FTER READING THESE
few pages, Morse found himself making some mental queries about a few minor items, and harbouring some vague unease about one or two
major ones. Being reluctant to disfigure the printed text with a series of marginalia, he wrote a few notes on the back of a daily hospital menu which had been left (mistakenly) on his locker.

The Colonel’s style was somewhat on the pretentious side – a bit too high-flown for Morse’s taste; and yet the writing a good deal above the average of its kind – with a pleasing
peroration, calculated to ensure in most readers some semi-compulsive page-turning to Part Two. One of the most noticeable characteristics of the writing was the influence of Gray’s
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ – a poem doubtless stuck down the author’s throat as a lad in some minor public school, and one leaving him with a rather lugubrious view
of the human lot. One or two
very
nice touches, though, and Morse was prepared to give a couple of ticks to that epithet ‘supra-corporal’. He wished, though, he had beside him
that most faithful of all his literary companions,
Chambers English Dictionary
, for although he had frequently met ‘ostler’ in crossword puzzles, he wasn’t sure
exactly
what an ostler did; and ‘figured’ bonnet wasn’t all that obvious, was it?

Thinking of writing – and writing books – old Donavan (Joanna’s first) must have been pretty competent. After all, he’d ‘found a publisher’ for his great
work. And until the last few years of his life, this literate Irish conjurer was seemingly pulling in the crowds at all points between Croydon and Burton-on-Trent … He must certainly have had
something
about him, this man of many parts. ‘Greatest man in the World’ might be going over the top a bit, yet a mild degree of megalomania was perhaps forgivable in the
publicity material of such a multi-talented performer?

‘Bertnaghboy Bay?’ – Morse wrote on the menu. His knowledge of geography was minimal. At his junior school, his teachers had given him a few assorted facts about the exports of
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and the rest; and at the age of eight he had known – and still knew (with the exception of South Dakota) – all the capital cities of the American States. But
that was the end of his apprenticeship in that discipline. After winning a scholarship to the local grammar school, the choice of the three ‘G’s had been thrust upon him: Greek, German,
or Geography. Little real choice, though, for he had been thrust willy-nilly into the Greek set, where the paradigms of nouns and verbs precluded any knowledge of the Irish counties. Where
was
– what was the name? – Bertnaghboy Bay?

It was paradoxical, perhaps, that Morse should have suddenly found himself so fascinated by the Oxford Canal. He was aware that many people were besotted with boat-life, and he deemed it wholly
proper that parents should seek to hand on to their offspring some love of sailing, or rambling, or keeping pets, or bird-watching, or whatever. But in Morse’s extremely limited experience,
narrow-boating figured as a grossly overrated activity. Once, on the invitation of a pleasant enough couple, he had agreed to be piloted from the terminus of the Oxford Canal at Hythe Bridge Street
up to the Plough at Wolvercote – a journey of only a couple of miles, which would be accomplished (he was assured) within the hour; but which in fact had been so fraught with manifold
misfortunes that the finishing line was finally reached with only five minutes’ drinking-time remaining – and that on a hot and thirsty Sunday noon. That particular boat had required a
couple of people – one to steer the thing and one to keep hopping out for locks and what the handbook called ‘attractive little drawbridges’. Now, Joanna’s boat had got four
of them on it – five with her; so it must surely have been awfully crowded on that long and tedious journey, pulled slowly along by some unenthusiastic horse. Too long! Morse nodded to
himself – he was beginning to get the picture … Far quicker by rail, of course! And the fare she’d paid, 16
s
11
d
, seemed on the face of it somewhat on the steep side
for a trip as a passenger on a working-boat. In 1859? Surely so! What would the rail-fare have been then? Morse had no idea. But there were ways of finding out; there were people who knew these
things …

He could still see in his mind’s eye the painting in the cabin in which he’d travelled, with its lake, its castle, its sailing boat, and range of mountains – all in the
traditional colours of red, yellow, green. But what was it like to
live
in such boats? Boats that in the nineteenth century had been crewed by assortments of men from all over the place:
from the Black Country; from the colliery villages around Coventry and Derby and Nottingham; from the terraced cottages in Upper Fisher Row by the terminus in Oxford – carrying their cargoes
of coal, salt, china, agricultural produce … other things.
What
other things? And why on earth all those ‘aliases’? Were the crewmen counted a load of crooks before they ever
came to court? Did every one on the Canal have two names – a ‘bye-name’, as it were, as well as one written in the christening-book? Surely any jury was bound to feel a fraction
of prejudice against such … such … even before … He was feeling tired, and already his head had jerked up twice after edging by degrees towards his chest.

Charge Nurse Eileen Stanton had come on duty at 9 p.m., and Morse was still sound asleep at 9.45 p.m. when she went quietly to his bedside and gently took the hospital menu from his hand and
placed it on his locker. He was probably dreaming, she decided, of some
haute cuisine
from Les Quat’ Saisons, but she would have to wake him up very shortly, for his evening pills.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
(Wednesday) was busy and blessed. Violet’s early offerings of Bran Flakes, semi-burnt cold toast, and semi-warm weak tea,
were wonderfully welcome; and when at 10 a.m. Fiona had come to remove the saline-drip (permanently), Morse knew that the gods were smiling. When, further, he walked down the corridor now to the
washroom, without encumbrance, and without attendant, he felt like Florestan newly released from confinement in Act 2 of
Fidelio
. And when with full movement of both arms he freely soaped
his hands and face, and examined the rather sorry job he’d earlier made of shaving, he felt a wonderfully happy man. Once out of this place (he decided) he would make some suitable, not too
startling, donation to the staff in general, and invite, in particular, his favourite nurse (odds pretty even for the moment between the Fair and the Ethereal) to that restaurant in North Oxford
where he would show off his (limited) knowledge of modern Greek and order a Mezéthes Tavérnas menu, the one billed as ‘an epicurean feast from first dip to final sweet’.
Ten quid per person, or a little more; and with wine – and liqueurs, perhaps – and one or two little extras, £30 should cover it, he hoped … Not that the creamy-skinned Eileen
would be on duty that night. Some domestic commitments, she’d said. ‘Domestic?’ It worried Morse, just a little. Still, so long as Nessie wasn’t going to be prowling around
… because Morse had decided that, in the interests of his convalescence, he might well twist the little bottle’s golden cap that very night.

Back in the ward, the time passed, one could say, satisfactorily. A cup of Bovril at 10.30 a.m. was followed by a further recital from Mr Greenaway of his daughter’s quite exceptional
qualities – a woman without whom, it appeared, the Bodleian would have considerable difficulty in discharging any of its academic functions. After which, Morse was visited by one of the
ten-a-penny dietitians in the place – a plain-looking, serious-souled young madam, who took him
seriatim
through a host of low-calorie vegetables on which he could ‘fill
up’
ad libitum
: asparagus; bamboo-shoots; beans (broad); beans (French); beans (runner); bean-sprouts; broccoli; Brussels sprouts; cabbage (various); cauliflower; celery; chicory;
chives; courgettes; cucumber – and that was only the first three letters in the eternal alphabet of a healthy dietary. Morse was so impressed with the recital of the miraculous opportunities
which awaited him that he even forebore to comment on the assertion that both tomato-juice and turnip-juice were wonderfully tasty and nutritious alternatives to alcoholic beverages. Dutifully, he
sought to nod at suitable intervals, knowing deep down that he could, should, and bloody well
would
, shed a couple of stone fairly soon. Indeed, as an earnest of his new-found resolution, he
insisted on only one scoop of potatoes, and no thickened gravy whatsoever, when Violet brought her lunch-time victuals round.

In the early afternoon, after listening to the repeat of
The Archers
, the most pleasing thought struck him: no work that day at Police HQ; no worries about an evening meal; no anxieties
for the morrow, except perhaps those occasioned by his newly awakened consciousness of infirmity – and of death. But not that even
that
worried him too much, as he’d confessed to
Lewis: no next of kin, no dependants, no need for looking beyond a purely selfish gratification. And Morse knew exactly what he wanted now, as he sat upright, clean, cool, relaxed, against the
pillows. Because, strange as it may seem, for the present he wouldn’t have given two Madagascan monkeys for a further couple of chapters of
The Blue Ticket
. At that moment, and most
strongly, he felt the enthusiasm of the voyager – the voyager along the canal from Coventry to Oxford. Happily, therefore, he turned to
Murder on the Oxford Canal
, Part Two.

PART TWO
A Proven Crime

A
LTHOUGH AT THE
time there were a few conflicting statements about individual circumstances in the following, and fatal, sequence of events, the general
pattern as presented here is – and, indeed, always has been – undisputed.

The 38-odd mile stretch of the Coventry Canal (of more interest today to the industrial archaeologist than to the lover of rural quietude) appears to have been negotiated without any untoward
incident, with recorded stops at the Three Tuns Inn at Fazely, and again at the Atherstone Locks, further south. What can be asserted with well-nigh certitude is that the
Barbara Bray
reached Hawkesbury Junction, at the northern end of Oxford Canal, an hour or so before midnight on Monday, 20th June. Today, the distance from Hawkesbury Junction down to Oxford is some 77 miles;
and in 1859 the journey was very little longer. We may therefore assume that even with one or two protracted stops along the route, the double crew of the ‘fly’ boat
Barbara Bray
should have managed the journey within about thirty-six hours. And this appears to have been the case. What now follows is a reconstruction of those crucial hours, based both upon the evidence
given at the subsequent trials (for there were two of them) and upon later research, undertaken by the present author and others, into the records of the Oxford Canal Company Registers and the
Pickford & Co. Archives. From all the available evidence, one saddening fact stands out, quite stark and incontrovertible: the body of Joanna Franks was found just after 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday,
22nd June, in the Oxford Canal – in the triangular-shaped basin of water known as ‘Duke’s Cut’, a short passage through to the River Thames dug by the fourth Duke of
Marlborough in 1796, about two and a half miles north of the (then) canal terminus at Hayfield Wharf in the city of Oxford.