by Robert Lock
‘As expected, both autopsies confirmed my initial thoughts. Mr Parr’s windpipe and oesophagus were greatly compacted, which would have cut off all supply of air, though his spinal column was only slightly distorted. Dr Jonckheer remarked that ‘This man went calmly to his death, without struggle or second thought’, a phrase I interpret as further evidence for George Parr’s guilt. He knew what he had done was unconscionable, and saved the courts the time and bother of coming to the same conclusion. I cannot in all honesty picture any other scenario. If a third party had strung him up there would surely have been a great disturbance in the surroundings, and signs of struggle upon the body, but there were none. Similarly, Miss Goodwin’s oesophagus and larynx were crushed by a force exerted on either side, i.e. by the savage application of pressure from two strong hands. She was a slender thing, without the strength to resist such an assault, and despite her occupation I can only commend her poor soul to the Good Lord’s mercy, for no one should meet their end in so brutal a fashion.
As to motive, I put forward two alternatives. The first is of a business transaction gone terribly wrong, perhaps when Miss Goodwin demanded more for her services than Mr Parr deemed right or proper; the second is the need to silence Miss Goodwin, who perhaps threatened to tell her story regarding the predilections of a well-known entertainer to some unscrupulous representative of the press. Having questioned those who knew both parties I could uncover no previous relationship of any kind, which eliminates an historical grievance or need for vengeance. I cannot countenance any kind of third party involvement, for reasons already outlined above, which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that George Parr murdered Hannah Goodwin, then took his own life. Some may seek to find complexity and subterfuge behind this act, but it is my experience that often the simplest of explanations is the truth of the matter, and I am sure that, in this sorry affair, this is the case.
Inspector H Price 17th November 1880
Colin slumped back in his chair and breathed out noisily. Reading the articles had brought the case’s grim details back into the forefront of his mind, details which, even in an era that was soon to witness the Jack the Ripper murders, had the power to shock. In the nineteenth century life could be brutal and short, and often traded as another form of commodity. There was hypocrisy and hubris, both wonderfully illustrated by the editorial tone, yet Colin saw through all this, freeing George and Hannah from the distorting lens of historical context to leave them standing on the shingle, a man and a woman destined to end their life in the shadow of the pier, the same shadow that fell now, less than half a mile from where he was sitting. Colin felt a sudden urge to go down to the beach. He wanted to stand where they had stood, even though the articles never explained the exact positioning of the bodies. He even thought, with a sniff of derision and a shake of the head only moments later, that he might find some vital clue overlooked by Inspector Price. Yes, the archivist had heard of Georgie Parr’s terrible crime, and he vaguely remembered reading the first of the newspaper articles before, but that must have been twenty years ago, when he was sufficiently young and ignorant to regard deeper research into his hometown as an admission of failure. The Colin Draper of 1966, fresh from Durham University and somehow left untouched by the sexual and social revolution sweeping through his generation, wanted nothing more than to continue his studies at postgraduate level, hopefully complete his doctorate and then immerse himself in a research post, like a tick burrowing under the skin of academia. He had written twenty thousand words of his thesis detailing the slave trade’s influence on the formation of the British Empire when the call came regarding his mother’s diagnosis, and Colin had abandoned his doctorate without a moment’s thought, returning to the resort and becoming the council archivist, a post he would come to make his own.
Only now, for some reason, had the Georgie Parr story fired his imagination. Colin wondered why that was, when it was clearly one of the most intriguing events in the resort’s history. Did he, in some way, identify more with the music hall performer now than he had back then? The newspaper articles had not mentioned George’s age, but reading between the lines Colin estimated it to be fairly close to his own, so perhaps he had needed to age, to develop a middle-aged perspective, for the story to come alive. Whatever it was, the archivist could sense that tingle of anticipation he always felt when an interesting and challenging project presented itself. He also, despite the best efforts of the Victorian journalists, believed there was more to the case than had been reported. Why, for example, had the paper not said anything about the investigation for three days after its initial headline? Why was Inspector Price so dismissive of the possibility of a third party? And what were the circumstances behind George Parr’s family tragedies? Were they in some way connected to the terrible events beneath the pier? There was a lot of work to do, but for the present Colin, like Inspector Price, wanted to see for himself the crime scene. Research and analysis could provide the facts, but for that flash of insight, that momentary inhabiting of another age, there needed to be a tangible connection, and what better example of this could there be than the pier?
Warm sunshine, an almost cloudless sky and a gentle onshore breeze combined to create the perfect spring day, and yet the beach and promenade were almost empty, metamorphosed into a bleak wilderness by the scattered family groups and individuals, who appeared vulnerable and lost within such a featureless tract. Colin looked at the sweep of sand and concrete, saddened by the stark contrast to how he remembered it only twenty years ago, when there was hardly a patch of sand to be seen for holidaymakers. Cheaper air travel and a taste for more exotic climes had exacted a terrible penalty on the resort; in the space of one generation it had gone from being a byword for fun and frivolity, drawing people from all over the country to its beach and theatres and arcades, to a neglected, down-at-heel place having to rely more and more on the raucous stag and hen parties who rampaged through its pubs and clubs at the weekend, leaving it stained with urine and vomit and then abandoned for the rest of the week, until Friday brought the next wave of revellers. The resort echoed to their marauding cries. It had become possessed of that febrile atmosphere prevalent whenever an empire collapses, and Colin hated to see it accept these reduced circumstances so meekly.
He reached the wrought-iron railing at the edge of the promenade and leaned against it for a moment to catch his breath. The archivist had decided to walk from the library to the pier, a decision he regretted now, even though the two were only half a mile apart. Colin had grown to loathe all forms of organised exercise at an early age. Chubby and uncoordinated, he had been taunted and bullied by his teachers as well as by his fellow pupils, but this had merely made him seek comfort in food, creating a vicious circle which saw him dumped in goal for football, where he would then spend most of the game surreptitiously munching on sweets smuggled onto the playing field in his shorts. His higher education was entirely sedentary, as was his career, so Colin slowly put on more and more weight without really noticing. His mother, in a mother’s wilfully blind vernacular, described him as ‘strapping’, but he was under no illusions as to his size; he expected to have to pay for his unhealthy lifestyle, presumably with either a heart attack or something similar. Colin was quite sanguine about this. He had even formulated a sort of rough guide to his own expected mortality, basing it on his father’s coronary, then adding a decade to Malcolm Draper’s lifespan for never having smoked (unlike his Senior Service-loving dad), another decade for the lack of physical exertion required in his work, and a further five or six years from his very moderate drinking, again unlike his father’s fondness for beer. This total, which Colin regarded as having been calculated with scrupulous honesty, took him to his late seventies, which he felt constituted a decent enough innings. It was more than the vast majority of mankind had enjoyed, after all, and would have been beyond the wildest imaginings of a fellow proletarian from any century before his own. And, having watched his mother’s decline, to the point
where she could now do little more than push buttons on the television remote control, he had no desire to reach an age that brought with it a similar level of incapacity. Better to take one’s leave of the planet with a lingering sense of what more could have been achieved than feel as though purpose and relevance had long since been left behind.
Restored to the minor aches and hindrances that passed for equilibrium, the archivist made his way along the promenade and began his descent. The steps cut into the promenade were deep and stained with rust from the flimsy chain fence that formed a makeshift handrail, and led him down onto the band of shingle which formed the upper section of the beach, fist-sized stones that the sea would, with its infinite patience, reduce to the tiniest of particles. Colin stumbled several times negotiating their shifting, convex surfaces. The pebbles ground against each other as his scuffed brogues settled on them, the one beneath his shoe binding to those surrounding it until, his full weight pressing down, the limits of friction were exceeded and the stones gave way, like a series of booby traps. The high tide mark was delineated by a straggling line of seaweed mixed with pieces of driftwood, plastic bottles and clumps of tangled netting; sandflies busied themselves amongst the detritus, whilst further along the beach several brown-and-white birds Colin did not recognise bustled in and out of the seaweed as they feasted on the insects.
Finally, with a grunt of relief, he reached the firmer footing of sand, and for the first time could look up at the pier. From down on the beach it appeared less poetic, more a collection of corroded iron pillars than a fine spun statement of mankind’s mastery of the elements, and Colin realised that he was not meant to scrutinise the pier from this angle, to lift its skirts, as it were, and squint upwards. Here was the rusting truth, the view of the pier as appreciated only by an engineer, a prosaic land of support upon which life could be sustained… and death found, of course.
Moving into shadows which seemed as solid and unbending as the iron piles they wrapped around, the archivist thought again about Georgie Parr, who had walked beneath these very same props and struts knowing he would never re-emerge. A sudden idea came to him: what if George had indeed committed suicide, and some devious villain had discovered the entertainer’s body and seen it as the perfect scapegoat upon which to foist the blame for their own violent crime? They could strangle the girl, dump her body near George’s suspended corpse, and walk away with impunity, secure in the knowledge that the police would associate the two deaths. This was long before any kind of forensic examination, apart perhaps from fingerprints or imprints of shoes; as long as detectives could concoct a convincing scenario they were unlikely to delve too deeply. They would even avoid the tedium and cost of a trial, as the prime suspect was, handily, already dead. He was only a music hall entertainer, after all, and the victim a prostitute. The whole sorry affair could be quickly concluded as a dispute between two representatives of the lower classes that had got out of hand, leaving the resort to forget the whole episode as an unnecessary distraction from its primary function as opiate to that very same stratum of society.
The more he thought about Inspector Price’s dismissive and condescending attitude, the more Colin felt convinced he was on the verge of uncovering a terrible miscarriage of justice. The authorities had assumed George’s guilt from the outset, without looking properly at his background, circumstances, motivation or character. They were both lazy and prejudiced, a privileged coterie of Freemasons and civic figureheads who saw the cash flowing into the town and were determined not to let a scandal cause alarm. That would explain the newspaper’s silence. He could see them now, gathered in some wood-panelled room with their brandy and cigars: the inspector, the town clerk, the magistrate and the newspaper editor, formulating a tale of sordid urges and violence with all the loose ends neatly tied together in a bundle of speculation and supposition.
The archivist patted one of the iron pillars. “If only you could talk,” he whispered.
Stepping out from beneath the pier, Colin felt as though he had returned, not only to the sunshine, but also to the present. He made his way towards the steps, but something made him turn and look again at the pier. A figure was leaning on the gently undulating back of the wrought-iron seating that ran along the pier’s edge, a figure who was clearly staring down at him. Colin shaded his eyes with one hand and squinted. He recognised the frizzy tufts of hair and bald pate which belonged to Mickey Braithwaite, the pier’s longest-serving employee, who had been arranging deckchairs along its length for over forty years. Colin wondered whether Mickey would know anything about the George Parr story, and made a mental note to seek out the attendant as soon as possible. He waved, and Mickey waved back.
Angel Delight
Edna Draper’s bedroom had become her world, and therefore contained strange vistas that could be seen by her and her alone. The light, too, possessed a translucent quality found nowhere else in the bungalow: gauzy, tinted blue from the thin curtains which were always drawn, as Edna’s eyes were sensitive and could no longer bear direct sunlight; it appeared at first glance as though she was lying at the bottom of a still, pellucid pool. At bedtime, Colin would switch on a child’s night-light to keep the darkness at bay. There was an indefinable quality to the light that gave the impression of it being very old, light that had perhaps witnessed too much and was tired now, reluctant to move from the large, bay-windowed room that contained it, the kind of light which stands guard over sleeping princesses who wait, insensible, in their rooms at the top of ivy-clad towers, dreaming, as all the persecuted do, not of their rescuer but their tormentor. Edna was, appropriately enough given her tenure cradled in this light, a romantic. She regarded her own plight in romantic terms, as a curse to be endured. She even referred to the multiple sclerosis as her ‘poisoned apple’, as though the disease had been visited upon her due to some innocently made but fatally flawed decision on her part. Her son did not attempt to alter this peculiar mindset, guessing quite correctly that it was simply a form of coping strategy, and that pointing out its obvious shortcomings could prove disastrous. The elegiac atmosphere in Edna’s bedroom, however, exerted little influence on the prosaic and ordered mind of Colin Draper. Stepping into that room was, to him, like nothing more than entering a familiar hospital ward.
Her single bed jutted out from the wall like a soft white promontory, surrounded on three sides by the things that made her life bearable. On one side stood a table which could be swung round so that it projected over Edna’s midriff, its top crammed with juice cartons, bags of sweets, bottles and boxes of tablets, magazines, books, a small radio, and a box of tissues. On the other side was a large electric fan, permanently switched on, its low hum as much a part of the room as the aquatic light. To one side at the foot of the bed was a trolley carrying a television and VCR, with videotapes neatly stacked and labelled on the lower shelf. The only other items of furniture in the room were a chair next to the fan and a huge wardrobe, constructed out of a dark wood with unusual jagged streaks of graining, which made it look as though someone had vented a terrible fury on the wardrobe, slashing and slashing at it before attempting to cover up their senseless act with a thick, treacly varnish. As a child, Colin had been terrified of it, and would refuse to go into his parents’ bedroom at night if there was no one there. He could never understand why they had chosen such a brooding piece of furniture, but his mother would not hear of it being removed, and so it remained, glowering at Colin like some malevolent guardian whenever he entered the room, ready to intervene if it suspected any form of threat against its immobile and vulnerable charge.
Mrs Draper herself, habitually clothed in a white nightie, and possessing skin as pale and smooth as cream, merged with her bedding so perfectly that, in the dim light, the bedroom appeared empty, as though either by some miracle she had recovered and left to re-acquaint herself with the wide world, or else had perished and been taken away in her coffin, a place of confinement which would hold no fear for her. And then her hand wo
uld move, perhaps to dip into her bag of sweets, or press a button on the remote control, and her whole form would coalesce, a collection of mounds and curves so amorphous as to resemble a bank of clouds rather than a person. Her hazel eyes, however, always her best feature, shone out from these pale foothills with undiminished life. Visitors invariably remembered Edna’s eyes, much more so than her failing body, or the room.
Her illness dictated that she lay for the most part on her right side, so arranged on the wall opposite was a collection of her favourite paintings, mingling with family photographs which to her were as precious as any Monet or Van Gogh. If there was nothing on television, and Colin was not available to feed a tape into the video machine, Edna could quite happily while away the hours studying her wall of images. She particularly enjoyed a game she had devised, whereby she transposed one or more family members from a photograph into one of the paintings, imagining how they would react, and what the people in the painting would say to them. As a lover of Impressionism, Mrs Draper realised that the painted characters were more than likely to speak French, but she ignored this small inconsistency and granted everyone subjected to her experimentation perfect communication in some form of lingua franca.
This, then, was Edna’s world; a cool land of permanent twilight, peopled by ghosts, never completely silent, never completely rooted in any one particular time, perfumed by the sherbet sweets she adored, and wonderfully tranquil, so much more tranquil than would be expected in a place of such cruel illness.
Into this world, for the first time, came Georgie Parr, and by this simple introduction was granted some small measure of peace.