Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  She turned and walked back into the beer house where Bury was hunched over his pint pot, brooding. She scooped up the pot that Tom had left, most of it spilled, more’s the pity, but there were a good few sweet mouthfuls to quench her thirst.

  She had a pitiful headache on her and this was just the thing to alleviate it.

  Bury said nothing when she sat with him and drained the pint pot and it made her wonder at the quality of men in her life.

  Her John Kelly was a better man than either of these two. He always saw her right. It was just that he made so little money. She’d had to take matters into her own hands. She didn’t like going behind John’s back like this as he was such a nice bloke, but it had to be done. It was a way of sorting out their financial worries for good. Plus, he’d refused to be involved in it, the moment she’d aired the possibility, so it was his fault she was here mooching around her ex-husband with a queer old fish like Bury, whose only saving grace was he could forge a signature and he didn’t think himself too good for stealing.

  If she played her cards just right, though, she’d have enough money to keep off the streets. At her age being on the streets was a dangerous business. She needed to sleep in a bed, not in a doorway or on a bench in some doss house held up by a rope. It would keep John Kelly off the streets too. He’d thank her in the end.

  “That’s twice you could have done it now,” she said.

  Bury emerged from his trance and said, “And both times there were people around. I’ll do it, when it’s safe to do it, and not before.”

  She slammed the empty pot on the table and said, “I could do with another.”

  “We need to watch our money.”

  “We’ll have enough money soon, all right. I saw to that, didn’t I?”

  “But we need money to get that money. You know that.”

  “We’ll get it. Can’t a girl have a bloody drink?”

  Bury seemed to flinch, as if his whole body was cringing, as if he was holding something inside his coat, like a snake that was wriggling to get out. A bag of snakes. She’d seen that look before. It happened just before a man lamped you one across the face.

  “Anyway, I suppose you’ve seen him now,” she added, softening her voice. “You know what he looks like. It’ll make it easier.”

  Bury nodded and puffed his chest out, like a lawyer giving a matter his due consideration. He stood and skulked over to the flap, returning with another two beers. He went back to the flap and waited for a minute. She supped at her beer and felt the tension ease away. The old landlord handed him a plate of something and he came back and almost threw it on the table so it skittered. A couple of slices of bread and a hunk of cheese with a sharp knife laid across the plate.

  He ate sullenly, his teeth tearing at the bread, paring at the hunk of cheese. She felt lighter and more cheerful and an old tune she’d written with Tom came to her:

  Come all you feeling Christians,

  Give ear unto my tale,

  It’s for a cruel murder

  I was hung at Stafford Gaol.

  The horrid crime that I have done

  Is shocking for to hear,

  I murdered one I once did love—

  “Don’t sing that. I don’t like it.”

  He stabbed the knife into the wooden table and the handle vibrated like a tuning fork.

  “Bleeding hell, cheer up, will ya?” she said, taking a sour glug. “What’s wrong with a nice old song?”

  “It’s not a nice song, it’s a nasty song.”

  “It’s a beautiful gallows ballad and I had a hand in writing it, if you must know.”

  “With your fancy man out there?”

  “Yes. With him. We made a fine living writing those ballads and selling them for a penny at all the hangings. Travelled the country we did.”

  Bury looked at her now with something like amusement. A sort of sickly smile spread across his face, his lips all sweaty with the cheese. “You’re still keen on him.”

  “Don’t be soft.”

  “I saw you with him.”

  “That was just leading him on, you fool. Anyway, if I was so keen on him why would I be here, with you?”

  He snatched up the knife and pointed it at her throat. The smile was gone.

  “Don’t you ever call me a fool again.”

  She shrank back. She’d pushed him to the edge of reason. A part of her wanted to push him once more, to see what his rage looked like, but she held back. This wasn’t the time for that.

  “You need to watch yourself, William Bury,” she said. “Running away with another woman. And you only just married and all. People’ll talk.”

  “There’s nothing between you and me.”

  “Tell that to your wife in London.”

  “My wife’s got nothing to do with this. You leave her out of it.”

  “Ooh! All protective now. All lah-di-dah. Are we talking about your wife, the ex-prostitute?”

  “You shut your mouth, Catherine Eddowes, or I’ll shut it for you.”

  “My husband’s got nothing to do with this either. If either of them had anything about them, we wouldn’t be relying on each other for this now, would we?”

  He stabbed the knife in the table again and shoved a lump of bread in his mouth, gnawing at it.

  “You just watch what you say,” he said, the bread thick and glistening in his mouth.

  She smiled and said softly, “We’re in this together, William Bury. Just you and me.”

  He nodded and shrugged his shoulders again and took a drink of bitter.

  It fascinated her to see how easily she could manipulate men, how she could push them towards anger and how easily she could soothe the savage beast again. But the real skill would be directing that rage at her ex-husband. She’d see then if he had the guts for it.

  21

  DANIEL AND ARTHUR EMERGED onto Sherlock Street, assaulted by the bright glare of sunlight and the rank smell of fish and tripe, and looked around them, wondering what they might do now that they had the bag.

  “Shall we take it back to your house?” Arthur suggested.

  Daniel shook his head firmly. “The police might return there. I’d rather safely view its contents to see if they reveal the killer’s identity first.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Daniel felt his stomach grumble. He hadn’t eaten all day.

  “A pub?” said Arthur.

  “I know of a good one nearby.”

  They climbed back into the Victoria and he instructed the driver to head to the Crown and Cushion on Bradford Street. Clutching the bag to his chest all the way, he resisted the urge to open it and examine the contents.

  The cabmen drew his horse to a halt outside the pub and Daniel pulled another florin from his pocket, holding it up to him.

  “Would you wait for us, driver?”

  The driver took it and raised his hat. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll have a pint myself. I’ll be in the saloon bar, of course. You just shout when you want me.”

  “Very well.”

  They entered the pub through their different doors. Arthur and Daniel found a seat in a quiet nook, laying the carpet bag between them. Arthur ordered two pints of porter along with cold beef sandwiches. “We are unravelling a mystery, Daniel. We must take our sustenance as we run.”

  They each took a sup from their pints, savouring the cold draught, its foam tingling on their lips, and then gazed at the murderer’s bag on the cushioned seat between them.

  “Shall we?” Arthur asked.

  Daniel nodded, wiping his lips.

  Arthur unclasped the brass catch and opened the bag out wide. It revealed nothing more than a shirt, neatly folded.

  “We must be careful not to disturb it too much,” said Arthur. “It might be used as evidence.”

  He lifted the shirt out and placed it carefully to one side. Underwear, a gentleman’s. Then a shaving brush and a razor, wrapped in a towel. The weightier items were at the bottom of t
he bag. Daniel could feel them shifting. He reached in and felt them. They seemed to be reams of paper. He pulled out a sheaf and read the title.

  May My End A Warning Be.

  “It’s a poem,” said Arthur. “A ballad.”

  “A gallows ballad,” said Daniel, the room starting to swim.

  “It’s for Thomas Wyre,” said Arthur, peering over it. “He’s the man who’s to be executed next week in Worcester. You know the case? Threw his child down a well after his philandering mother had left them. Awful case. Apparently he met the mother and had dinner with her and she knew what he’d done.”

  Arthur pulled out another sheaf of papers. “This one’s different. It’s for Robert Upton. Why, he’s the man who battered his wife to death with an iron bar. He’s to be executed in Oxford next week. Ballads concerning two men who are to be hanged within a day of each other. Most curious. Our hangman Mr Berry will be busy.”

  Daniel caught the comment like a drowning man might catch a stick, desperate to prevent himself sinking further into the depths. “Bury?”

  “James Berry, yes. The public executioner.”

  “Ah. I thought you meant... No matter.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bury. William Bury. The strange man who came to the house this morning, with Tom’s wife.”

  “Oh, that queer fish,” Arthur chuckled. “I doubt they’d ever allow a man who wears a deerstalker in the town to be a public executioner.”

  Daniel took out his red silk handkerchief and dabbed the beads of sweat on his forehead. “You are right. But something about him made me feel as if the job might suit him.”

  Arthur wasn’t listening. He was pulling out more things from the bottom of the bag.

  “Why, look. Pamphlets and chapbooks. Lives of famous men.” He flicked through the pages of a pamphlet. “And what appears to be a mystery story about a time travelling man and an amnesiac.”

  Daniel took a swig of porter, hoping it might cool him down. He felt as if the table were lurching, as if they were in the cabin room of a ship during a violent storm.

  “Now I’m sure abductive reasoning will help us solve the mystery. One can fathom the Niagara Falls from a drop of water, and all that. But I’m dashed if I know.”

  “It’s really quite simple, Arthur.”

  “Why, Daniel! Are you all right, man? You look quite pale.”

  The barmaid came to their table and deposited two beef sandwiches, with a pot of mustard, curtseying and hurrying back behind the bar. Daniel felt his stomach lurch and choked back the urge to vomit.

  “What was it you said, Arthur? When you have eliminated the impossible...”

  “Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Yes. But how can you surmise the murderer’s identity from this?”

  “Look inside. There might be a secret pocket. Within it I am sure you will find an army pension book.”

  Arthur picked at the lining of the bag and paused suddenly, feeling a wad of something hidden. “Why, you’re right. Right here. There’s something...”

  He fished out a small booklet, much like the chapbooks but smaller, and read the covering page.

  “I think you’ll find,” said Daniel, “That it belongs to a mister Thomas Quinn.”

  “How on Earth?”

  “We know him by his real name, not the false name by which he draws his pension in order to avoid his errant common law wife.”

  “Oh my word.”

  “A carpet bag belonging to a man retired from the army on health grounds, who writes gallows ballads and publishes his self-penned chapbooks.”

  Daniel covered his eyes with his red silk handkerchief to avoid the sight of the razor sitting on the table between them. The weapon that had most likely sliced up Louisa Gill. The killer’s razor.

  Arthur put his hand to his mouth with horror. “Good Lord. Our killer is your friend, Thomas Conway.”

  22

  THOMAS CONWAY HAD A funny feeling about Wiley’s Temperance Hotel. He had a funny feeling about everything at the moment and wondered if he was suffering a fever, his mind burning with delirium.

  He had found the hotel on Snow Hill and had assumed it to be respectable enough. There were another six in the city centre, all within a stone’s throw from here, with the exception of Corbett’s, which was being torn down. He had scoped this one earlier, after arriving, thinking it might be a safe place to stay, but now wished he’d tried one of the others: Cobden’s on Corporation Street, the New Waverley on High Street, or even the Trevelyan on New Street. But he had chosen this one, for its proximity to the station. That feeling that he might have to run at any moment, like a thief, like a fugitive.

  Though the hotel had given off an air of respectability, outwardly, when one looked closer it was apparent that the rules were rather relaxed. He had seen three different men walk through the lobby with women on their arms, and the women did not look like the sort of women married to such men.

  Voices in the corridor. He held his breath. Stifled laughter. Rushed to the door, peered through the spyhole. Bloated and warped, the image of a man in a bowler hat, a woman on his arm. Had he? Yes. The same woman he’d seen earlier in the lobby. Different man this time.

  He’d seen this sort of thing all over London. You could barely hide your eyes from it, it was so wantonly paraded in the streets. But in of all places a temperance hotel. It was disgusting.

  He pushed himself from the door, launching himself at the bed and his jacket again, turning it over, examining every pocket that was turned inside out, looking for holes in the pocket — anywhere the ticket might have fallen through and be closeted within the lining. If only he had a knife to cut the lining open.

  Nothing. It wasn’t in the jacket, no matter how much he looked.

  He pulled out his trouser pockets, producing nothing but a few coins, crumbs and fluff.

  With a cry of desperation he sat on the bed and tore off his boots, shaking them upside down, poking his fingers inside to see if the ticket had somehow slipped into his boot and become stuck to the inside.

  Nothing.

  He tore off his socks and turned them inside out. Then yanked down his trousers and did the same with them in case it had fallen inside his trousers and was still there. His waistcoat came off, every single pocket turned inside out, the lining examined for holes, then his shirt, till finally he was standing in his long johns, surrounded by piles of clothes and no pawn ticket anywhere to be seen.

  Why? Why had he done it?

  God was punishing him now for his arrogance. No, there was no god. He knew that. And yet he feared Him still. The Devil more.

  Why had he pawned his bag, with everything in it that he needed to make money? The two executions next week and his entire product sitting inside his bag, only to waste away on the shelf of a pawnbroker’s shop.

  To get the money to bet on the horses. Always his strategy. A kind of wager he made with Fate to see if she were still on his side all these years, and she always was. Pawn his goods for the stake money, make a few bets and increase his stake. It had always worked, wherever he travelled. It had always worked because he knew horses. Always had done, since back in his own time. He could pick out a winner immediately just by observing the horses as they were walked around the paddock before the race. The bright eyed, frisky one, with its ears pinned back, tip-toeing, skitty, all aflutter. That was the one that would win the race eight times out of ten. He knew that. Fate knew that. She rewarded him for it. Every time.

  He raised himself from the floor and eyed his pile of money sitting on the bed. Everything the old Jew had counted out for him on Sherlock Street.

  He should go now and hit the races. But he knew it didn’t matter how much he won. Without the ticket, he could not get his ballad sheets and his chapbooks back. And his pension book. Dear Lord.

  And would Fate desert him this time? As she had with the ticket.

  He pulled on his clothes again, sniffling pathetically, tryin
g to cast his mind back to where he might have mislaid the ticket.

  When he tied his red handkerchief around his throat, he had a sudden awful thought.

  No. Not then. Surely?

  He pocketed his money and the rolled up copy of the Gazette, which listed the Four Oaks Races and the Castle Bromwich Plate, and walked out, tramping down to the street in a silent fury.

  The bright sun mocked him, as did the clock tower of St Philip’s, which pealed the hour.

  He had so little time. Time is a human illusion. He laughed bitterly to himself. That pamphlet of Daniel’s he’d read. This morning, was it? So long ago. Time is a human illusion. All times co-exist in the stupendous whole of eternity. So by that means he was still reading the pamphlet in the morning, blissfully ignorant of his missing pawn ticket. He was meeting Catherine for the first time, so long ago, a sunny day, full of hope. He was free of Catherine because she was dead, some time soon. Because, yes, if all times co-existed that meant the future was just the same as the past. It had already happened.

  He crossed the street, skirting a brewer’s dray which thundered past him.

  Like with poor Daniel. A man with no past, and strange visions of the future. A man who seemed to be living his life backwards. Must remember that. Good idea for a story.

  The church bell reminded him of Daniel’s wedding. It surely wouldn’t happen now. It had been averted. Surely Daniel’s wife had already called it off after seeing those paintings. But he needed to be there, close to Daniel, to make absolutely sure. And Catherine had spoiled it. Turning up like that. Despoiling his friend’s home. Every time she hunted him down she brought disaster with her. She was the harbinger of doom.