Lovers Meeting (28 page)

And afterwards Josie would go to her room and read Tom’s letter again.

Reuben Garbutt sat at his desk in his study. He saw that the letter was addressed in Packer’s own writing – the solicitor would not let his secretary know of this business. Packer had paid an unemployed clerk to follow Josie and report her movements. Garbutt read the account of Mrs Miller’s activities, her visits to the bank, the
Macbeth
, the shop – the yard? Garbutt read that again. She had visited the yard, not regularly but frequently. Why? What could be there to interest her, a children’s nurse?

But she was also a partner in the Langley Shipping Company which was keeping the name of Langley alive. Was she also attempting, somehow, to breathe life into the Langley yard again? Garbutt swore. If she was he would stop it – stop her. He would go and—

There was a tap at the door of his study, then it opened and the butler entered. He carried a woman’s coat and hat in one hand and announced, ‘Miss Wilks, sir.’

Garbutt glowered at the interruption. He recalled hearing the wheels of a cab crunching on the gravel of the drive and realised it had brought Rhoda. She had a flat of her own now, paid for by Garbutt, and no longer lived in St John’s Wood. She wore a silk dress embroidered with lace which had cost him four pounds. She smiled timidly at him. ‘Hello.’

He snapped, ‘What do you want?’ The woman was a nuisance. He had installed her in a fine flat, bought her expensive clothes and gave her an extravagant allowance to pay her maid and her cook and live in style. What more did she—

Rhoda complained, ‘I haven’t seen you for days. You’re always off on business somewhere.’ But she wondered about that business. And once he had lusted after her body every night, but now—

Garbutt crossed to the fire and threw the letter into the flames. ‘I have to go away now. Up North.’

‘Can’t I come with you?’ Rhoda was becoming desperate. The promised marriage had not transpired. He had told her brutally, ‘Forget it. I’m not the marrying kind, but I’ll see you right.’ And he had provided for her, amply, Rhoda admitted, but how long would it continue? She remembered how she had once pleased him and rubbed against him. ‘Take me with you. Please.’

Garbutt had nothing but contempt for her intelligence but knew that she was devoted to him. She would do anything for him and that could be useful. Now … He reached out for her.

When he stepped down from the taxicab at King’s Cross station, Rhoda was already there, a porter beside her with her suitcase. She knew better than to keep Garbutt waiting. She had tried to hide the bruise on her cheek with powder and rouge but it showed through. Garbutt saw the work of his hands but said nothing. Rhoda made the excuse for him, told herself that he had been drinking. She saw that he had shaved off his moustache, opened her mouth to comment but then thought better of it.

In the first-class carriage he barely spoke to her throughout the journey. At Newcastle they booked into a small hotel as husband and wife. Next morning, as he shaved, Garbutt looked at the face of a stranger, now that he was without the moustache he had worn since reaching manhood. He had removed it because Packer had told him that witnesses had seen and described the driver of the lorry that killed James Langley and his wife. Garbutt did not want to risk one of those witnesses identifying him now, unlikely though it might be.

By mid-morning they had taken the local train to Monkwearmouth and were down by the river. Garbutt hired a boat there and flipped an extra half-crown to its owner. ‘I’ll pull it myself.’ And to Rhoda, ‘Get in.’

She wanted to say ‘I don’t want to go’, because she was terrified of boats and the water, had never ventured out on to the river before. But she dared not deny him and swallowed her protests, climbed nervously into the rocking boat.

Out in the stream, Rhoda asked unhappily, ‘Where are we going?’

The winter wind blew cold up the river from the sea and the little boat pitched as Garbutt tugged at the oars. ‘We’re just going for a row.’

‘How far?’

‘Until I’ve seen what I want to see. Today, tomorrow or whenever. Now shut up.’

They had caught the tide at high water. When they were opposite the Langley yard Garbutt paddled gently, just a few strokes now and then to hold the boat on station, keeping it from drifting. He had brought a pocket telescope with him and now extended it, set it to one eye and searched the yard. There was the slip where the ships were built and to one side was the quay where they were fitted out after their launching. There were rusting steel plates, stacks of timber, and one tall tower of it, made of huge baulks a foot in diameter and with a ladder propped against it. He saw no one, but knew there would be a watchman.

Garbutt pulled on the oars, beginning his slow patrol back and forth in front of the Langley yard. He saw Rhoda shiver and ignored her. She would have to put up with it. If she waited all day or all week.

‘Hello, Sammy.’ Josie, with Charlotte by her side, passed the timekeeper’s office and looked in on the watchman in his hutch. ‘How are you?’

‘Canny, Mrs Miller, canny.’ Sammy stood a kettle on the stove and a teapot beside it to warm. ‘I’m just making a cup o’ tea. Will you have one?’

‘If there’s one in the pot when we get back. We’re just going for a look round.’

‘Righto.’

Josie passed on into the yard and strolled slowly down a wide, cobbled track towards the river, stopping frequently to examine things she had not noticed before, making a mental note to ask Sammy about them. Charlotte talked to Amelia, the doll clutched in her arms, as she toddled alongside.

Out on the river, Garbutt snatched up the telescope again and set it to his eye. There was still no watchman to be seen – no doubt he was staying in the warmth of his cuddy – but there was a woman, looking just as Packer had described her. It had to be Mrs Miller. And with her? That would be the Langley brat, Charlotte. All just as Packer had said. They were walking a wide, cobbled track leading past the timber tower and down to the river.

Garbutt dropped the telescope and seized the oars. With swift, powerful strokes, he drove the boat in to slide against the quayside near the slip. He jumped out holding the painter – with the tide at the full the boat rode only a couple of feet below the quay. He paused only to loop the painter round a bollard and toss the end down to Rhoda. ‘Hold on!’

She squeaked, ‘No! Don’t leave me here!’

But he was already running. He crouched low so the heaps of timber and piles of steel plates hid him. He was sure that if Mrs Miller continued on that cobbled path she would pass close under the tall tower of timber. He came to the ladder propped against it, still out of sight of the woman. He was breathing heavily but climbed quickly; he must not be too late. At the top he wriggled on to the top of the tower, keeping flat on his belly. Its surface was green with moss, damp and slimy. When he raised his head he saw the woman steadily approaching and only about thirty yards away, the brat at her side. They would pass right under him.

Garbutt squirmed towards a baulk that lay nearest where they would pass. It formed part of the floor on the top of the tower and, like the others, this timber was eight feet long and a foot square. It lay a foot from the edge of the tower. Could he move it? There was a gap between it and the next baulk which admitted his hands. He got up on to his knees, though still keeping low, and curled his fingers under the timber. He lifted and it moved an inch or two. He tried again, gained another inch, but it was awkward lifting while kneeling and too slow. They would be past and gone!

He rose to his feet. The woman was only yards away. If she looked up … But she and the child had their heads bent over a rag doll. Garbutt stooped once more to get his hands under the timber and now it lifted smoothly—

‘
No
!’ The scream was piercing. Garbutt’s head turned as he started and his foot skidded on the greasy surface. The timber toppled but one end went first so that it bounced from the side of the tower, turning end over end – and over the heads of the woman and child.

Now Garbutt saw Rhoda, her hands framing her horrified face, standing between him and the quayside. She had been mortally afraid, left in the boat, and had scrambled out then followed him slowly, wondering what he intended. Until she saw him about to launch the lethal timber.

Garbutt knew only that it was she who had screamed.

‘Hey!’ At the shout his head twisted the other way and he saw the watchman coming down the yard from his office.

‘Damn you!’ Garbutt cursed Rhoda, glanced down and saw the woman below, clasping the child to her and staring up at him. Then he turned, scrambled down the ladder, dropping the last few feet, and ran for the boat. As he passed Rhoda he struck her a backhanded blow that sent her sprawling. Then he came to the quayside and saw that Rhoda had used the painter to haul herself out of the boat but had not made it fast. It had drifted away and was already a dozen yards out in the river.

Garbutt spun around and ran back up the yard. He passed Rhoda, lying with a hand to her bloody mouth, without a glance. The Miller woman, with the child hidden behind her, shrank away from him but he had no time for her now. The watchman barred his way but Sammy’s running days had ended long ago. Garbutt swerved around him, avoiding Sammy’s clutching hands, saw him gaping then heard him yell, ‘Here! I know you, you bastard!’

Garbutt ran on, through the passage past the timekeeper’s office and so into the street. He ran until he reached the next corner, the bellows of the watchman receding behind him, not caring who saw him or what they thought. But once around the corner he slowed to a fast-striding walk so as not to draw attention to himself. A few minutes later he was just in time to catch the ferry across the river.

In Langley’s yard, Sammy returned from his hopeless pursuit. He went wheezing and gasping to where Josie still stood by the tower with her arms around Charlotte. He asked, ‘Are you and the bairn all right?’

Josie’s heart went on pounding and her face was pale but she answered, ‘Yes.’

‘By, lass, you were lucky.’

‘I was.’ Josie stared at the baulk of timber only a yard away. It had gouged a hole for itself in the weed-grown, hard-packed earth. What would it have done to the tender flesh of herself and the child?

Sammy said, ‘That wasn’t an accident. He got up there and threw it off to try to kill the pair o’ you.’ Then, as Josie nodded, he went on, ‘And I know who it was. It’s twenty years since I saw him, when he was a lad of fifteen or sixteen, but I wouldn’t forget him.’ When Garbutt had shaved to avoid the possibility of recognition he had made it easy for Sammy, who recalled him as a youth before he grew the moustache. Sammy said, ‘He was a bad little bugger then. That was Elisha Garbutt’s lad, Reuben. I told you the other day how auld Billy Langley sacked Elisha Garbutt.’

Josie remembered that – and a lot more. Sergeant Normanby had questioned Reuben Garbutt in London following the death of William Langley. He had said that Garbutt matched the description of the man who murdered James Langley and his wife, Maria, but he had an alibi, men who had sworn he was in London at the time. What was that alibi worth now? Tom had said Garbutt had effectively killed William Langley, had done it out of spite. Then today there was the attack on Charlotte.

Josie could only come to one conclusion: Garbutt was attempting to destroy the Langley family. She shuddered and held Charlotte a little tighter. But Garbutt had failed; Josie and the child were alive and she knew who had saved them. Her gaze shifted from the timber to the woman who had screamed, ‘No!’ Josie had seen how that scream had distracted Garbutt so that he slipped and the timber fell askew. And she had seen the mad glare of hatred in his eyes as he stared down at her.

The woman was now sitting up in the dirt, careless of her skirts jerked up around her knees, her hands wiping at her bleeding lips with a stained handkerchief. Josie pushed Charlotte towards the watchman. ‘Stay with Mr Allnutt a minute, there’s a good girl.’ She did not want the child to see the woman’s battered face. Josie went to her, kneeling before her so she could peer at the sallow, blood-smeared face with its broken mouth. She did not know the woman, but searching back in her memory deduced: ‘You are Rhoda Wilks.’ And when Rhoda nodded: ‘You were with him.’ No nod this time. The dark eyes slid away, avoiding hers, but Josie stretched out a hand to turn the head and eyes back to her again. ‘You were with him at the house when old Mr Langley died. And he was driving the lorry that ran down young Mr Langley and his wife. You came here with him to kill little Charlotte and—’

‘No!’ The word was wrung from Rhoda Wilks again, but this time it was not a shriek but a moan.

‘
Yes
!’ Josie insisted, shaking Rhoda in her shock and anger. ‘I saw him, Sammy saw him – you did!’

‘I didn’t know.’ Rhoda was shivering now. Josie had released her but she still shook. ‘I was with him but I didn’t know what he was going to do. He never said and I didn’t dare ask him. He said that time before wi’ the lorry was an accident and I believed him because I couldn’t believe he would … But just now, when I saw him up there, and you wi’ that little bairn I used to look after, I couldn’t let him. No.’ The tears had come to run down from her eyes as her head shook. ‘No. No. No …!’

Josie helped her to her feet and led her, stumbling, to the watchman’s hutch, sat her by the stove. She wiped Rhoda’s bruised face passably clean, put the kettle on the stove and made a fresh pot of tea. Josie let Sammy bring Charlotte in then and she hugged the child. ‘Now you play in the corner with Amelia for a bit.’ Then to Sammy, doubtfully, ‘Can you write?’ She doubted it because few of his generation were literate.

But he answered proudly, ‘Aye. Me father paid for me to learn at the church school.’

At Josie’s request he fetched a pen, ink and paper from the timekeeper’s office. Then Josie had Rhoda tell her story before she could change her mind and Sammy set it down, slowly and with some strange spellings, but clearly enough. Josie would not have entrusted the task to Rhoda. Josie presumed Rhoda could read and write as compulsory education started around the time she was born, but her hand still shook. She needed little prompting, however, and she even included the fact that she had witnessed the murder of James and Maria Langley. She seemed relieved, at the end, to have lifted a weight from her conscience.