The Skeleton Man

Dryden sat on the bank, the grass already damp with dew. ‘So. I think I know what happened,’ he said, sucking two inches out of his pint.

Humph stretched his legs out into the night air and a spring in the driver’s seat flexed. ‘I’m listening.’

‘With three blinding exceptions.’

‘Ah,’ said the cabbie, exuding happiness.

Dryden was surprised to find that he hesitated, aware that the mysteries of Jude’s Ferry were intensely personal. ‘The person I feel sorry for is Kathryn Neate.’ He pitched a peanut at the nearest black swan, and from the reeds on the far bank a pair of Barbary ducks joined the food queue.

‘She’s sixteen, she’s beautiful – well, on the edge of beauty perhaps. But it’s there, in the willowy figure, the angel’s face that’s growing into something else – a woman’s face. Men circle her, all of them for different reasons. Her father and brother, cousins, lovers, protectors, gossips, and the legions of the jealous. Her mum, possibly the only person who ever put her best interests first, is dead a decade. And now the men in uniform have arrived to take her home away. More men, circling.’

Humph hit the cab horn once to scare the ducks away and let Boudicca out from the back seat to sit on the grass. The greyhound edged forward until she could rest her large bony head on Dryden’s shoe.

‘Then – disaster. She gets pregnant. I thought George Tudor was the father. But now it looks like it’s Peter Tholy, a friend of George’s off the farm. A frail, vulnerable boy whose only other friends were girls. Peter and George have put their names down for emigration, and the Reverend Fred Lake has vouched for both. Either way, no one seems too eager to step forward and help Kathryn get through the birth. Peter wants to do the right thing but lacks the courage. There’s a discreet silence for nine months and then the boy is born. He lives two days. According to Lake the child died of heart failure, brought on by acute jaundice.

‘The funeral is the last in Jude’s Ferry – at least it should have been. Jimmy and Walter Neate dig the boy’s grave – in the old Peyton tomb inside St Swithun’s. George Tudor turns up to give Kathryn support – moral and physical – which was either brave or stupid, or possibly both. The Reverend Lake certainly thought Tudor was the father, but nobody thought the police should know, and given that she was over-age by the time of the birth and wouldn’t name the father that’s not a great surprise. When they all get back to Neate’s Garage that evening Tudor’s got news for them – the father is Peter Tholy, and he wants to take Kathryn with him to Australia. Walter is against, Jimmy is against. They make Kathryn end it then, make her go and tell Tholy the family’s decision. She walks out that last summer’s evening and never returns.’

Dryden bent his neck back, looking straight up into the stars. ‘Why didn’t she want to leave, Humph? Australia must have seemed like a perfect escape.’

On the river a cruiser appeared around the bend, the cockpit lit, a couple standing enjoying the night, glasses full of wine the colour of pear drops.

‘She was escaping from the Ferry, anyway,’ said Humph. ‘Perhaps she didn’t love Peter Tholy, perhaps she never had,’ he added, thinking of another girl.

Dryden got a fresh round of drinks, the last-orders bell ringing out as he stepped into the cool night.

‘According to Fred Lake the funeral was at 5.00 pm. The next thing we know for sure is when Jimmy Neate and George Tudor turn up at the New Ferry Inn with Peter Tholy – that’s sometime after the Smiths begin brawling in the yard of the inn around eleven. They drag Tholy into the bar and break the news – that Kathryn’s dead, that Jimmy saw Tholy fleeing the scene, even though he claims he’s been alone all night except for a visit to old Broderick. Don’t forget Walter’s there by now and this was the daughter he loved too much, the one who always reminded him of the wife he’d lost.

‘It’s a tinderbox. Everyone’s popped up with the beer and God knows what else. The Smith brothers have been trying to tear each other apart in the yard, with Paul Cobley the next bout on the bill. Blood’s been spilt already and there’s all kinds of emotions rising to the surface. It’s the last night for this community; in a few hours they’ll all be gone, scattered to new lives. There’s plenty of anger, and suddenly they’ve got the ideal target – stumbling, half-witted Peter.

‘And there’s another strong emotion, Humph, they want to close ranks. This is something they want to deal with themselves, especially in those dying hours in the life of the village. They’ve lost one of their own, and the killer is one of their own. Tholy was never going to survive the night unharmed, but it turned out worse than that. How do ordinary people commit murder, Humph?’

‘They don’t,’ said the cabbie, watching some swifts play in the floodlight mounted on the side of the pub.