The Body at the Tower - By Y. S. Lee Page 0,50
coffin and slowly lowering it into the open grave. The four – no, five – mourners watched the first shovelful of earth drop onto the casket, damp and clumpy. There was no echo, of course, but it looked as though there ought to have been. After a suitable pause, the gravedigger tugged his cap and nodded once. This was the point at which the affair ended, leaving him to his solitary task.
The bricklayers seemed to understand this. But Harkness, his eyes fixed on the grave, didn’t seem to notice the brittle atmosphere of expectation surrounding him. His gaze was fierce in its sightlessness, his thoughts clearly miles from this ugly bare graveyard in south London. The seconds stretched out endlessly. It was a full minute before Keenan’s low growl, audible even to Mary across the street, shook him from his meditations. With a rattled look, Harkness murmured something – three syllables, four at most. Mary was practised at lip-reading, but the combination of Harkness’s fulsome beard and the angle of his stance defeated her here. All she knew was that it wasn’t the traditional “God bless you”. A moment later, without looking at the bricklayers, Harkness turned on his heel and marched away.
Expressionless, the four men watched him go. Now that both Wick, their comrade, and Harkness, their common adversary, were gone, they seemed rather at a loss, as though requiring an external reason to stay united. They left the graveyard in a shuffling, disorganized manner far removed from their earlier almost martial discipline, and scrambled into the waiting carriage for the return journey. They didn’t retrace the route of the formal procession, instead returning directly to the Wicks’.
Mary considered what she’d just seen. An expensive but otherwise minimal funeral for a man whose death few seemed to regret. Confirmation of Reid’s tenderness for Mrs Wick. Harkness’s extraordinary attachment to a dead bricklayer, in the face of bristling suspicion from the man’s friends and colleagues. It didn’t amount to much, put like that. Yet something about the charged atmosphere – something unspoken, but lurking behind all those carefully composed expressions – was very wrong. There was a storm coming. An explosion of some sort. And she still couldn’t tell where from.
It seemed daft to stand outside Wick’s house, where the funeral tea was just beginning. She ought really to return to site. Yet she continued to loiter at the street corner, watching the bricklayers and Mrs Wick – helped down from the carriage by Reid, who’d brushed past the waiting attendant – re-enter the house. The female neighbours would be inside, preparing food and keeping the children calm. The meal could go on for ages yet. All the same, Mary prepared herself for a long wait. She could justify it rationally, of course: additional mourners, those who couldn’t afford to forfeit an afternoon’s wages, might turn up. They might, in turn, lead to additional knowledge of Wick’s character. But beyond all that, something like blind instinct told her to wait. And so she did.
It was a good three hours and nearing dusk before something happened, but that something was even more dramatic than she’d imagined. A handful of friends had indeed rolled in through the late afternoon, and the babble of voices and clinking of crockery had increased in volume. But suddenly, there came sharp, distinct voices raised in anger. It was a genuine quarrel between Keenan and Reid, and it escalated for several minutes, despite placating noises from others – mostly female and, Mary guessed, not Mrs Wick. It was truly raucous, now: a vicious-sounding scrap, male voices barking and snarling like savage animals, that made passers-by turn and stare in brief wonderment.
A few minutes later the front door burst open, tearing off one of the hinges, and two bodies tumbled out, already locked together in passionate rage. Mary instinctively stepped back, tucking herself neatly behind a lamppost. The gesture was totally unnecessary. Neither Reid nor Keenan was likely to notice if Queen Victoria herself came strolling down the narrow street.
It was a fight in earnest, no mere display or posturing but a battle between two men who had passed from trust into hatred. Keenan was the larger man and ought to have had the advantage. But Reid fought with grim determination. He seldom missed an opportunity to land a punch, and each blow was placed with care and strategy.
The battle ended only when Mrs Wick ran out of the house, stumbling slightly as she came, and dived between