The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly

Author:Mary Kelly [Kelly, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Traditional
Publisher: Chivers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THREE

What Happened After

MR LUKE stared into the ark.

‘I had it stopped,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you did right.’

He looked up. His face was blank. Like Corinna’s his shock was too great for agitation. He was silent for a minute, concentrating, pulling himself together; the leader, the head of the family. Younger than me.

‘I’ve sent for the doctor,’ he said. ‘When Harry said accident I told Miss Chapman to ring. He’ll be here within five minutes.’ He paused. ‘We’ll have to get him out.’

‘Don’t you think – you ought to leave him?’

The blank look went past me, discounting my words as panic gibberish, disappointed of my usefulness, turning to a more reliable support.

‘Arthur.’

The man came from the press, a slip house worker, silent and calm.

‘How can we do it?’ said Luke, thinking aloud, not asking. ‘Need we drain the ark? No, it’s not very deep in there. If we roll up our trousers and take off our shoes we can go down the ladder and raise him. Joe can stand at the edge—’

‘No need for you to go down, Mr Luke,’ said Arthur, ‘we’ll do that.’

Luke was already unlacing his shoes. I bent down beside him.

‘Listen, even if it were an accident, the police would have to come,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t move him.’

Luke turned his head to me with a look of alarm, quickly suppressed. ‘He’s not to be left there,’ he said, with utter finality.

I couldn’t argue against the absolute sole lord of Shentall’s. ‘All right,’ I said, resigned. ‘I’ll help you. You’ll need all of three down there. Couldn’t we find something to raise him with?’

One of the men was sent across to the packers for a length of rope while we took off our shoes and socks and rolled up our trousers; Mr Luke, Arthur and I. The head of the firm, the man from the filter press, and the outsider, all reduced to paddlers with pale feet and hairy legs. The other men in the slip house stood back, still silent, waiting for orders. Luke set them out like sentries, one to each door, to stop anyone from coming in, two to stand by the edge of the ark.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you and I, Arthur, down in the slip.’ He turned to me. ‘You stay on the ladder half way, hold on with one hand and help with the other. You two take the rope, and both of you hold it. You won’t have the whole weight, but there’ll be extra heaviness in the clothes.’

I followed them down the ladder fixed to the brick wall of the ark, shivering at the iron rungs digging hard and cold against naked feet, and stopped just above the level of the slip. It was deeper than it looked from above, over the waders’ knees, sloshing about as they moved.

Between them they raised the body from the paddles. But it was no good, I had to go down and help Luke hold it while Arthur passed the rope under the shoulders.

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