The Body at the Tower by Y. S. Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

broad plank balanced between a pair of carpenter’s horses. Harkness was first in the queue, by common consent. Mary was still feeling the effects of the rum, not only in her throat, but in a slight tipsiness that made her feel extremely conspicuous. She was quite sure that her cheeks were flushed and that she smelled of drink. Yet Harkness seemed not to notice.
    As he returned to his office, the men clustered about the tea station in earnest. Oddments of food – slabs of bread-and-butter and hunks of cold boiled meat, the occasional pastry – appeared in their hands as if from nowhere, along with their own thick, glazed mugs. Despite the differences in costume and context, Mary couldn’t help thinking back to the last time she’d helped pour tea at a social gathering: beside Angelica Thorold, in Chelsea. This time, she made sure to hold the enormous teapot in an awkward grasp. Tea-pouring was a feminine technique, so she tried not to look too practised as she filled the mugs half-way with weak black tea. Jenkins then topped them up with rum.
    With Harkness gone, the general mood should have lifted. After all, what was likelier to produce gossip and levity than food, drink and a change of pace? Yet for the most part, the labourers remained silent and solemn. A few of them chaffed her: Not too much of that there tea, lad; don’t you know it’s the devil’s drink? Then, to Jenkins: Go on, give us a drop more rum; don’t be stingy now, son. Or, You’re a pretty pair, you with your black eye and him with that bloody nose . But once they had their tea, the men retreated into clusters that reflected their trades: glaziers with glaziers, stonemasons with stonemasons. And they drank their illicit rum without much relish.
    “Ain’t no one talking,” muttered Jenkins.
    So she hadn’t imagined the tension. “Why’s that?”
    “Cor, you don’t know nothing, do you?”
    “Tell me then, if you’re so clever.”
    Jenkins glanced about furtively. They’d served all the builders by now and were nowhere near any of them. All the same, he spoke barely above a whisper. “One o’ them brickies, chap named Wick, offed himself the other night. His body was right over there.”
    A jolt shot through Mary. “He killed himself?”
    “That’s what I said,” hissed Jenkins. “He jumped off the tower.”
    “How d’you know?”
    Jenkins glanced around. “’S plain. He were up there at night, and the police ain’t done nothing. If he got pushed, the Yard – ” he pronounced this nickname with over-casual pride, “the Yard’d nick somebody for it.”
    “They might still be looking.”
    Jenkins made a scoffing noise. “Not Scotland Yard. If they ain’t found no one, ain’t nobody to find.”
    Mary looked at him thoughtfully. She’d initially dismissed the lad as a bit dim: why else would he pick a fight he had no chance of winning? But now she wondered. He was sharp enough to make the tea round into a profitable venture. He had a reasoned theory as to Wick’s death. She’d have to watch the lad – and watch her own behaviour around him. He might be totally uncritical of the police, but he was clever enough to catch any slips she might make in the role of Mark Quinn.
    If Wick had in fact thrown himself from the tower, there had been no conflict and there was no killer. But there was still the question of motive. What would drive a man to kill himself? Despair? Debt? And what of his choice of method? Many suicides chose the river, from sheer familiarity, or poison, for its swift neatness. But jumping from a tower was a dramatic final gesture. Had he intended something by that? It could even have been a message to his employers…
    “Time to clear up.” Jenkins raised the rum-pot aloft and tipped the last few drops from the spout directly into his mouth.
    She glanced about. There was indeed a general dispersal of the labourers. “What should I do with this cold tea?”
    He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
    Mary