He couldn’t actually see the river below – everything was grey – but he knew it was there. The River Eden, it was called. Reed laughed harshly to himself. It wasn’t his fault that the river that runs through Carlisle is called the Eden, he thought; it was just one of life’s little ironies.
Twenty-five to four on a wet Wednesday afternoon. Nobody about. Now was as good a time as any.
Just as he was about to climb onto the parapet, a figure emerged from the mist. It was the first girl on her way home from school. Her grey pleated skirt swished around her long, slim legs, and her socks hung over her ankles. Under her green blazer, the misty rain had wet the top of her white blouse so much that it stuck to her chest. Reed gazed at her in awe. Her long blonde hair had darkened and curled in the rain, sticking in strands over her cheek. There were tears in his eyes. He moved away from the parapet.
As she neared him, she smiled shyly.
Innocence.
Reed stood before her in the mist and held his hands out, crying like a baby.
‘Hello,’ he said.
MURDER IN UTOPIA
I had just finished cauterizing the stump of Ezekiel Metcalfe’s left arm, which I had had to amputate after it was shredded in one of the combing machines, when young Billy Ratcliffe came running in to tell me that a man had fallen over the weir.
Believing my medical skills might be required, I left my assistant Benjamin to take care of Ezekiel and tried to keep up with young Billy as he led me down Victoria Road at a breakneck pace. I was not an old man at that time, but I fear I had led a rather sedentary life, and I was panting by the time we passed the allotment gardens in front of the mill. A little more slowly now, we crossed the railway lines and the canal before arriving at the cast-iron bridge that spanned the River Aire.
Several men had gathered on the bridge, and they were looking down into the water, some of them pointing at a dark shape that seemed to bob and twist in the current. As soon as I got my first look at the scene, I knew that none of my skills would be of any use to the poor soul, whose coat had snagged on a tree root poking out from the river bank.
‘Did anyone see him fall?’ I asked.
They all shook their heads. I picked a couple of stout lads and led them down through the bushes to the river bank. With a little manoeuvring, they were able to lie on their bellies and reach over the shallow edge to grab hold of an arm each. Slowly they raised the dripping body from the water.
When they had completed their task, a gasp arose from the crowd on the bridge. Though his white face was badly marked with cuts and bruises, there could be hardly a person present who didn’t recognize Richard Ellerby, one of Sir Titus Salt’s chief wool buyers.
Saltaire, where the events of which I am about to speak occurred in the spring of 1873, was then a ‘model’ village, a mill workers’ Utopia of some four or five thousand souls, built by Sir Titus Salt in the valley of the River Aire between Leeds and Bradford. The village, laid out in a simple grid system, still stands, looking much the same as it did then, across the railway lines a little to the southwest of the colossal, six-storey woollen mill to which it owes its existence.
As there was no crime in Utopia, no police force was required, and we relied on constables from nearby townships in the unlikely event that any real unpleasantness or unrest should arise. There was certainly no reason to suspect foul play in Richard Ellerby’s death, but legal procedures must be followed in all cases where the circumstances of death are not immediately apparent.
My name is Dr William Oulton, and I was then employed by the Saltaire hospital both as a physician and as a scientist, conducting research into the link between raw wool and anthrax. I also acted as coroner; therefore, I took it as my responsibility to enquire into the facts of Richard Ellerby’s death.
In this case, I also had a personal interest, as the deceased was a close acquaintance of mine, and I had dined with him and his charming wife Caroline on a number of occasions. Richard and I both belonged to the Saltaire Institute – Sir Titus’s enlightened alternative to the evils of public houses – and we often attended chamber-music concerts there together, played a game of billiards or relaxed in the smoking room, where we had on occasion discussed the possible health problems associated with importing wool. I wouldn’t say I knew Richard well - he was, in many ways, reserved and private in my company – but I knew him to be an honest and industrious man who believed wholeheartedly in Sir Titus’s vision.
My post-mortem examination the following day indicated only that Richard Ellerby had enough water in his lungs to support a verdict of death by drowning. Let me repeat: there was no reason whatsoever to suspect foul play. People had fallen over the weir and died in this way before. Assault and murder were crimes that rarely crossed the minds of the denizens of Utopia. That the back of Richard’s skull was fractured, and that his face and body were covered with scratches and bruises, could easily be explained by the tumble he took over the weir. It was May and the thaw had created a spate of melt-water, which thundered down from its sources high in the Pennines with such force as easily to cause those injuries I witnessed on the body.
Of course, there could be another explanation, and that, perhaps, was why I was loath to let matters stand.
If you have imagined from my tone that I was less fully convinced of Saltaire’s standing as a latterday Utopia than some of my contemporaries, then you may compliment yourself on your sensitivity to the nuances of the English language. As I look back on those days, though, I wonder if I am not allowing my present opinions to cloud the glass through which I peer at the past. Perhaps a little. I do know that I certainly believed in Sir Titus’s absolute commitment to the idea, but I also think that even back then, after only thirty years on this earth, I had seen far too much of human nature to believe in Utopias like Saltaire.
Besides, I had another quality that would not permit me to let things rest: if I were a cat, believe me, I would be dead by now, nine lives notwithstanding.
It was another fine morning when I left Benjamin in charge of the ward rounds and stepped out of the hospital on a matter that had been occupying my mind for the past two days. The almshouses over the road made a pretty sight, set back behind their broad swathe of grass. A few pensioners sat on the benches smoking their pipes under trees bearing pink and white blossoms. Men of ‘good moral character’, they benefited from Sir Titus’s largesse to the extent of free accommodation and a pension of seven shillings and six pence per week, but only as long as they continued to show their ‘good moral character’. Charity, after all, is not for everyone, but only for those who merit it.
Lest you think I was a complete cynic at such an early age, I must admit that I found much to admire about Saltaire. Unlike the cramped, airless and filthy back-to-back slums of Bradford, where I myself had seen ten or more people sharing a dark, dank cellar that flooded every time it rained, Saltaire was designed as an open and airy environment. The streets were all paved and well drained, avoiding the filthy conditions that breed disease. Each house had its own outdoor lavatory, which was cleared regularly, again averting the possibility of sickness caused by the sharing of such facilities. Sir Titus also insisted on special measures to reduce the output of smoke from the mill, so that we didn’t live under a pall of suffocating fumes, and our pretty sandstone houses were not crusted over with a layer of grime. Still, there is a price to pay for everything, and in Saltaire it was the sense of constantly living out another man’s moral vision.