Drowned Lives

34

Gruesome find halts restoration scheme

Work on a major waterways restoration scheme was halted yesterday by the discovery of human remains.

Ogley and Huddlesford Canal Restoration Trust members made the gruesome find while clearing earth and debris from the site of the former Fosseway Wharf, near Pipehill. A Trust spokesman said the remains had been concealed in a heap of lime and were uncovered by an excavator driver. ‘We were all very shocked,’ he said. ‘And work stopped immediately.’

Police say the body has not been identified and may have lain undiscovered for some time. They are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.

The incident happened during a visit to the site by Junior Agriculture Minister and local MP Lindley Simpson, who was on a fact-finding mission after recent protests by waterways groups against the proposed South Staffordshire Link Road.

Mr Simpson was unavailable for comment this week.

When I read the article, my first thought was of Frank. Had he committed suicide? But then I read it again, and I noticed the line ‘may have lain undiscovered for some time’. That sounded like a police euphemism for a rotting corpse. Frank had been very much alive when the excavator had begun to dig into the lime.

That night Rachel came around again, clutching more notes and looking pleased with herself. These sessions were becoming a regular thing now as we set about re-creating Samuel’s stolen manuscript.

Rachel had spent her time fruitfully in the County Record Office at The Friary. She’d scoured the parish register indexes for Buckleys and identified several members of the family in the records for St Chad’s. Obtaining an address, she’d gone on to locate them at their Lichfield home in the historical ‘snapshots’ that were nineteenth-century censuses. For the first time, I saw the names of my great-grandparents, Alfred and Eliza Buckley, of Tamworth Street, Lichfield. Alfred was described as a mercer.

‘Alfred’s ancestors were a bit more difficult to establish,’ said Rachel. ‘His parents were boat people, remember.’

‘Josiah and Hannah.’

‘That’s right. So he was probably born in the cabin of a narrowboat, like his brothers and sisters. But I did find a young Alfred Buckley in the 1891 census. He was six years old and described as the nephew of the people he was living with, the Bensons. I’d guess that Mrs Benson must have been the sister of his mother, Hannah.’

‘So they sent him to live with his aunt and uncle.’

‘Yes. I wonder why?’

‘Probably Josiah and Hannah had too many children to cope with on the boats,’ I said. ‘It was called “putting a child on the bank”. It probably meant that he got an education, at least.’

‘Lucky for him.’

‘But Alfred was left without a father,’ I said. ‘Josiah was killed.’

‘Was he? How?’

I was remembering what Samuel had told me. Josiah Buckley had operated a pair of narrowboats on the Ogley and Huddlesford, but had ended up drowned in the cut. There was a suggestion at the inquest that he was drunk, which was nonsense. Josiah Buckley was an abstemious man, a teetotaller... But, like many canal people, he was quite unable to swim.

Samuel had described in detail Josiah’s body being pulled out of the water from behind a lock gate. His head had been battered against the wall by the pressure of water when the sluices were opened, and his face had been unrecognisable. It was reported that shortly before his death Josiah had been involved in a fight with another boatman. He’d made himself unpopular with rival carriers by winning a lucrative contract for transporting coal to the power stations. But it seems he was just more efficient and better organised than the others. Probably more honest, too. There were some who didn’t like that.

I repeated to Rachel what Samuel had told me, and she grimaced at the gory details.

‘Well, Alfred did all right after that anyway,’ she said. ‘He was already a mercer by the time he married Eliza Shaw in 1911, and his address was the one in Tamworth Street. I also found an older brother, Thomas.’

‘Yes, Thomas was the one who tried to keep the boats operating after his father died, but the business failed.’

‘As a child, he seems to have lived on the boats with his parents. But he appears several times in the court records too. He must have been a bit of a bruiser — he was charged several times with affray, often fighting over women it seems. I also came across a paternity order against him. I only found him because Buckley is an unusual name. By the way, he was described as Thomas Buckley aka Thomas Pounder.’

‘A pseudonym. I think it was quite common among the boatmen in those days.’

‘Really? It sounds a bit suspicious to me.’

‘Who are we to judge? I suppose they had their reasons.’

‘Well, every family has its black sheep,’ said Rachel.

‘So both my grandfather and Great-Uncle Samuel would have been born at the house in Tamworth Street, I suppose.’

Rachel hesitated, seemed to consult her notes. ‘That’s the address your great-grandparents gave when George was baptised at St Chad’s. It would help if we could get the later censuses, of course, like 1911 and 1921.’

‘Why can’t we?’

‘The details are subject to the one hundred year rule.’

‘Sorry?’

‘They’re confidential. They’re not released until a hundred years have passed. So you won’t see the details of the 1901 census until 1st January 2002.’

‘We can’t wait that long. Go on.’

‘Okay. There was another child, a daughter, who died very young. That was very common too, of course.’

‘And Great-Grandfather Alfred himself died, when?’

‘Oh, not until 1947. But his brother Thomas died much earlier, in 1918. He was in France, serving with the Army Ordnance Corps. He was reported missing in action, presumed dead.’

‘One of millions,’ I said glumly.

‘Army records show him lost in action near Bethune at the start of the Lys offensive in April 1918. The Germans used gas in those attacks, didn’t they?’

‘He would have been over 40 years old by then, Rachel.’

‘Yes, and they didn’t extend conscription to men over 41 until almost at the end of the war. The Military Service Act Number Two, April 1918. But records weren’t terribly accurate then. He could have lied about his age to join up.’

‘That would be a pretty stupid thing to do.’

‘Men can be stupid at that age as well as at any other.’

‘A mid-life crisis?’

‘If that’s what you want to call it. And we know this one was stupid on two counts — fighting and women. Whatever it was, he never came back.’

‘It sounds as though Great-Grandma Buckley wouldn’t have been too keen to have him back anyway.’

‘It’s a pity we can’t ask her.’

I was impressed by the work that Rachel had put in. It was plain that she’d not only searched the parish registers and censuses, but had also hunted the Buckleys relentlessly through the court records and even the army lists. I could only guess at the amount of time and effort it had taken.

‘Parish registers are okay, but they’re incomplete,’ she said. ‘We really need to research the official registers of births, marriages and deaths. But they’re in London, at the Family Records Centre.’

I considered the situation I’d got into. Rachel and Laura were both helping me. Laura knew about Rachel, but Rachel knew nothing of Laura. It was a position fraught with potential conflict and embarrassment. But I’d reached a stage where I didn’t care about such consequences. The book was everything. It had become part of the fabric of my life now. I would have sacrificed all my relationships to it — even the house in Stowe Pool Lane, if it came to that. Which it might.

‘I’ve got somebody handling that end of things,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ Rachel looked surprised. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘No. A television researcher I met at Samuel’s funeral. She lives in London, you see.’

‘She?’ said Rachel sharply.

‘Her name’s Laura Jenner. I persuaded her to help. The thing is, Rachel, this is all very well — but I need to find out more about Samuel.’

‘Why?’ she said, reluctantly accepting the change of subject.

‘I feel I owe it to him. To record his life for posterity, along with William and Josiah.’

‘And what’s making you feel like that? You know practically nothing about him, even now.’

‘That’s exactly it, don’t you see? I still know nothing about his life, even though I was responsible for his death, in a way.’

‘But it wasn’t you who ran him over, Chris.’

‘The police suspect it might have been.’

Rachel snorted. ‘That’s the police for you. It’s their job. They don’t really think it was you, otherwise they’d have arrested you by now, wouldn’t they?’

‘Even so, it doesn’t take away the guilt. I sat and watched Samuel walk to his death. I let him down. No, that sounds too easy. It was more than letting him down. I betrayed him.’

She lowered her notebook and gazed at me with a concerned expression.

‘So that’s why it means so much to you. It isn’t just an intellectual exercise.’

I shook myself to try to pull my thoughts back together. I felt as though I’d been about to spill all my feelings out. It was a horribly tempting prospect, but dangerous.

‘Well, I haven’t researched Samuel,’ said Rachel. ‘But I’ve done some more work on William Buckley.’

‘Yes?’

‘And I’ve got a theory about his disappearance,’ she said proudly.

‘I thought you were leading up to something.’

A photocopied sheet fell from between the pages Rachel held. I picked it up and scanned it idly. It was just one of the many miscellaneous bits and pieces that were in Samuel’s files. Some day soon, somebody was going to have to sort them into order and decide what was important and what was irrelevant. This sheet had a curious dark blob at the bottom which must have been a wax seal on the original. It was a certificate, and it said:

‘I didn’t know William Buckley was a shareholder as well,’ I said.

‘One share. I suppose it was a gesture of faith in the project. He was only an employee really. He was the resident engineer.’

‘Still, William was in a position to be dealing with contractors, wasn’t he? There must have been a lot of money within his power one way or another. So the temptation proved too much. He was only human, after all. He was in trouble, and saw a chance of making a run for it with a pile of money. I might have done the same in his shoes.’

‘But let’s examine the story. It’s reported in an allegation to the committee that William Buckley arrived at the company stables in the early hours of the morning and made the stableman provide him with a horse. He harnessed the horse up and took a boat from the boatyard. The next day the boat was found abandoned at Fosseway Wharf, three miles away, with the horse tethered on the bank.’

‘Fosseway Wharf wasn’t in use, even then. It had been built in the wrong place, thanks to the dispute with Anthony Nall.’

‘So why did he go there?’ she asked.

‘Well, for that very reason — because it was deserted and he wouldn’t be seen. He was within walking distance of both Watling Street and the Walsall Road, where he could pick up a coach and be out of the area later that morning.’

‘Taking the missing money with him?’ said Rachel.

‘Exactly.’

‘Leaving his wife and an eighteen-month-old child?’

‘Maybe. It could be in the Buckley blood. Look at Thomas.’

Rachel shook her head impatiently. ‘Mmm. Try this one, then. In one of his letters, he tells Reuben Wheeldon he’d arranged to meet someone, but he doesn’t say where.’

‘The mysterious Mr P.’

‘That’s him. “At every turn he seeks to thwart me.” He was building up to a showdown with the person he thought was responsible for his trouble. I say he’d slipped out to meet Mr P. that morning, and Fosseway Wharf was the place chosen for the meeting, because it was isolated and quiet. William Buckley decided to go by boat, what else?’

I pictured the scene. A cold February morning, still dark, with perhaps a mist hanging over the water of the canal. William would have had a lamp lit on the fore end of the boat. He’d have chosen a good horse that would go on its own, if he was without a crew. What had been his intention? To return to the city with Mr P., having persuaded him to do the honourable thing? Or had he intended, all along, not to return to his home? Could he have planned some deal with Mr P.? Had they disappeared together?

But I knew that none of these could have been the case. It was clear from the letters that William Buckley knew he was in danger. With Rachel’s eyes on me, I saw a dim picture forming as I imagined William Buckley docking his boat against the empty wharf. I saw another figure in the shadows, waiting for him to step off the boat perhaps, but with a different intention. Mr P.? Or someone else? Had William been courageous, but foolish? Had he gone willingly to his death? He’d told Reuben Wheeldon, At every turn he seeks to thwart me.

So what happened to William Buckley? Was he a thief, a fraudster? Did he defraud the canal proprietors of their money, abandon his wife and child, then vanish to avoid ending up in prison? A cowardly thief and deceiver, or a reckless, honest fool? Which was in the Buckley character?

‘You think he might have been murdered?’ I said.

Rachel nodded. ‘I think it’s very likely. I think he stumbled on proof of a conspiracy to defraud the company, and he spoke up like the honest man he was. What did he say in his letter to Wheeldon? “I found it necessary to condemn what they have done as deficient both in honesty and good business. By so doing I have raised a Nest of Hornets about me.” He just didn’t realise what danger he was putting himself in. Or perhaps he knew that too, but had to do it anyway. Maybe he felt responsible.’

Well, maybe. But it wasn’t as if there was any concrete evidence that William Buckley had been murdered. How could there be?

And then the front page of the Lichfield Echo caught my eye, the headline about human remains unearthed during excavations at Fosseway Wharf. ‘Police say the body has not been identified and may have lain undiscovered for some time.’ Did ‘for some time’ mean centuries rather than months?

‘That’s it for now,’ said Rachel, closing her notebook.

‘I need to get my head round all this.’

‘You know, Chris, this could be what Samuel was aiming to prove all along — he wanted to clear his ancestor’s name, prove that William Buckley was murdered.’

‘Perhaps. Let me think about it for a bit.’

She nodded, resignedly. ‘No problem.’

I cast around for another subject to distract my thoughts, which were getting bogged down in the barrage of information and the sudden possibilities that had opened up.

‘How was Miss Saigon, by the way?’ I said.

‘Brilliant.’

‘And the matinee of Cats?’

‘Great.’

‘I’ve heard performers dressed as cats pop up among the audience and you can end up with one of them on your lap or something.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said vaguely.

‘And did you?’

‘What?’

‘End up with one on your lap?’

‘Not really. What else has been going on while I’ve been away? Did you go and see Godfrey Wheeldon?’

I shrugged mentally, noting that she was the one now changing the subject. If she didn’t want to talk about the musical she’d gone to see, it didn’t matter. I was only making polite enquiries. I’d expected her to be full of the subject.

So instead I told her about Godfrey Wheeldon, neglecting to mention the presence of Laura.

‘He sounds a sweet old man.’

‘Sweet? I suppose so.’

But Rachel was impatient. She didn’t want to talk about Cats or Godfrey Wheeldon.

‘So come on, what do you feel about it all now? Do you still believe that William Buckley was a crook?’ She was leaning close to me over the papers, and I straightened up suddenly, feeling the beginnings of cramp in my legs from kneeling on the floor.

‘According to history, he was.’

‘But what do you feel? This was one of your ancestors. What does your heart tell you?’

‘Well...’

‘Samuel didn’t think he was guilty.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You can tell by the way he writes. Read between the lines.’

‘But there’s no evidence of anything else,’ I insisted. ‘Not in the manuscript.’

‘I’m not so sure. There are the letters. If you put them side by side with the manuscript, I think they tell a different story.’ She thrust a transcribed letter at me. ‘Read again what he writes to Reuben Wheeldon. This man was in trouble.’

‘Look, I know all about money troubles. If William Buckley siphoned off a bit of cash from the canal company to solve his own short-term problems, I’ve got every sympathy. I need money too. If it wasn’t for Great-Uncle Samuel’s ridiculous legacy, I wouldn’t be touching this project with a barge pole.’

Rachel snorted again. ‘I don’t believe it’s just the money. You’re family, Chris.’

‘Family? None of these people really means anything to me. Not William Buckley, and not Josiah. Not even Samuel. I didn’t know any of them. And if it comes to that, my own parents and grandparents leave a lot to be desired, judging by the way they kept things from me.’

Rachel looked at me as if I was a backward child. ‘It doesn’t matter whether you knew them or not, or if you hated them. They’re still your family. You carry their genes, you’re made up of the same chromosomes. You might reject them intellectually, but it isn’t physically possible to deny the connection. And it certainly isn’t possible emotionally.’

‘What have emotions got to do with it, for God’s sake?’

She didn’t answer. She had that sceptical look on her face again.

‘You’re involved with these people, Chris. You’re involved, whether you like it or not.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but she was already on her way out of the door, back to number four. Her back was held rigid, as if she’d spoken the last word on the subject.

Damn the woman for being right.