ON OUR WAY BACK into Colchester we were once again held up in the town’s gridlocked streets. Armed with forks, shovels and pickaxes, gangs of men were slowly trenching their way through the town. Policemen were on point duty at the top of North Hill and Headgate Corner.
‘Come on, then,’ said Morley. ‘Let’s get a couple of photographs of the excavations and then we’ll pick up Miriam and bid the place farewell.’
We pulled over in the car, next to a trench where men were manhandling a rotten, rust-eaten pipe up out of the ground.
‘Excuse me,’ said Morley, clambering down into the trench, which could accommodate quite a crowd.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I wonder if we might take a couple of photographs and ask you about your work?’
‘I suppose,’ said one of the men.
I clambered down into the trench also.
‘Who are you?’ asked Morley.
‘We’re the Gas,’ said the man.
‘And we’re the Water,’ said another, not a few yards away. ‘And him down there’ – he pointed a few feet further down the trench – ‘they’re the Electric.’
‘The full complement!’ said Morley. ‘Working together in perfect harmony for a better Colchester!’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said the Gas man.
‘Trouble is, we hit one of theirs,’ said the Water man, ‘and then they hit one of ours, and we have to start all over again.’
‘I see,’ said Morley.
‘The whole thing’s taking months,’ said the Gas man.
‘It’ll take years,’ shouted the Electric man.
‘And when are the works scheduled for completion?’ asked Morley.
‘No idea,’ said the Water man. ‘You can ask the foreman.’
‘Who is?’
‘Mr Campbell.’
‘And where is Mr Campbell?’
‘I don’t know, mister, but you can be sure he’ll find you before you find him.’
And sure enough, a ferocious-looking Mr Campbell was in fact bearing down upon us at that very moment.
‘What do you think you’re doing in my hole?’ he shouted down at us.
Morley used his charms to placate Mr Campbell, explaining why we were in his hole and our purposes in writing a book about Essex – and Mr Campbell proved to be as kind and helpful as anyone we’d met. ‘The key to all human interaction,’ Morley often advised me, ‘is simply to ask others about themselves. Nothing else matters – and everything then follows.’
‘How did you end up as foreman on the works?’ asked Morley, taking his own advice, after having persuaded Mr Campbell to allow us to take as many photographs and as many notes as we liked.
‘I’d been quarrying for years,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘And then I left and started working the roads.’
‘Ah. And where were you quarrying, in Essex?’
‘It was Marden’s quarry, out on the Lexden Road.’
‘Marden, as in Arthur Marden?’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s still there?’
‘Most of the land’s been sold now.’
‘And so you left.’
‘I left before that.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘It was a long time ago now, sir. Twenty or more years. We were working at the bottom of a pit, me and Harry Ball, beneath a big sloping bank of sand and gravel – thirty foot or more it must have been – and we were in this hole that was maybe six foot deep. And there was a sort of a crack and this wall of earth came down like, hit poor old Harry, trapped him up to his neck.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Morley.
‘And so we were trying to get him out but we couldn’t do it. He was choking, you see.’
‘Choking?’
‘On all the dirt and sand and gravel. He went blue in the face, and that was it.’
‘Dear me.’
‘I tell you what, sir, I was in the war with the Essex Regiment, but that was the worst thing that ever happened to me, God’s honest truth.’
‘That is awful,’ said Morley.
‘It was. And worst of it was, the borough coroner said he thought the pit was safe, and so poor Billy and his mother never got a penny but of course Marden went from strength to strength—’
‘This is Arthur Marden?’
‘That’s right.’
‘The mayor? Who died last week?’
‘Indeed. Some people might say it was a sort of comeuppance, I suppose.’
‘Did you say Billy Ball?’ I asked. ‘Was he the son of the man who died in the quarry?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Who’s Billy Ball?’ said Morley.
‘He works at the jeweller’s,’ I said. ‘I met him at the Oyster Feast. Miriam’s met him.’
‘Miriam’s met him?’
I didn’t explain under what circumstances Miriam had met him.
‘Harry’s son,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘He’s turned out all right.’
‘Did you say you met him at the Oyster Feast, Sefton?’
‘Yes. He was serving, and he helped me when I cut my hand.’ I held up my hand, in evidence. ‘I was opening an oyster.’
‘I see. And he helped you how?’
‘He got a dressing for my hand.’
‘When was this?’
‘Just shortly before Marden died.’
Morley’s eyes widened, his moustache twitched, his weskit throbbed from within. I’d seen it before. He suddenly sprang up out of the trench like a mountain goat ascending the Matterhorn.
‘We need to go,’ he said.
I clambered up out of the trench after him.
‘Thank you, Mr Campbell,’ said Morley. ‘You have been most helpful.’
We got back in the Lagonda, drove as quickly as was possible under the circumstances and parked outside the George Hotel.
‘I just need to check something,’ said Morley.
‘Right-o,’ I said.
He went not to the hotel but to the Town Hall.
I smoked a cigarette.
‘Excellent,’ he said, when he returned.
‘Where did you go?’
‘To the toilets, Sefton, of course.’
‘I see.’
‘And now for your friend at the jeweller’s.’