But Michael Dearden was no longer listening. He got back into his pick-up, revved the engine and spun his wheels as he headed out of Withens. Cooper watched him as he climbed up Dead Edge and crashed his gears as he drove back over the border.
Cooper frowned. Derek Alton had said that Dearden avoided driving through Withens because he dreaded seeing the Oxleys in the road in front of Waterloo Terrace, as he had the day he’d knocked down and injured Jake. That might be so. But Cooper could detect no guilt in Michael Dearden. At least, not about what had happened to Jake Oxley.
Further up the village, over the bridge, Cooper could see the supports being set up for the well-dressing boards opposite Waterloo Terrace. The well consisted of a stone trough full of clear
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water that Cooper knew would be ice cold, though there was no obvious source for it.
But he noticed there was another well near the church. It had water bubbling into it from the wall behind, but it looked abandoned, and it wasn’t being prepared for dressing like the one further up the village.
There was a familiar face among the little crowd. Eric Oxley. He was the only adult member of the Oxley family here, though Cooper thought he had seen some of the children darting around, excited by what they had found waiting for them when they got home from school. Soon, the Yorkshire Traction bus driver would be doing extra business running tours to the scene. There were screens around the grave now, but a tent hadn’t been erected yet to protect the scene from the weather.
As Cooper approached, Eric Oxley seemed suddenly to remember their first meeting, when Cooper had been trying to find Shepley Head Lodge.
‘Shop!’ snorted Eric. ‘We’re bloody lucky we’ve got a pub.’
‘You’ve got a church too,’ pointed out Cooper.
‘Aye, there’s a church.’
‘The Reverend Alton says the congregations at St Asaph’s are very small, even when there are services here. I’d have thought the church would have been closed by now, to be honest.’
Oxley looked down the village at the church. ‘Everybody here thought they would have closed it, too,’ he said. ‘But that chap arrived, when we didn’t expect it.’
‘Mr Alton?’
‘Aye, Alton. Have you seen him, messing about in the graveyard?’
‘He’s trying to tidy it up, to improve the look of the place. He says nobody else will do it.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘He’s fighting a losing battle, Mr Oxley. He could do with some help.’
But Oxley just looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.
‘Have you done?’
‘I see your daughter-in-law has been working on the well dressing,’ said Cooper.
‘Aye. She does it every year. The younger ones help, too.’
‘Right.’ Cooper remembered the girls in the bath full of clay.
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‘Puddling’, they called it - making the clay ready for spreading on the boards.
‘It’ll be up at the weekend,’ said Oxley.
‘But what about the other well? The one below the church. Why isn’t that one dressed as well?’
‘That well isn’t used. It hasn’t been used for a long time.’
‘But there’s water in it.’
‘I know that.’
‘So why isn’t it used?’
‘It’s on the wrong side of the church,’ said Oxley.
‘What do you mean, the wrong side?’
Eric Oxley shrugged. ‘People won’t use the water down that end. They say it’s polluted.’
‘But there are no farming activities at the end of the village. The farms are at the other end. Down there, there’s just the church and the graveyard, and the village hall.’
‘Like I said - people reckon it’s polluted.’
‘But what by?’
But Oxley either didn’t know the answer, or couldn’t be bothered to explain it. With a twitch of his shoulder, he began to walk off.
‘Mr Oxley,’ called Cooper.
‘Aye?’ said the old man, without looking round.
Those graves at the back of the church. Were those men some of the navvies working on the railway tunnels?’
‘Yes.’
‘I noticed that they all seem to have died around the same time. What did they die of?’
Oxley had stopped, but he still didn’t answer.
‘Was it an accident in the tunnels?’ said Cooper. ‘I thought perhaps it was a roof collapse, or an explosion, or
