* * * * *
Hearing her husband shut the front door, Mathilda Tipple had time to plate a helping of her thick fish stew and place it on the table for him before Horace joined her in the kitchen.
“Love,” he said. He squeezed her hand in one of his in gentle greeting and then seated himself at the table with a sigh. Without further ado Horace began to eat.
Mathilda puttered about the kitchen to give him a few moments of peace, but joined him at the table as he was sopping up the last of the stew with a bit of sourdough bread.
She poured her husband a spot of tea while he finished, pondering his silence.
Her Horace would never be described as garrulous in any circumstance. His temper was generally amiable, reserved, and thoughtfully (if quietly) attentive. He’d schooled his expression to remain mild even when angered by the unavoidable vulgarities of his work. The ‘calm policeman’ mask hid a quick wit and sharp intellect so well that many mistook him for a dullard (to their ultimate upset). Beneath it all was a kindness 22 years of bleak police work had never driven to cynicism, and she’d always found his rare smiles and rarer laughs precious.
Tonight, however, his dusty blue eyes were leagues distant in thought, and his short, curly grey hair was fuzzed about the ears, as though he’d plowed his fingers through it absently. Which was something he only did when he found a problem particularly vexing. And he was frowning ever so slightly; Mathilda could think of only one thing that might work this change on him.
“The trial’s taken a turn, has it?” she asked.
“Why might you say that?”
She knew she’d hit the nail on the head as Horace turned his pensive eyes on her, and she could almost see the thoughts flitting through his head as he tried to work out her reasoning. After all, it was far too soon for the newspapers to report anything amiss, and the police weren’t in the habit of blurting things to the public, et cetera.
“At times I think I’m as good a detective as you are,” Mathilda returned with a smile. “For weeks you’ve thought of nothing, spoken of nothing save your case and how the world will at last be free of the Harkers. You’re brooding, so I can only think something’s happened to sully or muddle the proceedings somehow.”
“Hm.”
Horace had once told her he wasn’t sure how many policemen actually confided in their wives regarding their work; even if he were the only one who ever did so, she would always hold his confidence. Truth be told, Mathilda felt she’d often urged him along particular courses of action to good ends simply because her commonsense and intelligence weren’t so mired in a policeman’s world.
He now told her that his murder suspect had disappeared, and that the Harker lawyers – speaking on the family’s behalf – had tried to muck up the case in retaliation.
“I hope this will be only a temporary setback,” he concluded, “though we made little enough headway in our footwork this afternoon.”
“Well, seems to me as though the lawyers are grasping at straws,” Mathilda replied. “You oughtn’t worry on that front.”
“How so?”
“I wouldn’t attack my opponent’s professional character unless every other means were lost to me. I think they must be desperate.”
Horace considered this and nodded.
“Be that as it may, love, I still need my murderer back in the dock.”
“You’ll find him, Rory,” she said with a smile and a pat on his hand. “Of that I have no doubt.”
Saturday
Their captors left them alone after locking up David and his friend again. The room was a different one, and light flickering through a small, oblong hole in one of the walls broke up the darkness.
Though it took the priest a few moments to get his bearings, he lurched to Lewis’s side as quickly as he could.
All night long David kept a dogged vigil over him.
Lew only woke a few times, each time muttering apologies his friend was quick to silence, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. The sergeant’s slumber was fitful – marked by labored breathing, bouts of coughing, and an occasional low groan – and David feared what that meant for his friend’s health.
As dawn’s hazy fingers crept through the high, dirty windows and he was just steeling himself to make a thorough examination of Lew’s injuries, the door to the room crashed open.
The priest’s heart stuttered a beat, but someone only plunked a sloshing bucket and a loaf of bread inside the door. He then retreated before David had finished rising stiffly to his feet.
As the bolt slid home again, the priest crossed the ground to the door and discovered a pail of water (brackish smelling, but water nonetheless) in addition to the stale bread.
Bread. Water. Despite everything, David’s empty stomach panged and growled with the thought of food, and the pain of his parched throat became instantly more acute with relief so near. But, no: he would hold until he saw to his friend.
He was just mustering his courage to do so when the sound of a sigh reached his ears. The priest spun on his heel and peered hopefully through the gloom in Lew’s direction, but the man was still out cold.
A yawn sounded behind David and he turned again. What he’d mistaken for a pile of rubbish in the far corner was in fact a young man with lank brown hair and a round, moon-like face with a dimpled chin and wide-set eyes; the fellow was now sitting up and stretching. A ratty blanket fell away as he stood.
“‘llo,” the other murmured through another gaping yawn.
David nodded a wary greeting. “Who are you?”
“I’s is ‘nnocent.”
“Pardon?”
Though languages were David Powell’s forte, he had the hardest time deciphering what the other fellow was saying at first, and he couldn’t tell if the young chap just had a thick accent or a speech impediment.
After a few repetitions, however, the clergyman understood the other’s name was Innocent and that he was as much a newcomer as they were. David gave him his name.
“Who’s ‘at?”
Innocent pointed at the sergeant.
“My best mate, Lew.”
Finally mustering his nerve, David knelt down again next to his friend. Lewis lay curled on his side as he had been much of the night, arms drawn tightly across his middle, and his face, under rusty streaks of dried blood, was grayish and pinched.
“‘E s-s-sick?” Innocent stuttered. To the priest’s surprise, the young man crouched down beside him also.
“Sorely injured.”
Innocent cocked his head and nodded.
“‘Urt b-b-bad.”
Between the two of them, they maneuvered the sergeant onto his back, pried his arms away, and removed the remnants of his uniform tunic. The last fight had reduced the dark wool to little more than ribbons, and the shirt Lew wore underneath was hardly better, though it still (at least) had the appearance of a shirt.
David was at first glad to see that the blood staining his friend’s front appeared to have come entirely from injuries to his face – a nose possibly broken afresh, a gashed chin – rather than anything like a knife wound. But the way Lew was rasping, wheezing with every breath made the priest rip the fellow’s shirt open as well.
“Oh.”
“Wha’ s’it?”
David released his friend, and the sergeant curled back up reflexively with a moan.
“He’s…I’ve never….” He’d never seen anyone’s ribcage so obviously or badly broken. Lew’s right side…. “He’s in a very, very bad way.”
Innocent nodded. “I pray.”
And the young man bowed his head.
The simple declaration sent a silent but deafening roar through David’s brain – a scream that shrieked a wordless question. A question he could not answer; a demand he could not satisfy; a failing he could not overcome.
This failing was what the priest had so wanted to tell his friend about the afternoon before: it was the cause of his fear, his shame, his cowardice, a
nd his despair. It was the reason he started so badly at every rustle their captors made. It was why the tangible shadow of death struck such terror in his soul.
The scream hadn’t begun just with yesterday’s events, but with the brutal kidnapping it had gained focus; it had gotten louder, to the point that David could ignore it no longer.
He, a priest, could not pray.
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