The Black Country tms-2

by Alex Grecian

  It looked like a battlefield.

  Kingsley had tried to turn the altar into a makeshift worktop, but the vicar had put his foot down and so he had moved the podium down to the middle of the aisle and emptied his satchel on it. He had sent two boys to the apothecary with a few quid and a list of ingredients to bring back. Basically, he’d told the boys to empty the apothecary out. And he was sure there still wouldn’t be enough to work with. There had to be more than a hundred seriously ill people to take care of, and Kingsley had yet to see a well-stocked village apothecary. Still, he would assess the situation when the boys returned and begin treatment as soon as he possibly could. Meanwhile, he and Henry were doing what they could to make the villagers more comfortable.

  He helped Henry transfer a thin young woman onto a pew, then stopped by little Hilde Rose’s pew to check on her. She was awake, her eyes open and staring at the timbers of the ceiling. She turned her head when he approached.

  “I feel all right now,” she said. “May I go home?”

  Kingsley smiled. “Let’s have you rest a bit longer, okay?”

  “If you say I must.”

  “I do say so. I have something for you, though.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the tiny box that held the eyeball. “I was told this is yours.”

  “My eye!” She took the box from him and opened it, peeked inside and closed it again, and held it tight to her chest. “Thank you for returning it. It’s such an odd little thing, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose it must seem so to you.”

  “You’re finished looking at it?”

  “I am.”

  “And was it helpful to you? Do you know who it belongs to?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it belongs to you.”

  “But it started out in someone’s face. We should try to discover who that might have been, shouldn’t we?”

  “I’m reasonably certain it started out in a pig’s face, my dear. I don’t think this is a human eyeball, though I can’t be sure.” Kingsley almost laughed at Hilde’s look of disappointment. “It’s better that nobody lost an eye, though, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Hilde said. “I suppose it is. Oh, of course it is. I’m sorry. It’s only that it would be so much more special if it were from a person, wouldn’t it? I mean, if the person weren’t hurt too terribly.”

  Kingsley opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, the front doors banged open. Calvin Campbell rushed through the foyer and down the central aisle without bothering to shut the doors behind him. He took no notice of anything or anyone, but ran, slipping and sliding in his wet boots, straight to the apse and through the door to the vicar’s cramped quarters. Brothwood hurried after him.

  Kingsley patted Hilde on her head and stood. He looked for Henry and saw his giant assistant rushing up the aisle toward the foyer. Henry bounded up the three steps and closed the door against the blowing wind and snow. He turned to Kingsley with a puzzled look on his face, but the doctor shook his head and shrugged.

  A moment later, someone shrieked. It was a woman’s voice, and it came from the small room that Campbell and the vicar had just entered. The voice sank in pitch and became a low wailing sound, longer and louder than the combined moaning of the villagers in the sanctuary. It wasn’t recognizably human, there were no words, but it was undeniably the most mournful sound Kingsley had ever heard.

  Someone’s life had just been ruined.

  He and Henry stood, side by side, their eyes riveted to the door. It slowly opened and the vicar reappeared. He went directly to the altar and knelt before the cross. Then Calvin Campbell emerged from the back room, his arms around a woman who could barely walk. Kingsley was good at sizing people up by sight: age, weight, social class, obvious maladies and defects. But this woman’s face was distorted by crushing grief, and it was impossible to tell whether she was thirty years old or fifty. She staggered along beside Campbell, who was half carrying her, her long blond hair like a veil, a rough blanket draped over her shoulders.

  The two of them walked past Kingsley and Henry without looking up or acknowledging their presence. They went beyond the last of the pews and turned and walked through the foyer. Campbell opened the main doors and led the woman out.

  Henry watched after them until they had been swallowed by the storm, then closed the doors again and returned to Kingsley’s side.

  “Who was she?” he said.

  Kingsley glanced to the front of the church where Brothwood still knelt in prayer. “We’ll find out eventually,” he said.

  Henry nodded and crossed the aisle and picked up another pew. There was still work to do.

  45

  The man in the tunnels had walked slowly south from the unmarked grave and continued for half a mile. He was weak and tired. No sleep and little food in days, so he sat for a bit with his back to the wall. He knew the old seams and pits like the back of his hand. He had spent many lonely nights traversing every passage. He had visited the grave often, each time wondering whether he would finally feel remorse or shame, and each time he had felt nothing at all. He knew that he was an evil man, but knowing it didn’t make him feel anything, either.

  There was a second grave that had been dug next to the first, an open empty hole, waiting for the man, but he hadn’t found the strength yet to lie down in it.

  He was far from the active seam, but there were still ways in and out, and he easily found the egress he wanted. When he felt rested, he climbed twenty wooden rungs that were sunk deep into the earth on both sides of the shaft. Nobody used those rungs anymore, but at one time this had been a heavily trafficked shaft and dozens of men had traveled up and down them every day. The ladder here was permanent and would probably outlast everybody in the village. It would last until the tunnel eventually collapsed in on itself.

  The rungs were dusted with snow, each rung piled higher than the one below it, but he was still mildly surprised to find himself in the midst of a storm when he poked his head up out of the shaft. He had been in the tunnels for days and had anticipated bright spring sunshine up above.

  He hauled himself up onto level ground and adjusted the pack on his back. He squinted into the snow. Ahead was the village well. Beyond it, he knew, was the inn. He was a few paces from the main road. His home was nearby, and he assumed his remaining children were waiting there for him. It was even possible his wife was waiting there, too, but he considered it far more likely that she was already in West Bromwich or Scotland or somewhere even farther away. Maybe she had taken the children with her. The man wouldn’t have blamed her for that.

  The parish church wasn’t far. Beyond that, nothing but wilderness. He judged it was late morning, perhaps early afternoon, but the smooth grey sky gave him no clues. It wasn’t nighttime, and that was the only thing he could tell for certain. Constable Grimes might be anywhere in Blackhampton, but he was most likely to be somewhere along the road between the well and the church. That was where the tiny jail, the tiny post office, and all the other tiny businesses were located. The man had just got his bearings and decided on a course of action when he heard a woman crying. The noise was soft, but distinct, muffled by the falling snow and distorted by the wind. The man took a step back away from the road, and a moment later, two shadowy figures staggered past, moving purposefully along the road. They were looking down at their feet and walked right by the man without seeing him.

  He was close enough to recognize the woman as his wife. And she was crying. And he was reasonably certain he knew why.

  She was not in West Bromwich or Scotland. She had stayed. There was only one reason for her to do that. And there was only one reason she might now be crying, so many days after she had left him.

  They were headed in the opposite direction from the one he’d already decided to go in. They were walking toward the inn. He let the couple get a few yards ahead of him and then he stepped onto the road, its cobblestones buried deep under ice and snow, and followed in their rapidl
y filling tracks.

  46

  Day and Hammersmith trudged through the snow, half supporting each other, snowdrifts up past their ankles, swirling under the legs of their trousers, and whipping about their calves. Day was nearly frozen solid, his shredded coat and gloves useless, sopping wet. Hammersmith was sicker than he had let on, barely conscious. Blackhampton had not been kind to its London visitors.

  They followed in the general direction in which the village woman had taken the baby’s body, hoping to find shelter wherever they were going. Then the inn loomed up out of the storm, no more than twenty feet in front of them, the enormous ancient tree sheltering it from the wind like a cliff, and Hammersmith closed his eyes and walked blindly toward it, pulling Day along. Someone opened the door when they got there and someone else ushered them to one of the blazing fires and settled them in big comfortable armchairs by the hearth. Their coats and boots were removed and thick blankets wrapped around them and hot mugs of boiled broth shoved in their hands and, when Hammersmith opened his eyes again, Bennett Rose was standing in front of him with a glass of beer. He set the beer on a little table beside the chair and nodded gravely at the sergeant and disappeared in the direction of the dining room.

  Hammersmith sipped at his broth. He didn’t care whether it was drugged. Warmth spread through his chest and radiated outward through his arms and into his fingers, down through his groin and legs and toes. He gulped the rest of the broth and set the mug on the little table and took up the beer and drank that, too. For a brief moment, he thought he might vomit it all back up, but it stayed down and he began to feel like a human being again. He glanced over at Day and saw that the same process of transformation had begun to occur in the inspector. He closed his eyes again.

  –

  He woke to the sound of the inn’s door opening and slamming shut again. He sat upright and looked over the back of the chair and saw Calvin Campbell step across the threshold into the great room. Campbell was escorting, practically carrying, a woman who might have been lovely had her face not been screwed up in a rictus of grief.

  Bennett Rose emerged from the back and went to them and took the woman by the hand. He led Campbell and the woman up the stairs.

  Hammersmith stood and saw that Day was awake, too. Hammersmith was nearly dry and felt marginally better than he had all day. He left his blanket on the chair and followed Day to the stairs, and the two of them went up. There was a gathering of villagers outside a room down the hall from Day’s, and the crowd parted for Day and Hammersmith to pass through. Calvin Campbell was standing just inside the door. He glanced at the policemen, but said nothing. The woman who had come with him was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at something there.

  Hammersmith crossed the room, looked over the woman’s shoulder, and saw Oliver Price’s body. The woman was smoothing the baby’s wispy hair back from his pale forehead, absently repeating the same motion again and again. Hammersmith shuddered and looked away. Day gripped his arm and moved past him, put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, and waited until she looked up at him.

  “Mrs Price?” Day said. “Hester, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  The woman blinked and a single tear escaped, ran down her face, and dropped from her chin onto the back of Day’s hand.

  Day stepped away from her and nodded to Campbell before leaving the room. Hammersmith followed him. Bennett Rose stepped out into the hallway after them and shut the door behind him. They went quietly to the stairs and down before Hammersmith finally spoke. “Shouldn’t we question her?” he said.

  “When she’s had some time,” Day said. “I have a feeling whatever’s happened here has reached its conclusion, and not in the way Hester Price hoped it would. She doesn’t have anywhere to go now.”

  “Do you think she killed her child?”

  “No,” Rose said. Hammersmith was surprised to hear him speak. “No woman would end her own child.”

  “No,” Day said. “I agree, but not for that reason.” He and Hammersmith had both seen crimes against children. They were aware that mothers were as capable of evil acts as anyone else. “I think the only thing keeping her here was the hope that Oliver was still alive.”

  Day crossed to the hearth and took a seat. Hammersmith reluctantly followed. Bennett Rose fetched mugs of beer and sat with them. He seemed to need something to do, and he seemed to want company.

  After a time, Rose cleared his throat to get their attention. “I woulda made tea, but I don’t know about the water.”

  “Yes,” Day said. “Beer might be safer at the moment.”

  “I did somethin’ last night,” Rose said.

  “You drugged us last night,” Hammersmith said.

  Rose nodded and looked at his feet and mumbled something incoherent.

  “I’m sorry?” Day said. “I can’t hear you.”

  Rose looked back up at him. “It was the wrong thing to do, but I meant no harm by it. Just wanted to keep you somewheres Rawhead wouldn’t take you.”

  “That’s foolishness,” Hammersmith said. “You might have killed us if you’d got the dosage wrong.”

  Rose’s expression was pure misery. “I know it.”

  “I’m afraid there will be consequences, Mr Rose,” Day said.

  “All I’d ask is you remember why I did it. That I was tryin’ to help. A good night’s sleep’s all I wanted for you.”

  “We’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  Rose nodded again and slumped back in his chair. Hammersmith would have liked to be able to talk freely with Inspector Day, but even if Rose left the room, there was nothing to talk about. Not really. They had discovered two of the three missing Prices. The case was nearly finished and all the little mysteries of Blackhampton were resolving themselves. Sitting and waiting made him feel restless. All they needed to do was find Sutton Price and they could go home.

  As if on cue, the inn’s front door opened and a man lurched across the threshold. He was disheveled and wore a week’s worth of beard. His eyes were wide and wild, and they settled on the two policemen before the man had come even three steps into the room.

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  Day stood up and adjusted his jacket. “More properly,” he said, “who are you, sir?”

  “That’s Sutton Price,” Rose said. He jumped to his feet and pointed at the scruffy man, an outlet for the innkeeper’s guilt and nervous energy. “Where were you? Where were you when your son was dying?”

  Sutton Price ignored the question. He pointed at the back door next to the bar. “Is my wife through there or upstairs?”

  “She’s upstairs,” Day said.

  Bennett Rose scowled and turned and walked away from them, disappearing into the dining room. The door swung shut behind him.

  “Is she with him?” Sutton Price said.

  “Who do you mean?” Day said.

  “You know who I mean.” Price dropped his pack on the floor and rooted through it. He came up with a revolver, but he didn’t point it at the policemen. Instead, he moved toward the stairs. Day’s Colt Navy was in his hand instantly, pointed at Price’s center mass.

  “Please put your weapon down, Mr Price.”

  “I can’t do that.” Price’s voice was even and measured and reasonable.

  “What do you have planned, sir?”

  “I’m going to kill him and take my family back.”

  “I can’t let you kill anyone.”

  “I understand,” Price said. In one fluid motion, he swung the revolver up and pulled the trigger. There was a roar of exploding gunpowder and a piece of the mantel splintered away behind Day. Before Day could return fire, there was a corresponding blast from the back of the room and Price’s pack burst open, scattering its contents over the floor of the great room. Bennett Rose strode through the dining room door, a rifle held at his waist, pointed at Price.

  “I meant to miss you with that shot, Sutton,” Rose said. “But I won’t miss again, trust me
on it.”

  Price’s revolver wavered, suddenly presented with three possible targets. Hammersmith used that split second of indecision to launch himself across the room. He rammed into Price, knocking him on his back, the revolver spinning away across the floor. Day walked calmly to Rose and pushed the end of the rifle’s barrel down toward the floor.

  “Thank you, Mr Rose,” Day said. “That’s quite enough shooting for one day.”

  “I’ve ruined my own floor,” Rose said.

  “With good cause.”

  There was a clatter of footsteps on the stairs, and Calvin Campbell appeared on the landing.

  “What’s happened?” he said. Then he saw Hammersmith helping Sutton Price to his feet and his face went pale. “Keep him away from her,” he said.

  Price roared back at him. “She’s mine!” Hammersmith had to restrain him, pulling his arms up behind his back. It wasn’t easy to do given that the sergeant still felt weak and sick to his stomach.

  “You’re a monster!” Campbell said. “You killed your own child!”

  The fury went out of Sutton Price, and he sagged against Hammersmith. “He’s really gone, then?”

  “You know he is,” Campbell said. “You’ve not only killed your boy, but Hester, too. She’ll never recover from this.”

  “I didn’t do it.” Price’s voice was soft now, barely audible in the huge front room of the inn, drowned out by the sound of the crackling fires on both sides. “I’ve spent the week looking for him, hoping he was somehow alive.”

  Campbell looked down at his feet. He was still blocking the landing, as if to keep Price from running past and up. When he spoke, his voice was as soft as Price’s, but there was steel in it and everyone clearly heard him. “Then you’re a fool. Even if that’s the truth, you’ve done everything wrong.”