by Alex Grecian
He pulled himself up into the carriage, slipping on the step and recovering, trying not to jolt the thing too much and scare the poor horses. The reins hadn’t yet frozen, and he scooped them up in his stiff hands, gave an experimental snap. The horses obeyed, dug in and moved. He snapped again. The wheels gritted against the packed snow and spun, and then miraculously found purchase and rolled.
He pulled the reins and the horses slogged around, slowly, painstakingly, blinking their big dark eyes at the snowflakes that landed on them, and finally they were facing in the opposite direction and he began to steer them toward the train depot, where he was certain Campbell was waiting.
He had no idea what he might do if he found himself alive and well in Blackhampton tomorrow, but he had no other life or purpose but to finally enact his revenge upon Calvin Campbell.
50
Jessica Perkins was wiping sweat from Heath Biggs’s forehead when Calvin Campbell burst through the doors of the church for the second time in an hour, his hair frosted white, his face raw and pink. He stopped at the back of the sanctuary long enough to glance around, located Dr Kingsley, and ran down the center aisle to him. An hour ago, Campbell had taken Hester Price from the vicar’s room, and they had left the church. The children had not seen their mother. She had hurried past them and was gone so quickly that even Jessica wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Now Campbell was back, but without Hester. Jessica dropped her cloth and glanced over at Peter and Anna, who seemed to be deep in conversation with little Virginia, then hurried over to where Campbell was gesticulating wildly at Kingsley. Campbell grabbed Kingsley’s shoulder, but the doctor pulled away from him. Even before she was close enough to hear what they were saying, she recognized the tension in their voices.
“I have an obligation to these people,” Kingsley said.
“He’s a baby,” Campbell said.
“From what you’ve told me, there’s nothing I can do to help the baby. I can help the people here.”
“It was your man, Day, who sent me to fetch you. I’m not going back without you.”
“Good. Then you can lend a hand here.”
“A baby?” Jessica said. The men stopped arguing and looked at her. “Did they find little Oliver?”
Her voice broke as she asked the question, and she realized she didn’t want them to answer. But Campbell was wild-eyed and uncaring.
“Yes,” he said. “Oliver is dead.”
Jessica gasped and clutched the lace at the throat of her dress as if the air were attacking her. “Oh, no,” she said. “I had so hoped. .”
“I must get back to Hester. I haven’t time for this.”
“Hester?” Jessica said. “Then that was her. I thought it was. You’ve found the children’s mother.”
“She’s at the inn.”
“Is there word of Mr Price?”
“He’s there, too.”
“You must take the children to their parents.”
“I’m not here for that,” Campbell said. Jessica thought he sounded cruel, uncaring, but realized that he was completely focused on something else. He seemed to be barely aware of her next to him in the cavernous room full of Blackhampton’s sick and dying citizens. “Come with me, Dr Kingsley, or I will carry you back to the inn.”
Kingsley’s eyebrows shot up with surprise, and he took a look over his shoulder as if determining whether he had room to run. Henry, Kingsley’s massive assistant, materialized at his side. Jessica wasn’t sure where he’d come from or how he managed to move so quietly.
“If the doctor wants me to,” Henry said, “I will make this man go away.”
Henry sounded utterly sure of himself, and Campbell reared back, sized up the other giant. Jessica wondered who would win in a contest between them. They were the two largest men she had ever seen. But Kingsley laughed, and it was enough to break the tension.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Henry,” Kingsley said. “But thank you.”
“He should be careful how he talks to you.”
“I think Mr Campbell is upset and simply forgot himself.”
“Yes,” Campbell said. “I’m afraid I’ve spent too much time alone over the years. I sometimes forget my manners.”
Henry nodded. “Doctor’s teaching me manners. He could teach you, too.”
“The children should be with their family,” Jessica said.
“If the doctor will come with me, I’ll come back for the children. The storm’s too much right now for them.” But there was something in Campbell’s eyes that made Jessica think he was lying. He had no intention of coming back for Virginia, Anna, and Peter. He was right; he had spent too much time alone and that also meant he hadn’t learned to properly lie without giving himself away. She had no idea why he wouldn’t want to reunite the children with their parents. Maybe he wanted to spare them the sight of their dead brother. Maybe he had his own agenda in Blackhampton and they weren’t a part of it. But whatever the case, she felt certain the children were strong enough for the brief trip to the inn.
“I’ll go,” Kingsley said. He looked around at the pews full of patients. “I’ll go, if it means that the case will be finished. Then Day and Hammersmith can come back with me and help.”
“I’ll come with you,” Henry said.
“No, I need you here, Henry. If we all go, these people will have nobody.”
“I don’t know medicine yet.”
“They don’t need medicine. They need a watchful eye.”
“I have two of those.”
“Indeed you do.” Kingsley turned to Campbell. “Take me there. Then bring me right back here.”
Campbell nodded and led the way. He waited impatiently in the foyer while Kingsley fetched his bag and buttoned his overcoat, then the doctor hurried up the aisle and allowed himself to be escorted out into the blowing wind and snow.
Jessica didn’t waste a second. She knew that the men’s tracks would quickly fill with snow. She grabbed the children and bundled them into their coats, slipped their overshoes on their feet, and hustled them out of the church, ignoring their questions. She carried Virginia.
Outside, footprints were still visible, pressed down into the snow, two or three inches deep. Two sets, Campbell’s and Kingsley’s. She pulled her hat down over her forehead, hitched Virginia higher on her hip, and set out in the direction of the inn, putting her own feet in the men’s tracks. She could only see two or three yards ahead, and snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, forcing them closed. They wanted to stay closed, to crust over with ice. The village was completely silent, white and womblike. She and the children might have been the only people left in the world.
“Hold each other’s hands,” she said.
Peter and Anna held hands and followed her away from the church, into the swirling veil of white snow.
51
Day broke the silence. “Mr and Mrs Price, I believe it’s time you told me what’s been happening here.”
Hester Price sat back on the edge of the bed and looked at her son and said nothing. Sutton Price seemed to be in a daze. He stared at his wife. Bennett Rose sat upright on the floor. “I told you what’s happened,” he said. “Sutton Price killed his own son. You saw what happened. Oliver bled when his father came near to him. The dead boy’s had his say and told us who did the deed.”
Without warning, Sutton Price roared as if every ounce of energy left in his body had found an escape route through his throat. He fell on Rose, bearing him back against the wall. Rose grunted as his back hit the plaster and the breath went out of him again. He batted Price about his head and shoulders, using his forearms and elbows, but Price seemed not to notice. He pounded his shoulders into Rose in a steady rhythm, over and over, as if rocking a baby. Rose couldn’t breathe. Day dropped Rose’s rifle and leapt on Price. He pulled the grief-stricken father off the innkeeper and pushed him toward the center of the room. The fight immediately left Price and he staggered back toward the wall for support. He stood du
mb, looking off into the middle distance as if nothing had happened. Day checked Rose, who was breathing steadily, but was mercifully unconscious. It was for the best. Day had, quite frankly, heard enough from Bennett Rose for the moment.
Day straightened his jacket and picked the rifle back up, holding it down at his side, relaxed but ready. He sniffed and looked out the window. The wind didn’t seem to be blowing as hard now, but visibility was still bad. Puffy white flakes drifted swiftly past the glass, some of them piling on the outside windowsill, joining the mound there.
He had just decided to arrest everyone in the room and let a magistrate sort it out later when Hester Price began to speak. Day held his breath, scared that any distraction might halt the flow of her words. She looked down at Oliver’s little body as she talked, running the tip of her finger back and forth along his cheek and under his chin as if soothing him to sleep, as if telling him a story.
“You have to understand,” Hester said. “He killed a man for me. It’s the most anyone’s ever done for me, and I could never. .” She hesitated for a moment, but her finger continued to trace its pattern on her son’s face. “I was younger then. I was a pretty girl, and graceful, and he loved me. I lived in West Bromwich, where I grew up. Four sisters, and I was the youngest. They were all married, all except me, and my mother found suitors for me, hoping I might find a husband before I turned twenty. I didn’t want any of them, though. My sisters had their houses and some had children already, two of them did, and they knew their lives, everything that lay ahead of them. I can’t say what it was that made me think I was different, but I did think it. Youth, maybe. Maybe that’s all it was. But one day there was a stranger at the pub, a man no one had ever seen.”
“It was Campbell,” Sutton Price said. He leaned back until he was touching the wall behind him and then he slid down it and sat on the floor next to Bennett Rose. Price draped his arms across his raised knees and buried his face in the crook of an elbow. Day couldn’t tell if he was still listening or not, but Hester Price kept talking.
“I helped out at the pub. My sister’s husband, one of my sisters’ husbands, owned it, and so I spent an hour or two there in the evenings, washing mugs and picking up and trying to be of use, biding time until my mother found the proper gentleman for me.
“After a time, she thought she had found the right man. He was respectable, perhaps twenty years older than I was, maybe more. A grocer. My parents invited him to our house for dinner and left us to walk in the garden. His name was Mr Stephens, and he was not interested in walking in the garden. He didn’t want to listen to me when I talked, and he didn’t care what I wanted in life. The things he wanted from me, I won’t speak of them. But he was insistent and I had no other suitors left, and when he proposed marriage, I agreed. You understand, I didn’t want him. There was hair growing out of his ears and his breath smelled of fish and onions, and he talked and he talked and nothing he talked about was of any interest to a foolish little girl.
“But when the stranger began to come to the pub, it was as if a door had opened in my life. He was big and strong, but he was quiet. He had long hair, going grey, but he didn’t look old, at least not terribly old. Not like Mr Stephens. But he looked tired and he looked like he had seen a lot. And I had seen nothing. West Bromwich was my whole world. His name was Calvin Campbell, and he was the most exotic creature I had ever encountered. I stayed longer every night at the pub, did chores that didn’t need to be done, tried to do things that might make him notice me. And, finally, he did. He told me that he was only going to be in West Bromwich for a week. That he was on his way somewhere else, but he never said where. I felt like he wasn’t going somewhere at all, he was going away from something, or someone.
“But he stayed. A week went by, and another week, and Calvin didn’t leave. I began avoiding Mr Stephens and spending time with Calvin instead. We took long walks and we talked for hours. He had been to America and had been to war. He told me very little about his time there, he was quiet about those years, but the mere fact that he had survived their civil war and their prison camp made me admire him all the more. And he listened to me. Nobody had ever listened to me. He asked me questions about my silly little life in my silly little Black Country village. I must have seemed like the most boring person he had ever met, but he never made me feel like it.
“Like I say, I was pretty then.
“It was all so deliciously exciting, but Calvin didn’t know about Mr Stephens, and Mr Stephens didn’t know about Calvin.
“And then, suddenly, Mr Stephens did know. Someone must have told him, because one day, as I was waiting for Calvin by the banks of the stream outside of the village, Mr Stephens came out of a copse of trees. He had been waiting there, waiting for us. He didn’t say a word to me, just pushed me down and covered my mouth before I could cry out. I remember his hand tasted like salt and shit. His other hand was under my skirts, exploring me with his dirty fingers, and he was smiling at me with his yellow teeth, and I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t do anything.
“But then, from where I lay in the grass, it appeared Mr Stephens had suddenly learned to fly. He took to the air, and in a moment I saw Calvin behind him, holding Mr Stephens by the nape of his neck like a rabbit. Mr Stephens made the most horrible squeaking noise, and then Calvin swung him around and smacked his head into the trunk of a tree.
“He kept hitting the tree with Mr Stephens’s head, and I didn’t look away. Mr Stephens’s head mashed like some kind of fruit, bright pink juice running down Calvin’s arm.”
Hester finally looked up. She ignored Day, but stared at her husband, her brow creased with concern. “Do you understand?” she said. “He did that for me.”
“He went to prison for it,” Day said.
Hester turned her gaze to Day and she nodded. She opened her mouth to say something else, but stopped. They all heard the door open downstairs.
52
Day left Hammersmith to watch over Bennett Rose and the Prices. He bounded down the stairs and found Dr Kingsley stamping his feet on the mat. Kingsley was covered with snow, from head to foot.
“Thank God you’ve made it, Doctor.”
“That man practically carried me the entire way or I wouldn’t have made it.”
“Campbell, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
Kingsley looked around as if he might find Campbell hiding behind the coatrack. “I don’t know. He was right with me when I came through the door.”
Day pulled the front door open and stuck his head out. The wind had died down a bit, but the snow was falling just as quickly, already filling in the three sets of footprints outside. Day could see where Campbell and Kingsley had approached the inn together, but the third set of prints went away from the door, around the side of the inn. Campbell had left the doctor and fled. Day briefly considered giving chase, but then thought better of it. Campbell had served his time for murder, and there was no evidence that he had committed a crime in Blackhampton. The worst he had done was to help hide Mrs Price, and Day wasn’t sure he wanted to arrest anyone for that. He was certain she hadn’t killed her son, which meant Campbell wasn’t an accessory to a murder. Day pulled his head back in and slammed the door shut.
“I’m told you found the little boy,” Kingsley said.
“He was at the bottom of the well.”
Kingsley pursed his lips and removed his hat. “There’s never anything sadder than the death of a child.”
“I’m afraid I still need to know how he died.”
“Of course,” Kingsley said. “Bring me to him.”
Day led the way up the stairs. Bennett Rose was on his feet, but Sutton Price hadn’t moved. Day wondered if the miner had fallen asleep. Hammersmith nodded a greeting to Kingsley.
“How are you, Sergeant?” Kingsley said.
“I’m just fine, sir.”
“No weakness? Fatigue? Shortness of breath?”
“All of
those, but I’ll recover.”
Kingsley shook his head. “Lie down and rest a bit, would you?”
“I will the moment we’re on the train back to London.”
Kingsley shook his head again and snorted. He looked past Hester Price at the body of Oliver on the bed. The boy was a pale lavender color, purple veins feathering up under the collar of his shirt and across his face. His skin was swollen and distended from his time in the water, his eyes puckered holes. His legs bulged against his trousers. His left arm was missing at the elbow, lost somewhere in the bottom of the well. His shirt was tattered across the front, torn and open, exposing pale white-and-blue mottled flesh that showed the evidence of deep puncture wounds. One shoe was missing and the other had been stretched by Oliver’s expanding foot so that the seams had burst. Dark liquid crusted his lips.
Day watched Kingsley’s face, but there was no expression there. The doctor had surely seen atrocities that Day couldn’t imagine.
“He bled,” Day said. “I mean the body bled, not long ago. We all saw it. You can still see it there.”
Kingsley leaned down, his face inches away from the face of the dead baby.
“How is that possible?” Day said. “A miracle?”
Kingsley shook his head and made a quiet sound that only Day heard. “No,” Kingsley said. “Nothing about this is miraculous. Did anyone touch the body before it bled?”
“His father.”
“Pressed in on the boy’s chest, did he?”
“Yes.”
“He squeezed out the remains of this little fellow’s decomposing organs.”
Hester Price gasped, and Kingsley straightened up. He turned and glared at the people gathered there in the room. “So much for superstition,” he said. “Now go. I need privacy.”
“Of course,” Day said. He held his hand out to Hester Price, but she ignored him. Hammersmith stepped closer and took her arm, helped her up off the side of the bed, and walked her out of the room. They waited in the hall. Day followed Hammersmith’s lead by taking Sutton Price’s elbow. He helped Price to his feet and motioned for Bennett Rose to precede them out of the room. Day looked back and saw that Kingsley’s satchel was on the bed at Oliver Price’s feet. The doctor had already removed his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves, preparing for the grisly work ahead of him. He glanced up at Day and let out a long breath. His eyes were sad, pink-rimmed.