The Black Country tms-2

by Alex Grecian

  Day took a last look at Oliver’s delicate little body before he shut the door. There was a part of him that wanted to scoop the boy back up in his arms and carry him away from that cold, unhappy village.

  53

  Give her some time,” Bennett Rose said. “She can have this room.”

  He turned the knob and swung open the door of the room across the hall. Day would have liked to put more distance between Hester Price and the room where Kingsley was performing his dreadful work on her son, but he appreciated that Bennett Rose was making an attempt to be useful again. He stuck his head in and looked around the room. It was nearly identical to his own room at the other end of the hall, but the view out the window was of the woods behind the inn, a dark shape rubbed into the horizon by a giant thumb, obscured by layer upon layer of thick snowflakes.

  Grey upon grey.

  He motioned to Hammersmith, and the sergeant led Hester into the room and helped her sit on the edge of the bed. The three men left the room, joined Sutton Price in the hall, and shut the door on Hester.

  “Someone should be stationed up here in the hall, in case the doctor needs something,” Day said.

  And, he didn’t say, to keep an eye on Hester Price. Hammersmith would understand. One never knew what a grieving parent might be capable of doing.

  “You can handle. .” Hammersmith waved his hand, taking in Bennett Rose and Sutton Price.

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Hammersmith nodded and went to the door of the room where Kingsley was presumably working. He leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms, patient and ready. Day wondered how much the sergeant had recovered. He guessed not at all. It was very like Hammersmith to ignore himself until he collapsed. But the case was nearly finished. By tomorrow they would be back in London, and Day would recommend that Hammersmith be relieved of duty for a week, maybe two. Make the man rest, whether he liked it or not.

  Sutton Price stood where he had been left in the hallway. Day prodded him in the back, herding him toward the staircase and down. One of the fires had died. The great room was dim and, all at once, musty, as if the place had been shut up for years. An open window might have cleared away the fustiness, but the storm outside demanded that everyone remain shut away from the world.

  Then the door opened and the stillness was shattered as Jessica Perkins bustled in with the three Price children. She was carrying the littlest, Virginia, and dropped her on the inn’s floor, collapsing against the front door as it closed. Virginia saw her father and ran to him.

  “Father!”

  He stooped and picked her up. The two older children were more shy. They hung back and edged their way closer to Sutton Price. He took three quick steps toward them, with Virginia clinging to him like a monkey, went down on his knees, and scooped Peter and Anna into his arms.

  Bennett Rose disappeared and came back with a stack of thin blankets. He handed two of them to Day and took one to Jessica Perkins, who used it to dry her hair. Day took his blankets and draped them over the shoulders of Peter and Anna. They appeared not to notice him or care.

  Day gave them a few moments and then cleared his throat. “Your stepmother is upstairs,” he said. “Would you like to see her?”

  Nobody spoke, but Anna shook her head. No.

  “Come, children,” Jessica said. There were dark bruises under her eyes, and her shoulders were slumped and rounded with weariness. She hung her blanket on the coatrack and held out her hands. “You should say hello to her.”

  Sutton Price drew back from the two older children and set Virginia down next to them. “Go,” he said.

  “We don’t want to,” Virginia said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll still be here when you come back. I have to talk to the policeman, but I won’t leave you again.”

  The three children went reluctantly to Jessica, who took them to the stairs and up.

  Rose busied himself with the embers in the colder of the two fireplaces, while Day led Sutton Price to the largest and most comfortable of the armchairs positioned at the hearth of the other. There, the fire still blazed cheerily and the mustiness of the room gave way to a strong ashy, nutty odor. Price sank heavily into the chair and sighed.

  “You have questions,” he said.

  “A few,” Day said. “I hardly know where to begin.”

  “I’ll do my best to answer.”

  Day gathered his thoughts. He could hear Jessica Perkins upstairs, in murmured conversation with Hammersmith, but couldn’t make out their words.

  “You were down in the tunnels?” Day said.

  “Hester had disappeared. And little Oliver. .” Price looked away, into the fire, waiting for the ability to speak again. Day gave him time, let him work his emotions into something bearable. “She took him,” Price said at last. “At least I thought she had. But where could she go? You must understand, I came home, early in the morning. Hester and Oliver were gone. They had left me. That’s what I believed. I knew in my heart that she had finally left, and that she had taken our son.” He stopped again, but only for a few seconds, swallowed hard, and continued. “I always knew she would leave. She never loved me, always a part of her waiting for him to come and find her.”

  “Him?” Day said.

  “Campbell. I didn’t know his name until he arrived here in the village. He actually did come for her when he was released from prison. After all this time. But Oliver is mine. Was mine. Not Campbell’s. That was my son, and they couldn’t have him, damnit.”

  “Why the tunnels? They might have been anywhere.”

  “Where else? A mother and child in the woods? Risking wolves and badgers and the weather? Whatever else she might be-and she was not a good wife-she loved that boy. Didn’t care one whit for the other children. They weren’t hers, you know, and she made them know it. But she loved Oliver. She wouldn’t carry him into the woods. She hadn’t taken his belongings, so she couldn’t have been on her way somewhere else, couldn’t have taken the train anywhere. At least, not yet. She was not well-liked in Blackhampton. Where would she go? Put yourself in my place and think as I thought.”

  “Below ground.”

  “And so that’s where I went.”

  “But she wasn’t there.”

  “No.”

  “She was being hidden from you. I think she was at the church. Why would she hide from you?”

  “I don’t know.” But Sutton Price avoided Day’s eyes. He looked away at the dancing fire.

  “You had threatened her?”

  “Never.”

  “Hurt her?”

  “No, never.” Price looked back at Day, this time with conviction. “I would never raise a hand to her.”

  “And yet she feared you, didn’t she? I believe she was able to persuade the vicar that she was in danger, and so he hid her away from you.”

  Price shook his head back and forth, but said nothing.

  “Why stay in the mines?” Day said. “Why not come out when you didn’t find her?”

  “There are miles of tunnel down there. Miles of them.”

  “Who killed your son, Mr Price?”

  “He did it!” Bennett Rose said. “He did it! You saw that he did it. The body bled.”

  Price bounded from his chair. Day leapt forward, but not quickly enough to get between the two men before they grappled. Rose landed a solid fist on Price’s ear, and the miner bellowed and kicked out, catching the innkeeper’s shin with the steel toe of his boot. Then Day managed to insert himself in the mix and push the men apart. It wasn’t hard to do. The fight went out of them instantly.

  Day heard a door close upstairs, and then Hammersmith was pounding down the steps. He stopped at the landing and grabbed the banister, sought Day out in the cluster of men by the fireplace. His expression was panicked. Jessica crowded onto the landing behind him, and Day could see the three children farther up at the bend in the stairs.

  “Sir,” Hammersmith said. His voice rasped quietly, but could be easi
ly heard over the hard breathing of Price and Rose. “She didn’t answer when we knocked at her door. We gave her a moment, and then Miss Jessica went in. But Hester Price has left. She’s gone out the window.”

  Day went to the front door. He heard Hammersmith come down the stairs behind him.

  “I looked out the window,” Hammersmith said. “She’s nowhere in sight.”

  Day pulled the door open and a swirl of snowflakes entered the room in a mighty rush. Cold air settled along Day’s shoulders and crept down the collar of his waistcoat.

  “I think I know where she’s gone,” Day said. “Watch them. They don’t seem to get along.” He gestured at the room, indicating Sutton Price and Bennett Rose. He didn’t anticipate any trouble from Jessica Perkins and the three children, but the men remained tense and dangerous. Still, there was little they could do, and the storm would keep them inside. If they decided to resume their fight, Hammersmith could handle them. The miner and the innkeeper seemed geared for short bursts of manic energy, but they had no stamina.

  Day pulled on his torn and useless overcoat.

  “I’m going with you,” Price said.

  “No, sir, you stay with your children. They’ve had a difficult time of it and they need you.”

  With that, Day stepped out into the snow and pulled the door shut behind him. By now he could make the trip to the church with his eyes closed. The wind had died down and visibility had improved, but the road was buried under a foot of ice and powder. Day moved as quickly as he could, plodding through drifts. He tried to run and realized he must look ridiculous lifting each foot high and pushing out and down through the thin hard cover that had melted and refrozen into the soft snow beneath, then the next foot, like a duck with a tall hat. One foot, two foot, one foot, two foot. But he kept going. There was no one to see him.

  His nose went numb first, and he found himself wishing his ears would follow suit. They burned and stung. His eyes watered and he wiped the tears away, worried they might freeze on his cheeks.

  He tromped around the bend and saw the outline of the church ahead, still too far. The end of the road. He put his head down and watched his feet, concentrated on the up-and-down motion, ignored his stinging ears and hands and toes, and tried hard not to think about the distance, just move through it, decrease it, step by agonizing step.

  And then he was there. The grey stone façade stretched up and out in front of him, and he tripped over the invisible first step of the wide front stoop. He used the momentum and controlled his fall, pushing through the front doors and arriving abruptly in the foyer. He caught his balance, spun on his heel, and shut the doors.

  Inside, the church was cold, but compared to the frozen landscape just outside, it felt snug and toasty. Day stamped his feet a few times, both to get the snow off his shoes and to circulate his blood. His ears began to ping painfully as they warmed up. He clapped his hands over them to speed the process and left the foyer.

  He entered the sanctuary at a trot and hurried down the center aisle for what was to be his last time, looking neither left nor right. He couldn’t afford to be stopped or slowed, and the sight of Blackhampton’s sick and dying was of no possible help to him. He noticed Henry Mayhew as he passed him, but didn’t acknowledge the friendly giant.

  The vicar Brothwood stepped out in front of Day as he reached the pulpit, but Day walked past, ignoring him completely. He heard Brothwood follow him as he pushed through the door and into the private room at the back of the church.

  Day went straight to the small fireplace and found the smooth round stone in the surround. He tried turning it, but it was too slippery, there was no purchase. Brothwood put a hand on his shoulder and reached past him, pushed the stone hard. It slid back under the mantel, and Brothwood hooked a finger under the edge of the newly recessed area and pushed something else there that Day couldn’t see. The floor of the firebox dropped down at the front, beneath the level of the room’s floor, and a section of the hearth slid suddenly and silently out on what Day imagined was a well-oiled set of casters. There was a narrow staircase, not much more than a ladder built into the rocks, that led down into the dark beneath the fireplace.

  Brothwood smiled and led the way down the stairs. Day reached into his pocket and found his gun. He kept his hand there, ready, and followed the vicar. It occurred to him that he might have been wise to bring Henry Mayhew along.

  Day’s eyes adjusted quickly to the dim candlelight under the floor. He ducked his head and stepped off the last rung and onto a solid slab of stone, roughly six by six feet. The ceiling was made of the floorboards of the room above and was only about five feet high. Day had to stoop as he followed Brothwood out into the tiny underground room. He and the vicar stood side by side, bent over, their shoulders braced hard against the ceiling, their necks bent uncomfortably. Day was several inches taller than Brothwood, but the room wasn’t built for either of them.

  It was a priest hole. Exactly what Day had expected to find. Built centuries ago, when the church was an inn and Catholic priests were regularly put to death. Many towns like Blackhampton had built secret chambers in public buildings, sometimes ingeniously hidden, where a priest could hide from questing soldiers. A priest hole only needed to be large enough to conceal one man for a few hours at a time.

  There wasn’t much to see. The room was abandoned, but there were still signs that someone had recently lived in it. There was a candle, just a stub that had burned down to the ground and wouldn’t last more than another hour. A bedroll in one corner, hastily abandoned, a round scorched spot on the stone where countless fires had been built, and a small wooden box. Day hunched himself past Brothwood and looked in the box. It held a few dry biscuits and a tin cup, half full of cider. Day sniffed. The musty odor of sex lingered in the air, and Day was reminded of Campbell’s secret visits to the church. He looked at Brothwood. The vicar’s features danced and melted in the flickering light, but it seemed to Day that his smile was warm and genuine. It was probably a relief to have his secret exposed and finally lifted from his shoulders.

  “How long was Mrs Price hiding here?” Day said.

  “The night she left her husband, she came here.”

  “Why here?”

  “Where else would she go? Her husband certainly never came to church. He knew where he was destined to go. He wouldn’t have thought to look for her here.”

  “What do you mean? Where was Sutton Price destined to go?”

  “To hell, sir. For what he did to his first wife.”

  “What did he do to her? What do you know about that?”

  “I know nothing. But I believe what everyone else believes. He murdered Mathilda Price. She never left this village alive.”

  Day made a face. If Sutton Price had murdered his first wife, then their nanny, Hester, the second wife, might have had something to do with it. Blackhampton was a viper’s nest of rumor and innuendo, none of it proven or provable.

  “Why hide her at all?”

  “Because Sutton Price kills his wives. I believe I saved Hester’s life that night.”

  “And what of her children?”

  “Had she brought them, I would have hidden them as well.”

  “But weren’t you worried? You say he kills his wives. Who’s to say he wouldn’t kill his children?”

  “Who would kill a child?”

  Who indeed? Someone had killed Oliver. Maybe it was Sutton Price, maybe it was Hester Price, but neither of those options felt right. There was another solution, something else that nagged at the back of Day’s mind, but it made him uncomfortable and he avoided thinking about it directly. In any case, the vicar Brothwood hadn’t killed anyone. He had, at worst, been guilty of poor judgment.

  “Why not go to Constable Grimes for help?” Day said.

  “What could he have done? He’s a good man, but he’s not competent. He even had to bring you here to help him.”

  “Where is Grimes now? Do you know?”

  “I�
�m sure I wouldn’t have the slightest idea.”

  Day shook his head. “Thank you for your time, sir,” he said.

  He didn’t wait for a reply, but took the rungs back up to the surface two at a time and emerged in the vicar’s room. He wondered again how the man and his wife could both occupy that small space, and wondered, too, about the nights they had spent with Hester Price directly below them, huddled against the bare wall on a thin bedroll. Had Calvin Campbell been down there with her? How much had the vicar overlooked in his zeal to do the right thing?

  Day left the room, didn’t bother to close the door behind him, and drifted down the center aisle of the sanctuary, wondering about his next move. In fact, though he hated to admit it to himself, he was probably avoiding the storm. The longer he lingered in the church, the longer he remained warm.

  Calvin Campbell and Hester Price were out there somewhere, together and probably freezing, away from the warmth and safety of the church and the inn. Day didn’t know where else to look for them.

  “Mr Day.” Henry Mayhew came up the aisle toward him, moving with purpose. “Did you come to help?”

  “Hello, Henry.”

  “Hello.”

  “You’re helping the sick here?”

  “Yes, sir. And a lot of them.”

  “You’re doing good work.”

  “Not really, sir. Nothing much I can do for them.”

  “I’m afraid I feel the same. There’s a murderer in Blackhampton, and I seem to be out of ideas. Nothing feels right to me.”

  “Is the murderer at the church?” Henry looked around with such an exaggerated expression of unease that Day almost laughed aloud. He stifled the impulse, recognizing that it would hurt the gentle giant’s feelings.