“I’ll need better than that,” Maris said, sounding almost too reasonable. “Show me evidence of a crime.”
“He’s a murderer!”
“Then show me a body, Mister Spencer.”
Spencer growled. He looked about for support. “Come now!” he shouted at the gathering crowd. “Surely you lot have no truck with terrorist reformists! Stand with me and help me put this man where he belongs!”
The crowd shuffled.
“Go back to Vernella, you mincing git!” someone shouted, which drew murmurs of both support and consternation.
Spencer’s eyes fell on Christopher. “You,” he said. “Uncle Fernand might have been a—” His fists clenched and his jaw bulged. “But, he was a good traditionalist, and he served the Buckley family well. You know what these people are capable of! Say something! Don’t let this repugnant bloody cockroach just—”
Something in the timid, cringing Arthur Norwood snapped. He threw up his hands, howled wordlessly—and charged at Spencer like an enraged bull.
The first punch made a hard, wet cracking sound, and Chris gasped and jumped back as blood sprayed from Spencer’s face in a shower of dark droplets. The two men fell backwards into the grass, Spencer desperately trying to fend off punches and throw some of his own while Norwood simply rained hell down on his accuser. The gathered crowd began to burble with excitement.
“Gods!” Chris exclaimed.
“Mnn,” Olivia hummed.
Maris was already wading into the fray, barking orders like the men throwing punches were her detectives. “Norwood! Stand the hell down! Spencer, stop fighting back! Put up your elbows! Ach, idiot men!” She grabbed hold of the back of Norwood’s collar and yanked so hard that the usually timid man went flying backwards into the grass at Chris’s feet.
“Let me at him!” Spencer shouted, scrabbling up and pushing Maris’s hands aside. Blood covered his face, and his patrician nose had gained an unsightly crook in the middle. “You’ve shown your colours now, Norwood! See here!”
Arthur Norwood growled savagely. Undaunted by his toss into the wet grass, he scrambled to his feet and threw himself back into the melee. He met Maris’s boulder-like bulk and howled as he tried to push past her. Spencer started forward, dukes up, dancing like he thought this was a bloody pugilist match, and—
“What is the meaning of this?”
The voice broke through the buzzing crowd and shouting combatants like a whip crack.
Elouise Faraday emerged from the gathered onlookers like Queen Gloria herself, chin high and shoulders squared. Her eyes swept over the blooded and spitting Spencer, over Norwood’s split knuckles and red cheeks, over Maris standing between them with her hands extended like she was directing reluctant traffic. In stillness, with all their chests heaving and their faces ashamed, the tableau almost seemed like some strange, avant-garde art exhibit.
“Good heavens!” Missus Elouise proclaimed. “I cannot believe such behaviour! Dayton Spencer! How can I possibly entrust my family’s legacy to a man who brawls at our most honoured gathering?”
Spencer wavered on his feet and fell backwards into the grass.
“D-d-dayton S-spencer?” Norwood gasped. “A-avery Combs’s c-c-country l-lapdog?”
“And you! A guest in my home, behaving in such a way! I’ll have you packed back South with your uncle first thing in the morning, mark my words!”
Norwood coughed around syllables, but couldn’t seem to produce any. Gritting his teeth, he swallowed hard, stepped back, and hung his head. His fists fell to his sides.
“Oh, Gods,” Olivia whispered beside him.
“Mister Spencer!” Missus Elouise commanded. “Get to your feet! I won’t have a gentleman laying about in the wet grass while he bleeds from the nose! Come now, you’re better than this.”
Spencer only managed to get halfway up before falling back. His words ground out of him like pepper from a mill. “I… I find myself rather lightheaded, Missus Faraday. I can’t quite attain a standing position.”
“A convenient excuse!”
Maris grunted. “Beg pardon, Missus Elouise, but I think he’s telling you true. Heard that first hit. Wet and deep. Spencer here might have gotten his brains knocked around. Concussion. Best if he doesn’t push himself too hard, or Norwood actually might be arrested after all.”
“Christopher,” Olivia said, her voice quiet, but sharp. “We have a very serious problem.”
Chris nodded. “These two might be more involved than we’d thought,” he murmured.
Missus Elouise sighed. “Well. Summergrove’s doctor had a patient and didn’t come out for the Festival tonight, more’s the pity. I’ll mirror him up.” She surveyed the situation again and made a sound of exasperated disgust. “Gods. Men. Please, Dayton, do come inside and lay down. I don’t want you wandering about with stars in your eyes, hurting yourself further. We’re civil, here in Miller lands, regardless of what savages we apparently invite here!”
Maris helped Spencer to his feet. He wobbled dangerously and half-fell against her.
“Christopher,” Olivia repeated.
He forced himself away from the conflict. “What?” he demanded. “I—”
“Yes, we’ll address this matter shortly! It can wait! Look! There’s something wrong with these photographs! Livingstone took them all, yes? He took every single one of them, trying to capture his time here for his granddaughter! He said that, didn’t he?”
“I—yes, I—”
“Ah, Gods.” Olivia ran her hand through her hair. “Ah, Gods, I’m the worst kind of idiot—the blind kind! I’ve been so busy thinking about Em that I forgot to think about anything else.”
“What are you—?”
“Here,” she said, indicating a spot on a photo. He peered closer. Between the rows of trees, he thought he saw a figure. A figure with a ruined, half-melted face. “And here,” she said, pointing to another. The figure again. “Here,” she said, and “here,” she said, and “here, and here, and here, and here….”
Every single time, her finger pointed out a glimpse of the man. Billy Jones, the orchard worker whose face had been melted and whose life had been ruined on the night of the Floating Castle, lurking in the vicinity of every single one of Doctor Francis Livingstone’s photographs.
That sort of man might be so desperate for someone to blame that even an acquitted accused was guilty enough.
“Oh, hells,” Chris breathed. “He’s not stalking Emilia. He’s stalking Livingstone.”
“And tonight, when every single person except Livingstone is up at the Festival, is definitely when he’ll do something about it! The doctor is most assuredly in danger! Ah, I can’t believe I let this get away. Billy, you bloody—ugh! If I sent a man here, to my home, just to die, I’ll… I—” She buried her fingers in her hair.
“We have to get down there!”
“I know!” Olivia growled. “I know, I know, but if you might recall, this isn’t the only thing on my plate, and I’m on a timeline!” She closed her eyes tight and then turned to him. “All right,” she said. “Get Maris. You need to go down to the guest house. We’ll just have to hope that it isn’t already too late.”
“But we don’t know him!” Chris protested. “You should be there, you’ll know what to say! You should send Maris on—on whatever investigation you’re up to, here. Then, you and I—”
Olivia’s lips folded into a line. “Neither of us can fire a gun,” she said. “And something tells me it’ll be needed.”
Chris swallowed hard.
“You and Maris, Chris,” Olivia said, eyes glowing in the white fairy lights. “I’m counting on you. Please, please don’t let that poor man ruin his life even more than I already did.”
hris’s lungs were ready to burst when reached the parlour where he’d spent the afternoon recording notes. Maris and Elouise hovered over the prostrate, protesting form of Dayton Spencer, and Chris stopped to get his breath, hands on his knees. A stitch attac
ked his side, and he could barely get a word out. A vision of Doctor Livingstone laying in a pool of his own blood, after everything Chris had gone through to save him, sliced through his mind. He hacked out a cough.
Both women straightened and turned.
“Olivia needs you,” Chris gasped out.
“What could possibly be so urgent?” Spencer demanded, pushing himself up on his elbows. “I’ve been assaulted!”
Maris’s eyes locked on Chris. She fixed him with a deliberate look and carefully mouthed Emilia’s name.
Chris gritted his teeth. It was cruel of him, but it would get her moving, and so… he nodded slowly.
Maris straightened, knocking the heels of her shiny black boots together. “You’re going to have to excuse me, Missus Elouise, Mister Spencer. Duty calls.”
Chris had the privilege of watching Missus Elouise’s face turn from regal curiosity to flat, expressionless stone. “Just like my daughter to use the first Harvest Festival she’s attended in over a decade to play inspector. Well, fine then. Be gone with you if that’s what you want, Officer. But I rather think you’re better than to dance to her tune. I hope you’re aware that she cares for nothing and no one.”
Chris would have stammered an awkward acknowledgement and made himself scarce.
Maris jutted her chin. “Forgive me for saying, ma’am,” she said firmly. “But you don’t give your daughter nearly enough credit. She may be stubborn as a mule and mad as a march hare, but she cares. You do her a disservice by choosing not to see it.”
Elouise Faraday snapped to attention, her shoulders going stiff as lumber. “You don’t know a thing!” she spat. “Ask her, sometime, about Oliver! Ask her about her brother, and then you’ll see how much she cares!”
Maris didn’t acknowledge the proud, furious matriarch. She merely took Chris’s arm and hauled him out of the room.
“What’s happened?” she asked quietly as if she hadn’t heard Elouise’s accusations.
He couldn’t risk her anger if he admitted that it wasn’t directly about Emilia. He took a deep breath. “Billy Jones is at the guest house,” Chris said. “Olivia thinks he’s making his move. We need to be quick.”
Maris swore under her breath. “Right. Stables, then. Hope you know how to make a canter at least, pretty boy.”
Chris recalled flattening himself out against Hobby’s neck that morning. That had been on a clear, sunny morning rather than in the dark and rain, which pounded against the windows with impressive ferocity as they made their way through the estate. But he thought of the good doctor, and of the rage he’d seen infect the entire population of Darrington during the trial, and he straightened his shoulders.
“I can keep my saddle,” he said and hoped to all the gods it was true.
Startled gasps and then a confused, tentative cheer went up when he and Maris burst forth from the stables and into the fairgrounds. Chris hunkered down on Hobby’s back, grabbed the reins, and squeezed his legs to the horse’s sides, holding on for dear life and trusting his mount to follow Maris’s abrupt, tight turns around the jumping and racing tracks. He didn’t even try to steer. Excited chatter followed them down into the orchards, where the light from the tiny glowing white bulbs faded, the ground was soggy, and Chris thought for sure Hobby would slip and fall and break both their necks.
“Why isn’t Olivia here?” Maris shouted over her shoulder when they were far enough away they could barely hear the fairgrounds. “This is usually her favourite part, the bloodthirsty git!”
Chris pulled down further against Hobby’s neck and didn’t respond. Partly because he didn’t want to explain his bending of the truth, and mostly because he thought that if he had to both hold on and speak, he wouldn’t be able to do both at once.
The rain was cold enough to be shocking when it hit the exposed skin on the back of his neck and knuckles. Drops found their way beneath his clothes, running down his back and legs. Half a dozen times, he felt himself slip on Hobby’s back. The sight of the lights from the guest house rising before them made him feel like a sailor in a storm seeing a glimpse of a lighthouse on a cliff.
He was so certain that something terrible was about to happen that when Maris’s big old draft horse screamed and she disappeared from his vision, he thought for a moment that it was his own imagination. And then he heard her curse and howl in the dark, saw the big horse trying to get to his feet, saw a flash of her white blouse covered in mud as she scurried, trying to get out of its way.
“Maris!” he cried, yanking Hobby to a halt so sudden he nearly flew forward and joined her.
“Dammit!” Maris shouted. “He went up to his forelock in a soft patch! I–I’m fine, I’m bloody fine!”
The horse and Maris got to their feet at the same time, like they had choreographed performance. The big horse sidled a few steps away, very clearly favouring one leg. “Shit,” Maris growled. She tried to brush off mud, but only spread it further across her blouse and trousers.
“Are you all right?” Chris asked, head spinning and heart pounding. So many images of Maris trapped beneath the massive horse had crossed his mind that he wasn’t convinced that they hadn’t actually happened, somehow. “You’re not—?”
“I’m not,” she said firmly and focused her attention on the lights of the guest house. “Come on. We don’t have time to stall. Damn horse is just going to have to limp his way somewhere safe.”
She started off at a jog without waiting for him to confirm, and he urged Hobby to follow alongside her.
“He’s going after her research?” Maris asked.
Now that he was only going at a slow pace, and she was looking right up at him, he couldn’t find an excuse not to answer. He swallowed. “He’s going after Livingstone. He’s got murder on his mind, Maris. He’s been stalking the doctor for weeks.”
Maris slowed. Chris saw her fists clench. “What’s this got to do with Em?”
“I–it’s all related! You know it is, everything going on here! I—you know I couldn’t give specifics in front of Olivia’s mother and Fernand’s nephew! Olivia thinks he’ll kill the doctor!”
Maris faced forward not looking up at him. He heard the draft horse nicker pathetically behind them.
Chris tried again. “He’s been stalking the doctor for weeks! Maybe months!”
She grunted. She finally flicked a look up in his direction. The rain had plastered her cockscrew curls to her forehead. They had turned from orange to bronze and dripped into her eyes. “For that long?” she asked.
When he nodded, she pulled her pistol from somewhere at her waist that he hadn’t even noticed and broke into a full-on run. Chris urged Hobby after her, hyper-aware of every time his hooves struck the soft, wet earth.
When they reached the guest house, Maris didn’t bother to knock, merely turned the latch and then threw the door open with her shoulder. Chris dismounted carefully, and Maris stood like a sentinel, framed in the doorway, her icepistol glowing white. Steam curled up off it as rain splattered on the cold steel. The foyer was dark, but light streamed down the stairs like a sunbeam.
For a moment, everything was frozen in a silent tableau. Maris with her gun held ready, the foyer still as death, and the sound of rain pounding.
Then a sharp cry of pain.
“Admit it!” an angry voice cut through the night. “Damn you, old man, I deserve an apology for what you did!”
Maris snapped her head around to Chris. She put a finger to her lips. He nodded slowly, swallowing hard. Grim-faced, Maris edged her way across the floor, gun held at the ready. All he could do was follow after her.
Livingstone’s voice was thin and harried. “I am more sorry than you could possibly believe for what happened that night,” he said. It sounded like a plea. “I’ve spent every day since then trying to ensure nothing of the like ever comes to pass again.”
“Bugger you, that’s not what I want, and you know it!” A thick, wet sound cracked the air. Chris closed his eyes tig
ht, fingers gripping the bannister tightly. “Take responsibility. Admit the truth!”
Salamanders crawled excitedly around their globes all the way down the second-floor hallway like a queue of children waiting for their turn at bobbing apples. Maris moved more silently and gracefully than Chris would have thought possible from her stout, compact form. The voices grew louder.
“I can’t admit what I didn’t do!” Livingstone cried, and there was a soft sort of desperation in his voice, a pain that Chris hadn’t heard even on that day he’d visited him in his prison cell, all those months ago. “Your pain breaks my heart, sir, but the charges brought against me were and are false.”
“I won’t believe it.” Billy Jones sounded near hysterical in his grief. It was damnably familiar. How many times had he heard someone driven to the edge by the mere suggestion that the doctor might be innocent? That summer had turned all of Darrington crazy, and the city’s madness echoed in Jones’s voice, loud as thunder.
“Please. Please, don’t do this. Look. See here? These photos, all of them… they’re for my granddaughter. I didn’t want her to think I abandoned her to come out here. I want to show all of these to her, in the future, when things are better. When Tarland is healed. I want to tell her how hard I worked so that she could live in a world where—”
“Shut up!” Jones screamed, and something cracked in another gruesome sound of meat on meat. Another blow followed on its heels, and then another, accompanied by an anguished cry. Jones would beat the poor man to death!
Chris couldn’t stand it. He knew where they were now, and his steps quickened as he pushed past Maris, headed towards the darkroom.
“Buckley!” Maris hissed, but Chris’s feet moved on their own. His will did, too. He let it slip out of him, uncoiling. He could feel the burning red energy of Jones, and the flickering ball of light that was the doctor. He had no sense of their feelings, their thoughts, what was in their heart… but the very core of them was there.
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