The Black Country tms-2 Read online

  “Henry,” he said. “Good to see you.”

  “Hello, sir,” Henry said.

  Henry Mayhew was Dr Kingsley’s assistant, a simple, good-natured man who had been living on the street until Inspector Day found work for him with the doctor.

  “And you’ve brought your daughter, too,” Day said. He shook the doctor’s hand and glanced at the young girl sitting next to him. “Good morning, Fiona.” Fiona was fifteen years old with long blond hair, a sharp fox’s face, and wide eyes that seemed to see everything at once. She paid not the slightest attention to Day, but stood up and hurried around the end of the table, making a beeline for Hammersmith.

  “Oh, my,” she said. “What’s happened to your face?”

  She reached out toward Hammersmith’s face, but pulled her hand back at the last minute, as if she might be burned by him.

  “I’m fine,” Hammersmith said. He glanced at Day, shrugged, and covered his cheek with his palm. “Is it really as bad as all that?”

  “Father,” Fiona said. “Do something.”

  Kingsley rubbed the side of his nose and reached for the satchel on the floor at his feet. He came around the table and nudged his daughter out of the way. He peered up at the wound on Hammersmith’s cheek and clucked his tongue.

  “It’s not deep. Just needs to be cleaned.” The doctor rummaged in his bag and found a vial of alcohol and a laundered rag. “You were right about his clothes, though, Fiona.”

  “My clothes?” Hammersmith said.

  “She insisted we stop in at your flat. We talked to your landlady there, Mrs Flanders, and she sent along a fresh shirt for you.”

  “How could you possibly have known that I’d forgotten to bring a change of clothing?”

  “You tend not to look after yourself,” Fiona said. “You’re always too busy looking after others.”

  Hammersmith sucked in his breath as the alcohol-damp rag touched his cheek. Day smiled and looked away. He pulled out a chair and sat down between his wife and the schoolteacher.

  “Good morning, Miss Jessica,” he said.

  Jessica tore her eyes away from Hammersmith for just a moment before looking back at him while she talked to Day. “And good morning to you, Inspector. I trust you’re well rested.”

  “Surprisingly so,” he said. “Are there no classes today?”

  “The weather.”

  “It does seem a bit worse out there. But surely the snow will taper off soon. It’s a bit late in the season for a bad storm, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it really is,” she said. “But by the end of the day we’re sure to be completely snowed in. At least that’s what some of the villagers are saying. They’ve even shut the seam down.”

  “How could they possibly know what the weather will do?”

  “Mr Rose says a dead black stork was found in the center of town this morning. Means a bad storm’s on its way.”

  “I never saw-” Day said.

  “Tut,” Kingsley said. He pulled the rag back from Hammersmith’s face and pursed his lips. “What rot.”

  “I’m sorry?” Bennett Rose said. The innkeeper had been quietly busy in a corner of the room, polishing flatware, but now he turned and fixed Kingsley with a steely gaze. “I’ll ask you to be respectful while you’re in my place.”

  “I don’t understand.” Kingsley stood holding the rag, a look of genuine confusion creasing his face. Day could smell the sharp tang of alcohol from halfway across the room.

  “Mr Rose takes a bit of getting used to,” Hammersmith said.

  “Our customs are important to us,” Rose said. “Sometimes the customs of a place is what binds people together. It’s not somethin’ to jest about.”

  “I assure you, there was no jest intended.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Your superstitions have no basis in fact or reason. They mean nothing and should not come into consideration when discussing any provable thing,” Kingsley said. “But I meant no jest.”

  “Well, you’re. . you. .” The innkeeper’s face gradually assumed the color of his name, a deep pink hue blossoming from somewhere beneath his collar and moving rapidly across his fleshy face. He sputtered, but was unable to form a complete sentence. He pointed a thick finger at Kingsley, turned on his heel, and stalked out of the room.

  Kingsley blinked hard and scratched his nose with the same hand that held the rag. He gasped at the concentrated odor of the alcohol and dropped the rag back into his satchel. “I’m sure I don’t know what came over him,” he said.

  “The people here are quite keen on their beliefs, Doctor,” Jessica said. “I have found that superstitions are often to blame when people intuit information from their surroundings. That doesn’t make the information wrong.”

  Kingsley smiled. “Then please tender my apologies. You are a most perceptive young woman. Meanwhile, I’ve made your face as presentable as possible, Mr Hammersmith.”

  “Thank you. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll change my shirt.”

  Hammersmith took the clean white shirt from Fiona and went to the stairs and up. When he had ascended out of view, they all heard him cough once, loudly. There was a moment of silence, and then the echoes of a fresh coughing fit bounced down the stairwell at them. Day rose halfway from his chair, alarmed that Hammersmith might fall back down the stairs, but the coughing sounds retreated down the upstairs hallway and were shut off by the quiet click of a bedroom door closing.

  “He must have been saving that up the entire time you were working on him, Doctor,” Claire said.

  “I’m glad he didn’t let it go in my face.”

  “He sounds dreadful,” Fiona said. “Has he caught cold here?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Day said.

  “You must take care of him, Father.”

  “A cold will pass without any help from me,” Kingsley said. “But he must rest.”

  “There’s not much chance of getting Nevil to rest,” Day said.

  “No,” Fiona said. “He’s very dedicated.”

  “There are a lot of people here who’ve come down sick,” Miss Jessica said. “It’s possible he’s got what they have.”

  “Surely not,” Day said. “We’ve been here one night.”

  “What’s the village sick with?” Kingsley said.

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “It would be odd for him to have caught it so quickly, but I ought to talk with your doctor as soon as possible.”

  “I could take you.”

  “Actually, it would be helpful if you could first arrange a visit with the Price children,” Day said. “The remaining Price children, that is. They trust you.”

  “But didn’t the sergeant talk to them last evening?”

  “All but one.”

  “Oh, you mean Virginia,” Jessica said. “The youngest of them. But surely she’s not important.”

  “She may have seen something useful,” Day said. “Children often place importance on different things than we do.”

  “If you think it might be worthwhile, I would be happy to take you to her,” Jessica said. “But we should hurry. This storm is only going to get worse.”

  Day opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Hammersmith appeared on the landing, looking considerably more dignified in a fresh shirt. He was carrying a small fabric-wrapped bundle tucked under his arm. His face was pale and he was sweating, beads of dew glistening on his upper lip and across his brow. Kingsley crossed the room and laid the back of his hand against the sergeant’s damp forehead.

  “Fiona, bring me a thermometer,” he said.

  Hammersmith waved him away. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  Fiona rummaged through the satchel and produced a mercury thermometer, which she handed to her father. But Hammersmith clamped his lips shut. Day suppressed a chuckle as he watched Kingsley try to forcibly insert the thermometer past Hammersmith’s gritted t
eeth. Kingsley gave up and handed the thin tube of glass back to Fiona.

  “There are other places I could insert this, you know,” he said.

  But Fiona was already putting the thermometer back in the bag, so it was an empty threat. Hammersmith risked opening his mouth.

  “I’m just a bit worn out from spending a night in the woods,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  Kingsley clucked his tongue. “Nonsense. You must rest. I order you back to bed.”

  Hammersmith shook his head, and Kingsley scowled at him. Day had been right: The sergeant would never voluntarily neglect his duty. If he was conscious and capable of walking, he would work.

  “I’m afraid Sergeant Hammersmith is too valuable to me, Doctor,” Day said. “There’s only the two of us, and we must solve this case before we return to London tomorrow.”

  Hammersmith gave Day a grateful look. Day smiled back at him. Better to give Hammersmith a task that wasn’t strenuous than to fight him and allow him to go off on his own. Besides, stubbornness wasn’t the worst trait for a policeman.

  “Doctor, I brought these down for you to see,” Hammersmith said. He held out the bundle and laid it on the edge of the table. Day recognized the fabric. It was the runner from under the washbasin on his vanity. Hammersmith carefully rolled the cloth out and caught the bloody dress and the small box in his other hand.

  “Evidence?” Kingsley said.

  “We think so.”

  Kingsley opened the box and stared at the shriveled eyeball inside. He nodded and closed the box, set it on the table, and picked up the dress. He unfolded it on his palm, the sleeves and the hem hanging down off the ends of his fingers.

  “Blood.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “It does look like it. I’ll have to test it.”

  “Did you bring the proper equipment?” Day said.

  Kingsley made a face at him.

  “Yes, of course you did,” Day said. The doctor was always prepared.

  “I’ll need a few hours. It’s mostly a matter of observing chemical reactions, but I’ll want to be sure.”

  “Good,” Day said. “While you’re doing that, we’ll need to find witnesses. An entire family doesn’t disappear without someone seeing something. Nevil, I need you to accompany Miss Jessica and question Virginia Price.”

  “But surely I-”

  “It’s vital that we discover anything she might know.”

  Hammersmith nodded glumly. “I’ll leave now,” he said.

  “But you haven’t eaten yet,” Fiona said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Kingsley cleared his throat. “I know it’s no use to protest. But I strongly advise against any activity. One never knows about these provincial maladies. If something settles in your lungs. .”

  Hammersmith shook his head and waved a weak hand at the room, encompassing all of the people, as well as a fireplace and a low-hanging chandelier. “I tell you I’m fine. There’s nothing to be concerned about. Please, let’s stop discussing me as if I weren’t capable of managing my own affairs.”

  Fiona gave him a pitying look, but said nothing. Day knew what she was thinking. Hammersmith was capable of a great many things, but managing his own affairs was not one of them.

  “You’re anxious to work and we’ve interrupted,” Claire said. “I thought perhaps you had already solved the case and you’d be glad to see us if we stopped in.”

  “We are glad to see you,” Day said. “And though we haven’t solved the case yet, we can see you to the depot.”

  “We’ll leave immediately,” Claire said.

  Day saw a flush of humiliation on her cheeks, and an inexpressible sadness took root in him. It had been six months since a murderer had paid Claire a visit while Day was out of the house working his very first case for the Murder Squad. The killer hadn’t harmed her, had meant the visit as a threat to the inspector, a warning to abandon the investigation. That man was behind bars now, but he had shown the Days just how easy it would be to hurt them. Claire was a strong woman, but Day understood why she was uncomfortable being left at home alone, pregnant and vulnerable.

  “We can keep the train waiting for another few minutes, I think,” Day said.

  Hammersmith grimaced, clearly anxious to get started, but he nodded. Neither of the policemen would feel at ease until the ladies were safely away, but neither of them wanted to see them go.

  “It’s settled then,” Day said. “Sergeant, later this morning you’ll get an accounting from Virginia Price. I’m going to pay a call on the vicar and his wife. We’ll meet here directly after and arrange to explore the mines. I only wish we had more men, but perhaps by then Constable Grimes will have found some warm bodies. I don’t want to be out there fumbling about in the dark again.”

  “Speaking of fumbling about blind,” Hammersmith said, “where is Mr Grimes this morning?”

  25

  Constable Harry Grimes had lived and worked in Blackhampton his entire life. Unlike most of the men in the village, who carried on their legacies down in the mines, his father had been a policeman, and Harry had followed in his footsteps. He knew every square inch of the village and the names of all the people who lived there. He knew their secrets and he kept them. He knew about the charms in Bennett Rose’s attic and he knew about the priest hole in Mr Brothwood’s church. There was no part of Blackhampton that he didn’t know intimately. But he had not spent a lot of time in the woods, and so now he was having trouble finding the spot he had visited the previous night with the policeman from London.

  He had hoped to make a quick trip out, just to take another look at the place where they’d found the bloody dress, and to be back by breakfast. He had not slept well and had awoken with a sour taste in his mouth and the vestiges of a nightmare circling his consciousness. He had pulled on his trousers and hurried out the door, consumed by a single thought: If a bloody dress had been found just off the path in the woods, that very bend in the path might yield more clues if he returned in the daylight.

  Assuming he could find the spot again.

  He tromped along, swiping at the low-hanging branches over the path and muttering under his breath as the hems of his trousers brushed against the bracken, growing more waterlogged with every step. He had neglected to change into boots, and his finest black horsehide shoes were no doubt ruined. He stepped on a sharp stone and felt it through the sole of his right shoe. He stopped and leaned against a tree to take the weight off his right foot. He looked around him, trying to get his bearings. He knew that he and Hammersmith could not have penetrated too far into the woods in the dark. It occurred to him that he might have already passed the place where the dress was found. He frowned and bent his foot so he could see the bottom of his shoe, to see if the rock had made a hole in the leather. Glancing down, he saw broken branches and a long smooth smear across the ice by the side of the path.

  He had found the right spot!

  If he hadn’t stopped, he would have missed it, would have walked right past. He sent up a silent prayer, thanking whomever the patron saint of sharp stones might be. He pushed himself off the tree trunk and moved off the path, carefully examining the ground, forcing the stiff wiry branches of low-growing bushes aside. There was a shallow slope on the western side of the path, and he put his foot down too hard on a patch of ice, slipped and fell, and slid downhill on his bottom. He grabbed a fistful of thin spring grass and stopped himself, felt the cold through the seat of his trousers.

  Hammersmith had spotted the white dress somewhere nearby. It was a slim hope that there might be more clues out here, but if there was anything at all to be found, Grimes wanted to be the one to bring it out of the woods. He wanted to show the men from Scotland Yard that Blackhampton was not so backward and inconsequential as they no doubt thought it was. And, moreover, that Grimes himself was a good policeman, every bit their equal. It was foolish pride, he knew, but good work was often the direct result of pride.

  H
e stood and brushed snow off his trousers and looked around. The bushes Hammersmith had crawled under weren’t as impassable as they had seemed to be in the dark. In fact, just two feet to the right was a second, narrower trail that wound around the roots of the nearby trees and skirted the thorny shrubbery. He made his way over to it and followed it around, digging in his heels so as not to fall again. He stopped again a few feet farther along, where he judged the dress had been found. There were indentations in the mud, possibly made by Hammersmith’s elbows and knees. Low to the ground, a bit of pale lace was caught on a thorny twig. Grimes carefully pulled it off and stuck it in his pocket, mildly disappointed that there wasn’t more to find. Still, it was something.

  He looked up through the branches, trying hopelessly to judge the time by the position of the invisible sun in the smooth grey sky. Were Day and Hammersmith awake yet? Was breakfast finished? The London police might be doing anything by now. Possibly questioning the villagers, narrowing down the options for further searching. That’s what Grimes would do in their place. He should be with them when they talked to his people.

  He turned, headed back up the trail, and saw a flash of lavender in the trees above. He squinted. A pale purple ribbon was looped around a limb between him and the path ahead. He reached for it, but it was just out of reach.

  This was a clue. Or it might be. Better than a scrap of lace, at least.

  Excited, he braced a foot against the base of the trunk above the tree’s roots and lunged upward. His fingers brushed against the silky fabric. He jumped again. And again. But the tip of the ribbon darted away from him, anchored by the tree at its other end, dancing in the low steady breeze out of the north.

  He wrapped his arms around the trunk and attempted to shimmy up it like he’d done on every tree in the village common when he was a child. He was bigger now, though, and older, his arms and legs less flexible. He grunted and inched his way higher a bit at a time. He didn’t try to hurry. He didn’t want to loosen the ribbon only to watch it flutter away on the breeze. He made his methodical way upward, bracing himself carefully with his back against the tree behind him, making sure he was stable before reaching out and untangling the ribbon from the branch. It came loose easily and he smiled, held it up to the light, and admired the way the sun shone through the thin material. There was a cluster of minute black dots along one edge of the ribbon. Blood? This was a good clue indeed. Inspector Day would be most impressed.