The Black Country Read online

  “Children? I thought it was just one child.”

  “Oh, it is, but he has three siblings.”

  “And they’ve been accounted for?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, how long do they think their brother’s been missing?”

  “Not to mention their parents,” Hammersmith said. “Didn’t they miss their parents right away?”

  “I’m sure they did, but they have conflicting stories, and they’re not all able to tell time very well. The oldest kids say they thought their father had taken an extra shift at the mine. He’s a night guard.”

  “And their mother?”

  “Is not truly their mother. She’s the second Mrs Price. Was their nanny before the first Mrs Price run off. No love lost there. They say they simply didn’t notice whether she was around or not.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Be that as it may, sir, it’s what they’re tellin’ me.”

  “Are they staying with someone?”

  “The housekeeper’s got them under control for the moment. I suppose we’ll have to find a new place for ’em if their parents don’t turn up soon.”

  “Any other staff currently at the Price home?”

  “None. We’re not a posh estate here.”

  “Of course.”

  The three lapsed into an uneasy silence, and Day watched the scenery roll by outside the carriage. As they drew closer to Blackhampton proper, the train tracks, which crisscrossed the countryside and jounced the carriage as it eased over them, thinned out and were replaced by high ridges covered with a thin rind of snow. Hammersmith pointed past Day out the window.

  “Slag,” he said. “What remains after the smelting process.”

  “Where?” Day said.

  “The hills. The villagers pile the slag about, and after a few winters it becomes fresh soil. Good for gardening. Vegetables, potatoes, that sort of thing.”

  Day smiled. Tiny rivulets of melt-off curled through the maze of slag mounds, bordered by stone footpaths. Children, bundled in coats and mittens and boots, ran about, jumping over the water, throwing snowballs, and shaping small round snowpeople.

  “What kind of bush is that?” Day said. He pointed to a large woody thicket that seemed familiar.

  “Not a bush,” Grimes said. “That’s a tree. Or the top of one, at least.” He indicated a strange-looking house several yards behind the bush. “It’s all sinking.”

  Day craned his neck to see the house as it disappeared from view around a bend in the road. It was a single story with a sloping red roof and lined all about with small windows. There was no door on either side of the house that Day could see.

  “Do they enter by the back door?”

  “Doors are underground now,” Grimes said. “That place was two stories tall once. House and tree was above a seam what’s been mined already, so everything tends to sink down into the tunnel. People livin’ in it—that’d be the Baggses, mother, father, five children, and the lady’s sister—they go in and out through a window.”

  “So even though that looks like a bush . . .”

  “It’s an oak tree. It’ll be dead by spring, its roots down past the dirt layer.”

  “Will it keep sinking?”

  “Aye, until it falls the rest of the way through.”

  “Then they shouldn’t be living in that house, should they? Won’t it collapse beneath them?”

  “It’s their house, innit? Their choice, I suppose. Frankly, it’s a common problem round here.”

  “But why would you tunnel under your own homes?”

  “You’ve got it turned round in the case of that house. Been mining this area for generations. Some of the shafts under here are hundreds of feet deep, and some’re just below the surface. Nobody knows where they all are anymore, but we’ve got to live and work, don’t we?”

  “You’ve built on top of the tunnels.”

  “Sometimes. Built where we could build. No real way to avoid the mines.”

  Grimes pointed to another building, small and faded red, set back from the road on a hill and barely visible through the swirling snow. “That one’s built better for the mines beneath it, but the road up to it can be a mite tricky in weather like this. We had an early spring here, nice and warm, but then a late storm hit. Snow shut the road down yesterday.”

  “It’s a barn.”

  “No. Though ’twas a barn at one time. Now it’s a schoolhouse. Put it up on stilts what go right down into the tunnels and rest on the floor.”

  “So it won’t sink like the other buildings?”

  “Oh, it’ll still sink. Even the floors of the tunnels’ve got tunnels beneath ’em, but it’ll take it a wee bit longer and we’ll move it to a new place and put it up on new stilts when it starts to go. We don’t take chances with our children round here.” He smiled at them, proud of his village’s commitment to the future.

  “But I’ll wager you put them to work in the mines,” Hammersmith said.

  Grimes’s smile disappeared. “I don’t do that, no,” he said. “That’d be their parents’ decision, wouldn’t it?”

  The two men glared at each other, and Day kept his eyes glued to the window beside him. In his experience with Hammersmith, the sergeant could be hostile whenever he spotted something he deemed an injustice. At times, his attitude made him difficult to handle, but Day admired his unwavering sense of right and wrong. There was never a doubt in Hammersmith’s mind, which wasn’t something that Day could say for himself.

  The carriage rolled across a wide field. Half-sunken houses and crumbling stone walls dotted the landscape. Far in the distance, Day could see furnace towers, flames leaping high against the dull grey sky. As they drew near the village, Day saw a grouping of at least a dozen old converted train cars, set side by side and painted in bright colors. Green and red and yellow and cornflower blue, curtains in the windows and wooden fences painted the same colors as the cars bordering tiny square lawns. They looked warm and dry and homey, but curiously unpopulated. It seemed to Day that there ought to be more people out and about.

  But there was only a long line of dust-covered men slouched past the carriage. Miners headed home after a long day. Their skin was brushed with black, and their hair was matted grey. It was impossible to tell how old any of them were.

  The carriage passed the village well and pulled up next to a neat stone two-story building with a thatched roof and two tall chimneys that billowed smoke. An enormous tree grew next to the inn, centuries old by the look of it, its branches spreading out over the roof, its roots invisible under the covering of snow. Day wondered what might happen if it ever sank into the village’s mines.

  “Here we are,” Grimes said. “The best inn in town. The only inn, of course, but it’s a good one nonetheless.”

  “Does it get much business? The inn? Blackhampton can’t have all that many people passing through.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Besides you, there’s just one guest at the moment. But when they converted the old inn, someone must have felt the need to build another one.”

  “So the inn’s new?”

  “As new as things get around here. Perhaps fifty years old? I’m not certain.”

  Day opened the carriage door and jumped to the ground before the horses came to a full stop. Hammersmith followed. Day grabbed his suitcase before Grimes could get to it, but he noticed that Hammersmith left his bag on the carriage, waiting to see if he would be given the same courtesy Day had been given at the train station. Day watched Grimes hesitate before picking up the sergeant’s luggage.

  “You go ahead, Constable,” Day said. “I’d like to talk to Mr Hammersmith alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “Again?”

  “We’ll just be a moment.”

  Grimes frowned, then shrugged and pushed open th
e inn’s front door with his free hand. A wave of warmth and human voices washed over them before Grimes disappeared through the door and it swung shut behind him.

  “You wanted to talk to me, Inspector?”

  Day sighed. “You’ve already antagonized the local police, Nevil.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  “But you have. You’ve taken an instant dislike to Mr Grimes, and he to you, and it won’t help us in the least.”

  “He doesn’t like me?”

  “Well, he doesn’t seem warm toward you. And you must admit that you dislike him, don’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t he like me?”

  “You haven’t been kind toward him.”

  “I didn’t realize. If that’s true, I’m sure it’s not his fault. He does seem eager enough to find the missing child.”

  Day stepped back and looked out over the snow-covered fields. From far off, the sounds of the forges came echoing down the grey wind.

  “Were things as bad as all that,” Day said, “when you were a child?”

  Hammersmith looked around and pulled his overcoat still tighter to his torso. When he sighed, Day could see the breath steam from his nose and rise against the sky.

  “This place does take me back,” Hammersmith said.

  “Did you grow up near the Black Country?”

  “No, nowhere near here. But the sounds, the scents . . . I hear the smelters and I’m back there again, back in a hole, alone in the dark, waiting for the coal carts to come up through the tunnels.”

  “How old were you? When you started in the mines?”

  “Oh, three or four. I forget. Too young.”

  Day opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He watched his unspoken words drift away like smoke and he avoided Hammersmith’s eyes. After a long moment of silence, he tried again. “I suppose there’s not much difference between one coal mining village and another?”

  “The houses here,” Hammersmith said. “Their homes are different.”

  “That’s something, then. Something different. Remember, you’re a policeman, not a miner.”

  “Aye.” Hammersmith nodded. “It has been a long time.”

  “And you are not the person that you once were.”

  “Maybe not. But the child is the father of the man.”

  “Is that a saying?”

  “From a poem I read.”

  A figure reeled at them from out of the dusk. The man wasn’t wearing a coat, but he had woolen mittens on his hands and he waved at them as he passed by. His face was cherry red, and he staggered, went down on one knee, and righted himself, a fresh glaze of snow on his trousers. He smiled and blinked and shuffled off out of sight.

  “Drunk,” Hammersmith said.

  “I can think of worse ways to keep warm in a place like this,” Day said. He clapped his hands together and stamped his feet. “I miss my wife, Sergeant. I’d like to finish this case and get home. I very much fear that my child will come into the world before we return.”

  “You have time. Claire’s got weeks to go, and we’ll be leaving Blackhampton on Friday.”

  “True enough, I suppose. Still, I worry.”

  The two men stood side by side in the snow, quietly studying the crystalline landscape. The setting sun reflected through a million tiny prisms and sparked an electric red wire on the horizon. Behind them, out of sight over the hills, the train they’d arrived on sounded its bell and chuffed slowly away.

  “The child is the father of the man,” Day said. “I quite like that.”

  4

  Anna Price shivered and hugged herself against the cold breeze from the open door. A few brave snowflakes circulated through the room as Constable Grimes slammed the door shut, and Anna edged around the small crowd to get closer to the fire. When Peter touched her shoulder, she jumped, but before she could turn around, he said, “Where’s the other policeman? The one from London?”

  “Mr Grimes has his bag,” Anna said.

  The children watched Constable Grimes cross the room, stamping snow from his boots, a black suitcase dangling from one meaty hand.

  “So he has luggage,” Peter said. “I don’t care about luggage. Where’s the detective?”

  “If he has the detective’s luggage, then the detective must be close behind him. Use your head, idiot.”

  Peter ignored the insult. He was practically thirteen years old, but his sister often treated him like a baby, even though she was a year younger. “He could be out there talking to her even now,” he said.

  “How would he even know to talk to her?”

  “He’s a detective, isn’t he?”

  “But he’s just now got here.”

  “What if he does talk to her?”

  “She’ll be quiet.”

  “There’s evidence.”

  “What evidence? A shriveled eyeball? That means nothing.”

  “And there’s Hilde. He’ll talk to Hilde.”

  “God, you’re such a numpty,” Anna said. “Let him talk to Hilde. All she knows is that she found an eye and then she fell down onto her great round bottom and broke it.”

  “Be nice,” Peter said.

  “Yes, let’s do be nice. Let’s be as considerate as we can be to the constable’s new friend from Scotland Yard and, while we’re about it, let’s tell him all we know. Then we can continue to be nice to all the people in prison for the rest of our lovely nice lives.”

  “You’re in a fine mood today.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “but this is all such a mess, and now we have this new policeman to muck about in it and make everything ever so much more difficult for us.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Well, what?”

  “There’s the reverse of that to consider, isn’t there?”

  “The reverse of what? Oh, please do speak in complete sentences, would you?”

  “That was a complete sentence.”

  “But it made no sense whatsoever.”

  “Only because you’re too busy pouting to use that pretty little head of yours.”

  “Do you really think I’m pretty?”

  “Do shut up,” Peter said.

  “Tell me,” Anna said.

  “All right, if the detective can make things difficult for us by stomping about in it and asking questions, then can’t we also make it difficult for him by answering his questions?”

  She almost hugged him. Instead, Anna smiled for the first time in weeks and clapped her hands. “Of course. I mean, of course we would have lied to him if he’d asked us anything, but it didn’t occur to me . . . We can lead him round in circles by the nose, can’t we?”

  “Right. We’ll be ever so helpful.”

  “I’ve never felt more helpful in my life.”

  “And when he tires of chasing his own tail, he’ll retreat back to London and everything will return to normal.”

  “As normal as it can ever be again.”

  “Right. Not very normal at all, but at least the fuss will die down.”

  “I’m almost looking forward to meeting him now.”

  And, as if he had been listening to them speak, a man opened the front door and entered the inn. He was tall and earnest-looking, his shoulders broad and his eyes wide. His hands were clean and his back was straight, and it was clear that he had never set foot inside a coal mine. He appeared to be taking in everything around him, as if memorizing the room, and she took a step back to avoid his gaze. The detective stepped aside and held the door, and a moment later, a second man entered. Anna gasped. There were two of them. One detective was bad enough, but two was simply too much. This second man was thinner and quite handsome in an oblivious sort of way. He seemed more intense than his companion and, after shaking the snow from his damp hair, he peered about the room
as if he suspected everyone of wrongdoing.

  Anna sucked in her breath and the second man turned and looked directly at her. Then his gaze moved on to some other random spot in the room, and she slowly let the air out of her lungs in a long sigh.

  The fire at her back felt almost unbearably hot.

  5

  Hammersmith surveyed the inn’s great room. There was a long bar across from him on the back wall and two large fireplaces, both of them lit with cheery fires that cackled and whispered at each other across the long room. To his right, a stag’s head over the far fireplace stared back at Hammersmith and, beneath it, a roast dangled on a chain, twisting and swinging as it cooked, a big copper pot set under it to catch the drippings. Dark lamps hung from the high vaulted ceiling, but windows filtered the fading sunlight that had seemed grey outside, and here the walls glinted with orange and yellow and green from glass panels set above the bar. There was an inner door between the bar and the farthest fireplace that presumably led to a dining room and a kitchen, and on the other side of the bar, next to the fireplace on Hammersmith’s left, was a wide arch with a staircase leading up to a gallery above. Everything was scratched and faded wood, scarred leather, and smoke. The room was huge, plenty of space for the handful of villagers gathered at the farthest fireplace. They stole glances in his direction and murmured amongst themselves. The air hummed with their excited energy. Hammersmith shuffled his feet back and forth across the rug to get the snow off and then he hurried after Day, who was talking to a heavyset bearded man.

  “You’d be the sergeant,” the bearded man said when Hammersmith joined them at the bar. The man’s shoulders were broad and rounded, and he stooped forward as if the weight of his gleaming pink head were nearly more than he could carry. He reached across the bar and pumped Hammersmith’s hand up and down. “Name’s Bennett Rose,” he said. “This is my place. Mine and the wife’s.” He turned back to Day. “Like I was sayin’, we only put aside two rooms, one for Mr Day and one for the doctor what’s comin’ tomorrow. But we’ve got plenty others. Only got one other guest right now, so it’s no trouble to make up another room.”