Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons 2013
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books 2013
Copyright © Alex Grecian, 2013
Cover: Street scene: MJT4623 Trevillion © Michael Trevillion
Man in top hat: MAOW-02166 Arcangel (RM) © Mark Owen / Arcangel Images
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-405-91248-8
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Interlude 1
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Interlude 2
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
For Graham,
who is not allowed to read this until he’s much older
Rawhead and Bloody Bones
Steals naughty children from their homes,
Takes them to his dirty den,
And they are never seen again.
– Black Country children’s rhyme
It was an unusual egg. Not at all like other eggs Hilde had seen. It was slightly larger than a robin’s egg, white with a thin spiderweb of red, visible under a paper-thin layer of snow. A bit of dirty pink twine curled out from under the egg, and Hilde reached out, nudged it with her fingernail. The egg turned, rolling over in its nest of straw and feathers and bits of old string. Hilde could see now that the worm-thread was embedded in mud on one side of the egg and on the other side of the egg was a large coloured dot, slate blue, darker than a robin’s egg ought to be.
She adjusted her position in the tree, resting her behind against a big branch to free her hands. She looked down at the ground, but there was nobody to see what she was doing or to tell her no. Carefully she reached into the nest and plucked out the unusual egg. It was slippery, not as firm as the eggs she had handled in the past, and its surface gave a little under the pressure of her fingertips.
She held it up to the pale sun, turning it this way and that. It glistened, a dappled branch pattern playing over its surface. She brought it closer to her face. The blue dot in the centre ringed a smaller black spot and reminded her of something, but it was out of context and it took her a long moment to place it.
And then she did and it was an eye, and the eye was looking at her.
Hilde reeled back and dropped the eyeball. It tumbled down through the branches below, bouncing once, then twice, off the trunk, and disappeared into a pile of soft snow-covered undergrowth. Her foot came loose from its perch on the branch and she felt herself slip. Her weight fetched up against a smaller branch to the side, but it didn’t hold her. She felt the adrenalin rush too late as she grabbed for the nest and it came loose in her hand. Her dress snagged and tore, and all five stone of her dropped from the branch and slammed back into the tree trunk.
Still holding the useless bird’s nest, Hilde fell to the ground, screaming all the way.
Inspector Walter Day stepped off the train and directly into a dirty grey snowbank that covered his ankles. He was a solid block of a man with dark hair swept straight back from his face, and he smiled at the fat flakes that eddied in the train’s exhaust. The ride from London had been longer than expected, and he was tired and thirsty and nervous, but he took a moment to breathe in the fresh air. He set his suitcase down and raised his face to the sky, stuck out his tongue, and tasted the cold wet pinpricks of melting snow.
‘Ow bist?’
Day turned to see a stout man in a blue uniform striding towards him. The man’s cheeks were red and raw, and ice glinted in his thick handlebar moustache.
‘Beg pardon?’ Day said.
‘You the inspector, then?’
‘I am. And you’d be Constable Grimes?’
‘I am,’ Grimes said. He put his hand out before he had reached Day and hurried to make up the distance, his arm held out like a lance between them. ‘Welcome to Blackhampton, sir. Quite excited to be workin’ with the Yard. Been a dream of mine.’
Day was flattered. This distant sheltered village still respected the detectives of Scotland Yard, saw them as a force for good. London was a different matter. Jack the Ripper had ravaged the capital and left his nasty mark on a city that had since become cynical and scornful of its police. Scotland Yard was in the process of rebuilding, but it was a daunting task. Day had only been with the Yard for six months, much of that on the new Murder Squad, twelve men tasked with hunting murderers like Saucy Jack. The commissioner, Sir Edward Bradford, had told Day he could spare him for only two days, so two days it was. He hoped it would be enough.
‘We’ll try not to let you down.’ Day took a few steps in Grimes’s direction and shook the constable’s hand.
‘Let’s get your luggage,’ Grimes said, ‘and I’ve got the coach here to take you straight round to the inn. Cosy place, I think you’ll find. They do it up good there.’
‘Thank you. I’ve just got the one bag here. But we’re waiting for my sergeant.’
‘Sergeant? Was told to expect a detective and a doctor.’
‘The doctor will be along tomorrow. He had pressing business in London.’
‘So we’ve got an extra man, do we?’
‘It seems you do.’
‘Well, we’ll find room for him.’
Day wondered whether there was a territorial issue. One detective might be of assistance to the constable. But two men from the Yard might seem like a threat. The local law was already outnumbered.
‘I’m sure we’ll depend on you completely,’ Day said.
‘No worries there.’
‘Dash it all!’ Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith’s voice preceded him, muffled by the noise of the train’s engine. ‘It’s cold.’ Hammersmith hove into view carrying a small canvas bag. He stepped down from the train and shook his head at Day. The sergeant was tall, and rapier thin, and his unkempt hair hung over his eyes. His coat was unbuttoned, and a large wet spot decorated the front of his shirt.
‘I’m sure that doesn’t help with the cold,’ Day said. ‘The wet, I mean. Makes it colder yet when the breeze hits you.’
Hammersmith looked down at himself. ‘I don’t think it’s helped the shirt, either.’
‘Did we spill?’ Constable Grimes said.
‘Train lurched,’ Hammersmith said. ‘When it entered the station.’
‘Perhaps the innkeeper will be able to get that tea stain out,’ Day said.
‘What say we get you out of this wind and somewhere warm?’ Grimes said. ‘Got any other luggage, Sergeant?’
‘Just this.’
‘I admire a gentleman who travels light.’
Before Day could pick up his suitcase, Grimes grabbed it and led the way past the station through shifting snowdrifts. Hammersmith was left to carry his own bag. He raised an eyebrow at Day, who shrugged. The constable’s notion of their pecking order was clear enough. Day put a hand on Hammersmith’s arm and let Grimes walk ahead so they wouldn’t be heard.
‘What is it?’ Day said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something’s troubling you. I can tell.’
‘This snow is half ash from the furnaces,’ Hammersmith said. ‘It’s grey.’
‘Only half grey,’ Day said. ‘Still white beneath the surface. There’s good to be found in everything.’
‘That’s fine talk for a detective of the Murder Squad.’
Day smiled and looked past the station to the snowy field and, far beyond it, the pit mounds, the huge tanks of steaming wastewater, the tiny engine houses, and the iced-over stream that wound past them all. Here and there the snow made way for long furrows of mud and hopeful clusters of green spring grass. He pulled his coat tighter around his body. He waited, and Hammersmith finally nodded and pointed past the evidence of a thriving coal village. A dark line of trees stretched across the horizon.
‘A forest,’ Hammersmith said. ‘Coal mines. Furnaces. The water. We only have two days to find three missing people in all this. It’s impossible. There are too many places to look.’
‘We’ll find them. If they’re dead, we’ll find bodies. If they’re alive …’
‘If they’re alive, they’ll be moving about and we might never find them.’
‘We’re not the Hiding Squad, after all,’ Day said. ‘We weren’t sent for because anyone thinks they’re alive. And if murder’s been done, two days ought to be enough time to prove it.’
‘If they’re not found when we have to go back, you could always leave me here.’
‘I’m not going to leave you anywhere. The squad hasn’t enough men as it is and we have cases piling up at the Yard. I’m frankly surprised Sir Edward sent us here at all.’
Constable Grimes waved to them from the running board of a coach parked at the station building. ‘You men comin’?’
Day and Hammersmith trotted across the springy boards of the platform floor and down the steps to the waiting coach. The driver stuck his mouth in the crook of his elbow and emitted a series of short barking coughs. He shook his head as if dazed by the effort, then smiled and waved at them.
‘That’s Freddy,’ Grimes said. ‘He drives the coach, but you’ll see him tendin’ to most everythin’ else needs doin’ round here.’
‘You fellas need an errand, you look ol’ Freddy up and I’ll run it,’ Freddy said. He appeared to be barely out of his teens, red-haired and freckled, with a gap between his two front teeth. Even sitting, his right leg was noticeably shorter than his left and rested on a block of wood that was affixed to the floor in front of the driver’s seat, but the boy’s grin seemed genuine and infectious. Day smiled back and nodded.
Something drew Freddy’s eye, and he pointed to the sky behind the inspector. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘Magpie.’
Day turned to see a bird with a black head and a white belly flutter up past the far side of the station. It banked and wheeled back on its own flight path, then straightened out and flew on.
‘Bad sign, that,’ Grimes said.
‘Wait,’ Freddy said. ‘Look.’
Three more magpies erupted in a flurry of beating wings and joined the first. They glided overhead and away towards the distant woods.
‘Four,’ Grimes said.
‘Is that significant?’ Day said.
‘Maybe. Maybe not. One is for sorrow, of course. So it’s good to see the other three.’
‘One bird brings ill fortune?’
‘Ah, you know. One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth. Old rhyme. Not sure I give it much credence, but there’s some round here what does.’
‘Four for a birth, eh?’ Hammersmith said. He smiled at Day.
‘None round here’s expecting, far as I know,’ Grimes said.
‘My own wife is due to give birth soon enough,’ Day said. ‘Back in London.’
‘Congratulations to you,’ Grimes said. ‘Could be that’s what the birds was tryin’ to tell us.’
The three police clambered into the coach. They heard a ‘haw’ from Freddy, and the vehicle rolled smoothly forward.
The American waited inside the train’s rear passenger carriage until the two policemen were gone. He gave the porter a sixpence and stepped out onto the platform. The cold air on his cheeks felt invigorating after the closeness of his compartment. He took in the grey landscape with his grey eyes and checked the pocket of his grey leather duster to be sure the folding knife was still there. He smiled when his fingers touched the cold metal handle. The American’s smile was lopsided and horrifying. Even with his lips closed, a puckered hole from his left ear to the corner of his mouth exposed sharp yellow teeth behind the flesh of his cheek.
A sign swinging from the station’s awning welcomed the American to Blackhampton. He was in the right place. It was possible he’d bought old information, possible the soldier had moved on from Blackhampton, but this place felt right. He could almost smell his quarry. He’d never been so close. The American sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his duster.
He swung his knapsack and rifle case over his shoulder and walked away from the empty station, following the fresh coach tracks in the snow.
Day and Hammersmith sat together facing Grimes, who had taken the backward-facing bench, leaving the better seats for the visiting policemen to see out through the windows on either side. Hammersmith hunched forward on the seat and cleared his throat.
‘Tell us about the missing family,’ he said.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather settle in first?’ Grimes said. ‘You’ve had a long trip.’
‘There’s a child missing, no?’ Hammersmith said.
‘Every hour we delay diminishes our chance of finding the boy and his parents,’ Day said, ‘if they’re alive.’
Grimes shook his head. ‘Been gone for days. I’m afraid it’s bodies we’re looking for.’ He looked away from them at the shifting scenery outside, but not before Day saw the sadness in the constable’s red-rimmed eyes. Day remembered his own time as a village constable, the responsibility he’d felt for his people. He sympathized with Grimes. ‘We’ll stop at the inn,’ Grimes said. ‘There are people who want to meet you, want to help. I’ll introduce you round, let you get a feel for the way things work here. Might be questions you want to ask, though I’m sure I’ve asked ’em already.’
‘We were told you’d found some evidence,’ Day said.
‘’Twas little Hilde Rose found it.’
‘You’ve talked to her.’
‘I have, sir.’
‘Wonderful. Good work. Of course, we’ll want to talk to her, too.’
‘I suppose you will,’ Grimes said. ‘If her father’ll let you within a mile of the girl.’
‘He’s protective?’
‘He’s set in his ways.’
‘How long after the disappearance was the eyeball found?’
‘Well, you see, I’m not at all sure about that. It might have been the very next day, but it might have been as much as three days. Hard to pinpoint when they went missing. The weather’s made school a bit of an off-and-on thing round here, and the children weren’t missed right away.’
‘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 children 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 ran 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 coach. As they drew closer to Blackhampton proper, the train tracks, which crisscrossed the countryside and jounced the coach 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 storey 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 storeys 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 any more, 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 coach 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 carriages, set side by side and painted in bright colours. Green and red and yellow and cornflower blue, curtains in the windows and wooden fences painted the same colours as the carriages bordering tiny square lawns. They looked warm and dry and homely, 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 slouching past their coach. 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 coach passed the village well and pulled up next to a neat stone two-storey 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 coach 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 coach, 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 the 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 towards you. And you must admit that you dislike him, don’t you?’
‘Why wouldn’t he like me?’
‘You haven’t been kind towards 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 in 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 woollen 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 whistle and chuffed slowly away.
‘The child is the father of the man,’ Day said. ‘I quite like that.’
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 round, 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 shrivelled eyeball? That means nothing.’
‘And there’s Hilde. He’ll talk to Hilde.’
‘You’re such an idiot,’ 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.
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 furthest 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 furthest fireplace. They stole glances in his direction and murmured among 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 of others. Only got one other guest right now, so it’s no trouble to make up another room.’
‘It seems nobody here expected me,’ Hammersmith said.
‘That might be my fault,’ Constable Grimes said. ‘Could be I read the telegram wrong. But we’re glad enough to have you here. The more eyes out there lookin’ for the missin’ family, the better.’
Hammersmith tried a smile, but he feared it looked insincere.
Bennett Rose reached to untie his apron, his thick fingers fumbling with the knot under his belly. ‘The missus would be glad to meet you herself,’ he said. ‘But she’s not feelin’ well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Day said.
‘Lotta people round here have taken ill since the Price family disappeared.’
Hammersmith pointed to the gathering of people at the fireplace. ‘These people look healthy enough. Who are they? You say you’ve only got one guest.’
‘And he’s one of ’em there. The big gentleman watchin’ us. The others are here to get a look atcha.’ Rose pointed here and there among the gathered crowd. ‘The vicar and his wife, the schoolteacher and –’
Hammersmith produced a small pad of paper and a pencil from his breast pocket. ‘Names, please,’ he said.
‘Ah, yes, well, the vicar’s Mr Brothwood. He’s the older gentleman, right over there. Miss Jessica’s our schoolteacher. She’s got two of the Price children here with her. The boy is Peter. The girl Anna’s a year or two younger than he is.’
‘It’s their brother that’s missing?’
‘That’s right. Little Oliver.’
‘Isn’t there a fourth child in the family?’ Day said.
‘There is,’ Rose said. ‘I haven’t a clue where Virginia is today, but I’d imagine she’s probably back home with the housekeeper.’
‘What about your daughter? The girl who found the eyeball? Is she here?’
‘That’d be Hilde. She’s my youngest. She’s in our rooms upstairs, tendin’ to her mother.’
‘We’d like to talk to her,’ Hammersmith said.
‘You might wanna put your bags away first and get somethin’ warm in your bellies. I’ll have some of that roast sent up to your rooms. Or I’ve got some groaty dick back in the kitchen, still pipin’ hot from the oven. Hilde’s not goin’ nowhere.’
‘Thank you,’ Day said. ‘Something to drink would be nice.’
‘Of course,’ Rose said. ‘What kind of host am I, not offerin’ it already?’ He pulled three mugs out from under his side of the bar and set them on the long counter. He walked to the other end of the counter and came back with a tall thin glass, as big around as a stout rope and at least three feet tall. He filled it with beer from a keg on the wall behind him and handed it across to Constable Grimes. ‘Run that out to Freddy, would you? Must be freezin’ to death out there in the coach.’
Grimes took the glass and carried it across the room and out the door into the snow.
‘That has to be the tallest glass I’ve ever seen,’ Day said.
‘Gotta be that tall if you’re to hand it up to a coach driver, don’t it?’ Rose said. ‘Otherwise, the poor gents’d allus have to be clamberin’ down and back up just to get a bit of refreshment.’
‘Ingenious,’ Day said.
Rose filled the three normal-size mugs with beer from the keg. He handed two of them to the men from London and set the third mug at the end of the counter in anticipation of Grimes’s return.
Day raised his mug in a silent toast to the innkeeper and gulped half of the beer at once. He set the mug on the counter and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Your daughter Hilde,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t she have friends?’
‘Course.’
‘But she likes to play by herself outdoors.’
‘What’re you gettin’ at, Mr Day?’
‘The report we have says that she was playing alone, climbing a tree, when she found the evidence. It might help us to know more about her habits.’
The innkeeper suddenly leaned across the bar and grabbed Day’s wrist. An excited murmur passed through the people watching from the other end of the room. Hammersmith’s hand went immediately to the truncheon at his waist, but Day shook his head. Hammersmith left his hand there, hovering above his belt, waiting.
Rose’s voice was low and hoarse, barely above a whisper. ‘Let’s talk honest, while Mr Grimes is outten earshot. You can see my Hilde when I says you can see her. That might be never. Folks round here know what’s happened, and we’ll deal with it ourselves. Not a one here wanted Grimes to send for you lot, but here you are and you’re under my roof and that makes you my responsibility. But that don’t make me your friend. And it don’t give you free rein here.’
Day nodded. Rose let go of his arm and took a step back.
‘What did happen?’ Day said. He sounded unfazed. It was as if Rose’s outburst hadn’t occurred. Hammersmith knew that the inspector could be infinitely patient when he was asking questions.
‘When?’
‘You said you know what’s happened to the missing family. What was it, then?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘Try me.’
‘We can take care of our own, and we can bury ’em, too.’
‘Then you think they’re dead?’
The innkeeper blinked. ‘Hilde found an eye. Said so yerself.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’re all dead.’
‘Just ain’t found the bodies yet.’
‘Where have you looked for them?’
‘Dunno. Ain’t looked very hard since everybody knows what we’ll find when we find them.’
‘Pretend you don’t live in this godforsaken hellhole and give us a fact we can use,’ Hammersmith said. Day looked at him, eyes wide, but there was a small smile on his lips.
‘It’s a good village we got here, mister.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Day said.
Rose nodded. His shoulders slumped and the hostility drained from his face. ‘Oliver, the missing boy, he was a fine boy, too. This whole village is in mournin’. You’ve got no part of that. And this place is dangerous for you.’
‘Why is it dangerous?’
‘There’s somethin’ at work out there. It’s not here for you, it’s for us. But all the same, don’t be wanderin’ about by yerselves.’
‘You have Scotland Yard here to deal with anything you think you have,’ Day said. ‘So let us help you.’
‘Why did Grimes bring us here if you don’t need us?’ Hammersmith said.
‘That’d be a question for Grimes hisself,’ Rose said.
‘What’s all this?’ Constable Grimes said. His cheeks were bright red from the cold outside and he’d left a trail of slush behind him, but the two detectives hadn’t heard him re-enter the inn. ‘You’ve a question for me?’
‘How many able-bodied men can you muster for a search tonight?’ Day said.
‘There’s not much daylight left,’ Grimes said.
‘Will you not listen to me?’ Rose said. ‘I’ve told you there’s danger. Nobody should be goin’ out there tonight.’
Hammersmith turned on him. ‘It’s time you listened to us. Right now there are people who need us in London. But we’re here and we’ll be here for the next two days. We’re not leaving until we’ve found that little boy and his parents. If you won’t help us do that, then you’ll at least stay out of our way.’
Rose sniffed. ‘You think I don’t want the boy found?’
‘You’ve made it clear that you don’t.’
‘Then I’ve made the wrong thing clear. What I’m tryin’ to tell you is that the boy’s dead as sure as we’re standing here. There’s nothing you can do for him, except find his tiny body out there. But if you’re not careful, you’ll end up dead, too.’
‘Is that a threat? Because if it is –’
‘Oh, stop this, the lot of you.’
Day turned at the sound of a reedy voice behind his left shoulder. A painfully thin older gentleman stood there, dressed all in black except for a thick woollen oatmeal-coloured sweater that had bunched up under his ribs. He extended a hand, and Day shook it. ‘Mr Rose means well,’ the old man said, ‘but I’m afraid he’s liable to run you off if he can.’
‘And why would he do that, Mr … ?’
‘Brothwood. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’
‘Of course. The vicar.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And why would Mr Rose try to run us off?’
‘Please, Mr Scotland Yard,’ the vicar said, ‘come and meet the others. I promise we’ll do our best to explain everything that we can.’
Brothwood gestured towards the furthest of the two fireplaces, where the handful of villagers watched them. Day nodded. ‘Lead the way, Mr Brothwood.’