The Black Country (25 page)

D
ay broke the silence. “Mr and Mrs Price, I believe it’s time you told me what’s been happening here.”

Hester Price sat back on the edge of the bed and looked at her son and said nothing. Sutton Price seemed to be in a daze. He stared at his wife. Bennett Rose sat upright on the floor. “I told you what’s happened,” he said. “Sutton Price killed his own son. You saw what happened. Oliver bled when his father came near to him. The dead boy’s had his say and told us who did the deed.”

Without warning, Sutton Price roared as if every ounce of energy left in his body had found an escape route through his throat. He fell on Rose, bearing him back against the wall. Rose grunted as his back hit the plaster and the breath went out of him again. He batted Price about his head and shoulders, using his forearms and elbows, but Price seemed not to notice. He pounded his shoulders into Rose in a steady rhythm, over and over, as if rocking a baby. Rose couldn’t breathe. Day dropped Rose’s rifle and leapt on Price. He pulled the grief-stricken father off the innkeeper and pushed him toward the center of the room. The fight immediately left Price and he staggered back toward the wall for support. He stood dumb, looking off into the middle distance as if nothing had happened. Day checked Rose, who was breathing steadily, but was mercifully unconscious. It was for the best. Day had, quite frankly, heard enough from Bennett Rose for the moment.

Day straightened his jacket and picked the rifle back up, holding it down at his side, relaxed but ready. He sniffed and looked out the window. The wind didn’t seem to be blowing as hard now, but visibility was still bad. Puffy white flakes drifted swiftly past the glass, some of them piling on the outside windowsill, joining the mound there.

He had just decided to arrest everyone in the room and let a magistrate sort it out later when Hester Price began to speak. Day held his breath, scared that any distraction might halt the flow of her words. She looked down at Oliver’s little body as she talked, running the tip of her finger back and forth along his cheek and under his chin as if soothing him to sleep, as if telling him a story.

“You have to understand,” Hester said. “He killed a man for me. It’s the most anyone’s ever done for me, and I could never . . .” She hesitated for a moment, but her finger continued to trace its pattern on her son’s face. “I was younger then. I was a pretty girl, and graceful, and he loved me. I lived in West Bromwich, where I grew up. Four sisters, and I was the youngest. They were all married, all except me, and my mother found suitors for me, hoping I might find a husband before I turned twenty. I didn’t want any of them, though. My sisters had their houses and some had children already, two of them did, and they knew their lives, everything that lay ahead of them. I can’t say what it was that made me think I was different, but I did think it. Youth, maybe. Maybe that’s all it was. But one day there was a stranger at the pub, a man no one had ever seen.”

“It was Campbell,” Sutton Price said. He leaned back until he was touching the wall behind him and then he slid down it and sat on the floor next to Bennett Rose. Price draped his arms across his raised knees and buried his face in the crook of an elbow. Day couldn’t tell if he was still listening or not, but Hester Price kept talking.

“I helped out at the pub. My sister’s husband, one of my sisters’ husbands, owned it, and so I spent an hour or two there in the evenings, washing mugs and picking up and trying to be of use, biding time until my mother found the proper gentleman for me.

“After a time, she thought she had found the right man. He was respectable, perhaps twenty years older than I was, maybe more. A grocer. My parents invited him to our house for dinner and left us to walk in the garden. His name was Mr Stephens, and he was not interested in walking in the garden. He didn’t want to listen to me when I talked, and he didn’t care what I wanted in life. The things he wanted from me, I won’t speak of them. But he was insistent and I had no other suitors left, and when he proposed marriage, I agreed. You understand, I didn’t want him. There was hair growing out of his ears and his breath smelled of fish and onions, and he talked and he talked and nothing he talked about was of any interest to a foolish little girl.

“But when the stranger began to come to the pub, it was as if a door had opened in my life. He was big and strong, but he was quiet. He had long hair, going grey, but he didn’t look old, at least not terribly old. Not like Mr Stephens. But he looked tired and he looked like he had seen a lot. And I had seen nothing. West Bromwich was my whole world. His name was Calvin Campbell, and he was the most exotic creature I had ever encountered. I stayed longer every night at the pub, did chores that didn’t need to be done, tried to do things that might make him notice me. And, finally, he did. He told me that he was only going to be in West Bromwich for a week. That he was on his way somewhere else, but he never said where. I felt like he wasn’t going somewhere at all, he was going away from something, or someone.

“But he stayed. A week went by, and another week, and Calvin didn’t leave. I began avoiding Mr Stephens and spending time with Calvin instead. We took long walks and we talked for hours. He had been to America and had been to war. He told me very little about his time there, he was quiet about those years, but the mere fact that he had survived their civil war and their prison camp made me admire him all the more. And he listened to me. Nobody had ever listened to me. He asked me questions about my silly little life in my silly little Black Country village. I must have seemed like the most boring person he had ever met, but he never made me feel like it.

“Like I say, I was pretty then.

“It was all so deliciously exciting, but Calvin didn’t know about Mr Stephens, and Mr Stephens didn’t know about Calvin.

“And then, suddenly, Mr Stephens did know. Someone must have told him, because one day, as I was waiting for Calvin by the banks of the stream outside of the village, Mr Stephens came out of a copse of trees. He had been waiting there, waiting for us. He didn’t say a word to me, just pushed me down and covered my mouth before I could cry out. I remember his hand tasted like salt and shit. His other hand was under my skirts, exploring me with his dirty fingers, and he was smiling at me with his yellow teeth, and I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t do anything.

“But then, from where I lay in the grass, it appeared Mr Stephens had suddenly learned to fly. He took to the air, and in a moment I saw Calvin behind him, holding Mr Stephens by the nape of his neck like a rabbit. Mr Stephens made the most horrible squeaking noise, and then Calvin swung him around and smacked his head into the trunk of a tree.

“He kept hitting the tree with Mr Stephens’s head, and I didn’t look away. Mr Stephens’s head mashed like some kind of fruit, bright pink juice running down Calvin’s arm.”

Hester finally looked up. She ignored Day, but stared at her husband, her brow creased with concern. “Do you understand?” she said. “He did that for me.”

“He went to prison for it,” Day said.

Hester turned her gaze to Day and she nodded. She opened her mouth to say something else, but stopped. They all heard the door open downstairs.

D
ay left Hammersmith to watch over Bennett Rose and the Prices. He bounded down the stairs and found Dr Kingsley stamping his feet on the mat. Kingsley was covered with snow, from head to foot.

“Thank God you’ve made it, Doctor.”

“That man practically carried me the entire way or I
wouldn’t
have made it.”

“Campbell, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

Kingsley looked around as if he might find Campbell hiding behind the coatrack. “I don’t know. He was right with me when I came through the door.”

Day pulled the front door open and stuck his head out. The wind had died down a bit, but the snow was falling just as quickly, already filling in the three sets of footprints outside. Day could see where Campbell and Kingsley had approached the inn together, but the third set of prints went away from the door, around the side of the inn. Campbell had left the doctor and fled. Day briefly considered giving chase, but then thought better of it. Campbell had served his time for murder, and there was no evidence that he had committed a crime in Blackhampton. The worst he had done was to help hide Mrs Price, and Day wasn’t sure he wanted to arrest anyone for that. He was certain she hadn’t killed her son, which meant Campbell wasn’t an accessory to a murder. Day pulled his head back in and slammed the door shut.

“I’m told you found the little boy,” Kingsley said.

“He was at the bottom of the well.”

Kingsley pursed his lips and removed his hat. “There’s never anything sadder than the death of a child.”

“I’m afraid I still need to know how he died.”

“Of course,” Kingsley said. “Bring me to him.”

Day led the way up the stairs. Bennett Rose was on his feet, but Sutton Price hadn’t moved. Day wondered if the miner had fallen asleep. Hammersmith nodded a greeting to Kingsley.

“How are you, Sergeant?” Kingsley said.

“I’m just fine, sir.”

“No weakness? Fatigue? Shortness of breath?”

“All of those, but I’ll recover.”

Kingsley shook his head. “Lie down and rest a bit, would you?”

“I will the moment we’re on the train back to London.”

Kingsley shook his head again and snorted. He looked past Hester Price at the body of Oliver on the bed. The boy was a pale lavender color, purple veins feathering up under the collar of his shirt and across his face. His skin was swollen and distended from his time in the water, his eyes puckered holes. His legs bulged against his trousers. His left arm was missing at the elbow, lost somewhere in the bottom of the well. His shirt was tattered across the front, torn and open, exposing pale white-and-blue mottled flesh that showed the evidence of deep puncture wounds. One shoe was missing and the other had been stretched by Oliver’s expanding foot so that the seams had burst. Dark liquid crusted his lips.

Day watched Kingsley’s face, but there was no expression there. The doctor had surely seen atrocities that Day couldn’t imagine.

“He bled,” Day said. “I mean the body bled, not long ago. We all saw it. You can still see it there.”

Kingsley leaned down, his face inches away from the face of the dead baby.

“How is that possible?” Day said. “A miracle?”

Kingsley shook his head and made a quiet sound that only Day heard. “No,” Kingsley said. “Nothing about this is miraculous. Did anyone touch the body before it bled?”

“His father.”

“Pressed in on the boy’s chest, did he?”

“Yes.”

“He squeezed out the remains of this little fellow’s decomposing organs.”

Hester Price gasped, and Kingsley straightened up. He turned and glared at the people gathered there in the room. “So much for superstition,” he said. “Now go. I need privacy.”

“Of course,” Day said. He held his hand out to Hester Price, but she ignored him. Hammersmith stepped closer and took her arm, helped her up off the side of the bed, and walked her out of the room. They waited in the hall. Day followed Hammersmith’s lead by taking Sutton Price’s elbow. He helped Price to his feet and motioned for Bennett Rose to precede them out of the room. Day looked back and saw that Kingsley’s satchel was on the bed at Oliver Price’s feet. The doctor had already removed his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves, preparing for the grisly work ahead of him. He glanced up at Day and let out a long breath. His eyes were sad, pink-rimmed.

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.

G
ive 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 easily 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.