The Black Country (7 page)

T
he bowls Bennett Rose brought his guests were full of something thick and brown and hot, with thumb-size chunks of beef floating amidst cubes of onions and leeks. It was exactly what was called for on a dark snowy evening in a strange place. Sharing the tray with the two bowls was a half a loaf of good bread and a pair of beer steins filled with dark ale. Rose instructed them to leave the tray in the hall when they were finished, where it would be picked up by the scullery girl in the wee hours.

“You can always wait and tackle them woods in the morning,” Rose said. “I expect you’ll sleep hard tonight.”

“There’s no time to waste,” Day said. “We’ll eat and freshen up a bit and be right down.”

“I’ll tell the others you’ll be ready to go in a bit,” Rose said. He smiled and bowed and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Hammersmith took a bowl and sat in the room’s single straight-backed chair.

“You eat,” Day said. “I’m more thirsty than I am hungry and I want to unpack now while I have the energy. By the time we get back tonight, I suspect I’ll want nothing more than sleep.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“No, eat.”

Hammersmith shrugged and sniffed the bowl. He levered a spoonful into his mouth and frowned.

“Where’s your suitcase?” Day said.

“In my room.”

“I never saw you go to your room.”

“I was there long enough to set my suitcase down. I’ll worry about unpacking it later.”

“Your clothing will be wrinkled.”

Hammersmith smiled, and a moment later, Day laughed. Hammersmith’s clothes were always wrinkled, whether they came from a suitcase or a closet.

“Well, try not to spill any of that on your shirt.”

“I make no promises. Pudding stains go quite well with tea stains.”

“It’s a pudding?”

“Rose said it was groaty dick,” Hammersmith said.

“Groats?” Day said. “That’s bird feed.”

Hammersmith shrugged. He tore off a hunk of his bread and used it to soak up some of the stock. He popped the soggy bread into his mouth. Broth dribbled down his chin and narrowly missed the front of his shirt. He leaned forward so that it would drip into the bowl and then wiped his chin on his sleeve, realizing too late that he’d only altered the location of the stain rather than avoiding it. He sighed and set the bowl aside. “I was watching,” he said. “Looking your way when the vicar’s wife gave you something.”

Day held up a finger and went to the door. He opened it slightly and looked both ways down the hall, then shut the door again. He reached for his stein. He took a deep swallow of beer and licked the foam from his upper lip. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper, creased and wadded and still damp from Mrs Brothwood’s sweaty hand. He pushed aside the washbasin and laid the paper on the vanity. He carefully unfolded it, teasing the edges so that the soft paper wouldn’t tear. There was scratchy handwriting on one side, ten words, broken up into three short lines, hurriedly written in violet ink. Day took the scrap of paper by one corner and flipped it over. The back side was blank. He turned it back over and both men leaned in close to read:

She is under the floor.

He means no harm.

Please.

They both read it silently, and then Day read it out loud. His voice was hushed but clear in the small room.

“She is under the floor. He means no harm. Please.”

He backed up to the bed and sat down on the edge of it.

“What does it mean?” Hammersmith said.

“Should we assume it’s the missing Mrs Price?”

“I think if it were all of them, the whole Price family, she would have worded this differently, wouldn’t she?”

“But under the floor? What floor?”

They both looked down at the smooth wooden planks beneath their feet. Day shook his head.

“We were in the common room, near the hearth,” he said.

“Mrs Price is under the hearth?” Hammersmith said. “That makes no sense.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t think that’s what the note means,” Day said. “That’s where we were when she gave this to me, but she can’t have written it there, can she?”

“Why not? Before we arrived.”

“Her husband would have seen. And so would Calvin Campbell, and the schoolteacher, the children, Bennett Rose. There were a lot of people in that room. They all would have seen her write it.”

“Maybe they did see her.”

“I don’t think so,” Day said. “She was nervous. She handed this to me carefully, as she took my hand to say good-bye. She didn’t want anyone else to see. If she wrote it in front of them all, why keep it a secret afterward?”

“So she meant this for you.”

“For us.”

“She wrote it somewhere else and brought it with her.”

“She may not have even made up her mind about whether to give it to us. She might have waited to decide until she met us.”

“Then the floor she mentions could be anywhere. Why not be more specific? It’s not much of a clue, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I think she would have given us more information if it had occurred to her. It must have seemed quite obvious to her as she wrote it. She was in a hurry to write this before being discovered doing so and she was thinking about a place so familiar that it didn’t enter her mind that we wouldn’t know it, too.”

“But we’re not from here.”

“Exactly.”

“We don’t know this village.”

“So she didn’t just mean a place in the village, she meant the place where she was when she wrote this, the place where she’s most comfortable and at home, a place that needs no explanation for her.”

“Her home.”

“The rectory.”

“Mrs Price is hidden under the floor in the rectory.”

“It’s as good a theory as we’ve got.”

“Unless the note means nothing. It could be the ravings of a madwoman.”

“But if that’s the case, then we have no clues at all. So let’s assume it means something unless and until we discover that it doesn’t.”

“We don’t even know that this is meant to be Mrs Price. Or, if it is, where the other two are. Mr Price and the boy.”

“No.”

“And who is the man she mentions? ‘He means well.’”

“Yes. But she says ‘He means no harm.’ It could be Mr Price.”

“That doesn’t tell us where he is. This is a maddeningly imprecise note, Mr Day.”

“But I don’t think she means Mr Price. She was nervous, positively jumping out of her chair.”

“Well, three people have disappeared from her village.”

“She was standing next to her husband the entire time. She kept the note a secret from him.”

“Her husband.”

“The vicar. Mr Brothwood.”

“This is getting us nowhere.”

“Not entirely,” Day said. “We’ll want to examine that rectory. And we’ll want to do it without letting Mr Brothwood know that his wife gave us this note.”

“We don’t owe her anything.”

“No, we don’t. But we have no reason to make her life more difficult. She’s clearly already upset about all this. We’ll tread carefully.”

“Not so carefully that the little boy dies while we’re being polite to the vicar and his wife.”

Day sighed. “Of course not. Sometimes, Mr Hammersmith, your single-mindedness is just the slightest bit maddening.”

Hammersmith grinned and pulled another chunk of bread off the roll on his plate.

“Is it good?” Day said.

“Hmm?”

“The groaty dick.”

“Oh, I’m not sure. I didn’t notice right off, but it has a curious aftertaste. And I feel a bit dizzy.”

“It’s been a long day, and it’s colder here than it was in London.”

“True enough, but I’ve been drugged before, and this has the same feel about it.”

“Drugged? You’ve said nothing about being drugged as we’ve sat here discussing mysterious notes and rectories.”

“It may not be drugged. I’m only mentioning the possibility that there may be something in the groaty dick.”

“And if there is? Rose poisoned us?”

“I think perhaps someone did.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine. I had a bite or two, that’s all, but I recommend you eat only the bread.”

“I feel all right. I don’t think there’s anything in the beer.”

“Good. It was probably meant to disguise the taste of the drug. The bitterness.”

Day rummaged in his suitcase and brought out his Colt revolver. He checked the chamber and nodded.

“We’ll go downstairs and confront Rose,” he said.

“What if we don’t?”

“You mean, let him think he’s drugged us?”

“Just that.”

“He’ll know he’s failed when we continue to tramp about his village alive and well.”

“I don’t think he meant to kill us.”

“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense, would it?”

“London would only send more men if we both died or disappeared.”

“Perhaps the poison is only in
your
food. They don’t seem to like you here.”

Hammersmith reached and picked up Day’s bowl. He sniffed it and dipped a spoon into its murky brown depths.

“Don’t,” Day said. “If it’s got the drug in it—”

“A bite won’t hurt me. I have the constitution of an ox.”

Hammersmith tasted Day’s pudding. He spit the bite back into the bowl and smacked his lips. “That’s thoroughly unpleasant,” he said. “He’s overdone it. I don’t suppose he’s ever poisoned anyone before.”

“And, as you pointed out,” Day said, “the beer might have masked the flavor of the drug.”

“So we were both meant to succumb.”

“It would appear so.”

Hammersmith stood and gripped his truncheon. “This does seem to be a clear indication of Mr Rose’s guilt, sir.”

“Sit down, Sergeant. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to arrest him just yet.”

“But I do want to arrest him.”

“For slipping something in our food?”

“Well, yes. That seems sufficient grounds.”

“But without a reason.”

“Well, sir, we can ask him his reasons once he’s in custody.”

“Or we can wait and see why he wanted us out of the way,” Day said.

“What if he’s got the Price family hidden away somewhere?”

“It doesn’t seem likely. There’s something else going on here. Let’s see what happens.”

“Of course, he could be trying to kill us, after all,” Hammersmith said. “And he could decide to try again when he sees it didn’t work this time.”

“Then we’ll arrest him,” Day said. “Eat your bread to soak up the drug in your stomach. Eat mine, too.”

“Thank you, but if you wouldn’t mind turning your back for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Day turned and pretended to examine the chest of drawers against the window. Hammersmith took a deep breath and stuck a finger down his throat, immediately choking up a small amount of liquid back into the soup bowl. He wiped his lips on his shirtsleeve again and took a long swallow of beer to wash the taste of vomit out of his mouth.

“You are a hardy sort, aren’t you?” Day said.

“I do wish people would stop drugging me,” Hammersmith said. “I’m going to have to start preparing my own food and I’m a terrible cook, so that’s hardly better than submitting to all the poisoning going on around me.”

“It’s your second time. I can’t imagine it’ll happen again. You’re already bucking the odds.”

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

Hammersmith dropped to his hands and knees and pulled the chamber pot from under Day’s bed.

“There are still chamber pots in the rooms here?” Day said.

“I assume indoor water closets haven’t yet come to Blackhampton. At least, not all of it. Still, this ought to do,” Hammersmith said. He poured both bowls into the big pot and looked around for a place to dump it out.

“Huh,” he said. “They’ve blocked the window.”

“The chest of drawers. I thought putting it in front of the window was merely an unfortunate use of the space.”

“It was done to keep us in here.”

“Further evidence that the drug wasn’t meant to kill us. If we were dead, we wouldn’t try to climb out the window tonight.”

“Probably not. At any rate, I can’t dump the contents out the window, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with the scent of groaty dick in your room.”

“It’s not altogether unpleasant,” Day said. “If I have to put up with a scent, I mean.”

Hammersmith shoved the chamber pot back under the bed. He and Day sat and ate the bread, washing it down with the strong ale. Hammersmith yawned. “We were supposed to fall asleep quickly,” he said.

“The question is why?”

“Our host is hiding something from us,” Hammersmith said.

“Then I think it behooves us to find out what that might be.” Day stood and held out his hand, and Hammersmith handed him his plate. Day chuckled. “You still managed to get a bit on your sleeve there.”

“I know. I did it practically on purpose. I think you planted the notion in my head.”

“I’m devious that way.” Day put their plates and glasses on the tray with their bowls and opened the door long enough to set the tray in the hall. He came back into the room and closed the door.

“We should be very careful in those woods tonight,” he said. “They’ll think we’re sleepy, so we’ll watch them for mistakes. But no unnecessary chances.”