Sanguine Solutions

by Jess Faraday

  “Theo, you’re terrible!” Elizabeth said as I rushed into the kitchen. “Simon, wait.”

  I set the dishes next to the wash basin and pumped the basin full of water. It was as cold as Cornwall’s fierce autumn winds. Plunging my hands into it brought my mind and body back to a manageable state. Elizabeth followed a moment later. She stood in the doorway as if wanting to say something, but unsure if it would be welcome.

  “I can hear you thinking,” I said.

  She came up beside me, took the clean plate from my hand, dried it, and set it in the rack. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  She gave me a sideways look, one corner of her thin mouth turning up. “Which one do you fancy?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She laughed gently then put a hand on my forearm. “Simon, you spend too much time alone. It’s bad for you. Ask me how I know—and then tell me, if you had to buy an expensive supper for either of those beautiful young people in the other room, which would it be?”

  I let out a long breath. She was giving me an opportunity, and I so wanted to take it. But once said, I couldn’t unsay it. If I were mistaken, the results would be catastrophic, and the past eight months of my life had been one rolling catastrophe.

  “I would, of course, choose you, my dear doctor.”

  Her expression turned serious. “But I’m already taken. And you’ve kept our secret like the gentleman that you are.” Her hand was still on my arm, which was unusual. Like me, Dr. Bell wasn’t one who freely extended or accepted touch. “A secret can be burdensome if you’ve no one to share it with. I want you to know, if you had a secret, neither Alice nor I would judge or betray you.”

  My gasp might have betrayed me then, had it not been for a burst of raucous laughter from the other room. Sensing the opportunity to escape, I set my plate in the basin and stepped toward the door. Her hand tightened around my forearm.

  “Come on, Constable, I’ve got two shillings riding on this.”

  I turned. “You and Alice made a bet?” I tried to glare, but it was hard when the face I was glaring at was contorting with repressed laughter. “And that’s Detective Sergeant to you.”

  Elizabeth was laughing openly now, and I gave in and laughed as well. How few people I’d encountered in my twenty-seven years, with whom I’d been able to share this fundamental aspect of my very existence. And she was right. The burden was crushing. I hadn’t realized that until it had suddenly been lifted, leaving me to rise a bit too fast like a cork through deep water. By the time Alice stuck her head in the door to see what all the noise was about, both Elizabeth and I were nearly demented with laughter.

  “Right,” Alice said. “I’ll just wait out there, shall I?”

  “And your answer?” Elizabeth asked once I’d caught my breath.

  “I think you know my answer.”

  She regarded me fondly for a moment, then took my hand and led me back into the dining room.

  “Well?” Alice demanded.

  “Pay up, my dear.”

  ***

  The walk from my friends’ home to Angove’s tavern, where Theo and Abby were staying, wasn’t long, but in the cold, black Cornish night it felt endless. Theo and I walked together behind the women, slowing little by little until their group was just a dancing spot of lantern-light in the distance ahead.

  “I can’t believe it’s finally my turn to win,” Theo bubbled. “And with a dashing policeman, no less.”

  “Your turn? You knew about the bet?”

  “Please, they’re forever dangling men in front of us, and it’s always Abby. Well, almost always. Actually I’m glad it wasn’t, this time. She just finished with a nasty piece of work. Not that you’re a nasty piece of work—that I know of—but he didn’t seem it either—it’s hard to tell. I’m sure you’re nice, though. Oh dear, I’m blithering. But the point is, it’s usually pretty clear who’s going to walk away with the prize before dinner starts. With you, though, I honestly had no idea until the money changed hands.”

  That was hard to believe, considering for most of the evening I’d had a devil of a time thinking about anything other than that gorgeous mouth and how I’d like to put it to use.

  “In my line of work, I have to keep my cards pretty close to my chest,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting close to your chest.” He pressed a hand to his lips. “Oh dear, there I go again.”

  We both laughed. My mind reeled with the impossibility of it all—that someone so lovely had fallen, almost literally, into my lap. And he seemed to like me as well. But he lived in Bodmin. When the devil would I get to see more of him? As we walked along, our fingers brushed, then laced—hesitantly at first, and then with confidence. He slowed some more, then gently pulled me to a stop in front of him, shuttering my lantern and setting it on the ground.

  The darkness wrapped around us like a cloak. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the faint, metallic hint of rain hung in the still air. At that moment, we were the only ones there on that windswept field behind Elizabeth’s home, with Cornwall and the rest of the world a million miles away. I raised his fingers to my lips, and then his hands were on my cheeks, and I was leaning in, my mouth searching for his in the dark.

  They were friendly kisses, lighthearted, direct, and wonderfully enthusiastic. Eventually he pulled back, though, and brushed my hair back from my forehead with one hand.

  “The truth is,” he said, “Abby isn’t the only one who ended something recently. And it didn’t end well. Quite horribly, actually. But Alice said there’s no use moping, and she’s usually right about these things, and I’m sure she wouldn’t introduce me to a brute.”

  “I’m no brute,” I said. “Just inept.”

  He laughed. “I think you’re charming.”

  He was leaning in for another kiss, when a gunshot ripped through the darkness. Not that unusual for the countryside, but the scream that followed it was.

  “Sorry,” I said, grabbing up the lantern. Then I hesitated. I needed the light, but so did he.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I can see the others stopped ahead on the path. I’ll catch them up.”

  A light went on in the distance in the direction of the disturbance. Guthrie’s farm, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  “Cheers,” I said then took off at a run.

  The dark Cornish night can swallow a man whole. Even with a lantern, running across a field I’d crossed a dozen times, the going was treacherous. The ubiquitous sheep excrement was the least of it. What grass the sheep had left was long and slick, and where no grass remained lurked pockets of deep, sucking mud, just waiting to steal a shoe, or even break an ankle. And, of course, it was threatening rain. It rained a lot in Cornwall.

  By the time I reached the farm, romantically thwarted and spattered with muck, I was in no mood for fairy stories, but that was what Guthrie was giving me.

  “Piskies,” he pronounced. We were standing out near his chicken enclosure. The sky rumbled again, and the chickens were clucking and scolding from the safety of their wooden house.

  “Pixies broke into your henhouse, so you shot at them?”

  “That’s what I said, ain’t it? And it’s piskies, copper.”

  “And then one of them screamed?”

  He frowned. “That came later, after I chased her off.”

  “Her?”

  “Went that way. Go on now, city-boy you can still catch her.” He shook a finger toward the looming black void. He was an old man, thin and gnarled, but farm-tough, and filled with the confidence that I would, without question, do his bidding.

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “She got away with my little speckled hen! That’s my best layer!”

  If this were London, I’d have told Guthrie to go back to bed and file a report in the morning. But I was still an outsider to Penbreigh. Earning the people’s trust was an ongoing process. And to be honest, a lot of the time there wasn’t a lot for me to do—a fact upon
which a number of people, Guthrie included, liked to comment.

  And now, pixies or not, a chicken was missing and a woman had screamed.

  As I plodded down the muddy footpath that cut through Guthrie’s field, I tried not to think about Theo, tucking into his warm, dry bed, alone. I tried not to think about my own warm, dry bed for that matter. By way of distraction, I began to compose my next letter to Cal.

  Funny you should mention chasing chickens….

  What I really wanted was to tell him was that he wasn’t the only one enjoying a bit of company these days. Reading between the lines of his carefully worded letters, his life since we’d parted seemed to have been one long string of parties, trysts, and assignations—in stark contrast to my own. The first few times he’d mentioned it, I’d treated it as a test. My unfounded jealousy had ruined things between us. Could I set it aside now? Lately, though, it just struck me as excessive. And to be honest, it stung a bit.

  The mud caught my shoe for the twentieth time and, by now knowing the drill, I hopped back on one foot to retrieve it. I checked my watch. It was after eleven. The chicken thief had, no doubt slaughtered, plucked and dressed the bird by now. A fat raindrop landed on my cheek, and then another. Clearly it was a sign. I’d do one final sweep, then turn back.

  I stopped, set down my lantern, and turned in a slow circle, scanning the countryside. Quiet and dark. All of Penbreigh were snug in their beds save for their faithful copper. There was no sign of a woman, nor the reason for her scream. In all likelihood, the report of Guthrie’s rifle had startled her, nothing more. Completing my three hundred sixty degree inspection, I saw that Guthrie, too, in his warm, safe house, had extinguished his lamp. Right. This nonsense could wait for morning. I reached down to pick up my lantern.

  And that’s when I saw the body.

  Rather, I saw the feet. The rest of the man was obscured by the tall, reedy grasses that had been supple and green when I’d arrived over the summer. Now they were desiccated, brown, and bowed over the corpse as if guarding it.

  He appeared to be a young man, possibly in his late twenties, tall and well-formed. I didn’t recognize his face, and not only had I met everyone in Penbreigh, but I had a good memory for faces. He wasn’t from around here. His clothing was nondescript, save for the fact that he seemed to be wearing a lot of it. Even with the foul November weather, I’d not seen anyone layered up to quite that degree. It reminded me of the poorest of London’s poor who walked around wearing everything they owned, as they’d nowhere else to keep it. Only this man lacked the gaunt features of the truly destitute. He was on the move, but hadn’t been for long.

  He hadn’t been dead for long, either. His skin was still warm, though it was cooling fast in the frigid night air. His hadn’t been the scream, surely, though the sound had come from near here. I was certain of it.

  The man had to have come from Bodmin. Whether that had been his home, or whether he’d come from somewhere else via the new train line was anyone’s guess. What was not under question, however, was the means of the man’s death.

  Someone had bashed in his skull—one solid blow to the side of his head—with, if I wasn’t mistaken, the rock that lay immediately to his side.

  I sighed. So much for getting any sort of rest that night.

  •••

  “You know what they say,” Elizabeth said as we trudged back along the path through Guthrie’s field, dragging the dilapidated farm cart behind us. “A friend will help you move house, but a good friend will help you move bodies. Though I am disappointed that the appearance of this one has ruined all my carefully planned matchmaking.”

  I laughed though it was still jarring to hear things like that uttered in her genteel female voice. Jarring, but, having come to know my good friend as well as I had, not surprising.

  Elizabeth had been delighted when I’d knocked on her door after midnight with the offer of an adventure. Plenty of people in Penbreigh would have a handcart, but few would have relished being roused in the middle of the night and pressed into this particular service. Fewer still would have taken corpse-handling in stride. But I could tell from the gleam in her eye as I told her what I needed that she was thrilled to find herself back in the game, despite her protests of retirement.

  We reached the unfortunate man just as the rain that had been threatening all evening started to fall. The drops were heavier, now, and coming faster.

  “Good thing the weather cooperated until now,” she said as we set the handles of the cart down. “I assume you’ve already examined the area for evidence.” She didn’t wait for me, but instead unhooked her lantern from the cart and began to inspect the scene herself.

  “I reckon someone bashed his head in with that rock.”

  She cackled. “Can’t fool Scotland Yard.” She picked up the rock and tossed it back to me. I set it on the cart and watched as she tested the body for temperature, rigor mortis.

  “He’s still warm,” I said. “No rigor yet. I’d put the time of death within—”

  “The last four hours,” she finished. “You did your homework, copper. But what was he doing way out here in Guthrie’s field?”

  “Following that scream? Or perhaps being the cause of it?”

  “That was from Guthrie’s chicken thief. Will you pick him up tonight or wait until morning? Guthrie, that is.” She was holding up the victim’s right hand and peering closely at it. In the light of her lantern I saw that a few small, speckled chicken feathers were stuck to the webbing between his fingers.

  “I don’t think Guthrie killed him,” I said.

  “That hen is Guthrie’s pride and joy. Speckled Sussex—even lays in the winter. He had her brought in specially.”

  “Nobody murders someone over a chicken.”

  She snorted. “They do. You just haven’t been in the country long enough to have seen it.”

  “He said the thief was female. A pixie, actually. Even if he did mistake this delicate flower,” I gestured toward the corpse. “For a pixie—and that’s what he actually said—why would he chase him down and bash him with a rock when he had his rifle to hand? Besides, Guthrie’s seventy if he’s a day, and shorter than you. You think he could have done this to a strapping young man?”

  Elizabeth nodded, impressed. “Point, copper. Guthrie actually said piskies?”

  Now it was my turn to snort. “He did.”

  “Well, someone did scream.”

  “Some woman screamed. It wasn’t that bloke, and it wasn’t a blasted fairy,” I said.

  “Piskies and fairies are different.”

  “Come again?”

  “Piskies are mischievous. They lead people out onto the moor and get them lost for fun. Fairies are full of sunshine and mirth. Also, their wings are different.”

  I laughed. “You can’t tell me you believe in either of those things.”

  “Of course not, but a lot of people here do. If you’re going to be our village bobby, you have to understand the lens through which the people in your village see the world.”

  “Rubbish,” I said. “You want to know what I think? I think a woman—a human woman—was in Guthrie’s henhouse. Guthrie chased her off. She came this way, and for some reason this man, whoever he was, was waiting. Were they partners? Had he been lying in wait for her or was it a chance meeting? Either way, he grabbed the chicken, she screamed, and he somehow ended up with his skull beaten in. Did she do it? It seems unlikely, but I’ve seen stranger things. Who is she? Where is she? Where’s the chicken? And if she didn’t kill this man, who did? These are the things we have to find out.”

  She nodded. “I can see why Landry made you a detective.”

  “Is that sarcasm, Doctor?”

  “Easy, Sergeant. No, it’s not. In fact, there’s a set of footprints behind the body leading across that field. Small footprints and recent. I’d bet my boots they belong to—”

  “A piskie?” I finished.

  She laughed. “No. As you said; a hum
an woman. Or a girl.”

  Holding out my own lantern, I crossed to where she was standing. The footprints were small— still human-sized, but a small human. They led away from the path, disappearing into the tangle of mud and vegetation.

  “Who lives over that way?” I squinted in the general direction where the footprints led, but couldn’t see anything through the darkness.

  “Jenny Stark and her children.”

  “No husband?” I asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “How do they support themselves? The occasional chicken-theft?” I fished for my notebook and wrote down the woman’s name, humbled and chagrined that I apparently didn’t know everyone in Penbreigh after all. “And could this be the father?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But from his age I’d doubt it”

  I asked, “They ever cause any trouble?”

  When she spoke again, there was a sharp note in her voice. “People are always ready to believe the worst about a woman on her own, but I’ve never heard of them causing any sort of problem.”

  Just then thunder clapped above us and rolled out across the wide, black sky. Then the rain began in earnest. “Perfect,” I said. I looked back out across the field. “If Jenny Stark is our woman, I don’t want to wait until morning to talk to her. At the same time….” I gestured toward the corpse.

  “Say no more, Detective,” Elizabeth said. “Just help me get him onto the cart. He’ll be safe enough locked in my shed until morning.”

  “You sure you can manage? He’s heavy.”

  She smirked at me through the lantern-light and rain, and I knew I’d done the right thing dragging her out of retirement. It was a pity the Cornwall Constabulary wasn’t hiring women.

  It was near one o’clock when I found myself on Jenny Stark’s splintery doorstep. Her little dwelling was located well outside the village, and looked as if someone had slapped it together from materials stolen from different building sites. The planks that made up the uneven porch creaked beneath my feet—a sound that might have been unnerving to a woman all alone, so far from civilization, had the sound not been swallowed up by the clatter of a sudden gust of wind shuddering through the heavy cloth stretched over the frame of the front window. The noise also obscured the sound of my knocking, so I found myself rapping hard enough against the front door that I worried I might accidentally batter it down. Eventually it cracked open.