The Black Country tms-2

by Alex Grecian

  “Dr Denby,” Campbell said. “You might be useful.”

  “Sorry?” The doctor appeared to be nervous, and Day understood why. Campbell was intimidating. Quiet and commanding and subtly dangerous. Like the military man Day now knew him to be.

  “I was going to show the inspector something I found out here, and you might be able to say something about it if you come along.”

  “Say something about what?”

  “Come.”

  Campbell turned and walked away into the dappled shadows, leaving no time for argument or refusal. Denby shrugged his shoulders at Day and meekly followed along. Day breathed deeply through his nose. He took his flask out, uncorked it, and took a sip. The heavy brown liquid warmed his chest. He looked around at the trees and then up at the featureless sky. He already missed his wife. And he was reasonably certain he was getting nowhere with the current case. He worried that he would never make it home to her.

  He recorked the flask, stuck it in his pocket, and plunged into the woods close behind the doctor and the surly giant.

  32

  Hammersmith felt like a stranger in his own body. Like someone small and tired inside someone larger, looking out through the larger person’s eyes at a place he’d never been and didn’t understand. Across the room, a framed drawing, pen and ink, fell off the wall and the glass smashed. A cabinet walked itself sideways and toppled forward, narrowly missing Jessica Perkins. The chandelier above Hammersmith swayed back and forth, slowly, then faster until it began to twirl in ever-widening circles. The rug under his feet bunched and crept about the floor, only anchored by his own feet.

  But he didn’t fall.

  In fact, Hammersmith couldn’t feel that anything unusual was happening to the house. He could see the evidence of some seismic shift all around him, but he couldn’t feel it. He stood rock-steady, or so he thought, as everything around him went utterly mad.

  The Price children all sank immediately backward against the walls and slid to the ground, covering their heads with their forearms. The housekeeper disappeared somewhere back in the shadows of the hallway behind her. Jessica pushed Hammersmith away from the center of the room, and he fell backward against the sofa. Jessica rolled across the ground and fetched up against the tips of his shoes as the chandelier came loose from the ceiling and crashed to the floor where Hammersmith had been standing only seconds before. Teardrop-shaped crystals smashed against the rug, came loose from their wire fasteners, and propelled themselves outward in every direction. One of them hit Hammersmith in the knee. He thought it was beautiful the way it caught the light and reflected it back in a spiral.

  And then everything stopped moving.

  The Price children stood back up, all at once, as if this were part of the normal course of daily events. The housekeeper reemerged from the back hall with a broom and began sweeping up glass. Jessica picked herself up and brushed off her skirt. She tested her leg, put weight on it and winced. She smiled at Hammersmith as if embarrassed, then quickly looked away.

  “Are you quite all right?” Hammersmith said. He still felt like a prisoner in someone else’s body, and his voice came to his ears like a distant echo.

  “Yes, thank you,” Jessica said. “This sort of thing does happen.”

  “What sort of thing was it?”

  “The house sank.”

  “It sank?”

  “Yes, I’d judge that was at least an inch or two.”

  “It sank into the ground?”

  “Into the tunnels beneath us.”

  “You should really stop building houses atop tunnels.”

  “Some houses weren’t built atop tunnels,” Jessica said. “I’d guess the tunnels were dug under this house after it was put up. The buildings here and the mines have grown together. They’re intertwined. There’s a relationship in a village that depends on the people, but goes beyond us.”

  “Couldn’t the tunnels have been dug around the houses?”

  “The tunnels follow the seam. Coal is king here.”

  “Good lord.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, thank you. I think you saved my life just then.”

  “They shouldn’t have a chandelier in here anyway.”

  “You know, I didn’t feel the tremor at all.”

  “Perhaps it’s because you’ve been shaking so badly,” Jessica said. “You were shaking just as much as the house was.”

  All at once, Hammersmith was no longer a stranger looking out through his own eyes. His body came back to him and he could feel the bitter cold in his limbs and across his chest; he could feel himself shaking so hard that he was driving his own body deeper into the cushions of the sofa, every muscle tensing so that it hurt.

  “What’s happening?” he said.

  “You’re sick,” Jessica said.

  “I can’t be as sick as all that.”

  “But you are. You can’t help it.”

  “I can’t?”

  “No. You must have drunk the water here.”

  “What does the water have to do with anything?”

  “I think it’s in the water.”

  “What’s in the water?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ve got to get you to your doctor right away. He’s the one who guessed.”

  The last thing Hammersmith felt before he blacked out was Jessica grabbing him under the arms and hoisting him up. He tried to move his legs, tried to help her, but then he was gone.

  33

  The woods on this side of the village were more lush. The trees were farther away from the furnaces and, therefore, not as blackened. Fewer dead trunks, more new growth. Thick ash hadn’t fallen this far out, season after season, obscuring the ground cover, killing the green. The snowfall was irregular, soft drifting flakes giving way to occasional showers of ice and snow as the leaf canopy bent under the accumulation and let it all go in a sudden cascade of freezing white.

  Day moved along quickly, already acclimated to walking in the forest. He followed their faint trail and caught up to the others within a few minutes. Calvin Campbell was moving easily through the trees and brush, obviously used to the terrain, and just as obviously moving slowly so that the others could keep up. Dr Denby was having the most trouble. He stopped every few yards to catch his breath, and Day worried about the possibility of another coughing spell.

  “How far is it?” Day said. He had to shout because Campbell was several yards ahead, barely visible through the tangle of branches.

  Campbell stopped and turned, waiting for Day and Denby to catch up. “Not far,” he said. “Not long ago, this would have seemed much closer to the back of the church. Where I’m taking you. The undergrowth would have been brittle and the leaves wouldn’t have grown in yet on all these trees.” He pointed up at the tops of the trees, but kept his eyes on Day. Deep shadows emphasized the cruel lines in the giant’s face. “Someone would have needed to come this far in to be sure nobody would see them from the church’s belfry.”

  Day turned and looked back the way they’d come. It was hard to be sure, but he thought he might still be able to see the high grey stone walls of the church through the trees. But then he might have been looking at a small slice of the heavy sky.

  “See who?” he said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” Campbell said. “Come, we’re almost there.”

  Campbell turned and crashed away deeper into the woods. Day and Denby hurried after him. Day listened to the wilderness around him, on alert for some sort of attack. He still didn’t understand Campbell’s motives. But the only thing he could hear was Denby’s heavy breathing behind him. Campbell had left him behind in the woods the night before, and it was entirely possible that it was a habit with the bird-watcher. Then Day swept a springy branch out of the way and found Campbell just ahead of him, squatting down over something in a natural clearing in the forest.

  He came up behind Campbell and could see the giant’s muscles ripple an
d tense, uncomfortable with his back to anyone, but he didn’t move away. Day took a step closer and saw something bulky, something pink and grey and soft, lying near the outer edge of the clearing.

  Day reared back and bumped into Denby. The doctor craned his neck to see past Campbell, and Day saw the color drain from his face when he realized what he was looking at. The process of recognition took the doctor a few seconds longer than it had the inspector, but Denby was used to treating burns and scrapes and broken arms and fevers. Day was used to murder scenes and all that they entailed.

  The mass of flesh that had been pushed up under some low-hanging branches was once a small pig. That much was clear from the shape of the remaining ragged ear that Day could see when he turned back for a second look. But the pig had been changed by the carpet of maggots that lay frozen in place across its skin and in its many gaping wounds. There was no blood. Not anymore. Animals had been at the body, tearing open the pig’s belly and carrying away most of the juicy internal organs. The brief early spring had helped the denizens of the woods break the pig’s corpse down into its various component parts, but the return to winter had interrupted that process. Still, its hindquarters had been burrowed into, and there were various exit points higher on the corpse where those burrowing creatures had come back up for sunlight and air.

  Campbell broke a low branch off a nearby tree. It was thick with new green leaves. He used it as a brush, swiping at the pig’s corpse, scraping off the layer of crunchy white maggots until more of the pig’s skin was visible. He used his free hand to wave the doctor over. “What do you think?” he said.

  Denby leaned over the body and then squatted to get a closer look. “Dead a week, at least,” he said.

  “I thought maybe we could heal it,” Campbell said. His sarcasm was lost on the doctor. “Anything else you can tell us?”

  Denby looked stricken. “What exactly would you like to know?”

  “I’d like to know what killed it,” Campbell said. “Is that something you can tell from looking at it?”

  “A knife. It was killed with a knife or some other small sharp object. A miner’s wedge, perhaps?”

  “A lot of wounds there.”

  “Someone timid did this. None of those wounds is deep. A lot of shallow work done.”

  “Why would the pig sit still for that?” Day said.

  “Bound by the feet. Ligature marks, front and back. The two front feet tied together and the same with the two back feet.”

  “Trussed up?” Campbell said.

  “No, not pulled up on a trestle or a branch, the way it might be if someone were hunting.”

  “Then what?”

  “Just tied.”

  “Pig won’t sit still for a thing like that.”

  “Well, a wild hog wouldn’t. But pigs are smart. If this one belonged to someone, it might wait, might trust its owner until it was too late to fight back.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know what you. .” Dr Denby doubled over with no warning and began to vomit, each spasm taking an apparent toll on his frail body. Pale brown liquid splashed into the snow. After a minute or two, he fell over on his side and, before either Day or Campbell could get to him, he hit his head on a log. He lay there, bleeding heavily from a scalp wound that looked, to Day’s untrained eye, to be fairly minor. Day looked about for something to staunch the wound, grabbed up an end of the muffler Claire had made him, and thought better of it. He didn’t want blood on it. Instead, he found Claire’s handkerchief in his breast pocket and squatted over the doctor, pressing the clean cloth against his head and staunching the flow of blood. Denby’s breathing was wet and labored, but steady. Day leaned against the log and looked up at Campbell. The inspector and the bird-watcher watched each other for a long moment. Tension crackled through the clearing.

  “What are you doing in Blackhampton?” Day said.

  “Helping you find Oliver Price.”

  “I told you. I’ve read about you.”

  “You don’t know me. You don’t know my life.”

  “I didn’t say I did. I said I’ve read about you. I received a telegram from Scotland Yard this morning. I know you killed a man.”

  “I’ve killed a lot of men.”

  “You killed someone in London ten years ago. Over a woman.”

  “I did my time.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Someone I loved. And still love.”

  “So you killed for her?”

  “I don’t allow anyone to threaten the people I care about.”

  “Did she wait for you, at least? The woman you went to prison for?”

  Campbell was silent.

  “I’ll ask again,” Day said. “Why are you in Blackhampton? Are you running from something? Hiding from something?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong. Unless you’re going to arrest me-”

  “I’d prefer it if you just talked to me.”

  “I could talk. But I think we ought to do something about this.” Campbell gestured at the heap of Denby lying next to the dead log in the forest clearing. “That’s a lot of blood.”

  Day agreed. He peeled Claire’s handkerchief back and looked at the wound. It had stopped bleeding. Denby’s skin was pale, and there was a trickle of blood running from a corner of his mouth. Day tossed the handkerchief into the brush (another excuse to buy her something with the proper monogram) and opened Denby’s jacket. He undid the top few buttons of the doctor’s shirt to make his breathing easier. As the shirt came open, Day gasped. He looked up at Campbell and saw that his eyes had grown large, his lips pressed tightly together. Day unbuttoned the rest of Denby’s shirt and stood up. He stepped back, side by side with Campbell. He heard the bird-watcher draw in his breath.

  Denby’s entire torso, everything that had been covered by his shirt, was a writhing mass of dark wet shapes. Leeches writhed over the doctor’s flesh, their fat bodies pulsing and bloated, filled with blood.

  34

  Kingsley had commandeered the inn’s dining room over the strenuous objections of Bennett Rose, who had stalked off into the common room and had not been seen since. Kingsley covered the oak tabletop with a fresh linen bedsheet, and his assistant, Henry Mayhew, fetched in his microscope, slides, and a small crate full of tools and chemicals. A portion of the sheet was pulled away from one corner of the table, and a small burner was filled and set on a plate. Henry lit the burner and adjusted its tiny flame.

  Kingsley spread the tiny floral dress across the opposite corner of the table and examined it under his lens, checking each of the dark stains for telltale signs of dirt clumps or paint buildup.

  “First,” Kingsley said, “shall we see if this is blood?”

  “It looks like blood to me, sir,” Henry said.

  “And to me. But let’s be certain.”

  He dabbed at the middle of the largest stain with a dampened cotton swab and rolled the swab across a glass slide. He rummaged in his satchel until he found a small vial of clear liquid, labeled Acetic Acid Chloride. He unstoppered the vial and the air above it began to smoke. Quickly, Kingsley filled a dropper and restoppered the acetyl chloride, then added a single drop of the liquid to the slide. Holding the slide in a pair of tongs, he carefully heated the mixture, then moved the slide over to his microscope. He set it on the platen and clamped it down, then angled the small mirror underneath to catch the room’s lamplight and deflect it up through the slide. He bent over the lens and drew in a sharp breath. He stood and beckoned to his assistant.

  “Look, Henry. Right in there.”

  Henry hunched down and looked through the leather eyepiece. He stood and shook his head, showed Kingsley a puzzled expression. “I don’t see anything. I’m sorry.”

  “Crystals, Henry. Crystals are already forming on that slide. Take another look.”

  Henry sighed and looked again. He straightened and took a step back and smiled at the doctor, but said nothing.

  “You still don’
t see them?” Kingsley said.

  “I don’t know what a crystal looks like, sir.”

  “That’s okay, Henry. I suppose you can take my word for it. The presence of crystals means that we have found blood.”

  “Where?”

  “On the slide. There’s blood on the slide.”

  Henry’s eyes grew wide and he gasped. “It must’ve come from that dress.”

  Kingsley chuckled. “I think you’re right. Shall we see what else we can determine by looking at the dress?”

  “I can’t see anything except a mess, sir.”

  “Hmm. I see a mess, too. But there may be more to that mess than we at first suppose.” Kingsley walked the six feet to the other end of the table and gestured at the dress. “You aren’t familiar with Lacassagne’s patterns of blood.”

  “Sir?” Henry said.

  “There are shapes here.”

  “I don’t wanna see no more blood, sir, crystals or no.”

  Kingsley smiled at the simple giant. “You don’t have to look, Henry. I’m used to talking to myself in the laboratory. Or to Fiona, if she’s around. I know we haven’t quite got used to each other, but if you’ll only let me talk aloud, you don’t really have to listen to what I say.”

  “I will listen, sir. Only I still won’t look, if it’s all right.”

  “As I said. No looking. If I catch you looking. .” Kingsley wagged a finger at Henry, who grinned.

  “No looking, sir. Won’t do it.”

  “Good man.” Kingsley picked up his lens and peered at the dress. “So, what I see here are splashes and what I would call spurts.”

  “Spurts?”

  “Just listen, Henry. If these stains are blood, then this dress was not worn by the victim. Whomever, or whatever, this blood belonged to was facing the person who was wearing the dress. Blood left a body, some body, and moved outward along what appear to have been several different trajectories, each of them making a mark on this dress.”