Stephen Gallagher - The Bedlam Detective

“Bill Turnbull told me you’d sent ahead for a room,” Stephen Reed said. “Let’s speak plainly.”

“Let’s.”

They moved to the inn’s part-time police office, which had been brought back into service after the murder of Grace Eccles.

“You and I know that tinker never killed those two children,” Stephen Reed said. “And there can be no doubt that Sir Owain is dangerously insane. His wealth and reputation have kept him above suspicion. I believe that if Doctor Hubert Sibley doesn’t actively collude, he at least looks the other way.”

“Then let’s catch them out on that,” Sebastian said. “What exactly happened to Grace Eccles?”

“Are you saying you agree?”

“Absolutely. I know the man’s history now. It’s a recipe for tragedy. How did she die?”

“She appears to have let someone into her home. Someone she knew. She wasn’t expecting to be attacked.”

“That’s a big supposition.”

“The door was unlocked.”

“I’d look for more than that to support it.”

“She poured a glass of water for her guest. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but … you’d have to know Grace. It was him, it has to be.”

“Was there a further violation?”

“Not in the police surgeon’s opinion.”

“No offense,” Sebastian said, “but when a missing-children case turned to murder they replaced you pretty damned quickly. How come you’re back in charge?”

“That case was important to someone,” Stephen Reed said. “Grace Eccles is important to no one. You’ve been a long time away from policing, Mister Becker. You of all people should know how it plays.”

He gave Sebastian a quick account of what was known of Grace’s murder. She’d invited her attacker in. Bloodstains showed that he’d turned on her once inside the house. When she fled the building, he pursued her out onto the estate. After killing her and making little attempt to conceal her body, he returned and searched the house. He might have intended to return to deal with the remains, but at that moment the search mattered more. There was no saying what he was looking for, or whether he’d managed to find it.

Sebastian said, “What’s happening with the tinker? Is the execution still on, or is there a stay?”

“There’s been no word of any stay. I’ve suggested that this new killing may call his guilt into question, but without hard evidence I can’t get anyone to listen. He put his mark to a confession, for God’s sake. Even his own counsel thinks he’s guilty. How did the news get to London? To most people it’s no more than a local affair.”

“I heard it from Evangeline Bancroft,” Sebastian said. “Her mother wrote to her.”

“Evangeline?” Stephen Reed said. “You’ve seen her?”

“I tracked her down. We shared information. Her life has been marked since her childhood, but she remembers nothing of how. She sends you her best wishes. I’ve warned her to stay away.”

Evangeline stood by her bicycle before Grace’s cottage, her heart heavy, her skin cold. Her oldest friend was dead, and here was where she’d spent her final hour. Now someone was close by, moving around in the yard.

It was a man. An old man, bent and white-haired but able-bodied. Arthur had seemed exactly the same for as far back as she could remember. At one time or another he’d carried out odd jobs for just about everyone in town. Her mother had paid him to paint their shed once. Now he was putting out feed for Grace’s chickens, and hay for Grace’s horses.

When he was done he came over and they stood side by side in silence for a while, watching the horses eat.

Eventually Evangeline spoke. “What’s to be done with them?” she asked.

“Sergeant Reed told me to graze them until someone decides,” Arthur said.

“Stephen Reed? He’s here?”

“Hereabouts,” Arthur said.

When the hay was gone the animals stood in their paddock looking toward the house, as if expecting Grace to appear in the doorway. After the one-eyed horse had been roped and led back from the main street, the others had returned on their own.

“Can I go inside?” Evangeline said.

“No one’s stopping you,” Arthur said.

She left her bicycle by the gate and pushed at the cottage door. The house had not been secured. People would probably avoid it for a while because of what had happened here, but after a few days the superstition would wear off and then anything that wasn’t nailed down would be fair game. Anything that was nailed down would be fair game thereafter. Left unattended for long enough, such a remote building would be stripped of its lead, slates, and timbers, with the dressed stone to follow.

Unless, of course, Sir Owain took the necessary steps to safeguard his property. She knew he had designs for it; Dr. Sibley had advised him so. The house and land would need some investment to turn it into a rentable concern, but she knew that Sir Owain’s advisor had some scheme in mind for that.

Perhaps if Grace had quit the property, she’d be alive now. Evangeline wondered if her defense of Grace had helped to seal her old friend’s fate.

Inside the house, all was silent. The smell of damp, held at bay by for so long by a lit stove and human occupation, had quickly established itself. Someone had been in and tidied; the furniture was arranged all wrong. Broken crockery and ornaments had been swept into one corner by a wide broom that had left its marks in the dust.

Evangeline felt sick. Poor Grace. Brave Grace. As good as any of them, despised by all. Now she would never tell Evangeline-or anyone-what she’d known.

But why ransack the house after Grace’s death? Why had he killed her, and what could he have been looking for? Evangeline could remember the last conversation that had passed between Grace and herself.

“That doctor friend of his … he wants me paying rent or he wants me out. Well, he can want. There’s worse than him to watch out for.”

“Like who?”

“If anything ever happens to me, I daresay you’ll know where to look to find out.”

At the end of the cottage, a set of wooden steps led up through a trap to the loft where, as a child, Grace used to sleep and the two of them used to play. Evangeline picked up a simple bentwood chair and climbed the steps with it.

The loft was filled with rubbish now … old tools, mildewed cloth, broken mirrors, broken harness. Evangeline made a space on the floor under the roof beam, set the chair down, and climbed onto it. The heavy beam, a hundred years old or more, was in two pieces with a pegged joint in the middle. Many times over the years it had been painted with bitumen to preserve it, so that it was almost black. This concealed the fact that, between the two interlocking halves of the joint, there was a gap plugged by a matching timber wedge.

Evangeline worked the wedge free, uncovering the space behind it. Their secret place. There was a box in the space that Evangeline didn’t recognize.

She took it out, climbed down, turned around and sat on the chair, and inspected the box on her knees. By the faded paper label, it had once held cotton reels. When Evangeline had looked at it from every angle, she opened the lid.

The box might not be familiar to her, but some of its contents were. They were mostly childish treasures. A hat pin and a tortoiseshell comb, mementoes of Grace’s mother. Some foreign coins they used to play shop with, and a pebble from the Holy Land, one of a sackful brought to their school and handed out to each child by a visiting missionary. There was a fancy livery button, and the remains of some papers; if these had been deeds or title papers of any kind, then they’d be of no value to anyone now. Mice had somehow entered the box and shredded them into a mass of pulp and little black droppings.