Daniel Friedman - Riot Most Uncouth

He began to climb down into the wreck, but I shooed him off with a roll of my shoulder. “It’s no use. I’m chained in here quite securely, and I’ve no idea where the keys went.”

“I’ve got them,” he said. “Had to dig them out of Mr. Dingle’s waistcoat pocket, but I knew you might be trapped someplace.”

He worked the key in the heavy iron padlock, and I was free. With his assistance, I climbed out of the overturned vehicle, and sprawled my body out upon the grass.

“Are you in much pain?” Angus asked.

“I can only hope that no one has confiscated my laudanum,” I said.

“It’s good to see you’ve maintained your humor.”

“I’ve got no other solace in these dire circumstances.”

“Well, it could have been a good deal worse for you, I daresay,” said Angus. “This carriage is only tipped on its side. If it had collided with something at speed, like a tree or a house, it would have been smashed to bits. You’re lucky the horse broke free of the harness when its leg went, or else it would have got tangled in the wheels.”

“From inside, it seemed as though the stage rolled end over end before it stopped,” I said.

“It didn’t. There are no gouges in the earth to indicate such, nor is there dirt or grass on the roof of the vehicle.”

He reached down with his meaty hand and pulled me to my feet.

“You can see the track here, where the stage veered off the road,” he said, pointing to the thick wheel-ruts that the carriage had cut into the earth. “The carriage just sort of ran into the grass, bounced around a bit, lost speed, and fell over. Laid you down quite gentle, I’d say.”

“It certainly didn’t feel gentle.”

“Well, you just rest for a bit and get your bearings. After I found the driver, I hired a boy from the first farmhouse I saw to ride back to Cambridge and fetch Mr. Knifing. He should be along shortly to examine the bodies. Hopefully he’ll arrive in a stagecoach. I don’t suspect you’re fit to walk back to town, nor would you want to sit horseback in your condition.”

I didn’t really care one way or the other about Knifing or the bodies right then, though I was possessed by a rather fearsome desire to be carried to my bed, where I could ensconce myself snugly with my bear and consume lots of drugs. “Have you got any whisky?” I asked. The fine red webbing etched upon Angus’s face gave me reason to hope he might.

“I’ve been known to carry a little nip to gird meself against the wind,” he said, confirming my suspicions. He handed me a dented flask, and I drank from it without even bothering to wipe his spittle off the mouth of it. It was cheap stuff, and it tasted like the wormy grain it was made of and the old, rotten barrels it was fermented in. But I could barely taste it, as my nostrils were filled, anyway, with the stink of blood; the horse’s or maybe my own. And sometimes, a man needs a drink.

“Do you suppose that, just before he died, Mr. Dingle’s life passed before his eyes, and he realized, in that ultimate moment, what a terrible bore he was?” I asked Angus.

“Who can say what any of us will see, afore we pass beyond that threshold.”

“At least his departure was interesting.”

Angus chuckled. “That it was, though I don’t know that he appreciated it.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” I said. “He lacked refined sensibilities.”

“Not all of us have the time or the resources to devote ourselves to being interesting or refined, you know,” Angus said. He pushed out his stout chest as he spoke.

“I apologize. I meant you no offense.”

“If I may ask, what passed through your mind, Lord Byron, as the stagecoach crashed? Did you regret your sins?”

“Only the ones I hadn’t yet got around to committing,” I said, and I drank again and peered at Angus over the lip of the flask. “What brings a man to volunteer himself as a constable, and to spend his evenings patrolling country roads, hunting for bandits?”

Angus took the whisky back from me and swallowed some of it. “What are those creatures called that you collect books about?”

I supposed my archive of dark lore was no longer much of a secret. “Vampires,” I said.

“Yes, vampires. I hunt for bandits, and you hunt for vampires.”

I pictured Knifing hacking with an ax at the locked doors of my black bookcase. I couldn’t quite visualize it; the investigator’s tight-fitting suits left him with an insufficient range of motion to undertake such a task. I blinked, took the flask back, and had another drink. Then I pictured Angus breaking open the cabinet while Knifing watched. “You searched my rooms, I gather?”

“In fact, we did not,” Angus said. “Knifing said you were innocent, so he wasn’t interested at all in the contents of your residence. Dingle didn’t look around much either, though Knifing said he should have, if he believed you to be guilty.”

“How did you know about the vampire books, then?”

“Violet Tower kept a diary. She thought about you quite a bit, and I have to say, she was concerned by your fixations. Mr. Knifing and I know all about the vampires. And about your father.”

“Of course you do. Remind me never again to share a confidence with a woman.”

“I haven’t caught any bandits,” he said. “Do you suppose you’ll catch a vampire?”

He gave me his flask again, and I had another drink. “It’s not the catching that matters,” I said. “Only the hunting.”

“But do you really believe in such creatures?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I try to. I like being the man who believes.”

He let a long silence pass between us, and then he sighed loudly. “I had a daughter-I mean, I still have a daughter, but I had another daughter, Iris. My oldest,” he said. “She was lovely to look at, and I don’t just say that as her father. Everyone thought so.” When he spoke, his eyes did not meet mine, for his attention was focused someplace beyond me, off toward the horizon, or into the past.

I looked critically at his rough, leathery features; at his round and ample gut. His misshapen nose and lumpy cheeks reminded me of the bulges and protuberances one might find on a large, strange potato.

“You seem surprised my daughter was beautiful,” Angus said. “But I was quite handsome before I ruined my face with drink and my body with food and sloth. You’ll not keep your own fine features for long if you continue to live the way you live.”

“The way I live, I don’t expect to need them for long,” I said, and since I was still holding the flask, I drank from it again. He gestured toward me, and I handed it back to him.

“As I said, my daughter was very beautiful, and the men from the College started noticing her once she was around thirteen or fourteen. Of course, the rarefied university sort would never marry a girl with a father like me, no matter how pretty she was.”

I rubbed gingerly at my bruised wrists. “What is your trade, Angus, when you aren’t hunting bandits or guarding murder scenes?”

“I’m a carpenter,” he said.

“So, you build houses and things?”

“No, I’m more of a craftsman. I make furniture. Chairs and bed-frames and tables. Plain ones, mostly, for ordinary folk. But I’ve got a bit of a talent for delicate carving. My hand is quite steady when I’m sober, and I’ve been known to make some fine pieces. The university commissioned some chairs from me a few years ago. In fact, I saw one of them in your parlor. How did it end up there?”