Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

Dr. Mortlock was looking at the boy, on the verge of tears it seemed. “Would you both mind if I spent a moment alone with him?”

I called Pugh. After he let us out, we followed him to the dark recess by the gaol’s entrance where he wiled away the hours. He stared rudely at Miss Appleby, as though he had never seen a lady before.

“What’s the story there, Pugh?” she asked.

“Uh?”

“With the boy, what happened?”

His dull features grew animated. “Done her with his ’ands like … in …”

“His hands? Are you sure?”

“Round her neck, aye …” He made out he was throttling himself. “… tchsss …like that, see.”

I remembered what the doctor had said yesterday about a ligature.

“How do you know it wasn’t a belt or a cord?” asked Miss Appleby, clearly thinking along the same lines.

“Mr. Crane said.”

“And how would he know?”

“He found ’em up there.” Pugh’s grin revealed misshapen yellow teeth. “He’ll swing for squeezing that sweet kitten. And I’ll be on duty, see. Can’t wait!”

Looking down now, he seemed to have noticed her shapely legs in fashionable cycling trousers for the first time. He licked his lips and chuckled. “Them’s a pair of fancy pants you got on.” His hand reached out and squeezed her tweed covered thigh.

Before I was able to intervene, she struck him hard across the face. He cowered, as though expecting another blow.

“Pugh, do you like money?” she said.

“I like to spend it, aye.”

“Then how would you feel about earning a good sum?”

Afterwards I made notes in my room at the house, thinking about what was at stake here. It was much the same throughout the country. Like Pugh, certain folk delighted at the prospect of another’s execution, yet those with an ounce of compassion were naturally repulsed. After an outrage that shocked the public, such as a particularly gruesome murder, society demanded that somebody pay the price. This pressured the police, who were then often too quick to deliver a suspect. It did not matter if the person might be innocent, so long as an example was set. Miss Appleby, I suspected, had a particular aversion to this barbaric toss of a coin, and the noose itself, enhanced by personal experience, which drove her to pursue her work so diligently.

I unfolded the yellowed newspaper cuttings and read them again, except this time from a more personal perspective now that I was acquainted with one of those involved. Miss Appleby had returned home from university one evening to discover a mob hanging her father from the tree overlooking her bedroom window. When she tried intervening, some men held her back, and when she screamed, she was punched in the face. A gang of shrieking women insisted she accompany her father on the tree, and for a wavering moment it almost went that way. She was unable to look, a witness said, so one of the men, with a gleeful expression, gripped her chin and wrenched her face towards her father kicking and squirming. The correspondent, who in a previous article had virtually incited the mob, was this time sympathetic. He called for those responsible to face the noose, which of course they did.

The servant knocked the door and announced that lunch was about to be served.

The meeting with the boy had clearly upset the doctor. We ate watery pigeon soup in the dining room, in silence except for the tick-tock of the grandfather clock and a crude slurping as the doctor’s spoon met his lips. After a time, Miss Appleby looked him in the eye and said, “Yesterday I mentioned certain terms. On the basis of those terms I agreed to help. And yet you have already broken them, Doctor.”

He seemed offended. “That’s not true. I feel I must protest here.”

“You have not been honest with me.”

“In what sense?”

“Why didn’t you tell me Tobias is your son?”

He turned his head, looking ashamed. “Is it really that obvious?”

“Your manner with him earlier was paternal, certain physical characteristics are similar, and there is a photograph of him on your mantelpiece.”

“Ah, I grow complacent. Sometimes I forget to put it in the drawer. In truth, since my wife died, I’m past caring. Let them think what they like!” He turned defiant for a moment before reverting to the more familiar despondency. “I had a very brief affair with Tobias’s mother, just a single occasion where temptation got the better of us. She fell pregnant. Naturally I supported her financially in secret. And we both did a thorough job of hiding it from our respective spouses. Her husband always believed Tobias to be his, and my wife never suspected. She was not able to bear us children. Consequently, over the years, I have felt a growing yet distant affection for the boy. It would break my heart to see him hang. Also, as the presiding physician, I would be expected to examine him afterwards to confirm his passing.” He wiped a tear from his cheek with a handkerchief. “I feel that is beyond me.”

“What about family? Has he anyone else, any brothers and sisters that may help?”

“His mother died of fever several years ago, his father in a quarry accident. There is an older half-sister. She teaches at the school here. But I fear she is too afraid to speak out and defend him. Crane’s donations keep the school running. I suspect he has approached her in private.”

She brushed her lips with a napkin. “Then I shall pay her a visit too.”

The high ceiling with exposed beams rendered the schoolroom only marginally less cold than outside. As I closed the door, making a great racket, the children turned and stared. A schoolmistress approached along the aisle, which divided the desks in two sections, her heels echoing over the woodblock floor.

“Get on with your work!”

With her plain, stern features, and hair stretched above her scalp in a stiff bun, there was little resemblance to her handsome half-brother. The doctor spoke almost in a whisper. “I’m sorry for the sudden intrusion. Miss Appleby here wishes to talk to you about Tobias.”

“What? Have you lost all sense, Doctor?”

She peered around as if there might be spies among the pupils. Breathing fiercely through her nose, she ordered the doctor to take the class for a moment then led Miss Appleby and me into a windowless storeroom. The smells of boxed chalk, new pencils, water-based paints, and fresh paper reminded me of school as a little boy. Also, the schoolmistress’s strict manner prompted a peculiar echo of crimeless guilt, as if we were about to be scolded for our existence alone.

“Who are you?”

Miss Appleby introduced us and said that her business was fighting injustice.

“Injustice?” The schoolmistress spoke as if the word were a profanity. “What can you do?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. But anything is worth a try, wouldn’t you say?”

“Poking your nose in looking for trouble is bad for everybody.”

“I’m not seeking trouble, madam, merely the truth.”

“The truth is there is no justice in this life. Tobias is doomed. We just have to accept that and get on with things.”

“But if the real murderer is at large still, and we do nothing and he acts again, how could we live with that on our conscience?”

“Don’t lecture me about moral duty! You should try spending a lifetime in this town first.”

“What if your brother is innocent?”

“Of course he is innocent.”

“Then who murdered Charlotte Crane?”