The Black Country

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Day was dripping wet, the back of his overcoat in tatters and his gloves hanging torn and useless from his wrists. Calvin Campbell took one look at what Day was holding in his arms and turned and disappeared into the storm. Hammersmith heard his muffled footsteps in the snow, running fast back toward the church. Hammersmith briefly considered following him, but instead he went to Day and helped his inspector back to solid ground where two village women were ready with a blanket for him.

Nobody looked at Oliver Price and nobody spoke a word, but the third woman of the group took the tiny body from Day and carried it away into the storm.

43

The storm gave the American time to think. He had checked his snares after killing the policeman and found a badger, caught in the wee hours, still alive and snarling. Its meat was oily and dense, but it filled the American’s belly well enough. He had to finish chewing each bite and swallow before both hands were free to tear another piece from the badger’s carcass. He chewed with one hand pressed over the gap in his face, and while he chewed, he thought.

One of the men from London had seen the American in the woods. The American could have killed him then, but Campbell had been nearby, and so had the village constable and the other Londoner. The odds had been against the American. He liked to kill at a distance, liked to use the rifle. He was good with it. Fighting and killing in close quarters was more difficult and-although he would never admit this, even to himself-the American was afraid. Ever since Campbell had cut away part of his face, the American had avoided people, kept himself at a distance. It was better that way.

But the man from London had seen him. He had probably told Campbell. Which meant that Campbell was either holed away somewhere, waiting out the storm, hiding from the American, or he was already leaving the village, running again. Campbell had never stood his ground, never sought the American out, and there was no reason to think he would decide to do so now.

Campbell had spent the better part of the last decade in another prison where the American couldn’t get at him. Campbell seemed to have an affinity for prisons. So the American had waited. He was good at waiting, but he didn’t want to wait any longer. There was trouble in this Black Country village and Campbell was mixed up in it somehow. The American needed to end this soon, before Campbell disappeared again.

If Campbell was waiting out the storm, he would be leaving as soon as he could get away. Unless he was leaving now, using the storm as cover. Away from the village, he could go in any direction and lose himself in a big city or in the isolated countryside. Tracking him was a laborious process, and the American didn’t want to have to start over. So, whatever Campbell had decided to do, the American felt he only had one logical course of action open to him. The train was the fastest way out of the village, and so Campbell would eventually show up at the depot.

The American gathered his things and packed his bag. He cut two thick badger steaks off the animal’s body, wrapped them in pages torn from another book he’d found in the schoolhouse, and stuffed the bundle in the bottom of his gun bag. He cleaned the Whitworth and loaded it and slung it over his shoulder, picked up his bags, and crawled out the window, leaving the fire he’d built there to die out by itself.

The sun was invisible, far above the grey clouds, so the American took a moment to orient himself, using the tree line as a marker. Then he set out, trudging through the deep snow toward the train depot.

He would wait there, and Calvin Campbell would eventually come to him.

44

Henry Mayhew staggered past carrying a long wooden pew. Kingsley estimated the pew weighed perhaps three hundred pounds and he wondered, not for the first time, about the strength of his simpleminded assistant. Henry was of no use when it came to performing even the most straightforward of chemical experiments or basic autopsy procedures, but Kingsley had no regrets about hiring him. Henry was loyal and strong and kind, and he made Kingsley smile, which was a rare enough thing.

Putting the pews back in place was the first thing Kingsley had decided to do after taking a look at the rows of hacking, crying, moaning villagers in the sanctuary. More than half of his new patients were on the floor, some of them lying directly on the cold floorboards. That wouldn’t do. Obviously someone, probably the vicar Brothwood, had determined that more bodies would fit in one side of the sanctuary if all the pews were moved to the other side. And Kingsley imagined that the decision had been motivated by a desire to preserve the antique pews. Otherwise, the situation made no sense. And so Kingsley had ignored the vicar’s stammered objections and he had put Henry to work restoring the sanctuary’s original layout.

It had been slow work. A few patients had been carefully moved to the center aisle and a pew had been positioned in their place. They had been moved back, two patients per pew, feet to feet, their heads at the outer ends, and another row of patients had been moved to the center aisle. More villagers were being moved to the aisle than were being taken back because they took up more room on the pews than they did on the floor, but as pews were moved across from the east side of the sanctuary, space had begun to open up there. Henry, with the help of a few of the healthier volunteers, was ferrying them all the way across the aisle and gradually filling the entire room with sick people.

It looked like a battlefield.

Kingsley had tried to turn the altar into a makeshift worktop, but the vicar had put his foot down and so he had moved the podium down to the middle of the aisle and emptied his satchel on it. He had sent two boys to the apothecary with a few quid and a list of ingredients to bring back. Basically, he’d told the boys to empty the apothecary out. And he was sure there still wouldn’t be enough to work with. There had to be more than a hundred seriously ill people to take care of, and Kingsley had yet to see a well-stocked village apothecary. Still, he would assess the situation when the boys returned and begin treatment as soon as he possibly could. Meanwhile, he and Henry were doing what they could to make the villagers more comfortable.

He helped Henry transfer a thin young woman onto a pew, then stopped by little Hilde Rose’s pew to check on her. She was awake, her eyes open and staring at the timbers of the ceiling. She turned her head when he approached.

“I feel all right now,” she said. “May I go home?”

Kingsley smiled. “Let’s have you rest a bit longer, okay?”

“If you say I must.”

“I do say so. I have something for you, though.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the tiny box that held the eyeball. “I was told this is yours.”

“My eye!” She took the box from him and opened it, peeked inside and closed it again, and held it tight to her chest. “Thank you for returning it. It’s such an odd little thing, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it must seem so to you.”

“You’re finished looking at it?”

“I am.”

“And was it helpful to you? Do you know who it belongs to?”

“As far as I’m concerned, it belongs to you.”

“But it started out in someone’s face. We should try to discover who that might have been, shouldn’t we?”

“I’m reasonably certain it started out in a pig’s face, my dear. I don’t think this is a human eyeball, though I can’t be sure.” Kingsley almost laughed at Hilde’s look of disappointment. “It’s better that nobody lost an eye, though, isn’t it?”