Half an hour later I found myself on a train bound for the scene of the crime—John Turner’s farm, the constables had told me, in Boggart Valley. I’d never heard of the place. This, it turns out, was because it was a small and unimportant fold in the ground out by Woodside and Cheapside, abutting the Great Park at Windsor. In other words: not far. Just a little west of London.
When I arrived, I found Grogsson waiting for me on the train platform, his arms crossed in vexation over his generous expanse of chest.
“Argh! Why so long?” he complained.
I gave a huff. “Because your note said to ‘com’, Torg, but it didn’t say where. I naturally assumed you’d be at Scotland Yard.”
“HRRRAAAAAGH!” he replied, by which he meant that my excuses were specious and served only to waste more time.
…I think.
Anyway, we soon found ourselves on a whirlwind tour of all the pertinent sites, punctuated by reviews of the local newspapers’ coverage of the crime and subsequent inquiries.
Which I will not relate.
Not because I am trying to be difficult, understand, but because I am trying to spare you. I have a concern for your patience, dear reader, and—as I fully expect you to be reading this in the wake of a world-shattering demon apocalypse—I understand your time is precious.
Allow me to sum up what I learned:
1. Charles McCarthy had been a crusty, dislikable, Australian sort of fellow who lived—for reasons nobody could quite explain—rent-free at Hatherley Farm. This particular property happened to be one of the finest farms on the rather eye-poppingly large tracts of land held by John Turner.
2. Last Monday, Charles McCarthy returned from a visit to a nearby town, urging his driver to hurry, for he had an appointment to keep at 3pm. Said appointment was—and only I seemed to find this odd—scheduled to be held by the side of Boggart Pool, which lay about one quarter mile from Hatherley Farm, across a field of grass and bush and… you know… nothing special. From this meeting, he never returned alive. He was seen walking alone, towards the pool, by John Turner’s gamekeeper and one local lady.
3. About six minutes later, the same two people saw Charles McCarthy’s son, James McCarthy, heading in the same direction. The local opinion of James McCarthy was that he had always seemed not to be touched by the same defects of character that had troubled his father and that—though he was somewhat unlikely to produce any scientific breakthroughs or pen any particularly insightful essays—he was rather nice to look at. This difference in character between father and son was accompanied by an equal number of differences in opinion, and the two often fought.
4. Sure enough: about fifteen minutes after James McCarthy was seen walking to the pool after Charles McCarthy, the fourteen-year-old daughter of John Turner’s lodge-keeper, Patience Moran, burst into her home and told her mother she’d seen the two of them employing rather heated language towards each other. She’d seen James McCarthy raise his hand towards his father, as if to hit him, and had run home to report that she was afraid the two men were going to fight.
5. Secondary sure enough: just as Patience was finishing her tale, James McCarthy burst in to say that he’d just found his father beaten to death by the side of Boggart Pool and would somebody please help. James McCarthy’s right hand and sleeve were smeared with fresh blood. Not only did the men who accompanied James back to the pool find the body of Charles McCarthy lying face down with the left-rear portion of his skull beaten in, they also could not help but notice James McCarthy’s rather bulky shotgun lying just a few paces away, clean, loaded and ready for action.
6. Tertiary sure enough: James McCarthy was promptly arrested. It would be fair to say things did not go well for him at Tuesday’s inquest, which returned a verdict of “willful murder” and insured that the magistrates who saw him Wednesday opted to have him held until the next assizes. Despite the early stages of the case, they made sure to ask James how tall he was and how much he weighed, to make sure they had the proper length of rope standing by. You know… just in case.
7. Just as I was beginning to wonder how on earth Grogsson could ever assume young James to be innocent, our deliberations were interrupted by Alice Turner. She found us at our hotel and launched into a diatribe regarding James McCarthy’s unimpeachable character and certain innocence. For a moment, I supposed Grogsson may have fallen back to old ways and had only come to summon me because he was trying to impress the pretty young lady. Except… she wasn’t all that pretty. Now don’t get me wrong: as the only heir to a father who owned enough of the local countryside to be considered something of a private empire, she must have been quite the marriage prospect, even if she’d had one extra foot and twenty-eight extra teeth. Still, Grogsson treated her as nothing more than a confederate—the only other person to assume James’s innocence.
8. There was a romantic connection between Alice and James. Though she made some attempts to hide it, it was clear to me that Alice Turner had grown rather accustomed to gazing longingly at James McCarthy’s rugged, handsome face. The enjoyment of this process would be decreased, she reasoned, if James were to become dead. Indeed, the prospect of their marriage had been brought up by his father a few times (and certainly not deflected by young Alice, who had a dress concealed in a box in her closet for just such an occasion). Her own father had
