“Distract me,” Lewis rasped after his friend had helped him lie down again, for sitting had proved too uncomfortable.
The priest’s thoughts were still windswept by what the policeman had asked of him, and watching Lew – a normally powerful, confident man now so very weak and afraid – didn’t help calm them. For the umpteenth time, he wished his pipe weren’t broken.
“How?” David asked.
“Tell me a story,” his friend wheezed. “A memory, a fiction, a dream—doesn’t matter.”
“I can do that.”
He paused only briefly before spitting out the first thing that flitted through his brain, a tale from nearly 20 years past.
“Do you remember the first time you came home with me from school?” David began. “I’d have been nearly 12, and you would’ve just turned 13. It was before you grew so unearthly tall, and before we decided we’d rather be men than boys.”
Lewis nodded briefly as he bit back another harsh cough.
“We tried so hard that summer to escape my sisters. Agatha was too busy with her beau to bother with us, I think, but Lucy and Margaret were determined to torment us, and Cat wanted to join us on all our adventures.”
“She was very persistent for such a tiny creature,” Lew murmured, closing his eyes. A faint, fleeting smile broke up the clouds in his expression.
“Very.” David chewed his lip for a moment, thinking. “One day, we decided to go fishing. The river was higher than I’d ever seen it – before or since – from unusually heavy rains, and the current was quick. The shallows along the bank still made for good fishing, though, and I think we were there from dawn until nearly evening, up past our knees in the eddies.”
“Did we catch anything?” his friend whispered.
“I think we must’ve since we stayed there all day. And what a day it was! I remember the water sparkled in the middle of the river, and the sunlight was so brilliant it made us squint except when we stood under the willows near the shore. The breeze always smelled like fresh hay and damp rocks and growing things, and the air hardly had a man-made sound upon it.”
David fell silent for a moment. Speaking the idyllic scene sent an image of such beauty through his mind that the priest wanted to take a moment to enjoy it, hoping Lewis could as well.
“But the day soured,” his friend put in with a whisper, his brow furrowing faintly in memory. “We argued.”
“We did,” the priest returned, the recollection startling him. He hadn’t remembered until the policeman mentioned it. “It was something childish. About our fathers, I think.”
“I punched you.”
“T’weren’t the first time. Wasn’t the last, either.” David pursed his lips and wondered if he ought to interrupt himself and start a different tale. This wasn’t the happy story he’d originally aimed for, even if it did strangely parallel their current predicament.
“I don’t remember what happened next.” Lewis opened his eyes, curiosity momentarily chasing away all other concerns.
“Well, we began fighting in the shallows,” David replied, capitulating in favor of his friend’s interest. “Our violence was a wrestler’s brawl – all shoving and grappling. You and I were a much more even match back then.”
The priest paused for a moment, the echoes of that summer day darting rapidly and hotly through his brain. Shaking himself, he went on.
“Our fight ended when I pushed you away as hard as I could. You stumbled and fell and struck your head on a rock or a log, or something similar just under the water. And then the current caught you. It was very strong, even in the knee-deep shallows, and you went spinning away in a heartbeat.”
“Oh.” The policeman’s gaze was searching. “You saved me?”
David shook his head. “Lord, I tried. I could barely keep myself afloat, let alone you as well when I dove after you. The current pulled us out to the middle and kept trying to drag you under. Either of us could’ve swum back to the shallows without much trouble, but you were out cold and I couldn’t swim far with you. And if I’d let you go, you’d have sunk. We were stuck. So Catherine saved us.”
“Ah. Yes…she’d followed us that day and played under the trees while we fished.” Lewis raised a brow quizzically. “How, though? She was far too small – no more than four or five years old.”
“Yes, but she was old enough and big enough to run to fetch help.”
“It was a half-mile back to your house,” he whispered.
“The road passed nearby. She fetched some passing cart driver and he came to help us.”
“Ah.” Lewis paused, his eyes half-open and thoughtful. “I remember being ill for a week afterward.”
“Might have something to do with swallowing half the river. Certainly didn’t help that everything upstream was pastureland: makes for very unpleasant runoff.”
Despite everything, Lewis smiled. “That entire week, you made jokes about me drinking my weight in cow piss.”
“—And for much of the rest of the summer.” David found himself smiling as well.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for a child’s meddling, then.”
The priest rubbed his eyes. “I’d give a kingdom to have one meddle in this mess.”
* * * * *
Horace Tipple couldn’t sleep.
He’d gotten out of bed – putting on his dressing gown and house slippers quietly so he wouldn’t wake his wife – and wandered into the sitting room. He’d paced, poured himself a dram of scotch, paced some more as he drank it, poured another, smoked a few cigarettes while he drank and paced, and thought furiously all the while.
Horace could count on the fingers of one hand the number of cases that had kept him awake at night during the course of his career. Fretting never solved anything, and he thought better with sleep. However, that logic fell flat in the face of his current investigation.
The reason why Nicholas Harker had let himself be seen so soon after his escape was beyond baffling. And there was no question in Horace’s mind that the fellow had let the police catch sight of him. Though Mr. Harker was none too bright, and most probably not the one who’d orchestrated the flight from Holloway Prison, even a complete idiot would know not to show himself in public during his own blasted manhunt without a bloody good reason.
So why had he done it? Add that to—
“—Rory.”
“Ah. Sorry, love. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Mathilda slid her arms around him as she joined him in front of the hearth. Horace returned the embrace with one arm, still holding his tumbler with the other hand.
“You’ll find him.” She nodded toward the family portrait, which hung above inspector’s old cavalry sword over the mantle. “And the murderer too.”
The inspector brushed his fingertips over the signature in the corner of the painting, and then drew his wife over to the sofa. They sat down together, and Hildy snugged herself into his side.
“What is it, darling?” she asked.
Horace pursed his lips. “I have an awful, terrible feeling I’m missing something. Or perhaps several things. Lewis disappeared nearly two days ago. I still haven’t any idea who started the rumor that he was home in bed with a fever, and the delay that caused in the search for him is troubling. Also, he vanished more or less the same time our murderer did, and ostensibly at the hands of the same crew. I have my boys tracking both.
“This afternoon, one of those Roman Catholic sisters with the tremendously large wimples—”
“—cornettes,” Hildy supplied.
“—Thank you. One of those. She reported the disappearance of a popish clergyman who began to be missed after he failed to turn up for some celebration or other Friday afternoon. After some additional legwork by my men, he seems to have vanished the same morning as both Lewis Todd and Nicholas Harker. This clergyman, David Powell, is Lewis’s best mate. We’ve met him before, if you recall.
“To further complicate matters, Mr. Harker stepped into view briefly this afternoon and then disappeared once more before any of my people could lay a finger on him.”
“Where did he turn up?”
“He walked into a Clerkenwell police station. Bold as brass. Came in, left an envelope at the desk, and departed as quiet as you please. Didn’t even bother with a disguise.”
“A police station.”
“Yes. And so unexpected it was that the chaps at Clerkenwell didn’t recognize him or give chase until Mr. Harker had plenty of time to vanish in the afternoon street traffic. Which he did.”
“What was in the envelope?” Hildy asked after a pause.
“A certain policeman’s warrant card and a broken string of prayer beads. The kind a popish vicar might use.”
His wife digested this for a moment.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her brown eyes wide with alarm. “They have both Lewis and his friend… but what can they want? What could be Mr. Harker’s purpose with them?”
“That is why I’m awake at this hour. I can make wild conjectures, but I haven’t the faintest shred of proof in any direction. And since whatever plot’s afoot smacks of far more creativity than Nicholas Harker seems capable of, I begin to wonder if someone else is playing puppet master. Other Harkers are certainly devious enough, but they’ve never resorted to such measures before when one of their own is on trial. They usually worm their way out of charges in the courtroom. On being questioned, they’ve protested that they know nothing.
“To top it off, I have the most nagging suspicion we’re being toyed with, or that my boys and I are puppets as well.”
“Well, it seems obvious you’re being taunted, what with the blatant reappearance and all.”
Horace pursed his lips wryly. “Of course that is a taunt, but I don’t see the need for it. Mr. Harker has been on trial for murder. A very public trial. In that context, this public display would be counterproductive.”
His wife nodded in understanding and yawned. “Lord knows what they’re thinking, then. Fighting a murder charge, but then flaunting multiple kidnappings: quite baffling. Maybe if you stand everything on its head it’ll come out right.”
* * * * *