Read Online Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox - Free Book Online Page A

at its fullest stretch, but her shoulder never pulled forward. The worn leather soles of poor Miss Ingrid’s slippers slapped and scuffed.
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    MR MULBERRY’S church had become a makeshift infirmary . Some pews had been moved together to make beds, and others had been pushed back to the walls to make way for cots. There was a detached draining board balanced on the font, carrying a kettle, a basin, a pot of soup, and a basket of bread. There were around ten town women in attendance on twelve near-drowned people – Mrs Mulberry in charge of all.
    Billie stood where she’d been let go, in the doorway, and listened to the doctor, to the minister, Mr Mulberry, and to Murdo Hesketh. Hesketh was now all politeness, patience, and propriety. The doctor told how he had the four worst cases back at his house – those who showed signs of bronchopneumonia after their immersion. Three had been ‘pumped’on the pier yesterday. Emptied of water, and had air pumped in by a bellows inserted in one nostril. There were many ‘dry’ drownings – the shock of sudden and unexpected immersion in the icy water had simply stopped hearts. All the dead were next door, in the sacristy. Seven bodies were as yet unrecovered .
    â€˜Your cousin wouldn’t let me look you over,’ the doctor said to Hesketh, grave. ‘Or the young gentlemen. He was in a hurry to have you off the scene and safe at Kiss Castle, and he couldn’t be made to see sense.’ The doctor pointed the porcelain cone of his stethoscope at Hesketh’s buttoned waistcoat. ‘Do you mind?’ Hesketh gazed disdainfully over the top of the doctor’s head, but submitted to his touch, stood rigid as the doctor unfastened six waistcoat and three shirt buttons and put the stethoscope in against his heart. The doctor then inserted a hand, fingers shaped like a parrot’s beak, to sound against Hesketh’s ribs. Billie saw Hesketh hold his breath, as he was told, then let it out so that it stirred the wispy, unoiled hair by the doctor’s left ear.
    â€˜You’re fine,’ the doctor said, himself reassured. Then he moved out of the knot of men, came to Billie, frowned at her, concerned, and pushed down her bodice a little to place the skin-warmed porcelain cone against the top of her chest.
    â€˜She wasn’t in the water,’ one of Hesketh’s men said, informative and acid at once. Billie recognised the man as the one with the same name as the other half of the island – Skilling.
    â€˜I’ve brought Miss Paxton to help identify some people. Wherever they are.’ Hesketh spread his hands rather like the even-handed, sloe-eyed Christs in the Last Judgements frescoed on walls of the churches Billie had seen as a child. Churches in San Remo or Portofino, or the chapel near La Brigue – Christs with hands spread to say, Behold! The damned and the saved ,Hesketh was apparently too refined to say, ‘Among the living or the dead.’
    Billie, who knew well enough where in a church a sacristy generally was, took herself there. The men hadn’t expected this independent movement and, by the time they caught up, Billie was already in the doorway and faced with two rows of wrapped forms, on the flagstone floor, around a massive, immovable table in the centre of the room. The only light came from the church behind Billie and two tall and narrow windows of alternating, diamond-shaped, violet-and-amber panes. The minister’s wife appeared beside Billie, a lamp in her hand. She took Billie’s arm and led her in among the silent shapes. Mr Mulberry, Mr Hesketh, and Rory Skilling followed them.
    The corpses wore their names printed on brown paper and pinned to their shrouds. Billie looked at the paper on the shape nearest her, then glanced helplessly at Mrs Mulberry. ‘What is it, dear?’ said the minister’s wife. ‘Do you know this man? He’s Gunther Hathrenson,