Read Online The Black Country by Alex Grecian - Free Book Online Page B

to find out what that might be.” Day stood and held out his hand, and Hammersmith handed him his plate. Day chuckled. “You still managed to get a bit on your sleeve there.”
    “I know. I did it practically on purpose. I think you planted the notion in my head.”
    “I’m devious that way.” Day put their plates and glasses on the tray with their bowls and opened the door long enough to set the tray in the hall. He came back into the room and closed the door.
    “We should be very careful in those woods tonight,” he said. “They’ll think we’re sleepy, so we’ll watch them for mistakes. But no unnecessary chances.”
    “Agreed.”
    “I mean it, Nevil. You are not invincible. You have a tendency to leap before you properly think a situation through.”
    “I’m touched that you worry about me.”
    Day shook his head and smiled. He searched his pockets until he found his flask and took a deep swallow from it. He held it out to Hammersmith.
    “Take a drink. It’ll kill the poisons.”
    “No, thank you, sir. I’d prefer tea.”
    “Of course. But brandy will keep you healthy.”
    Hammersmith took the flask and raised it in a mock salute to Day. He took a swallow and handed the flask back. The two men stood and looked around the room.
    “Well,” Day said. “Are you ready to go and risk our lives in the woods behind an unsettling village in the middle of the night?”
    “It’s what I live for,” Hammersmith said.
    “Then after you, Mr Hammersmith.”
    He swung the door open and waved the sergeant through, then stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. The two men stepped over the tray of empty bowls and steins and walked to the staircase. Without a look back, they headed down into the flickering darkness of the inn.

11

    F ires banked forty feet into the air, throwing the landscape into sharp contrast and spreading shadows of the four men across the snowy fields. Constable Grimes led Day, Hammersmith, and Calvin Campbell past the furnaces, which worked night and day, smelting ore and creating the slag that bordered every path. Day and Hammersmith had seen the furnaces from the train windows when they arrived, but the effect was much more dramatic in the dark. Everything was indigo and white, and as they drew nearer the forest, shadows capered beyond the tree line, a fairy dance for the unaccustomed audience.
    Day let Hammersmith and Campbell walk ahead. The two men seemed to have found an easy camaraderie based on their shared fear for the life of little Oliver Price, but Day wasn’t ready to trust the stranger yet. He held out his hand in front of Grimes to slow the constable down.
    “Tell me about him.” Day nodded in the direction of Campbell’s back.
    “Nothing much to tell,” Grimes said. “He’s been around the village for a week or two. Staying at the inn. Studying birds of the region, he says.”
    “Rose doesn’t like him.”
    “Rose likes him well enough,” Grimes said.
    “He didn’t want Campbell with us out here.”
    “No,” Grimes said. “You misunderstand. It’s nothing to do with Mr Campbell. He’s probably harmless enough.”
    “Then what?”
    “I think Mr Rose was trying to protect you.”
    “But you just said that Campbell’s harmless.”
    “Not from Campbell. It’s only that most of the people round here are superstitious. Rose is the same as any. He didn’t want you out here tonight.”
    “I’d say he didn’t. He drugged Sergeant Hammersmith and me.”
    “Drugged you?”
    “Put something in our supper to make us sleep.”
    “I’m sure he didn’t mean to harm you. He doesn’t always think. They’re good people here, they really are, but they’re closed off.”
    Day didn’t say anything. He waited.
    Grimes sniffed and looked at the trees ahead of them. “You understand I’m not one,” he said.
    “One what?”
    “Like the others in Blackhampton. I don’t believe in the . . . I don’t think the same things about it