Nocturnes

The Underbury Witches

Steam and fog swirled together upon the station platform, turning men and women to gray phantoms and creating traps for the unwary out of carelessly positioned cases and chests. The night was growing colder, and a faint sheen of frost could already be detected upon the roof of the ticket office. Through the steamed-up glass of the waiting room figures could faintly be discerned, huddling close to the noisy radiators that reeked of oil and smoldering dust. Some drank tea from cheap cups lined with spidery cracks, sipping urgently as though apprehensive that the crockery might yet disintegrate in their hands and shower them with tepid liquid. Tired children cried in the arms of weary parents. A retired major tried to engage two soldiers in conversation, but the men, new conscripts already fearful of the trenches, were in no mood to talk.

The station master’s whistle sounded defiantly in the gloom, his lamp swinging gently high above his head, and the train slowly began to move away, leaving only two other men standing upon the suddenly deserted platform. Had there been anyone to see or to care, it would have become quickly apparent that the new arrivals did not belong in Underbury. They carried heavy bags and were dressed in city clothes. One, the larger and elder of the two, wore a bowler hat, and a muffler around his mouth and chin. His brown coat was slightly frayed at the sleeves, and his shoes were built for comfort and long life, with few nods to fashion or aesthetics.

His companion was almost as tall as he, but slighter and better dressed. His coat was short and black, and he wore no hat, exposing a mass of dark hair that was a good deal longer than would ordinarily have been considered acceptable in his chosen profession. His eyes were very blue, and he might almost have been called handsome were it not for a curious aspect to his mouth, which curled down slightly at the edges and gave him an air of perpetual disapproval.

“No welcoming committee, then, sir,” said the older man. His name was Arthur Stokes, and he was proud to call himself a sergeant of detectives in what he did not doubt was the greatest police force in the world.

“The locals never like it when they’re forced to accept help from London,” said the other policeman. His name was Burke, and he enjoyed the rank of inspector in Scotland Yard, if enjoyed was indeed the right word. Judging by his expression at the moment in question, endured might have been a more appropriate term. “The arrival of two of us is unlikely to make them doubly grateful.”

They made their way through the station and onto the road beyond, where a man stood waiting beside a battered black car.

“You’ll be the gentlemen from London,” he said.

“We are,” said Burke. “And you would be?”

“My name’s Croft. The constable sent me to collect you. He’s busy at the moment. Local newspapermen. We’ve had some of the London boys calling on us as well.”

Burke looked puzzled. “He was told not to make any comment until we arrived,” he said.

Croft reached out to take their bags.

“And how’s he supposed to do that, then, if he can’t talk to them first to tell them that he can’t make no comment?” he asked.

He winked at Burke. Sergeant Stokes had never seen anyone wink at the inspector before, and he wasn’t convinced that Croft was the ideal candidate to be the first.

“Fair point, I suppose, sir,” said Sergeant Stokes hurriedly, then added, for form’s sake: “Don’t you think?”

Burke gave his sergeant a look that suggested he thought a great many things, of which few were complimentary toward the present company.

“Whose side are you on, Sergeant?”

“The side of law and order, sir,” Burke replied happily. “The side of law and order.”

The witch panic that gripped Europe for over three hundred years, beginning in the mid-1400s and ending with the death in Switzerland in 1782 of Anna Goldi, the last woman in Western Europe to be executed for witchcraft, claimed the lives of between fifty and one hundred thousand people, of whom eighty percent were women, most of them old and most of them poor. Such panics were most prevalent in the German lands, which accounted for roughly half of all those killed. Fewer than five hundred died in England, but twice that amount were executed in Scotland, due in no small part to the Scottish courts’ greater tolerance for torture as a means of securing confessions, and the paranoia of its young monarch, James VI.

The most comprehensive guide to the identification, interrogation, and, finally, immolation of witches was the Malleus Maleficarum, the “Hammer of Witches,” coauthored by the German Dominican Heinrich Kramer and Father James Sprenger, the dean of theology at the University of Cologne. Kramer and Sprenger pinpointed the seed of witchcraft in the very nature of the female species. Women were spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally weak, and motivated primarily by carnal lust. These fundamental flaws found their most potent expression in witchery.

The coming of the Reformation did little to undo such beliefs. If anything, any existing tolerance for the so-called “wise women” of village life was to be stamped out along with any other evidence of old pagan ways, leading Martin Luther himself to declare that they should all be burned as witches.

It would be 1736 before the crime of witchcraft would officially be removed from the books of law in England, almost 120 years after the capture, trial, and execution of the three women known as the Underbury Witches.

Croft drove the two policemen to the heart of the village of Underbury, where they checked into a pair of small but warm rooms at the back of the Vintage Inn. When they had refreshed themselves, and taken some tea, the two policemen were brought to the local undertaker’s. Waiting for them were the village doctor, Allinson, and the sole representative of the local constabulary, Constable Waters. Allinson was young, and a recent arrival in Underbury with his family following the death of his uncle, who had previously dealt with the births, illnesses, and various manifestations of mortality in the area. Allinson walked with a slight limp, a vestige of childhood polio, which had excused him from service in France. Waters, in Burke’s view, was a typical village copper: cautious without being careful, and with a modest intelligence that had not yet evolved to the stage of wisdom. All four men stood by while the undertaker, a man seemingly composed entirely of creases and wrinkles, slowly uncovered the body that lay upon his slab.

“We haven’t done much with him yet, on account of you gentlemen coming down from London,” he explained. “Lucky it’s been cold, or else he’d be on the turn more than he is already.”

The body revealed to them was that of a man in his early forties, with the bulk of one who labored in the fields during the day, at the dinner table in the evening, and in the pub at night. His features, or what remained of them, were discolored, and the men could smell the greater decay already taking place inside him. There were long vertical wounds across his face, and similar injuries to his chest and stomach. The wounds were deep, and penetrated far into his body, so that his innards were clearly visible to them. Rolls of torn intestine extruded from two of the cuts, like the larvae of some dreadful parasite.

“His name was Malcolm Trevors,” said Waters. “Mal to most people. Single man, no family.”

“Good Lord,” said Stokes. “It looks as though an animal attacked him.”

Burke nodded to the undertaker, and said he would be called if he was needed. The little man exited quietly, and if he felt any sense of injury at his exclusion he was far too practiced in his trade to show it.

Once the door to the embalming room was closed, Burke turned to the doctor. “You’ve examined him?”

Allinson shook his head. “Not fully. I didn’t want to interfere with your investigations. I have taken a closer look at those wounds, though.”

“And?”

“If it’s the work of an animal, it’s like none I’ve ever seen.”

“We’ve sent out word to the circuses and fairs in the area,” said Constable Waters. “We’ll soon find out if they’ve lost one of their beasts.”

Burke nodded, but it was clear that he had little interest in what Waters had just said. His attention remained on Allinson.

“Why do you say that?”

The doctor leaned over the body of the dead man and pointed to smaller abrasions to the left and right of the main cuts.

“You see these? In the absence of any other evidence, I’d say they were left by thumbs, thumbs with deep nails on the ends of them.”

He raised his hand, curled the fingers slightly as though grasping a ball, then raked them slowly through the air.

“The deep wounds come from the fingers, the ancillary, angled cuts from the thumb,” he continued.

“Couldn’t someone have used some kind of farm implement on him?” asked Stokes. The sergeant was London through and through, and his knowledge of agriculture extended no further than washing the dirt from vegetables before cooking them. Nevertheless, he had a pretty fair suspicion that if one were to open up any barn between here and Scotland there would be enough sharp objects contained within to fillet a whole tribe of men such as Trevors.

“It’s possible,” said Allinson. “I’m no expert on farm tools. We may know a little more once I’ve taken a closer look at the body. With your permission, Inspector, I’d like to open him up. A more detailed examination of the wounds should confirm it.”

But Burke was once again leaning over the body, this time looking at the hands.

“Can you pass me a thin blade?” he asked.

Allinson took a scalpel from his instrument bag, then handed it to the policeman. Burke carefully placed the blade beneath the nail of the dead man’s right index finger and probed.

“Get me something to hold a sample.”

Allinson gave him a small specimen dish, and Burke scraped the residue from beneath the nail into it. He repeated the process with each nail of the right hand, until a small scattering of matter lay upon the dish.

“What is it?” asked Constable Waters.

“Tissue,” answered Allinson. “Skin, not fur. Very little blood. Hardly any, in fact.”

“He fought back,” said Burke. “Whoever attacked him should be marked.”

“He’ll be long gone, then,” said Waters. “A man scarred in that way won’t hang around to be found out.”

“No, perhaps not,” said Burke. “Still, it’s something. Can you take us to where the body was found?”

“Now?” said Waters.

“No, the morning should do. In this fog, we’ll risk trampling on any evidence that hasn’t been crushed or lost already. Doctor, when do you think you might complete your examination?”

Allinson removed his jacket and began to roll up his sleeves.

“I’ll start straightaway, if you like. I should know more by morning.”

Burke looked to his sergeant.

“Right then,” he said. “We’ll be off for now, and we’ll see you at nine tomorrow. Thank you, gentlemen.”

And with that, the strangers left.

The village of Underbury numbered barely 500 souls, half of whom lived on small farms some distance from the village itself, with its church, its inn, and its handful of stores, all set near the crossroads that marked Underbury’s heart. A visitor might have noted that the central area in which the two roads met was considerably larger than one might have expected. It was perhaps sixty feet across, and was dominated by a raised grass circle upon which no flowers grew. Instead, to alleviate its dullness, a statue had been raised to the Duke of Wellington, although the cheap stone used for its creation had already begun to disintegrate, giving the duke the physical appearance of one who was slowly succumbing to leprosy, or one of the more unmentionable social diseases.

To understand the nature of the circle at the crossroads required a knowledge of local history of which few visitors could boast. Underbury, once upon a time, was a far more populous place than it now appeared to be, and was, in fact, the commercial hub for this part of the county. A vestige of those former days still remained in the form of the weekly farmers’ market held each Saturday in a field on the east side of the village, although in the past (and, indeed, in the present, in places other than Underbury) such markets traditionally took place in the very heart of the village. This practice came to an end in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when Underbury became the focus of the largest single investigation into witchcraft ever undertaken in the British Isles up to that point.

The reasons for the arrival of the witchfinders remain unclear, although an outbreak of illness among some of the children in the village may have provided the initial spur. Five children died in the space of a single week, all of them firstborn males, and suspicion fell upon a trio of women newly arrived in Underbury from parts unknown. The women claimed to be sisters of independent means, formerly resident in Cheapside. The eldest, Ellen Drury, was a midwife, and took over such duties in the village following the sudden drowning of her predecessor, one Grace Polley. Ellen Drury delivered the male children who subsequently passed away, and it was immediately said of her that she had cursed them as they passed from womb to world. Demands for the women’s arrest and questioning grew louder, yet the Drury sisters had managed, in their brief time in Underbury, to make themselves popular with many of the local women, due to their facility with various medicines and herbs. It may also have been that the Drury sisters could have been described almost as “protofeminists,” for they encouraged those who were victims of casual abuse from their husbands and male relatives to make a stand against such acts, and a number of men found their houses surrounded by groups of shouting women, invariably led by Ellen Drury and one or both of her sisters. In fact one resident, a farmer named Brodie, and a vicious man towards his wife and daughters to boot, was so badly beaten as he made his way home through his fields one night that it was thought he would not survive his injuries. Brodie subsequently declined to name his assailants, but gossip in the village intimated that the Drury sisters were abroad that night, and that their walking staffs were ingrained with Brodie’s blood. While few wept for the victim of the assault, who was left with a useless right hand and an impediment to his speech as a result of the attack, this was clearly a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue. The deaths of the children gave the men of the village the excuse that they sought, and a pair of witchfinders was despatched from London on the orders of the king to investigate the occurrences.

There is little that needs to be said about the manner of the witchfinders’ enquiries, for their methods have been recorded elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the Drury sisters were sorely tried, along with ten other women from the village, of whom two were married, three very ancient, and one barely twelve years of age. Marks were found upon their bodies-patterns of warts, unexplained folds of skin in their private parts-that were construed as evidence of the women’s diabolical nature. The young girl, under threat of torture, admitted to the practice of witchcraft, and claimed that she had seen Ellen Drury prepare the potion that took the lives of the newborn infants. She told her interrogators that the three women were not in fact sisters at all, although she did not know their true names. Finally, she added stories of debauches conducted in the women’s cottage, in which she was forced to participate, and of treasons spoken against the Church of England, and even against the king himself. A confession thus secured, the women were presented to the circuit court judges and sentence was passed.

On 18 November, 1628, Ellen Drury and her sisters were hanged to death in the village square at Underbury, and their remains buried in an unmarked plot to the north of the cemetery, just beyond its walls. Their co-defendants were set to suffer the same fate, but the intervention of the king’s physician, Sir William Harvey, who was curious about the nature of the “witch marks” allegedly found upon the bodies of the convicted women, led to their transportation to London, where they were re-examined by the Privy Council and among whose members their fate was subsequently debated at leisure. Five of the prisoners passed away while imprisoned, and ten years went by before the survivors were quietly released to spend their final years in poverty and ignominy.

Ellen Drury was the last to die on the gallows. Even in her final agonies it was said of her that her eyes remained fixed on her tormentors, unblinking, until a relative of the unfortunate Brodie threw pitch upon her and set her alight, whereupon her eyes exploded in their sockets and her world went dark.

Dr. Allinson worked into the early hours, examining the wounds left upon the body of Mal Trevors. The largest of them, as he later told Burke and Stokes over breakfast at the inn, extended internally from the man’s belly all the way to his heart, which had been pierced in five places by long claws or nails. At this point, Sergeant Stokes briefly lost his appetite for his bacon.

“Are you telling us that a hand was pushed up through this man’s body?” asked Burke.

“It would appear so,” replied the doctor. “I inspected him closely in the hope that I might find a fragment of nail but none was forthcoming, which I find surprising under the circumstances. It is no easy thing to tear apart a man’s insides in such a way, and some shattering would have been expected. It leads me to suspect that either the nails of the hand were unusually strong, or that the fingers had been artificially enhanced in some way, perhaps by the addition of metal talons that could be strapped on or removed as needed.”

The doctor could add nothing more to the sum of their knowledge, and retired to his bed at the behest of his wife, who had arrived to do a little shopping and encourage her exhausted husband to return home. She was a woman of striking looks, a tall blonde with flawed green eyes that caught the light as though they were emeralds inset with fragments of diamond. Her name was Emily, and Burke exchanged only a few words with her as he escorted her husband to the door.

“Thank you for your help,” he said, as Allinson buttoned his coat at the door of the inn, his wife remaining inside to exchange some pleasantries with the innkeeper’s daughter.

“I’m sorry that I could not be of more assistance,” said Allinson. “Nevertheless, it is most intriguing, in a dreadful way, and I should like to take one more look at Trevors later before we leave him to the gentle ministrations of the undertaker. It may be that, in my exhaustion, I missed some detail that could prove useful.”

Burke assented, then stepped aside in order to allow Mrs. Allinson to pass.

And a most curious thing happened.

Directly across from Burke was a mirror, advertising some brand of whiskey with which the policeman was unfamiliar. He could see himself reflected clearly in its surface, and, as she passed, so too was Emily Allinson, but through some distortion in the glass it appeared as though her reflection moved more slowly than she did, and Burke almost believed that it seemed to turn its face toward him even though the original stared fixedly ahead. That face, for an instant, was not that of Emily Allinson. Elongated and ruined, its mouth gaped and its face was grotesquely charred in places, the eyes like cinders in their sockets. Then Mrs. Allinson stepped outside with her husband and the vision was gone. Burke walked closer to the mirror and saw that it was deeply tarnished, as such cheap advertising tools tend to become. Its surface was mottled and uneven, so that even his own face shimmered and buckled like an image in a carnival tent. Yet he remained unsettled, even as he watched Mrs. Allinson escort her husband down the street, the doctor seeming almost to lean into her for support as they went. There were few males under the age of fifty wandering through Underbury that morning, although this was by no means unusual. Most towns and villages were now sorely depleted of their stock of young men, and Burke had no doubt that when the present hostilities came to an end it would still be many years before places like Underbury found some balance restored between the sexes.

Burke returned to his sergeant, but he allowed the remainder of his breakfast to go cold and untouched.

“Anything wrong, sir?” asked Stokes, who had rapidly regained his appetite with the departure of the doctor.

“Just tiredness,” replied Burke.

Stokes nodded, and finished off the runny yolk with a swipe of his toast. It was a good breakfast, he thought; maybe not as good as the breakfasts Mrs. Stokes cooked up for him, but very satisfying nonetheless. His good lady wife often offered the view that Inspector Burke could do with a little fattening up, but Burke was not one to accept invitations to dinner. In any event, Stokes understood that by “fattening up” his wife meant that Burke should be married, with a good strong table beneath which he could rest his feet while a woman fed him cooked meals, but Inspector Burke appeared to have little time for women. He lived alone with his books and his cat, and while he was always courteous in his dealings with ladies, even with those for whom the term “ladies” usually came with the appendage “of the night,” he remained distant, and even slightly uncomfortable, in female company. Such an existence would have proved insufferably lonely for Stokes, who fitted easily into the company of both sexes, but police work had made him conscious of the differences between people, and the complexity that lay beneath even the most apparently mundane of lives. Besides, he felt a great admiration, and even a fondness, for the inspector, who was a very good copper indeed. Stokes was proud to serve alongside him, and his private life was a matter for himself and no one else.

Burke stood and removed his coat from a hook on the wall.

“I think we need a little air,” he said. “It’s time to see where Mal Trevors died.”

Burke and Stokes stood at one side of the post, Constable Waters at the other. It was still possible to discern traces of the victim’s blood upon the wood, and fragments of his jacket sleeve were caught in the barbs of the wire that formed a fence marking the verge of the property on which they stood. Beyond lay barren ground, then the low wall surrounding the church and the village cemetery.

“He was found against the post, his sleeves hanging from the wire,” said Waters. “Poor beggar,” he added.

“Who found him?” asked Stokes.

“Fred Paxton. He remembered Trevors leaving the pub shortly before ten, and he followed about an hour later.”

“Did he touch the body?”

“No call to. Didn’t need letters after his name to tell that he was dead.”

“We’ll have to talk to Paxton.”

Waters proudly drew himself up a little.

“Thought you might say that. He and his missus live not half a mile up the road, and I told them to expect us this morning.”

Burke would happily have flayed Waters with the fence wire had he not taken this simple step, but the detective allowed the village policeman a muted “Well done, Constable,” which seemed to content Waters.

“Did you search the area?” Burke resumed.

“I did.”

Burke waited. Trevors was crossing the field when he was attacked, and it was a cold night. The temperature had not risen much since; in fact, if anything it had fallen. Burke could see his footsteps and those of his companions receding toward the road. Whoever attacked Trevors must have left some sign upon the grass.

“Well?”

“There were only two sets of footprints: Mal Trevors’s and Fred Paxton’s. I tried to keep people away from the body, once I’d seen what had been done to it, so there wasn’t as much disturbance as you might think.”

“Perhaps he was attacked on the road,” said Stokes, “then attempted to escape across the fields and died on the fence when he could go no further.”

“Don’t think so,” said Waters. “There was no blood in the field between the road and the fence. I checked.”

Burke knelt and examined the ground at the base of the post. There was still a great deal of dried blood visible upon the blades of grass. If what Waters said was true, and even Burke was forced grudgingly to acknowledge a certain level of competence on the part of the village copper, then Waters had been attacked on this spot and had died here.

“Something must have been missed,” he said at last. “No disrespect to you, Constable, but whoever killed Trevors didn’t materialize out of thin air. We’ll go over the ground on either side of the fence, inch by inch. There has to be some trail.”

Waters nodded his assent, and the three men spread out from the death post, Burke moving toward the cemetery, Stokes toward the road, and Waters in the direction of a cottage some way distant, which was, he informed the detectives, the home of the Paxtons. The policemen searched for an hour, until the cold had burrowed into their hands and feet, yet found nothing. It seemed that Mal Trevors had been attacked, quite literally, from out of nowhere.

Burke finished his examination of the ground and sat upon the low cemetery wall, watching his fellow policemen as they moved across the field, Stokes bent over slightly, his hands in his pockets, Waters less careful, but still doing his best. In his heart, Burke knew that it was a futile yet necessary effort. To have made a proper search would have required more men, and men were scarce, but even then he remained unconvinced that anything would be found. Still, it made no sense to him that a big man like Trevors could be savagely murdered with no sign of a struggle.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it over his face. He was sweating profusely, and starting to feel a little ill. It’s this place, he thought: it saps one’s energy. He recalled Dr. Allinson walking down the main street, virtually propped against his wife, and the earlier lassitude of Constable Waters, which seemed to have been arrested somewhat by the arrival of new blood in the form of the two London policemen. Underbury was a village emptied of its most virile men, all of whom were now fighting in foreign fields. Those that remained must have been aware of their status as flawed bodies, unsuited for combat or sacrifice, and that awareness hung like a miasma over their lives. Now Burke was feeling it too. If he stayed here too long, perhaps he also would end up like Allinson, exhausted after a few hours labor, for the doctor told him that he had retired to bed shortly after one in the morning. He had therefore rested for some six hours, but at breakfast Burke would have sworn that the man had not enjoyed proper sleep in many months.

Burke slipped down from his perch and went to rejoin his colleagues. As he did so, his foot struck stone. He stepped back, then knelt down and brushed the tips of his fingers along the ground. There was a slab there, almost entirely covered by long grass and weeds. The vegetation came away easily as Burke pulled at it, for some of it had merely fallen across the stone, or had been placed there to conceal it. There was no inscription upon it, but Burke knew its purpose. This was an old community, and he did not doubt that in times past the bodies of suicides, of unbaptized children, and of gallows fodder had been interred outside the walls of the cemetery. It was common practice, although it was rare to see a marker of any kind upon such graves.

Now, as he looked at the ground from this low angle, he could see two other similar raised slabs nearby. When he examined them, he discovered that the stone on one had been broken recently. Someone had taken a hammer and chisel to it, fragmenting the rock into a number of pieces and leaving a hole as big as Burke’s fist at the center. Burke leaned forward and slipped two fingers into the gap, expecting to touch earth below. Instead, there was only emptiness. He tried a similar experiment using his pen tied to a piece of thread from his coat, and again felt the instrument dangle in the space beneath the stone.

Curious, he thought.

He stood and saw Stokes and Waters watching him from the road. There was nothing more to be learned by the cemetery wall, so he joined them and made no argument when Waters suggested that now might be the time to talk to the Paxtons, and perhaps take some tea for their trouble.

“What kind of man was Trevors?” Burke asked Waters, as they made their way along the road.

The constable made a noise somewhere between a cough and a sigh.

“I didn’t care much for him myself,” he said. “He served time in a prison up north for assault, then came back down here when he was released and lived with his father until the old man died. After that, it was just him alone on that farm.”

“And the mother?”

“Died when Mal was a boy. Her husband used to beat her, but she never made a complaint. Constable Stewart, my predecessor, he tried talking to her, and to her husband, but nothing ever came of it. I reckon Mal picked up some of his old man’s bad habits, because he was jailed for beating up a, well, you’ll forgive me, sir, but a prostitute in Manchester. Near killed her, from what I hear. When he came back here, he took up with a woman named Elsie Warden, but she soon gave him a wide berth when he fell back into his old ways with her. There was an incident about a week ago, when he came to her house in the night and demanded to speak to her, but her father and younger brothers sent him on his way. They’d already given him a taste of his own medicine once, and he didn’t fancy another spoonful.”

Burke and Stokes exchanged a look.

“Could the Wardens be suspects?”

“They were all in the bar when Trevors left, and they were still there when Fred Paxton came back there with news of what he’d found. They never left. Even Elsie was with them. They’re in the clear, as far as this is concerned.”

Waters reached into his pocket, withdrew a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to Burke.

“Thought you might want this. It’s a list of all the people who were in the bar that night. A star marks the ones who were there from the time Trevors left until the time the Paxtons returned.”

Burke took the list and read it. One name caught his eye.

“Mrs. Allinson was there that night?”

“And her husband. Saturday night’s the big night in the village. Most people find their way to the inn, sooner or later.”

Emily Allinson’s name was one of those marked with a star.

“And she never left,” he said, so quietly that nobody heard him utter the words.

The Paxtons, a young couple with no children, were both relative newcomers to the area. Fred was born about twenty miles west of Underbury, and after a period of city living decided that it was time to return to the countryside with his wife. The land at Underbury had cost them comparatively little, and they were now raising cattle and hoping for a good crop of vegetables to sell in the coming year. They fed the detectives bread and cheese, and brewed up a pot of tea large enough to sate a field of laborers.

“I remember I was walking along, my mind on getting home, and I just happened to look to my right,” said Fred Paxton. His left eye was yellowy white, with tendrils of red crisscrossing upon it. It brought back to Burke an image from his childhood: a visit to his uncle’s farm on the outskirts of the city, where his father had drunk milk fresh from the cow and the boy had seen blood in the creamy liquid.

“There was a shape draped across the fence,” Paxton continued. “It looked like a scarecrow, but there’s no scarecrow on that land. I climbed the gate and went to have a look-see. I never seen so much blood. I felt it under my boots. I’d say Mal hadn’t been dead more than a couple of minutes when I found him.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Stokes.

“His innards were steaming,” replied Paxton, simply.

“What did you do then?” said Burke.

“I went back to the village, fast as I could. Ran into the pub and told old Ken the barman to send for the constable here. I think some people might have been on their way to take a look at the body for themselves, soon as they heard, but as it happened the constable was passing when they came out and he went with them.”

“And you also went back, I presume?” said Stokes.

“I did. When all was done, I went home to the missus here and told her what had happened.”

Burke turned his attention to the young woman seated to his left. Mrs. Paxton had spoken barely five words since their arrival. She was a slight thing, with dark hair and large blue eyes. Burke supposed that she might even have been termed beautiful.

“Is there anything you can add to what your husband has told us, Mrs. Paxton?” he asked her. “Did you hear or see anything that night that might help us?”

Her voice was so low that Burke had to lean forward to hear what she was saying.

“I was asleep in bed when Fred came in,” she said. “When he told me it was Mal Trevors, well, I just felt something turn inside me. It was terrible.”

She excused herself and rose from the table. Burke watched her go, then caught himself doing so and returned his attention to the men around him.

“Do you remember how the people in the inn responded when you told them the news?” he asked Paxton.

“Shocked, I suppose,” he said.

“Was Elsie Warden shocked?”

“Well, she was later, when she found out,” said Paxton.

“Later?”

“Dr. Allinson said that Elsie’d taken ill not long before I returned. His wife was looking after her in old Ken’s kitchen.”

Burke asked if he might use the toilet, so that he could have a little privacy in which to consider what he had learned. Fred Paxton told him the facilities were outside, and offered to show him, but Burke assured him that he would be able to find them alone. He walked through the kitchen, found the privy, and relieved himself while he thought. When he went back outside, Mrs. Paxton was standing at the kitchen window. Her upper body was bare and she was washing herself with a cloth from the sink. She stopped when she saw him, then lowered her right hand so that her breasts were exposed to him. Her body was very white. Burke looked at her for just a second longer, then slowly she turned away, her back a pale expanse against the shadows, and disappeared from view. Burke skirted the side of the house, returning to the main room through the front door. Upon his return, Waters and Stokes stood and the four men walked together into the front yard. Paxton spoke to the constable about local matters, and Stokes ambled onto the road, taking the air. Suddenly, Burke found Mrs. Paxton by his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

She blushed slightly, but Burke felt that the only real embarrassment was his own.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“I do have just one other question,” he said to her.

She waited.

“Did you like Mal Trevors?”

It took a moment for the answer to come.

“No, sir,” she said eventually. “I did not.”

“May I ask why?”

“He was a brute of a man, and I saw the way he looked at me. Our land adjoined his, and I made a point never to be alone in the fields when he was around.”

“Did you tell your husband of this?”

“No, but he knew how I felt, right enough.”

She stopped talking suddenly, conscious that she might have said something to incriminate her Fred, but Burke reassured her.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Paxton. Neither you nor your husband is a suspect here.”

She remained suspicious of him, though.

“So you say.”

“Listen to me. Whoever killed Mal Trevors would have been covered in blood afterward. I hardly think that description applied to your husband that night, did it?”

“No,” she replied. “I see what you mean. I don’t think Fred has it in him to kill Mal Trevors, or to kill anyone, come to that. He’s a good man.”

“But you felt distressed at Trevors’s death, despite what you felt about him,” said Burke.

Again, there was a pause before the reply came. Burke could see her husband over her shoulder, no longer distracted by Waters but now coming to his wife’s aid. There was little time left.

“I wished that he was dead,” said Mrs. Paxton softly. “The day before he died, he brushed against me when we were in Mr. Little’s store together. He did it deliberately, and I felt him push into me. I felt his…thing. He was a pig, and I was tired of being afraid to walk in our own fields. So, for a moment, I wished him dead, and then a day later he was dead. I suppose I wondered…”

“If somehow you might have caused his death?”

“Yes.”

Fred Paxton was now beside them.

“Is everything all right, love?” he asked, placing a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“Everything’s fine now,” she said.

She smiled at her husband, but it was to reassure him rather than to express any real emotion on her own part, and Burke caught a glimpse of the real power behind their marriage, the strength hidden inside this small, pretty woman.

And he felt a surge of unease.

Everything’s fine.

Everything’s fine now that Mal Trevors is dead.

Sometimes you do get what you wish for, don’t you, my love?

By now it was growing dark. Stokes remarked that winter seemed to be extending its reach far into February, for although the winter solstice had long since passed, daylight was in short supply in Underbury and its surrounds. Constable Waters counseled the detectives against visiting the Warden family after dusk-“They’re an uneasy lot, and like as not the old man will have a shotgun in his hand to greet visitors at this hour”-and so the policemen returned to the village, where Stokes and Burke ate stew together in one corner of the inn, untroubled by inquiries after their health. Burke announced that he wished to visit Dr. Allinson, and politely declined his sergeant’s offer of company on the road. He wished to have some time alone, and although Stokes generally knew when to keep quiet in the presence of the inspector, Burke nevertheless found the presence of others distracting when he was trying to think. He secured a lamp from the innkeeper and then, once the directions offered were clear in his head, he took to the road and walked to the Allinsons’ house, which lay about one mile north of the village. It was a starless night, and Burke was oppressed by unseen clouds.

All of the windows were dark when he arrived at the house, save one at the very highest eave. He knocked loudly and waited, expecting a housekeeper to open the door. Instead, after some minutes, and to his surprise, the lady of the house herself greeted him. Mrs. Allinson wore a very formal blue dress that extended from her ankles to her neck, where it ended in a faint ruffle beneath her chin. It was somewhat dated to Burke’s eye, but she carried it off with aplomb, aided by her height and her fine features, not least of which were the flawed green eyes now regarding Burke with polite inquiry and, he felt, not a little amusement.

“Inspector Burke, this is a surprise,” she said. “My husband had not told me to expect you.”

“I regret any imposition,” said Burke. “I take it that your husband is not at home?”

Mrs. Allinson stepped back and invited the policeman inside. After an almost imperceptible pause, Burke accepted the invitation and followed her into the drawing room, once Mrs. Allinson had illuminated the lamps.

“I’m afraid he was called out suddenly. Such are the duties of a village physician. He shouldn’t be very long. May I offer you tea?”

Burke declined.

“I rather expected you to have a housekeeper, or a servant of some sort,” he said, as Mrs. Allinson took a seat on a couch and waved him toward an easy chair.

“I gave her the night off,” said Mrs. Allinson. “Her name is Elsie Warden. She’s a local girl. Have you met Elsie, Inspector?”

Burke replied that he had not yet had that pleasure.

“You’ll like her,” said Mrs. Allinson. “A lot of men seem to like Elsie.”

Once again, Burke was aware of Mrs. Allinson’s distant amusement, an amusement that he believed she felt at his expense, although he was unable to guess why this might be so.

“I understand you were with her on the night Mal Trevors died.”

Mrs. Allinson raised her left eyebrow slowly, an action followed closely by the hint of a smile on the left side of her mouth, as though a wire extended from eye to jaw, linking their movements.

“I was ‘with’ my husband, Inspector,” she replied.

“Do you usually spend your Saturday nights at the village inn?”

“You sound almost disapproving, Inspector. Don’t you believe that ladies should socialize with their husbands? Doesn’t your good lady accompany you on the occasional evening?”

“I’m not married.”

“That is a shame,” said Mrs. Allinson. “I believe that a wife tames a man wonderfully. A good woman, like the alchemists of old, can make gold from the lead of most men.”

“Except the alchemists failed in their efforts,” said Burke. “Lead remained lead. I expect the late Mal Trevors might have been construed as a man of lead, don’t you think?”

“Mal Trevors was corrupted metal,” said Mrs. Allinson dismissively. “In my view, he is of more benefit to the earth now that he lies beneath it than he ever was when he walked upon it. There, at least, he will provide food for worms and nourishment for plants. Poor eating, admittedly, but sustenance for all that.”

Burke did not remark upon this display of feeling.

“It appears that few people have a good word to say about the late Mr. Trevors,” he said. “I expect it will be a short eulogy.”

“I believe succinct is the word, and any eulogy would be more than he deserves. Do you have any theories yet on how he might have died? They talk in the village of a wild animal, although my husband scoffs at the possibility.”

“We are keeping an open mind on the subject,” said Burke. “Nevertheless, we appear to have become sidetracked from the subject of Miss Elsie Warden. My understanding is that she was taken ill on the night that Mal Trevors died.”

“She had a moment of weakness,” said Mrs. Allinson. “I took care of her as best I could.”

“May I ask the cause?”

“You may ask Elsie Warden, if you choose. It’s not my place to tell you such details.”

“I thought it was only doctors who took the Hippocratic oath?”

“Women have their oaths too, Inspector, and I doubt if even Hippocrates himself could rival them for their fastness when they choose to be silent. I am curious, though, as to whom it was that spoke to you of Elsie Warden’s illness.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” replied Burke. “Policemen too have their secrets.”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Allinson. “I expect I will find out soon enough.”

“Elsie Warden clearly trusts you a great deal, for one so recently arrived in the village.”

Mrs. Allinson tilted her head slightly and regarded Burke with renewed interest, rather like a cat that suddenly finds the mouse with which it is toying making an unexpected but ultimately doomed break for freedom, all the while with its tail pinned firmly beneath the feline’s paw.

“Elsie is a strong young woman,” answered Mrs. Allinson, with what Burke construed as a degree more caution than she had previously exercised. “This is not a village known for its tolerance of strong women.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Burke.

“They hanged witches here, many years ago,” said Mrs. Allinson. “Three women died at the heart of the village, and more languished in jail until they too began to die. The hanged women still bear the name of Underbury when they are spoken of, and their bodies lie buried beyond the cemetery walls.”

“The three stones,” said Burke.

“So you’ve seen them?”

“I didn’t know what they were, although I suspected that they marked graves of some kind,” said Burke. “I was surprised to see plots beyond the wall commemorated in any way.”

“I don’t believe the stones were placed there to commemorate three murdered women,” said Mrs. Allinson. “There is a cross carved in the underside of each stone, facing down. The superstition that caused their deaths followed them into the ground.”

“How do you know about the crosses?”

“The village records. In a small place like this, one has to entertain oneself as best one can.”

“Yet these are more enlightened times, and Underbury is no longer as it once was.”

“Would you have considered Mal Trevors an enlightened man, Inspector?”

“I never met him, except to look upon his remains. All I have is the testimony of others as to his character.”

“Why are you not married, Inspector?” asked Mrs. Allinson suddenly. “Why is there no woman in your life?”

Now it was Burke’s turn to answer cautiously.

“My job takes up much of my time,” he began, uncertain why he was even attempting to explain himself to this woman, except that in doing so he might learn more about her. “Perhaps too I have never met the right woman.”

Mrs. Allinson leaned forward slightly.

“I suspect,” she said, “that there is no ‘right’ woman for you. I’m not entirely sure that you like women, Inspector. I don’t mean in the physical sense,” she added quickly, “for I am sure that you have appetites like most men have. Rather, I mean that you don’t like them as beings. You perhaps distrust them, maybe even despise them. You don’t understand them, and that makes you fear them. Their appetites, their emotions, the workings of their bodies and their minds, all are alien to you, and you are afraid of them for that reason, just as the men of Underbury were afraid of the women whom they named ‘witches’ and hanged amid the winter snow.”

“I’m not afraid of women, Mrs. Allinson,” said Burke, a little more defensively than he had intended.

She smiled before she spoke again, and Burke was reminded of the faint smile on the face of Mrs. Paxton as she reassured her husband earlier that day. He heard the sound of footsteps approaching the house, their rhythm slightly distorted, and knew that Dr. Allinson had returned, yet he found himself staring only at Mrs. Allinson, caught in the depths of those green eyes.

“Really, Inspector, I don’t know if that’s true,” she said, apparently untroubled by any offense that she might be causing him. “In fact, I don’t believe that’s true at all.”

Dr. Allinson joined them and, after a suitable period had elapsed, his wife announced that she was retiring for the evening.

“I know I’ll be seeing you again, Inspector,” she said, as she left them. “I look forward to it.”

Burke spent another hour with Allinson, learning little that was new but content to bounce theories back and forth with someone whose knowledge of physiology was so intimate. Allinson offered to take him back to the village, but Burke declined, consenting only to a little brandy to warm him on the journey.

Burke almost instantly regretted taking the brandy once he set out for the village, for while it was undoubtedly warming, it clouded his head, and the cold was doing little to sober him. Twice he almost slipped before he had even made it to the road, and once upon it he kept to the center, fearing for his safety if he drew too close to the ditch. He had been walking for only a few minutes when he heard movement in the bushes to his right. He stopped and listened, but the presence in the undergrowth had also paused. Burke, like Stokes, was every inch the city dweller, and supposed that there must be a great many nocturnal animals in these parts, yet whatever was on the other side of the bushes was quite large. Perhaps it was a badger, he thought, or a fox. He moved on, the lamp raised, and felt something brush past his coat. He turned suddenly, and caught a flash of black as the creature entered the bushes to his left. It had crossed the road behind his back, so close to him that it had touched him as it went.

Burke reached behind himself and brushed at his coat. His fingers came back coated with something dark and flaking, like pieces of charred paper. He brought them closer to the lamplight and examined them, lifting them to his nose to sniff them as he did so.

They smelled of burning right enough, he thought, but not of paper. Burke recalled an incident, some years earlier, when he had been forced to enter a house about to be engulfed by fire in an effort to extract any survivors before the building collapsed. He found only one, a woman, and her body was already badly burned when he discovered her. She expired upon the road outside, but Burke remembered the way that fragments of her skin adhered to his hands, and the smell of her had never left him. It was why he rarely ate pork, for the smell of roasting pig was too close to that of human meat burning. That was the smell that now lay upon his fingers.

He brushed it away on his coat as best he could and continued toward the village, faster now, his footsteps slapping upon the road as he ran, and all the time he was conscious of being followed from the undergrowth, until at last he came to the margins of Underbury itself and the creature stopped before the first house. Burke was breathing heavily as he scanned the blackness in the bushes. He thought for an instant that he saw a darker shape within it, a figure within the shadows, but it was gone almost as soon as he registered it. Still, its shape stayed with him, and he saw it in his dreams that night: the shape of its hips, the swelling of its breasts.

It was the figure of a woman.

The next morning, Stokes and Burke, accompanied by Waters, drove across the village to the farmhouse occupied by Elsie Warden and her family. Burke was quiet on the journey. He did not speak of what had occurred the night before on the road back to the village, but he had slept badly and the stink of charred meat seemed to cling to his pillow. Once he awoke to the sound of tapping at his window, but when he went to check upon it, all was still and silent outside, yet he could have sworn, for a moment, that the smell of roasted fats was stronger by the sill. He dreamed of Mrs. Paxton, watching him through the glass with her breasts exposed, but in his dream her face was replaced by that of Mrs. Allinson, and the green of her eyes had turned to the black of cinders.

Elsie Warden’s brothers, too young to enlist, were out in the fields, and her father off on some business of his own in a neighboring town, so only Elsie and her mother were in the kitchen when the policemen arrived. They were offered tea, but they declined.

In truth, Burke was not entirely certain why they had come, except that there had clearly been bad blood between the Warden family and the late Mal Trevors. Mrs. Warden remained sullen and unresponsive in the face of their questions, and Burke saw her glance occasionally through the window that looked out over the family’s fields, hoping to catch sight of her sons returning from their labors. Elsie Warden was more forthcoming, and Burke was a little surprised at the level of assurance exhibited by a young woman brought up in a household largely composed of menfolk.

“We were all in the pub that evening,” she told Burke. “Me, my mum and dad, and my brothers. All of us. That’s the way around here. Saturday nights are special.”

“But you knew Mal Trevors?”

“He tried to court me,” she said. Her eyes dared Burke to dispute any man’s reasons for pursuing her. The detective was not about to argue with her. Elsie Warden had lush dark hair, fine features, and a body that Sergeant Stokes was doing his very utmost not to notice.

“And how did you respond to his advances?”

Elsie Warden pursed her lips coyly.

“Whatever do you mean by that?” she asked.

Burke felt himself redden. Stokes appeared to be suddenly afflicted by a fit of coughing.

“I meant-” Burke began, wondering what exactly he had meant, when Stokes came to the rescue.

“I think what the inspector means, miss, is did you like Mal Trevors, or was he barking up the wrong tree, so to speak?”

“Aaah,” said Elsie, as if she were only now beginning to understand the direction the conversation was taking. “I liked him well enough, to begin.”

“She always was attracted to bad sorts,” said her mother, speaking a full sentence for the first time since they had arrived.

She kept her head down as she spoke, and did not look at her daughter. Burke wondered if the old woman was scared of her. Elsie Warden seemed to radiate life and energy, and it was clear that she had the capacity to arouse strong feelings in men. There was something fascinating about her, especially seeing her seated next to the worn-out figure of her mother in the gloomy kitchen.

“Was Mal Trevors a bad sort?” asked Burke.

Elsie tried the coy look again, but it faltered a little on this occasion.

“I think you know what Mal Trevors was,” she said.

“Did he hurt you?”

“He tried.”

“What happened?”

“I struck him, and I ran.”

“And then?”

“He came looking for me.”

“And took a beating for his troubles,” said Burke.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she replied.

Burke nodded. He took his notebook from his pocket and flicked through the pages, although he had no need of its contents to guide his thoughts. Sometimes he found that the very act of checking the written word was enough to disconcert an individual under police scrutiny. He was pleased to see Elsie Warden crane her neck slightly, as though in an effort to discern what might be contained within.

“I’m told you took ill the night Mal Trevors was killed,” he said.

Elsie Warden flinched. It was a small reaction, but enough for Burke. He waited for an answer, and watched as Elsie appeared to analyze the possible answers she might give. Burke felt a shift in her, and was aware of the charm slowly seeping out of her, disappearing between the cracks on the floor to be replaced by what he could only regard as a form of restrained ferocity.

“That’s true,” she said.

“Before or after you heard about Mal Trevors?”

“Before.”

“May I ask what ailed you?”

“You may ask,” she said, “if you want to embarrass yourself.”

“I’ll take that chance,” said Burke.

“I had my visitor,” she said. “The monthly guest. Are you happy now?”

Burke gave no sign of happiness or unhappiness. Underbury was giving him much-needed practice in hiding any embarrassment he might feel.

“And Mrs. Allinson assisted you?”

“She did. She took me home later, and tended to me.”

“It must have been most severe, to require her ministrations.”

He was aware of a sharp intake of breath from Stokes, and even Waters felt compelled to intervene.

“Now, sir, don’t you think we’ve gone far enough?” he said.

Burke stood.

“For the moment,” he said.

Suddenly, he staggered, overcome, it seemed, by a moment of weakness. He stumbled and brushed against Elsie Warden, then found purchase on the mantel.

“Are you all right, sir?” Stokes had come to his aid.

Burke waved him away.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just a little light-headedness.”

Elsie Warden now had her back to him.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “I hope I didn’t injure you.”

Elsie shook her head and turned to face him. Burke thought she was a little paler than before, and her hands were folded across her chest.

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

He took a breath, thanked the women, then left. Mrs. Warden saw them to the door.

“You’re a rude man,” she said to Burke. “My husband will hear of this.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he replied. “I should tend to your daughter, if I were you. She looks ill.”

He said nothing to Stokes or the disapproving Waters as they returned to the village. Instead, he thought of Elsie Warden, and the look of pain that had crossed her face as he brushed against her body.

And of the new speckles of blood upon her blouse that were almost, but not quite, hidden by her folded arms.

Mal Trevors was buried in the churchyard the following day. Many turned out for his funeral, despite his reputed failings as a human being, for in a village such as Underbury a funeral served a greater social purpose than that represented by the mere interment of a body. It was an opportunity to exchange information, to gather, and to speculate. As Burke looked around the graveside he could see faces familiar to him from his brief time in the village. The Wardens were there, the family making its dislike of Burke clear only through hostile glances in his direction rather than outright force. So too were the Allinsons and the Paxtons. As the ceremony concluded, Burke saw Emily Allinson leave her husband, who made his way over to join Burke and Stokes. Mrs. Allinson walked by the wall of the cemetery, staring out over the fields toward the spot where Mal Trevors had died. She exchanged a few words with Elsie Warden as she passed her by, and they both looked for a moment in Burke’s direction and laughed before going their separate ways. Mrs. Paxton seemed to be keeping her distance from both of them, but Emily Allinson cornered her and laid a hand on her arm, a gesture simultaneously intimate and somehow threatening, for it effectively held Mrs. Paxton in place while the tall, elegant Mrs. Allinson leaned down to talk to her.

“What do you think that’s about, sir?” asked Stokes.

“A little friendly greeting, perhaps?”

“Doesn’t look too friendly to me.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? Perhaps we need to have another talk with Mrs. Paxton.”

By now, Allinson was almost upon them.

“Any progress on your investigation?” he said.

“Slow and steady,” said Burke, who felt a sudden stab of guilt as he recalled the appearance of the doctor’s wife in his dream.

“I hear you stirred up the Wardens.”

“They’ve spoken about our visit?”

“The mother has spoken of little else. She seems to think you’re somewhat improper in your manner. She’s suggesting that someone ought to teach you a lesson.”

“Any candidates for the role?”

“No shortage, apparently. The Warden family is large, extended, and very male. I’d watch my back, if I were you, Inspector.”

“I have Sergeant Stokes here to watch my back,” said Burke. “It leaves me free to watch other people.”

Allinson grinned. “Good. I’m rather hoping that you won’t have any reason to call on my services in a personal capacity.”

“You know,” said Burke, “I’m rather hoping that too. Tell me, does your wife know a little of medicine?”

“Many doctors’ wives do. Mrs. Allinson is trained as a midwife, and her skills now extend considerably beyond that. She can’t practice medicine, of course, but she knows what to do in the event of a crisis.”

“The women of Underbury are fortunate to have her, then,” said Burke. “Very fortunate indeed.”

The rest of the day added little to the sum of knowledge accumulated by the two policemen. With the help of Constable Waters, they completed their questioning of all those who had been present at the inn on the night of Mal Trevors’s death, and began talking to many of those who were not present. While few had a good word to say about the dead man, there was nothing to link them to the events of that night, and by the time evening came Burke’s natural silence had deteriorated into sullenness. He bid Waters a curt good-night, paused for a time to exchange some words with his sergeant, and then ascended to his bedroom, where he remained seated on his bed for the rest of the evening, rising only to receive his supper at the door.

In time, he must have fallen asleep, for the room was darker than he remembered when he opened his eyes, and the inn was quiet. He was not even aware of why he had awoken until he heard voices speaking softly beneath his window. Burke left his bed and walked to the glass, concealing himself in the shadows as best he could. Two women stood in the yard below, and in the dim light filtering from the inn he could make out the faces of Emily Allinson and Mrs. Paxton. The women appeared to be arguing, for he could see Mrs. Allinson’s finger stabbing the air before the smaller, darker Mrs. Paxton. Burke could not make out their words, but then Mrs. Allinson abruptly walked away. Some seconds later, Mrs. Paxton followed, but by then Burke was already on his way downstairs. He left the inn, moved through the yard, and soon found himself following the two women along the road that led out of the village. They were heading toward the Paxton house, but as soon as Mrs. Paxton caught up with Mrs. Allinson they left the road and made their way across the fields. They seemed to be heading for the place in which Mal Trevors died, until Burke saw them reach a small gate in the fence, open it, and move toward the wall of the churchyard. The inspector kept low as best he could, aided by the clouds that obscured the moon. He was almost at the gate when the women stopped and turned to face him.

“Welcome, Inspector,” said Mrs. Allinson. She did not look surprised to see him. In fact, Burke thought she looked rather pleased, and he knew then that he had stepped firmly into the trap they had set for him. Mrs. Paxton said nothing, but kept her head down, unwilling even to look in his direction.

Burke heard footsteps approaching from behind. He turned to see Elsie Warden moving slowly through the grass, her hands brushing the tips of the weeds as she walked. She stopped when she was some twenty feet from him. Mrs. Paxton in turn moved away from Mrs. Allinson, so that Burke found himself at the center of a triangle formed by the three women.

“Is this how you finished off Mal Trevors?” he asked.

“We never laid a hand on Mal Trevors,” said Mrs. Allinson.

“We didn’t have to,” said Elsie.

Burke tried to keep turning, always holding two women in his sight and hoping that he might be fast enough to prevent an attack by the third.

“I suspect there are wounds on your chest, Miss Warden,” said Burke.

“And on my scalp,” she said. “He fought back. He always was quick with his hands, was Mal.”

“So you attacked him?”

“In a manner of speaking.” It was Mrs. Allinson.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Allinson. “But you will.”

Burke felt the ground shift slightly beneath his feet. He leapt away, fearful of plummeting into some terrible depths. Over by the cemetery wall, fragments of stone shot a foot into the air, leaving gaping holes where they once lay. He heard a howling sound, like wind rushing through a tunnel, and then something scratched his face, opening parallel wounds across his cheek and nose. He stumbled backward, raising his arms to protect himself, and watched as the front of his coat was torn open by unseen claws. He smelled foul breath, and thought for a moment that he caught a disturbance in the air, as of heat rising from summer ground. Slowly, its form became clearer, allowing Burke to see, however indistinctly, the shape of breasts and hips.

Faced with a target, Burke struck. He pounded his fist into the figure before him. There was slight resistance before his fist passed through it, but he saw Emily Allinson’s head jerk backward. Blood spurted from her nose. Burke tried to punch again, but he was attacked from behind before he could do so. His scalp was torn apart, and he felt liquid warmth upon his neck. He tried to rise, but his right hand was wrenched away from him and forced into the air. A sharp pain ran through three of his fingers, and the impression of teeth appeared upon the skin of his knuckles. Over by the fence, he saw Elsie Warden’s teeth gritted.

Elsie shook her head furiously, the pain increased, and the fingers were severed from Burke’s hand. His eyes closed, and he prepared to die. Then from somewhere in the darkness he heard a booming sound, and a familiar voice said:

“That’ll be enough now.”

Burke’s eyelids felt heavy, and blood dripped from the lashes when he finally managed to force them open. Sergeant Stokes stood by the cemetery wall, and he held a shotgun in his hands.

You took your bloody time, thought Burke.

He caught sight of a disturbance in the air once again, moving quickly toward Stokes. Once again, it seemed to him to approximate the shape of a woman. Its body was blackened, and long fair hair trailed behind it as it crawled along the ground to attack Stokes. He tried to warn his sergeant, but no words came. Instead, his own head was pulled back by the hair, and he felt teeth upon his neck.

Stokes saw the presence when it was almost upon him. Instinctively, he swung the shotgun around and fired.

For a moment, nothing happened, then, slowly, Emily Allinson’s mouth opened and a great gush of red poured from it. She rocked upon her feet, and the front of her green dress darkened. Burke heard a scream that seemed to come from the ground beneath him, echoed in turn by Elsie Warden. His hair was released and he fell to the dirt, a weight upon his back as he was used as a stepping stone by an unseen presence. Burke’s left hand reached out and grasped a rock upon the ground. With the last of his strength, he rose up and straddled the thing, bringing the rock down with all the force that he could muster upon its head. He could feel it moving beneath him, although he saw it only as a shimmering in the air. The stone hit its target, and it spasmed beneath him.

Behind him, Elsie Warden’s skull cracked. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell down dead.

Stokes was running toward him now, reloading the shotgun as he came. He was watching Mrs. Paxton, but she was retreating from them, her face a mask of horror and disgust. She turned from them and ran across the fields, making for the little cottage that she shared with her husband. Stokes shouted after her, warning her to stop.

“Let her go,” said Burke. “We know where to find her.”

And then he sank back on the ground, unconscious.

Summer came, and the streets grew bright with the plumage of women.

The two men met in a bar close to Paddington. It was quiet, the lunchtime drinkers now departed, and the evening crowd yet to arrive. One man was thinner and perhaps a little younger than the other, and wore a glove on his right hand. His companion placed two beers on the table before them, then took a seat against the wall.

“How is the hand, sir?” asked Stokes.

“It hurts a little still,” said Burke. “It’s odd. I can feel the ends of my fingers, even though they’re no longer there. Strange, don’t you think?”

Stokes shrugged his shoulders. “To tell the truth, sir, I don’t know anymore what’s strange and what isn’t.”

He raised his glass and took a long draft.

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ any longer, you know,” said Burke.

“Doesn’t seem natural calling you anything else, sir,” said Stokes. “I do miss being called ‘Sergeant,’ though. I’m trying to get the missus to call me it, just so I can hear it again, but she won’t agree.”

“How is the bank?”

“Quiet,” he said. “Don’t care much for it, to be honest, but it keeps me busy. The money helps, though.”

“Yes, I’m sure it does.”

They were silent, then, until Stokes said:

“You still think we did right, not telling them what we saw?”

The two men had not met in many months, but they had never been ones to dance around a subject of concern to them.

“Yes,” said Burke. “They wouldn’t have believed us, even if we had. Mrs. Allinson had my blood and skin in her nails, and the bite marks on my hand matched those of Elsie Warden. They attacked me. That’s what the evidence said, and who were we to disagree with the evidence?”

“Killing women,” said Stokes. “I suppose they had no choice but to send us on our way.”

“No, I suppose they didn’t.”

Burke looked at his former sergeant, and laid his good hand upon the older man’s arm.

“But never forget: you didn’t kill women. You never fired at a woman, and I never struck one. Let your conscience be clear on that score.”

Stokes nodded.

“I hear they let the Paxton woman go,” he said.

“She supported our story. Without her testimony, it would have gone much harder for us.”

“Doesn’t seem right, though.”

“She wished a man dead. I don’t think she expected that wish to come true, and I don’t believe that she wanted a part of what the other women were offering. She was weak, but she did nothing wrong. Nothing that we can prove, at any rate.”

Stokes took another draft from his glass.

“And that poor beggar, Allinson.”

“Yes,” said Burke. “Poor Allinson.” The doctor had taken his own life in the weeks that followed the incidents at Underbury. He had never uttered a word of blame toward Stokes or Burke for the part they played in his wife’s death.

Burke spent most of his waking hours thinking about that night, juggling facts with suspicions but never able to make them fit to his satisfaction into a cohesive theory. A village depleted of its men; the arrival of a strong woman, Mrs. Allinson, from outside; the threat posed to Elsie Warden and, perhaps, Mrs. Paxton by Mal Trevors; and the response to that threat, which had led to Trevors’s death and the subsequent attack on Burke and Stokes. Burke had not yet been able, or willing, to put a name to that response. He now knew more about the Underbury witches and their leader, Ellen Drury, burned as she hanged. Possession, the term that Stokes had used in the aftermath, was one possibility, but it seemed inadequate to Burke. To him, it was something more. He believed with all his heart that it came from within the three women, not solely from some outside force, but then he would have been the first to admit that he had never enjoyed a great understanding of the fairer sex.

They finished their drinks, then parted on the street with vague promises to meet again, although both men understood that they would not. Burke walked in the direction of Hyde Park, while Stokes stopped at a flower stall to buy some carnations for his wife. Neither saw the small, dark-haired woman who stood in the shadows of a lane, watching them closely. The air shimmered around her, as though distorted by the summer heat, and a faint smell of roasting meat could be scented by passersby.

Mrs. Paxton made her choice, and slowly began to follow Burke toward the park.