along with two older men and a youngster who dropped in from time to time to collect advertisements and local announcements for the Wisbech Advertiser, and who was known to supplement his income by contributing the occasional news paragraph to the paper. They greeted Joshua with nods and a routine mutter of ‘Josh’.., ‘Mornin’, Josh’..., ‘Well then, well, Josh.’
The barmaid, Leah Morritt called Joshua ‘Mr. Serpell’. The landlord, whose wife was safely in the scullery, heating up the copper, took the opportunity of squeezing his bottom past Leah’s on his way to get Joshua’s old tankard from its hook.
‘Hear as they’ve got a plague of adders under Sowder’s Hythe.’
‘Been bitten yet, Josh?’
‘Wouldn’t reckon much on the adder’s chance of surviving.’
Joshua drank half a pint without stopping to reply, then began to recount what he had seen last night and this morning. Leah sniggered, and then at a glance from the landlord wilted into sullen silence. ‘Great big marks,’ Joshua emphasized, ‘comin’ on, gettin’ closer since last night.’
Fortrey, the landlord, leaned on the counter and mopped up a beer spillage and asked the constable very loudly whether there was any news about that poacher who had hidden out here a month ago without anyone getting a sniff of him. Joshua faltered as the men moved away and leaned towards each other over the far end of the bar.
The young Wisbech man said: ‘This is interesting. You’re really telling us that—’
‘I swear to you they’re on their way,’ said Joshua. ‘Them footsteps, they’re comin’ up the track, comin’ up this way.’
Leah was beckoned to fill Joshua’s glass. Thus encouraged, Joshua talked across the other conversation. ‘If they go on beside the hill and out over the level, maybe that’s all right. None of our concern. But if they turn off, like I got the feeling they will do, like turnin’ up Tinker’s Lane, then they’ll be in amongst us.’
Leah winked at the young man. Fortrey stubbed his right foot against the inner planks of the counter and glared, but not at anybody in particular.
‘Go and make yourself comfy in the corner, Josh,’ he said, ‘and let’s hear a bit less.’
‘’Specially at night, when you’re on your way home.’ Constable Rylot forced a laugh. ‘Happen I’d have to steer you into the lock-up.’
The young man said: ‘But aren’t you even going to go and see? Isn’t it your duty to follow up a report like this?’
There was an uneasy silence, broken by the constable with a thunderous clearing of the throat. ‘We know as well as needs be how to manage the affairs of our own parish.’
‘I’m certainly going to see for myself.’
‘Nobody to stop you, young feller. Us, we know what to take seriously, and what not.’
Joshua had reached the end of his second pint. ‘But there’s something brewing—’
‘And as long as there is, you’d best be content.’
‘You know what I’m talking about. Like those times before. Specially that last time, the special one.’
The landlord began noisily to blame Leah for a dirty pot he had just found by the sink, and made a great to-do about mopping the counter yet again. Constable Rylot finished his drink and, with a final admonitory glance around the other occupants of the bar, went out.
‘You’ll see,’ said Joshua.
‘And tidy up them bottles while you’re at it, girl.’
‘It’s not just the footsteps. There’s a sight more to ’ut than that. Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’...comin’ for all of us.’
When the young man had left to make his own inspection of the footprints, nobody else spoke to Joshua and nobody answered his increasingly aggressive questions. Grumpily he left the inn long before his usual time.
Five days later a boy’s dripping corpse was dragged out of the weed and slime of Peddar’s Lode.
CHAPTER TWO
The crossing gates were still open to the road, but a distant feather of smoke showed that a train was on its slow way from Withersey. Visible for miles, it puffed along the embankment above fields and dykes and washlands, for an age seeming to draw no nearer. Bronwen Powys, one arm about her camera so that it did not thump too heavily against the rail of the hired trap, felt like urging haste on the driver. But he knew the roads and the railway and their relative speeds. Allowing for the train’s short wait at Hexney Halt, there was plenty of time before Mrs. Dunstall came out to swing the gates across the road.
It had been a rewarding day. Excellent light, fine definition. Bronwen smiled at the inappropriateness of totting up a score on such matters. Yet it had undoubtedly been a worthwhile bag: those almshouses in the shadow of abbey ruins, two windmills, and the quite unlooked-for gem of an intricately pargeted cottage. Tomorrow she must tidy up loose ends in Hexney itself, try another study of the church tower and the gateway, and complete another chapter in her self-appointed task.
She shaded her eyes to see how well the scene before her compared with the picture she had taken last week. For a fleeting moment she seemed to see Tommy Dunstall in the foreground, just as she had captured him on her plate. It was a good picture. She must make a print for his mother.
She was about to lower her hand when she noticed something different about the cottage ahead. An assortment of objects had been stacked up outside, like a winter store of wood and peat propped against the wall, since she set out this morning.
They were her own belongings: her trunk, the developing tent, and clothes piled up in a heap.
There was a distant whistle. Smoke from the train streamed away over the levels, at one point wreathing into the swirling plume from a pumping station’s blackened chimney.
As the trap slowed between the crossing gates, the door of the cottage opened and Bronwen’s maid came out. She was dressed for travelling, her bonnet firmly in place, and carried a bag which she set beside the others. Mrs. Dunstall, close behind, might almost have been bundling her out of doors.
‘Oh, Miss Bronwen, there’s glad I am you’ve got here in time.’
‘What on earth is happening?’
Mrs. Dunstall’s face was blotched by tears. Two men, one with dried duckweed caking his trouser legs and sleeves, stood behind her in the shadow of the doorway.
Bronwen got down and reached into the trap for her camera.
‘Don’t bring that any closer,’ cried Mrs. Dunstall.
‘I don’t understand. What are all my things doing here, thrown out like this?’
‘You’d best be on your way, miss,’ said one of the men flatly.
‘Mrs. Dunstall—’
‘They brought him back. Not an hour ago.’
‘Him?’
