Short Story Sunday: Latchberry Farm [Part Six]

Dr Patterson washed his forearms in the bowl of water. It was a kind of meditation to see the water swirl and then colour as the soap blended in. He dabbed a towel down to the elbow of his left arm and then switched to the right. The prints of human anatomy along the wall gaped at his movements, giving their wide-eyed approval. 

 

            He heard a shout from beyond the door and anticipated being called.

            “Through here, through here.”

            The door flung open and Billy Rogers was howling, either from pain or the way he was being wrestled by his father and brother.

            “Can you help us, Doc?” The elder Rogers helped Billy onto the examination table. “He fell off the wagon and under the wheels. There was no time to stop the horses.”

            Billy was clammy and perspiration styled his hair.

            “Step back, please.” He retrieved his white coat and stethoscope from the hook behind the door and began his examination.

            William Rogers and his other son, Reggie, hovered.

            “Nurse Beckwith, assistance.”

            She appeared at the door. “Please come this way, gentlemen. We will call you once Dr Patterson has finished.”

            William clamped his hand on the doctor’s forearm. “I can’t lose my boy.” He probably would have said more if his voice had not let him down.

            “I will do what I can.” He had learnt from experience that a vague but reassuring answer was best. Wagon accidents did not usually end well and he could see Billy’s broken ribs through his shirt.

            William nodded and hugged his arms to chest. He glanced at Reggie, whose guilt prevented him from looking up. It must have been a game gone wrong, Patterson thought. And if Billy died then Reggie would have to carry more than an extra workload for the rest of his life.

            “Hang in there, Billy.” He said it more to himself than to his patient. “You’re going to feel much better now.” The syringe glinted in the morning sun and the effect of the morphine was immediate; Billy stopped shaking and closed his eyes.

            “How is the patient?” Nurse Beckwith was back.

            “On cloud nine for the time being. We’re going to have to set his ribs and arm. I’ll only know more once he’s open. Let’s hope he hasn’t punctured anything.” He glanced at the clock above the door. “Can you arrange for the extra staff to be here? Billy will need surgery sooner rather than later.”

            “Yes, doctor.”

            After she left the room, he used his surgical scissors to remove Billy’s clothes. He cut through the fabric and noticed the bruises on his torso. There were a number of scars as well, probably from being kicked in the gut by a horse. Farming was dangerous business, and some days he resented how he was the one expected to pick up the pieces when the worst happened. He thought about Sebastian Faulkner’s wounds and shuddered. Fincher had been sniffing around the morgue and, based on the gossip he overheard, was heading to Latchberry Farm to make his first arrest.

            Judging by the noise coming from the waiting room, Mrs Rogers had arrived because he kept hearing someone bleating about their boy. The doctor-patient relationship prevented him from correcting her. The boy on the table before him had stopped being a one around the time of his fourteenth birthday when he’d visited the doctor after a night with Miss Marie Delvigne. He swallowed. He hoped he would never again have to perform a circumcision on an adult.

            Billy’s breathing was laboured. He sped up his movements and dragged the tray of instruments closer to where his patient lay. As he opened his mouth to call out, Nurses Beckwith, Finnegan and Hollister joined him. Hollister was the only male nurse for miles around, which made people snigger into their gloves, but Patterson didn’t care. It helped to have the muscles when an especially heavyset patient needed moving to a gurney once the years of butter, cheese and crackling caught up with him. Finnegan held up his operating gloves and handed him his surgery cap. He nodded and put them on.

            “Right, ladies and gent. Let’s see if we can save a life today.”

Sasha, wake up. Someone’s coming.

            Fincher pounded the door. “Miss Doyle.”

            Fred whined and licked her hand.

            Sasha, wake up. He’s here. The policeman.

            Sasha opened her eyes as the door burst open. Fincher was red in the face and huffing.

            Fred began to bark.

            “What’s going on?” Her book fell off her lap as she sat up.

            “Miss Sasha Doyle, you are under arrest for the murder of Sebastian Faulkner.”

            “What?” Sasha stood. “You can’t come in here and say things like that. He was my friend and I loved him.”

            “You have the right to remain silent...”

            “I most certainly will not. What are you playing at, Fincher? I have allowed you and your men to trample through my house and I have helped you any way I could with your investigation. Now you want to accuse me of murder?”

            “Miss Doyle, please. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I’m going to need to escort you to the gaol.”

            Sasha felt herself pale. Her vision blurred with tears. “This can’t be happening to me. Why is this happening?”

            Fincher caught her before she fell. After a beat, the flung her over his shoulder and began the trek back to the gaol. He wished he’d brought his horse.

            Hey, hey you. Put her down. Put Sasha down. Are you listening to me? She didn’t do it. I’m still here. So you can – hey! I’m talking to you.

Jacob was hunched over his workbench. He was trying to repair one of the buckles that had fallen off his saddle. It was proving tricky because he did not have the right tools. As hard as it was for him to admit, he would need to take it to the steelworks in the village.

            “Jacob!”

            The sound of his name was accompanied by boots striking gravel. He stood and went to the barn door. It was Susie.

            “They’ve taken her.”

            She was out of breath and rested her palms on her thighs.

            “Fincher took Sasha.”

            “When?”

            “Just now. He arrested her for murder.”

            Jacob closed his eyes and listened to Susie’s laboured breaths.

            “Please, you have to do something. She’s innocent.”

            He turned his back on Susie and went to the workbench. “It’s out of my hands.”

            Susie straightened. “How can you say that? I know you care about her. Are you really prepared to let her spend the night in that stinking gaol?”

            “She does not care for me, and it is really none of my business anyway. Fincher has made up his mind and until new evidence comes out, that’s all there is to it.”

            “Sasha loves you, Jacob, but she’s scared that if she says it out loud then she will lose you. All the people she has ever loved have died. Don’t you see?”

            Jacob picked up a piece of wood and began working on it with his chisel. “I think you better go, Susie.”

            “I don’t understand you. If you were a real man, you would fight for her.”

            He threw the wood down and faced Susie. “I am not fighting with you or anyone else.” He pushed past her and walked in the direction of the field.

Amelia watched the exchange from the house. It did not require an expert to understand what Susie was saying. She recognised that same look of frustration in her own behaviour. It had taken her years to work out why her mother’s pet name for her father was Mule: stubbornness was endemic to men, as it turned out. She watched her son and Susie head in opposite directions, but not before Susie had thrown in the last word. You’ll pay for this, Jacob Mortimer.

            Amelia closed her eyes and found herself back in the skin of a young woman. She heard the same words coming out of her mouth, except that they were directed at a different man: Herbert Donahue. Bertie had been her true love. She doted on him because he was the first man to show her kindness once she was old enough to leave her father’s house. Bertie had been a sergeant in the army and she believed his manners to be as good as his skill with a sword. She had held out on him for eight months and then, one night, he visited her at the hostel where she worked as a cleaner and told her he was going to the Crimea. It was his idea to take something of her with him, something no other man could claim and she – caught up in the romance of it all – had lain back and thought of England.

            Bertie did not keep his promise to write her, but he did visit. She found him one night in the Maiden Arms in the arms of a maiden. Jacob was six months old then and they were living in the workhouse. When she approached him with his child, Bertie accused her of being a liar in front of the whole pub. Her son’s cries silenced the place and expressed how she felt about having her heart ripped in two. It was then that she said, “You’ll pay for this, Bertie Donahue.”

            Six weeks later, she read his obituary in the newspaper. He had paid with his life, but it didn’t change the fact that she was an unwed mother in a small town. The visit to her father had yielded nothing but insults and a small bag of money – her inheritance. She parted with some of the coins to buy a wedding band and, keeping her own name, set off to the city to start a new life.

            At first, keeping the truth from Jacob had been easy. She told him his father was a brave man who died in the Crimea. Later, when he wanted to join the army and follow his father’s footsteps, she could not keep herself from admitting the truth. Bertie was a scoundrel who did not keep his promises, and she was so ashamed of their association that neither she nor Jacob took his name. All the resentment she bore and sacrifices she made tumbled out and crushed her son’s idealism. After that, Jacob worked hard to please his mother and they did not discuss Bertie again.

            Until, of course, they arrived here three years ago and that wench beyond the trees made something stir in her otherwise obedient son. He was defying her and ignoring the truth of his feelings, and while she supported his rejection of Sasha, she did not raise Jacob to turn his back on his friends. It was an impossible situation because she knew that if he helped Sasha then they would never be rid of her.

Susie paused and stared at the house. It was probably her doing, the old Matriarch Mortimer. Just because she was unhappy did not mean that she had the right to thwart others’ happiness too. A shadow moved away from the window. Susie snorted. Yes, I see you, she thought. I know how you have worked against them and tried to keep two people who love each other apart. Susie gathered her skirts and headed for the trees. The sooner she got away from that witch, the better. She had no idea of how she was going to save Sasha, but she hoped Jacob would come to his senses before they had time to set up the scaffold in the courtyard behind the gaol.

           

The stench of urine woke Sasha. There were at least seven unwashed bodies in the cell with her. Two of the women were smoking, taking turns to puff on tobacco squashed into a sliver of newspaper.

            “Oy, look, it’s Sleeping Beauty.”

            The others laughed. A girl with matted hair crawled across the floor to Sasha and smiled at her, baring blackened teeth.

            “Don’t mind them.” Her breath smelt of outhouses. “They just like your boots. Jane’s been saying if you die then she gets them.”

            “That’s right.” Jane looked down her nose at Sasha. “We be the same size.”

            Sasha sat up and rubbed her head.

            “My name’s Stella.” She shuffled to a spot along the wall. “That’s Bea, Magenta, Lolly, Fran, Mary and her twin Jacinta.”

            Sasha tried to smile, but her head hurt too much. “How long have I been here?”

            “’Bout ‘alf a day.” Fran picked her teeth.

            “What you in for, then?” It was Mary or Jacinta.

            “I am not sure.”

            “I ‘eard it was murder,” said Fran. “Whole place been buzzing with it. They said you knocked off that man Faulkner in ‘is own bed.”

            “That’s not true.”

            “Shut up, Fran. She don’t look like a murderer.”

            “Neither do I, Bea, but I always wanted to see a ‘anging. Maybe this time I will.”

            Stella was sucking on her fingers. “Don’t you speak about her like that.” It was hard to understand her with her fingers in her mouth.

            “What’s that?” Jane squinted at Stella. “The crazy girl got something to say?”

            “Quiet in there!” A man’s voice shouted down the corridor.

            Stella leapt at Jane and began clawing at her face. “Take it back, you bitch!”

            Jane bellowed and the others circled them like carrion to the kill. Sasha tried to squeeze herself against the wall and covered her ears to block out the cacophony.

            Three Bobbies appeared and blew whistles and delivered blows from their truncheons. It took twenty minutes for the din to end, and the women looked worse for wear.

            “I’ve told you before, I’ll have none of this.” The officer looked puce. “One more fight and I’ll have you hanged so fast you won’t realise you’re dead.”

            The women reminded Sasha of animals licking their wounds.

            “You.” He pointed at Sasha. “Come with me.”

            The others began to protest, but he silenced them with a look. His hands were rough on her arm and he led her into an interrogation room. The air was stuffy and he told her to sit and wait.

           She had no way of knowing how long she was there, but she felt faint with hunger and exhaustion. There were footsteps up and down the corridor and voices of pain and anger interjected the silence. Sasha looked up at the window and saw a patch of sky through the bars. The entire day had been so surreal and she felt herself rage at Sebastian for putting her in this situation.

            The door opened and Fincher’s presence filled the room. “Ah, Miss Doyle. Still in one piece, I see.”

           Sasha chose to remain silent. She did not trust herself enough to speak to him after what he had put her through.

            “So, just to update you. We are dropping the charges against you for now, owing to...” He cleared his throat. “Owing to new evidence.”

            She noticed a folder in his hand, which he placed on the table between them.

          “We have had several witnesses come forward and claim that they saw a male figure running through the trees. I have spoken to our resident mortician, who tells me that there have been several murders like the one committed in your house.”

            Sasha blinked at him.

            “So, either there is a copycat, or we have a serial killer. Since we have no other evidence, beyond the purely circumstantial, we are going to let you go. Your bond has been paid, so you will be back at home before dark.”

            “All this happened today, while you left me in the cell?”

            “Well, not exactly. One witness only came to give her account this afternoon.”

            “Who was that?”

            “I am not at liberty to say. But she wished to speak with you.”

            As though it was all part of a choreographed play, there was a knock at the door.

            Fincher stood. “There she is now. I’ll give you two a moment and then I will ask you to sign the terms of your release.”

            “I am innocent, Fincher.”

            “Yes, so it seems.” He opened the door and a woman in black with a veil over her face entered. Fincher nodded at them and shut the door behind him.

         Sasha’s eyes widened as the woman took Fincher’s seat. She watched her movements as she raised the veil to reveal her face.

            “What are you doing here, Amelia?”