Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (79 page)

THE STABLE WAS A
respectable shed with four stalls, smelling of horse but presently empty save for a pair of trestles with a sheet of tin roofing laid across them. The body had been placed on this, a handkerchief laid over the face for decency, though it was too cold for flies.

Jamie crossed himself unobtrusively and offered a brief, silent prayer for the stranger's soul.

“Any sign he was robbed, Mr. Jones?” Locke took out his own handkerchief and a small bottle. He shook several drops from this onto the cloth and pressed it to his nose in a practiced manner. Oil of wintergreen; the sharp smell prickled the hairs inside Jamie's own nose, and a good thing, too. The stranger
was
ripe.

“Well, yes,” said the constable, with a touch of impatience. “If empty pockets and a cracked skull are sign enough for you.”

Locke plucked the damp handkerchief off the man's face with two fingers and set it aside. Jamie felt his wame clench and rise.

The man had a shocking great wound in the side of his head, but that wasn't what was making the sweat break out in a rush on Jamie's body.

“You know this man, Mr. Fraser?” Locke had noticed his reaction.

“No, sir,” he said. His lips felt stiff, as though someone had hit him in the mouth. The man was strange to him, but the look of him was not. Not tall, but large, a heavy-boned man who had run to fat, his bloated stomach a great round swelling under his half-buttoned breeches, tapering down to too-small feet that had flattened and spread under the weight they were required to bear and burst the seams of the man's worn shoes.

He'd seen those feet and those bursten shoon before—and likewise the dead, broad face, hairy jaw slack and eyes half open, dull and sticky under their lids. Seen it covered with dirt as he filled in the grave, shoveling fast lest he vomit again.

LOCKE, IN HIS
office as coroner, told the constable to go and inquire of the tavern's patrons and bring any potential witnesses to view—and hopefully identify—the body.

Jones shifted his weight, restive. “Whoever robbed him's long gone. Think he must have been in that alley for two, three days at least, from the smell.”

“Tell me about it in the morning, Mr. Jones,” Locke said, and shrugged his coat closer. It was perishing in the shed, and his voice rose in a white cloud. Jamie felt the chill in the aching bones of his maimed right hand and closed it into a fist, which he thrust into the pocket of his greatcoat.

“Do ye have such occurrences often?” he asked Locke as they made their way back through the dark streets.

“More often than I'd like,” Locke replied grimly. “And more often than used to be the case.”

“War does bring out the worst in folk.” He hadn't meant it as a joke, and Locke didn't take it as one—merely nodded. He closed the door of the shed behind them and they walked in silence up the street.

Jamie declined the offer of a final dram, bade Locke farewell at his door, and asked him to give their thanks to his wife for the fine supper. The Widow Hambly's house was two streets over; he'd pass the stable again on his way there.

THERE WAS A
flickering light inside the stable; it spilled through the chinks between the boards, making a ghostly outline against the night. Jamie stopped dead at the sight, but curiosity and dread combined made him walk softly toward the door.

The door was ajar, and he saw a fantastical figure inside, an elongated shadow that moved sharply at the crunch of his footstep on gravel.

“Uncle Jamie?” It was Ian, holding a lantern, and Jamie's heart slowed down.

“Aye.” He stepped into the shed. “Are Rachel and your mother settled, then?”

“Well, they've got to the Widow Hambly's, all right. As Mrs. Locke kindly came with them, to bring a packet of food for tomorrow and stayed to tell the widow everything that was said over supper, I doubt they'll find their beds before midnight.” He twisted a forefinger in his ear, in illustration.

“Which would be why you're here,” Jamie said. “Ye consider this gentleman better company?”

Ian held out a flattened hand and oscillated it, indicating that the difference between Mrs. Locke and an ill-feckit corpse was negligible in terms of providing good company.

“I wanted to see what he looked like.” He raised one sketchy brow at Jamie. “And ye're here because…?”

“I wanted to see what he looks like, again. I maybe didna get a clear keek at him, earlier.”

Ian nodded and moved aside, holding his lantern high above the body. They looked at it in silence. Jamie closed his eyes and took two or three deep breaths, despite the smell. Then he opened them again.

Was it? The stranger seemed different now than he had on first sight. Shorter. The neck was maybe longer, and it was scrawny, in spite of the bulging stomach. The other's neck had been creased, two deep lines dividing the fat into rings. “Fat lumpkin,” his sister had called the man who'd raped Claire. The pressure in his chest eased a little, and he considered the face, carefully this time.

No. No, it wasn't the same at all, and his belly hollowed with relief. The face was unshaven and had been for some time, but if he disregarded that, then…no. Nose and mouth were a different shape altogether.

“Ye thought ye might ken him, Uncle?” Ian was looking at him from the opposite side of the table, interested. “I thought that, too.”

“Did ye, indeed,” Jamie said, and the pressure in his chest was back. He resisted the urge to turn and look outside. Instead, he said in the
Gàidhlig,
“A man ye might have seen by firelight once before?”

Ian nodded, his gaze steady, and replied in the same language.

“The man whose filth defiled your fair one? Yes.”

That was as much a shock as finding Ian here, and it must have shown on his face, for Ian grimaced, then looked apologetic. “Janet Murray's your sister,
bràthair-mhàthair,
but she's my mother.” Dropping back into English, he added, “I'll no say she canna keep secrets, for she does. But if she sees reason to speak, then ye're going to hear what she has to say. She told me some weeks ago, when I came to say I was going to Beardsley's trading post, and did she want anything. She told me to keep an eye out for the fellow.”

This eased Jamie a little, and he looked back at the dead stranger.

“We dinna want to say anything to her about this.”

“No, we don't,” Ian agreed, and a faint shudder went over him at the thought.

“From curiosity,” Jamie said, returning to the
Gàidhlig,
“
why
did your mother tell ye about the
mhic an diabhail
?”

“If it might be that you needed my help in the killing,
a bràthair mo mhàthair,
” Ian said, with the trace of a smile. “She said I must not offer, but if ye asked, I must go with you. And I would have done so,” he added softly, his eyes dark in the lantern's glow. “Without the telling.

“What do you think?” he said then, changing subjects with a nod at the stranger. “Plainly, it is not the same man. That man is dead?”

“He is.”

Ian nodded, matter-of-fact.

“Good. Do we think this one might be his kin?”

“I dinna ken, but this one is also dead, and I canna think his death”—Jamie nodded at the corpse—“can have aught to do with the other.”

Ian nodded in agreement.

“Then I think it hasna anything to do wi' us, either.”

Jamie felt air in his chest, light and cold and fresh.

“He has not,” he agreed. Then, struck by a thought, asked, “How do ye come to ken what the—other—looked like?”

“The same as you, I expect. Went to Beardsley's and asked after the man wi' the birthmark. Dinna fash,” he added. “I didna make a meal of it; no one would remember.”

“No,” Jamie said flatly. No one
would
remember, because no one would ever see the man again, or think to look for him—he wasn't the sort of man who had real business with anyone. He was the sort of man who lived and died alone. Save for his dog.

And even if someone thought to visit him, they willna find him.
It wasn't unusual for solitary men to disappear in the backcountry, their passing unremarked. Killed by accident, died of untended illness, wandered away…

They stood together for a moment, scrutinizing the stranger's face. Jamie felt Ian relax, his decision made, and a moment later, Jamie also shook his head and stepped back.

“No,” he said, and Ian nodded and, leaning forward, blew out the lantern's wick, leaving them in darkness with the smell of the dead man.

“Ye're sure, yourself?” Jamie asked, not moving. Ian hadn't asked
him
that, but he couldn't help himself. Ian touched his shoulder.

“I'm sure this man is no concern of ours,” he said firmly. “Ought we to leave him with a blessing, though? He's a stranger.”

They stood close together and murmured the short form of the death dirge. Jamie's eyes were accustomed now to the dark of the shed, and he saw the words come out of their mouths in white wisps, insubstantial as the soul they blessed.

They left, and Jamie closed the shed door quietly behind them.

THE MAN WAS
still in their minds, though, as they walked down the street. Not the dead man they had just left. The other.

“Ye didna go to look for him, did ye?” Jamie asked Ian as they turned in to the main street. “After ye learnt his name, I mean.”

“Och, no. I kent ye'd dealt with him.” They were near the square, and there was enough light from the taverns that he saw Ian glance at him, one brow raised.

“Ken, I had some business in the forest near the bottom of the Ridge, and I heard your horse comin' along the wagon road just after dawn, so I went and looked. Ye had your rifle with ye and ye looked grim enough. I could tell ye were hunting, but it wouldna be an animal, of course, not on horseback.” Ian's head turned briefly toward him.