A Night in the Lonesome October. Chapter 23, 24, 25
October 23
Up in the morning, out on the job. I hassled the Things, then checked around outside. A black feather lay near our front door. Could be one of Nightwind’s. Could be openers on a nasty spell. Could just be a stray feather. I carried it across the road to the field and pissed on it.
Graymalk wasn’t about, so I walked over to Larry’s place. He let me in and I told him everything that had happened since I’d last seen him.
“We ought to check that hillside,” he said. “Could be there’d been a chapel there in the old days.”
“True. Want to walk over now?”
“Let’s.”
I studied his plants while he went for a jacket. There were certainly some exotic ones. I hadn’t told him yet about Linda Enderby, perhaps because he’d revealed in passing that all they’d spoken of was botany. Perhaps the Great Detective really was interested in plants.
He returned with his jacket and we went out. It was somewhat blustery when we reached the open fields. At one point we came across a trail of huge misshapen footprints leading off in the direction of the Good Doctor’s farmhouse of the perpetual storm. I sniffed at them: Death.
“The big man’s been out again,” I remarked.
“I haven’t been over that way to say hello,” Larry said. “I’m beginning to wonder now whether he isn’t a rather famous man I’ve already met, seeking to further his work.”
He did not elaborate, as we came upon a crossbow bolt about then, stuck in the bole of a tree.
“What about Vicar Roberts?” I said.
“Ambitious man. I wouldn’t be surprised if his aim is to be the only one left standing at the end, sole beneficiary of the opening.”
“What about Lynette? This doesn’t require a human sacrifice, you know. It just sort of greases the wheels.”
“I’ve been thinking about her,” he said. “Perhaps, on the way back, we could go by the vicarage and you could show me which room is hers.”
“I don’t know that myself. But I’ll get Graymalk to show me. Then I’ll show you.”
“Do that.”
We walked on, coming at last to the slopes of the small hill I had determined to be the center.
“So this is the place?” he remarked.
“More or less. Give or take a little, every which way. I don’t usually work with maps the way most do.”
We wandered a bit then.
“Just your average hillside,” he finally said. “Nothing special about it, unless those trees are the remains of a sacred grove.”
“But they’re saplings. They look like new growth to me.”
“Yes. Me, too. I’ve a funny feeling you’re still missing something in the equation. I’m in this version?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve discussed this before. If you take me out of it, where does that move it to?”
“The other side of the hill and farther south and east. Roughly the same distance as from your place to a point across the road from Owen’s.”
“Let’s take a look.”
We climbed the hill and climbed back down the other side. Then we walked southeastward.
Finally, we came to a marshy area, where I halted.
“Over that way,” I said. “Maybe fifty or sixty paces. I don’t see any point in mucking around in it when we can see it from here. It all looks the same.”
“Yes. Unpromising.” He scanned the area for a time. “Either way, then,” he finally said, “you must still be leaving something out.”
“A mystery player?” I asked. “Someone who’s been lying low all this time?”
“It seems as if there must be. Hasn’t it ever happened before?”
I thought hard, recalling Games gone by.
“It’s been tried,” I said then. “But the others always found him out.”
“Why?”
“Things like this,” I said. “Pieces that don’t fit any other way.”
“Well?”
“This is fairly late in the game. It’s never gone this long. Everyone’s always known everyone else by this time, with only about a week to go.”
“In those situations where someone was hiding out, how did you go about discovering him?”