Nocturnes

“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 i

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 ma