Eleanor Hayes
The Arrival
The rain had been falling over St. Aldwyn’s for two days without pause, a relentless curtain of silver that blurred the hedgerows and emptied the cobbled streets of its usual chatter. Nestled in the heart of the town was the Blackthorn Inn, a Tudor-fronted building whose dark beams sagged with age, whose windows glowed like watchful eyes in the storm. On that particular evening, a carriage stopped at its door—a rare sight, for few visitors chose to travel in such weather. From within stepped a tall man in a deep maroon coat, his boots striking sharp against the stone. He carried no luggage, save for a polished wooden case he held as though it contained something fragile, perhaps even dangerous.
Inside the inn, the patrons turned. Locals filled the room—farmhands, merchants, two weary constables sharing a quiet pint. They all fell into silence as the stranger entered, removing his hat with a courteous tilt. His presence commanded the air, not by force, but by an unsettling calmness. He gave his name only once to the innkeeper: Mr. Alaric Grey. And though his voice was smooth, it lingered in the ears like a whisper that refused to fade.
Eleanor Whitcombe, the inn’s young maid, watched from the shadows. She was no stranger to travelers—St. Aldwyn’s saw enough drifters in autumn—but this one made her uneasy. Perhaps it was the way he studied the room with eyes too dark to reflect the firelight, or the faint smile that never seemed to leave his lips. When he asked for a room, the innkeeper hesitated, then nodded. Business was business.
By midnight, the storm grew worse, rattling the shutters and moaning through the chimneys. Most of the patrons had gone, leaving only Eleanor to tend the hearth. She carried kindling to the parlor when she heard voices—low, urgent, coming from Grey’s room above. She paused on the stairs. The words were muffled, but she caught fragments: “payment… unfinished… not yet safe.” Then came silence, followed by the soft thud of something heavy dropped upon the floor.
The following morning, the storm cleared. Sunlight returned hesitantly, gilding the rooftops in trembling gold. But the peace lasted only until Eleanor went to Grey’s door with a tray of breakfast. She knocked once. Twice. No answer. She pushed the door open, only to gasp.
Mr. Alaric Grey lay upon the carpet, eyes open but lifeless, a dark bloom spreading across his white shirt. The polished wooden case was gone.
Word spread quickly. The constables who had drunk in the inn the night before returned to find the parlor crowded. Townsfolk whispered, some crossing themselves, others peering over shoulders with a morbid hunger. A murder in St. Aldwyn’s—something not seen for decades. Inspector Charles Hargreaves, a stern man with a hawk-like nose, took charge. He ordered the room sealed, the body examined, the guests questioned.
“What we must find,” he said, voice grim, “is not only who killed the man, but why he came here at all. For strangers do not arrive in storms by accident.”
And as he spoke, Eleanor could not shake the memory of those half-heard words from the night before: payment… unfinished… not yet safe.
The murder was only the beginning.
The Ledger and the Latch
The parlor had the nervous chill of a church before confession. Inspector Hargreaves stood by the empty hearth, rain-damp coat unbuttoned, hands clasped behind his back with military neatness. He addressed the small assembly—innkeeper Mr. Godfrey Blackthorn with his broad red face and worried eyes; his wife, Mrs. Blackthorn, a narrow woman whose mouth looked stitched shut by habit; Maggie the cook, flour-dusted and hawk-eyed; Thomas Pike the stable boy, all knees and freckles; a traveling draper named Mrs. Rowan; a bookish curate, Reverend Swithin, who had come for a supper and stayed through the storm; and a thin man in spectacles, Mr. Alden Cole, a chemist on his way to Bristol. Eleanor stood among them, tray held like a shield. The empty space in the headcount—the space that belonged to Mr. Alaric Grey—tugged at the room like a missing tooth.
“We will proceed simply,” Hargreaves said. “One by one, in my office. Mr. Blackthorn, your ledger first.”
The innkeeper swallowed. “Aye, sir.”
Hargreaves made a small office out of the back pantry: a table, a chair, and the ledger laid open like a patient. The pages shone with neat columns—names, nights, shillings, notes. Eleanor, sent to fetch ink and a cloth, hovered within call. The inspector turned the ledger with careful fingers, then looked up.
“Mr. Grey paid in coin?”
“Half a crown for the night,” Blackthorn said. “Up front. No supper. He kept to himself.”
“Description of his case?”
“Polished wood, dark. No bigger than a violin case, but deeper. No handle, so he hugged it. I thought it an instrument, but—” He faltered. “He carried it like you’d carry a sleeping child.”
“Did he meet anyone?”
“I cannot say,” Blackthorn muttered, eyes flicking away. “The storm had me mending a shutter till near eleven.”
Eleanor heard the untruth in that flicker. Not a lie exactly—more like something kept back, wrapped in an old rag. Hargreaves did not press. He sent for Mrs. Blackthorn next. She came like a needle, quick and straight.
“You retired when?”
“Half past ten, Inspector.”
“You heard nothing? No steps? No voices?”
“Only the storm.” Her hands twisted her apron. “And our clock striking eleven. I sleep light. I’d have heard something else.”
Eleanor thought of the voices above the stair, the soft thud, the phrase she could not shake: not yet safe. She felt it between her ribs like a lodged splinter.
“Send in the maid,” Hargreaves said.
Eleanor set the tray down and stepped forward. She gave her name, her duties, the time she carried the last peat to the parlor fire. Yes, she had gone up with the candle past eleven. Yes, she had paused at Mr. Grey’s door, because she heard voices within. She tried to speak plainly, without adding fear’s embroidery.
“Two voices?” Hargreaves asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Both male?”
“One was Mr. Grey’s, I believe. The other—lower. Rougher. Not anyone I recognized.”
“What words did you hear exactly? Repeat them.”
“ ‘Payment… unfinished… not yet safe.’ Then a thud, soft, like—” She hesitated, remembering the sound with unwelcome clarity. “Like a knee hitting a carpet.”
Hargreaves nodded once, as if fitting another nail into his board. “And you did not knock?”
“I… no, sir.”
“You did right,” he said. “Curiosity can be fatal currency.”
He dismissed her, but as she turned to go, he added, “Miss Whitcombe—who sleeps in the room adjacent?”
“Mrs. Rowan the draper on the left. Mr. Cole the chemist on the right.”
“Thank you.”
The interviews flowed like a slow river. Mrs. Rowan complained of damp walls and a draft that sang under her door like a ghost whistle; she claimed to have slept by half ten with a cloth over her eyes, and to have heard nothing but rain. Mr. Cole the chemist spoke evenly, too evenly, his answers distilled: he had been examining vials by candlelight—“a traveling demonstration kit, Inspector”—till near midnight; he had, he admitted, a touch of insomnia. He heard footfalls in the corridor twice, and a door latch scrape close to eleven. “Which door?” “I could not say. The building is old; its sighs wander.”
Reverend Swithin blushed to confess he had fallen asleep over his Evening Prayer in a chair by the upstairs landing and woke stiff at two, startled by the silence; he then crept to his room, ashamed of his nap like a child with jam on his fingers. The cook had slept in the attic with her ear to the rain. The stable boy claimed he had run out to check the horses at midnight because the thunder made them restless; he swore he saw someone leave the yard by the side gate, but “it was only a shape, sir. Could’ve been smoke. Could’ve been a coat.”
“A coat?”
“A long one. Dark. The rain makes shadows.” He shifted his feet. “There were prints in the mud this morning, Inspector.”
“I’ve seen them.” Hargreaves’ mouth was set. “Half-wiped by more rain, but I’ve seen them.”
When the last voice had been recorded, Hargreaves shut the ledger and asked for the keys to Mr. Grey’s room. The innkeeper produced a ring from his pocket. The Inspector shrugged into his coat again and climbed the stairs with Eleanor following at a respectful distance, ostensibly to hold the lamp.
The room smelled faintly of iron and something sweet—verbena perhaps, or a chemist’s floral spirit. The sheets had been pulled back once and not slept in. Grey lay on the carpet with the calm of a broken idol, his eyes neither accusing nor at peace. Dr. Merriweather—summoned from the next street—had taken the body’s temperature and muttered about a blade, quick and precise, driven between the ribs. No signs of struggle—no upturned chair, no shattered glass, only a single drop of wax hardened on the floor by the bed, red as a pinprick wound.
Hargreaves went to the window. “Latch.”
Eleanor held the lamp close. The casement’s latch was smeared with soot, an odd slick grey against the black iron.
“Someone opened this in the storm,” Hargreaves said. “And someone with grimy hands—or gloves rubbed in ash—closed it after.” He crouched, studying the sill. A faint crescent of grit lay there, and beside it, snagged on a splinter, a thread so dark it was almost black but in the lamp’s heart glinted green, like a beetle’s back.
He pinched it free and tucked it in a folded paper. “Emerald silk,” he said. “Finer than anything sold in St. Aldwyn’s.”
Eleanor’s gaze drifted to the small deal table by the bed. On it lay Mr. Grey’s hat and gloves, neat as a sermon, and a folded sheet of paper weighted by a coin. Hargreaves lifted the coin—foreign, with a hole through its middle, the stamp of a crescent—then read the paper without a change of face. He passed it to Eleanor; she read a single sentence, written in an even hand:
If I do not come down by nine, burn this letter and forget my face.
There was no letter, only the instruction. The space where a second page might have been ached like a phantom limb.
“The case,” Hargreaves murmured. “Gone. No handle on the lid—finger-grooves at the sides. You said he held it close?”
“Yes.”
“Then he feared theft. Or he feared the contents might shake themselves loose.”
He knelt by the hearth. The grate was cold, but ash lay under it in a neat cone. He dipped his fingers and brought up a curl of sealing wax, melted and hardened again, stamped with a device—a leaf pierced by a needle.
“Blackthorn,” Eleanor breathed before she could stop herself.
Hargreaves’ head snapped up. “You recognize it?”
“It is the inn’s old mark, sir. My grandmother used to tell of the Blackthorn seal—Mr. Godfrey’s great-grandfather used it on bills and crates. The press broke years ago. At least Mrs. Blackthorn said so.”
Hargreaves turned the wax in his palm thoughtfully. “Old marks have long memories. If this came from a broken press, someone kept a fragment.” He rose, brushing his knees. “And someone stamped something last night in this very room, then burned whatever they sealed.”
A floorboard near the bed creaked under Eleanor’s foot. She paused, sudden heat up her neck. Hargreaves frowned, moved the bedstead an inch, then another. The board at the corner had the look of being lifted and replaced many times—the nailheads flattened and polished by old pryings. He levered it with his penknife. Beneath, in a dust-soft cavity, lay a small brass key on a red string.
He held it up between finger and thumb. “And our Mr. Grey hid this as a child hides a marble. To keep it from whom?” He looked at the lock on the wardrobe, at the empty trunk, at the door’s clean strike. The key was not for any of those. Its tooth was square, its bow oval like an eye.
“A case without a handle,” Eleanor whispered. “It might have had a keyhole at the side.”
Hargreaves nodded. “And whoever took it did not find the key. Or did not need it.”
Downstairs, someone sneezed. A cart rattled past in the street, ordinary life insisting on itself. Hargreaves replaced the board and pocketed the key. He stood at the center of the room for a moment, a still figure listening to all the small, guilty sounds a house makes when it thinks no one is listening.
“Miss Whitcombe,” he said at last, “lock this door. No one enters till I say. And ask Mr. Blackthorn to bring me that broken seal press. If he cannot, I shall find who can.”
Eleanor bowed and turned to obey. At the threshold she glanced back at the dead man, at the thread of emerald silk in the inspector’s folded paper, at the faint smear of soot on the window latch, and felt—without reason she could defend—that the storm had not passed at all. It had merely moved inside, and shut the door behind it.
The Broken Seal
Morning wore its usual disguise of normality, though everyone in the Blackthorn Inn knew the mask was cracking. The smell of frying bread drifted from Maggie’s kitchen, the stable boy clattered buckets in the yard, Mrs. Blackthorn arranged pewter mugs on the shelf with tight lips. Yet beneath it all was a hum—fear sharpened to gossip, curiosity sharpened to suspicion. By nine o’clock, half the town had crowded the lane, necks craning for a glimpse of the inn that now carried the scent of murder.
Inspector Hargreaves tolerated neither gossip nor gawkers. He stationed one constable at the front door, another at the gate, and stalked into the taproom like a crow cutting through fog. He summoned Mr. Blackthorn with the authority of a magistrate.
“You told me the family seal was broken years ago,” Hargreaves said.
“It was, Inspector. The press cracked in the iron vice. I threw it out with old nails.”
“Then explain this.” Hargreaves laid the hardened curl of wax on the table. The mark—the leaf pierced by a needle—glimmered faintly in the morning light.
The innkeeper’s face paled. He bent closer, then jerked back as though scorched. “That is impossible. My father swore he buried it.”
“Where?”
“Behind the orchard wall. He said—he said the press had seen wicked business in his father’s time. Smuggling, debts, I never asked.”
Hargreaves’ eyes narrowed. “You mean to tell me a century-old seal resurfaces in the room of a murdered guest, and you call it impossible? Nothing is impossible. Show me the wall.”
The innkeeper faltered, then lumbered out with the inspector. Eleanor, under pretense of carrying bread to the constable, followed at a discreet distance. At the orchard wall, they found earth disturbed, weeds uprooted as if clawed aside. The inspector prodded with his cane and struck iron. He drew up not a press but a box, rust-bitten, cracked open, empty.
“Your father’s graveyard yielded treasure to someone else,” Hargreaves said. “Recently.”
Blackthorn swore under his breath. “But who—?”
“Someone who knew this land,” Hargreaves said. “And someone who had cause to stamp wax last night. That press is walking again.”
They returned to the inn with a new tension. Inside, Mrs. Rowan the draper was speaking too loudly about her sleepless night, while Mr. Cole the chemist scribbled notes in a narrow journal, and Reverend Swithin muttered prayers over his coffee. All three looked up at once when Hargreaves entered, and Eleanor saw in their eyes the same flicker—guilt, or fear of being suspected.
The inspector ignored them. He climbed back to Grey’s locked room, Eleanor with the lamp again at his side.
“I dislike unfinished patterns,” he said. “This man came here carrying something too valuable to leave at home, yet fearful enough to hide its key under a floorboard. He spoke of payment, of unfinished business. He died before sunrise, his case stolen. Whoever killed him knew what he carried—or thought they did.”
Eleanor asked quietly, “And the seal?”
“A token. A promise. Perhaps the case was meant to be opened with that press. Or perhaps Grey meant to prove identity to someone here.”
The inspector examined the window again. Rain had rinsed most tracks from the sill, but the soot smear lingered, black in the cracks. He sniffed the air and frowned.
“Coal soot, not wood ash. There is only one place in this town burning coal fine enough to cling so—Cole’s chemist shop. He heats with a stove. He handles ash daily.”
Eleanor’s stomach tightened. “Then Mr. Cole—?”
“Not yet. Coincidence is cousin to guilt but never the same man. We watch, not accuse.”
He checked the hearth once more. Under the ash he found a corner of parchment, charred but legible: a figure, drawn in black ink, half-burned. It was a serpent coiled around a staff, the mark of medicine.
“The chemist’s mark again,” Hargreaves muttered. He wrapped it in oilskin.
When they descended, he asked for Mr. Cole. The chemist adjusted his spectacles and smiled thinly.
“Do you know this sign?” the inspector asked, showing the fragment.
Cole’s lips thinned. “Naturally. It is the caduceus. Every man of science recognizes it.”
“Why burn it?”
“I cannot answer. Perhaps Grey was once a physician. Perhaps he carried a prescription.”
“Or perhaps,” Hargreaves said, “he carried evidence against a chemist who sells more than remedies.”
Cole flushed. “Inspector, I am a man of integrity—”
“Integrity wears many coats. I only ask that you remain here until I finish. Should you leave, I shall consider it flight.”
Cole bowed stiffly and retreated.
That night, Eleanor dreamed of serpents coiling through cupboards, of cases opening to spill silver instruments across the floor. She woke before dawn with the sound of a carriage in her ears. She hurried to the window—too late. Only wet tracks on the road remained. Someone had tried to flee.
By breakfast, news arrived: the constable at the gate had found the stable boy, Thomas Pike, sneaking out with a small parcel. When opened, it contained not clothes but a square of emerald silk, cut rough at the edge.
The inspector held it up before the assembled guests. “This was found in the boy’s keeping. Where did you come by it, lad?”
Thomas stammered, face blotched. “I… I saw it in Mr. Grey’s room, after—after they carried him down. It was under the bed. I thought it pretty. I thought—what harm?”
Hargreaves’ voice sliced the air. “The harm, boy, is theft from a corpse. More than that—it ties you to the very thread I found snagged at the window.”
“No, sir!” the boy wailed. “I never opened no window!”
“Then who did?”
But Thomas only wept, too young to fashion lies that held. Hargreaves dismissed him to the constable’s custody, though Eleanor saw doubt in the inspector’s eyes.
That evening, the inn felt hollow. Guests huddled in silence, spoons clinking in bowls like funeral bells. Eleanor carried ale to the curate and caught him staring not at his drink but at the brass key Hargreaves had found, which now lay on the inspector’s table in plain sight. Reverend Swithin’s eyes gleamed too long upon it before he forced them away.
Eleanor whispered to Hargreaves later, “He looked at the key as though it belonged to him.”
Hargreaves tapped the table. “The serpent’s mark, the emerald silk, the seal of Blackthorn, the boy’s parcel, the curate’s stare. Each piece leans toward another, yet none lock. Not yet.”
He leaned closer, voice low. “But storms gather again, Miss Whitcombe. Grey’s death was not the end—it was the door. And I fear what waits on the other side.”
The Curate’s Glance
By the third morning after the murder, the inn’s air had turned heavy, as though each breath carried a trace of coal dust and dread. Outside, the townsfolk had grown bolder, gathering in knots beyond the gate, whispering that the Blackthorn Inn was cursed, that Death had rented a room and meant to stay. Mrs. Blackthorn had ordered the shutters kept half-closed, claiming it discouraged gawkers, though Eleanor suspected it was more to keep the outside world from peering too deeply into her husband’s affairs.
Inspector Hargreaves convened his “council” at the long table in the taproom. The chemist Cole, pale and stiff; Mrs. Rowan, her bonnet trembling with each nervous nod; Reverend Swithin, still smelling faintly of candle grease; and Mr. Blackthorn himself, who looked older by a decade in the three days since Grey’s arrival. Maggie the cook was banished to her kitchen, Thomas Pike kept under watch in the yard. Eleanor alone was allowed to remain, perched by the hearth with her ledger to “observe,” though she knew the inspector valued her memory more than her pen.
“We must proceed by exclusion,” Hargreaves began, pacing. “The boy’s silk scrap—tempting, but not sufficient. He had neither means nor knowledge to strike Grey so precisely. Which leaves us with those seated here. Each of you has a thread knotted to this case, whether you admit it or not.”
Cole bristled. “Inspector, I will not be spoken of as though—”
“You will be spoken of as the evidence demands,” Hargreaves cut in. “Grey burned a parchment marked with your trade. The window latch bore soot such as only your stove produces. Explain.”
Cole’s thin lips pursed. “I keep my vials in order, my stove clean. But soot is everywhere in this town. Half our chimneys cough it.”
“Yet Grey chose to burn only that page,” Hargreaves pressed. “What had he discovered?”
“I cannot know what a dead man discovered.” Cole’s hands twitched. “Perhaps he was mad.”
Mrs. Rowan interjected hastily, “He did look peculiar, Inspector. Kept glancing over his shoulder when he came in. I feared him at once. Some men are born wrong, you can tell at the bone.”
Hargreaves’ hawk-nose tilted. “Convenient, Mrs. Rowan, to blame the victim. But you slept with a cloth over your eyes, did you not? Perhaps so you might not see too much?”
Her bonnet trembled violently. “I am a widow, sir, and nervous by nature! I cover my eyes against drafts, nothing more.”
The inspector turned to Reverend Swithin. “And you, good father. You prayed yourself to sleep on the landing, yet somehow found time to gaze at the key yesterday with hunger in your eyes. What did you recognize in it?”
The curate flushed scarlet, mouth opening and shutting. “A key, Inspector, no more. I was startled by its brightness.”
“Brightness rarely startles clergymen,” Hargreaves said dryly.
At this, Eleanor remembered the glint in his gaze—the way his pupils had widened, not with fear but with longing. She felt a cold certainty: the Reverend knew that key’s purpose.
The council broke with no resolution. Hargreaves sent them scattering under orders not to leave the inn. He then beckoned Eleanor to follow him upstairs once more.
“Your instincts have served us,” he said as they mounted the creaking steps. “What did you see in the curate’s eyes?”
“That he knew the key,” she said simply.
“Aye. And knowledge is harder to conceal than guilt.”
Back in Grey’s room, Hargreaves examined the cavity under the floorboard again, this time running his finger along the dust. He frowned.
“Two impressions,” he murmured. “The key’s curve, and beside it a smaller hollow—something else lay here once, long ago. Something removed before Grey’s visit.”
He replaced the board and stood in thought. “If Grey came seeking a relic of this house, perhaps he was not the first. Perhaps the curate knows more of the Blackthorn family than they admit.”
That afternoon, a disturbance broke out in the yard. Thomas Pike, still under guard, was found clawing at the earth near the orchard wall, muttering that he had seen “the green man” in his dreams. The constable dragged him inside, his face mud-streaked, his eyes wild.
“What man?” Hargreaves demanded.
“The green man,” Thomas sobbed. “Tall, coat shining like beetle-shell, face pale as milk. He pointed at the wall and told me dig. Said the treasure’s not gone, only waiting.”
The inspector’s expression hardened. “Dreams,” he said, but Eleanor heard doubt in his voice. Dreams sometimes sprouted from seeds sown by waking eyes.
That night, unable to sleep, Eleanor stole to the chapel at the edge of town where Reverend Swithin kept his sermons. She found the door unlocked, candles still guttering though no one was inside. On the lectern lay a book of parish records, open not to births or deaths but to a page inked with strange diagrams: circles within circles, keys sketched in the margins, and in the center the same serpent coiled around a staff. Her breath caught.
Footsteps behind her froze her blood. Swithin entered, startled to find her there. His face was pale in the candlelight, but his eyes blazed.
“You should not be here, Miss Whitcombe.”
“Nor should you be copying a chemist’s mark into parish records,” she retorted, heart hammering.
He shut the book with a snap. “There are matters older than this town, older than the inn itself. Mr. Grey thought he could purchase secrets with coin. He was wrong.”
Eleanor backed toward the door. “What secrets?”
Swithin’s hand closed over the lectern. “The Blackthorn seal was never merely a family crest. It was a covenant. What Grey carried threatened to open what should remain sealed. And now—now the key is loose.”
His voice trembled, half terror, half ecstasy. Before Eleanor could speak, Hargreaves appeared in the doorway, drawn by some instinct sharper than reason.
“Reverend,” he said, voice iron. “You will come with me.”
But Swithin did not move. He laid his hand upon the book, eyes fixed on Eleanor. “The storm has not ended,” he whispered. “It has only chosen a vessel. Beware the green man, child. He walks where faith has failed.”
Hargreaves seized his arm and dragged him into the night, but Eleanor knew the words would echo long after the man himself was locked away. The storm had indeed chosen a vessel—and perhaps more than one.
The Green Veil
Reverend Swithin spent his first night of custody in the little room off the vestry, not a cell, merely four walls and a chair; Inspector Hargreaves did not believe in iron unless absolutely required. At dawn, with the town still smeared in damp grey, the inspector questioned him again. I brought hot tea and kept my eyes lowered, for there are confessions that loosen only when no one is looking.
“The seal was a covenant,” Swithin said, voice hoarse. “Not noble, not holy—practical. In my predecessor’s ledger there is a note: Leaf and Needle—keep hunger out, keep sickness in. The Blackthorn ancestors held the key. The press proved the bearer’s right.”
“To what?” Hargreaves asked.
Swithin’s eyes shifted, not to me but to the steam rising from the cup. “To open what should not, in haste, be opened.”
“Plainly,” Hargreaves said.
Swithin swallowed. “There is, beneath the inn, a place older than the inn. A well or a pit with stonework like teeth. In it, once, the family kept contraband—brandies and Dutch linens—then later, something else left by a physician who fled the city fever. He called it his Green Veil. He said it cured as well as killed, depending on the hand.”
Hargreaves’ brows climbed a hair’s width. “Green Veil?”
“A silk—emerald-dyed—used to swathe vials and seal a chest against damp. There were warnings in Latin I could not decipher. The parish forbade its use; the Blackthorns swore to keep it shut. Then fathers died, sons forgot.”
The inspector only nodded. “And Grey?”
“Grey came to buy what should not be sold—or to take it from whoever had already broken oath. He showed me the coin with the hole and called it earnest. I told him to leave this town before it remembered its old sins.”
Hargreaves turned the crescent coin over in his palm as if expecting it to answer. “And the key?”
Swithin’s gaze hooked to an invisible point near the floor, like a fish dragged by line. “The key opens the iron mouth under the inn.”
After, when we stepped into the thin daylight, Hargreaves spoke without looking at me. “I have read pamphlets of wallpaper that sickens whole houses, green dresses that poison the wearers. A chemist in Bristol warned me—arsenic hides in beauty. If the Green Veil is dyed with such a thing, every hand that touches it is bargaining with death.”
“The thread in Grey’s window,” I whispered, feeling a small coldness in my fingertips. “And the square Thomas hid.”
“Handle nothing green,” he said, and his tone, so level, broke through my stubbornness. I wore an apron with blue piping—I was grateful for it as for armor.
We went first to Mrs. Rowan. She sat in the parlour with her bolt of travelling samples and her mouth pinched into virtue. When Hargreaves asked to see any cloth she kept in emerald, she laughed too brightly, then sent me upstairs with a key to her trunk.
In the trunk’s bottom lay the truth: a length of silk, green as beetle wing, wrapped in oiled paper and tied clumsily with twine. Even before I undid it, a faint bitter odor bit my nose—like crushed apple pips and something metallic. The silk gleamed wetly in the light, slippery as if newly born. Tiny glitters dusted the paper.
I did not touch. I fetched the inspector.
Mrs. Rowan’s bravado fled at once. “A sample only!” she cried. “A man in a dark coat offered it three weeks past, said it was Paris-dyed, that any lady would swoon for such a sheen. I bought a yard to show customers—nothing more.”
“What man?” Hargreaves asked.
“I did not see his face.” Her eyes jittered. “He wore his collar up. His coat shone… like a beetle indeed. He said another would come to collect what I did not sell.” She pressed her hand to her temple. “I have had headaches since. It must be the weather.”
Hargreaves had me bring vinegar and water. He wrapped the silk with his handkerchief at the corners only, held breath tight, and sent the packet to the shed with orders no one enter. He did not let Mrs. Rowan touch anything more than her teacup.
By noon he had set a trap. Loudly, in the taproom, where every ear could guide a dozen more, he said to the constable, “We send the brass key to the magistrate by coach at nine tonight. I am done with relics. Let the court lock them deeper.” He said it as if weary. It slid into the town like fat into broth—unmistakable and soon everywhere. But the key on his table was a twin cut at the smith’s that afternoon, brass newly polished to pass for age. The real key lay sewn inside the hem of my apron, pricking my thigh with honest weight.
At dusk, rain needled again. Mrs. Blackthorn barred the shutters, yet small slits of light remained for eyes to sip. The inn drowsed on its own fear. Hargreaves sat where all could see him, head bent over stale bread, feigning sleepiness. I wiped tables that were already clean. Thomas Pike snored on a bench—on order, loudly.
At a quarter to nine, the taproom clock, a cantankerous old thing, stopped as if holding its breath. The front door’s latch clicked though none stood near it. Every hair on my arms lifted.
Hargreaves was already moving, discreet as a cat’s spine. He nodded once; I slipped into the corridor that ran behind the taproom and took the servants’ stair to the landing above, where one could see the inspector’s table through the balustrade and also the shadow-soaked end of the hall.
I saw it then—the green shimmer, not bright, rather a dark gloss, the way a beetle is more black than green until it turns. A figure pressed itself along the wall, the hood of its oilskin drawn over its face. It smelled faintly of pepper and sweet, like some pharmacy drag. The gloved hand reached the doorway and paused, listening. Thomas snored theatrically. The hand slipped inside.
The figure went straight to the table with the mock-key and lifted it. For an instant it hung there between theft and triumph. Then the inspector’s cane struck the floor.
“Take off the hood.”
The figure flinched and bolted. Not out, in. Up the main stair, boots whispering on wood, along the landing past me by an arm’s length—I shrank against the newel and the oilskin brushed my sleeve with a slick hiss that made my skin crawl. Hargreaves took the steps three at a bound. The figure reached the far end—no escape there, only a door to the old linen-closet and, beyond, a short timbered corridor that led to the cellar stair by a trick of the house’s age.
We ran. The green back vanished round the corner; the door to the cellar yawed like a pulled tooth. The air below smelled of damp stone and iron. Hargreaves thrust the lantern into my hands and went down first. I followed because fear and curiosity are cousins that drag one another by the hand.
At the cellar’s heart lay a circle of flagstones different from the rest, slick as if tongues had licked them. In the center an iron ring sat flush with the stone, decorated with the leaf pierced by a needle. The green figure knelt there, hunched like a worshipper, fumbling at the ring with the inspector’s decoy and swearing softly when it failed to bite. The hood turned—two eyeholes, black and depthless. I felt the gaze touch me like the edge of paper.
Hargreaves did not speak. He moved with that stillness he wore like a coat, then sprang, one hand to the hood, the other to the wrist.
The struggle was brutal and brief. The lantern swung and threw dizzy light; shadows leapt like goats. The hood tore. The figure twisted, struck Hargreaves’ shoulder with desperate, untrained force, then faltered when I flung the lantern light into its eyes. The oilskin slipped.
“Godfrey,” I said before sense could stop me.
Mr. Blackthorn froze, panting. His face looked wrong under the hood’s ragged rim—older, water-swollen, frightened. He did not drop the false key. He stared at Hargreaves as if measures had been miscounted.
“I am not the man you hunt,” he said, and the lie fell apart in his mouth. “I am protecting what my fathers kept.”
“By breaking into your own cellar in a costume?” Hargreaves’ voice was neither surprised nor cruel. He held out his hand. “Give me the bauble.”
Blackthorn’s shoulders sagged. He opened his fist. The decoy slid into the inspector’s palm, wet with sweat. Hargreaves gave me a small nod. I knew then we would use the real key—not tomorrow, not with fanfare, but now.
He lifted the iron ring. Beneath it lay a mouth indeed: a circular hatch iron-bound and pin-studded, its keyhole oval like an eye. He reached for my hem, and I unpicked the few rough stitches with nails that trembled. The brass key was colder than I expected. It fitted as if it knew home.
The hatch opened with a breath, a sigh of long-kept air. Lantern light sank and pooled. Steps spiraled into a throat of stone. From below came the smell of old wet and, faint beneath, something sweet-bitter that wove itself into my throat. I thought of the silk’s odor.
“Stay,” Hargreaves told Blackthorn. “If you run, I will know.”
We went down. The steps were narrow and slick, their edges worn soft by feet that could not possibly all belong to one man. At the bottom, a small chamber sat like a clenched fist. On a pedestal in the center lay a wooden case, polished, lid stamped with cooling wax—Blackthorn’s leaf and needle, fresh.
Hargreaves touched nothing. “He—or you—brought it back,” he said.
“Not I,” Blackthorn said from above, his voice hollow down the shaft. “I never had that box. I tried to keep anyone from opening what’s below. I failed.”
On the pedestal lay also a card, edges browned, marked with the serpent coiled about a staff. Below, a single line in a firm hand: The dose restores or kills. What you sought now breathes in town.
Hargreaves’ jaw tightened. He lifted the lid with his knife inserted at the hinge. Inside the velvet cradles were empty arcs shaped for three small vials. Only a fraying silk ribbon remained, green dust freckling the lining like mildew.
He shut the lid again, gently, as if to avoid waking anything left asleep.
A scream knifed the cellar air from above—thin, shocked, final. Hargreaves took the steps like a man running up a bell rope. I followed, lantern bumping my knee, breath tearing.
In the parlor Mrs. Rowan lay on the carpet near the hearth, eyes wide, mouth slack. A scarf—emerald silk, soft as a whisper—circled her throat in a bow a child might tie. Her fingers were dusted with faint green glitter, and on her cheek a smear the color of spring leaves gleamed when the fire licked it.
I reached for her wrist and felt nothing but my own pulse in my palm. The inspector held his hand above her mouth and then did not lower it. He looked at the scarf and at the faint heat of the fire, at the damp in the air, at the way fear sweats out of a room and leaves something clinical behind.
“We have a second dead,” he said quietly. “And the murderer has chosen a new instrument.” He looked at me, not as at a maid but as at a partner who would not flinch. “Keep no green in this house tonight, Miss Whitcombe. Burn what you must.”
The silk at Mrs. Rowan’s throat shone, beautiful and wicked. Somewhere in the yard, Thomas Pike began to wail. In my head, the curate’s warning walked again: Beware the green man. But as I stared at the dead woman’s hands glittering faintly in our lamplight, I feared more than a man. I feared a veil. And a veil will settle where it pleases.
The Second Death
The Blackthorn Inn wore mourning without drapes. No one sang, no one whistled, even the taproom clock ticked more cautiously. Mrs. Rowan’s body, wrapped hastily in a canvas shroud, lay in the cold store where the beer barrels sweated. The scarf around her throat had been removed, though Inspector Hargreaves handled it with iron tongs, never his fingers. He had me fetch vinegar again, and we soaked the silk until its sheen dulled, then buried it under a heap of salt in a locked crate.
“She tied it herself?” I asked, though my voice faltered at the absurdity.
Hargreaves shook his head. “A bow that neat? Not in her final gasps. Someone drew it tight and left it to mock us. Look at her hands—dust on the palms. She tried to tear it free.”
By dawn, word had traveled. Townsfolk claimed Mrs. Rowan had dealt with smuggling men, or that she had been Grey’s accomplice and was silenced by his killers. Some muttered that the inn itself was cursed: first a stranger, now a guest, who next? Mothers forbade their children from passing the orchard gate.
The inspector ignored rumor. He gathered the remaining guests—Cole, Swithin under watch, and the Blackthorns—around the table. His voice was harder than before, as though the second death had scoured away patience.
“Two bodies in three nights,” he said. “Both tied to emerald silk. Both tied to this house. If any of you imagine silence will save you, look at Mrs. Rowan. Silence strangles just as surely as cloth.”
Cole’s spectacles glinted. “Are you accusing me, Inspector?”
“I accuse no one yet,” Hargreaves said. “But Grey burned your sign, and Mrs. Rowan died in silk brought by your supposed trade. Tell me plainly—what do you sell besides powders for coughs?”
Cole’s jaw clenched. “Remedies. Salts. Nothing criminal.”
“Nothing criminal can still be fatal,” Hargreaves murmured. “I have heard whispers of arsenic in wallpaper, in gowns, in toys. A chemist with skill could distil more than syrups.”
Cole’s pale throat worked. “You have no proof.”
“Not yet,” Hargreaves said, and turned to Swithin. “And you, Reverend. You knew of the covenant. Did you know it still breathed beneath your pulpit?”
Swithin’s face looked waxy. “I warned Grey. I told him not to stir it. He would not hear. Now the town pays.”
“You sketched the serpent in your records,” Hargreaves pressed. “Why?”
Swithin’s eyes flicked toward Cole. “Because the serpent tempted me. I saw what the chemist was doing. He courted what should remain buried. I—I was weak enough to draw it, though not to touch.”
Cole leapt to his feet. “This is slander!”
Hargreaves raised a hand. “Sit. Both of you have stains you cannot wash by argument.”
The innkeeper coughed into his fist, voice hoarse. “Inspector, I beg you. These quarrels tear us, but what of my wife? My staff? My name?”
Hargreaves’ hawk-eyes narrowed. “Then tell me, Mr. Blackthorn—how long have you known of the chamber beneath your floor?”
Blackthorn swallowed. His wife’s knuckles whitened around her apron. “All my life. But I never opened it. My father told me: leave the well sealed. I tried to honor it.”
“And yet,” Hargreaves said evenly, “we found you last night with a hood and the false key, reaching for the ring.”
Blackthorn’s face mottled. “Because I feared what others might do. If they opened it before I could—”
“Then you would rather steal from yourself than guard openly?”
Blackthorn could not answer.
Hargreaves dismissed them all with curt orders: no one leaves, no one wanders alone. A constable shadowed each guest. I thought the house might breathe easier with watchmen at its corners, but the silence only thickened.
At midday, Hargreaves and I returned to the cellar. The wooden case on the pedestal still gaped empty. Salt crystals from the silk glimmered on the stone as if mocking us.
“Three vials,” the inspector murmured. “Gone into someone’s keeping. If the dye is arsenic, even one is enough to kill by touch, more by inhalation. Whoever holds them now chooses death as easily as water.”
A scrap of parchment lay on the pedestal’s edge, perhaps dropped in the struggle. It bore half a word, the rest charred: —veil.
We said nothing.
That night, the storm returned. Wind rattled the shutters, rain bled down the chimney. In the parlor the guests huddled with mugs, trying not to look at one another. Cole scribbled furiously in his notebook; Swithin prayed aloud with too much fervor; the Blackthorns sat like statues.
Then—three knocks at the door. Not timid, not hurried—measured, as though someone counted the heartbeats between.
The constable unbarred it. No one stood outside. Only the rain and, on the threshold, a scrap of emerald silk pinned under a pebble.
Mrs. Blackthorn gasped. Cole hissed. Swithin crossed himself.
Hargreaves lifted the silk with his tongs and held it to the firelight. “The murderer wants us to know he walks freely,” he said. “He leaves tokens like bread crumbs.”
“Or like threats,” I whispered.
That night, I could not sleep. I wandered the upstairs landing, candle in hand. From the chemist’s room came a faint clink of glass, as if vials knocked together. From the Reverend’s chamber, murmured prayers. From the Blackthorns’ room, silence—too heavy to be honest.
I paused by Grey’s locked door. The corridor draft whispered through the keyhole, carrying a smell sharp and bitter, half-sweet. My skin prickled. The room had been sealed three days, yet something breathed within.
The candle guttered. I fled to my pallet, yet dreamed of green veils spreading across walls, smothering breath.
At dawn, Hargreaves woke me. His face was grim, his hand holding a folded paper. “This was slid under my door in the night.”
I opened it. The same steady hand as Grey’s note, but darker ink:
The third will fall before the church bell. The veil feeds until paid in full.
The words trembled in my grip though the paper was steady. “Third?” I asked.
“The pattern continues,” Hargreaves said. “We must find whose life is counted next—or the veil will choose for us.”
The Third Toll
The paper’s threat clung to the air like smoke. The third will fall before the church bell. Inspector Hargreaves kept it folded in his breast pocket, but every face in the Blackthorn Inn seemed to know its content by the tension in his step, the harsh set of his jaw.
Morning began with the town bell striking eight, deep iron waves rolling across the cobbles. We stood tense at each toll, waiting for a scream to join it. None came. Yet fear once seeded grows without water. By nine, the guests were shadows of themselves: Cole pacing with hands clenched behind his back, Reverend Swithin muttering prayers into his collar, Mrs. Blackthorn clutching rosary beads though she’d never shown piety before. Mr. Blackthorn stared into his untouched ale as if it might answer questions.
Hargreaves ordered the house searched. Trunks opened, drawers overturned, boots examined. He asked me to help, and together we scoured the Reverend’s chamber. Beneath his mattress we found a packet of drawings—circles, serpents, cryptic diagrams, each marked with the leaf-and-needle crest.
“Curiosity or conspiracy?” Hargreaves muttered. He slid them into his coat.
In Cole’s room, hidden beneath the false bottom of a chest, we discovered vials wrapped in cloth—not green, but pale glass stoppered with wax. They smelled faintly of bitter almonds.
“Arsenic trioxide,” Cole admitted when pressed. His voice was thin, defiant. “For rats, for pests. Legal enough if one knows the dose.”
“And illegal if one does not,” Hargreaves said. He confiscated them all.
The bell struck ten. Still no scream. Still no corpse. But the promise of one walked with us, whispering.
Near eleven, Eleanor—that is, I—took tea to the parlor and found Mrs. Blackthorn alone. Her husband had stepped outside to argue with townsfolk, Cole had been sequestered, Swithin questioned again. She sat stiff in her chair, staring at nothing. When I set the tray before her, her hand shot out and gripped mine with surprising strength.
“You must believe me,” she hissed. “This house is not what it seems. My husband thinks he guards us, but he has always known more than he admits. The seal, the chamber, the silk—it has passed from father to son like a curse. And now—”
Her words strangled in her throat. Her eyes bulged. Her other hand clawed at her neck.
The tea tray clattered to the floor.
“Help!” I shrieked.
Hargreaves came at once, shouldering through the door. He caught her as she convulsed, foam flecking her lips. “Poison,” he barked. “Fetch water, vinegar, anything!”
But it was too late. Within minutes, Mrs. Blackthorn sagged lifeless in her husband’s arms, the rosary beads spilling like black tears across the carpet.
The church bell tolled noon. Its clang rolled through the town, sealing the prophecy.
The inn fell into chaos. Mr. Blackthorn howled like an animal, clutching his wife’s body. Cole swore he had nothing to do with it, though the confiscated arsenic marked him as villain in every watching eye. Reverend Swithin collapsed into prayer louder than ever.
Hargreaves, however, stood rigid. His face betrayed no shock, only calculation. He pressed fingers to Mrs. Blackthorn’s lips, then examined the teacup she had not touched. Instead he lifted the rosary. Between the beads, faint green shimmer dusted his glove.
“Not poison drunk,” he said grimly. “Poison worn.”
The rosary, it seemed, had been tainted. Whoever touched it after she clutched it had sealed her fate.
“Someone placed it in her keeping,” he said. His eyes swept the room. “Someone who knew she would cling to it, desperate, while the veil fed.”
Mr. Blackthorn roared. “Which of you fiends did this?” He turned on Cole, seized him by the collar, would have struck him if the constable had not pulled them apart.
Cole gasped. “I never touched her beads! Why would I? My own neck is on the noose already!”
“Because a noose round my neck draws eyes from yours,” Blackthorn snarled.
Hargreaves silenced them with one word: “Enough.”
He ordered Mrs. Blackthorn’s body removed, the beads sealed in vinegar. Then he gathered us all once more around the table. The storm outside had quieted, but inside thunder pressed against our ribs.
“Three deaths,” he said. “One guest struck with a blade, one strangled in silk, one poisoned by devotion. Three methods, one thread: emerald. Our killer walks among us still. He toys with us, leaves warnings, and uses this house as his stage. Until I know whose hand guides him, no one leaves, no one eats or drinks without my eye.”
We obeyed. Hunger dulled to dread. Night fell. The inn creaked like a ship in storm.
At midnight, unable to bear my pallet, I drifted down the corridor. Grey’s locked room whispered still, that faint bitter odor breathing through cracks. I pressed my ear to the wood and thought I heard movement, as if something shifted within—though the inspector himself kept the only key.
When I turned, I saw a shape at the far end of the hall. Tall. Cloaked. A gleam of green when it moved. My blood froze.
The green man.
He did not advance, only lifted one hand in silence, as if pointing to the door I leaned against. Then, in a blink of lightning, he was gone, the hall empty but for me and the echo of my own heart.
I fled to Hargreaves, breathless, but when we searched together, we found nothing but shadows. He did not mock me. He only said: “The veil wears many faces, Miss Whitcombe. And sometimes it borrows ours.”
That night, I dreamed of Mrs. Blackthorn’s rosary beads rolling like green marbles across the floor, spelling words I dared not read.
By dawn, another note was waiting on the inspector’s table. In the same hand as before:
Three are done. One remains whose silence hides the truth. Bring the key to the church at vespers—or the veil will choose again.
Vespers
The note’s command rang like a summons from a court older than the magistrate’s. Bring the key to the church at vespers—or the veil will choose again. Inspector Hargreaves read it thrice, his jaw tightening with each pass. Then he folded it and slipped it into his breast pocket with the same solemnity he had given Grey’s first letter.
“Someone wants us out of this inn,” he said. “Into their ground, on their terms. The church at dusk—it is no random choice. That place has been altar and refuge, but also ledger-keeper of secrets. Whoever holds the veil believes its covenant began there.”
I said quietly, “Will you go?”
Hargreaves’ eyes met mine, hawk-sharp. “We will go. But not unprepared.”
All day the inn pressed down on us like a coffin lid. Mr. Blackthorn prowled in grief, his eyes hollow; the constable shadowed him at every turn. Cole scribbled in his notebook still, though with trembling fingers; twice I caught him staring toward the vinegar-locked crate as though longing to unseal it. Reverend Swithin, allowed brief prayers in the parlor under watch, muttered louder than ever. His voice shook the rafters: Deliver us from evil, from pestilence, from the serpent’s tongue.
When I carried broth to Thomas Pike, still confined to the stable loft, he whispered feverishly, “The green man walks at night. He points, always points. He says the church hides the fourth grave.” His eyes rolled with a child’s terror. I shivered, though the noon sun slanted warm across the yard.
At vespers, the church bell began its slow toll, six measured peals. The inspector took the real brass key from his coat, weighed it in his palm, then passed it to me.
“You’ll keep it in your apron again,” he said. “If I fall, you run. Do not look back.”
I wanted to protest, but his tone admitted no refusal. Together we crossed the square toward St. Aldwyn’s chapel. Townsfolk watched from doorways, whispering behind palms. They knew something was coming; the very air tasted metallic, as if the storm that had drenched us for days had seeped into the stone.
The chapel door yawned. Inside, candles flickered weakly, their wax pooling like spilled marrow. Shadows hunched in the pews. At first I thought the church empty, but then figures rose: Cole the chemist, Blackthorn the innkeeper, and Reverend Swithin. All three had come, as if summoned by a string pulled through their ribs.
Hargreaves’ voice carried. “Which of you wrote the note?”
Silence. Only the candles hissed.
“Grey died with a blade, Rowan with a scarf, Mrs. Blackthorn with poisoned prayer. All three deaths point back here. If you mean to end the tally tonight, speak now.”
Still no answer.
Then from the altar’s shadow came a fourth figure—the green man. Cloaked, hooded, face hidden, shoulders gleaming with that beetle-sheen. He moved with unsettling calm, as though he owned each flagstone.
“You brought the key?” His voice was low, neither Cole’s nor Swithin’s, though it seemed to wear pieces of both.
Hargreaves stood firm. “Why murder? Why these theatrics?”
“The veil feeds until balance is restored,” the figure said. “Grey betrayed the covenant by seeking to sell it. Rowan betrayed by hoarding silk. Mrs. Blackthorn betrayed by silence. One remains—one who holds truth yet speaks not. When the mouth is opened, payment ends.”
“Balance?” Hargreaves scoffed. “You mean power. You mean poison wrapped in silk.”
The green man spread his hands. “Call it what you wish. The veil cures as it kills. In the right hands it could heal fevers, purge plagues. In the wrong, it slaughters. Tell me, Inspector, do you not serve death yourself? You weigh lives daily. I offer you the scale.”
Hargreaves drew no weapon, only his words. “And which of these men is beneath that hood?”
For the first time, the figure laughed. It was a warped laugh, layered, as though echoing in a hollow mask. He reached up and pulled back the hood.
It was Blackthorn.
Yet not Blackthorn. His eyes gleamed fever-bright, his mouth twisted in triumph. But behind him, in the pews, Blackthorn himself gasped. Two Blackthorns—the grieving innkeeper, and the hooded phantom with his face.
I staggered back. “How—?”
The hooded one smiled cold. “Every covenant wears a mask. The seal does not keep hunger out—it lets hunger wear another’s shape.”
The real Blackthorn clutched his chest. “God forgive me—I dreamt—I dreamt my hands tied Rowan’s scarf, pressed my wife’s beads. But I swear I never rose—”
The phantom laughed again. “Dreams are doors. The veil walks through.”
Hargreaves moved swiftly. He seized a candle from the nearest stand and flung it at the hooded figure. Fire licked silk. The phantom recoiled, its sheen writhing like liquid beetle shell. It screeched, high and shrill, nothing human in the sound.
“Light blinds it!” Hargreaves shouted. “Eleanor—now!”
I fumbled at my apron hem, ripped the stitches, pulled out the brass key. My hands shook but I thrust it forward. The phantom lunged, not at Hargreaves but at me. Its fingers brushed my sleeve, leaving a faint green dust that burned cold into my skin.
Before it could seize me, Hargreaves snatched the key and drove it toward the altar. I had not seen the iron ring there, carved into the stone itself, but he knew. He jammed the key into a hidden socket. The ground groaned.
The altar split, stone sliding apart to reveal a cavity like a well. From within rose a stench of arsenic and damp. Faint green light pulsed, as though the silk itself breathed. Three empty vials rolled in the hollow, rattling like bones.
The phantom screamed and staggered, its form flickering like heat-haze. The real Blackthorn fell to his knees, clutching his head as if something were being ripped from it.
Hargreaves shouted above the din: “The veil has no body of its own. It rides guilt, silence, inheritance. Break the covenant, and it starves.”
He seized the vials, hurled them into the brazier by the pulpit. Glass shattered, flame flared green then white. Smoke poured, acrid, clawing our throats.
The phantom writhed, arms thrashing. Its beetle sheen blistered, split. For an instant its face flickered through dozens—Grey, Rowan, Mrs. Blackthorn, Blackthorn himself—before it burst in a hiss of sparks and was gone, leaving only a smear of green ash on the altar steps.
Silence followed. A heavy, dreadful silence.
The real Blackthorn sobbed into his hands. Swithin prayed weakly. Cole collapsed against a pew, coughing.
Hargreaves coughed smoke from his lungs and turned to me. “It’s done,” he said hoarsely. “But there will be a reckoning. Bodies still lie in graves. Truth must be written.”
The bell above struck seven. Each toll rolled like thunder. But this time, no scream followed.
The Ash That Breathes
The morning after the church burned green, St. Aldwyn’s woke quieter than I had ever known it. The air outside the Blackthorn Inn smelled of scorched stone and arsenic smoke. Townsfolk crept through the square as if their feet might wake something still sleeping under the flagstones. No one spoke above a whisper. Mothers held their children closer. The bell rope hung slack, as though afraid to toll again.
Inside, the inn was no less grim. Reverend Swithin had retreated to prayer so constant his voice cracked into whispers; he muttered not to us but to some ledger only he could see. Cole sat pale and hollow-eyed, spectacles slipping on his nose, scribbling lists of “ratios” and “counteragents” though his hands shook. Mr. Blackthorn, the innkeeper, could barely rise from the chair by the hearth where his wife’s absence sat heavier than any ghost.
Inspector Hargreaves seemed carved from the same oak as the beams overhead. He had not slept, not even blinked much, yet his voice was iron. “What we fought in the church was no phantom conjured by smoke. It was a parasite. It feeds on silence, on guilt, on inheritance. But it needs a host. The question is: who is still carrying it now?”
I dared whisper, “But you destroyed it in the brazier. The vials, the silk—”
“Not all of it.” He drew a folded square of cloth from his coat, emerald green dulled to grey. “Ash remains ash until it is scattered. Someone gathered what we burned.”
He set it on the table. Green dust freckled his gloves. “Last night while the church smoked, someone crept back to the altar. They scooped the ashes into a pouch. The sexton found footprints in the soot. Small feet, narrow. Not a man’s boot.”
The room chilled. My mind leapt to Thomas Pike, the stable boy—barely fourteen, feet narrow, dreams haunted. Yet my heart resisted. He was only a child.
Hargreaves summoned Thomas at once. The boy shuffled in, freckles stark on his pale face. His eyes darted not to us but to the cloth. “I didn’t,” he whispered before any question. “I swear, sir, I didn’t go near it.”
“Then why,” Hargreaves asked softly, “does your hand glitter?”
We saw it then—green motes caught in the creases of his fingers, faint but unmistakable. Thomas stammered, tried to wipe them on his trousers, but they clung. His knees buckled.
“It called me,” he sobbed. “In my sleep it called. Said if I kept it, it would stop pointing at me. Said it would give me strength.” His small shoulders shook. “I didn’t want it, sir, but it made me dig in the night. My hands moved themselves.”
Swithin made the sign of the cross. Cole muttered, “Possession. Perfectly possible, perfectly chemical.”
Hargreaves’ gaze did not waver. “You are not wicked, boy. But you are a doorway. We must close it.”
He ordered vinegar brought, salt from Maggie’s kitchen. He made Thomas plunge his hands in the mixture until the boy yelped at the sting. Green swirled, hissed faintly, then dulled to grey. Hargreaves nodded grimly. “It weakens in the open. But someone placed the idea in his sleep. That someone still breathes.”
The day dragged like a funeral march. I scrubbed tables that did not need scrubbing, just to keep my hands busy. Every sound seemed too sharp—the scrape of a chair, the whistle of wind through a shutter crack.
Near evening, I carried broth to Cole’s room and paused at his desk. His notebook lay open, pages crowded with cramped writing. But at the center of one page was not words but a sketch: the serpent around a staff, drawn in thick strokes, and beneath it a phrase: Green Veil: Elixir or Plague?
Cole caught me looking. His eyes gleamed feverishly. “Do you understand, Miss Whitcombe? If we master it—properly distill the arsenic, balance it—we could cure fevers that kill hundreds. Grey came for that knowledge. I believe he was right.”
“Three dead in this house,” I said coldly. “Is that cure enough for you?”
He slammed the notebook shut. “Progress demands sacrifice.”
I fled before he could say more.
That night, as the storm returned with low growls of thunder, Hargreaves sat in the parlor with only the lamp for company. I lingered near. His eyes never left the door.
“They will try again,” he said. “The veil does not end with fire. It hunts new cloth, new prayers, new hands. Tonight it will make its boldest move.”
As if on cue, the door creaked open. Not by latch, but as though wind pushed. No one stood there. Yet the lamp flame fluttered.
Then—footsteps above. Heavy, deliberate. From Grey’s locked room.
Hargreaves was on his feet before I could gasp. He snatched the lamp and strode up the stair, me close behind. The key scraped in the lock. The door swung wide.
The room was unchanged—bed unslept in, hearth cold, carpet stained dark where Grey had fallen. Yet the air was alive with that bitter-sweet smell again.
On the bed lay the wooden case. The very one we had seen empty beneath the church. Its velvet cradles were no longer empty. Three vials lay nestled, glowing faintly green, as though light leaked from within.
“But we burned them,” I whispered.
“Not all,” Hargreaves said grimly. “The veil recreates itself through those it touches. Someone restored this.”
He bent closer. The wax seals were fresh. On each, stamped deep, was the Blackthorn leaf pierced by a needle.
From the shadowed corner of the room came a voice. “Because the covenant never dies. Only passes.”
We turned. Reverend Swithin stood there, eyes wild, robes smeared with ash. In his hand dangled a pouch leaking green dust.
“I warned you, Inspector,” he said. “But you thought to burn a sacrament. The veil is God’s scourge and God’s gift. I alone was chosen to keep it. The others were unworthy.”
“You killed them,” I whispered.
His smile was thin. “No. I delivered them. Grey sought to sell holiness. Rowan flaunted it. Mrs. Blackthorn denied it. Their deaths were purging. The boy was next, until you interfered.”
Hargreaves’ voice was steady. “And you would make yourself priest of poison.”
“Priest of balance,” Swithin hissed. He lifted one vial, its glow painting his face ghastly. “With a drop I could heal—or end any man who threatens. Do you not see? God placed the serpent in Eden. I merely hold its tongue.”
He raised the vial toward his lips.
Hargreaves moved faster than thought. He hurled the lamp. Flame burst, oil splashing. The vial shattered in Swithin’s hand. Green fire roared, consuming dust and cloth. Swithin screamed—a sound that cracked like the church bell itself—before collapsing into the blaze.
Hargreaves dragged me back, shielded me as the fire leapt. The case toppled, two remaining vials rolling toward the hearth. He seized the poker, flung them into the flames. They burst with a hiss, smoke coiling green then black.
When the fire died, only ash remained. Swithin’s body lay twisted, face blackened, eyes wide in eternal sermon.
The inspector straightened slowly. His gloves were scorched, his jaw set. “It is ended. Truly ended.”
But as we left the ruined room, I glanced back. In the ash, faint and glowing, the serpent mark curled once more. And I felt in my bones that the veil was not gone. It had only shifted its skin, waiting for the next silence to wear.
The Crimson Dawn
By the time Reverend Swithin’s ashes cooled, the storm outside had passed. Dawn crept reluctantly across St. Aldwyn’s, its light pale and washed thin, as though the sky itself doubted the rightness of returning. The inn felt like the last lungful of air after drowning—thin, raw, and uncertain whether it would hold.
Inspector Hargreaves kept the room sealed. He posted the constables at the landing and sent me to fetch vinegar again, salt again. Rituals against poison had become as common as prayers. When the flames guttered down to nothing but black soot, we scattered the salt and washed what we could. The velvet case was reduced to scorched splinters, the vials to fused glass. Only Swithin’s blackened hand remained uncrumbled, clenched still around nothing at all.
“Three deaths the veil claimed,” Hargreaves murmured. “And the priest who thought to wield it joined them. Balance of a kind.”
I shuddered. “But what of the mark we saw in the ash? The serpent again?”
He met my gaze, his eyes weary but unwavering. “Some poisons leave their stain forever. But a stain is not a body. We must remember that difference.”
The town gathered by noon, drawn as crows to carrion. Word had flown faster than the bell: the chemist’s vials destroyed, the curate consumed, the covenant broken. Faces peered through the inn’s windows, wary, hungry for details, eager to name villains and whisper of hauntings.
Hargreaves stepped out to address them. His voice was steady, measured, each word shaped like a stone laid in a wall.
“There has been death in this house, yes. Three by murder, one by his own folly. But let no man or woman here say it was ghosts. It was greed, silence, and superstition that killed. And it will kill again if you feed it with gossip. The covenant of the Blackthorn seal is ended. No silk, no veil, no poison remains. If any of you keep emerald cloth in your homes, burn it now. If you trade in powders you do not understand, bury them. Do not make gods of serpents.”
The crowd listened. Some nodded. Others crossed themselves still. But fear lost its teeth. People began to drift away, muttering not of curses but of justice, of courts and sentences.
Inside, the reckoning came.
Mr. Blackthorn slumped at the parlor table, face hollow. “It was my house. My family’s oath. My wife paid for it. I should have burned the chamber myself years ago.”
Hargreaves spoke with a rare gentleness. “You inherited silence. You did not fashion it. The blame lies with those who kept covenant for profit, not with those who feared to break it. But fear is no shield, Mr. Blackthorn. You must live with that knowledge.”
Cole sat rigid, his notebook confiscated. He muttered of ratios and formulas, of lost opportunity. When pressed, he admitted Grey had contacted him weeks before, seeking samples of arsenic dyes. “I did not refuse outright,” he said, voice dry. “The prospect of discovery tempts every man of science. But I swear I did not lift the blade that killed him.”
Hargreaves eyed him coldly. “Perhaps not. Yet you paved the road with your ambition. You will answer to magistrates for that.”
Cole bowed his head. For the first time, he seemed not defiant but old, small, and spent.
Thomas Pike was spared. The inspector took the boy’s freckled chin in his gloved hand and said, “You were touched but not claimed. Do not let guilt trick you into chains. Work hard, speak truth, and no veil can wear you.” Thomas wept but nodded fiercely.
As for me—I thought myself only a maid. Yet each eye turned to me as witness. My words had weight. I realized then that fear could silence, but it could also sharpen truth. I promised silently I would never again swallow words that might save a life.
That evening, after magistrates arrived to collect Cole and to take statements, the inn stood quiet at last. The storm had left the sky washed clean. For the first time in a week, candles burned without shadows whispering behind them.
Hargreaves sat by the hearth, his coat unbuttoned, his cane leaning against the chair. He looked older, the lines at his eyes carved deeper.
“You have a clear memory, Miss Whitcombe,” he said. “And a clearer conscience. Without you, the veil might still walk in this house.”
I shook my head. “Without you, none of us would have lived to tell it.”
He gave a rare, thin smile. “Perhaps truth lies between. We fought it together. And that is the only covenant worth keeping.”
We sat in silence then, watching the fire. For once it was only fire, not green, not poisoned, only warm.
Yet when I went upstairs to tidy the deserted rooms, I paused outside Grey’s door once more. The lock was broken now, the room empty but for scorched boards and vinegar tang. Still, I thought I heard the faintest whisper through the keyhole—a breath, or the sigh of dust.
If I do not come down by nine, burn this letter and forget my face.
His words haunted me still. Grey had known the danger. He had come to pay or to bargain, but he had known.
I closed the door firmly and whispered back: “We will not forget. But we will not let it wear us again.”
At dawn the next day, Inspector Hargreaves departed with the magistrates. He left me no coin, no letter, only a nod and words that would stay with me longer than silver:
“Keep your eyes open, Eleanor. The world is full of crimson guests. Most do not knock.”
I stood in the yard as he rode away, the sky streaked red with sunrise, the inn creaking behind me. A new day, but one that remembered.
The Blackthorn Inn would host travelers again, laughter would return to its taproom, but for me the walls would always carry the echo of those nights—the blade, the silk, the rosary, the green fire. I would carry them too, not as chains but as lessons.
And so ended the covenant, and the veil, and the tale of the Crimson Guest.
Or so we hoped.
For when the wind rose across the orchard wall, the weeds whispered with a sound like silk stirring. And sometimes, when night pressed close, I thought I saw, from the corner of my eye, a shadow pointing down the lane—patient, watchful, waiting for silence to fall again.
END
