The Aylesford Skull by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

the house. “The first man, the poisoner, might have been pursued surreptitiously by the second, I assume?”
    “More likely it was mere happenstance,” said Hasbro. “If the second man had followed the first with some fell purpose, he wouldn’t have tarried near the weir, it would seem. His prey might simply have continued along the river and got away.”
    “There’s no indication that they were companions?”
    “No, sir, to the contrary. Their separate tracks led back to the village, where I discovered that they had started out by different routes – one of them from behind the Chequers Inn and the other from the path that runs up into what’s known as Hereafter Farm, or so I’m told by the publican at the Chequers.”
    “Isn’t that a spiritualist commune?”
    “Indeed, sir. Owned by a woman named Mother Laswell, who, I gather, is widely considered to harbor dark secrets. She has apparently lived in Aylesford these past forty years and is known by everyone, largely because of her reputation for speaking to the dead, and also her public disapproval of the industrial debris created by the paper mills. She’s considered to be ‘the bane of industry,’ according to our publican.”
    “So the man from Hereafter Farm followed the other?”
    “In some sense of that word,” said Hasbro. “I wonder if it’s conceivable that he observed the other doctoring the pike and took offense to it.”
    “Knock the man on the head, but leave the poisoned fish lying in the creel?” asked St. Ives. “He would be a tolerably strange guardian angel.”
    “Indeed he would,” Hasbro said. “We’re none the wiser, I’m afraid. There’s no evident motive for the poisoning, or for our man to be laid out with a stick.”
    “The lack of motive suggests Narbondo,” St. Ives said. “And of course motives invariably exist. We’ll find them out in due time, although it would suit me down to the ground if the whole business simply went away. I’m not keen on tumult, Hasbro. I’ve had too much of it lately. I’m content to live the life of the gentleman farmer and let the planets revolve as they will. Indeed, I’ve promised Alice as much. But we’ll keep our eyes open, certainly.”
    The two men parted company, Hasbro toward the house and St. Ives toward the barn. Ahead of him he saw the filled-in pit that Mr. Binger, the groundskeeper, had dug to bury the pike, the white quicklime visible in the dirt. His mind began to dwell on the poisoned fish once again, and he found that he was angry, despite the gentleman farmer talk. He had suppressed the anger in front of Alice, and just moments ago, when speaking to Hasbro, he had bid it disappear, but here it was again, returning with a vengeance. Anger, he was certain, was almost always a toxicant, worthy of being buried beneath quicklime. Still, he would know the identity of the poisoner before he was done, which possibly meant a visit to Hereafter Farm and a chat with Mother Laswell.
    It was often the case that he saw things more clearly when his mind was occupied elsewhere, and he forced himself now to think about the hiatus in the barn roof – the combination of pulleys and line that he would design to draw back sections of roof along a greased track on behalf of the airship. The undertaking wouldn’t be simple, regardless of what he had told Alice. Hasbro, however, had served in the Royal Navy in his youth and was a wizard of tackle. And St. Ives would call on Keeble to help, once the air vessel was fit to take aloft. Together, the three of them would prevail. It occurred to him now that it would require a considerable force to move the sections of roof, given the necessary size of the outlet. A steam engine would do, but he abhorred the noise and the vapors, and certainly it would poison the livestock in the enclosed barn. The inscrutable Mother Laswell would condemn him publicly.
    A capstan, perhaps? Surely it would take no more power to shift a section of the roof