The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - By John Joseph Adams Page 0,175

blanket should. She felt a shiver of cold along her backbone, knowing what she was to find.

In the eye of the white horse, Grisel knelt beside the scarlet cloak spread open on the ground. She wore a look of grim determination, but she would not be shocked. She had been midwife to the village these forty years, and she laid out the dead as well, so she'd seen the worse, taken all round. She lifted the edge of the blanket and found herself staring into the sightless eyes of a stranger. A moment's examination told her that the man was a gentleman—the cut of his blood-stained clothes would have told her that, but besides his wardrobe, the man had the smooth hands and the well-kept look of one who has been waited on all his life. She noted this without any resentment of the differences in their stations: such things just were.

The man was alive, but only just.

"Can you tell me who did this to you?" she said, knowing that this was all the help he could be given, and that if there were time for only one question, it should be that. The rest could be found out later, one way or another.

The man's eyes seemed to focus on her for a moment, and in a calm, wondering voice he said clearly, "Not a maiden . . . "

And then he died. Grisel Rountree did not stay to examine him further, because the short blade sticking out of the dead man's stomach told her that this was not a matter for the layer out of the dead but for the village constable.

"Rest in peace, my lad," said the old woman, laying the blanket back into place. "I'll bring back someone directly to fetch you down."

"Missus Rountree!" Young Tom Cowper stood under the apple tree beside the old woman's cottage, gasping for breath from his run from the village, but too big with news to wait for composure. "They're bringing a gentleman down from London on account of the murder!"

Grisel Rountree swirled the wooden paddle around the sides of the steaming black kettle, fishing a bit of bed sheet out of the froth and examining it for dirt. Not clean yet. "From London?" she grunted. "I shouldn't wonder. Our PC Waller is out of his depth, and so I told him when I took him up to the white horse."

"Yes'm," said Tom, mindful of the sixpence he had been given to deliver the message. "The London gentleman—he's staying at the White Horse, him and a friend—at the Inn, I mean."

Grisel snorted. "I didn't suppose you meant the white horse on the hill, lad."

"No. Well, he's asking to see you, missus. On account of you finding the body. They say I'm to take you to the village."

The old woman stopped stirring the wash pot and fixed the boy with a baleful eye. "Oh, I'm to come to the village, am I? Look here, Tom Cowper, you go back to the inn and tell the gentleman that anybody can tell him the way to my cottage, and if he wants a word with me, here I'll be."

"But missus . . . "

"Go!"

For a moment Tom gaped at the tall, white-haired figure, pointing imperiously at him. People roundabouts said she were a witch, and of course he didn't hold with such foolishness, but there was a limit to what sixpence would buy a gentleman in the way of his services as a messenger. Choosing the better part of valor, he turned and ran.

"Who is this London fellow?" Grisel called after the boy.

Without breaking stride Tom called back to her, "Mis-terr Sher-lock Holmes!"

Grisel Rountree finished her washing, swept the cottage again, and set to work making a batch of scones in case the gentleman from London should arrive at tea time, which, if he had any sense, he would, because anybody hereabouts could tell him that Grisel Rountree's baking was far better than the alternately scorched and floury efforts of the cook at the village inn.

The old woman was not surprised that London had taken an interest in the case, considering that the dead man had turned out to be from London himself, and a society doctor to boot. James Dacre, his name was, and he was one of the Hampshire Dacres, and the brother of the young baronet over at Ramsmeade. The wonder of it was that the doctor should be visiting here, for he had never done so before, though they saw