Lady in Rags

Chapter Six: Home

Neil Armiger was on his third glass of whiskey at the public house when an excited youth ran in and shouted over the crowd,

"You'll never guess what that Baker's daughter did this time! She's killed a man!"

Within an instant, a crowd surrounded the youth, demanding more. It turned out the youth didn't know more. He'd been sent to find men to form a search party for Miss Baker: she'd run away after killing this man, and the local constable wanted to find her, before she either disappeared to France, or fell into a drift.

Neil found himself suddenly sober, and full of a strange fear.

"Where's this search party starting from?" he demanded.

"Village green, in half an hour," the youth shouted, before wheeling to answer another question.

Neil hurried to the village green, which was covered in snow. A crowd of cloaked men were already waiting there.

"Did Miss Baker truly kill a man?" Neil asked quietly, to the constable, who was stamping his boots in the cold. The constable stared at him coldly a moment.

"Aye, or nearly. She stabbed him in her home, and he managed to crawl out down the street. He's with the surgeon now."

"And why did she stab him?"

"He says because her father owed him debts he couldn't pay. Good enough reason as any."

"Perhaps."

Neil was beginning to imagine more detailed circumstances. He did not think – no, he was certain – that Miss Baker would need a better reason to stab a man than because she owed him money, and his cynical mind leapt immediately to rape. But it was not the immediate problem. It was the first true fall of the winter, and the snow did not look to abate all night.

"Then, Miss Baker ran away, in this?" he asked.

"Yeah, that's what Mr Harlan says anyway. Says she was gone from the house when he could move, and we looked, and she is. Are you joining our search party, Mr Armiger? You know her, don't you?"

"I know she would not stab a man without excellent reason. But I will not join your search. I must go to bed."

But Neil did not go to bed. Instead, he walked briskly towards Little Hough, to the Baker cottage. Urgency compelled him to break into a trot at intervals, but it was some two miles, and with the snow piling higher on the ground, he could not move fast. He had time to think through the events as he knew them, and come up with all the possible reasons Verity might stab a man and then flee. None seemed to him so likely as rape, and a guilt colder than the snow began to seep through his body.

He arrived at her house almost running. There was an empty carriage out the front, covered in snow, the shafts empty. In fact, the constable had taken pity upon the freezing horse and stabled it with Verity's own skinny mare immediately. Neil did not know that, and only checked the carriage in case Verity had crept inside to hide. She had not, and it was empty. He went into the house, and stumbled through all three shabby, miserable rooms, calling her name, in case the constable had missed her hiding. China tinkled under his boots in the dining room, and he felt the sticky grip of half-dried blood under his feet, and knew that this was where the incident had occurred.

She was not there. But then, where had she gone?

He examined the view through the front door, the narrow street, the abandoned carriage. He went to the kitchen, and looked out the back door, facing towards grey-white fields, and then a loom of dark woods. He felt at the lump of shadow on the door hook. Her cloak, still damp from snow.