The Bedlam Detective Read Online Free Page A

trees here had been marked for felling, but there was no sign of the woodsmen. Sebastian scared off a fox.
    After making certain of the copse, they moved on. A track from the wood led to a disused set of rails, which in turn led to a mine shaft about a quarter of a mile farther on.
    “How far is it to Sir Owain Lancaster’s estate?” Sebastian said.
    “You’re on it,” said his garrulous partner, and that was that for a while.
    This place was more menacing than magical. The shaft was a vertical hole in the ground capped with wooden railway sleepers. The middle beams of the cover had collapsed in, and when Sebastian looked through the rotted hole he could see black water fifteen feet down. He cast all around looking for signs, but saw none.
    He stepped back. Arthur was plucking at his lips, thoughtfully. He saw that Sebastian was watching him, and stopped doing it.
    “Anywhere else we can look?” Sebastian said.
    “There’s not a lot more we can do before nightfall,” Arthur said, and then, sadly and unexpectedly, added, “God bless them.”
    Suddenly he was no longer a surly old local, but some child’s grandfather. And the places they were visiting might well have been his own remembered playgrounds, from a life spent on this land.
    As they crossed a field to join a lane that looked very like the one that they’d left, they saw someone running down the hill. A lad, by the looks of him. He saw them at the same time, and diverted to meet them.
    As he drew close, Sebastian could see that it was the youngest-looking of the boy soldiers. He was white-faced and flustered.
    He said to Sebastian, “Are you the detective?”
    “No,” Sebastian said. “He’s down at the inn. What’s the matter?”
    “We found them,” the boy said.
    Then was violently sick.

T HE TWO BODIES HAD BEEN PULLED FEET-FIRST FROM A SCRUB-FILLED gully, and now lay side by side. They were like white china dolls in a woodland clearing. Their cotton dresses had been dragged upward to cover their faces as they were pulled out of the gorse. One still wore underthings, the other none. Their feet were bare. Half a dozen of the boy soldiers were picking around the site to no convincing purpose, and a couple were staring at the exposed parts of the unclad child.
    “Hey,” Sebastian called out across the clearing. “Who’s in charge, here? Has someone moved those bodies?”
    Most of their faces turned his way, but none of them responded. There they stood, all pale and slack in their ill-fitting khaki. As Sebastian drew closer he could see that a soldier near the bodies had emptied a wicker picnic basket onto the ground at his feet and was stirring through the contents with the toe of his army boot, nosing them around like the muzzle of a clumsy dog.
    “Stop that!” Sebastian said. “Put everything down!”
    He was breathless from his dash to the scene, but not too breathless to shout. The soldier looked up and the others continued to stare, as if Sebastian were some madman who’d come crashing into a private function to blurt out obscenities.
    Good God, was there nothing they hadn’t disturbed? One was down among the gorse bushes in the gully and had lifted a bloodied cotton bag of some kind on the end of a stick. He appeared to have been poking around in the undergrowth and passing up anything he could find. This included a wooden box that one of the others had paused in the act of trying to open.
    “For God’s sake!” Sebastian said, turning here and there to address them all, his voice so sharp and loud that it scared a bird or two out of the trees above their heads. “Am I talking to myself? Stop trampling the ground and handling all the evidence! This could well be the scene of a crime! You have two dead children here! How do you expect anyone to account for them?”
    Not one of the young men showed any sign of having understood, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d come upon some regiment of mutes or simpletons. He took three