The Bedlam Detective Read Online Free Page B

long strides and grabbed the wooden box from the soldier’s hands, and he called down to the boy with the bloodied sack on a stick.
    “Put that back wherever it was,” he said. “As close as you can manage it. Step out of there and don’t touch anything else.”
    At that moment he heard the engine of a motor truck, laboring hard, and turned to see the vehicle coming into sight at the other end of the clearing. It was the same truck that he’d seen collecting the boys from the station. At the wheel was its operator and beside him was the youngest soldier, the one who’d been sent down the hill, now returning to act as guide.
    The truck pulled into the clearing and stopped, and from around the back there was a crash as the tailgate dropped. A second later a figure swung into view, followed by another. One was the gray-headed sergeant, and the other, in a rather sharp tan overcoat, was the detective from the Sun Inn’s snug.
    Stephen Reed looked first at the bodies, and stopped. Some of the will seemed to go out of him, just for a moment, as if he’d absorbed a blow, and Sebastian saw the youth behind his authority. Serving officers quickly grew hardened and could view wasted adult life with little emotion. But a dead child was a grief to all the world.
    From the bodies, he looked up to Sebastian. He saw the box in Sebastian’s hands, and his face grew dark.
    Before Sebastian could speak, Stephen Reed was walking toward him. His expression was one of fury.
    “That man!” he said, and he pointed a finger. “Tampering with evidence! What do you think you’re doing?”
    Sebastian stood his ground. “In your absence, I was doing your job,” he said.
    Stephen Reed looked back at the army sergeant and said, “Arrest this man.”
    “You heard him, boy!” the sergeant said to the nearest of his squad. “What are you waiting for?”
    So they weren’t deaf after all. Having borne his abuse, here was their license to respond. The box was knocked from Sebastian’s hands and he was seized by the arms and collar and rushed toward the back of the waiting truck. He could hear Stephen Reed saying, “Sergeant, I need you to remove everyone from this place, now,” and he tried to call something back over his shoulder, but a sly punch in his side made it impossible to speak.
    He was shouted at and forcefully propelled into the back of the motor truck, where he just about managed not to land on the dirty floor but made it onto one of the side benches.
    Two of the boys climbed in after and sat, one with a rifle, to guard him. Sebastian’s last sight of the scene, as the truck made a bumping circle and returned to the lane, was of Stephen Reed crouching and gingerly starting to uncover the face of one of the dead girls.
    He took a deep breath and relaxed back against the side of the wagon, as much as he was able. The seat was hard and the track was rough, and every now and again he had to grab the slats to keep from being thrown around. The only light came from the open back and through vents cut into the canvas, making the wagon a moving box of musty shadows.
    The boy soldiers were watching him with dead eyes. Their manner had changed. They were no longer passive but had been given the upper hand.
    One said, “What do we do with him?”
    And the other, the one that he’d berated, shrugged and then blew air out through closed lips in a gesture that said, Don’t ask me .
    Sebastian said, “If there’s a police station, you take me there.”
    “You shut yer mouth,” the second one said.
    So Sebastian settled back for the rest of the grim ride, and closed his eyes and looked inward, where he saw again the uncompleted moment as the county detective reached to uncover a dead child’s face.
    Molly or Florence. He didn’t know which.
    Perhaps he should have stayed in his room. For he’d surely achieved nothing for anyone by leaving it.

T HE MOTOR TRUCK STOPPED RIGHT BY THE S UN I NN’S COACHYARD gate. In the absence of the