River's Edge by James P. Blaylock

Author:James P. Blaylock
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2017-09-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Murder in

Tunbridge Wells

DOCKETT’S TRUNKS AND Cases was known to Kraken. He had been to Tunbridge Wells a dozen times, had purchased sheep there, and had purchased the very horse he rode now, Old Bluenose, from a farmer another mile up the way toward Green Hill. He stood on Camden Road, across the street from Dockett’s. The photographer’s studio—Manfred Pink’s—sat two buildings down. Its door was locked, and there were shutters over the windows.

Manfred Pink, Kraken thought. That was no sort of a name for a man. A man with such a name, who would do these things, wanted badly to be knocked on the head, and Kraken had half a mind to climb in through a window and…

That wouldn’t be wise, though. Mother was always recommending wisdom. He wondered whether she had known where he was bound, him leaving like that, without a word, but if he’d said a word, he’d have said ten, and then what? Had they followed him? Three women passed along the pavement, and he nodded to them. They sidled into the street at the sight of him, however, and hastened away, looking back with obvious suspicion—something that was simply his lot in life, and he took no offense in it.

Now that the question of his being followed was hovering in his mind, it came to him that there was no time for idleness, and he crossed the road and went up between the buildings, where he found himself in a weedy yard with a wooden hovel beyond. There was a broad meadow behind the hovel and a woods in the distance. The door to the hovel was just then opening, and a small boy stepped out. He saw Kraken, a look of surprise crossed his face, and immediately he stepped back inside and shut the door. It was the boy who had been with Pink at the soirée. Kraken had no quarrel with him, but it was a rum thing, since the boy had known him.

He heard noise from within Pink’s—a clattering and the sound of a cabinet door banging shut. So the villain was within, perhaps in a hurry, and yet the front door of his shop was locked at midday. Kraken glanced back at the hovel, but the boy had gone to ground. So be it.

He climbed the three wooden stairs to the porch and stood listening at the door, hearing the creak of the sign that read “Pink’s” shifting overhead on its iron rings. He had the sudden urge to rip the sign from its moorings and smash it through the window, but he clapped a stopper over the compulsion, thinking of Mother Laswell again, how she had suffered, and how he mustn’t be the cause for more. Steadier now, he put his hand on the metal knob, turning it silently. When it swung open he stepped through and shut the door behind him. There stood the small man, Manfred Pink, wearing his audacious hat and looking down at a photograph. Pink swung toward him, shouting out loud in surprise, his eyes widening, as if he saw his doom.

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