The Man of Friars' Wood: A Colonel Bainbridge Mystery by Evelyn James

Author:Evelyn James [James, Evelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Raven Publications
Published: 2023-05-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Edmond Radley helped at the local blacksmith’s forge. He was good with horses and was always on hand to keep an animal still and calm as it was being shod. He did not have the skills for much else, being trained as a farm worker rather than a blacksmith, but he made enough to get by. He would take on odd jobs as well, from time to time. At the age of fifty-four, he was just glad to have work at all. Like the rest of his family, the loss of the Vintner farm without warning had hit him hard and he had scrabbled around to find anything to fill the void.

Edmond was holding a large dray horse when Victoria pulled up the car opposite the forge. The noise of the car engine made the horse draw back its ears and stamp its feet uneasily. Edmond made some soothing noises to it and then glared over at Bainbridge and his niece.

“Good day,” Bainbridge said, wandering over to the warmth of the forge. The entire front of the blacksmith’s shop was open because the heat from the forge within was so overwhelming and did not allow the cold to catch hold. “I am hoping to speak to Edmond Radley?”

The blacksmith looked up from his work, two nails held in his mouth so he could not speak. His eyes flicked to Edmond.

“I am busy right now,” Edmond said, not prepared to risk his pay for these two strangers.

“We shall wait,” Bainbridge told him breezily. “We have been talking to your father.”

Edmond tried to decipher what was meant by that statement – was it some sort of implied threat, or a statement that these strangers knew more about him than he cared to suppose?

“My father talks to anyone,” Edmond said, pretending he was not unnerved by their words.

“That is just as well,” Bainbridge said. “Seeing as Chester Vintner has accused your family of murdering Stephen Mundy.”

The blacksmith missed the nail he was tapping into the horseshoe and hit his thumb instead. He swore loudly, though without opening his mouth because of the nails he was clutching. The horse, unsettled by the sound, and already made on edge by the car, lashed out with the hoof the blacksmith had been holding and knocked the big man backwards.

Chaos started to ensue. Edmond endeavoured to calm the horse and stop it from standing on the blacksmith who was now writhing on the floor and clutching at his chest. Victoria knelt by the fallen man, unwitting of how perilously close to the horse’s hooves she herself was.

“Can you breathe?” she asked the blacksmith urgently.

“Yes,” the blacksmith gasped unconvincingly. “I swallowed the nails.”

Victoria winced.

“Julius!” she called to her uncle. “What does one do when a man has swallowed nails?”

Bainbridge made his way over, scratching at his head.

“That is quite the dilemma,” he said. “I should help the fellow up and get him something to drink. Wash them down and all that.”

Edmond had finally managed to calm the horse enough to remove it from the forge and tie it up to a railing outside.

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