Solomon's Gold by Leonard Tourney

Author:Leonard Tourney [Tourney, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-ONE

The next morning, he pulled Johane aside just as she was leaving the breakfast table. He told her they needed to talk. She had learned of Broderick’s role as deputy magistrate from Mildred Challoner, who in turn had learned it from her husband. Johane knew about William’s finding the body of the former cleric, Broderick’s claim that he couldn’t find it himself, and even William’s failure to find the body again. Challoner had put it all down to the young doctor’s feverish imagination. His wife agreed.

“But what do you believe?” he asked her.

Johane smiled. “You don’t seem to me a man who needs to imagine dead bodies, having seen so many real ones.”

She reached out and touched his hand reassuringly.

* * *

Later, a man came to the manor from the village. He said he was a friend of Israel Parker. He was a tall, lanky man of about thirty dressed in fisherman’s garb. He said his name was Jeremy Locke.

“Would you be the London doctor, sir?”

“I am.” William said.

“Master Parker begs you to come to the tavern.”

“For what purpose? I spoke to him only last night.”

Locke seemed surprised at the question. “Why, he said it was important, sir. He said that was how you would see it, sir, Doctor. Important, I mean.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible, sir.”

“I’ll come now, then,” William said.

Within minutes they had arrived at the Saracen’s Blade. Israel Parker was behind the bar. He looked up, saw William, and left his station to come where William had taken a seat. Locke had gone off somewhere.

“I’m come at your behest, Master Parker. What news?”

“News to gladden your heart, or at least relieve your worries,” Israel Parker said, all smiles.

“My worries? Worries about what?”

“Why, Doctor, the belief about the village and at the manor that you’re mad.”

William knew what Parker was speaking of. But he waited. He wanted to hear Parker say it. It did not please him to learn that his claim to have found the dead body of Tobias Wincott had created such an impression of him on the island.

“That you’ve been seeing dead bodies that aren’t,” Israel Parker continued.

“And now I will be believed?”

“Proof, Doctor. Honest to God proof.”

“What proof?” William asked.

“Two fishermen have seen the body for themselves. It floated up on yonder island.”

“What island?”

“That would be Little Livesey.”

He had seen Little Livesey from the tower. A pile of rocks rising from the sea. Wincott had told him about it, how it used to be part of Great Livesey, several hundred years earlier.

“They found his body floating in the shallows just off the island. They pulled it ashore and left it there.”

“Did they know who it was, the body?”

“Everyone on the island knows Tobias Wincott, Doctor.”

“Why didn’t they bring him back to the village? That would have been the decent thing to do. Why leave it on the island where it might never be found again or washed away?”

“Ah, that’s a good question, Doctor, but easily answered. They were afraid. Afraid they would be thought to have murdered the man had they brought the body back.

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