Death in the Valley of Shadows by Deryn Lake Page B

morning he had left London.
    Hearing his master call, the coachman came running into the hall. “What is it, Sorrh?”
    “Tom, borrow some of the Comte de Vignolles’s horses. We’re off to a funeral.”
    “And whose would that be?”
    “Aidan Fenchurch, the man who was killed outside his own house in Bloomsbury Square. Which reminds me, what did they say to my letter in Bow Street?”
    “I took it to that old fox Jago. He told me to tell you that the two Brave Fellows would be setting off this morning to bring the woman concerned in for questioning.”
    “God’s teeth, they may well be here by now.”
    Tom shook his shaggy Irish head. “I doubt it, Mr. Rawlings. If there is one thing I pride myself on it’s my speed. Flying Runners they might be, but they will never outpace me.”
    John nodded. “You’re probably right. Now, do you feel up to turning out again?”
    “Oh yes indeed, Sir. I like it when we go to funerals. There is usually a good alehouse close to the church and besides the happenings are so exciting. There’s nearly always someone vomiting or fainting.”
    John yelped a laugh. “Well, if that’s your idea of fun. Anyway, Miss Evalina is bound to do a really good swoon today. She’s probably been practising at home.”
    It was the coachman’s turn to grin. “Why is it, Mr. Rawlings, that the burials you go to are attended by such a rum bunch of coves?”
    “Usually because there’s a murderer amongst ‘em,” the Apothecary answered succinctly, and went to change into the darkest clothes he had brought with him.

    * * *

    Stoke d’Abemon, which despite its grand name proved to be little more than a hamlet, lay some ten miles or so north of West Clandon, yet despite its proximity was difficult to get at for want of a road. Therefore, having taken directions from the de Vignolles’s coachman, Irish Tom followed the course of the River Wey, which meandered serpentine through verdant pastureland, then eventually turned away from the stream and on to a well-beaten track. In the distance John could see the spire of the church, from which a solemn bell was already tolling, filling the countryside with a gloomy reminder of man’s mortality.
    “Oh, I think this is going to be a fine one,” Tom called from the coachman’s box.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I feel it in my bones, Sir.”
    “I wonder why they decided to bury him in the country. It must have been a terrible effort to bring the body all the way.”
    “Perhaps he came down by water, Sir. It would be much easier.”
    “Yes, I suppose it would. What a depressing thought.”
    “What?”
    “That a river journey which should be so pleasant and sparkling, particularly in this green month, should actually be the one he never sees at all.”
    At that moment John had a vision of Aidan Fenchurch’s anxious crab-like eyes and felt genuinely angry about the way in which he had met his end.
    “Let’s hope the Brave Fellows find Mrs. Bussell and take her to Bow Street without too much difficulty,” he called up to Tom.
    But even as he said the words the Apothecary knew that there was no hope of that happening. That Ariadne would start by being flirtatious and end by kicking and screaming as they hauled her away to London.
    “Wretched woman,” he muttered as they rounded the comer and drew up outside the church. Then he froze in horror, his jaw arrested in mid air, his brain questioning what his eyes were actually seeing. For standing at the end of the church path, clad from head to toe in deepest black and leaning on a small, water- rat kind of man for support, was the woman he had just been thinking about. Ariadne Bussell had come out of hiding and was about to attend the burial of the lover whom she had most likely ordered to be killed.
    “Drive round the front, Tom,” John whispered loudly, and crouched down on the coach floor as the equipage swept round and out of sight. “That was her,” he continued, straightening up and