Among the Darkness Stirs

She returned a few minutes later carrying a blanket. “Henry, I’ve been thinking. They attacked you on the grounds of the workhouse. Anyone could have come upon you. They must be concerned that we are close to finding the truth.”

He sighed. “I thought the same as I walked here. They know. They don’t know how much we know, but they know it’s us.”

Audrey sat next to him on the couch as he nursed his face with the cool rag. “I think the ledgers is money being spent using the workhouse as a cover,” she told him. “The key is the bodies. Marguerite was keeping track for a reason. She suspected something. When Alistair died, she was afraid. Then she died. We lost the mortuary and accounting ledger. I think we need to return to the mortuary.”

Henry took the cloth away from his face. “How quickly can you get dressed?”

“Five minutes. Ten at the most. Are you up to it? Your face—”

“No time like the present,” he said firmly.

Audrey quickly changed from her nightgown to the mourning gown and threw a shawl about her shoulders. “Come.”

They stepped into the small pathway outside the cottage, and he winced in pain.

“Henry?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“My face hurts, and I’m tired. But I want to finish this. If the mortuary holds the truth, so be it.”

They passed the skeletal trees of the orchard guarding their kingdom. A light mist had fallen.

“It looks spooky at night,” Audrey whispered.

“Don’t start saying spooky,” he admonished her. “Suddenly there will be a ghost or goblin behind every turn.”

They came to the one-story mortuary. It appeared dark from the lane. They found the door they had both entered before, and the knob turned easily.

They walked into the same hallway as before and found the records room. There was a gaslight burning along the hallway, but once they were inside the office, it was darker. The rectangular glass window above the door offered some light.

“Check the desk,” Henry said. “See if you can find a letter opener or something sharp. We can use it to pry open the cabinets.”

She went over to the desk. The light was scant. She could see the objects on the desk but no letter opener. “I don’t see—” she began and stopped abruptly when she heard voices in the hallway.

“I have another one for you,” a male voice spoke.

“You know where to put them,” a second voice responded.

Henry and Audrey listened at the door as the footsteps receded and then came again.

“This one is for the evening train tomorrow,” the voice said.

“No problem. We’ve got this down to a science,” the second voice said.

Audrey strained to hear the voices, trying to find something familiar in their tone. Did she know them? Were they staff at the workhouse? When the footsteps receded, she turned to Henry.

“The evening tomorrow. We’ll be on it,” he said.

Audrey spent much of the next day in the classroom watching the clock. Several of her students had to repeat their questions, and she felt awful. But the more the clock moved, the more excited she felt. When the students were finally dismissed, she hurried down to the cottage to splash some water on her face and grab her wool coat.

She was heading back to the front of the foyer when she saw Joseph and Levi chatting. They greeted each other.

“Hello there.”

She struggled to maintain her composure as she passed them by, and when she joined Henry outside in the cab, she blurted out, “I just saw Joseph and Levi just now. It was just in passing, but Joseph has a bruise on his face.”

He frowned. “A bruise?”

“Didn’t you tell me you got one punch in? The person who took the ledger? You hit him?”