The Burying Ground. Janet Kellough
Читать онлайн книгу.
I cut. Do you think you can manage that?”
“What? Oh, my toe, my toe,” the injured man wailed.
Luke ignored him.
The standing man gulped. “All right, I guess.”
“Put the axe down and kneel down, on the other side of the foot.”
The man complied.
“Now, when I take the rags away, you need to grab the toe by the end and pull it taut so I can see where I have to cut.”
“Nooooooo!” screamed the injured man.
“I haven’t actually done anything yet,” Luke pointed out to him. “Save your screams for when I do.” And then he looked at the other man. “Now.”
He held his scalpel ready with one hand and pulled the cloth away with the other. His unwilling helper gingerly grabbed the toe and lifted it away from the foot. Luke sliced. The toe detached and both his patient and his helper fainted, the latter still holding the severed digit like a purple, blood-spattered trophy.
The bleeding was easing off a bit, Luke could see, the wound starting to clot on its own. There was enough skin left, he judged, that he could suture it closed around the jutting piece of bone. He fished a needle and a length of catgut out of his bag and began coaxing the skin up around the wound, sewing it in place wherever he could find undamaged flesh.
He was halfway through the task when the man holding the toe came to again. He took one look at the grisly relic in his hand and promptly fainted again.
When he was satisfied with his handiwork, Luke enlisted the aid of a beefy neighbour, and together they carried the patient into his kitchen, where they laid him on the small bed in the corner. Luke sluiced himself off at the kitchen pump.
When he emerged into the dooryard again, the swooning assistant was gone. He had left the toe where it fell, in the middle of the yard. Luke retrieved it, wrapped it in an unused rag, and handed it to the boy.
“Bury this under a bush somewhere,” he said. “That way your Pa’s foot won’t itch so badly. I’ll check on him tomorrow.”
Satisfied with his morning’s work, he tipped his hat and left by the garden gate, suddenly feeling quite optimistic about his decision to come to Yorkville. The village was still small enough that word of his backyard surgery would spread, especially since no account of the operation would fail to include a grisly description of the toe, or the information that a grown man had fainted at the sight of it. The next time a mishap occurred, few would insist on waiting for “the old doctor” instead of accepting Luke’s attendance. The fees he brought in to the practice wouldn’t be exactly lucrative, as his old schoolmates so seemed to desire, but they would be steady and help to solidify his position as the junior partner. In spite of Dr. Christie’s unsettling office skeleton, Luke was starting to feel quite cheerful about his future prospects.
He was lost in these pleasant thoughts as he made his way back to the Christie house, so it took him a moment to realize that a voice from somewhere behind him was calling his name.
“Mr. Lewis?” the voice said again. “Is that you?”
Luke turned to discover that he had been hailed by a scrawny little man whom he was quite sure he had never seen before.
“Yes, I’m Mr. Lewis. Well … Doctor Lewis, actually.” It still seemed odd to use the title. “Could I help you?”
But the little man had a puzzled expression on his face. “I’m sorry, I’ve mistaken you for someone else. I was sure you were someone I once knew, but now that I’m closer I can see that you couldn’t possibly be him.” His brow wrinkled. “And yet you say your name is Lewis?”
“Yes. Luke Lewis. And you are…?”
“Morgan Spicer. Pleased to meet you.” Then the worry lines on his brow cleared away. “Luke Lewis? You’re Thaddeus’s son then.”
Luke sincerely hoped that his father’s reputation as a solver of crimes had not reached Yorkville. He had been forced to recount the stories of Thaddeus’s adventures far too many times. It had all happened a long time ago, though, and with any luck the memory of them had faded. His own adventure with his father, on the other hand, was known to only a handful of people. There had been none of the public acclaim that had attended the other two crimes. And then, from somewhere deep down in his mind, something stirred in his memory. Morgan Spicer. Where did he know that name from?
“I met you once,” Morgan said. “A long time ago. In Demorestville. You were about to travel west with your brother.”
And then it came to him. Spicer was a sorry little stray who had tagged along with Thaddeus on the Hallowell Circuit, in Prince Edward County. He had wanted to be a preacher, Luke recalled, but Thaddeus determined that he needed to learn how to read and write first, and offered to teach him as they rode. It was a propitious decision on his father’s part — Spicer had been instrumental in the apprehension of the murderer Isaac Simms.
“Mr. Spicer. Of course.” Luke held his hand out for Morgan to shake. “I do recall our meeting.”
“I’m sorry about the mistaken identity, but you must realize how much you look like your father.”
“Not so much these days, I’m afraid. My father has aged since my mother died.”
Spicer’s face fell. “She’s dead? Oh dear. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. She was a nice lady.”
“She was. We all miss her sorely. But what about you? Are you a minister here?”
“No. I’m not a minister. My application was never approved.” It was obviously a sore subject, Luke realized, for Spicer quickly went on. “So where is your father now?”
“Here as well. More or less. He’s gone back to the preaching business, at least on a temporary basis.”
Spicer seemed excited by this intelligence. “Here? On Yonge Street? I would like very much to see him, and not only to renew our acquaintance. I have a difficulty I would appreciate his advice on.”
“I’ll tell him I met you,” Luke said. “He will have completed his circuit in a few days, I expect and then he’ll come back here. Could I give him any indication of the nature of your difficulty?”
He had no idea if his father would be happy to see Morgan Spicer or not, especially if the man required advice. Although, he supposed, that was what a preacher was for, really.
“It’s to do with the Strangers’ Burying Ground,” Spicer said. “There has been a very odd occurrence there, and I can make no sense of it. I’d like to ask Mr. Lewis what he thinks. Tell him he can find me at the Keeper’s Lodge by the front gates.”
Luke’s first thought was that Spicer must be referring to ghosts or hauntings or some other nonsense that people associate with graveyards. He knew that his father would be quick to dismiss anything of this nature as a trick of the imagination, but then Spicer peered up at him anxiously. “Tell him it’s important. Tell him it’s a puzzle.”
No request would bring his father running faster, Luke figured, whether he was personally interested in seeing Spicer again or not. Thaddeus loved a puzzle.
“I’ll tell him,” Luke said, and then he tipped his hat and went on his way, wondering if anything that happened in a graveyard could possibly be any stranger than a skeleton whose finger followed you around the room.
Chapter 3
Thaddeus Lewis had given up horseback riding, and now made his rounds in a hired trap pulled by a rib-thin pony. The provision of a horse and cart was one of the conditions that he had insisted upon when he’d been approached by Philander Smith to take temporary charge of the Yonge Street Circuit. He was too old to ride, he pointed out to the bishop, and his aching joints plagued him too badly.
He was reluctant at