Free An Inquiry Into Love and Death by Simone St. James

him, you know.” The ground sloped here, and I felt myself growing warmer with the walk. “And now he’s died, and I feel torn about it, as if I’ve left something terrible undone. As if I could somehow have done something more.” It felt good to say the words aloud to someone, though I didn’t mention the coroner’s findings, or Inspector Merriken’s suspicions. I wondered where the inspector was now, and what, if anything, he had learned.
    “That’s likely very common,” William said. “I felt something similar when my parents died.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.”
    “No, you mustn’t say anything. There I go again. It was years ago, while I was at war. I just felt a similar way, that’s all. Who was mentioning me, may I ask?”
    “It was Rachel Moorcock, who runs the sundries shop.”
    “A ringing endorsement, I’m sure.” His smile was wry. “Ah, now, you needn’t be embarrassed. There are a lot of tangled connections in a small town like ours. Rachel is my sister-in-law, and she’s never liked me.”
    “Oh?”
    “She married my brother, Raymond. She disliked me from the start, and now that Raymond is gone, she has as little to do with me as she can. I wouldn’t mind, except I don’t get to see my nephew very much.”
    “Sam,” I said. “I met him. I would never have guessed. He looks nothing like you.”
    “Ah, no. He looks like Raymond.” William’s gaze grew wistful as he led me down the path. “Raymond and I were very different.”
    I didn’t miss the note of pain in his voice. “What happened to him?” I asked gently.
    William shrugged. “Belleau Wood.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Now I’ve made you say that a second time.” He managed a smile, one that wished to please. “Can we start again?”
    I smiled back. “Of course.”
    We had turned along the curve of the woods now, and from the sight of the unbroken sky through the trees I could tell we were at a high vantage point. “Can we see the water from here?” I asked.
    “We can. Just this way.” William turned from the path and we cut through the woods, Poseidon bounding with excitement over the departure. “Calm, you great fool,” William told his pet with obvious affection. “Show a little dignity in front of the lady.” Poseidon barked happily, undeterred.
    Soon we broke through the trees, and I looked around in amazement. We were at the top of the cliffs I had seen from town, but we were not looking down the south coast toward Rothewell. We were on the other side, looking north down a long, tangled, wooded slope to sea level, and the view was just as breathtaking. The woods ended at a long sweep of beach, rocky, dark sanded, and wet, battered by relentless water in a bay that curved like a large, perfect shell. Through the mouth of the bay we could see the open expanse of whitecapped ocean; inside the bay the water surged choppily, like a bowl of water that was being gently sloshed. There was not a soul, not a single building to be seen, only the green of the tangled woods and the unbroken water.
    “Blood Moon Bay,” William Moorcock said, indicating the curved cup of beach.
    I hunched my shoulders against the biting wind, remembering what Rachel Moorcock had said. “These are the woods haunted by Walking John,” I said. “These woods and the bay.”
    “Oh, yes—our famous haunted woods.”
    “Who was he?”
    “A smuggler,” William replied. “In the seventeenth century, when smuggling was everywhere in England.”
    “He was a ship’s captain?”
    “Actually no. He worked the land side of things—arranging with the sailors when the boats would come in, unloading, hiding the goods, transporting them. If you go farther down this path and over to the east—you see that promontory, just there?—you’ll find a signal house, where John kept his lantern. He’d light it on nights when a ship was due to come in, signaling that the coast was clear and it was safe to land. The structure is still there, though of