Free The Deathly Portent by Elizabeth Bailey

position, eyeing the man even as he racked his brains for a means to introduce Tillie into the room where the corpse lay.
    T he vicar was a slim-featured gentleman with a serious expression and a pair of startlingly blue eyes. The black garb and clerical collar proclaimed his calling, and he spoke with a quiet assurance that instantly drew Francis’s interest.
    “Will? Is Tisbury here?”
    “In the back, Reverend. Shall I fetch him to you?”
    “If you please.”
    The tapster disappeared through a doorway behind the counter, and the vicar stood back, glancing around the taproom. He met Francis’s eye briefly but made no comment, instead focusing his gaze upon a bench flanking the fireplace.
    “What you done with that there witch, Reverend? Time to set up the faggots, be it?”
    A high-pitched cackle accompanied this challenge, and Francis turned to find the comment emanated from the old country fellow stigmatised as Pa Wagstaff. A smoking clay pipe was in his fingers, and he sported a greasy smock and a battered hat.
    The vicar nodded towards him. “I’ll thank you not to jest upon such a subject, Mr. Wagstaff.”
    The ancient sniggered the more and waved his pipe. “And I’ll thankee if’n you be minded to take a stick to my fool daughter, Reverend.”
    Before the parson had a chance to respond, the tapster returned with a portly individual whose unprepossessing countenance took on a discontented expression the instant his eyes fell on the vicar.
    “Oh, it be you, Reverend. What be you wanting this time?”
    A slight edge entered the vicar’s voice. “I shall be obliged, Tisbury, if you will furnish me with the names of the village boys.”
    The landlord scowled. “What, all on ’em?”
    “All who may answer to the charge of stoning Mrs. Dale.”
    The fellow Tisbury looked recalcitrant. “How’s I to know which on ’em done it?”
    Francis watched the blue eyes set steady upon the landlord’s face. “Yet I am certain you do know.”
    No response being forthcoming, the vicar glanced again around the tavern. Francis saw a swift shifting among the assembled men, all but the aged Wagstaff refusing to meet the vicar’s eyes.
    “They won’t none on ’em tell you, Reverend,” said this worthy, who seemed to find every one of his own utterances matter for mirth. “What’ll you do, dust they jackets for ’em?”
    The parson ignored him, turning back instead to the landlord. “Have you boys of your own, Tisbury?”
    “Mine’s growed,” returned the man, his tone sullen.
    “And are they good citizens?”
    “Only be one, and he be ’prenticed.”
    “Excellent. Now, which boys do I look for on this occasion?”
    Tisbury scowled the more. “If’n you want the ringleaders, you best try Staxton’s boys. Lawless little varmints they be.”
    “I thank you.”
    The vicar turned to go, but at that moment, the door opened again and a burly fellow came in, attired in rough homespuns.
    “Here be Staxton himself,” pronounced the landlord.
    The man who had entered halted abruptly, his glance going from the landlord behind the counter to the vicar, who was facing him. Francis heard a collective intake of breath and looked more closely at the fellow Staxton, taking in the raw and ruddy cheeks and a look of fierce defiance in a pair of bloodshot eyes. It struck him the village was chock-full of bad-tempered men. Or was it due to the happenings of the hour?
    “Farmer Staxton?”
    The man stood his ground, his frowning gaze fixed on the vicar. “Reverend?”
    The parson unexpectedly held out his hand. “We have not met. I am Kinnerton.”
    The farmer looked at the hand, wiped his own against his breeches in a gesture Francis took to be both habitual and unconscious, and shook it.
    “Saw you last night, Reverend,” said Staxton, his voice a low growl.
    Kinnerton smiled. “Indeed? I regret I could not take in all the faces.”
    A faint twitch of the man’s lips might be taken for an attempt at a smile.