Page 78 of Corpse in the Canal

He swallowed it down and somehow forced the pony to halt. He threw himself to the ground. Constance didn’t even look at him. She was on her knees beside Solomon, her face white, her eyes wild. Yet still she was looking for a pulse in his wrist, his neck.

“Solomon. Solomon, don’t you dare, not now. Wake up, damn you…” She let out a sound between a gasp and a sob.

David seemed to have frozen, staring at the brother he had lost for twenty years. Only as he seemed to be losing him again, permanently, did he begin to realize all it had meant to have found him. He sank to his knees.

Constance seized his hand. “He’s alive, David. He’s alive. Help me…”

Alive… David got to his feet, hauling Solomon into his arms. It seemed he was still strong enough to carry him as far as the gig.

“Dare Hall is nearest,” Constance said. “I’ll lead the pony around.”

There was no room in the gig for another adult, or so David thought, but Constance simply squashed in, kneeling on the floor, holding Solomon as still as she could, a handkerchief pressed to his temple, while the pony trotted back to the main path to Dare Hall, almost as though it sensed the urgency.

They barely spoke during the short journey, each of them lost in their own nightmare.

Eventually, David said, “Someone shot him. From the woods.”

Constance spared him a glance, but only one. “Was it from the woods?” she asked, only half distracted.

“I saw someone move. Something flashed. Is he…?”

“He’s breathing. He’s still bleeding.” Her voice shook. “I don’t know enough. We need a doctor.”

As they clattered up the path to the hall, Adelaide and two maids spilled out onto the front steps.

“What is it?” Adelaide called breathlessly, hurrying toward them. “What happened?”

Only then did David realize he had to be in charge. Solomon was injured and his brother’s wife was in pieces. The pony halted without instruction and David jumped down, hurrying around to the other side of the gig.

“He’s been shot,” he said briskly. “Could you send for a doctor urgently? And we need somewhere to see to his wound.”

He was aware of her eyes widening in shock and couldn’t understand why that pleased him until he remembered that Adelaide was a suspect in Percy Harvey’s murder. He thrust it to the back of his mind for later, hefting Solomon over his shoulder as gently as he could, and striding after the silent Adelaide into the house.

“Water, clean cloths, bandages,” he told the open-mouthed maid. “Quickly.”

“To the back parlor,” Adelaide called after her. “And tell Nelson to fetch Dr. Owens immediately.”

She threw open a door on her right, a comfortable room that would normally catch the sun, although it was cloudy now. A fire burned cheerily in the grate.

David laid his brother on a long, wide sofa, while Constance fussed with pillows beneath his head.

“Who shot him?” Adelaide demanded, staring down at David’s wounded brother.

Solomon’s eyes were still closed, drying blood streaked across his face, with a mess of gore at his temple that Constance’s blood-soaked handkerchief could do little to allay. David gave her his.

“We don’t know,” he told Adelaide. “They shot from the wood.”

“I couldn’t leave him,” Constance whispered, holding the fresh handkerchief to the wound.

David laid his hand on her shoulder. “Of course you could not.”

The maid scuttled in with a bowl of water, salves, and bandages and set them at Constance’s side. Constance made a noise that might have been thanks and immediately soaked one of the cloths in water to clean the wound. She had done this before, David thought irreverently, dealt efficiently with the ugliness of injury and gore. Though she looked and sounded like a lady, she had grown up on the roughest streets and hauled herself into a safer world, dragging as many as she could with her. He found himself achingly grateful for her, suddenly convinced that if anyone could save Solomon, it was Constance, not the physician.

Her breath caught. “I don’t think it’s so very bad. Look, it’s like a furrow, as though the bullet skimmed the skin but didn’t lodge… I think. The doctor must look.”

“Then why doesn’t he wake?” David blurted.

She took Solomon’s face between her hands, the cloth still held over the wound, her other palm cupping his cheek. “Sol? Solomon, this is no time to sleep. Sol!”