Burke heard footsteps approaching from behind. He turned to see Elsie Warden moving slowly through the grass, her hands brushing the tips of the weeds as she walked. She stopped when she was some twenty feet from him. Mrs. Paxton in turn moved away from Mrs. Allinson, so that Burke found himself at the center of a triangle formed by the three women.
“Is this how you finished off Mal Trevors?” he asked.
“We never laid a hand on Mal Trevors,” said Mrs. Allinson.
“We didn’t have to,” said Elsie.
Burke tried to keep turning, always holding two women in his sight and hoping that he might be fast enough to prevent an attack by the third.
“I suspect there are wounds on your chest, Miss Warden,” said Burke.
“And on my scalp,” she said. “He fought back. He always was quick with his hands, was Mal.”
“So you attacked him?”
“In a manner of speaking.” It was Mrs. Allinson.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Allinson. “But you will.”
Burke felt the ground shift slightly beneath his feet. He leapt away, fearful of plummeting into some terrible depths. Over by the cemetery wall, fragments of stone shot a foot into the air, leaving gaping holes where they once lay. He heard a howling sound, like wind rushing through a tunnel, and then something scratched his face, opening parallel wounds across his cheek and nose. He stumbled backward, raising his arms to protect himself, and watched as the front of his coat was torn open by unseen claws. He smelled foul breath, and thought for a moment that he caught a disturbance in the air, as of heat rising from summer ground. Slowly, its form became clearer, allowing Burke to see, however indistinctly, the shape of breasts and hips.
Faced with a target, Burke struck. He pounded his fist into the figure before him. There was slight resistance before his fist passed through it, but he saw Emily Allinson’s head jerk backward. Blood spurted from her nose. Burke tried to punch again, but he was attacked from behind before he could do so. His scalp was torn apart, and he felt liquid warmth upon his neck. He tried to rise, but his right hand was wrenched away from him and forced into the air. A sharp pain ran through three of his fingers, and the impression of teeth appeared upon the skin of his knuckles. Over by the fence, he saw Elsie Warden’s teeth gritted.
Elsie shook her head furiously, the pain increased, and the fingers were severed from Burke’s hand. His eyes closed, and he prepared to die. Then from somewhere in the darkness he heard a booming sound, and a familiar voice said:
“That’ll be enough now.”
Burke’s eyelids felt heavy, and blood dripped from the lashes when he finally managed to force them open. Sergeant Stokes stood by the cemetery wall, and he held a shotgun in his hands.
You took your bloody time, thought Burke.
He caught sight of a disturbance in the air once again, moving quickly toward Stokes. Once again, it seemed to him to approximate the shape of a woman. Its body was blackened, and long fair hair trailed behind it as it crawled along the ground to attack Stokes. He tried to warn his sergeant, but no words came. Instead, his own head was pulled back by the hair, and he felt teeth upon his neck.
Stokes saw the presence when it was almost upon him. Instinctively, he swung the shotgun around and fired.
For a moment, nothing happened, then, slowly, Emily Allinson’s mouth opened and a great gush of red poured from it. She rocked upon her feet, and the front of her green dress darkened. Burke heard a scream that seemed to come from the ground beneath him, echoed in turn by Elsie Warden. His hair was released and he fell to the dirt, a weight upon his back as he was used as a stepping stone by an unseen presence. Burke’s left hand reached out and grasped a rock upon the ground. With the last of his strength, he rose up and straddled the thing, bringing the rock down with all the force that he could muster upon its head. He could feel it moving beneath him, although he saw it only as a shimmering in the air. The stone hit its target, and it spasmed beneath him.
Behind him, Elsie Warden’s skull cracked. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell down dead.
Stokes was running toward him now, reloading the shotgun as he came. He was watching Mrs. Paxton, but she was retreating from them, her face a mask of horror and disgust. She turned from them and ran across the fields, making for the little cottage that she shared with her husband. Stokes shouted after her, warning her to stop.
“Let her go,” said Burke. “We know where to find her.”
And then he sank back on the ground, unconscious.
Summer came, and the streets grew bright with the plumage of women.
The two men met in a bar close to Paddington. It was quiet, the lunchtime drinkers now departed, and the evening crowd yet to arrive. One man was thinner and perhaps a little younger than the other, and wore a glove on his right hand. His companion placed two beers on the table before them, then took a seat against the wall.
“How is the hand, sir?” asked Stokes.
“It hurts a little still,” said Burke. “It’s odd. I can feel the ends of my fingers, even though they’re no longer there. Strange, don’t you think?”
Stokes shrugged his shoulders. “To tell the truth, sir, I don’t know anymore what’s strange and what isn’t.”
He raised his glass and took a long draft.
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ any longer, you know,” said Burke.
“Doesn’t seem natural calling you anything else, sir,” said Stokes. “I do miss being called ‘Sergeant,’ though. I’m trying to get the missus to call me it, just so I can hear it again, but she won’t agree.”
“How is the bank?”
“Quiet,” he said. “Don’t care much for it, to be honest, but it keeps me busy. The money helps, though.”
“Yes, I’m sure it does.”
They were silent, then, until Stokes said:
“You still think we did right, not telling them what we saw?”
The two men had not met in many months, but they had never been ones to dance around a subject of concern to them.
“Yes,” said Burke. “They wouldn’t have believed us, even if we had. Mrs. Allinson had my blood and skin in her nails, and the bite marks on my hand matched those of Elsie Warden. They attacked me. That’s what the evidence said, and who were we to disagree with the evidence?”
“Killing women,” said Stokes. “I suppose they had no choice but to send us on our way.”
“No, I suppose they didn’t.”
Burke looked at his former sergeant, and laid his good hand upon the older man’s arm.
“But never forget: you didn’t kill women. You never fired at a woman, and I never struck one. Let your conscience be clear on that score.”
Stokes nodded.
“I hear they let the Paxton woman go,” he said.
“She supported our story. Without her testimony, it would have gone much harder for us.”
“Doesn’t seem right, though.”
“She wished a man dead. I don’t think she expected that wish to come true, and I don’t believe that she wanted a part of what the other women were offering. She was weak, but she did nothing wrong. Nothing that we can prove, at any rate.”
Stokes took another draft from his glass.
“And that poor beggar, Allinson.”
“Yes,” said Burke. “Poor Allinson.” The doctor had taken his own life in the weeks that followed the incidents at Underbury. He had never uttered a word of blame toward Stokes or Burke for the part they played in his wife’s death.
Burke spent most of his waking hours thinking about that night, juggling facts with suspicions but never able to make them fit to his satisfaction into a cohesive theory. A village depleted of its men; the arrival of a strong woman, Mrs. Allinson, from outside; the threat posed to Elsie Warden and, perhaps, Mrs. Paxton by Mal Trevors; and the response to that threat, which had led to Trevors’s death and the subsequent attack on Burke and Stokes. Burke had not yet been able, or willing, to put a name to that response. He now knew more about the Underbury witches and their leader, Ellen Drury, burned as she hanged. Possession, the term that Stokes had used in the aftermath, was one possibility, but it seemed inadequate to Burke. To him, it was something more. He believed with all his heart that it came from within the three women, not solely from some outside force, but then he would have been the first to admit that he had never enjoyed a great understanding of the fairer sex.