1_5

Ten minutes later, as they were walking back along St. John’s Street, a thought occurred to Reverend Butler.
“Where was the poor girl found?”
“Out on the mud on the far side of the island.” Bailey replied breathlessly. Butler was a very tall man who strode along at a great pace, and Bailey found he almost had to run to keep up with him.
“Really? I wonder what she was doing all the way out there.”
“Heaven only knows” Bailey replied, but she looked to have been killed yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” the Priest stopped abruptly with a look of distaste and Bailey found himself propelled along by his own momentum.
“That’s what it looks like, but I wouldn’t wager money on it.” He said turning back to regard the taller man.
“And you say she was found out on the mud flats?”
“Yes.” Bailey answered.
“Then she had to have been in the sea. She could have been killed some where else.”
“I know.” Bailey answered. “Mr de Hogue has gone to search along the shore for any clues as to where she met her end.”
Reverend Butler’s eye brows raised in surprise.
“Mr de Hogue?”
“Aye.”
“That’s a long search. I doubt he’ll find any thing today.”
Bailey looked up at the lead coloured sky and nodded. He knew that the tide was already in again, and the chances of finding anything at all were pretty slim.
“Why is Mr de Hogue concerned with this matter?” Butler inquired.
Bailey considered him for a short while then resuming his pace along the road, he answered; “Mr de Hogue is with the Admiralty.”
“The Admiralty?” Butler started with surprise and then rushed after Bailey.
“Aye, but keep that to your good self Father if you please”
“Of course…”
They hurried along the last few hundred yards to where the Chandlery stood over looking the now empty harbour. Even as they approached they could hear the high pitched screaming coming from within, and their faces hardened at the harsh female sound.
As Reverend Butler stepped up to the door, it was opened and Frederick Mason, his face dark and stricken stepped out into the light.


Morgan de Hogue had contemplated the shore in either direction, and taking the currents from the sea and the river Medway into consideration, he had decided that if the body had been washed ashore, it had to have come from the east. Gingerly he had left Thatcher and Bailey and begun to follow the sea.
“Mind your self when you reach Dead Man’s Bank” Thatcher had warned him. “The mud there is mortal. It’ll pull you down as quick as you can shake your fist.”
“Dead Man’s Bank? Where the Indiaman floundered?”
“Aye. And along the coast there you’d be best lay a course off the mud.”
He’d thanked Thatcher who had made no further reply and made his way along the mud, searching for anything unusual.
He didn’t expect to really find any thing, but it felt good to get away from the macabre dead girl and let the cold wind blow through his hair.
As he walked the tide came in, and he soon found himself walking back on the thin grass, through small clumps of tree’s and scatterings of under growth, and it was in a small grove he came across the second body.
A sheep had been eaten and its remains left, its ribs sticking up out of the ground, its head lying off to one side.
He knelt by the body and found the blood was still sticky. The animal had only been dead a few hours or so. He glanced around at the empty landscape and pulled out the short flint lock, thumbing back the lock cautiously.
Standing up he noticed the ground was filled with odd little triangular puncture marks, as if some one had been hammering away at the packed earth with some form of sharp instrument. There were no foot prints though, and no other clues that he could see. He spent the better part of an hour examining the area, but there was nothing to be seen but the splayed remains of the sheep. He even looked up into the trees, but he saw nothing there. Finally he became aware of the gathering dusk and made his back towards Welles.