The Crossed Keys public house stood at the crossroads where the village high street met the road to the moor. It was a low-beamed, smoke-stained establishment that had served the men of Bramford-on-Tees for three centuries, its walls thick with the accumulated confessions of farmers and laborers and, on certain evenings, men who worked for Sir Reginald Ashworth. On this particular evening, three days after Dr. Moore's tea with Lady Ashworth, the pub was crowded with the usual Friday night custom—shepherds celebrating the end of a long week, farmhands spending their wages on ale, and a handful of estate workers who had walked down from the manor to wet their whistles.
Among them was Mullins.
The gamekeeper sat alone in a corner booth, his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. It was a habit he had developed over twenty-two years of service to Sir Reginald—never sit with your back exposed, never let anyone approach unseen. His dog, a grizzled lurcher with one torn ear, lay at his feet, occasionally lifting its head to sniff the air before sinking back into dreams of rabbits and open moorland. Mullins had been drinking steadily since six o'clock, and by half past eight the empty glasses on his table had begun to outnumber the full ones.
The barmaid, a plump woman named Dottie who had worked at the Crossed Keys since before the war, approached his table with a fresh pint. "Rough week, Mr. Mullins?"
"You could say that, Dottie." Mullins took the pint and drank deeply, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "You could certainly say that."
"Sir Reginald keeping you busy?"
"Aye. Busy." Mullins laughed, a short, humorless bark that made the lurcher twitch in its sleep. "There's been a spot of bother on the estate. Trespassers. Poachers. The usual riffraff. Sir Reginald wants them dealt with, and Sir Reginald gets what he wants."
Dottie nodded sympathetically. "I heard about Old George. Terrible business, that. They say he got caught in one of his own snares."
"They say a lot of things." Mullins stared into his pint glass, watching the foam settle. "They say a lot of things that aren't true."
Before Dottie could respond, the pub door opened and a figure slipped inside—a boy, small and wiry, with a cap pulled low over his eyes and a jacket that was too thin for the weather. He moved quickly to the bar, avoiding eye contact with the other patrons, and asked for a glass of water.
It was Tommy Briggs.
Dr. Moore would have been horrified if she had known he was here. She had instructed him to stay in the signal box, to keep his head down, to wait for her signal. But three more days of waiting had frayed Tommy's nerves to the breaking point, and the page from the ledger burned in his pocket like a live coal. He needed to know what was happening in the village. He needed to hear the rumors, the gossip, the whispers that never reached the signal box. And more than anything, he needed to see Mullins.
He had recognized the gamekeeper's voice instantly—that gruff, familiar growl that had haunted his nightmares since the night on the moor. Mullins was the man who had carried the woman's body. Mullins was the man who had released the hounds. Mullins was the key to everything, and Tommy had come to find out what he knew.
He took his glass of water and found a seat in the shadows near the fireplace, where the light was dim and the smoke was thick. From here he could watch Mullins without being seen, could study the gamekeeper's face and the way his hands shook when he lifted his glass. The man was drinking heavily, and Tommy knew from experience that drunk men talked. It was only a matter of waiting.
He did not have to wait long. An hour later, as the pub began to empty and the fire burned down to embers, Mullins was still in his corner, his head bowed over his pint and his shoulders slumped in the posture of a man who had carried a heavy burden for too long. The lurcher had woken and was watching the room with yellow, suspicious eyes. Tommy slipped out of his seat and approached the booth.
"Mr. Mullins?"
The gamekeeper looked up, his eyes bleary and unfocused. "Who wants to know?"
"My name's not important." Tommy sat down across from him, keeping his voice low. "I heard you talking about the estate. About the trespassers. I wanted to ask you something."
"Ask away, lad. Not promising I'll answer."
Tommy took a deep breath. He was risking everything—his safety, his freedom, perhaps his life. But the page in his pocket was burning hotter than ever, and he could not keep silent any longer. "I know about the hunts," he said. "The special hunts. The ones that aren't for pheasant or grouse."
Mullins's hand froze halfway to his glass. His eyes, which had been dull with drink a moment before, sharpened into sudden, startling focus. "What did you say?"
"I said I know about the hunts. I know about the women. I know about the ledger with the red crosses. And I know you were there, the night before last, when they buried a woman in the peat."
The gamekeeper stared at him for a long moment. Then, to Tommy's astonishment, his face crumpled. The hard, stoic mask that he had worn for twenty-two years cracked and fell away, revealing something underneath that was raw and broken and desperately, terrifyingly human.
"You're the boy," Mullins whispered. "The one who got away. The one we've been hunting."
"I'm the boy."
Mullins looked around the pub, his eyes darting from shadow to shadow, as though he expected Sir Reginald himself to materialize from the darkness. Then he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. "You shouldn't be here. If Sir Reginald finds out you're still on the moor—"
"He already knows. His men have been hunting me for days."
"No. You don't understand." Mullins grabbed Tommy's wrist with a grip that was surprisingly strong for a man who had drunk six pints of ale. "You don't understand what he's capable of. The hunts—they're not just about killing. They're about power. About control. About watching the light go out in someone's eyes and knowing you were the one who put it out. Sir Reginald has been doing this for twenty years. Maybe longer. And the men who hunt with him—they're not just rich men. They're important men. Men who could crush you like a beetle and never think twice about it."
"Then why do you work for him?" Tommy asked. "If you know what he does, why do you stay?"
Mullins released his grip and sank back into his seat. For a long moment he said nothing, just stared at his hands as though they belonged to someone else. "Because I'm a coward," he said at last. "Because when I was fifteen years old, Sir Reginald caught me poaching on his land. He could have sent me to prison. He could have had me transported. Instead, he offered me a job. A place to live. A purpose. I've been his man ever since." He looked up at Tommy, and his eyes were wet. "You think I wanted to be part of this? You think I wanted to drag bodies across the moor in the middle of the night? I didn't have a choice. None of us did. Sir Reginald owns us, body and soul. He owns the village. He owns the constable. He owns everyone who's ever taken a shilling from his hand."
"There's always a choice," Tommy said. He pulled the ledger page from his pocket and laid it on the table between them. "I have proof. Names. Dates. Everything. If you testify—if you tell the police what you've seen—we can stop him. We can make sure he never hurts anyone again."
Mullins stared at the paper as though it were a snake about to strike. "Where did you get that?"
"From his office. Hidden behind a portrait."
"You broke into the estate office?" Mullins let out a shaky breath. "God help you, lad. God help us all. If Sir Reginald finds out that page is missing—"
"He already knows," said a voice from the doorway.
Tommy spun around. The pub had emptied while they talked, the last of the patrons drifting out into the night. The only person left, besides Tommy and Mullins, was the barmaid Dottie, who stood behind the bar with a dishrag in her hand and a look of barely concealed terror on her face. But the voice had not come from Dottie.
It had come from the man standing in the doorway. He was tall and lean, with a face that might have been handsome once but was now marked by a long, pale scar that ran from his temple to his jaw. He wore the uniform of an estate keeper—heavy boots, tweed trousers, a waxed jacket that had seen years of weather. And he carried a shotgun, broken open over his arm in a gesture of casual menace.
Tommy recognized him immediately. He was the third man from the moor. The one who had stood beside Sir Reginald, watching the burial with cold, impassive eyes.
"Mr. Hayes," Mullins said, and his voice was thick with dread. "I didn't know you were coming tonight."
"Evidently not." The man called Hayes stepped into the room, his boots loud on the flagstone floor. "Sir Reginald sent me to find you. He was concerned. You've been drinking rather a lot lately, Mullins. He worries it might loosen your tongue." His gaze shifted to Tommy, and his scarred face twisted into something that might have been a smile. "And who is this? A new friend?"
"No one," Mullins said quickly. "Just a lad asking for work. I was telling him to move along."
"Were you?" Hayes reached the table and looked down at the paper that still lay between them. His expression did not change, but his knuckles went white on the stock of his shotgun. "That's interesting. Because that looks very much like a page from a certain ledger. A ledger that Sir Reginald noticed was missing this very evening."
Tommy moved. He snatched the paper from the table and bolted for the back door, the same door through which he had entered. Behind him he heard Hayes curse and Mullins shout, and then the crash of a table overturning as the gamekeeper lunged to intercept his fellow keeper. The lurcher burst into a frenzy of barking, adding to the chaos.
Tommy burst through the back door into the alley behind the pub. The night was cold and clear, the stars glittering overhead like chips of ice. He ran without looking back, his feet pounding against the cobblestones, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Behind him, he heard the crack of a shotgun—not aimed at him, he realized, but fired into the air as a warning. Or perhaps as a signal.
He did not stop running. He dodged through alleys and over fences, through the churchyard where Old George's body had been laid to rest that very afternoon, past the vicarage where Dr. Moore was sitting at her desk, unaware of the drama unfolding in the streets. He ran until he reached the moor, until the lights of the village were nothing but a faint glow on the horizon, until the only sounds were the wind and the distant barking of hounds being released once again into the night.
He reached the signal box just as the first baying cry split the silence. He pulled up the ladder, collapsed onto his bed of heather, and clutched the ledger page to his chest. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might burst through his ribs. But he was alive. And he still had the proof.
Outside, the hounds were getting closer.
In the Crossed Keys, Mullins knelt on the floor, blood streaming from a cut above his eye where Hayes had struck him with the butt of his shotgun. The scarred man stood over him, his face calm and untroubled.
"Sir Reginald will want to speak with you personally," Hayes said. "He is very disappointed, Mullins. Very disappointed indeed."
Mullins closed his eyes. He thought of the boy, running through the darkness with the proof in his pocket. He thought of the women buried in the peat, their faces preserved in his memory like photographs. And for the first time in twenty-two years, he felt something other than fear.
He felt hope.
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