Chapter 52
THEN
A few days after the fight, Ellen went to the Well to throw some dried flowers in, to remember Meg and to try to apologise to her in the only way she could.
As she approached the Well, she saw what was left of Charles Milburn, his bloated body floating in the seven feet of water in Coventina’s Well, turning and rolling in an invisible current, his skin white, wrinkled and macerated, beginning to peel off his body.
Ellen screamed then vomited, then ran back to Newbrough, the flowers forgotten.
Some men came to haul the body out – and it was then they saw the stab wound in his neck.
Nobody could explain how it had happened, or how he had ended up in the water. Most people put it down to murder, but there was never a manhunt. Perhaps a vagabond or a traveller had done it, they said. Some even said he had inflicted the wound himself, out of guilt.
When they went to Milburn Hall to tell Emory, he opened the door to them himself.
‘One of the women found Mr Milburn. At the Well. We have been to get him out. It looks like murder,’ said Robert, relishing the job and responsibility he had been given.
Emory just looked at the men who were there to deliver the message, the words not seeming to register with him. He looked dishevelled and exhausted, a broken man stretched beyond his limit.
‘Some of the villagers think it was yon Meg Noble – that unholy Snow Witch attacking him from beyond the grave,’ continued Robert, buoyed up by what he had taken on as his duty.
But Robert had clearly given no thought to who he was speaking to.
Because Emory simply punched him in the face, and shut the door on him.