Convicted Innocent(20)

Horace asked a few further questions but received no clearer answer than this.

Might Sergeant Todd have been the bobby who’d been attacked?

He wondered if he should be checking hospitals.

* * * * *

“Fink I kn-n-n-nowed ‘im.”

David Powell and Innocent had just finished mopping up the sergeant’s face, cleaning away the blood and grime with the priest’s handkerchief and a bit of their water.

Innocent had leaned over the slumbering policeman, his thick brows drawn in a pensive, thoughtful frown for a long moment before making his pronouncement.

“You know him? How?”

The young man fingered a shred of the sergeant’s uniform where it lay wadded on the floor; the sleeve chevrons were on the top of the tattered heap.

“S-S-S-Sergean’ L-L-Lewis Todd.” He looked to David for affirmation, and the priest nodded. “‘E ‘rrest me.”

A thousand questions flooded David’s mind at once.

“Why did he arrest you? –And when?”

Innocent shrugged. “Lon’ t-t-time ‘go. ‘E saided I d-d-died someone.”

David felt his mouth open, but no sound came out. He closed it. Then he asked,

“Did you?”

Innocent shook his head vigorously.

“‘E s-s-say I mur…mur…mur—” he frowned, the word too much for him.

“Murdered?”

Innocent nodded. “On’y I don’ un’erst-st-stand tha’ means d-d-deaded some’ne, unt-t-til later.”

“My friend is very careful with his work,” David said. “Why would he think you killed someone if you didn’t?”

With much stuttering, the young man explained. Though some of the details escaped the priest, David gleaned that Innocent’s uncle had called him into a room, given him a bloody knife, and told Innocent to stand in his stead as he left. The police, led by Sergeant Todd, had shown up only moments after. They discovered a fresh body in the room as well, and the bobbies arrested Innocent on a murder charge.

David didn’t know what to think. Was Innocent really so gullible that he’d allow family to set him up as a patsy for such a serious crime? Or was the young man spinning a tale to entrap the priest in some strange machinations?

But then, the concern Innocent had shown to the injured policeman seemed far too genuine to be feigned, so a devious scheme seemed unlikely.

In fact, as the young man had been telling his tale, he’d been carefully trickling water into Lewis’s mouth, using a tin cup they’d found in the pail to give the man a drink. He’d even propped the sergeant’s head up so he could swallow more easily, and gently wiped away whatever water escaped the injured man’s lips.

“How did you come to be here?”

When they’d made their initial introductions, David had learned Innocent had arrived, as he and Lewis had, only the day before. He’d not said how, though.

“They br-br-brunged me.”

“Who? From where? And how?”

Once again, Innocent launched into a stuttering recollection. This time David found it a bit easier to interpret what the young man was saying, perhaps becoming accustomed to his manner of speech.

Innocent described a place that sounded like a prison (though he didn’t call it such), saying several bobbies had loaded him into a wagon and brought him here.

David wondered if those “bobbies” were the same ones who’d kidnapped him and his friend. He asked if the young man recognized any of their captors as the chaps who’d taken him from prison.