Page 87 of First Blood

‘Bloody nursery rhymes,’ Dawson cried out, once he’d finished reading.

‘Huh?’ Stacey said, barely looking up.

‘Listen,’ he said, wanting her full attention.

She looked up properly.

‘The small things that have been overlooked. The vinegar and brown paper that links Luke Fenton to Hayley Smart.’

His colleague appeared both interested and yet disbelieving at the same time.

‘But they’re just harmless little rhymes to entertain kids. To send ’em to sleep, or something.’

‘And that’s where you’re totally wrong, I’m afraid. Most nursery rhymes appear to have darker meanings in their past. At the least they are cautionary tales.’

‘Go on,’ Stacey said, dropping the frown but leaving the interest behind.

‘“Little Bo Peep”, for example, is a harmless ditty about lost sheep?’

‘Err… yeah,’ she answered.

‘Wrong. It’s about falling asleep on the job and someone getting killed as a result.’

‘But it’s for kids,’ Stacey argued.

‘And back in the day, kids were workers too. There were no child labour laws back when every hand in the family was needed to survive.’

‘Dawson, I ay sure…’

‘Okay, listen to this. “Goosey, Goosey, Gander where shall I wander, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers. I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.”’

‘Yeah, I know it. To teach kids to say their prayers,’ she said.

‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? The origins of the rhyme date back to the sixteenth century. It’s talking about the need for Catholic priests to hide in priest holes to avoid persecution from Protestants. If they were caught then the priest and the family were executed. The moral implies that something unpleasant would happen to anyone failing to say their prayers correctly. And by correctly it means Protestant prayers said in English and not Catholic prayers said in Latin.’

‘So, you’re making this whole assumption because Lester Jackson was found in a priest hole?’ Stacey asked.

‘When he could have been killed anywhere in a hundred or more rooms, then yeah, I’m thinking it has to mean something, but you haven’t heard the best bit.’

‘Oh, do continue cos it’s not like I ay got any work of my own to do.’

He paused. Was that sarcasm from his meek and mild young colleague? Hmm… so there was a bit of spirit in there just dying to come out.

He continued anyway, unable to ignore the burning in his gut. ‘“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Up Jack got and home did trot as fast as he could caper. He went to bed and bound his head with vinegar and brown paper.”’

‘I have no idea what that’s about,’ Stacey offered but her gaze did move over the wipe boards.

‘Jack and Jill are said to be King Louis XVI, of France, and his consort, Queen Marie Antoinette, who were both beheaded. The words were made more acceptable for children by providing a happy ending. They were beheaded for treason during the reign of terror in 1793, so I’m wondering…’

‘If that’s symbolic of Fenton and Hayley Smart for what they did to Mia?’

‘They both made her suffer. Him with the actual abuse and Hayley for going back after being free of him for six months.’

Stacey was again looking at the board. At the details that had as yet remained unexplained.

‘What about Keats’s John Doe. An old shoe or something?’ Stacey asked.

‘I was just coming to that one and I just found this. Listen, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread; and whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”’