“Her mother had worked at an inn for a time, until it closed on account of the tavern owner being implicated in a rather horrible crime. The woman didn’t particularly want to talk about the case except to say that she wouldn’t be opposed to finding a job in an inn like the one her mother had held all those years ago. I was curious enough to look into the matter of the long-ago crime and realized she was referring to the Radlett murder. That it came up again in the Mastiff’s blackmail struck me as a little odd. But, then again, coincidences do happen.”

“They do, yes, but they always make me wary,” Barnabus said.

It was entirely possible there was no actual connection between the forged letters of reference Mr. Sorokin made so many years ago, the case that impacted that woman’s mother in a roundabout way, and the blackmail now being perpetrated against Lord Chelmsford.

It was possible, but Barnabus didn’t trust coincidences.

Bodies of Light

Bodies of Light

being a Fictionalization of Reported and Corroborated Mysterious Phenomena

by Dr. Barnabus Milligan, physician

Chapter Four

When Dr. Sefton Palmer arrived at the college where he had, a mere dozen years earlier, undertaken his medical education, he did so with an unmistakably frantic air. He would prove the existence of the lights he’d seen. He would discover their source, their cause, their nature.

He would, if it required pursuing the answers for the rest of his life.

Had his attention not been so entirely upon his pursuit, he might have noticed the odd looks he was receiving. He might have been concerned that people received him so quizzically. He was no more aware of these reactions than he was of his own haggard and unkempt appearance.

His steps took him to the office of the professor he’d most respected during his time at the college. Dr. Sherman would help him find the answers.

“Palmer.” The good professor looked entirely taken aback at seeing his former student upon the threshold of his office. “I had not expected you.”

“What do you know of the presence of lights in the human body?” Palmer had no time for pointless niceties.

“I know that you submitted a paper on the subject not many months ago.” Dr. Sherman did not seem pleased.

“I had hoped for help in solving these mysteries, but I have received nothing but silence or ridicule.” Palmer held his hat in his hands, crushing the brim in his frustration. “You said, when I was a pupil of yours, ‘The moment a doctor believes his learning to be complete, he ceases to be a good doctor.’ It seems to me there are a great many poor doctors who have dismissed out of hand what I have actually seen. I pray you will prove an advocate of your own advice.”