The Grimm Dossier

Chapter 28 - The Fools

England, West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
St George, Skirrid Inn
5 November 1898, 11:30 a.m.

The clink accompanied a tray that slid onto the tabletop with a corner, and Elly placed a new pot on the table with nimble fingers. She pushed a strand of hair that had slipped back behind her ear with a slow movement, and Kyle's lips could be seen forming an appraising, yet more appraising, curve as the girl turned to Dr. Archer.

"Is there anything else I can get you? Would you like anything else?" she asked, and there was a hum in the young voice that sounded to Kyle like the purr of a cat in heat. Why did it irritate him so much? But what troubled him even more was how Dr. Archer reacted. As if moved by lightning, he sat up, fastened the top two buttons of his open shirt, and smiled meaningfully at the girl.

"Thank you, Elly. Breakfast is wonderful again."

Elly smiled, even giggled briefly, but then waved it off sheepishly. Out of the corner of her eye, she peered at Kyle as if to watch his reaction. She was trying to read him. So she wasn't stupid because she seemed to have noticed that her manner fell on deaf ears with him. As it appeared, Miss Oldren knew how to beat a silent skirmish from mind to mind. It made him crane his neck back, and his eyebrows - stern but not directly maliciously sly - slid a little higher.

"You can help us some more." he then remarked, perhaps a little drier than necessary. Then he pointed to the third chair at the table and motioned to her to please sit down. Irritation was quite evident in Elly's features; the doctor suddenly seemed much more alert. It was as if he feared Kyle might jump on the poor girl and eat her. What was wrong with Archer?

"You work here as a waitress and have lived in this village for a long time," he continued after Elly had lowered herself into the chair. "Can you think of any connection between the deaths so far? Marie and Sandra were about your age? How about the others? Were there any similarities?"

Elly frowned as if she had all the mysteries in the world to solve. Weren't girls like her trained to brush everything away with a nod and a smile to avoid confrontation? Instead, he could feel the thread tightening inside her. Anyone with anything like sensitivity and an eye for detail would have noticed.

"Similarities?" she asked, although she had already understood what he meant.

"Someone you didn't like or who had a problem with you? Or common interests?" Kyle specified, and Elly's finely curved lashes lowered as she stared at the tabletop. As if something was exciting there, she chewed on her red lips and pulled her long braid forward somewhat stiffly.

"I think there would be something... or someone," she murmured.

Kyle felt the crackle that was suddenly in the air. A cool, warning tingle pricked the back of his neck and made him shift his stance. He leaned back a little, his eyes still on the girl to whom he had perhaps paid too little attention so far. He was about to ask further when the doctor unexpectedly interrupted him.

"Who exactly? Elly, if you know something..." Instead, the latter automatically turned his powerful upper body towards her; his gaze fixed tonelessly on her face from sharp eyes and relaxed lips. Dr. Archer regarded her with a look as if it seemed to graze every pore. The doctor's hard shell somehow cracked in her presence. It was just little things. A slight twitch of his hand, the abrupt movement in which he adjusted himself to her and turned his chest towards her by the second, the barely visible dip his chin made downwards or the way his lips tightened, pressed together, and the pull around his eyes lost its hardness.