Death at Dartmoor (10 page)

E
njoying the brisk temperature and bright morning sunlight, Charles walked to the prison early the next morning. In the shadow of the school and the police station, a shimmer of white frost still clung to the paving stones, while between the houses on the north side of the street, Charles could see the open moor lying in silvery folds like a carelessly thrown robe, decorated here and there with heaps of blue gray granite, diamond bright in the morning sun. Charles was not a poetic man, but it seemed to him that there was something clean and innocent about the moor, which endured despite all the cruel efforts of those who, in small ways and large, sought to exploit its reserve of mineral and metal and stone, its resources of silence and solitude. It was that innocence that he loved and hoped to see preserved for all time to come, and to that end, he had joined the Dartmoor Preservation Association shortly after it was formed in 1883, and had submitted an article or two for publication in the association's journal.

But there was a place on the moor which held nothing of innocence. Ahead, on his right, loomed the prison, Tyrwhitt's “great work” and Princetown's raison d'être, the poisoned womb from which the town had been born. With mixed sensations of reluctance and enthusiasm, Charles quickened his step. The sooner he finished instructing the guards and saw that the fingerprinting project was well under way, the sooner he would be able to get out of the prison and explore the moor—tomorrow or the next day, he hoped, if all continued to go well with the work.

Once inside the walls, Charles went first to the Administrative Block, where he put his head into the governor's office to remind Oliver Cranford that he would like to speak sometime that day with Samuel Spencer, in the man's cell, if that were convenient. Then he went off to spend the morning with the two young guards and instruct them in the business of setting up a fingerprinting system.

He'd been with them only an hour, however, when another guard arrived with the message that Prisoner 351 had been returned to his cell. “If ye'll follow me, please, sir,” he said. “I'll take ye there.”

The cell, Charles saw as he stepped through the low door, was a bleak stone cubicle about twelve feet by seven and eight or nine feet high, dark as a cave and cold enough to make him glad that he was wearing his greatcoat. A barred window no larger than a tea tray was set in the outer wall near the ceiling. The thick, metal-bound wood door was fitted with a glass peephole, shuttered on the outside so that the guards could look at the prisoner within at will, but the prisoner himself could not choose to look out. A man in a gray prisoner's uniform, the number 351 blazoned on the front and back of his coarse jacket, was seated on the bed, which was made of wooden boards on trestles only a few inches off the floor and covered with a thin mattress and a rough blanket.

The prisoner looked up at Charles. His eyes were a quite remarkable blue. “What do you want?” he asked in a gruff North Country voice.

“ ‘Wot d' ye want, sir,' ” the guard snapped. “An' stand t' attention when 'is lordship speaks t' ye.”

“Thank you,” Charles said to the guard. “You may leave us now.”

The guard shook his head. “No, sir, milord. Prison rules, milord. Not'llowed.”

“Just go and stand outside the door,” Charles said gently. “If I need you, I shall be sure to call.” When the guard still hesitated, he went on, “If you are in doubt as to taking my instructions, I shall be glad to go with you to Major Cranford so that he may give you his authorization.”

“Tisn't yer instructions I doubt, milord,” the guard replied uneasily. He nodded at the prisoner, who had remained seated. “They‘uns be right dang'rous, sir, some more 'n others. Ye dessa‘int turn yer back on 'em.”

“I understand,” Charles said, waiting until, with a last nervous glance at the prisoner, the guard went out and closed and locked the door.

His eyes adjusting to the gloom, Charles glanced around the cell. In one corner stood an enamel jug and an empty slop jar. In another corner, a wooden ledge was fixed so as to serve as a table. On the bare, distempered wall above it was a mirror the size of a post card, under the edge of which was inserted a black-bordered obituary notice and a blurred, sepia-toned snapshot of a young man. On the table sat a tin plate, for the prisoners took their meals alone in their cells. To the right and slightly above the plate was a cup. Beneath the table stood a wooden stool.

Charles pulled the stool toward the bed and sat on it. “My name is Sheridan,” he said. “Charles Sheridan. I hope you will allow me the privilege of a few minutes' conversation, Dr. Spencer.”

“Do I have a choice?” Spencer asked sardonically. He swung his feet onto the bed and shoved a pillow between his back and the stone wall. “Anyway, as long as you're here, I'm released from work detail. You may stay as long as you like.” His voice was gruff but cultivated, and he spoke slowly, as if he had grown disused to speaking. He rubbed his hand across his shaven head, where a fuzz of sandy hair was just showing. “You may stay all day, as far as I'm concerned.”

Charles regarded the man thoughtfully. Spencer was in his forties, of slender build but well muscled. He looked an athlete, not yet having acquired the flab that comes from a diet of too much bread and too little meat. His jaw had a hard, clean line, his eyes held no self-delusion, and there was a contained self-sufficiency about him, almost a kind of monkishness. Indeed, Charles thought that it would not be hard to imagine the man as having chosen a life of monastic retreat—not to books, but to labor, for his hands were callused, his face reddened as if by wind and sun.

“You work outdoors, I take it?” Charles asked.

“In the bog fields.” Spencer was wary. “I build ... walls.” He folded his arms and waited. When the silence had lengthened to several minutes, he asked, “Well, then, what do you want?” He added, almost insolently, “my lord.”

“To know about the crime that brought you here,” Charles said.

An opaque curtain came down behind Spencer's eyes, but Charles could read the pain in the thin lines around the man's mouth. “What do you want to know about it?”

“I should like to know what happened.”

Spencer was curt. “What happened? It's in the court transcript.”

“I have read the transcript,” Charles replied in a measured tone. “Since you did not testify on your own behalf, I could not read your version of the events, however.”

“I was not required to testify.” There was no drama in Spencer's voice, no theatrical gesture, only a flat factuality.

“You gave no statement to the court, other than a change of plea.”

“No. ”

“And you are required to say nothing now. I should appreciate it, that is all.” Charles sat without moving, crouched on the stool beside the bed as if he himself were a penitent, the prisoner his confessor. After a moment he added, “Your wife was struck by a poker, as I understand it. By an intruder, your solicitor first argued.”

“Yes.”

“Struck a number of times—eight or nine, according to the coroner.”

Charles saw and took note of the spasm of pain that crossed Spencer's face. “So they say,” he replied, in a low voice.

“She was killed in her bedroom?”

“Her body was found in her bed. She was wearing her nightdress.” Charles could feel the cold of the cell on the back of his neck, but Spencer was sweating, the perspiration like jewels beaded on his forehead. “Why are you asking?”

“And why was she killed?”

The man's nostrils flared. “You read the transcript, didn't you? It's all there, the whole sordid story. The maid heard us arguing. The policeman found me with the poker. I was jealous. I killed her because I was jealous. I tried to cover it up by claiming that she was killed by an intruder.”

“Of whom were you jealous?”

“Of ... of a man with whom she was planning to leave.” Spencer's eyes closed against the memory. “A man she loved more than she loved me.”

“And where were you when this terrible thing happened ?”

Spencer's eyes came open and he laughed, a hard, false laugh that fell into the cold like frozen clods of earth. “I was standing over her with the bloody damned poker, you bloody sod. That's why I'm here, isn't it? Because I'm guilty.”

For a moment, Charles wondered what question Sherlock Holmes would have asked to shake the man out of his insistence on his guilt. He could think of none, though, so he repeated, in a lower voice, “Where were you when your wife died, Dr. Spencer?”

Spencer's eyes were slitted; he was breathing in short, rasping gasps. “Ask the police. Ask the prosecutor. Ask the judge who sent me here.” He opened and closed his hands. “They'll tell you where I was.”

“You were in the house? In your laboratory in the attic, perhaps? And when you heard the quarrel in the bedroom, you left your laboratory in such haste that you abandoned your microscope and several petri dishes open to the air?”

With an abrupt, jerky motion, the prisoner sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the pallet. “Get out of here,” he rasped. “I have no more to say to you.”

Charles still crouched on the stool, his face expressionless, wishing that he could be like Holmes, could make this a mere intellectual puzzle, a riddle of guilt or innocence designed to be unraveled in a cloud of tobacco smoke, before a comfortable fire in the grate at Two Twenty-one B Baker Street. “Do you know who killed her? If you know,” he added, “I should be glad if you would tell me. Even at this late date, it may be possible to obtain proof of his guilt.”

Spencer stared at him. He tried once or twice to speak, then managed, “Who the hell
are
you?”

“There was a bloody handprint on the wall beside the door of your wife's bedroom. The print of a right palm and several fingers. I have the equipment here at the prison to take such a print from you. I would like to do so without delay. The print may provide evidence that would obtain you a new trial, and perhaps an acquittal.”

Spencer jumped to his feet and went to the cell door. “Guard!” he cried, shaking the door. “Guard, let this man out!”

Charles stood and pushed the stool under the table ledge. “We will speak again,” he said to Spencer, as the orderly's key rattled in the lock.

“Not if I can help it,” Spencer muttered angrily.