Death at Dartmoor (16 page)

“On this celluloid,” he said, when he had finished, “are the fingerprints you just saw on the glass,
your
prints. No one else in the world has the same prints.” He pointed to a distinctive, lopsided mark in one of the prints and a different one in another. “This whorl and this loop, for instance, are uniquely yours, and none other's. Not in the whole, wide world.”

“Is that so, indeed?” The constable was now clearly excited. “So if I wuz to go and murder my landlady by knockin' her on the head with a poker, my fingerprints could be lifted from the poker and looked at 'longside these and—”

“Exactly,” Charles said, “although the rough surface of a poker might not easily retain a full print. But in general, fingerprints taken from the scene of a crime can be matched against those of someone who might have committed the crime. Such evidence has not yet been presented to an English judge and jury, but it is only a matter of time before this occurs.”

The constable frowned. “Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but juries ... well, they don't always listen careful-like to evidence. Do ye really think they'll be able to understand?”

“Like the rest of us,” Charles said with a sigh, “they'll have to be taught. It will be a slow process, I grant you, but—”

Charles was interrupted by the loud and repeated clanging of a bell, a jarring racket that rattled the windows and vibrated in his bones.

“What's going on, Constable?” he yelled, over the noise. “What does it mean?”

“It's an escape, sir!” the constable cried excitedly, already halfway to the door. “One of the prisoners has got away!”

I
t was not one who had got away, as it turned out, but three, as Charles discovered when he joined the group jostling around prison governor Oliver Cranford in the yard outside the Administrative Block. Two shamefaced guards were making their report, shouting over the continuing clamor of the huge bell above the prison's main entrance, which was being rung to summon off-duty guards back to the prison. The trio had escaped from a large work party in one of the bog fields, under cover of the mist.

“It cumm'd so fast tumblin' down th' tor,” one of the guards told the major, “that usn's di‘n't have time t' form up th' men. One minnit us wuz all clear, the next minnit,
whoomf,
there t'wuz, thick as sheep's wool. Afore us could say ‘Tention,' they three wuz over the wall an' away down the hill, east.”

“But not before they‘uns smashed Jamie Caunter with a shovel,” the other guard said angrily. “Jamie tried to stop 'um, an' he got his head cracked. Ruthless, t'wuz. He's comin' in on a stretcher.”

“You know what this means, Richards,” Cranford said sternly. He turned to the orderly at his elbow. “Put every guard in that detail on report for neglect of duty—except for Caunter, of course. Summon Dr. Lorrimer to see to the injured man.” He looked around. “Where's Constable Chapman? Is he still on the prison grounds?”

“Here, sir,” the young constable said, beside Charles. He stepped forward eagerly. “Want I should organize roadblocks and watches on the public footpaths, Gov‘nor? The village boys can go as runners, and one or two has got bicycles. Since the men went east, it'd be good to send word over to Widecombe and Morehamptonstead, to alert the moormen to put up their ponies. We don't want the convicts stealin' horses to carry 'em off th' moor.”

“Right-o,” replied Major Cranford briskly. To the orderly, he added, “See that a telegram is sent to Yelverton, as well. Ask the constable there to put a man on the train coming up. He can keep a lookout along the railway line. As soon as the off-duty warders are all assembled, we'll send the search parties out. Oh, and the reward, of course. Five pounds to the first man to give information that results in capture.” He turned to the guards. “You say they made off to the east?”

“Yessir,” Richards said, hanging his head. “All three of ‘em, sir. In th' d'rection o' Beardown Tor.”

“I'd best send a boy to Chagford, then,” the constable said. “They'll want to know over there.” He paused. “I can also send to Miss Medford, at Horrabridge, to ask for the loan of her bloodhounds. It'll take a few hours to get 'em here, though.”

“We'll need scent for the dogs,” the major said thoughtfully. “Clothing?”

“Their blankets, sir,” the orderly put in. “We'll get their blankets off their beds.”

“Right, then. And who are we looking for?”

“Black and Wilcox, sir,” Richards replied promptly. “And Spencer.”

“Samuel Spencer?” Charles asked, startled.

“That's the one,” Richards said in a dark tone. “Number Three Fifty-one.”

“I find that rather surprising, Oliver,” Charles said quietly to the major. “I wouldn't have thought that he was the type to make a run for it.”

The other guard frowned. “I have th' idea that Black an' Wilcox might've made it up t‘gether to go, sir. We stopped 'um talkin' yest‘rday. Spencer, he wuz workin' nearby. Maybe when Black an' Wilcox went off, he went, too, sudden-like.”

“Well, planned or not, he's gone,” Cranford said to Charles, in a resigned tone. “It'll go hard with all of them when they're caught—and hard out there on the moor, too, in this weather.” He looked grim. “But I don't imagine it will matter to Black. He's the biggest and toughest of the three. An ax murderer, and crazy. I've been trying to get him sent to Broadmoor, where he belongs. We don't have the means to deal with his kind here.”

At the mention of “ax murderer,” a murmur went up from the crowd that had gathered, and the men exchanged apprehensive glances.

“Well, sir,” said the constable, “the town knows by the bell that there's been an escape, so the women'll lock their doors and keep the children inside. And we'll get the word to the outlyin' farms to keep a sharp lookout.”

“Thank you, Constable,” the major said. “I'll feel a great deal easier when they're all three back in their cells.” He looked around at the crowd. “We'll have 'em all in a few hours. Won't we, boys?”

A cheer went up. But Charles saw the constable glancing up at the blowing mist with a look of concern, and he was not so sure. The fog was now so thick that the very walls—no more than a dozen yards away—had vanished into the mist. The dogs would help, of course, but if it took several hours to get them on the trail, it might be a while before the escapees were recaptured. Meanwhile—

Ten minutes later, Charles was at the Boise Brothers livery stable, hiring a horse. The men's apprehensive glances had made him worried as well. The escaped convicts had last been seen heading in the direction of Beardown Tor. And Kate and Patsy and Patsy's friend had taken a pony cart to Grimspound, which couldn't be more than five miles to the east of the point of escape. As he climbed into the saddle and set off into the impenetrable gray fog, he felt a cold lump of fear congeal in his stomach.

K
ate and Patsy and Mattie had made a leisurely drive of it to Grimspound via the meandering road to Widecombe, chatting on the way. Kate found herself liking Patsy's new acquaintance, a lively, vivacious young woman who seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the moor and its ancient inhabitants. When they finally reached their destination, they secured the pony to a rail that had been put there for that purpose and followed the course of a small stream called Grims Lake, up the hill.

Grimspound, a large enclosure of about four acres walled by a double ring of large granite blocks that glistened with the damp, lay in a saddle between Hookney Tor and Hameldown Tor. Within the enclosure they could see the remains of some two dozen stone huts, one of which had been rebuilt during a recent archeological excavation and enclosed with an iron railing to protect it. Kate could not help but feel the antiquity of the place and its remoteness, for all around lay the gloomy, cloud-shrouded moor, bracken-covered, bare of trees, and somehow sinister. It was very quiet, although far away in the distance could be heard the tolling of a bell.

Kate wandered around, studying the place with interest. She was not sure what she had expected to see. She had heard so many conflicting tales about Grimspound's mysterious origins and purposes. Did it have something to do with the Romans? Was Grim the name of a bold Viking who had fought his way onto the moor and built this place for defense? Or did the name derive from the Anglo-Saxon word
Grima,
the devil? Was Grimspound a temple where medieval people worshipped the Evil One?

In her dry, unromantic way, Mattie Jenkyns soon answered Kate's questions. Grimspound, she said, was no temple but a simple pastoral village: a large empoundment that might have been built as early as the Stone Age or as late as the Middle Ages; there was no way to tell. But whatever the time of its original construction, it had been built to protect cattle and sheep and people from marauding enemies, animal or human. The double wall had been six or eight feet high, its interior packed with dirt and the whole topped with turf. The archaeologists who excavated the area had speculated that most of the huts were used for storage or as small-animal shelters, while others, which boasted protected entrances, stone hearths, and raised sleeping platforms, were almost certainly dwellings. Kate studied the circle of heaped-up stones, trying to imagine it busy with the small daily rituals of domestic life: women cooking and caring for babies and digging a bit of garden, children playing and laughing, men hanging skins to dry and meat to cure while they talked about the weather. But however determined and resourceful the residents, life here would have been a challenge, day by day.

Carrying her camera, Patsy came over to stand beside Kate and Mattie. “It must have been a desolate place to live,” she said soberly. “Especially in winter.”

“And hard to stay warm, even in the huts,” Mattie agreed, pulling her red cloak closer around her. “The people would have slept on mattresses made of heather or bracken and covered themselves with sheepskins, or the skins of wolves or bears.” Her face was thoughtful. “It wouldn't have been an easy life. I think they were hardier than we are. I can't imagine actually sleeping in one of those stone huts.”

Kate shivered. It had not been cold when they set out, but the mist had dropped down, blown by a chill wind that seemed to slice like a knife right through her heavy woolen coat. They had planned an all-day outing—the hotel had packed a lunch for them, which they'd left in the cart—but that might prove too ambitious, given the weather. She consulted her watch. It was after noon. “Perhaps we should have lunch,” she said.