Death at Dartmoor (33 page)

“Did you enjoy working for Sir Edgar and Lady Duncan?” Kate asked, leaning forward to poke the fire.

“Fer Sir Edgar,” Avis replied with a sadness in her voice. She turned her cup in her hand, running her thumb around the rim.

Kate heard the omission and recognized that Avis had not enjoyed her relationship with her mistress. But that by itself was not remarkable, for she knew from her own experience that it was the mistress who ensured that the maids did what was expected of them and disciplined them when necessary.

“Sir Edgar was a very kind man,” Kate said, feeling her way. “I knew him only slightly, but he seemed quite mild-tempered”

“Oh, that him wuz,” Avis said, and her voice trembled. “Even when him wuz provoked.” She fell silent, chewing on her lower lip.

Jenny poked her sister with her elbow. “You must tell it, Avis,” she said in a low voice. “That's wot us come fer. An' there's nobody else, y' know that.”

“I'm sure that there are matters that you are reluctant to speak of,” Kate said encouragingly. “I'll be glad to help in any way I can.”

There was another long silence. Outside in the street, a moor pony whinnied loudly and cart wheels rattled on the cobblestones. Avis looked up but did not quite meet Kate's eyes, and Kate read in her glance a good servant's unwillingness to carry tales—and behind that, an anguish that she was afraid to reveal. Unfortunately, servants were often mistreated, even in the best of households. Had someone threatened her? Had someone
hurt
her?

At last, Avis said, “I left Thornworthy cuz I wuz afeard.”

“Afraid?” Kate asked gently. “What were you afraid of, Avis? Was ... was someone cruel to you?”

Avis began to cry.

 

Out on the moor, Evelyn and Patsy had developed a plan. Evelyn set the basket of supplies into the kistvaen that she and her brother used as their cache and then joined Patsy in a nearby stone hut, one of the abandoned tin workings left by the Old Men. She pulled her cloak tightly around her and sat down to wait, silently, for she and Patsy had agreed not to talk for fear that her brother might come upon them unaware and overhear their conversation.

Evelyn hoped he would appear soon, for the day was growing colder and the damp mist was creeping down the shoulder of the nearby tor, and in spite of Patsy's reassurances, she was desperately apprehensive at having brought the other woman here. She knew her brother, and she could not imagine that he would take kindly to the idea that she had shared their secret with anyone else. She could only pray that Patsy was right when she said that there had been some sort of attraction between them. Otherwise—

And then Evelyn saw him, moving deliberately and warily along the footpath from the direction of the River Walkham. As she had told Patsy and Kate, had she not known who he was, she would not have recognized him, with that abundance of brown hair, the unfamiliar sweater and jerkin, the dashing Tyrolean hat. She waited until he came upon the cache and had filled his pockets with the apples, cheese, and bread she had brought. Then she stepped forward, revealing herself.

“Hello, Sam,” she said quietly.

Samuel Spencer jumped and whirled. “Evelyn! What the devil—”

“I had to see you, Sam,” Evelyn said. She caught his hand and pulled him into the tin miners' hut. “Don't be angry, please. Everything's changed. They're watching the ports. We can't get away as we planned. It won't work.”

Spencer scowled at her. “You came here to tell me that? You risked being followed, being discovered—”

“No, not that. We
have
been discovered. That's what I came to tell you.”

His face showed the prison pallor under the ruddiness of recent windburn. “Discovered?” His eyes narrowed. “Did you tell?” When she didn't answer immediately, he grasped her arm hard, his fingers like pincers. She flinched, and he loosened his grip. “Sorry,” he muttered, pushing her arm aside. “Forgive me, Evelyn.” He half turned away. “Did you tell?”

“I don't want a row, Sam,” Evelyn said quietly. “It's all up, that's it, and that's final. Lord Sheridan knows what happened in Edinburgh, all of it. He knows why Malcomb did what he did, why you pled guilty—”

“You
told
him!” Spencer exclaimed, and pushed a hand under his brown wig, rubbing his head and cursing savagely. When he pulled the wig down, it was askew. “You gave me away. You betrayed me.”

“No!” Evelyn protested, indignant. “I didn't give anything away, Sam! Lord Sheridan, the man who came to visit you in your cell, worked it all out himself, from fingerprints he got off the wall in Elizabeth's bedroom and from your cup, and from the clipping he found in your cell. All about Malcomb, and your reasons—he just figured it out, that's all.”

“Malcomb,” he growled. “I suppose Sheridan wants me to go back to court and say that Malcomb killed her after all, is that it? I suppose he wants to hurt Clemmy and Rachel and destroy their—”

“No,” she said. She put out a hand to straighten the wig on her brother's head. “He says that the court isn't the answer, Sam, after all this time, and that there's no way to get justice, not now. It's too late for that, and the evidence won't stand up. And he understands about Clemmy and Rachel and the need to protect them, even though Malcomb is dead.” She tried to smile, to lighten the tension between them. “Lord Sheridan is like Sherlock Holmes, Sam, only smarter. And more compassionate.”

“I suppose he was smart enough to figure out who you were, then?” Spencer said sarcastically. “Even that you brought the Bible to me?”

“Yes,” Evelyn said, “even that. He found the Bible in your cell, and he looked at it, and the way I glued the flyleaf, and he knew there was a map or a note or something in it. I don't know how he got on to me—to Mattie Jenkyns, I mean. But he did, and when I told them about the plan—”

“
Them?
Who the bloody hell are
they
?”

Evelyn looked at him. “Lord Sheridan's wife and their friend, Patsy Marsden.”

“Patsy?” Spencer frowned, startled. “Patsy Marsden? But she's the woman I—”

“Yes, that's right,” Patsy said, stepping out of the darkness. “The woman you met on the moor the day before yesterday.” She held out her hand and he took it—he
seized
it, Evelyn saw. Patsy smiled. “I'm sure you're as surprised as I was, Sam, when I learned that you weren't an engineer, but rather a ... a doctor.”

“Not a doctor,” Spencer said in a low voice. “An escaped convict.” Watching her brother, expecting his anger, Evelyn was astonished to see that his eyes had lightened, his mouth had softened, and that he was still holding Patsy's hand. “I thought I'd never see you again.”

“I hope,” Patsy said, “that it mattered.”

“Yes. More and more as the hours went by. I can't—” He swallowed. “I can't believe you're here. Is this Evelyn's doing?”

“No,” Patsy said, repossessing her hand with evident reluctance. “She said you'd be angry, but I insisted. Please don't blame her.”

He turned to Evelyn. “She knows ... everything?”

“Yes,” Evelyn answered. “She knows why Elizabeth died and who killed her, and that you were in no way responsible. She knows that you didn't kill that man on the moor, either. She wants to help you get safely away, off the moor, out of England—she and the Sheridans.”

He hesitated, his eyes going back to Patsy, fastening on her face as if he couldn't get enough of the sight of her. “But why?” he asked. “Why would you and your friends involve yourselves in something so dangerous? This isn't a game, you know. If you're caught, you could go to prison.”

“I know,” Patsy said calmly. She smiled. “I hope it doesn't come as a surprise that there are people in England who refuse to stand by while an innocent man is punished for crimes he did not commit.”

Evelyn sensed rather than saw the tension go out of him. “Listen to me, Sam,” she said, taking the advantage. “All you have to do is go to Okehampton with us—with Patsy and me.”

“That's right,” Patsy said. “Evelyn and I will go back to Princetown, pack up our things, and hire a brougham. We'll stop and pick you up along the road and drive on to Okehampton. We'll all be holiday-makers who have been on the moors for a ramble, and we'll get on the train and go up to London together. And then to Liverpool and—”

But Spencer was shaking his head. “No!” he exclaimed fiercely. “It's not safe. I won't let you do it, Patsy. If we're caught—”

“We won't be caught,” Patsy said, “as long as we all play our parts, as if we were actors in a drama. And as long as we all trust and believe in one another.” She smiled. “Anyway, the police in England don't frighten me nearly as much as bandits in Morocco did. They won't cut my throat.”

Spencer grinned. “I don't suppose they'll cut my throat either. They'll just hang me—or shoot me on sight.” He paused and looked again at Patsy. “I'm a fool for letting you involve yourself in this. But since you have—well, then, let's do it. What do I have to lose?”

I
t was only a short distance from Stapleton House to Thornworthy. The mist seemed not to have lifted at all but to have drifted ominously lower across the parapets and crenellations and chimney pots of the old stone buildings. When Charles and the constable found themselves waiting for Lady Duncan in the morning room, it, too, seemed filled with the gloominess of the out-of-doors, in spite of the soft green of the draperies and wall covering and carpets and the lively green of the flourishing plants set under the mullioned casement windows, where they caught what little light there was. The gloom was further echoed by the black crape bow and swag that adorned an oil portrait of Sir Edgar that hung over the mahogany sideboard, flanked on either side by a pair of black candles tied with black bows.

They were shown to two chairs, and tea was brought and served by an exceedingly correct butler. When he had bowed himself out of the room, Charles turned to the constable. “What do you think, Mr. Chapman, about our conversation with Mr. Delany?”

“I'm uneasy, sir,” the constable said, frowning. “I'd not much doubt, goin' into the conversation, that he did it. His motive seems clear, an' Sir Edgar's body was found practic' lly on his doorstep. But for a guilty man, he seemed a bit too open ‘bout it all, least in my experience. And the bus'ness about Mrs. Redman unsettled me.” He rubbed his upper lip. “If that brother of hers, that shoemaker, learned that his sister wuz ‘bout t' run off with a married man, he might've took a dim view of the matter. He might've—”

He broke off, and they both rose from their chairs as Lady Duncan came into the room. She was dressed in black from head to foot, a black lace mantilla over her head and black lace fingerless mitts on her hands. Her pale face was marked with sooty shadows, her eyes large and very dark, as if the violence of her husband's death was freshly imprinted in her mind.

“Good morning, Lady Duncan,” Charles said, bowing slightly over her ladyship's extended hand. “It is good of you to see us today.” He nodded in the constable's direction. “I thought perhaps it might be less vexatious for you if I accompanied Constable Chapman on this routine visit. I'm sure you want nothing more than to have the official inquiry over with quickly, so as not to be distressed by it any longer than absolutely necessary.”

Charles spoke with genuine concern, for he felt a great deal of sympathy for her. Her husband's death would have been a difficult and distressing matter in any case, but that his death was murder must have made it that much worse. And if Dr. Lorrimer was correct, the Duncans had not been married as long as he and Kate. He could imagine her pain.

“Yes, thank you, Lord Sheridan.” With dignity, Lady Duncan seated herself on the small, green velvet sofa. “And please let Lady Sheridan know that I appreciated her thoughtfulness in coming with the vicar yesterday afternoon.” Her eyes went to the blue-uniformed constable, whose helmet sat conspicuously at his feet. He had taken out his notebook and was fishing for his pencil. While she did not quite sniff, it came very near. Turning back to Charles, she said, “It is kind of you to accompany our local policeman, my lord. I'm sure his questions are necessary under the circumstances, but I do not expect them to be pleasant.”