Death at Dartmoor (26 page)

Kate reached for Charles's hand. “I told you, Charles,” she said in a low voice. “The night of the second séance, she
knew.”

“And that was the day of his disappearance,” Charles said. “So she must have been involved in some way.”

“Perhaps,” Kate said. “But not in the way you—”

At that moment, the carriage made another impetuous leap, tumbling them all into a heap against one side. And by the time they had regained their seats and their breath, they had arrived at Hornaby Farm, and the coachman was opening the carriage door.

Charles went with the coach and horses around to the barn, while Kate and Jenny dashed through the pouring rain for the shelter of the door, held open for them by a stout, capable-looking woman, an apron tied around her middle, a shawl around her shoulders—Avis, Kate guessed, Jenny's sister.

“How is Mrs. Bernard?” Kate asked anxiously.

“Not s' good, m‘lady,” Avis replied, hanging Kate's cloak on a peg. She had full, round cheeks that promised a cheerful nature, but her brows were pulled together in a worried look. “Dr. Lorrimer, him be wi' the poor lady now. Him be terr'ble worrit.”

“Where is she?” Kate asked. The white cat she had seen three days before appeared out of the sitting room and gave a plaintive meow.

“Up th' stairs,” Avis said. A stone hot-water bottle swathed in a towel sat on a table. She picked it up, cradling it in the crook of her arm, then lit a candle from the paraffin lamp on the wall. Turning to her sister, she said, “Tea, Jenny, quick-like, now, dear.”

Jenny scurried for the kitchen, while Kate picked up her skirts and followed Avis up the narrow, twisting stairs and into a low, dark room lit by another candle, flickering on the bedside table. The curtains were drawn against the drafts, but the room was nearly as cold as the out-of-doors, and the wind rattled the windows as if it were desperate to get inside.

Dr. Lorrimer turned from the bed. “Ah, Avis, thank you,” he said. “Give me the water bottle.” With a quick gesture, he thrust it under the blankets at the foot of the bed. Then he straightened, looking questioningly at Kate, who introduced herself.

“How is she?” she asked. The doctor shook his head with a somber look, muttered something under his breath about a difficult night, and stepped away from the bed so that Kate could come forward.

She drew in her breath sharply. Mrs. Bernard lay under a heap of quilts and blankets, her face so drawn and changed that Kate almost did not know her. She was muttering something in a low, cracked voice, and as the doctor left the room with Avis to get a cup of tea downstairs, Kate leaned over the bed, smoothing the tangled brown hair back from Mrs. Bernard's pretty forehead, seeing with concern that she looked shrunken and fragile, her skin almost transparent.

“Hello, Mrs. Bernard,” Kate said softly. “I've come to stay with you for a time.”

Mrs. Bernard's eyelids fluttered and she moaned, tossing her head feverishly, breathing hoarse, labored breaths. There was a damp cloth in a saucer on the table beside the bed, and Kate refolded it and placed it on the hot forehead. The doctor had been sitting on a wooden chair, and Kate pulled it forward for herself, reaching under the blankets for Mrs. Bernard's hand, noticing as she did so that there was blood on the pillow.

At Kate's touch, the eyelids flickered again, and Mrs. Bernard turned toward her. “Lady Sheridan?” she whispered. “It's very dark. Is it you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Bernard. How are you feeling?”

The fingers, light as twigs, clutched hers. “He's dead,” she said, forming the words slowly and with what looked like enormous effort. “They won't tell me, but you will, I know. He's... Sir Edgar is dead, isn't he?”

With the sick woman's eyes on her, Kate felt that she could speak only the truth. She said quietly, “Yes, he's dead.” And then, thinking that it might relieve Mrs. Bernard's mind to speak of it, asked hesitantly, “How did you know, my dear?”

“I... saw it,” Mrs. Bernard whispered. She closed her eyes, and tears squeezed out from under her eyelids and ran down her temple, into her tangled hair. “In my mind.” She coughed hollowly.

Did she mean that she had dreamed it? Kate was not a believer in the sort of spirits that were conjured up by mediums, but she did know that there were things that couldn't be explained by ordinary means. She leaned closer. “How did it happen?” she whispered.

There was no answer for a long moment, while the wind tore savagely at the window and the candle flickered. Somewhere outdoors, there was a splintery crash, as of a tree limb coming down. Kate thought that Mrs. Bernard must have drifted back into sleep, but she was mistaken.

The fingers clutched hers again, and the pale lips moved. “A gun,” Mrs. Bernard said hoarsely. “It was a gun, and a ... a rock. And later, dogs.”

With her free hand, Kate stroked the feverish face. “Who?” she asked. “Did you ... see who killed him?”

Mrs. Bernard's eyes came open, showing shadowed depths. Was it fear that Kate saw there?

“No,” she whispered. “Only Sir Edgar ... and the gun.”

Sir Edgar and the gun. So Mrs. Bernard understood, however the information had come to her, that he had been shot. Another question rose to Kate's lips, a possibility that had not occurred to her until now. “Did he shoot himself?” she asked. Perhaps the bludgeoning was unrelated to the death.

Mrs. Bernard gave a little cry, and her head went from side to side. “No, oh, no,” she said. “The gun, struggling. The rock.” Her lips quivered, and her eyes widened, as if she were seeing this horrible vision now. “His face ... Oh, my God, his poor, dear face...”

“Don't think of it, please,” Kate whispered.

“But I can't stop!” A little whimper escaped her lips. “I loved him ... so desperately ... but he never knew. And now he's dead!”

There was a sudden movement behind Kate, and Mrs. Bernard turned her head away. Avis came through the door with a bowl covered with a white napkin. “Th' doctor wants her t' have some hot soup,” she said in a low voice, and put the bowl on the table.

Mrs. Bernard had ceased speaking, and Kate had the feeling that she had learned all she was going to, at least at the moment. She released the hand that still clung to hers and rose. “I'd like to speak to the doctor before he leaves,” she said. “Can you give her the soup?”

“O' course,” Avis said in a kindly voice. “There be hot tea downstairs, m'lady.”

Kate bent and kissed Mrs. Bernard's forehead, then went to the door. There, she paused and turned, prompted by an impulse she didn't quite understand. Avis had seated herself beside the bed and was removing the napkin from the bowl of soup.

“Avis?” she said softly.

Avis turned, the candle's glow outlining the curve of her plump cheek. “M'lady?”

“Your sister said that you were until recently in the employ of Lady Duncan, at Thomworthy.”

The broad, capable shoulders seemed to stiffen. “Yes, m'lady.”

“Until ... when?”

There was a brief hesitation, and then the shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. Avis's voice was lower when she said, “Three days ago, m'lady.”

Something Kate heard in the woman's tone made her say, “Forgive me for being impertinent, please, Avis. But Sir Edgar's death is much on Mrs. Bernard's mind, and I thought perhaps you might shed some light on what happened. When did you first learn of it?”

Avis seemed to pull in her breath. “Jenny and me, us heard it right here, from Mrs. Bernard. Yestiddy, us heard it. Somethin' about a gun, it wuz, an' a rock.”

“And from anyone else? When was it confirmed?”

“This evening, the man who looks after the farm said that Sir Edgar was killed.”

“I see. I wonder ... You were at Thornworthy. Do you have any information about Sir Edgar's departure from there?”

This time, the hesitation was more lengthy. Avis turned her head slightly away, so that now Kate could not see the outline of her face, only the neatly dressed hair, the fold of woolen shawl, the set of her shoulders. “No, m'lady,” she said at last.

But Kate did not quite believe her, and she puzzled over these new bits of information as she went slowly down the steep stairs.

I
n the small parlor off the hallway, Charles and the doctor were sitting in front of the fire, drinking tea liberally laced with brandy and talking about Thomworthy. For in Dr. Lorrimer, Charles had at last found someone who knew something about Sir Edgar's coming to the moor, and he intended to make the most of their time together.

“Tell me about him, Lorrimer,” he said. “What was he like?” But even as he asked the question, he understood that its answer would not tell him all he needed to hear. Everyone who knew Sir Edgar would know something different about him, and while some of these images would certainly be illuminating, they would also be contradictory. Still, it was impossible to understand the murder without knowing more than he did about the victim, and so he had to ask.

“From what I understood of his earlier activities,” the doctor replied, “I shouldn't have said that Sir Edgar was a man to enjoy a life of rural retirement. One of Rhodes's men, you know, down there in Africa, where he made a great deal of money, a great deal faster than he ought. He seemed, or so I thought, to fancy more excitement than the moor offers.” He turned his head, and the firelight glinted off his glasses. “But he had been ill, you see, and wasn't expected to live long.”

“Oh?” Charles asked curiously. He blew across the top of his teacup and took a sip, feeling the welcome warmth of hot brandy slide down his throat. “What sort of illness? If you don't mind my asking.”

“I don't know the details, I'm afraid,” Lorrimer replied. “One of those nasty African fevers that comes and goes unexpectedly, quite frightening in its recurrence, I was told.”

“You say that he wasn't expected to live. When was that?”

“When he returned from Africa and inherited Thornworthy from his uncle.” He put down his cup and fished in his pocket for tobacco and cigarette papers. “The moor has had a restorative effect upon a great many people, and Sir Edgar was among those fortunate enough to be returned to health by the fresh air and bracing climate. Very different from the African heat, to be sure.” Dexterously, he rolled a slender cigarette, then lit and drew on it. “Or perhaps it was the salutary effects of matrimony. He and his wife were married only a short time before they came here.”

“I see,” Charles said. He waited, and when the doctor continued to smoke in silence, finally said, “Go on, please.”

The other seemed to start, as if he were recalled from private thoughts. “Ah, yes. Well, in the event, Sir Edgar's health seemed to improve a great deal, and he told me not long ago that his London doctors had pronounced him quite cured and likely to live a long and healthy life. I think it was that news which made him consider the possibility of standing for election. He seemed ready enough to reenter an active public life. I even understood that he was planning to purchase a house in London, and remove there for part of the year. But then he dropped the scheme and withdrew his name from consideration. I didn't hear why.”

Charles thought about that for a moment, letting the silence lengthen. The wind was howling in the chimney and the rain beat violently against the window. He thought of the prisoner out on the moor and hoped he had found shelter from the storm. After a moment, he returned to the subject. “There was some sort of uneasiness between Sir Edgar and his cousin, I understand. Something about the inheritance?”

“Oh, dear, how stories do get around,” Lorrimer said with a sigh. He bent over to flick a cigarette ash into the fire and continued in that posture, his elbows on his knees. “Yes, I am sorry to say that there has been a great deal of uneasiness, as you put it, in this matter. Jack Delany is a hotheaded man, and he was absolutely persuaded that his claim to Thornworthy would be honored by the courts.” He straightened, rubbed his nose, then sat back in his chair. “I must say, Jack took it quite hard when the decision went the other way. Made a great deal of unpleasantness about it, actually. Those of us who know him counseled him to be careful in what he said for fear that it might be misinterpreted.”