Death at Dartmoor (29 page)

Hearing the “we” and thinking that it would only complicate matters if Patsy involved herself, Charles opened his eyes. “This isn't the sort of decision one can make in an instant, Patsy. We'll talk about it first thing in the morning, shall we?” Then he recollected, with a frown, “No, not in the morning. I am meeting the constable very early, to have a look at the place on the moor where Sir Edgar's body was found. And then I hope to go to Thomworthy to have a conversation with Lady Duncan.”

Kate came through the open bedroom door in her dressing gown, unpinning her hair. “Patsy, dear, I'll go with you to see Mattie—Evelyn, I mean—in the morning. We'll come to some conclusion then.”

Charles frowned. “I wish you two would not involve yourselves in this matter. Whether Spencer is innocent or guilty of these crimes, he is a desperate and dangerous man. And his sister will not welcome your interference.”

“Of course, Charles,” Kate said ambiguously. To Patsy, she added, “Let's go to bed now, shall we? The evening has been utterly exhausting for all of us.”

Recollecting herself, Patsy stood. “I'm very sorry to hear about Mrs. Bernard,” she said. “I had no idea she was ill, even.”

“Nor had we, dear,” Kate said, and saw her to the door as Charles, wearily, went into the bedroom and began to unbutton his shirt.

Ten minutes later, Charles and Kate were in bed, lying close together under the heavy blankets. Warm and soft and fragrant, her hair loose, his wife lay in the curve of his arm, tracing his cheek with the tip of one finger as he stared at the ceiling.

“We can't abandon him, Charles,” she said quietly, speaking the thought that was in both their minds. “You know that Spencer is innocent of his wife's murder, and you don't believe that he killed Sir Edgar. We can't just turn our backs on him.”

Charles pulled in his breath. “I don't want you to involve yourself in this—”

Kate put her finger on his lips. “Setting my involvement aside, dear heart, what would be the best outcome of Spencer's escape?”

“The best outcome?” Charles scarcely had to think about the answer. “Why, for him to get away, of course. Off the moor, out of the country, someplace where he will never be recognized or known. There's no justice to be had in our English courts, under the circumstances. I have the evidence to exonerate him, but it will never be heard—or if it is heard, will not be fully accepted. We are years away from that.” He lapsed into silence, the frustration weighing leadenly on his heart. To have the indisputable proof of a man's innocence, and not to be able to use it because the judicial system was so confoundedly, so perversely backward!

Kate broke into his thoughts. “If he is to escape successfully, how? By booking passage through Plymouth?”

“He can't leave through any of the southern ports, not with the watchers on the lookout. If he could be disguised, and especially if he could join some sort of holiday-making group, it would be best to go by train from Okehampton to London, and then perhaps to Liverpool, where he could take ship.” He frowned. “Why are you asking, Kate?”

“Because I know how seriously you are concerned with this man's welfare, my love.” She paused. “You are, aren't you? I'm not mistaken?”

“I've never seen a case that cries out for justice as this one does,” Charles replied sadly, “or that baffles resolution to such a degree. It was difficult enough when Spencer was in prison, but this escape and the fact that he is suspected in Sir Edgar's murder complicates everything.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “I'll do all I can to ensure that he is cleared of Sir Edgar's murder, at least, but beyond that—”

She put his hand on her breast. “If you can clear him of that terrible charge,” she whispered, “I'm sure it would do him a very great service.” She turned her face to his and kissed him.

And then Charles found something else to occupy his attention.

T
rue to his word, Charles met Constable Chapman at the tiny Princetown police station as the sky began to lighten, revealing low, leaden clouds that spit occasional showers of cold rain. The constable had been to the livery stable and procured a horse and a two-wheeled brougham with a red top to protect them from the rain, and they set off down the cobbled street, swinging left at the plaza in front of the Duchy just in time to avoid a trio of children who were trooping noisily off to school. A man came out of the Plume of Feathers to sweep the front step, the green-grocer opened his door for business, and two boys were pumping buckets of water from the village well. A little farther along, they encountered two ponies laboring to pull a loaded milk wagon up the hill, and past that, a girl in a heavy coat, a shawl over her head, herding a flock of unruly geese. Storm or shine, no matter the weather, Princetown's residents carried on in the usual way.

Sir Edgar's body had been found on Chagford Common, between Metherall Brook and a narrow track that crossed the moor to the main road. Charles quickly saw that, if there had been any footprints or distinguishing tracks at the site, they had been lost in the process of recovering the body, for the entire area roundabout—already wet from recent rains—had been trampled before the constable arrived to cordon it off. If any other incriminating trace had remained, the night's storm had obliterated it, leaving nothing behind but the fresh, peaty odor of wet earth and decaying grass.

But a close examination confirmed for Charles the constable's reconstruction of events. Judging from the marks in the soft dirt inside the kistvaen, the killer had wedged Sir Edgar's body into the small coffin—a rectangular pit about two feet deep, five feet long, and some three feet wide, its sides and ends composed of single stone slabs—and shoved another slab over it. The spot was an isolated one, and in the ordinary way of things, the corpse might have remained forever in its ancient coffin, keeping company with the moor's aboriginal spirits, with the ghost of the one who had first occupied this narrow grave.

But the killer hadn't counted on the forces of nature, for soon thereafter, wild dogs appeared on the scene and got at the body, pulling and tugging at a hand and an arm until they had it partially out from under the stone, then mauling the throat and face. A moorman named Rafe, on the trail of the sheep-killing dogs, found the remains and hurried off to Princetown to fetch the constable. As he had put it, in horrified tones, “There weren't ‘nough left o' th' pore bloke's face t' tell who 'twuz.”

But it wasn't only the dogs that had been at the poor bloke's face. Less than a yard from the kistvaen Charles found a jagged chunk of granite, about the size of a melon, washed almost clean by the rain, but not quite. In the crevices of the rock enough blood was visible to persuade him that this was the weapon that had been used to destroy the dead man's features and obliterate—or at least that's what the killer must have hoped—the dead man's identity.

Charles straightened up and looked around. The kistvaen was dug into the peaty soil near a standing stone, about ten yards off the narrow track where their horse and brougham waited for them. Sir Edgar might have been killed elsewhere and his corpse brought here, or he could have been shot on the spot—there was no immediate way of knowing which.

As Charles surveyed the surrounding moor, a beautiful succession of tawny hills and rocky dales, he saw a sooty curl rising from a brick chimney behind a nearby clump of trees and smelled the pleasant fragrance of woodsmoke. “What residence is that?” he asked the constable.

“That? Oh, that's Stapleton House,” the constable replied. “Where Jack Delany lives. But this is commons land where we stand,” he added. “Stapleton House has only a small patch o' land with it, no more 'n an old orchard an' a fenced pasture.”

“I see,” Charles said, thinking what Dr. Lorrimer had told him the night before. “I had not realized that Mr. Delany's house was quite so near to the place where Sir Edgar was found.” The rain was starting to fall again, and the cold, damp air seemed to wrap him like a wet blanket. “What do you say to our warming ourselves at Stapleton House before we intrude on Lady Duncan, Constable? And perhaps we could have a look in the stable, as well.”

“The stable, m'lord?” The constable looked puzzled. “An' wot 're we lookin' for?”

“For a horse and gig,” Charles said. “From Thornworthy.”

 

Yelverton and Princetown were only six miles apart, but the difference in altitude between the two stations—Yelverton was some 850 feet lower than the town on top of the moor—required that the railway line twist and turn like a demented snake for a total distance of ten miles and forty-six chains, an elapsed time of one and one-quarter hours, and a cost of ten pence, one way. Most of this information was posted in the ticket booth in the Princetown station, including also the fact that this Great Western spur had been opened in August 1883 as an extension of the Plymouth-to-Tavistock line and boasted two trains a day, one arriving from and departing to Plymouth, the other from and to Tavistock, crossing at the Yelverton junction.

Conan Doyle intended on going only as far as Yelverton, so he paid his ten pence, ducked through the drizzling rain, and took his seat in the single railway carriage, in the company of a vacant-faced soldier returning to duty, an elderly lady with a wicker basket containing two cackling hens, and a young mother with a squalling babe in arms and too many valises. The engine huffed and steamed, and just as it got under way, the carriage door popped open one more time and Dr. Lorrimer jumped aboard, carrying his black leather physician's satchel and his stick, a fine, hefty walking stick with a silver band at the neck and a dog's tooth marks in the middle.

“Good morning, Dr. Lorrimer,” Doyle said with a smile. “Wretched day for traveling.” He glanced down at the bag, wondering if the doctor might be making a house call.

“Good heavens, yes,” the doctor agreed. “But not so wretched as last night, I'm glad to say.” He sat down in the seat next to Doyle and put his bag on the floor. “I suppose his lordship filled you in on the details,” he added distractedly, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and polishing the mist from the lenses with his handkerchief.

“I'm afraid I haven't seen his lordship this morning,” Doyle replied. “He planned to go off with the constable quite early to view the place where Sir Edgar's body was found.” He eyed the doctor. “The details of what, sir?”

“Ah, of course,” Dr. Lorrimer muttered. “So he said, so he said.” He hooked his glasses behind his ears, applied the handkerchief momentarily to his beaked nose, and sat back. “The details of poor Mrs. Bernard's death.”

“My heavens.” Doyle's eyebrows went up and he leaned forward. “Her death, did you say? Mrs. Bernard is
dead?”

“Consumption,” the doctor said sadly. “She had been doing quite well, so this came as something of a surprise.” He paused, pushing his lips in and out. “A great surprise, actually. I for one certainly hadn't expected it. The lady's physical health had improved substantially over the past year or two. I thought she was getting on quite well.”

Doyle stared at him, but it was not Mrs. Bernard's image that had risen into his mind. He was thinking of Touie, whom the doctors had expected to succumb for eight years now. Dear, dying Touie, whose resolute hold on life was the only thing that kept him and Jean from—His stomach wrenched and he shuddered violently. No, no, these were thoughts he dare not allow to cross the threshold of consciousness.

“But circumstances other than the physical played a role in her death, which you may appreciate, being a medical man yourself.” Dr. Lorrimer's head bobbed as he continued. “Poor Mrs. Bernard had been suffering for a day or two under a terrific mental strain. Sir Edgar's death, you see. She seems to have had some sort of psychic knowledge or awareness of it.”

“Indeed?” Doyle asked, putting Touie out of his mind and returning his attention almost desperately to the doctor. “A psychic knowledge?”

“So it would seem.” The doctor darted a glance at him. “I realize that you and Sherlock Holmes are more interested in science than in the supernatural, Dr. Doyle, so I won't bore you with—”

“Oh, but I
am
interested in psychic phenomena, Dr. Lorrimer,” Doyle interrupted hastily. “I myself have seen things on this earth that are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature. And I know beyond doubt that there is a realm in which even a genius like Holmes is helpless.”