The Formula for Murder (24 page)

“He paid me well, Dr. Lacroix,” Weekes says. “But it almost cost me my life. I’ve seen plenty of strange things out in moors, but it was the first time I saw the ghost of Lady Howard, with her coach of bones, pulled by a black beast of a hound.” He gives us a glassy-eyed stare. “Near scared the life from me.”

He coughs out spittle and stares at me. I don’t know what to say. His eyes turn glassy and his face goes beet red. My impression is that he’s suddenly holding his breath.

“Are you all right?” Wells asks.

Weekes stares ahead and then coughs again; blood dribbles down the corner of his mouth.

“My God, I think he’s having a stroke.” I look to Wells. “What do we do?”

Weekes gives out a gasp that sounds like a nervous rattle from his lungs and then seems to simply relax in his chair.
Dead.

I can’t breathe.

I stare at him then look at Wells who stares back at me. His mouth is open and so is mine.

Weekes slumps forward.

The handle of an ice pick is sticking out of his back.

There’s a scream.

Mine.

A DARTMOOR ROAD

40

Everything stopped. The talk, the laugher, the slap of ale pints onto tabletops, the loud, sucking noise some men made as they slurped down the beer. For me, time itself stopped in a frozen moment during which I gape at Weekes.
The last remains of Weekes
.

Then all hell broke loose as the realization dawns that there is death—
that there is murder
—before their eyes.

My entire world is a small, crowded, smoky little pub in a wilderness village that is probably too small to be on most maps. First there is more confusion than questions—My God! It can’t be! What happened? How? Why? Who did such a thing?

When the last question makes its way around the room like a juicy rumor whispered at a party, the room grows silent and two dozen pairs of eyes stare at the two strangers in the room.

Wells and I look at each other. We don’t need a Ouija board to realize that we are the only candidates for murderers in the room.

“You killed him,” a grizzled man with the body of a blacksmith says to us.

“The strangers killed Old Isaac,” another man yells.

“Murderers!” the barmaid screams.

A growl goes around the room and panic moves my feet and mouth.

I step up to the barmaid. “
Stop it!
” I spin around to the tightly packed crowd surrounding us. “
Look at us!
We’re not killers. We were talking to Isaac about a painting. Someone killed him, but not us. We hardly know the man.”

“No man in Linleigh-on-the-moors would have touched Old Isaac. Only a stranger could have done it. If not you, lady, then him!”

More growls of concord go around the room. Poor Wells is wide-eyed. He tries to say something and it comes out as a stammer.

“
Wait!
” I shout. “We were facing Mr. Weekes. He’s been stabbed from behind!”

Another frozen moment as the men digest what I told them. I hear mumblings of assent and others of doubt.

“Where’s the other stranger?” I ask.

There’s confused mumbling and the man who accused Wells says, “There are no other strangers.”

“There has to be, the man at the general store said there was.” I pounce at the barmaid. “You served another stranger in here tonight, didn’t you!”

“Yes, by the lord, yes, I did.” She looks around. “He was here a moment ago. Where’d he go?”

“There was a man standing behind Isaac earlier,” Wells says.

“Yes, I gave him a pint,” the barmaid says.

“That’s your murderer,” I tell the men. “Find him!”

Wells and I pour out of the alehouse with the others.

“The horse is gone!” someone yells.

The statement is about the full-sized horse we’d seen earlier. As the men gather to talk, I pull Wells away and to our buggy.

As we leave town, I tell Wells, “Keep the speed down.”

“Why? They may think about it and come after us.”

I look back. There is no pursuit.

“I don’t think so. These people think the moors are haunted. They’ll wait for morning, I’m certain.” If I was them, I wouldn’t go out on the moors at night.

“Why do you want me to keep a slow pace? There’s a full moon, we can see the road pretty well.”

“There’s a murderer ahead of us. Let’s keep a good distance from him.” I don’t say I am also concerned that our little horse could step into a rut. I don’t think he would appreciate my concern for a horse at this time.

Wells is silent for a moment. “We should go back to the village. They’ll have the police out there tomorrow. They’ll want to question us.”

I sigh. “Wells, you have too much book learning to be a good investigator. My
experience
with coppers tells me that if they get ahold of us, we won’t be going anywhere for days. If we’re not lynched by those farmers back there after they get boozed up. The delay would mean I’d have to return to New York without answers. For me, that means the horseshoe and the kingdom’s lost or whatever happened at the battle.”

“‘For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.’”

“That, too. Who uses an ice pick?” It’s a rhetorical question, not one for which I expected an answer.

“An ice pick,” he repeats.

“Knives, guns, poison, clubs, hands and cords for strangling, all common weapons. But an ice pick is a singular weapon.”

He is silent for a moment and then says, “The Rustlers.”

“Come again?”

“A London gang from the Whitechapel district. They wear American cowboy boots and call themselves rustlers.”

“Cowboy boots,” I repeat.

“They’re known to kill with ice picks.”

“Clean wounds, easier to use than a knife, placed right in spine, heart, or brain, brings instant results without making noise.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense.” Wells shakes his head. “There wouldn’t be a Whitechapel thug out here.”

Whitechapel was the violent, poverty-stricken area in London made notorious for having been the scene for the killings by the fiend known as Jack the Ripper.

“It’s just as likely,” I tell him, “to find someone from Whitechapel out here as it would be finding a female newspaper reporter from New York or a teacher from London. The person was hired and sent here.”

“Why? Who in God’s name would kill that old painter?”

“This time it’s easy. There’s only one candidate, actually two acting together. Lacroix and Radic. They are the ones who have a motive to keep Isaac silent. And I’m at fault, too.”

“What? That’s nonsense. Why would you say such a thing?”

“I’ve left an open trail for a horde to follow. The interest I showed in the bog painting must have been conveyed to Radic by Lady Callista Chilcott.”

“And you believe they acted that quickly? What? Took a train to London and picked up a Rustler off the street in Whitechapel?”

“No, there must have been a prior connection. When I was in Dr. Radic’s office, he had a thug there.” I meet Wells’s eye. “He was wearing cowboy boots.”

41

We arrive back at the stable after midnight—avoiding being murdered by a Whitechapel cowboy or ripped to pieces by a moors beast, but we have a sleepy, angry stableman to deal with. Meeting his demand to be paid double soothes his ruffled feathers, but it doesn’t get us a ride into the heart of town where we can find lodging.

“Taxis stopped hours ago and don’t come down here unless they have a fare, anyway.”

“We need lodging.”

He points to the faded word
GUESTS
on a shingle hanging from the gatepost to his house next door. “Me wife takes in a traveler now and again.”

“How many rooms do you have?” I ask.

“Just the one.” He eyes us. “You’re married, aren’t ya?”

“Of course,” Wells says.

I give the stableman an extra shilling. “For a good meal of fruit and your best grain for our tireless pony.”

The pony accepts my big hug. “I’m going to miss you,” I whisper in his ear. He nods his head. I like to think it’s his way of telling me he’ll miss me, too.

The wife greets us at the door, sleepy-eyed, wrapped in a robe with her hair up in curlers. Fortunately, she is less evil tempered about our late arrival than her husband, but no less mercenary.

“The room’s a quid.”

Wells starts to object and I interject, “We’ll take it.”

A quid is five dollars,
¹⁶
which is several times more than what I’m sure her going rate is, but I pay it. I am too tired to haggle or pack my sore body and valise to go to another inn.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I whisper to Wells as we follow the woman up a dark and narrow stairway. The bedroom is tiny with a frumpy brass-railed bed topped with a heavy quilt, a small dresser with a washbasin and mirror above it on the wall, and a single stuffed chair.

“The water closet is down the hall.”

The landlady pauses at the door and turns and smiles at us as we stand together, worn and ready to drop.

“It’s so nice to have a good Christian couple as our guests.”

The moment the door closes I fall backward onto the bed. “Oh God, I am so sore and tired I could sleep a week.”

Wells collapses in the stuffed chair. “I confess that had we not gotten this room, I would have laid down on the ground and slept ’til the sun came up.”

I close my eyes and the grim image of Isaac Weekes’s eyes popping, blood dribbling from his mouth, came to me. So does another horrible thought—I am sure I caused him to be targeted for death.

“Don’t think about it, Nellie.”

“What?”

“I could tell from the expression on your face you’re agonizing over Weekes. Unfortunately for him, Weekes signed his own death warrant when he did the painting for Lacroix. If it wasn’t you seeking him out, it would have been an investigator for Lord Winsworth, the police, or another reporter and the result would have been the same. It’s a little too much to imagine that we were being followed so quickly that an assassin got to Linleigh before we even decided to go there.”

“Thank you.” I close my eyes again, too worn out to get up and take off my shoes and freshen up in the washroom down the hall.

I am dozing when I hear Wells say, “I’m sorry.”

Slowly pulling myself into a sitting position, I ask, “What are you sorry about?”

He is slumped in the chair with his eyes closed. His lids open and our eyes meet.

“For not being the man I would like to be.”

“I see … and what is the reason for this profound observation of your presumed failings?”

“You have been paying our way because I don’t have money. You had the courage and determination to stand up to that mob in the village, while I stood by shocked and speechless. I was frightened to set out in the night through the moors because I felt that if we were attacked by the murderer, I would not be strong enough to protect you.”

Men and their egos! Even Wells, who insists he wants women to be strong and equal, is slighted if I’m too assertive.

“And who made you master of the world, Mr. Wells? You’re not responsible for me. As for what happened in the pub—”

He throws up his hands. “You’re going to tell me that you reacted because you had experience dealing with a mob before and I, poor devil that I am, have only read about mobs.”

“As a matter of fact, I was going to say exactly that. And while you’re castigating yourself, let me tell you something. It’s a rare man of courage and determination, indeed, who would have left town with a potential posse chasing us and a killer on the road. I don’t know what would have happened had we ran into the murderer, but I do know that the man I was with had guts to face the dark night and I’m confident he would have fought valiantly for me had it come to a fight.”

He stares at me for a long moment.

“Do you really believe that?”

“Have you heard me ever say anything I didn’t believe?”

“Nellie … you do lie a bit.”

“White lies … they don’t count.”

I bend down and kiss him on the forehead. “Thanks for taking care of me tonight.”

He pulls my head down and my lips meet his, warm and soft and smooth. I can feel the kiss down to my toes. I pull back and he stands up and pulls me to him. We kiss again.

“Let me make love to you,” he says.

I shove him back into the stuffed chair. “Make yourself comfortable. You can use the floor if the chair doesn’t work out.” I bend down and give him a peck on the forehead. “It’s a true knight in shining armor who lets a woman have the only bed in the place.”

42

Bright and early the next morning, Wells and I go to the train station together and obviously buy two tickets to London, letting the ticket seller know that I am an American and that Wells and I are traveling together.