Death Comes to Dartmoor

by Vivian Conroy

  “To kill himself, you mean?” Merula’s mind raced. “In a state of despair? Or because he was mad with fear? He did mention to the stable boy that ‘they’ were after him.”

  “You talked to the stable boy in detail?” Raven studied her. “What did you expect to learn from him?”

  “Where Oaks might have ridden out to so early in the morning. I also asked what people came to visit him here. Bixby, of course, but they did argue just last week. And a gentleman in a very fine carriage.”

  She told him everything the stable boy had told her and Lamb, including his rather cryptic references to the missing servant girl who might very well be the dead girl found that morning.

  While she spoke, Bowsprit was busy undressing their host and putting him into bed.

  Raven picked up one of the man’s boots and studied the soles. “No peculiar red clay here that can give us a decisive clue,” he said with a wry smile. “Nothing much here but a bit of dried mud holding some stems of grass or other leaves. Must have picked it up at the river. I should know more about plants, really. It might prove to be useful someday.”

  He put the boot down and looked at Merula. “You just said that the stable boy mentioned he knows where Oaks’s money chest is.”

  “Yes, he claimed to be able to pay Tillie’s wages even if Oaks wasn’t here.”

  “How would he know that? He doesn’t come into the house.”

  “Perhaps he did come into the house. Oaks might have paid him his wages in the library or his study. The money chest could be on or in a desk there. Perhaps the boy saw where he got it and remembered its place.”

  Raven stood with a pensive look on his face, staring toward the window seemingly without seeing anything. He spoke slowly, as if to himself. “Oaks mentioned the girl’s name last night. He seemed to be upset about her. About the disappearance? Did he fear she’d be killed? But why? There had been shipwrecks, yes, and whispers that some creature was behind them, but Oaks had no reason to think a girl, on dry land, would be hurt by this same creature.”

  He suddenly turned to Merula, fixing her with his intense eyes. “Or did Oaks already know what had become of her? Did he kill her? You can’t deny he was in a state of great distress when we met him. And why leave this morning insisting ‘they’ were after him? The death wasn’t yet known.”

  “I have no idea.” Merula looked at the man on the bed. “I had hoped you’d find him quickly so he could enlighten us, but he doesn’t seem able to tell us anything. And even if he does come to and can speak with us, will he tell us the truth?”

  Bowsprit said, “Will he even know what the truth is? I’ve seen men in a state like this, and they couldn’t remember what had happened to them. Sometimes a blow to the head can do that. Or intoxication.”

  Raven strode to the bed. His lean fingers examined Oaks’s head, running over the back of it. “I can’t feel a bump here. I had already ascertained there was no damage to his face. No black eye or bruised lip. No signs anyone punched him. Intoxication …”

  He leaned over and sniffed the man’s breath. “No alcohol as far as I can tell.”

  His gaze ran over the face resting on the pillows, then to the side table. “Wait, what’s this?”

  He reached behind the lamp that stood on the side table and produced a small glass bottle with a stopper on it. He opened it and sniffed. “Odorless. Might be laudanum. Oaks might have told Bixby he needed no doctor, but he did take some kind of drops.”

  “We could send them to Galileo in London to have him find out what they are,” Bowsprit suggested. “I’m sure he will be happy to help out.”

  “Excited to be part of a new investigation,” Raven said with a sour half smile. “He was actually quite jealous that we left the city to come here. But he could hardly have accompanied us, with his creatures to take care of. They may all be still alive, but servants are just as eager to stay away from them as they are from Oaks’s dead specimens. Besides, he wanted to try some obscure experiment he had found in an old manuscript. I do hope his house is still standing.”

  Merula couldn’t help smiling at the memory of seeing Galileo for the first time through a haze of pungent fumes wafting from a test tube and wondering if those fumes were somehow explosive, as a Bunsen burner was flaming nearby. Once the need to complete an experiment was upon the eager scientist, he forgot about everything else. Including his own safety.

  Raven continued in a grim tone, “I was just thinking as we rode back here how we went on a vacation to Dartmoor to recuperate from our last adventure. Now it seems we have run headlong into new trouble.”

  He turned to Merula. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, actually. My ribs haven’t hurt at all, and we have been rather active.” She smiled at him, trying to convince him that the injury she had acquired in her confrontation with Lady Sophia’s killer hadn’t worsened. “I think sometimes that being active helps to keep one’s mind away from things that are painful when one has too much time on one’s hands to think about them.” If she had remained in London, she might have been tempted to dwell upon those fearful moments when she had been face-to-face with someone who had already killed and wasn’t afraid to kill again to stay out of the hands of the police. Here in Dartmoor, confronted with yet another puzzle, she had to direct all of her mental energy to that.

  Raven shook his head. “I don’t agree. This should have been a nice quiet time for us. Some walking by the sea, on the moors. Visiting a country house that is open to the public. You could do some sketching, I some horse riding. We’d go see the Perseids shoot across the night skies. Nothing to do with crime. And now it appears there have been deaths here, of sailors on wrecked ships and this strangled girl, and our friend Oaks is involved in them. Or at least implicated in them.”

  “It would be useful,” Bowsprit observed, “to know more about these marks on the dead girl’s neck. I do know that strangulation leaves discoloration, bruises, but I’m not sure what they mean about the marks. Strange marks, suggesting that the perpetrator wasn’t human.”

  “Bixby said something about red blots,” Merula said. “He referred to the suckers on the kraken’s tentacles.” She looked at Raven. “Do they actually suck? I mean, if the tentacle was thrust around the neck of a living girl, would those suckers have left red blots on her skin?”

  “I doubt it. But then, I don’t know much about tentacles. I do know that some animals kill with their touch because there is poison in their skin. For instance, in hairs on their skin. I wonder if those suckers are poisonous somehow.”

  “That is why you didn’t touch them,” Merula said. “You looked at them as if you wanted to test them but didn’t.”

  “Well observed.” Raven laughed softly. “I did indeed want to test them, but I can hardly sling such a tentacle around your neck and pull to see what it does. If it is poisonous, my little experiment could prove to be the end of our vacation.” His tone was light, but Merula sensed he was genuinely worried about her being there, caught up in another crime.

  The door opened, and Lamb carried in a tray holding a coffeepot, cups, a crystal carafe full of a brownish liquid, and glasses. She seemed to be concentrating completely on balancing the heavy tray, and Merula was glad she hadn’t seen the odd deer in the corridor and dropped the tray, smashing everything on it.

  Raven gestured for her to put the tray in the windowsill. “Put it beside those books. I’ll pour.”

  Bowsprit caught Raven’s eye. “If I have to send off a parcel with that bottle of drops to Galileo in London, I could go to that inn near Cranley and have a talk with locals, try to find out more.”

  “Yes, but you should disguise yourself a little. Some of the people who were here this morning to burn down the house might have seen you and know you’re with us.”

  Bowsprit nodded. “I can dress up like a sailor. I’ve brought my old things with me.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed them a tattoo just over the elbow. “Such signs always inspire confid
ence. I’ve been across the world, can tell my tales of storms and dangers. Foreign ports, foreign markets. Things they’ve never heard of out here.”

  “Just as long as you don’t mention sea monsters.” Raven wagged a finger at him. “You’ve seen firsthand how the mood heats here and how the mob is ready to attack and hang a man. If your cover isn’t convincing, they might—”

  Lamb gasped.

  Bowsprit cast her a cool look. “I’ve done this before,” he assured them, and left the room.

  Raven rubbed his hands. “He should turn up something. He’s good at what he does.” Reaching out to pour the coffee, he froze, staring at the books beside the tray. “What’s this?”

  He picked the top book off the stack. “A history of grave robbery?” He looked at the next book. “Kistvaens? What on earth are those?”

  Oaks groaned from the bed. They all looked at him, Raven closing in quickly and touching his hand. “Charles? Are you with us? Say something.”

  “I saw it …” Oaks’s bloodless lips barely moved as he whispered in a croaking voice. “I saw it. The ship never had a chance.”

  Raven looked at Merula. Kraken, he formed without making a sound.

  Merula shrugged.

  Oaks sighed deeply. “She should have … left. She should have gone away.”

  His hands grasped across the blanket Bowsprit had put over him.

  Merula stared at the fingers tensing and relaxing like animal claws. Could this man be a killer? Had he strangled the girl? Perhaps under the influence of the strange drops they had found in this room?

  Opium gave people terrible visions of things that were not real.

  “No!” Oaks pushed himself up on the pillows, his face a contorted mask, his eyes open wide. “Take it away from me. It’s gruesome. Take it away!” he screamed, then fell limply back.

  Raven hurried to feel for his heartbeat. He sighed in relief. “Beating strong. He seems to have fallen asleep now.”

  “He is mad,” Lamb proclaimed firmly. “We have to call a doctor and leave him in capable hands. Then we can go back to London.”

  “If he took drops of some kind, their influence will wear off. We have to speak with him and learn all we can about the strange happenings here. Bowsprit will also bring news of his time at the inn.”

  Raven paced the room. “While we were out looking for Oaks, I asked Bowsprit what he had learned about the wreckmaster. You will recall he was supposed to ask the coachman a thing or two while sampling my expensive cigars.”

  Merula had to laugh at his sardonic tone. “And did it pay off?”

  “I’m not sure. The coachman repeated much the same things we had heard already. He’s in charge of the search parties when ships get wrecked and their cargo washes up along the shore. He also saves people. But that doesn’t explain why his helper was so eager to keep us away from the beach yesterday or why your notebook was seized and the drawings he assumed you might have made of the beach torn out of it. They must be hiding something.”

  “Smuggling!” Lamb cried. She walked up to Raven and gestured at him. “Everyone knows that in Cornwall and Dartmoor, they’re all smugglers. They have boats coming in and then they take off the cargo and they trade it themselves. Liquor foremost, but also other things. They must be hiding that from the local law.”

  “Possibly.” Raven knotted his fingers. “I’ve heard of hides on the moors where the liquor is stored until another person can come by to take it away. Did the girl know about the smuggling? Perhaps she saw the people involved? Had she threatened to tell? But why? Villagers stick together. They don’t betray one another.”

  Betrayal, Merula thought. Their host had mentioned that topic the night before, speaking of his adventures abroad and the guide he had wanted to hire to take him to some ruin in the jungle. The guide had been considered a traitor by his fellow men and had been murdered. Or at least there was a possibility of that. A possibility that the anaconda hadn’t come into his room by accident or coincidence.

  Betrayal. Why had Oaks felt it necessary to talk of that? Had he known that the missing girl had been too talkative? That people might have thought she had betrayed the secret of the wreckmaster at the estuary and his helpers in Cranley and beyond, and that she had to die for that reason?

  Had Oaks feared that his servant girl was already dead as he spoke to them?

  Raven gestured at the bed. “I’ll stay with him for a while, see if I can get some liquor into him, some coffee to clear his mind. I’ll call you in when he’s fit to speak with. You go and sit for a while, rest. Once Bowsprit is back from the inn, we’ll have more to discuss.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Bowsprit didn’t return until late in the afternoon. He came in with an unsteady pace, and Merula wondered for a moment if he had drunk too much. But as she saw the keen light in his eyes, she knew he was still sober and probably just stiff from walking or riding.

  Bowsprit gestured for her to come along with him up to the room where Raven was still tending their unwell host. “I had to wait a while for any men to come into the inn at all. The morning is quiet. Lunch pulled some merchants from a neighboring town who knew little about the deaths and even seemed reluctant to discuss anything unsavory over their meal. Then, around two, some men came in, and I recognized the one who had blocked the road.”

  Merula’s heart skipped a beat. “He saw all of us well. Did he recognize you?”

  “I don’t think so. I was quite close to him, sitting beside him and drinking ale, and I never saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. But these are sly people, and they don’t let you see what they think or are up to.”

  While speaking, they had reached the landing, and Bowsprit went ahead of her and opened the door into Oaks’s bedroom with a flourish. “After you, my dear lady.”

  Merula walked in and found their host sitting up against the pillows, having regained a little color in his face. His eyes were still dazed but no longer darting around the room, and he seemed to have been talking, for he was suddenly silent, nervously knotting his fingers on the blanket in front of him.

  Merula felt a moment’s stab of disappointment that Raven hadn’t kept his word and hadn’t called her up the moment their host started talking and revealing telling information. Had he never meant for her to be present?

  Or had their host suddenly started pouring out his heart such that Raven felt that breaking the flow of his story might send him back into silence?

  Bowsprit gestured to Raven to go on and went to sit in the windowsill while Merula stayed near the door. Still their host seemed to be bothered by the disruption. “I have a terrible headache,” he declared suddenly, and reached to his bedside table. His eyes narrowed, and he half twisted his upper body to run his hands across the stand. “My drops. Where are they?”

  “What drops?” Raven asked in an innocent tone. “Are you ill?”

  “It’s just a simple sedative I take. The bottle should be here.” Oaks’s gaze darted from the side table to the windowsill, as if he hoped to discern the bottle there.

  “Since when do you take a sedative?” Raven asked. “Who prescribed it for you?”

  “I’ve been taking it for years now.” Oaks shrugged. “I’m a light sleeper, which isn’t convenient while traveling.”

  “And you never suffered any ill effects from it? Delirium, not remembering what you did or where you were?”

  “Not at all.” Oaks ran his hands over the blanket. “Just the past week …” He reached for his head. “These terrible headaches. I can’t think.”

  Raven sighed and told him to lie down and have some more rest. “It’s very quiet, so I’m sure that even without the drops, you will sleep.” He then walked to the door, leading Merula out into the landing.

  Bowsprit didn’t follow, so it seemed that he understood it was now his task to guard their host.

  Outside the door, Merula said, “If Oaks has been taking those drops for a longer time, his recent errant behavior can’t st
em from those.”

  “Still, I would like to know what the drops consist of. A simple sedative, Oaks says. I’ve heard people say the same about laudanum. But it has addictive properties, and in larger doses it can even kill. Perhaps over time Oaks started taking more and more drops, and what had first been harmless then started to cause delusions? At any rate, he can’t take more of them now. The bottle is on its way to Galileo. I am anxious to hear what his analysis turns up. Did Bowsprit mention to you how he got on at the inn?”

  “He did seem to have spoken to some people involved. Including the man who blocked our way yesterday.”

  “Ah, the wreckmaster’s right-hand man. How interesting.”

  Merula didn’t feel like talking about this. Fixating him, she asked, “What did Oaks tell you?”

  Raven’s keen gaze darted across her face as if he searched there for something. She also glimpsed the indecision in the tightening of his jaw before he spoke. “He wasn’t fully coherent …”

  Merula drew in breath. Was Raven hiding the worst from her? Better to put it into words right away. “Did he confess to the murder?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “Then what are you hiding from me?” Merula held his gaze, lowering her voice even more although there was no risk of them being overheard. “You’re hiding something, I can see it in your eyes.”

  Raven exhaled slowly. “I have no idea if I can trust what he told me.”

  “With that caution, tell me what he said.”

  “He repeated several times that we have to save the girl. The servant girl who used to work here. Tillie. He repeated her name as if convinced she was in danger. He doesn’t seem to know she’s dead. He told me to go out and find her and save her. Because … she loves him.”

  “She loves Oaks? They had an affair?” Merula wasn’t quite sure how old the girl had been, but judging by the age at which girls usually went into service, she couldn’t have been very old. Oaks was past forty at the least. An unlikely pair.

  Merula swallowed. It was common knowledge that often in households, males—whether within the family or the servants—might cast an avaricious eye on the maids, promising things like presents or money to get favors from them. When maids were young and naive and the suitor in question was wealthy, handsome, or had a way with words, the maids fell for this, and more often than not, a pregnancy threw their entire life into turmoil. They might be cast out of the house, forced into the street, afraid to return to their families and admit to their condition.