Death Comes to Dartmoor

by Vivian Conroy

“But that is cruel. My mother expected my father’s return. Even on her deathbed. By taking me away, he deprived my father of the baby he could have had.” Merula felt anger well up inside her. “I have to go back and ask him to his face.”

  “No, don’t do that. He will have had his reasons for acting the way he did. I’m sorry I said this to you. Perhaps I should not have. I don’t know if he lied about your father. I only had that impression because of the way in which he spoke and averted his gaze.”

  “There we are.” Raven came back in with the stable boy in tow. “I met him outside the front door,” he explained. “As he had kept an eye on our visitors’ horses. So, my boy … what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Edward, sir. But they all call me Eddie.”

  “Well, Eddie, why don’t you sit down for a bit?”

  Eddie didn’t seem to hear him as he stared at the scene of the village, river, and sea Raven had built. “What’s that?” he asked, going over and taking a closer look.

  “Oh, just a little something I enjoy. Building scenes.”

  “But it’s books and papers and …”

  “Can you read?”

  “Yes, sir.” Eddie’s face shone with pride now. “Not very well, not entire books, if that’s what you mean. They’re full of long words. But I can write letters. My mother lets me write to my father for her. He’s a sailor. He’s away for months.”

  “I see. Do you miss him?”

  Eddie shrugged. “I haven’t met him much. I’ve been in service since I turned twelve.”

  “And now you’re here with Mr. Oaks. Do you like it?”

  “His horses are very nice.”

  “And Mr. Oaks himself?”

  Eddie’s expression turned dark. He picked up a tin soldier and toyed with it. “He’s arrested. He must be an evil man. My mother won’t want me to keep working here. But I can’t leave the horses. They need someone to take care of them.”

  “Yes, of course. And besides, Mr. Oaks will soon be returning. He isn’t guilty. It was all a misunderstanding.”

  “Not guilty?” Eddie looked up, dropping the soldier to the floor. It rolled away across the boards. “You mean, he didn’t kill Tillie? Then who did?”

  “Yes, we would all like to know that.”

  “But he must have killed her. He was angry with her.”

  “Angry with her?”

  “Yes. He said she had been through his things.”

  “Things? You mean like valuable things?” Raven glanced at Merula. “Mr. Oaks thought Tillie was stealing from him?”

  Merula studied Eddie’s expression and posture closely. This idea was completely new to them.

  “No, paperwork, he said. But that was silly. Tillie couldn’t read or write.”

  Eddie looked down and stooped to pick up the soldier. He wiped some dust off it.

  “But you could,” Merula said. Her heart was beating fast as a picture began to emerge in her head. “Was that why Tillie let you in here? Not to look at the specimens but to help her make sense of paperwork?”

  Eddie flushed deep. “I know nothing.”

  “I can understand you’re loyal to Tillie. Especially now that she’s dead. But you must tell us the truth. It can help us find her murderer.”

  “I know who murdered her.” Eddie’s eyes flashed a moment. Then the anger died down again, and he stood with his chin on his chest.

  “Who then?” Merula asked softly.

  Eddie fidgeted with his hands. “Oaks,” he whispered.

  “No, Eddie, it wasn’t Oaks, and you know that. You’re lying. Why are you lying? Because you know who did it and don’t want to point the finger at him? But poor Tillie is dead, and … She must have been afraid when the killer grabbed her from behind and choked the life out of her.”

  “Stop it!” Eddie cried. “She died because of me. It is my fault. If I had helped her, she would still have been alive!” He burst into tears.

  Merula went over to him and stood beside him. “Why is that, Eddie?” she asked softly.

  Eddie gasped for breath to speak between sobs. “She asked me to help her read something. But I thought it would just get us into trouble. So I didn’t do it. Then later I was sorry and thought I should do it anyway. She had said it was important and could get her money. I don’t know why, but I wanted to help her and make her happy.”

  He rubbed at the tears that ran down his cheeks. “But when I said I’d help her anyway, she just laughed at me and said she didn’t need me anymore. She had someone else to do it for her. That man must have helped her and then killed her to take the money for themselves.”

  Merula’s mind raced. Eddie’s revelation fit with what they had concluded themselves earlier. That Tillie might have had an accomplice in her plans to get rich. “You say it was a man. So you know who helped her?”

  “Not really.” Eddie shrugged.

  “Come, come,” Merula pressed. “I think you know. At least you have some idea.”

  Eddie swallowed hard. “Ben Webber,” he whispered.

  “Ben Webber? And why would that be?”

  “Because he always acted like he’s so smart. And she liked him. When she was still working at the inn, she liked him. But he wanted Fern. He never looked at Tillie. Until she started talking about money. Then he liked her well enough.” The boy’s anger was tangible, like heat radiating from an open fire.

  “So Ben Webber agreed to help Tillie?” Raven asked. “He knew about this … money scheme she was involved in?”

  “I think so.” Eddie rubbed his face again. He seemed suddenly embarrassed about his outburst.

  Raven’s eyes met Merula’s for a moment. She read the same uncertainty there that she felt inside. Eddie had no reason to lie to them. If he said Tillie had wanted to look at paperwork and he had refused to help her, so another might have done it in his stead, it could be true.

  But Ben Webber? He seemed so ambitious, always looking up. Why would he listen to a girl he had never noticed before, telling him about some obscure scheme involving money? He had the shop to tend to, his reputation to consider.

  Still, Webber was an ambitious man. And if the money scheme had to do with the railroad coming, Webber might have believed it could benefit him. Hand him the power over the village he craved. A new era with tearooms and toby jugs …

  “And what about those tales her father is telling about Oaks harassing Tillie?” Raven asked. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Mr. Oaks was friendly to us, that’s all. I think Tillie would have thought him very old.”

  Still, Tillie had suddenly kissed Oaks when he came back from a walk one day and asked him to marry her, protect her. Why? Because she had been with child? From a man who would not marry her?

  Ben Webber? The greengrocer’s son, who had to marry someone of his own class, not the daughter of a blacksmith who spent too much money on liquor and gambling after his wife died?

  But Ben Webber was now courting Lamb. Lamb, who was also not of his own class.

  Or didn’t he know that? Did he take her for a girl from a middle-class family in London who had been hired as lady’s maid to the niece of a lady?

  Merula bet that Lamb had dropped Aunt Emma’s title as quickly as she could to convince Webber she came from wealthy circles. If Webber thought Lamb was a girl he could show off, not knowing one bit about Rotherhithe …

  Raven said to Eddie, “Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything about what Tillie wanted with paperwork? And what happened when you were inside the house? Have you seen the specimens? Have you been near the kraken? Have you cut off one of the arms?”

  Eddie shook his head. “I didn’t want to help her because I thought no good could come of it. I just wanted to keep her safe.” He gulped again. “I did everything wrong. Now she’s dead.”

  Raven said softly, “We’ll find out who killed her, Eddie, you can depend on that. He will be punished.”

  Looking past the boy
at Merula, he continued. “I think we need to speak with Ben Webber. Confront him with some lies he told us.”

  CHAPTER 16

  At the grocery store, they learned from Mrs. Webber that her son was out with the cart delivering goods. That they might catch up with him if they drove out to Leekwood Farm.

  “What is wrong?” she queried with a sharp look from her cold blue eyes. “What do you want him for?”

  “A party we will be arranging soon,” Raven said. “Thank you and good day.”

  Outside, he hissed to Merula, “The typical overbearing mother. I wager that because she’s smothering him so, our friend Ben Webber takes his pleasures where he can.”

  “You think he fathered Tillie’s child?”

  “It seems likely.”

  “But he was supposed to love Fern. He never had eyes for Tillie. Why would he have fathered a child with Tillie? I don’t want him to be the father of her child, as Lamb likes him so much.”

  Raven grimaced. “Lamb’s feelings can’t deter us from what we have to do. Excuse me, sir …” He gestured to an old man carrying firewood. “Where can we find Leekwood Farm?”

  Armed with directions, they left the village across a sunny road, the occasional butterfly fluttering by. Leekwood Farm was a beautiful, well-preserved building with stables and shacks, chickens searching for food in the dirt beside their coop, and a scruffy black-and-white dog running for their cart as far as its chain would allow. Then he stood, straining and barking.

  No one came out of the farmhouse.

  Raven jumped down and helped Merula off. “That must be Webber’s cart.” He pointed at a vehicle left beside the stables. “Where can he be?”

  They walked over to it. The dog had quieted down and sat watching them, his tongue out of his mouth. From inside the stables they heard voices and then a girl’s giggle.

  Raven put his finger to his lips and gestured for Merula to follow him. Her eyes had to adjust to the dimness a moment, but then they could see the pair sitting on a hay bale. Webber was telling some story about a hunting party, and the girl laughed at each few words he said. Her cheeks were red and her hands clutched a paper bag, probably containing sweets from the grocery store, as she noisily sucked on something.

  “Mr. Webber,” Raven called out. “I’m sorry to tear you away from your … customer, but I must have a word with you.”

  Webber jumped to his feet, the cap that had lain on his knee falling to the floor. He retrieved it and brushed some dirt off it. “Until next time,” he said to the girl, then rushed over to them.

  Raven took him outside and then observed, “You must be very popular, Mr. Webber. I assume that the girl didn’t pay for those sweets?”

  Webber flushed. “She leads a lonely life here, sir, never seeing anyone. Her parents let her do a lot of work and … Well, I just like to spoil her a bit, bring her some sweets every now and then. These are new, pink ones, her favorite color. Just a little kindness, sir, for a lonely girl.”

  “Yes, and as she doesn’t get away from this farm much, she can’t tell others about you. She can’t find out that your … uh, kindness isn’t limited to her alone.”

  Webber flushed even deeper. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  Raven laughed softly. “I mean, sir”—he put mocking stress on the term of address—“that Tillie had to die because she was carrying your baby and you couldn’t afford your mother finding out about it.”

  Webber’s face drained of all color. “No,” he whispered. “No. She wasn’t with child. She only said so to pressure me into marrying her. She wanted away from that father of hers. Desperately. She would have done anything to achieve that. Slept with any man.”

  “Did you tell yourself that to hush your conscience?” Raven’s voice was loaded with contempt. “Tillie’s father might have had his weaknesses, caused by loneliness and grief, but he loved his daughter and wanted the best for her. You, on the other hand, took advantage of her, making promises you never intended to keep. You’re a predator.”

  “No, sir, I …”

  “Not another word!” Raven growled. “When I first spoke with you, you said that Oaks had to kill Tillie to cover it up. You pretended you meant that he wanted to cover up their affair, but you referred to her being with child. You claim not to have believed her when she told you, but you’re lying. You did believe her. You realized that you were in trouble now. That once your mother found out about Tillie’s condition, you could lose everything you have. You had to kill her to remove her threat to you.”

  Webber, his eyes bulging in his pale face, looked for a defense but didn’t seem to find any.

  Merula said, “You’re friendly with my maid as well. If you hurt her feelings, I will hurt you. You can count on that.”

  “Just a little kiss; what does it mean? I wager she has been kissed before. She has traveled, has seen the world. She has been with a footman here, a coachman there. It doesn’t matter to me. We’re just having a good time.”

  “Until she leaves again.” Merula’s voice trembled with anger. Lamb believed she would find a home here, a safe place away from the poverty in London, not just for herself but also for her old mother. This man had never meant anything of the sort. Just a short affair, a few kisses. Hushing his conscience with the idea that it was the same for Lamb. Not even having asked her or tried to determine what kind of girl she really was.

  “I demand,” Raven said coldly, “that you stay away from Lamb from now on. You’re a despicable person for what you did. A cold-blooded killer.”

  “No,” Webber spoke with a trembling voice. “Tillie claimed to be with child, that’s how I knew, but I never believed her. It was just lies to pressure me into marrying her. But I would never do that, and she knew it.”

  “She told you,” Raven hissed, “and you knew it could not get out. You had to kill her so she couldn’t tell anyone that the baby was yours.”

  “They would not have believed her. They all knew that she wanted to get away from her father.”

  “Stop using her father as an excuse for …”

  But Ben Webber pushed on, in a loud voice, “They would have believed me when I said it wasn’t mine and she had been with others. At the inn, at the house. Mr. Oaks …”

  “Leave him out of it. He’s a decent man; you’re not.”

  “Just prove it.” Webber spat at Raven, his normally nice and friendly face a mask of rage. “Prove it was my child. Or that I killed her. You can’t. I never did anything of the sort.”

  “But you have been in the house. Tillie asked you in. You had to help her with some scheme. It could bring in money. She needed you and you obliged. You want to rise up in the village, be their new leader. Not the wreckmaster, some old man smelling of fish and saltwater; no, you. Younger, cleverer, at least that is what you think. Did Tillie have to die because of what she knew? So the money could be yours alone?”

  “No!” Webber’s eyes were even wider now, the color of his anger draining from his features, leaving them marble white. “Yes, she asked me to come into the house and help her look for some paperwork, but then she changed her mind again. She didn’t want to do it anymore. Tillie was soft like that. She could never hurt people.”

  “Hurt people?” Merula echoed. “What was it about exactly?”

  Webber sighed. “I don’t know. I helped her look once, but we couldn’t find the right things.”

  “What things?”

  “Something about the house, the land. I don’t know the details. She would tell me once it was all done.”

  “And you agreed to that?”

  “I …”

  “You saw it as a chance to be with her,” Merula understood. “In the privacy of the house.”

  Webber hung his head and shuffled his feet. “I never meant to do her any harm. She told me she wasn’t going through with the money thing, and I said she was a fool, and then she said all these nasty things about me, like I had never loved her and wouldn’t care
for her, and I left. You can’t talk to women when they’re all hysterical like that. She had to be crazy to let a chance for money go. But I wasn’t about to argue with her about it. I had enough of her tales. The supposed baby …”

  “She was with child. And she is dead now. Probably because she had no one to turn to.”

  Webber bristled. “I am not some insane killer. Whoever strangled her must be mad. Have you not heard about the markings on the neck? No human hands can do that. It wasn’t me.”

  “Then who?” Raven pressed. “You spent time with her, you knew whom she might have been afraid of.”

  “No one. She was nice; everyone liked her. She was very popular at the inn. Well, not like Fern, but nice enough. No one hated her or would have hurt her. We were all sorry for her because her mother died and her father couldn’t make ends meet anymore. He blamed everyone for their misfortune, even the doctor who hadn’t been able to heal his wife. He said the man had bled him dry, knowing the cures he prescribed weren’t going to help anyway.”

  Raven stood and stared ahead, his eyes pensive. Merula wondered if some thought had struck him, some light in the case.

  Webber said, “You won’t tell anyone about the baby, will you? I swear it’s not mine. And you cannot prove it. My mother would go crazy if she heard anything like that. She might turn me out of the shop.”

  “Now that might not be a bad punishment for what you did.” Raven crossed his arms over his chest. “You will never learn unless you get burned someday.”

  Webber pulled back his shoulders. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And that maid of yours is just a tavern wench. She threw herself at me. I didn’t even want to kiss her.”

  Merula scoffed. “How dare you twist the truth like that? We can obviously not believe a word you say.”

  Raven said, “What about the Tasmanian devil, Mr. Webber? You took it, didn’t you? Don’t try to deny it. You left your fingerprints on the glass of the container.”

  “That can’t be, because I was …” Webber fell silent.

  Raven leaned over. “Wearing gloves? Ah, Mr. Webber, such an intelligent man, knowing his alcohol and his formaldehyde. Of course you wore gloves.”