Death Comes to Dartmoor

by Vivian Conroy

  “You tricked me into saying something,” Webber hissed, “but I will deny everything until my dying day.”

  Raven clicked his tongue. “If you get accused of murder, that dying day may come sooner than you think.”

  Webber blinked nervously. “You have nothing against me.”

  “You had access to the house. You could take away specimens, cut the arm off the kraken. You knew about Tillie’s money scheme. The land wanted by the railway. They needed Oaks out of the way. You helped Tillie. You had to make sure Oaks went away somehow. Bixby had failed. He wasn’t going to get all the money the investor had promised. But you might. If you could solve the matter. Kill a girl who was a problem to you anyway and then …”

  “That is ludicrous. What railway? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The Tasmanian devil, Mr. Webber. Out with it.”

  “Yes, so I took it. I saw it and it looked kind of fierce and suitable to use in a prank. Bixby doesn’t want to buy his groceries with us because we are not fancy enough for his taste. I wanted to ruin his party, upset his guests. I took the beast and hid it in the well. Just to have some fun at his expense. Nothing more.”

  “And the arm of the kraken?”

  “I didn’t take that. I swear. I’ve never even seen the kraken. It was not in the room where I have been.”

  Raven glanced at Merula. That much might be true, as the kraken was kept in a separate room.

  “You’re far from cleared, Mr. Webber,” Raven said in a treacherously soft tone. “I would tread lightly if I were you. Stay away from Lamb and hope that your mother never makes the connection between you and poor dead Tillie’s condition.”

  Webber trembled a moment, his arrogant attitude shaken at the idea of his mother finding out and confronting him. “You’re so certain I could be involved. But what about Fern? Did you even consider her?”

  “What about Fern?” Merula asked. “You do not honestly propose she might have strangled her own friend?”

  “Friend?” Ben Webber laughed, a low, spiteful laugh. “They weren’t friends anymore, not after Tillie told her she was expecting. I never believed it was my baby, but Fern did. She hated Tillie. Also because she was always going on about her privileged position at Oaks’s. Fern might have killed Tillie believing she could then come to work for Oaks in her stead. Fern always wanted too much out of life. I wasn’t good enough for her when I proposed to her. No, she wanted a man with more money, more prospects in life. She was always scheming. No matter what the cost.” He spit in the sand and walked to his cart, got on it, and drove off. The dog barked and growled until he was gone.

  “Even the dog doesn’t like him,” Raven scoffed.

  Merula shook her head. “Do you believe him when he points the finger at Fern? I can’t see one girl strangling another.”

  Raven shrugged. “Hatred drives people to extreme acts. Fern is a tall, strong girl. Especially when using some tool, she could have strangled Tillie. You said earlier it was odd that a girl would agree to a meeting by the river at night. But it wouldn’t be odd if she had been asked to come there by her best friend. Someone she trusted.” He rubbed his hands together. “We need to talk to Fern again. Confront her with the knowledge of Tillie’s condition.”

  He led Merula to their cart and helped her on it. She almost lost her balance as she contemplated the implications of Webber’s admission that he had been involved with Tillie. “How are we going to tell Lamb what kind of man Webber really is? She will be heartbroken.”

  “Why? She just met him.”

  “But he was her hero, her new future! Her chance for a better life.”

  “Yes, Tillie must have felt that way about the railway coming.” Raven grabbed the reins and put the cart into motion. “I wonder who approached her and forced her to look into the papers at Oaks’s home.”

  “And why she didn’t want to be part of it anymore,” Merula mused. “If Oaks can be believed, she tried to have him marry her. She chose his side.”

  “Turning against whoever had engaged her to look through the paperwork,” Raven nodded.

  He suddenly froze. “Betrayal.”

  “What do you mean?” Merula studied his features closer.

  “Remember how Oaks told us a tale about his travels where he wanted to visit a ruin in the jungle and he needed a local guide and one man came forward, and in the night before they left, he was killed because an anaconda got into his room? An animal killed him, but it was believed it had been let into the window by a human hand to punish him? For his betrayal of his people in wanting to take Oaks to the sacred place. What if betrayal is at the heart of all of this?”

  “Tillie betraying whoever asked her to conspire against Oaks?”

  Raven nodded. “That person killed her.” He stared ahead thoughtfully. “It must have been about more than Tillie not wanting to harm Oaks anymore. To the killer, Tillie’s change of mind must have felt like a punch in the gut. So it was someone who relied on her, believed he or she could trust her. Someone like Fern? What if the girls originally devised this plan to get money together? After she killed Tillie, Fern then lied to us that Tillie had wanted riches but had never told her what they were. She could easily lie, since she was certain Tillie would never talk again to tell on her.”

  “But the stable boy could just as easily have devised the plan and then used Tillie for his own purposes. He was the one who could read and write, but Tillie had to give him access to the house if he wanted to get into anything. He claims she was doing it for someone else, but he could be lying about that.”

  “True. And what about Ben Webber?” Raven mused. “Isn’t he the most likely candidate to support the arrival of the railroad, to be the spy for this industrialist? And with Tillie’s condition, he stood to lose everything: his mother’s love, the shop. His future as an important person in the village. The new leader, as it were. For him, killing Tillie solved several problems in a single stroke.” He glanced at Merula. “If Fern really knew about Webber and Tillie, she might also hate him now. She might be able to tell us something we can use to create a solid case against him.”

  “But if she hates him, we can’t simply accept anything she says as the truth. She will have every reason to lie. Especially if, as Webber suggested, she herself is the killer.”

  * * *

  They drove out to the inn, where an eager boy of only six or seven years old grabbed the horse by the reins to lead it away. He pointed to where they could go inside, but Raven asked if they could go round back, as they wanted to speak to Fern in private. The boy seemed puzzled, but said, “If you go around the corner, you can see the kitchen door. It’s open, and there are lots of pots and pans out to dry. Fern should be about too.”

  Raven nodded at Merula. “That way, then.”

  Behind the inn, on a patch of dried-out, yellowing grass, the pots and pans the boy had mentioned lay in the sunshine. Most were dented or chipped. Fern was seated on a rough wooden bench, running a cloth through a pan she held in the crook of her arm. Glancing up, she widened her eyes a moment when she recognized them. “Are you looking for lodgings? We have none available at the moment. You can only eat and drink.”

  She laughed softly, nodding at the pots and pans. “And not very well either. Not what you’re used to, I reckon.” She surveyed Merula’s dress with obvious envy.

  Raven said, “When we spoke at the church, you forgot to tell us a thing or two, Fern. Tillie was going to have a baby. And you knew who the father was.”

  Fern sat up straight. “I did not. Tillie said whose it was, but I didn’t believe her. It was a lie.”

  “A hurtful lie,” Merula said softly. “After all, Ben Webber had proposed to you.”

  Fern’s eyes were wide and alert, darting from Merula to Raven and back. “Why are you asking questions? Are you with the police?”

  “No. We came here from London to have a pleasant time in the countryside. Unfortunately, murder is never pleasant.�
�� Raven held the girl’s gaze. “Although it can be convenient. If you can get rid of the girl who stole the man you loved and then taunted you to your face with the baby she was expecting.”

  Fern jumped to her feet. The pan fell to the ground and jumped away across the uneven grass, clanging into another. Fern cried, “I never loved Ben. That’s why I refused to accept his proposal. And Tillie wasn’t expecting his baby. She just said that to hurt my feelings.”

  “Why would she want to hurt your feelings if you were friends?”

  “Tillie could never stand all the men liking me instead of her. They did paw her, but they never gave her presents like they did me. She wanted Ben, but he never even noticed that she existed.”

  “Perhaps not at first,” Raven said. “But after she came to work for Oaks and could share interesting stories about his house and his collection …” He clicked his tongue. “Ben Webber is an intellectual man. Such a house would pique his interest.”

  “Intellectual?” Fern scoffed. “All men are alike. They only want one thing.”

  “So you did believe Tillie’s baby was Ben Webber’s.” Raven stood with his feet apart, eyeing the girl with a dark frown. “You lured her to the river at night and you strangled her.”

  “No!”

  “She trusted you. She would have come to you. And you are certainly strong enough to kill her.”

  Merula looked at Fern’s hands, which were clenched together in front of her. They seemed to squeeze and wring. She shivered involuntarily.

  Fern said, “No one will ever believe I hurt Tillie.”

  “They will once there is official confirmation that Tillie was pregnant. There were already rumors at the inn on the night she died. Once it’s confirmed during the inquest, everyone will wonder whose baby it was. If they conclude it was Webber’s, it isn’t hard to see how angry you must have felt. How humiliated that he replaced you so soon.”

  Fern wet her lips. “Why would anyone want to spread the word that Tillie was pregnant? They’d sooner hush it up. Her father wouldn’t survive such a tale. He always thought the best of her. Not that she deserved that. She didn’t want to stay with him anymore. She had had enough of his drinking and his gambling.”

  “But you said earlier,” Merula intervened, “that her plan to get rich was a surprise for her father.”

  “Yes, a surprise it would have been if one morning he woke up and she was gone. She wanted money to leave this place behind.” Fern gestured around her. “Can’t you see there is no future here? Not for Tillie and not for me either. But she had a plan to get rich and I had nothing.”

  “Perhaps you killed her, then, to prevent her from getting away like she wanted. Perhaps you wanted her to be stuck here forever like you are.”

  Stuck in a shallow grave, Merula thought and shivered.

  Fern shook her head. “She never told me how she’d get the money. I didn’t even believe her. I thought she was just making herself interesting. Yes, I was angry with her, and yes, I could have slapped her or pushed her in the dirt, but I didn’t kill her.”

  She bent down and picked up the pan again, reseated herself, and continued cleaning. The harsh lines around her mouth told of resilience, of being dealt a blow and getting up again, pushing through, as there really was no other choice but to go on, and on, and on.

  Sensing the moment of overtaking this girl and achieving anything was gone, Merula gestured at Raven to leave. He followed her with a sour expression. “That didn’t deliver a thing.”

  “She’s far too hardened by life to just crack if you push her. If she did kill Tillie, she knows she’ll end up on the gallows for that.”

  Merula didn’t want to add that she even felt half sorry for the girl who might have been driven to the edge by her friend’s revelations that she was about to be rich and was expecting a baby of the man who had shortly before claimed to love Fern. “I can picture Fern pushing Tillie so that she fell, hurt her head and died. Something impulsive leading to a death Fern hadn’t really wanted. But strangulation with an implement suitable for that, brought along for the express purpose of leaving the alleged kraken marks on the victim’s neck? That indicates premeditation. A calculated plan to get rid of someone and implicate another. Does that fit with Fern’s personality?”

  “Ben Webber said she wanted to have money and opportunity. You never know how far a person might be willing to go for that.” Raven sighed, rubbing his eyes.

  They stood in front of the inn again, waiting for the boy to bring their horse and cart to them.

  Raven said softly to her, “Oaks is still behind bars. The fact that Bixby engaged a fake doctor to commit him to an insane asylum won’t convince our inspector that Oaks isn’t guilty of murder. We need more than that. But what?”

  “A confession of guilt,” Merula whispered back at him.

  Raven laughed. “Yes, preferably that, but how do you propose to get it?” His tone suggested the question was rhetorical.

  But Merula replied, dead serious, “In the same manner as we did last time. By setting a trap for our killer.”

  “Oh, no.” Raven caught her elbow. “We are never going to do that again. I don’t want to remember how close it was.”

  The boy had their cart ready and brushed the horse across the neck one last time. Raven gave him a coin, and the boy grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you, sir. Do stop by again, sir. There has been an inn here even before the great conquest. Knights came here to sleep on their way to tournaments to do battle.” His excited look conveyed he would have loved to have been a part of that.

  “Don’t you have to go to school?” Merula asked.

  “There’s no school in summer.” He sounded as if he thought her quite dumb for not knowing this. “We have to help out with the sheep or getting peat. But I don’t go to school in winter either. Father thinks it’s a waste of time. If you can work with your hands, you’ll always have bread.”

  Raven tossed him another coin, and he caught it with one hand and ran off with it to assist two merchants who were leaving the inn.

  Helping her up on the cart, Raven observed wryly, “He’s still satisfied with what the passing folks give him. But someday he’ll want to get away from here. I can’t imagine spending your entire life here in Cranley.”

  With a click of the tongue and a slap of the reins, he put the horse into motion, and waited until they had left the inn well behind before he said, “Don’t believe for a moment I will agree to setting a trap for the killer.” He glanced at her. “I already died inside last time we tried that.”

  “This time”—Merula held his gaze—“I won’t be the bait. I can’t be. I’m not in the right position to do it. But Lamb is. She stayed at the house; she can have found things there. She was close to Ben Webber, and he might see her as a threat. She can claim to have papers from Oaks, or my sketchbook, or … whatever the killer might want to have. She can tell her tale at the inn. Because she ran away from me. I treated her badly, and she ran away. She’s on her own, then, with what she knows and holds. An easy prey. Yes, that might just work.”

  Raven shook his head. “I have no idea what you mean by all of this, but I’m not participating in any plan to trap the killer.”

  “Good. Then Lamb, Bowsprit, and I will have to do it without you.”

  Raven made a disbelieving sound. “Bowsprit is my valet. If I tell him he can’t be in on it …”

  “Then he’ll do it anyway. He’ll never let Lamb run any risk. You know that as well as I do.”

  Raven stared ahead for a few moments, then turned his eyes on her with a challenging look. “And you think I would?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Merula shivered in the deceptively chilly breeze that came whispering through the group of trees that sheltered them. The creaking of the branches overhead jerked across her raw nerves.

  The night was full upon them without stars or a moon. They only had the lantern Raven was carrying. He had turned up his collar and stared into t
he darkness to where the lit windows of the inn beckoned them. Lamb had gone in about an hour ago, carrying a valise as if she were traveling. She had walked with the gait of someone angry and upset, carrying enough coin to buy food and drink for herself and linger to complain about her bad luck to anyone who wanted to hear.

  Until it was time to leave. The inn didn’t have any vacant rooms, so Lamb would have to go and walk away from it to reach the village of Cranley and find refuge for the night there.

  Merula bit her lip. This was very dangerous, and it wasn’t her risking her neck this time but Lamb. Dear, faithful Lamb.

  She had been truly mad and upset when they had told her of Ben Webber. She had said she was sure he was no killer and would prove it by doing what they wanted. “If the killer comes tonight,” she had said, “and he jumps me and you catch him and pull him away from me, pull off his hood, you will see it is not Ben. I know my Ben.”

  “Psst!” A dark figure came up to them. Bowsprit in his old sailor’s disguise, the limp and the hanging shoulders, the wild hair and the beard. He whispered to them, “She did a marvelous job fooling them all with her tale of how you had turned her out of the house for having snooped among Oaks’s things. She made a show of keeping her valise close to her all the time, like it contained something of value. She ate a little and drank two ales. I hope she can stand alcohol well. It is easy to get intoxicated on an empty stomach.”

  Bowsprit sounded worried, glancing back at the inn as if he couldn’t stand the idea of having left Lamb behind in that place, alone.

  Merula shook her head. “The ale will be watered down as it is in most public houses. And Lamb ate bread before we left the house. She will be fine.”

  She said it more to convince herself than the others. Lamb had been upset about their suspicions of Webber and in a mood to do odd things. Had it been fair to request this of her? She was brave and strong, but the person they expected to turn up tonight had already killed one girl.

  “There she comes,” Bowsprit pointed.