Black Heather

by Virginia Coffman

  Patrick Kelleher had turned scarlet under this devastating insult, and he sprang forward, thrusting me aside. He would have reached Sir Nicholas’s straight, contemptuous back had not Elspeth run to him and stopped him.

  “No, Patrick, it is what he wishes. He has done away with Grandmama somehow, and he wishes us to cloud the matter by bickering with him. Then he may have us all remanded for trespass.”

  Patrick was still struggling with her when Sir Nicholas looked over his shoulder at us, remarking pleasantly, “I never remand young ladies who visit my household. Only wife-murderers.” Then he went into the Hall.

  Mrs. Hardwicke and I were shocked at this language, but it was like setting a burning spill to tinder for Patrick Kelleher.

  “Look!” he cried to the rest of us. “He calls me murderer. Yet see what we found here in his own park...”

  Elspeth stared at the twisted brown morocco leather in his hands, and she was soon joined by Mrs. Hardwicke and her husband, who nodded their heads, easily convinced. But for a reason I did not quite understand, I felt strongly repulsed at the idea of becoming a part of this cabal.

  “You see, Kathleen?” Elspeth whispered faintly. “Her shoe. It must have fallen off when he carried her away.”

  “Perhaps she was walking and lost it,” I ventured, hoping desperately that this was the case. But Elspeth would not have it so.

  “What could possibly drive her to walk out here in the night, in her bedwrapper, and then to ... to wander about in her poor bare feet? If she were not dead before, this would—this would...”

  Patrick had the decency to look ashamed of himself for having presented his evidence quite so crudely and with such triumph. When he put his arm out to console her, she shrugged him off and pleaded with me.

  “We must find her. We know now she is not in the house nor the cellars. There is only the moor. She must be out there.”

  “Lord love us, Miss Elspeth,” the housekeeper murmured, shaking her head as she touched the muddy shoe with one hesitant finger. “There be the whole of Heatherton Moor to hide the poor soul in. And His Ludship knowing the moors so well and all.”

  “But why do you keep saying those things?” I demanded, since Sir Nicholas had walked away like an innocent man, and left me to make his defense. “You’ve no more proof that he did this than that anyone else had taken Mrs. Sedley away. One of the Hardwickes, for instance.”

  Mrs. Hardwicke, however, would not stand by for this. “Truly, mum! That’ll be the outside of enough! And what for would we be doing harm to the poor lady? It isn’t as if we’d had that fierce tongue-lashing from her in the deep night.”

  I began to suspect there was more to this dreadful business than I had suspected when Elspeth Sedley first complained to me of her grandmother’s disappearance. Or perhaps it was simply that Elspeth had considered the implications too horrible to tell me. Even before the Hardwickes answered me, I knew what to expect. I felt that awful numbness which comes when one is given the death warrant of a friend.

  “His Ludship was walking out of the lady’s chamber after her attack at dinner, and Ezra and me heard her say, ‘You’ll burn the Hag’s Head when I’m rotting, and not a moment afore.’ And then ... Miss Elspeth, you’ll be after telling young Miss the rest I cannot speak it for what it means.”

  “Tell me,” I repeated, half frantic with wondering. “What was it? What did she say?”

  Elspeth had taken the poor, dilapidated shoe from Patrick’s hand and was caressing it, though it made her dainty fingers all muddy. She did not look at me as she added, “Grandmama said at the last, ‘I believe you’ve always wanted to kill me, because I would not let you marry Megan. But if I live through this night, I’ll see you never touch the Hag’s Head.’”

  “Is that enough?” Patrick asked me, not taunting now, but cold and deliberate and judicial.

  I could think of nothing more in Sir Nicholas Everett’s defense. Nothing except that whatever his crimes, he had been kind and gentle to me for a few minutes yesterday, and I would never forget those moments.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “You know why he wishes to burn the inn, do you not?” asked Patrick. “It is to hide away any evidence against his earlier crime. It was very likely our grand magistrate who murdered my poor wife.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Elspeth agreed. The two of them began to argue the possibilities implied by his finding her grandmother’s shoe, and no one but me, I thought, cared tuppence for the spirits of the man we had condemned out of hand, in a very un-English way, without a trial. I was mistaken though, when I thought no one cared.

  “Oh, Miss,” murmured Mrs. Hardwicke, shaking her head, “if you could but think on him as driven! He must have gone quite off his head, thinkin’ of her bein’ so unhappy and all at the Hag’s Head. And it’s my thought they’d ought to burn the place down. Sir Nicholas is right on that score, money or no.”

  I looked toward the Hall. Elspeth and Patrick Kelleher were discussing the time it would take to hitch up the young Sedley mare to the gig so that they might more quickly notify the magistrate of the next parish and conduct a complete search of Heatherton Moor.

  “Pothole by pothole,” as Patrick added grimly, while Mrs. Hardwicke and I shuddered.

  With a quick glance at the others, I whispered to the housekeeper, “I cannot leave him without at the least saying thank you for his care of me. About my foot, I mean. And until they prove—or find something, I think someone ought to believe in him.”

  “Aye, Miss Kate. You do that.”

  So, while the others set about with their gruesome thoughts and suspicions, I went back into the Hall, not understanding completely my own feelings that made me wish to offer a parting word to a man who very probably had murdered Mrs. Sedley and may even have murdered her daughter twelve years before. Oddly enough, I felt no fear for myself. The memory of that visit of his as the Hag did not haunt me now, perhaps because it was broad daylight or because I borrowed the sense of safety implied by the presence of Patrick Kelleher and the Hardwickes so close at hand.

  I was wandering aimlessly through the ground floor gallery, trying to become interested in Sir Nicholas’s ancestors gleaming at me on the wall while I considered where he himself might be, when he called to me from one of the rooms near the entrance hall.

  “Kathleen! What are you doing by yourself there? Do you want to be eaten by the ogre? I’m surprised the good Patrick trusted you with me.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, what he meant, or whether he was entirely sane to say such things, but I turned, thinking I might calm him and assure him of one person’s care and interest in him. He came out into the gallery, took my hand, and led me into that room where he had deposited me yesterday afternoon, a lovely, bright, cheerful place with a southern view that included, among other, less forbidding sights, the distant blotch upon the moorland landscape that was the Hag’s Head. I sat down obediently upon the elegant but comfortable sofa and expected him to sit down too, but he let go of my hand and walked up and down, occasionally looking out upon the moor.

  “I believe you share the general view, that I have somehow made away with Clara Sedley.”

  “If—if that is so,” I said hastily, “I’m sure you had your reasons!”

  He laughed and stopped long enough to look down at me and say, “What an equivocal answer! My dear child, what possible reason could I have for spiriting that old woman out of my house in a most inhospitable way and sinking her in the nearest pothole? Well, answer me!”

  I began to wish the others were closer at hand, for I did not dare to answer him without exhibiting my knowledge of his duplicity, that masquerade as the Hag, and the fact that he had been exactly where the Hag came from last night. Could I say that I knew he had followed me across the moor yesterday, frightening me half to death, and then miraculously appearing with his man and his dogs to throw me off my suspicions? Perhaps he did not know that he did these things.

&nb
sp; “Sir, it is only that—everyone knows of your quarrels with Mrs. Sedley, and the threats last night. She would never let you burn down the Hag’s Head, or even purchase it as you wish to do.”

  “You may as well ask why Clara does not wish me to do these things. Her evil is considerably greater than mine, ungallant though it is to say so. She married her only daughter off to a detestable sneaking creature who was forever kissing the barmaids behind the kitchen door, pinching the scullery maids, running off for liaisons with them.” He paused, staring out at the heath under its morning coat of sunlight, which made it appear blackened and dead. I knew he was reliving these dreadful years when he had been forced to stand back and see the woman he loved destroyed by a man he despised.

  “I know, sir. Mrs. Sedley told me she had made a grievous mistake in choosing Patrick above yourself.”

  He smiled grimly. “But not for the reasons I have given you. Clara’s reasons were my title, these estates. Not once did she ever try to free Megan of that disastrous marriage, and Megan was too loyal—or perhaps she loved the rogue, after all.”

  “Surely it is possible, sir.”

  “Anything is possible, in love. Why, the day Megan died, I went up there to ... I would have killed that rascal with my bare hands ... He had struck her, because she made objections to some barmaid or other with whom he had a rendezvous in Heatherton. Yet she prated to me about devotion and marriage vows and the rest of it.”

  “How dreadful! And after he had struck her!”

  “Commonplace—for that fellow. But he will not set foot on my land again, and that I warn you. I mean to have the grounds patrolled and the dogs loosed upon him.”

  There was a great deal of natural male jealousy in this, I thought to myself, and I wondered if he guessed it. It was quite possible that he did not know of some of the things he did in the night, like that masquerade.

  “Well, sir,” I said, rising, “the explanation may be that someone in the community is in reality two persons. Someone who does not know that he does these things.” Seeing him begin to frown, I added hastily, “Father said that was the case with a fisherman in the cove, back home, who struck his head one night on a rock and was forever doing things afterward that he did not remember.”

  I thought he was going to be angry, but he seemed to change his mind. He put his hand under my chin and for the barest instant I was afraid he might attempt to choke me. Then, shaking a little under the feeling that he always engendered in me, I felt the light blotted out briefly by his face as he kissed me lightly on the lips, and I, quite forgetting myself, kissed him back. I could hear someone walk into the room behind Sir Nicholas, but his body hid the intruder from my sight until Sir Nicholas added, with only his eyes smiling, “You see, I know perfectly well what I am doing. Run along. Elspeth is here, armed to the teeth, to rescue you.”

  Flushed at having been caught in so compromising a situation, I raised my head, fussed with my hair a moment, then walked over to join Elspeth, who said to Sir Nicholas, “And you talk of Uncle Patrick’s way with females! I think you are rather before him in that regard, if in nothing else. I intend to find Grandmother, whether she is dead or otherwise. And if she is dead, you shall hang, sir, as you should have hanged for the death of my Aunt Megan ... all because she would not run away with you that night.”

  “Bravely said,” Sir Nicholas applauded her. “I could only wish Megan had had such noble support upon that last day of her life ... Good day for now, Kathleen.”

  “Goodbye, sir,” said I, going out and feeling both excited by his signs of preference and wretched for what I felt we were about to prove against him.

  When we reached the gravel path outside the Hall, I said to Elspeth irritably, “I did not need you to play the warder, you know. I am perfectly capable of defending myself.”

  “Yes, I could see that,” she murmured in that sly way which I felt would have surprised her grandmother. “You know, of course, that there is every reason to believe he really has murdered Grandmother.”

  “I don’t see why,” I lied stoutly, as we came in sight of Patrick and the horse and gig. “We don’t even know she is dead. She may be wandering about, for some reason of her own.”

  “Really, Kate, and you called me silly!”

  Behind us, we heard Sir Nicholas’s purposeful stride upon the gravel, and I paused, hoping against hope that he would say something—anything—that would put him in an innocent light. When I looked around, though, I saw that he had Mrs. Sedley’s little tiger-striped cat, Timothy, draped over his hand, and I ran back to take the little fellow from him, thanking him profusely.

  He glanced from me to Elspeth, saying in that grave way of his which masked his ironic humor, “You see, I have not eaten your Timothy. Though I was sorely tempted. He scratched down two portieres and made a hopeless jumble of the plants in the conservatory.”

  “There,” I pointed out to Elspeth as we walked through the gate to the high road, “he is quite human, after all. I’ve no doubt you’ll find Mrs. Sedley left of her own will, but nobody has the sense to look for her tracks.”

  “Her tracks!” said Elspeth impatiently. “What do you think Hardwicke and Uncle Patrick and I have been about this past hour? There are no tracks through the Hall Park. The walk is gravel, you know.”

  “Take seat in the gig,” said Patrick as he met us outside the east gate. “We’ve a deal of things to do, and one of them is to send to York and London for Bow Street runners to help locate tracks across the moor, particularly around the region of Everett Hall.”

  Father had always said the Bow Street runners who did so much police work in London and thereabouts, were “outlanders” when it came to Cornwall and the West County, and that he wouldn’t trust one with a single farthing. But there was no doubt that they had done some remarkable work in recovering lost valuables and sometimes in recovering bodies. The idea of a Bow Street runner up in these parts, prowling over the moors like a hound on the scent, made everything seem very immediate and horrible. Perhaps Mrs. Sedley was dead. I very nearly wished they were not calling in the runners.

  “Oh, you needn’t look so horrified at the thought,” Elspeth said, apparently reading my secret dread. “It was Jassy Macrae’s idea. After all is said, her husband was killed yesterday, and likely by Nicholas.”

  I settled Timothy in my lap, for he was vastly uncomfortable and squeaked his protests several times before I remembered him. Then I turned to Patrick Kelleher.

  “I suppose this is your idea. You were up at the Hag’s Head when I left yesterday. Did you find your precious treasure?”

  For the first time he looked surly, and I thought I saw the expression he must have used with Megan, his wife, when he struck her that last day. I began to dislike him and wonder what Elspeth could possibly see to attract her. Or, indeed, what Megan had seen, to make her give up her relationship with Nicholas Everett for that with Patrick.

  “No, I did not. And I looked through both floors and the cellars. But it’s not a place I’d care to spend a fortnight in, and that I’ll confess to readily!”

  “Did you see anything?” Elspeth asked with curiosity as he started to lift her into the gig beside me.

  Patrick glanced off in the direction of the Hag’s Head but could not see it, since the large main building of Everett Hall stood between us and that sinister view.

  “I saw nothing. But I felt ... I felt a presence.” He shrugged, then laughed at himself, and I liked him a trifle better. “I daresay, you’ll be shouting from the housetops that I’m the greatest craven who ever lived, but I tell you, if we but had Megan’s little savings out of that place, I’d as lief put the torch to it myself! I tell you, there are ... things...” He shivered and laughed. “No matter. You’d not believe what that feeling is. And I’ve no mind to tell you and be laughed to Bedlam for my imaginings. At one time I thought I saw—” He broke off and leaped into the little seat beside us, crowding us considerably.

  I considere
d that neither of them knew of my encounter with Sir Nicholas, when he had left those red-mud prints, just as had the Hag who haunted that room of mine; and therefore that they had not so much evidence against him as I, and I was heartily glad of it.

  “Perhaps Sir Nicholas is right about wishing to burn down the inn,” I ventured.

  Patrick’s face hardened, and the halo of his hair with the morning sun upon it merely made the mature lines of his face stand out, so that I knew I was dealing with a man who might be as strong-willed as was Sir Nicholas himself.

  “I mean to have Megan’s savings. They were mine as well. I worked dog-hard for it, and never a farthing did I see except that which she entrusted to me after incessant promises and groveling on my part.”

  “It was not truly a happy marriage, was it?” I asked, feeling very clever, for he only bore out what Sir Nicholas had said about Megan’s disastrous marriage.

  “Happy enough, as marriages go happily,” he said with a cynical twist to his full lips. “One word between us was enough for the half the county to accuse me, after that night when I came home from Heatherton to find the cellars all afire, and Megan dead in the ruins of them.”

  “You had friends, and have them,” Elspeth reminded him loyally, which annoyed me for some odd reason. “I knew, even as a child, that they lied about you.”

  “Dearest Beth,” he murmured, holding out his hand to her, and they clasped hands before me. I thought of how easy it would be for them to band together and accuse Sir Nicholas of the very thing Patrick was guilty of.

  He said then, brushing her hand away with a brisk little slapping gesture, “Ten years I have been away. And still there are those that think me guilty, all because I was having a glass of porter over the taprail in Heatherton. And not even a girl to drink with. She’d gone off with some more likely customer or mistaken the rendezvous.”