“You gave Nicholas a perfect chance to quarrel with Aunt Megan and to strike and kill her in a rage,” Elspeth put in with horrid insistence. “Yet he has stayed here during these past twelve years with scarcely a shred of suspicion against him.”
“There is that which will change; mark me!” said Patrick in such a grim tone that I looked straight ahead and gritted my teeth so as not to make some stupid, illogical defense of Sir Nicholas.
“Look!” cried Elspeth suddenly. “There goes Nicholas now across the moor, and with a gun. Hunting at this hour?”
“A trifle late for hunting, I expect,” said Patrick, glancing back over his shoulder at the tall figure of Sir Nicholas striding over the heath beyond the west gates of Everett Park.
“Perhaps we should ... see what he is about.” Elspeth suggested, while I held my breath. I was frightened that they might decide to follow him and perhaps catch him in something he could not explain away. I felt that what Sir Nicholas Everett needed was someone to swear to his innocence, or—if it be so—his guilt. But not to be so in the dark as to his real nature. In short, someone rather like myself. But I could not very well leap out of the gig now and, making some preposterous excuse, take off across the moorland in his wake. here must be a plan to it, something logical so that no one would think I had done it merely to protect him by my evidence.
The well-mannered mare, in obedience to Patrick’s signal took us rapidly over the high road toward Maidenmoor. Each moment brought us closer to the Bow Street runners, and once they arrived, I thought, there would be no stopping until evidence of one kind or another was found against Sir Nicholas. I only hoped it would never be necessary for me to tell some nasty little thieving runner what I myself had seen and knew about the magistrate of this parish. It seemed dreadful to me that everyone should be aware of these latest forces ranged against him except Sir Nicholas himself.
Elspeth stared out over the moor, frowning. “He’s so very clever,” she said. “He scarcely came under suspicion when Aunt Megan died. Consider, Patrick, what if we never find Grandmother? It’s so vast out there. There is no end to it. And his position makes him very nearly invulnerable.”
“She may also be alive,” I said loudly, revealing more anger than I had intended. They both stared at me as though I had taken leave of what senses I had. “What if we find her at home in Maidenmoor? Will you still try to charge Sir Nicholas with some crime or other?”
Patrick laughed abruptly. “I can see that his titles carry weight with more than the old dragon.”
“Please,” said Elspeth; “don’t call her that. Not ... now.”
By this time the road had turned, and we were rolling westward, down toward hilly little Maidenmoor and the inevitable summoning of the Bow Street runners. There must be something that could be done to warn Sir Nicholas so that he might, at the very worst, be prepared for the humiliation and shame of questions, investigations, perhaps even arrest. Yet there was no gainsaying the fact that I was afraid for my own life if Sir Nicholas should suddenly turn into that horrid old Hag before my very eyes.
We reached the place where I had found Patrick and Jassy yesterday afternoon, and I saw the more obscure sheep tracks that led over the moors to the Hag’s Head or down under and following a beck that led through Seven Spinney. All I had to do was jump off and walk across the moors to meet Sir Nicholas and warn him. But I did not take the chance after all. The ugly truth is, I too was afraid of him.
By the time we reached Maidenmoor and saw the numbers of local people million about in front of the big parish church beyond the graveyard, I knew what it was. Jassy Macrae was there, with her husband’s body, and there was a burying.
Elspeth groaned at sight of it. “Oh, no! By midday they will all be drunk as lords. There’s the arval that does it every time there’s a burying.”
In spite of her husband’s death or, more likely, because of it, as the custom was, Jassy Macrae had the Owl of York Tavern open to accommodate the local men at the arval. It was a custom familiar to me in Cornwall under a different name, I soon saw, and like the Irish wake, but perhaps with more and stronger free liquor, if possible. And after every arval there were quarrels, brawls, and fights. In the end, the only one who got any peace put of it all was the person in the rough-hewn box that served as a coffin. Mrs. Famblechook and Meg Markham, both in black with heavy shawls over their heads, came out of the Owl of York, walking almost too firmly up to the church, and I guessed by Meg’s careful handling of her companion that the cook had borrowed a male’s prerogative to have herself a few drinks before the arval even started.
Patrick let us out in front of Sedley House. “I’ll be getting off to York at once. We should have a runner here by tomorrow at the latest if he takes the York Mail.”
I did not want to hear about it and descended even before he could help me, carrying the squirming Timothy looped over my arm upside-down.
After a moment’s low-voiced conversation with Patrick, Elspeth hurried in after me and up to Mrs. Sedley’s bed-sitting-room, calling her grandmother’s name all the way up, in a voice that was harrowing in the extreme. For all we knew, Clara Sedley would be in a wooden box tomorrow, and there would be the same milling throng about the church, with Elspeth and me as mourners. I had hoped against hope that we would find Mrs. Sedley snug in her bed at home, though how this might have been accomplished I could not imagine.
Elspeth had hurried out to run after Patrick and tell him that their suspicions were very likely right, when Meg Markham came in with Mrs. Famblechook, who was sobbing noisily and hanging upon Meg’s strong arm.
“Meg,” I said, “you haven’t seen Mrs. Sedley since yesterday, have you?”
“No, Miss. She said some’ut as how she’d have herself took to the inn, to see if it could be made habitable for your young ladies. But that was to be today.” She was turning from me to provide a handkerchief for the sobbing, hiccupping Mrs. Famblechook, when she added in a puzzled tone, “Miss, you wouldn’t credit the kind of tale that’s told these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Seems as how them as come across Heatherton Moor for the arval today, talk of seein’ a female as like to the mistress as makes no matter. And awalking she was. Awalking and arunning, all hunched over like it give her pain to do so.”
This was marvelous news. It would go far to negate all the present suspicions that Sir Nicholas had snatched her away and buried her in some boggy place on the moor.
“Yes, Meg. Where?”
“It’s what I don’t credit above half, myself, Miss. Seems as if it was on the sheep track to the Hag’s Head, just above the rise on Seven Spinney.”
“What time? What time, Meg!”
She was bewildered at my vehemence and so confused at it that she let Mrs. Famblechook go. The wretched cook wheeled away onto the love seat in the passage at the foot of the stairs, with only little Timothy to comfort her.
“Why, now, Daniel Fuller said it was close on dawn. Maybe earlier. Dan’l set out for Maidenmoor at half after midnight, for to be in time for the arval and all. He’s got a sheepcote on Heatherton Moor.”
Elspeth came back onto the staircase and asked us what we were arguing so loudly about.
“About your grandmother,” I said, cold, crisp, and clear. “About the person you said Sir Nicholas dropped into some muddy grave on the moor. She has been seen walking—mind you!—upon the sheeptrack up to the inn.”
Elspeth looked from one to the other of us. She was very pale, and when she spoke, all the confident, slightly superior manner was gone.
“That is impossible. Grandmother would never walk so far.”
Meg shrugged. “Well, Miss, that’s the story being told. The MacLaidlaw saw her, same as Dan’l Fuller, and them is folk with mighty sharp eyes. And we do know the mistress was that put about to get to the inn herself. Maybe she just walked off in her sleep.”
I had a wonderful idea, and logical, I thought. “I think she
went to the Hag’s Head to look for her daughter’s savings. The money both she and Mr. Kelleher and the Macrae have been wanting to find.”
“I tell you, it would only be the most extreme matter that would ever get Grandmother upon her feet for so long a walk.” Elspeth looked around as though hoping to find Mrs. Sedley suddenly sitting up in that comfortable bed of hers, giving us our orders in her sugar-sweet voice.
I said, “If we can get a man to go with us, I am perfectly willing to walk up to the Hag’s Head and prove Meg’s story is true. That is where we will find Mrs. Sedley, and I daresay she may even have walked up there in a kind of sleepwalking, which I’ve heard of people doing at times.”
Elspeth murmured thoughtfully, “That would certainly explain the nightrobe, and the stout shoes for walking. She meant to walk about Everett Hall for some reason we do not yet know, and then—something—made her follow on up to the Hag’s Head, either in pursuit, or in a state of mental confusion. I must get Patrick before he leaves for York.”
She rustled down the stairs, through the passage, and out onto the street. I went to the window of Mrs. Sedley’s room and watched her until she was out of sight down the hill, past the graveyard. She was gone several minutes before I saw her hurrying up the hill again, but still alone; she must have been too late to fetch up Patrick Kelleher. She hesitated in front of the Owl of York, where so many of the black-clad men of the district were coming and going. Then she disappeared within. Remembering my own experience in there, I did not envy her, and I wasn’t surprised when she hurried out a few minutes later. I ran downstairs to meet her at the door.
“It’s no use,” she burst out, still breathing hard from her run. “Uncle Patrick left a few minutes ago. Gone to order up a runner, you know. I tried to get one of the men in the tavern, but of course, they will not leave while the drinking is free. What on earth shall we do?”
“Why, go ourselves, of course,” said I, surprised at her hesitation.
“Yes, but it will take so much longer by the high road if we use the horse and gig. And yet, if we take the sheep track, we will not be able to bring Grandmother back ourselves. And she will be so tired. That is,” she added, with one of her heavy-lidded looks at Meg that boded no good for Mrs. Sedley’s maid, “if what you say is true, that they have seen her.”
“Well, then,” I said, having given it some thought. “You must take the gig and the horse, and I will go over the moor trail.” I had my reasons for this arrangement, for I suspected that Sir Nicholas might conceivably have been headed for the inn when we saw him this morning. If so, I hoped to stop him before he entered the inn and quarreled with Mrs. Sedley again over the inn’s destruction.
I guessed from her manner that Elspeth was confused, so many ideas being presented at once, and without her beloved Uncle Patrick to bolster her. But apparently, whatever troubled her was resolved, because she nodded, and when I had changed my shoes and put on an older coat, we went out upon the street together, she to have the mare harnessed again, and I to take the straight sheep trail over the heath and the rising moor to the Hag’s Head, this time without little Timothy to confuse my path—or, indeed, to warn me, in his feline fashion, when ghosts and haunts were abroad.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I was much more familiar with the various crisscrossing sheep trails by this time, and I could take what I felt fairly confident was the correct path, while stifling a yawn or two; for the last night had scarcely been a period of much sleep for any of us at Everett Hall. However, though I yawned as I climbed the first rise above the hill-hugging village of Maidenmoor, I was not in the least sleepy but keyed to higher and higher nervous excitement. I knew that if I was able to reach a normal and clear-headed Sir Nicholas before Elspeth arrived with the conveyance to assist Mrs. Sedley, I must warn him of the difficulties about to be thrown in his way.
As I walked, huddling my throat and jaw closer into my coat collar against the winds of morning, I tried to reason out this idiotic obsession of mine that Sir Nicholas must be warned. My eyes and my wits had told me on several occasions that he might well be guilty of trying to frighten people into the very sort of accident that Macrae had met with yesterday. Why, then, did such “accidents” seem more the result of feminine trick than the weapon of a very masculine mind like that of Sir Nicholas? He might even have been the murderer of Megan Sedley long ago when she would not leave her husband and go away with him.
Yet within my heart at this moment, I did not really believe that the man who was so gentle with me, who made me feel so protected and so admiring, could possibly be a murderer. Such is often the case, I believe, when one is kindly treated by another human being, more especially if that human being is well endowed and extremely handsome. I suppose that is how murderers often commit their crimes with such ease.
I had been thinking so deeply of my own responsibility for further crimes if I warned Sir Nicholas, that I had already climbed up around the little ridge where I had met the injured Macrae yesterday. The poor man! Was I actually becoming responsible for other such “accidents” caused, as I felt sure, by Macrae’s sudden and shocking sight of the Hag? And was the Hag actually an absurd but horrible disguise of Sir Nicholas, for purposes of his own, which must be more serious than the mere desire to obtain the inn and burn it to the ground? My footsteps faltered for the first time since I had left Maidenmoor. I felt keenly aware of the many dangers involved in my keeping secret my knowledge of Sir Nicholas. Yet he had been kind to me, and gentle, and so very much what any romantic young woman would dream about of nights.
I think it was my first good glimpse of the Hag’s Head Inn, over across the intervening sea of dead black heather, that made me suddenly and terribly frightened, both for Sir Nicholas and of him. Before going on, I resolved to move warily from here, to tell him about the runners and warn him of the risks if he seemed in the mood he had generally used toward me since yesterday. If, however, he was up to some more deviltry, I would tell Elspeth and the others when they came and forestall further crimes. In this way, I hoped to salve my own conscience, both in what I owed to the people of the district and in what I owed to this man who had shown me, at moments, such kindness and tenderness.
I did not have long to wait before carrying out one or the other of my plans. As I walked around the hillock where I had met Macrae, and then picked out what I could see was the right sheep-track leading off across country toward the inn, I made out a tall figure far in the distance, somewhat to the north and east, and felt reasonably sure it was Sir Nicholas on the last part of his walk from Everett Hall toward the Hag’s Head. I hurried along, hoping the prickly heather and furze would hide my figure from his sight until I knew what my own actions must be. I did not yet know how I should prevent his meeting Mrs. Sedley within the Hag’s Head, if that was where we would find her, but I did think that if I appeared at the same time, playing the pesky intruder I actually was, both Mrs. Sedley and Sir Nicholas would find it difficult to quarrel, for whatever else they might be, they were gentlefolk and knew what was expected of them in the way of good manners.
I could see that Sir Nicholas was going to reach the Hag’s Head before I did, for he had taken a shorter route than I expected, directly through the furze and up over the brow of a hill, which brought him out very close to the broken gate of the inn.
He stood there at least a full minute, with his gun across his arm, before he lowered it casually and studied the facade of the old building.
Meanwhile, I picked up some time by cutting across the endless sheep tracks, losing sight of him and of the inn for a short time as I crossed through a dell where I was temporarily delayed by a herdsman and his flock. The man greeted me in friendly fashion, contrary to all I had heard of these lonely and self-sufficient people. As I was trying to pass him and his curly flock, he asked me if I had come from Maidenmoor, and then said sadly, “Ay, but if he’d been a male now, love, ye’d be where I’m wishing I was. At the Owl of York for the grand ar
val.”
I smiled and hurried on, reflecting that he was probably not as hard of heart as he sounded, for a funeral celebration like the arval was in all likelihood the only “pleasant” happening in his hard and dreary life.
I had lost sight of Sir Nicholas, though, and I assumed that he had entered the old building. This made me excessively nervous, and I began to run so fast that I knew I would be in no case to interfere between Mrs. Sedley and Sir Nicholas if I were this out of breath. When I began to climb that last little ridge where I would be plainly seen by anyone in the building, I had to stop and go carefully around to a corner of the inn where there were no windows and where I would be masked by the outbuildings, at least until I reached the small areaway between the stables and the inn itself. I huddled in the shadow on the west side of the still-room.
There was not a sound of any kind from the Hag’s Head as it loomed there before me, with the dark stains of the ancient fire still visible around the stone foundations. What on earth was Sir Nicholas doing in the old building? Had he met Mrs. Sedley? The silence reassured me only to the extent that I knew they were not quarreling—if, of course, Mrs. Sedley actually had reached this place of her daughter’s unhappiness and murder. I thought of all the barmaids and upstairs maids whom Megan’s husband had lured into sordid relationships of one kind or another, even on the day of Megan’s murder, and I wondered how I could ever have thought Patrick Kelleher was in the least an attractive person, whether in appearance or in manner. How superior, by comparison, was Sir Nicholas, if only I could be quite sure that he was not about to commit some terrible crime while under the influence of this sick and diseased old building!
Not a shadow, not even a mere flicker of light and darkness, crossed those windows of the Hag’s Head, where any persons inside might give me an indication that I was being watched, and yet, the instant I thought of this sinister possibility, I became convinced that there was someone there peering down at me. Surely, I thought, if it were Sir Nicholas who was watching me unseen in this fashion I should not be so frightened. Was it possible that someone else, or some thing else, was up on those top floors, waiting for me to blunder into the web?
Black Heather Page 20
