Murder on the Moor

by Julianna Deering

  “It was his heart, according to the doctor,” Beaky said as they walked back to the house. “I thought it might be that. He likely shouldn’t have gone to war at all.”

  “I’m curious,” Drew said. “Why did he call the dog Kedgeree? I thought his name was Baxter?”

  “That dog, yes,” Beaky said. “But Kedgeree was Uncle Vester’s dog. Before the war. He was old even then. Grandmother said he died of a broken heart when Uncle Vester didn’t come back. Baxter was, oh, I don’t know, some multiple of great-grandson to the dog Uncle Vester remembered. Uncle Hubert always kept one of them about. I suppose in his brother’s memory.” He winced as if something had suddenly pained him. “I don’t know how Uncle Vester could have imagined the family didn’t want him. If my father and my uncle had known he was alive, they’d have had him home that very hour. Poor Uncle Vester, believing he’d been purposefully shut away all those years when nothing could have been further from the truth.”

  Madeline gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m so sorry. About all of this. It’s such a tragedy.”

  “Yes,” Beaky said. “I just have to believe he’s found peace at last.”

  “I pray he has,” Drew said. “God knows what he’s been through and how ill he must have been. He will give him both justice and mercy. It’s His way.”

  Madeline leaned closer to kiss his cheek and then put her arm through Beaky’s. “I’d love to hear about him,” she said gently, “from before the war.”

  As they walked on ahead, Nick fell back to talk with Johnson about the sheep, and Drew found himself next to Sabrina. He knew he had to say something, but it was deuced hard to know where to start. They were quiet for a long while.

  “I’ve come to realize what a very perceptive woman my wife is,” he said at last.

  Sabrina looked arch. “You’re just now noticing? I thought you were supposed to be a detective and all that.”

  His face turned hot, but he managed a smile. “I’ve been more wrong than right this time out, I’m afraid. And I owe you an apology.”

  “Me? Whatever for?”

  “I rather thought you were in on this whole thing. Trying to kill Beaky for his money or, uh, at least trying to cover up the affair you were having.”

  That startled a laugh out of her, making several of the others who had been at the funeral glance her way. “I had no idea you thought so highly of me.”

  His face turned hotter. “Madeline kept telling me I had it all wrong and that I had nothing but my own prejudices to go on, but I’m afraid I didn’t give her advice the consideration it deserved.”

  She struggled to make her expression more appropriate for the occasion, but she wasn’t very successful. “I ought to be cross with you, you know. Whatever did I do to make you think so highly of me?”

  “I’m sure you’re aware that you are a very attractive woman.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So I’ve been told.”

  “Well, Beaky’s a capital fellow and I think the world of him, but he’s never going to come in anything but dead last in a beauty contest.”

  “I see.” She still looked as if she wanted to laugh. “So naturally I am only in it for the money and, as it must follow, I have a lover on the side. Who was it? Delwyn?”

  “Mr. Delwyn is a rather fine-looking man, I suppose, and near at hand. But, as you may have noticed, he’s rather attached to Iris Midgley. I had to rule him out.”

  She arched one pencil-thin eyebrow. “In favor of?”

  Lord help him, this was painful. “Well, it seemed rather obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Gray weren’t as devoted as one might wish, and you were paying him a great deal of attention when we were at dinner, and naturally I—”

  “Morris Gray? You’ve got to be joking. Morris Gray? Oh, I really should be angry now. That little weasel? Why in the world would anyone go from Beaky to a toad like Morris?”

  “I know.” Drew gave her his most apologetic look. “I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am to tell you all this. But it just seemed that you and Beaky, well, I just didn’t see you were very affectionate toward him.”

  She pressed her lips into a tight line. “I’m not a romantic, Mr. Farthering. I never have been, not even when I was a girl. I’ve never been the dewy-eyed type. That doesn’t mean I don’t love.” He caught a flash of emotion in her dark eyes before she looked away. “Beaky knows how I feel, and it’s not anyone else’s business.”

  He bowed his head briefly. “You’re quite right. I just couldn’t help remembering how it was when you were out with Bunny.”

  She exhaled heavily. “I like Bunny. Enormous nitwit that he is, he’s a lot of fun. How could I help liking him? And I could have married him. You know that as well as I do. But I didn’t love Bunny.” She looked at Drew as if he were a great fool not to have seen it. “After a month or two of being his wife, I would have had nothing but contempt for him. He would have let me do anything, given me anything, put up with anything. How could I respect a man like that? How could I love a man who has nothing to talk about but the theater and clothes and his motor car?”

  “But Beaky—”

  “Beaky loves me. Not the idea of having me on his arm for fashionable occasions or to show his mates he got the prize they all wanted, but me. Myself. Whatever looks I have will be gone one day, and far sooner than I’d like to think, and then what would I have had with a man who didn’t care about anything else?”

  “I was wrong about you, I know. I just thought—”

  “Beaky’s not much to look at. He’s not stylish or clever or particularly entertaining.” She lifted her chin. “But he’s kind and gentle and thoughtful. Not all men are, you know, and—” Her voice caught, and there were sudden tears in her eyes. “And I know he would never hurt me.”

  She said nothing more. She didn’t have to.

  “I’m sorry,” Drew said with a bow of his head. “I’m a perfectly beastly detective. I told Beaky straight off I was, and he still insisted I come up. I ask you, what could I do?”

  Her lower lip quivered but then she laughed. “I think you’ll do nicely, when you stick to the facts and not your assumptions. Do you know why I broke things off with Bunny?”

  “You just said—”

  “That was only part of it.” They were almost at the house now, and she slowed to a stop, clearly wanting to finish their talk. “I met a man, handsome as that Errol Flynn from the cinema, funny, clever, romantic. No family and no money, of course, but what did I care? I had money enough for both of us, or at least my father did. But then I found out that was all he wanted, he and the waitress he was keeping on the side. Right after that, I met Beaky. I thought he was ridiculous at first, but then I saw him for who he really was. And I saw true and lasting love. How could I ask for anything better?”

  “You make me ashamed,” Drew said softly. “And you’ve taught me a great deal. Thank you.”

  “Coming, my dear?” Beaky called from the doorway.

  Sabrina gave Drew a cheeky grin and took his arm. “Come out of the cold, Detective. It ought to be very cozy inside.”

  “You took your time,” Drew said when Nick hopped onto the train as it was pulling out of the little station at Bunting’s Nest the next day.

  “Sorry about that.” Nick dropped into the seat across from Drew and Madeline. “I went to post a letter to Carrie and ran into a couple of chaps from the Hound and Hart. I was afraid they might be a bit vexed with me for my part in our little charade, but turns out they thought it rather admirable. It seems we’re local heroes. Oh, and I could have bought myself a rather natty red Alfa Romeo.”

  “Really?” Drew asked. “You can’t mean Morris Gray’s.”

  “I do. There’s a notice at the post office that it’s for sale. Very reasonable.”

  No one said anything else. Gray had preyed on Iris’s youth and inexperience, her wistful desire for romance, to be cherished and loved, and her fear that no one ever would. But he had deceived himself, as well. Drew
seriously doubted Gray would or could find what he was looking for with his own wife. He didn’t seem the type to risk asking her to start over with him, and Frances certainly didn’t seem the type to agree to such a scheme. There would be no recaptured youth or adventure or adulation. He’d given up.

  “Now that Iris has figured out what a sham he is and found an honest man, I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor blighter.”

  “I think someone should have hit him with a poker,” Madeline said with a fierce frown.

  “Now, now, darling,” Drew said. “I’d say he’s already well punished. Iris was able to leave him behind, but he’ll always be stuck with himself. It’s not something I envy him.”

  She huffed. “I suppose you’re right. He and Frances and old Mr. Gray don’t have a very happy home, do they?”

  “No, but I think Iris and Delwyn will. And Baxter, too.”

  Her expression softened and she nestled against him. “I hope so. Delwyn loves her very much, doesn’t he? To have waited for her and protected her even when she was hurting him.”

  “And ‘love covers a multitude of sins.’”

  “True,” she said. “And whoever is forgiven much, loves much. Yes, they ought to be very happy together.”

  “I daresay God’s not done with any of them yet,” Drew said. “Them or the Grays. I’m just glad our part of it is over and done. I’ve eaten about as much crow as I can bear for at least the rest of the year.”

  “I thought Sabrina was remarkably gracious about it,” Madeline said. “Of course, if you had listened to your wife in the first place, you would have not been so quick to jump to conclusions.” She looked decidedly smug.

  “I suppose you knew. About the man who betrayed her before she met Beaky.”

  Madeline shrugged. “We had a lot of nice talks, Sabrina and I.”

  “You might have told me.”

  “It wasn’t mine to tell.” She kissed his cheek. “But I’m glad she loves Beaky. I’m glad you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  “Good old Beaky, I think he’s well able to look after himself after all.”

  “I ran into Trenton when I was posting my letter to Carrie,” Nick said, sitting up a bit straighter as the train chugged through the countryside. “He wanted me to tell you his little son was christened this morning.”

  “Lovely,” Drew said, and he made a face. “I hope he and Watts have had a long heart-to-heart about taking initiative when necessary.”

  “They’ve worked that all out, but listen here, I’m supposed to make sure to tell you the baby’s name.”

  “Oh, tell,” Madeline said. “It couldn’t be worse than Bilby.”

  “It is Bilby,” Nick said. “Well, his second name is Bilby. His first is Andrew.”

  Drew leaned his head back against the seat, wincing. “Good heavens.”

  “No,” Madeline said, giggling. “It’s not really. Andrew Bilby Trenton? Oh my.”

  “Oh, yes.” Nick leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “He told me he couldn’t very well do anything less. Not after the famous amateur detective solved the most celebrated case in the history of Bunting’s Nest, and on the very night his son was born.”

  “Ludicrous,” Drew muttered, his eyes closed now. “Absolutely ludicrous.”

  “Why?” Madeline said. “Andrew’s a very nice name.”

  “Here’s the best part,” Nick said. “Think how nice it will be for our dear Chief Inspector Birdsong to have little Drew about at every family gathering for the remainder of his life. That’s got to put a smile on your face, old man.”

  Despite Drew’s best efforts, it did.

  Acknowledgments

  To the British Broadcasting Corporation for making delightful period television series like Poirot, Campion, and Jeeves and Wooster, to the actors who bring them wonderfully to life, and to the writers of their brilliant source material, for letting me see and hear England in the 1930s.

  To Aidan Turner, who by some amazing coincidence just happens to look exactly like Rhys Delwyn, even if he is Irish and not Welsh.

  And to my dad, who looks nothing like Aidan Turner, but that would be weird anyway . . .

  Thank you for making this book possible.

  Julianna Deering, author of the acclaimed Dressed for Death and Murder at the Mikado in the DREW FARTHERING MYSTERY series, is the pen name of novelist DeAnna Julie Dodson. DeAnna has always been an avid reader and a lover of storytelling, whether on the page, the screen, or the stage. This, together with her keen interest in history and her Christian faith, shows in her tales of love, forgiveness, and triumph over adversity. A fifth-generation Texan, she makes her home north of Dallas, along with three spoiled cats. When not writing, DeAnna spends her free time quilting, cross-stitching, and watching NHL hockey. Learn more at JuliannaDeering.com.

  Books by Julianna Deering

  From Bethany House Publishers

  THE DREW FARTHERING MYSTERIES

  Rules of Murder

  Death by the Book

  Murder at the Mikado

  Dressed for Death

  Murder on the Moor

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