“I’m sorry I can tell you no better news.” The man smiled at her wearily. “But in a way, I’m glad you came here and forced me to speak with you and clear things between us. I think you’ve turned into a lovely young woman. Someone your mother would have been very proud of.”
It seemed poor consolation, and Merula resisted the urge to hug herself. She vaguely remembered thanking him and walking away with Bowsprit beside her. The fencing men they passed, the violin player, it was all a blur. She had waited for this chance for so long, believing she could learn something better about her past than the half-truths she had grown up with, and now the moment had come and gone and left her empty.
Heartbroken.
* * *
“Merula!” Raven rushed into the room, halting beside her chair, looking at her closely. She felt his scrutiny but didn’t look up. She just wanted to sit like this forever, all marble inside and cold.
Raven crouched down. He caught her hands in his and held them tightly. “Bowsprit told me where you’ve been. I told you not to do it and …”
He fell silent. Even without looking at him, Merula could sense the emotions rushing through him. Anger, disappointment …
Clutching her hands, Raven muttered, “Why can’t you ever listen? I knew no good would come of it. Just look at you now. Oh, never mind. This will never do. Come here.”
He let go of her hands, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her to him. Her head fell to his shoulder, and her cheek touched the warm skin of his neck.
Raven patted her back, saying things that she couldn’t even understand but were soothing, like the rain against the window when you’re curled up in front of the fire and everything is at peace within.
Then he released her and placed her back in the pillows, shaking his head at her. The sadness in his eyes struck her like a dagger to the heart. He wasn’t angry or disappointed like she had suspected. He was … hurt. Because she was?
Raven turned away from her and paced the room. “I waited at the telegraph office for replies. They came speedily enough. This Dr. Twicklestone does exist, but he is not in England at the moment. He is on the continent, traveling from society to society to speak of his latest research results. I have no idea how this man we met at the police station got his hands on some private correspondence, but he’s not this specialist, and I assume not even a doctor at all.”
He drew breath. “I’ve told this to our good inspector, who was none too pleased about it and immediately invited the impostor over for another chat. I urged him to take fingerprints and see if the crook is known to them from other cases of impersonation. It’s conclusive to me now this is some kind of scheme between him and Bixby to defraud Oaks of his house or something in it. But for what purpose, I still can’t understand, and that is the key to the whole thing. Without a reason, there is hardly a case against them for anything other than fraud. How can we ever connect it with the murder? We can hardly assume that Tillie discovered the good doctor was a pretender. How would she have known that?”
Merula listened, registering what he said but not really feeling the need to respond and conjecture with him. Bixby and his fellow conspirators seemed to stay just outside the light she and Raven were trying to throw on them.
Raven continued, “Galileo wrote that the drops we sent are a mixture he had never seen before, having both sedative and nerve-stimulating properties. He suggested it works the same way as a large amount of alcohol, making a man wild and unreasonable, then letting him collapse.”
“But Oaks told us it was a harmless sedative he had been taking for some time.”
“Yes, I thought about that on the way back here. There are two options, as far as I can see. Someone must have added to his drops or even replaced the liquid inside his bottle with something else, without Oaks noticing. The bottle stood beside his bed, so who could have done that?”
“The stable boy claimed to know where the money chest is. He has been inside the house. A bedroom is a very private place to go, but the boy might have been curious.”
“But”—Raven pointed a finger at her for emphasis—“how would a simple stable boy have access to a medicine he could add to Oaks’s sedative? We’d have to accept that he did it for someone else. Someone who provided him with the liquid to put into the bottle.”
“Yes, probably. Bixby? He did start talking about delusions as soon as he heard you ask the doctor about the drops.”
“Exactly. And think about this: Oaks was most likely under the influence of these drops when he rushed out into the night on horseback and then later collapsed by the river. His horse has been found and captured. It came to no harm. It is hard to decide, though, whether Oaks really collapsed by the river or somewhere else and was then taken to the river to suggest he had returned to the place of his crime. If Bixby came across him when he had fallen off his horse and the horse was still there, Bixby might have slung Oaks’s body across the horse and led the animal to the riverside where he wanted Oaks to be found.”
Raven seemed to wait for her to discuss this theory with him, but Merula’s head felt empty and her interest in the case had almost disappeared. She was just so tired. Even her ribs ached again, as if the old injury was now fresh.
Raven stopped his pacing and looked at her. “Bowsprit told me that you met with this man, but he didn’t tell me what he said. He even said that he would never tell me, as it was up to you to decide whether you wanted to say or not. I must confess I hated him for one brief moment, for knowing what I might never know, and also for having gone with you while I should have been the one to do that. I was a fool to think I could keep you from discovering the truth. You had to. I understand now.”
His eyes darkened, and he drew breath slowly. “I want you to know one thing. You need never tell me what the man told you. You can keep any secret you want from me. But promise me one thing. If there is something that puts you in danger, something that might … take you away from me, then tell me. Because I couldn’t bear to find out later that I might have … helped you, saved you, and that I didn’t, that I failed you. I couldn’t live with …”
His voice broke, and he walked to the door quickly.
“Raven!” Merula lifted her hand to stop him before he could rush out. “I promise.”
He turned to her in a jerk, his eyes surprised and slightly doubtful. “You do? Just like that?”
“Yes. Of course. I know your story and … I would never want you to blame yourself.”
A slow smile spread across his features.
As it appeared, it brought some warmth back into Merula’s cold insides. Like a ray of sunshine streaking through the darkness, a soft touch upon her face. The man had said her mother had died all alone. But Merula herself was not all alone. She would never be.
No matter how hurtful her past was or how sad she was for the mother and father she’d never know, her quick judgment had been rash and wrong. She did have a future. Because she had friends.
Raven came back to her and sat down opposite. “I know you probably do not feel like it, but I could use your help. We need to go over every little detail of what we’ve heard and seen since we got here. There might be something in it that can help us solve the case. Tillie’s murder. Not just for the sake of Oaks. Also for the sake of all the locals involved. When I was in the village, I felt this atmosphere again of fear, like a cloak hanging over the place, suffocating people. Even the young doctor who came to settle here with his family is thinking of leaving again. I stopped by his house to ask if he had known about Tillie being with child before she died, if she had been to see him. He laughed and said girls didn’t come to a doctor for that. Especially as he was considered an outsider. The old doctor had been born here, lived here all of his life. But even then girls sooner confided in older women who knew herbal remedies. He couldn’t point me in the direction of one particular woman who might have been Tillie’s confidant. He kept repeating that he didn’t know the people here well yet.”
>
Raven shook his head. “It took them quite some time to find a replacement for the old doctor after his carriage accident, and now he’s already thinking of leaving. Country life just doesn’t agree with him, he said. But I wager it’s this atmosphere of gloom and doom that is driving the poor man away. Proving Tillie’s death was the act of a mere mortal might help change things for the better.”
“Well, if you’re right in assuming that the house is hiding some secret, it seems significant that a local girl came to work here and was then murdered. Fern’s remarks about Tillie believing she would soon be rich could be connected to that.”
Raven narrowed his eyes. “You mean she might have been sent to work here to discover more about the house’s secret?”
“Yes. Everybody assumed she quit her job at the inn because of the men leering at her, but perhaps someone asked her to work for Oaks and explore the house. Didn’t Webber say she had all these stories about valuables in the house? That suggests she was looking around in the rooms, perhaps even in the cupboards and drawers.”
Raven nodded enthusiastically. “That makes perfect sense. But for whom was she working? Bixby? If she was working for him, he needed not kill her.”
“Unless she became too talkative. And if she did talk too much, she might have let something slip to someone who used her and then disposed of her. The father of her child?” Merula considered for a moment and then continued, “Both the stable boy and Fern told us Tillie couldn’t read. That means that if she needed to look into books or through paperwork, she’d have to ask someone for help.”
Raven stared at her. “Merula, you’re a genius. That must be the answer. She came to work here to discover something, but in order to do so, she needed help. And once the two accomplices had discovered whatever they were after, the other party killed Tillie so he could have the reward for what they had discovered all to himself.”
“Or herself. We shouldn’t forget Fern. She claimed not to know how Tillie had wanted to get rich, but she could be lying. You said yourself she was unnaturally nervous when we suddenly came upon her in the church.”
“Yes, but Tillie’s accomplice has to be able to read. Can we assume that Fern can?” Raven asked, doubt in his voice.
“We should find out. It might have been Fern’s plan to begin with. She might have overheard something at the inn and then asked Tillie to go work for Oaks.”
“Why wouldn’t she have gone to work for Oaks herself? If she’s the one who can read and write, that would have made much more sense.” Raven sank back in his chair again. “Not that anything in this case seems to make sense. It’s all like that white woman on the coastal path Bowsprit talked about. Just wisps of fog moving on the breeze. You think you see something, then it’s gone. Nothing material.”
He leaned back against the headrest and stared up at the ceiling. “Material,” he repeated, sounding almost dreamy. “Material.”
Merula was sure that he was so physically and mentally exhausted from running to and fro all day long that he was drifting off to sleep and she would soon hear him snoring, when he suddenly flew to his feet.
“Of course,” he shouted, slapping his fist into his open palm. “That’s it. I should have realized before. Sirens! Bowsprit mentioned sirens on that first day.”
He ran to the table and studied the scene.
Merula followed his movements, her mouth agape. Was he succumbing to the strain? Sirens? Those creatures from Greek mythology holding a clue to a case in Dartmoor?
“Yes, of course!” Raven cried. “That must be it. That must be the reason they didn’t want us to look too closely, and certainly not to draw things or … It must be a trap somehow.”
He looked at her. “I can’t be sure until I have discussed this with an expert. I don’t want to look like a fool, especially not with that Scotland Yard inspector. But think about it. Shipwrecks. Unusually often. The wreckmaster living off the finds. Deriving his power from his position, his success, the money he can acquire. Being in a struggle as the ways of the town are changing. People like Ben Webber taking charge, talking of tearooms and tourists, of selling toby jugs instead of tinning and farming. The wreckmaster is losing control, even to an outsider like Bixby, who can bluff people with his scientific knowledge. Who comes here changing the landscape around his house and bringing in his rich city friends to study the movements of the heavens.”
Raven gasped for air to continue his excited explanation. “Now the wreckmaster is a specialist in his own field. The sea and her secrets, her loot. What if he could cause the shipwrecks, to bring fresh spoils to fill his coffers, keep the village dependent on him?”
“But how? Not with a kraken? Surely not with one cut-off arm?”
“No. He wouldn’t need one. If he could lure ships to the shore some other way. I read about it. I think they did it in medieval times. You create a beacon on the coast that is not steady but moving. Sailors get disorientated by it and the ship crashes on the rocks. They take the spoils. Perhaps our wreckmaster even saves the sailors so no lives are lost. He may be ethical like that.”
Merula tilted her head. “Can you prove it?”
“Only after I’ve talked to an expert about undertows and wind and everything this coast is subject to. But I think it must be true. Remember how Oaks mentioned having seen something at night? Danger to a ship, something gruesome? Perhaps he knew something about a false beacon luring ships into disaster, and the wreckmaster tried to get rid of him because of what he knew.”
“But in that case, the wreckmaster could have killed Oaks. He could have lain in wait for him somewhere along the route Oaks took when he went horse riding. He need not have killed a local girl. I don’t think the wreckmaster would. You just called him ethical, in a mocking tone, no doubt, but there is a big difference between theft of ships’ cargo and cold-blooded murder of a completely innocent girl.”
“Perhaps.” Raven waved at her. “I have to go send more telegrams.”
“You’re completely wearing yourself out.” Concern for him filled Merula, pushing her sad thoughts about her own past away.
Raven shrugged it off. “Oaks is locked up. So far we have made it a little better for him by exposing this so-called doctor as a liar, but we need to do more. Keeping busy is sort of invigorating, if that makes sense.”
It made perfect sense, but that only increased her worries for him. Raven’s need to engage his thoughts and crack cases was just a way to prevent himself from dwelling on what he could no longer change. No matter how many people he might manage to save from wrongful accusations, he could never undo his mother’s death. She was beyond saving.
Already at the door, Raven smiled at her; then his expression sobered. “You take care now.”
“I will. You know that. And … I never break a promise.”
Raven’s smile returned. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 15
When Merula heard the sound of hooves outside, she believed it was Raven coming back after having sent the new flurry of telegrams. She was glad for it, as the silence in the house quivered across her tight nerve endings. She knew that with Bowsprit and Lamb around, she was hardly alone, but still there was something about the place that unsettled her. Perhaps it was Raven’s strong belief that the house held some kind of secret that people had been willing to kill for.
Just as she thought this, a knock sounded at the door, and Bowsprit looked in. “Excuse me, but Mr. Bixby is in the hallway and …” He turned round quickly, and she heard him say, “You can’t just barge in here. Don’t you have the decency to … Hey!”
But his figure was shoved aside, and two men entered the room in a rush. The first was Bixby, his face red and his eyes frantic, the second the man whom Merula had last seen at the police station passing himself off as Dr. Twicklestone. He was again carrying his leather bag.
She glanced round for something to grab hold of, to defend herself with, but the poker near the hearth was too far away to get to.
Bixby cried, “Where is Royston? I need to talk to Royston.”
“He will be here any moment,” Merula said, to impress upon them that they need not try to harm her. “What do you mean by this sudden intrusion? I understand that Bowsprit”—she nodded at the valet, who stood bristling in the doorway—“told you to wait in the hall as he came up to me.”
“There’s no time to stand on formalities.” Bixby’s expression was suddenly weary, and he reached up to rub his eyes. “Things have taken a terrible turn. It was never meant to … I should have …” He drew breath slowly.
The other man urged, “Tell them everything. You assured me that it could not hurt when I got involved. You lied. It can hurt. I want you to explain before the police come to arrest me.”
“If there is anything to explain,” Merula said coldly, “you should do so to the police. They already know you are not Dr. Twicklestone and probably not a doctor at all. You could be sued for this impersonation. I’m sure that the real doctor will be none too pleased when he finds out about this.”
“You said it would never get out!” the doctor yelled at Bixby. “You told me it was perfectly safe.”
Bixby threw up his hands in frustration. “I thought these peasants here wouldn’t check. That it would all be over soon. I had no idea people would be murdered and an inspector from Scotland Yard would come.”
Bowsprit stepped aside to allow in Raven, who eyed Bixby with a murderous look. “What are you doing here? You have some nerve to show up after what you caused. Or do you deny you tried to harm Oaks? That you have worked for weeks on end to discredit him with people and drive him away?”
Bixby sighed. “No, I do not deny it. But you have the wrong view of the entire situation. It has nothing to do with this dead girl.”
“Does it not? I was there when you talked to the villagers as they had come to burn down the house. When you threatened them that some evil would come to their village. You’ve been playing them.”
Death Comes to Dartmoor Page 19