Oaks seemed shaken out of his dazed state now that he saw a purpose up ahead related to what he loved most in life. “People here are wary of change though. I don’t want to upset the locals again.”
“Some of them might even want to support you. Ben Webber only favored the railway because he believed it would bring advantages for his mother’s shop. If you could convince him that protecting the natural beauty of the land will also bring people here, he might stand with you.”
Merula had to admit it was likely that the self-centered Webber would choose to side with whoever had the most influential friends.
Raven added, “And you need not worry about the wreckmaster objecting to change. He’ll be busy explaining to the authorities how so many ships ended up in trouble along the coast lately. The expert I consulted is very interested in those events and hopes to prove that the ships were lured to the coast by a false beacon. He assured me it’s a very old trick used in ancient times. The wreckmaster should be careful or he’ll end up in prison.”
“That’s a relief,” Oaks admitted. “I never liked his arrogance. I wasn’t quite sure that the light I had seen one night was real and not a delusion caused by me losing my mind … But now that you assured me there was never anything wrong with me …” A hesitant smile spread on his features. “You’ve really done a world of good.”
He reached out and toasted them with his coffee cup. “A world of good.”
Tell that to Lamb, Merula thought. The maid had played a brave role in their unmasking of the killer, but she was heartbroken over her loss of the beautiful future with a shop, room for her mother …
Merula rose and excused herself to go and find Lamb. She came across her sitting outside on the steps leading to the front door. “I just want to say goodbye to the place,” she said in a small voice. “Now that we’re leaving again.”
Merula sat beside her. “I’m sorry we didn’t have a better time. It was supposed to be a vacation, but …”
“I was just silly believing he cared for me. As silly as I was when I was thirteen and believed that shipmate would come back for me. Just because he had given me a silver blue ribbon.”
“Webber cared for no one but himself. You can’t help that.”
“I know that.” Lamb smiled sadly. “It wasn’t about him either. I just wanted his shop and the safe life and the quiet village and all I never had in Rotherhithe. I didn’t love him either, not one bit, you know.”
Merula nodded. “Of course not.” She supposed it helped Lamb to see it that way. But her excitement had suggested she had been a little bit infatuated. Ben Webber was, after all, a handsome and dashing young man.
Lamb said, “Oh, well, I suppose it’s for the better. Else you’d have to find yourself a new companion. Your aunt wouldn’t be pleased. And Mother? She complains about Rotherhithe, but it would have been too quiet here for her liking. She lives for gossip, a little liveliness in the neighborhood. All her friends live there. She would have been loath to go. And you know that old saying about never replanting an old tree. Her heart might not have been up to it.”
Lamb forced a smile. “It’s not that bad, Miss. We still have each other.”
“We certainly do.” Merula squeezed her hand.
They sat in silence, staring at the blue skies, both lost in their own thoughts. Merula wondered if there was time left, and if it was even wise to wish for it, to visit the cottages again and confront the man who had shared something about her mother’s past with her, with Bowsprit’s belief that he had been lying about her father’s death.
If he was still alive, she wanted to know who he was, where he was, and how she might reach him. Not that she ever would, perhaps, but the idea that she might be able to, in case of an emergency, or just …
She felt restless not knowing, half deceived again.
A boy came running up the driveway. His simple outfit and the stick in his hand suggested he helped the shepherds. He carried an envelope in his hand. “This is for a Miss Merula,” he called from afar.
Merula rose to meet him halfway and handed him a coin for his troubles. He stared at it as if he had never seen such a thing, then rubbed it over his shirt to make it shine. Grinning from ear to ear, he bounded off.
Merula studied the handwriting on the envelope. Confidential. Only to be opened by Miss Merula Merriweather.
Her stomach squeezed, and she tore it open with her little finger, something Aunt Emma would have frowned upon. But she didn’t want to lose time going inside looking for a letter knife. She looked inside. There were two things. A note and …
She pulled out the second item. It was the half photograph depicting her mother.
Merula stared almost hungrily at the face, the eyes, the smile, the whole loveliness of that image. Then she opened the note:
You have attained justice for a poor deluded girl. For that you should be rewarded. Keep this photograph of a good woman close to your heart. But never look for your father. If he finds out who you are, then he will come for you, and you will become just like him.
That was all it said.
Merula turned it over and over, desperate for more, but there was nothing.
She reread the cryptic words, open confirmation that her father was indeed still alive.
Still alive but out of her reach, as she wasn’t allowed to ever contact him. The letter even suggested she had to make sure he never discovered who she was.
Or that she even existed?
Had her father never known her mother was with child? But how?
She ran inside and called for Raven. He rushed out of the breakfast room to meet her. She explained hurriedly that she had to go somewhere, and could he take her?
Raven took one look at her excited face and agreed. They were on their way in a few minutes. She directed him to the cottages. Her heart pounded; sweat stood on her forehead. She knew what she would find there: the women, the fencing men, the melancholy violin music and the table, not with wine, probably, at this hour, but maybe their breakfast?
She’d spend time with them. She wanted to know more about the man, his life, and … Even if he didn’t want her to speak of her mother, then she would not; she would pretend to be interested in the acting and …
Anything to learn more.
From a distance, Merula noticed something was wrong. The cottages lay there in the morning sunshine, the doors closed, no people moving about. There were no colors, no pillows strewn outside.
As they pulled up, she spotted the long table, but nothing was on it. The playful dog was also gone. The grass lay trampled by many feet, but no one was around.
She clambered off the cart, ran around, peeking into windows and checking the barn where they had rehearsed for their performance. No one, everything gone.
“What are we here for?” Raven asked. “What’s wrong?
Merula just gave him the note. He read it and frowned at her. “Why can’t your father know who you are? And what does the writer mean by, if he finds you, you will become like him?”
“I don’t know.” Merula let her arms dangle in dejection. “I don’t know, and now they’ve left and … They are always here for the entire summer, he told me. Why have they left? Where did they go?”
As she spoke, a woman came walking up, carrying a basket. She looked surprised to see no one there. She called out to Merula and Raven, “Where are the actors?”
“We hoped you’d know.”
“They never leave around this time. They’re always here until September. They must have received word of something to do in another town.”
“But you don’t know where?”
“No.” The woman shook her head in bewilderment. “I was asked to clean here, and I come every other morning. They didn’t tell me a thing. I even baked them bread and brought some apples. I don’t understand.”
She started to do the same thing Merula had done, peek into windows, knock on doors. No response, just silence.
Merula turned to Raven. “
They have left, and they don’t want to be found, either. This man must have a lot of power within the group for them to just listen to him. I wish I knew at least who he was or what he once had to do with my mother. But perhaps it is better not to know.”
She studied the photograph of her mother closer. “He calls her a good woman. And I believe he means that. But why would a good woman fall in with a man who …? There must be something wrong with my father, or he would not warn me so strongly against him.”
Raven said, “If this man loved your mother and she didn’t love him but rather another who wasn’t worthy of her in his mind, that may be his reason for wanting to keep you away from him.”
“Perhaps.” Merula stood and looked around her at the cottages sitting so lonely in the outstretched moors. She wasn’t sure if Raven was right.
She had sensed genuine concern in the man. Would he still be jealous after two decades and try to separate her from her father purely out of ill will against the man who had taken the woman he had loved?
Or was her father truly a dangerous man?
Dangerous in what way?
How could she “become like him”? Why would that be bad?
Raven put his arm around her. He smiled down on her. “We must go now. There’s nothing to be found here anymore. At least now you have her picture. You did get on a bit.”
Merula nodded. She let him walk her back to the cart.
Dartmoor had delivered something, some clue, a tantalizing glimpse into her past and perhaps even a key to the future. But did she want to unlock that door now marked FORBIDDEN by the man she had met here?
Solving murders had proven to her she had a keen mind and could unravel secrets, and besides that, she had friends who would support her in anything she undertook. But digging into the secret of her birth, her origin, might prove to be something wholly different than investigating a crime in which she wasn’t personally involved. Family was an amazing thing, but also a two-edged blade, as she had experienced here firsthand.
Raven helped her onto the cart and sat beside her. “Back then. We did run out on Oaks somewhat unceremoniously.”
“Yes, we must celebrate his release with him and plan for his lands to be protected from further greedy prospectors. Bowsprit handed him a really good idea.”
“Perhaps we can travel sometime and explore such a national park somewhere.” Raven glanced at her as he steered the horse across the road. “Would you want to travel abroad with me?”
Merula sat up at this sudden suggestion. “If Uncle Rupert would let me. I can imagine Aunt Emma would have a thousand objections. She only agreed to this because she thought London wasn’t safe for me.”
Merula laughed softly. “I better not tell her about what happened here, or she will think I can’t be safe anywhere.”
As she said it, a cold wind breathing across the moor caressed her face and put gooseflesh on her arms. She hugged herself and moved closer to Raven.
“I’ll talk to your uncle as soon as we’re back in London.” Raven cast her a look. “The Continent might be best for a start. I don’t think South America would much appeal to him or to my purse. It would be best, of course, if we could let ourselves be hired. As specialists of some kind. Then we could travel with all of our expenses paid.”
“If only that could be true,” Merula said.
Raven grinned at her. “Who knows?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND AUTHOR’S NOTE
As always, I’m grateful to all agents, editors, and authors who share online about the writing and publishing process and enable me to keep learning. A special thanks to my amazing agent Jill Marsal, my wonderful editor Faith Black Ross, and the entire talented crew at Crooked Lane Books, especially cover designer Mimi Bark for the evocative cover.
* * *
As a huge fan of The Hound of the Baskervilles, I’ve always wanted to write a mystery set in Dartmoor featuring a legendary murderous creature. As with The Butterfly Conspiracy, the first book in the Merriweather and Royston series, the idea for the premise of Death Comes to Dartmoor was sparked by watching Sir David Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities, where he draws on many exciting sources—biographies, treatises, encyclopediae, correspondence, etc.—to explore misconception, confusion, and conscious deceit in the development of zoology. When I watched him speak of the mythological kraken and the giant squid, the real-life animal that probably inspired the stories and sketches of ships being dragged into the depths by enormous tentacles, I knew I had found my killer for the Dartmoor story. Oaks’s keeping it draped across a stand in his bathroom is of course inspired by the famous photograph of a giant squid draped across Moses Harvey’s bath stand, taken in 1874, and the missing tentacle followed from an account of a real-life fisherman defending himself against a kraken, alias giant squid, with an ax, actually managing to chop off one of its tentacles.
Oaks’s extensive collection of specimens in alcohol, including deformed animals, reflects collections in museums I have visited ever since I was a little girl fascinated by two-headed calves. And as I can never resist an opportunity to look up at the night skies and see something special—whether a meteor shower, a lunar eclipse, or a planet visible with the naked eye for one single night—I just had to work the August Perseid meteor shower into the story, hoping to entice you to also look up sometime and admire the splendor of the infinite universe.
Other tidbits to enliven the story weren’t hard to find. Often as I researched online, I laughed out loud in surprise and amusement at what lay ready to be used and concluded that indeed fact can be stranger than fiction: men going insane on the train, age-old graves on the moors containing riches, the professional wreckmaster who sees to division of everything washed ashore, and the (im)possibility of luring ships deliberately onto the rocks by using false beacons, something experts are still divided about.
And of course there was Dartmoor lore, so full of mysterious stories about mayhem and murder. I put my own spin on a few (like my version of the will in blood I devised for fictional Harcombe Tor). In general, I pulled some of the Dartmoor landmarks a little closer together so my characters could easily travel around and enjoy the full array of natural wonders on offer, but still I hope the depiction is true to the wild beauty of the land and the many amazing stories connected with it and will inspire you as a reader to learn more about it or even visit sometime. As Conan Doyle already recognized over a century ago, it is indeed the perfect setting for a great crime story.
ALSO AVAILABLE BY VIVIAN CONROY
MERRIWEATHER AND ROYSTON MYSTERIES
The Butterfly Conspiracy
CORNISH CASTLE MYSTERIES
Rubies in the Roses
Death Plays a Part
COUNTRY GIFT SHOP MYSTERIES
Written into the Grave
Grand Prize: Murder!
Dead to Begin With
LADY ALKMENE CALLENDER MYSTERIES
Fatal Masquerade
Deadly Treasures
Diamonds of Death
A Proposal to Die For
MURDER WILL FOLLOW MYSTERIES
Honeymoon with Death
A Testament to Murder
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Having spent many afternoons as a teen on the Nile with Poirot or confronting sinister spinsters in sleepy English towns with Miss Marple, it was only natural Vivian Conroy would start writing mysteries of her own. Atmospheric descriptions, well developed characters and clever plotting made several of her cozy mysteries #1 Amazon US and Canada bestsellers in multiple categories. Besides writing, Vivian enjoys hiking, collecting stationery and trying new desserts, especially if chocolate is involved.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Vivian Conroy
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-009-2
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-64385-010-8
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-64385-011-5
Cover design by Mimi Bark
Book design by Jennifer Canzone
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
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New York, NY 10001
First Edition: August 2019
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