Not that Dicky’s death was right, Jake told himself, not by a long shot.
“The rest of you lot, clear off!” directed Skelton.
The other men shuffled away silently, burdened by deep and discomforting thought. With one last glare over his shoulder, Harry brought up the rear.
Bridget hasn’t done anything wrong, Jake told himself. I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone make her feel like she’s done something wrong. . . . Skelton was looking at him, waiting for him to leave, too. He wanted to lock up the room.
“Sir,” Jake said, “sir, you said yourself I couldn’t be the murderer. Let me stay here, look the place over, see if I can come up with something that’ll exonerate Nurse O’Neill. The evidence against her is no more than prejudice and coincidence.”
“You rather fancy Nurse O’Neill, do you, Houston?” Skelton allowed himself a thin smile. “But yes, you could well be quite correct about coincidence. And the prejudice as well, sadly, although you have to recognize that we have our backs to the wall just now, which does rather alter one’s viewpoint.”
“Yes sir. I understand. Just give me until the police come.”
“Very good then. I’d hate to lose Nurse O’Neill.”
“Just one thing, sir. Do you have a copy of the roster—a list of . . .” Jake almost said “inmates”, “. . . patients and staff both?”
“The initial B, is that it?” Skelton reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a small notebook, and tore off a page. “There you are. You have one thing on your side, Houston—we discharged a group of patients last week and several staff are on leave, so there aren’t many people here tonight.”
“And I have one thing working against me. Time. Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best.”
“Lock up when you’ve finished.” With a firm nod, Skelton walked across to the doorway and pulled the double doors shut behind him.
Jake turned in a slow circle, trying to see the familiar room with new eyes. The library had been his sanctuary against the outside darkness both literal and figurative. He’d spent many hours here, reading and writing letters and listening to Andy’s half-baked but always interesting musings—the fault, my lad, is not in ourselves but in our stars. Now the comforting smell of books, paper and ink with an afterglow of mildew, was overwhelmed by the reek of mortality.
Between the books the shelves were cluttered with Andy’s collection of art and artifacts—a bust of Athena, a set of apothecary’s scales with a stuffed dove nestling in one bowl, a model ship, a Roman amphora. Several of his rolled-up maps lay on the mantel. . . . Andy. After he looked over the library he’d talk to Andy. If the old man had just come in from his daily walk maybe he’d seen or heard something.
Jake leaned up against the desk and unfolded Skelton’s list. Of course Skelton himself might be the murderer. While it was stretching it a bit to think a doctor would kill one of his own patients, if Skelton was the traitor then he’d have a motive to kill. Assuming Dicky actually had reason to suspect a traitor. As much as Jake wanted to think the entire scenario was another of Harry’s malicious jokes, he couldn’t see how a joke would lead to murder. Neither could he see Harry himself killing Dicky, more’s the pity.
And what information would a traitor find at Lydford Hall, anyway? Killing off a few recuperating airmen wouldn’t damage the war effort.
He read down the list, looking for names beginning with B. No, Skelton’s first name was Trevor, for what that was worth. Matron was Geraldine White. The orderly was William Graves. . . . Someone named William was often nicknamed Bill, but Jake couldn’t remember hearing anyone ever call him that.
The Brits with their mania for multiple names. Harry wasn’t the only one who called Jake “Tex”, even though the closest he’d ever been to Texas was Tulsa. His surname was Houston, that was enough. At least Tex was better than some of the others’ nicknames, which made them sound like characters in a Wodehouse comedy—Epsom Downs, Foggy Dewar, Twig Smallwood, Taffy Evans. Harry Davenport should’ve been “Sofa”, Jake supposed. But then, no one liked Harry well enough to give him a nickname.
Jake glanced down at Dicky’s shrouded shape. He was—had been—a big man. Jake had often wondered how he managed to pleat himself into a cockpit. Now he was no more than a pile of meat to be disposed of. If he owed Bridget the truth, Jake told himself, then he owed Dicky, too.
He looked at the list. Dicky’s name was Donald Richardson—not that he’d have been writing about himself. The only “B” on the list besides Bridget was Twig, whose name was Bernard. Even if he could believe Twig was a spy and traitor, which he didn’t, Jake knew the man had only to keep his mouth shut about Dicky’s suspicions and everyone else would’ve discounted Harry’s wild story as just that.
Jake folded the paper into his pocket. The storm seemed to have eased a bit—at least the wind was moaning rather than howling and the rain was more a patter than a roar. A draft played along the floor, stirring the edge of the sheet and exposing Dicky’s clenched hand. Jake shivered. From the cold, he assured himself. The fire inside the massive fireplace with its marble mantelpiece had died down, not that it had been very big to begin with. Looking into that fire Jake could see burning cities, exploding flak, Spitfires spiraling down into the cool but unforgiving water of the Channel. He’d sat in the pub in Glastonbury staring into its fire and seeing the same visions. The pictures weren’t in the fire at all, were they, but in his own mind.
The small stone—the murder weapon—lay on the floor. Jake knew what it was, a lion’s head from Glastonbury Abbey that usually sat on the desk. Andy had rescued it from a spoils heap when he was helping with the excavations before the war. The first war.
And that, realized Jake, was where he’d heard the name on one of Andy’s books. Frederick Bligh Bond had been the archaeologist in charge of the excavations. He’d been discredited in later years for saying the spirits of dead monks had told him where to dig.
Painfully Jake lowered himself down beside the sculpture. Except for the flecks of blood the stone looked all right, not damaged at all. Andy wouldn’t be happy one of his prized possessions had been used to kill someone. He’d had a wooden pedestal made especially for that lion’s head. . . . Jake glanced back at the desk. The pedestal and the sculpture had stood on the edge of the desk. Now the pedestal was lying on its side.
Cursing both the feeble light and his own injuries, Jake sat down on the floor and leaned as close as he could to the sculpture. Yes, it was spattered with a few drops of blood. But several drops lay on the floor as well. And as far as he could tell not one strand of hair clung to that rock, not one blood smear. What if it wasn’t the murder weapon at all?
He clambered clumsily to his feet and peered down at the bottom edge of the desk. Yes, beside it lay a long triangle of clean wooden plank. The desk had been moved, very recently. And there—yes. The upper corner, closest to where the sculpture had stood, was sticky. The color of drying blood blended with the cherry wood so well it was almost invisible. But the two strands of blond hair that were matted in the sticky patch were apparent enough, if anyone looked.
Jake let himself down into the desk chair. That was it. Dicky hadn’t been hit with the sculpture at all. He’d pitched forward for some reason, hitting his head on the corner of the desk. A sudden jolt could’ve both moved the desk and toppled the sculpture.Then, dazed, Dicky could’ve crawled a few paces and then collapsed. Head wounds bled profusely. When Dicky’s head hit the floor blood spattered all around.
Jake supposed an autopsy would show that the indentation in Dicky’s head was sharply angled, not rounded, to fit the corner of the desk but not the sculpture. Which was all well and good, except for one very important point. Unlike Harry, Foggy, or Jake himself, Dicky had been perfectly steady on his feet. Why had he fallen? Had he been knocked over in a struggle?
The door behind him burst open and Jake jumped, jamming his belly into the arm of the chair. The pain shot stars and comets across the room. Whe
n they cleared he saw Harry standing in front of him, wearing a triumphant smirk and holding out a piece of paper. On the whole, Jake thought, he’d rather have the stars and the stitch in his side. “What do you want?”
“I found this in the sideboard in the dining room. Dicky and I both saw Bridget put it there last night. I daresay he had himself a look after the party. Perfectly damning evidence against your little Irish . . .”
Jake lashed out with his cane, striking Harry across his good shin. He cried out, dropped the paper, and staggered backward to crash heavily against one of the bookcases. Several books fell to the floor.
Apologizing silently to the books, Jake leaned over and picked up the paper. On it was drawn a circle with lines radiating out from the center. Other lines angled across them. Letters and symbols were grouped in different sections. Oh, for the love of . . .
“What’s all this?” demanded Skelton from the doorway.
Harry’s words came in staccato bursts, like a machine gun. “Bloody Yank tripped me up. Found proof that O’Neill is the traitor. Some sort of navigation chart. Guiding the Jerry bombers to Bristol. Maybe more. An invasion plan.”
“This is perfectly innocent,” Jake told them both. “It’s not even Bridget’s handwriting.”
Skelton levered Harry away from the bookcase and draped him over his crutch. Then he took the paper from Jake’s hand. “Whose handwriting is it, then?”
“It’s Andy’s. He cast her horoscope for her—her birthday was yesterday, remember?” Jake reached down and picked up one of the books that had slid to his feet. He opened it. Across the top of the flyleaf, in calligraphy worthy of a diploma, was written, Anthony Jenkins-Ashe, Lord Brue. He handed the book to Skelton. “You don’t see penmanship like that any more.”
“A horo-what?” asked Skelton, looking from the book to the drawing and back again.
“A horoscope’s a way of predicting the future by charting where certain constellations were in the zodiac on the day someone was born. Like in the Bible, when the three wise men follow a special star to Bethlehem. Astrology’s just a mathematical game, if you ask me, but Andy believes in it. He told me he knew he’d never see his son again because he read it in his horoscope, and that made his death easier to accept.”
Skelton shook his head doubtfully. “Spiritualism?”
“No, he’s not claiming he can communicate with the dead. He’s claiming he can predict, maybe even control . . . Oh, hell.” Jake suddenly remembered the purchase order he’d given the bookshop owner in Glastonbury, signed with just the one word, Brue. That was another of Andy’s topics, how titles were based on landscape features. Anthony Jenkins-Ashe, Lord Brue.
He could see it all now, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. “I remember reading an English history book when I was a kid, the author kept referring to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, as both ‘Dudley’ and ‘Leicester’. I thought he was talking about two different people. What I didn’t think was that Dicky’s ‘B’ could be Andy. But he always tried to call Andy by his title, didn’t he? If he was referring to him in a letter he’d call him ‘Brue’.”
Skelton leaned over and pulled the letter closer. “Yes, the word could be ‘Brue’, right enough. Richardson may well have thought this, this horoscope business was something underhanded. He borrowed Andy’s books, he’d recognize the handwriting.”
Jake looked at the sheet laid so carefully over Dicky’s body. Blood from the puddle on the floor was seeping through, staining the white linen with a brownish-red blotch. Dicky had been prepared to die for his country in battle. Even here he’d thought he was helping his country by turning in a traitor.
Harry kicked petulantly at the books lying at his feet. “Who’s saying this horoscope rubbish isn’t underhanded? Maybe the traitor isn’t O’Neill—I’ll reserve judgment on that—but what about Dotty Andy, eh? He’s out and about the countryside every day, isn’t he, always writing in that notebook of his, always at his maps. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he is helping the enemy, him and his supernatural bunkum. The Nazis believe in the occult, don’t they? Everyone knows that!”
“It doesn’t follow that because Andy’s interested in astrology he’s a traitor!” Jake spat.
“I’ve said before and I’ll say again,” insisted Harry, “that there’s something seriously wrong with that man. Wrong enough to sell us all out. Wrong enough to murder Dicky here.”
Jake heaved himself to his feet and with his cane started pushing the fallen books into a pile. “Look. I don’t think Dicky was murdered at all. He fell against the desk—see, how it’s been moved? And there’s blood and a couple of hairs on the corner. The sculpture fell over when the desk was pushed. Andy wasn’t even here.”
Skelton inspected the desk. “I see. Very good.”
“So how did he fall, eh?” Harry asked.
“I don’t . . .” Beside the book that lay next to the door were several little brown lumps. Jake slowly knelt next to them, but he already knew what they were. He picked up first one lump and then another, rubbing them between his fingers. His heart dived like a rudderless airplane.
“What do you have there?” asked Skelton.
“Bits of mud and leaf mold.”
“Someone tracked it in from the outside, I expect.”
Jake looked out the door. Footprints smudged the entrance hall, but he didn’t see any between there and here. Only the suggestive little clots of mud. as though someone had put a pair of muddy boots down just inside the door. Put them down because they had to do something in the library.
Gritting his teeth, Jake pulled himself up. “I have to talk to Andy.”
“Right,” said Skelton. “I’ll come along, shall I? No, Davenport, I’ll see to it.”
Jake could feel Harry’s glower on the back of his neck as he and Skelton knocked on Andy’s door. Again the old man’s voice said, “Come.”
He was still sitting by the fire, holding a rolled paper across his knees. The scent of tobacco smoke hung in the air and a ghostly wisp of it wafted across the silvery pale rectangles of the windows. The storm had passed, and the moon and the stars were starting to peek through the clouds. A full moon was a bomber’s moon, Jake thought. Under the full moon no blackout could hide a target. Only camouflage could do that, making factories look like fields and gun emplacements like barns.
“I hope we’re not intruding,” Skelton said.
“Not at all,” returned Andy. “Please, sit down.”
Jake sat on his stool. With a sharp glance at Jake, Skelton moved Andy’s clean boots aside and pulled up a light chair.
“Have to valet myself, don’t you know,” Andy explained. “There’s a war on. Mustn’t complain.”
“Too many young men lost,” Jake said quietly, repeating the words Andy had dismissed him with earlier. “Were you thinking of your son? Or were you thinking of someone else?”
Andy’s face sagged as though pulled down by a heavy weight.
“You put your dirty boots down inside the library door,” Jake went on. “What happened? Why is Dicky—Pilot Officer Richardson—why is he lying there dead?”
The dying fire crackled. Skelton’s chair squeaked. Andy said slowly and precisely, “Upon returning from my walk, I wished to consult a reference book. When I pushed open the door of the library I saw Richardson sitting at the desk. He was muttering and splashing ink about, having a spot of bother, I expect, writing with his right hand and holding the paper steady with his left. I asked him if I could be of assistance. He crushed the paper, leapt from the chair, and spun round as though I’d shot him.”
“Ah,” said Skelton softly.
“Then he went positively ashen and toppled over, striking his head on the desk. I dropped my boots and hurried forward to help, but he propelled himself himself across the floor away from me. And then he collapsed, quite dead. Quite. Horribly. Dead.” Andy closed his eyes. One bright teardrop traced a zigzag path down the creases in his cheek.
Skelton nodded. “Richardson was still convalescing. Leaping up in alarm like that caused his blood pressure to plummet. He blacked out briefly. Rotten luck he fell against the desk.”
“Rotten luck he hadn’t been taking Harry’s spitefulness with a grain of salt, the way the rest of us have,” Jake said. “You never looked at the letter he was writing, Andy?”
“Read another man’s private correspondence? I should hope not!”
“Why didn’t you fetch Matron or me as soon as it happened?” Skelton asked.
“Ah. Well then. . . .” Turning away from the fire, Andy drew his fragile body to attention. “I’ve been sitting here having a smoke and thinking it all over. I’ve decided I should put you in the picture. The full picture. You see, Richardson had one of my maps unrolled on the desk beside him, held open with one of my notebooks. He’d found both there in the library. I’m a bit disappointed that he’d take it upon himself to read them, but I imagine the other gentlemen’s talk of ‘Dotty Andy’ and the like had piqued his curiosity.”
“Not to say his suspicions,” muttered Jake.
“Yes, his suspicions. What was he thinking, do you suppose? That I was making maps to guide the German bombers? An appalling misconception, if so, for I’ve been doing the exact opposite.”
“I beg your pardon?” Skelton asked.
Andy’s face struggled with several expressions, doubt, distress, determination. “I didn’t tell you Richardson had been injured—had been killed—because I knew there’d be a lengthy investigation that would in all likelihood draw me away from Lydford tomorrow. Tomorrow being the equinox. Virgo is moving into Libra, you see. That segment of the zodiac must be walked.”
“The zodiac,” repeated Jake.
“I’ve hesitated to speak of it openly. Look what happened to Bligh Bond when he spoke of his spirit guides—he was removed from his position, completely discredited, left to die in shocking obscurity.” Andy shook his head. “But personal considerations aside—and they must be put aside in wartime, mustn’t they?—I had an even better reason for keeping my own counsel. While Richardson and Davenport had the wrong end of the stick in regard to my loyalty, in one area they were quite correct. Loose talk must be avoided. The more people who know about the Zodiac and the importance of the equinoctial walk, the more opportunity the enemy will have to hear of it, to realize its importance, and to try to destroy it!”
The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth Page 16