Murder on the Moor

by Julianna Deering

  Beaky watched with anxious eyes. “If you could help at all, Drew . . .”

  “She’s the one who telephoned you last night, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. Halford said she seemed rather flustered about something. A letter she’d sent.”

  “A letter?”

  Beaky nodded. “She said she’d sent me a letter and then decided it was a foolish matter and called to say I should pay it no mind, that she had merely imagined something fanciful and I needn’t worry over it.”

  “And did the letter come?”

  “Not this morning,” Beaky said. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Drew looked around the shabby little room, feeling more than a bit out of his depth. “Tell me about her.”

  “A Miss Millicent Patterson, spinster, aged seventy-three,” the sergeant read from his notebook. “Was in service as a nursery maid for a good long while, from when she left school until she retired some ten or fifteen years ago. Had a nephew in Caerphilly, another in New York City. No other family to speak of.”

  “Did she always live in Bunting’s Nest?”

  “Born here, as I understand, sir, and lived in Bunting’s Nest a while before going down to London to work. Then came back about six months ago.”

  There was a bit of unfinished needlepoint in the basket next to the chair, an old-fashioned picture of roses and cherubs, but the colors were off in several places.

  “Did she have poor eyesight?” Madeline asked, fingering a skein of rose-colored wool.

  “She wore spectacles, ma’am,” the sergeant said. “I’m sorry to say they were broken when she was—well, during the incident.”

  “And who found her?” Drew asked.

  “It was Mrs. Pence come with her laundry early this morning. More to check up on her, as she generally did. She wondered why the milk was still on the step, seeing as Miss Patterson was always early up. Found the poor old lady slid down off her chair and onto the floor, huddled over like a broken doll.” The sergeant frowned contemplatively. “Neck broke, of course. They get brittle at that age, you see, and it doesn’t take much. The doctor says it was likely done the evening before. And her old tabby cat was sitting pressed up close to her, just as sad as if she knew what had happened.”

  “I trust the cat’s been seen to.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Mrs. Pence took her. Said it was the least she could do for Miss Patterson now she was past being helped.”

  Drew nodded and looked around once more. “There wouldn’t seem to be a financial motive for the killing.”

  “She hadn’t two beans,” Beaky said. “Just a small pension.”

  He seemed reluctant to go on.

  “A pension?” Drew asked.

  “For service, you know. She tended rather a lot of children in her time, I reckon. Seems only right for one of those families to look out for her when she was past doing that sort of work.”

  She hadn’t been Beaky’s nanny, Drew knew that much. He remembered too vividly the stories the boy had told about the very strict Mrs. Bowden and her threats to pinch his head off if he made so much as a peep. Could this Miss Patterson have once been at Westings?

  “She wasn’t Morris Gray’s nanny, was she?”

  “That was before my time,” Beaky said. “She might have been. But old Mr. Gray’s too mean with his money to pay anyone for no work. I, uh, happen to know she worked somewhere else before she was pensioned off.”

  Again he hesitated.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Drew asked finally. “Who was paying her?”

  “Well, actually . . .” Color flamed into Beaky’s face. “I was.”

  Madeline’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

  Drew glared at Beaky. “You? Why? You had the Bowden, I remember it distinctly.”

  “I did. But when Sabrina’s father passed on, I took over the payments for him. We couldn’t just let Miss Patterson go to the workhouse, you know.”

  “Sabrina’s . . .” It all clicked into place. “She was your wife’s nanny. I see.”

  “We had her brought up from London, Sabrina and I, once we were married. She was in a wretched little flat in Ealing.” Beaky looked faintly embarrassed. “I suppose I ought to have given her more. I—I never thought about it, to tell you the truth. I never met her, and I’d never been round here to . . . to see how she lived.”

  Drew clasped his shoulder. “Perhaps it isn’t much, but the place seems cozy enough.”

  “I think it’s very sweet,” Madeline said. “She had her cat and her sewing, and it doesn’t sound as if she was friendless and alone.”

  “No, ma’am,” Trenton put in. “I’m given to understand four or five of the old ladies played whist together every Thursday afternoon. Other than that, she went to church, and sometimes she and the ladies would go to tea at Milbury’s in the village, but that was all.”

  “Not much reason for anyone to kill her.” Drew examined the floral chair, the faint signs that Miss Patterson had ever even been there. “Any theories, sergeant?”

  “None, I’m afraid. That’s why Mr. Bloodworth thought you might be able to help.” There was something almost apologetic in the officer’s mild expression. “We don’t have this sort of thing happen much, not in Bunting’s Nest.”

  Drew nodded. “I suppose her nephews would inherit whatever it was she had to pass on.”

  “Right, sir, but I wouldn’t much think they’d have done it. Not rich men, I understand, but comfortable enough. In business, families of their own, all that. Wrote now and again, Mrs. Pence says. Out of duty, I suppose, but it couldn’t have benefitted either of them to kill her.”

  “Rather far to come, too,” Beaky added. “At least for the one in America.”

  “Still, one can’t know for certain, I always say. Might be some family grievance that’s been festering all these many years.” The sergeant’s eyes brightened once again. “I did have a thought, sir, which I shared with Mr. Bloodworth earlier on. I’d like to know what you think of it.”

  Drew gave Madeline a subtle wink. “Certainly. You never know what’s going to spark an idea.”

  “Just as I always say.” The officer gave Beaky a nod. “I thought that if it were to be one of the nephews, the one from America most like, seeing as they have peculiar ways he might have picked up, he might have come over in disguise and strangled her in the night and then slipped off quiet as you please back to New York to wait for the sad news. Mightn’t he, sir? I say it’s well within the realm of possibility.”

  “I suppose it is.” Drew glanced at Beaky, who only shrugged in reply. “But why would he do it? If she had nothing to leave him, and that seems rather evident, why go to all that bother?”

  The sergeant sighed. “Just a thought, sir. One doesn’t know for certain in these matters.”

  “Very true. Very true. My advice on that line of investigation is for you to contact the police where the two nephews live to see if they’re unaccounted for at the time of the murder. That ought to settle it for you posthaste.”

  “Yes, sir, and we’ve done that. The younger one, the one in Caerphilly, has been the speaker at a convention of dentists all this week. Seen by a good three hundred people during that time and was giving a speech on proper oral hygiene at the assumed time of his aunt’s death. We’re waiting to hear on the other one. That’s why I thought you might want to hear my theory. Might not be so fanciful as it first seems.”

  “Well, you keep it handy,” Drew said. “If it turns out we need it, we’ll ask for the loan of it with thanks.”

  There was little to see at the house, and before long Drew, Madeline, and Beaky were headed back to the Lodge.

  “Were you going to tell us?” Drew asked after they had driven a few minutes in silence.

  “What?”

  “About this Miss Patterson having been Mrs. Bloodworth’s nurse and you being the one paying her pension?”

  Beaky gaped at him. “Of course I was. Why shouldn’t I? W
e’ve nothing to hide.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell us straight off?”

  “I didn’t think of it, to be honest. It’s unsettling enough to have someone in one’s own village murdered, let alone two, but that’s nothing to do with me or my wife.”

  “She was Sabrina’s nurse in London?” Madeline asked.

  “Yes. Until she went off to school,” Beaky said. “Sabrina’s father pensioned Miss Patterson off after that, and when he passed on, it seemed only logical to move her back up here. The house has been in our family for ages, but it had been standing empty for some months before. It seemed the perfect solution for everyone to settle her there.”

  “Until now,” Drew reminded him.

  When they returned to the Lodge, Sabrina was waiting for them at the front door.

  “Patty’s dead, is she?” She blew out a curling stream of cigarette smoke. “It’s too bad. She was never very interesting, but she was generally kind. I’m sorry.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?” Madeline said, sympathy in her gentle expression.

  Sabrina scoffed. “It’s not as if we were close, you know. I’m sorry she’s dead. It’s an awful thing to happen to anyone, but I can’t say I’m terribly cut up over it. Come tell me what you found out, and I’ll show you the new gown I got for the Mayfield bash next month.” She hurried Madeline up the front stairs.

  Beaky shook his head, watching them go. “Apart from when she went to see if Miss Patterson was well settled in the house this spring, I don’t think she’d seen the woman since she went off to school.” Once again, his ears and cheeks had reddened. “I’m sure she doesn’t mean to come across as unfeeling.”

  “Of course not,” Drew said as he followed Beaky into the study.

  Beaky immediately pounced on the stack of mail on his desk, rifling through it until he came across one addressed in an old-fashioned, spidery sort of script. On one corner, in heavier strokes, the letter was marked Personal and Confidential. He slipped a finger under the flap and took out a folded piece of notepaper.

  “She was just like poor old Miles. Never harmed a fly. Hardly someone anyone would bother with, if you ask me. Who’d kill either of them?” He opened the paper and scanned it. “I’m sure neither of them had been out making mischief on the moor in the middle of the night. The idea of their taking a lamb and . . .” He paused, his brow furrowing.

  “What is it?” Drew asked.

  Beaky handed the note to him. “What a perfect swine I am.”

  It was the letter, the one Miss Patterson had called about the night before, the one she had wanted Beaky to disregard. Drew read it.

  The Burrows, Bunting’s Nest, Yorkshire

  12th October, 1934

  Dear Mr. Bloodworth,

  I am reluctant to trouble you, but I feel I cannot repay your continued kindness to me by keeping from you something that concerns you intimately. I have debated for some while whether or not it is my place to speak of such a delicate and potentially damaging matter, but if I do not, especially in light of recent events, it seems to me it would be a greater wrong than keeping silent.

  This is not something I can trust to a letter or a telephone call. Please do me the favor of calling upon me at your earliest convenience in this matter of great importance.

  Until then, I am

  Yours faithfully,

  Millicent Patterson

  Beaky looked miserable. “I should have returned her call. No, I should have taken it at the time instead of putting her off and then completely forgetting about it. The poor woman.”

  Drew scanned the letter again. “What do you think it means?”

  “I just don’t know.” Beaky dropped onto the straight-backed chair near the desk, shoulders slumped. “I hardly knew the woman. What could she have wanted to talk about that involves me intimately?”

  “And the bit about recent events?”

  Beaky shrugged, looking as bewildered and helpless as he once had when trying to explain to the French master how an indecent translation of Rabelais had ended up in his copybook.

  Drew paced for a moment, thinking. “I have to assume Miss Patterson’s murder and the vicar’s are related, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a place like Bunting’s Nest? I daresay it is. Two murders within days of each other? They must be linked somehow, but how? I mean, she went to St. Peter’s, naturally, but most everyone does. I don’t think there’s anything in that.”

  “Doesn’t narrow it down much, eh?” Drew said, and Beaky’s grave expression did not change.

  “I’m hanged if I know what she could have wanted to talk to me about. Why me? If it had to do with the parish or the church, why should she have told me about it in particular?”

  “You were supporting her,” Drew said. “Perhaps she thought you were the most logical one to come to if she needed help.”

  “But she didn’t say it was to do with her. She said it was to do with me. Intimate, delicate, and damaging were her words.”

  Drew nodded, stopping to stare out of the mullioned windows that overlooked the drive and the canary-yellow Austin Ten parked there. Intimate. Delicate. Damaging. He didn’t like what he was thinking, but he could hardly think anything else. No wonder the woman had changed her mind about talking to Beaky about it. It wasn’t her place any more than it was Drew’s, but still, a man ought to know, oughtn’t he?

  “What are you thinking?” Beaky asked after a bit.

  Drew shook his head.

  “No, there’s something, Drew. I still remember when we were at Eton and you’d get that look. You know something or think you do.”

  “I don’t know,” Drew admitted. “But I can’t help but wonder.”

  “What?”

  Drew didn’t turn. He didn’t want to see Beaky’s face just now. “I . . . well, you know how it is, especially in these small villages. People talk. It doesn’t take anything sometimes, especially when there’s not much else to do.”

  Beaky snorted softly. “‘Enter Rumor, painted full of tongues,’ eh?”

  “Exactly. And when someone new comes along, especially someone privileged and young and beautiful, well, there has to be something to wonder about. And if there’s the slightest basis for conjecture . . .” Drew turned, looking at his friend at last. Beaky’s face was taut, the freckles strewn across it stark against its pallor.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing, old man. Just wondering what this Miss Patterson might have thought. Or heard.”

  “About Sabrina?” Beaky’s voice was low, strained. “Are you saying she wanted to tell me something about Sabrina?”

  “I’m only trying to reason it out. From what the lady wrote in that note, it seems whatever she wanted to say had something to do with you specifically. Something personal.” Drew managed a smile. “It’s rather cliché, isn’t it? But I suppose it’s human nature that scandal is the first thing that springs to mind.”

  Beaky gave a grudging nod. “Might be.”

  Drew steeled himself. “I have to ask you, have you ever heard anything? Ridiculous as it might be, has any gossip gotten back to you about your wife? Anything at all?”

  “Oh, good heavens, Drew.” Beaky’s pale face was purplish now. “Of course I have. Did you think a girl like Sabrina could suddenly show up here looking the way she does and be mistress of the largest estate in the county and there not be talk?”

  “I understand that. But I would think this Miss Patterson would as well. If she spent most of her life looking after the children of the gentry, living in their homes and everything that entails, she had to have spent a great deal of time ignoring baseless gossip. If she went so far as to write to you about this, she had to have seen or heard something that made her think you needed to know.”

  “If she did, I couldn’t tell you what it might be. I’ve never heard anything that was remotely believable.”

  The hardness in his eyes and the set of his jaw dared Drew to question the
statement. “But what have you heard?”

  Beaky threw up both hands. “Oh, monstrous, ludicrous things.”

  “Tell me. About her and Delwyn?”

  “Why him?” Beaky demanded.

  “He’d be the obvious choice, wouldn’t he? Handsome. Brooding and mysterious. Welsh. More than a few of the fair sex are fascinated by the Heathcliff type, aren’t they? The rogue only the love of a good woman can tame?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Drew nodded. “I don’t know the man, but I hear he has a reputation for being something of a Lothario.”

  “That’s as may be,” Beaky said. “What’s that got to do with my wife?”

  “I’m not saying anything except perhaps they were seen talking. In the village or even out on the moor. Maybe he was even bold enough to approach her.”

  “Are you saying Miss Patterson was out on the moor?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just saying, no matter how innocently it might have started—”

  “I think you had better stop right there, Drew. If you’re going to make assumptions about my wife based on—based on nothing, that’s where I must strongly object.”

  “No offense meant, Beaky, old man.” Drew gave him an apologetic grin, knowing it would be no good if he were ordered off the estate before he’d even started to investigate. “Obviously you know Sabrina much better than I do. But if she weren’t your wife, you’d say I wasn’t much of a detective if I didn’t ask.”

  Beaky merely looked stern.

  “Admit it now. You know you would.”

  Finally Beaky cracked a smile. “I suppose it had to be asked. But you’re right. I know Sabrina better than you do. She’s a good egg, even if she does try a bit too hard to be modern and sophisticated. Be fair now and you’ll see.”

  “Can’t ask for more than that,” Drew said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  He would be fair. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to hurt his old friend in getting at the truth.

  Once Sabrina had shown Madeline her new gown, a dazzling confection of shell-pink taffeta, she insisted that Madeline come walking with her and Raphael again.

  “It’s so nice to be able to talk to someone like this,” she said as they tramped along. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it until you came to visit.”