Murder on the Moor

by Julianna Deering

  “Stay where you are. Please.”

  She turned, her grip tightening on the distaff. “Who’s there? What do you want?”

  “It’s Drew Farthering, Miss Midgley. You remember me. Please don’t come any farther.”

  She frowned, looking more angry than frightened. “What are you doing here? Where’s my father? I heard him. Da?”

  Drew took her arm, startling her. There was just no easy way to do this. “I’m sorry. He’s dead.”

  “Da?” She tried to shake him off. “You’re wrong. I just heard him. What did you do to him? Da!”

  “Please, Miss Midgley—”

  “Where is he?”

  She wrenched away from him and, tapping the ground with the distaff, strode toward the shed behind the cottage. Almost at once the distaff came into contact with something she wasn’t expecting, something still and heavy and unyielding.

  “Da,” she whispered, sinking to her knees beside the body, patting his hands and then his still face. “Da, what have you done?”

  Drew crouched down beside her. A touch at the fallen man’s wrist was enough to assure him her father was beyond help, and he couldn’t help but remember what Beaky had said about the two lambs that had been left out on the moor. A threat or a warning? Perhaps it was practice.

  The girl grasped Drew’s sleeve, her face turned to him. “What happened? I heard him. I heard you arguing with him and then I heard him cry out. What happened?”

  “I wasn’t the one he was arguing with.” Drew looked around. “Someone else was here, but I didn’t see who it was.”

  “I heard—”

  “We haven’t any time to waste.” He pulled her to her feet and put the distaff back into her hands. “We’ve got to get him inside.”

  She found her way back to the door and went inside, leading Drew with his still-warm burden to a little closet of a bedroom. She pulled off the bed a patchwork coverlet that looked older than the girl herself, and Drew lay the body down.

  She spread the coverlet over her father, patting it with both hands, smoothing it when it was already smooth, shaking her head all the while. He hated to leave her.

  “I’ve got to go for the police,” he said. “Will you be all right here? Would you rather come with me?”

  “No,” she breathed. “Wouldn’t be right to leave him here alone.”

  “I’ll come back as quick as I’m able,” he assured her. “You latch the door and keep that blunderbuss at hand.”

  She nodded, and he hurried back outside. Feeling once more for the Webley in his pocket, he took a quick look around, but the killer had been wily, even in his escape. Though there were footmarks in the mud, he had taken care to blot them out, turning his foot this way and that, sometimes on his heels and sometimes on his toes, stepping into the same print two or three times so the type and size of his shoe would be obliterated.

  It wasn’t far to the stream, and the fugitive had taken advantage of it, stepping from rock to water-slicked rock so that trailing him was impossible. Drew blew out a hard breath and turned toward Bunting’s Nest. He hadn’t gone far when he realized he was not alone. This time he drew the gun.

  “Who’s there?”

  A tall figure stepped out of the darkness.

  “Beg pardon, sir.” Delwyn tugged the brim of his cap. “I thought I’d heard something up near Midgley’s. Thought I’d best see what it was.”

  Drew slipped the Webley back into his pocket and looked him over. The gamekeeper was rather disheveled and out of breath, but that could be because he had hurried from where he’d been. There didn’t seem to be any blood on him, but he did have one hand in his coat pocket. The right one.

  “He’s dead.”

  Drew watched the other man’s face as he said it, the involuntary widening of the eyes, the startled intake of breath, the instinctive lurch toward the cottage, and then caught his arm, managing to pull his hand out of his pocket as he did. It was bare and empty, innocent of blood.

  “You can’t just leave his daughter up there alone, sir. Not if he’s dead. Does she know?”

  “She does.” Drew released his arm. “I had no choice but to leave her. I have to go for the police.”

  Drew considered for a moment. There were no footprints here save the ones the gamekeeper had made just now, but that didn’t mean he mightn’t have come the opposite way from the cottage and around through the kilns and down in the dales and then back through here. If Midgley knew too much, mayn’t his killer wonder what Iris could have heard, as well?

  “I think it would be best if you get the police, Delwyn. I’ll stay with the girl until you get back.”

  “But Iris—she knows me. We’ve known each other for years. She wouldn’t want no one else.”

  “All the same.” Drew nodded toward the village.

  Frowning, the man tugged his cap once more. “As you say, sir. I’ll be back soon as I’m able.”

  Drew rushed back to the cottage and found Iris sitting beside her father’s body, perfectly still except for her fingers stroking his gnarled hand.

  “I wish I could say he wasn’t always this way, Mr. Farthering. Mum, well, she loved him anyway, whether or not he deserved it.”

  “I expect that’s the way of real love,” he said gently. “It’s rarely, if ever, deserved.”

  She made no reply to that, and he wondered if she was thinking now of her father or of someone else.

  “I’m very sorry.” He pulled up a chair next to her. “I’ve sent Delwyn for the police.”

  She caught a quick breath. “Rhys? Why would you send him? How did you get to him?”

  “He was coming towards the cottage when I was heading for the village. I thought I’d best send him on and come back to be with you.”

  “Did they fight?” she asked. “That Selden Da’s been bringing round, he said Da and Rhys been fighting round at the pub. Did they, sir?”

  “Not fight. Not really.”

  The girl bit her lip. “Da said he’d beaten Rhys till he couldn’t stand.”

  “No, nothing like that. Just a bit of squabbling and shoving. It was nothing.” He didn’t like to tell her the reason for it. “Delwyn wasn’t here earlier, was he?”

  “Here?” Her voice trembled just the slightest bit. “Not here, sir. He don’t generally come here. Not anymore.”

  “Anymore?”

  She shrugged. “He used to . . . when we were children.”

  “But he doesn’t anymore.”

  “No, sir. Not now.”

  “Was that his idea or yours?”

  She lifted her chin. “He didn’t need the likes of me slowing him down.”

  “Not because you think a working man’s beneath you?”

  “Who told you that?” Her words were fierce and hot. She caught a hard breath, and the sudden anger was gone. “I never said nor thought such a thing. It’s just a working man, or any man, needs a woman who can help him, not one who will be nothing but a burden to him all his life. He deserves better than that.”

  “And you deserve better than Morris Gray.”

  She ducked her head. “I’m a fool who deserves everything she got and more. And now look what’s happened. God forgive me.”

  “He will. Just ask. I have a feeling He’d tell you to go in peace and don’t go back to what you were doing. That’s not so hard, is it?”

  “The not going back?” She drew a shaky breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Not hard at all. If he were free and came to me now on his knees begging to make an honest woman of me, I wouldn’t take him.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I think I always knew, deep down, that he was only trifling, but in those moments, when he’d tell me all the things we’d do, the glorious places we’d go, when he’d read me poems that said I was everything to him and more precious than all the world, it . . . well, sir, it was something for me. For once in my life just for me, even if it wasn’t no more than a dream.”

  “Just be glad you woke up befo
re there were more complications.”

  For a moment she looked puzzled, and then she colored. “No, sir. Nothing like that, I don’t think . . .” She hugged herself and started to cry in earnest.

  He wasn’t sure what he ought to do, but all this at once was more than those slender shoulders ought to have to bear. He put his arm around her and, feeling her tremble, pulled her close. “It’s all right now,” he murmured. “It’s all right. I know things couldn’t be much worse, but I daresay that just means you’re due something better to come.”

  She sniffled and then pulled away.

  He hesitated for a moment, not wanting to be indelicate. “If you do find yourself . . . in difficulty, I hope you will let me know. My wife and I would be happy to give you whatever assistance we can.”

  She swallowed hard and licked her lips but said nothing. Again he hesitated. She’d already been through so much, he hated to press her, but it had to be done.

  “Forgive me, Miss Midgley, but I must ask you what you heard just now. When your father was killed.”

  She patted the bed beside her until she found Midgley’s hand again. “I don’t know. There was a knock at the back door. Just a tap really. Secret-like. Da told me to stay here and went out. So I went over by the sink there, just to try to hear something of what he was about.”

  “And what did you hear? As exactly as you can remember.”

  Her fine brows came together. “It was hardly anything, I’m afraid. Da said, ‘Are you there?’ and the other man said, ‘It went well. Now there’s just a few loose ends to see to.’ And then . . .” She tried to go on but was too choked with tears. She had heard the same scuffle, the same terrible cry Drew had heard. He hadn’t heard the killer’s voice, not distinctly.

  “What sort of voice did he have?”

  “I couldn’t hear very much. A gentleman’s voice.”

  “The one you’ve heard before?”

  “Might have been.” She fished a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and blotted her eyes and nose. “It wasn’t much at all. It was all too fast. Why did he do it? Da thought he was going to get payment. I could tell by the way he was acting before he went out there. He thought he was going to be set for a long while after. Now I suppose he is, God forgive him.”

  “God forgive him,” Drew whispered. A bad end to a bad life. It was a pity and a waste, no doubt a life that God meant for better.

  The two of them sat in silence for a while, waiting for Delwyn’s return. Delwyn was as good as his word, and they weren’t obliged to wait very long. Unfortunately it was young Teddy Watts and not his uncle the gamekeeper brought back.

  “Mr. Delwyn says there’s been a murder done,” Watts said, peering around the front room of the cottage the moment Drew admitted him and looking as if he thought the murderer might pop out of the cupboard at any moment.

  “The body’s in there with the girl,” Drew said quietly, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d remember she’s his daughter.”

  “I do know that, sir, begging your pardon, as I’ve been a resident of this area all my life.”

  He blundered into the tiny bedroom, startling the girl, but even he didn’t need more than a look to know the poacher was dead. He came back into the main room, took out his notebook and pencil, and looked expectantly at Drew. “As we have established, there has in fact been a murder. I’d like to know exactly what happened. From the beginning, if you please.”

  Drew frowned. “Where’s Trenton? Oughtn’t he be handling something as serious as this?”

  “He’s with Aunt Mae on account of the baby coming. But he said I can see to things for one night, and don’t think I won’t. I am a constable, duly sworn, sir, as I’ll thank you to remember.”

  “I’ve already told you the little I know,” Delwyn growled. “Let me go see to Iris.”

  Watts gave him a hard look but evidently could think of no objection. “Mind you stay put, Rhys Delwyn.”

  The gamekeeper didn’t deign to make any answer. Instead he pushed past the constable to the bedroom doorway. “Iris?”

  For a moment there was no answer. Then she said something too low to hear, and he stepped into the room and pulled the door closed.

  Watts merely stood there until Drew indicated the two chairs near the fire. “Shall we sit?”

  Evidently knowing of nothing in the regulations that prohibited it, Watts sat. Drew took the chair at the spinning wheel.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “From the beginning, sir,” the constable repeated, so Drew told him everything he had seen and heard.

  “Precious little, if you’ll pardon me, sir. Precious little.”

  “Believe me, I wish I could tell you exactly who it was. Better yet, I wish I’d caught him before he could kill the man, if only for the girl’s sake.”

  “Didn’t like Midgley, did you, sir?”

  Drew pressed his lips together. “Couldn’t recommend him, no.”

  “And you say you didn’t see the supposed murderer in the doing of the deed?”

  “No. He was on the other side of the cottage from me. In the back.”

  Watts stood and said, “I think you’d better just show me, sir. Where you were hiding, and where you were when you saw the body.”

  Drew took him to the stone wall and then to the front corner of the cottage and then out to the back. Even in the dimness, there was evidence of a struggle, and a dark pool glistened in the moonlight. Watts took copious notes and afterward gestured for Drew to go back inside.

  “That’s all I know. I took the body inside and laid it out on the bed as decently as possible. Then I went to fetch you. Ran into Delwyn along the way and sent him instead. I didn’t like to leave Miss Midgley alone.”

  “I see,” Watts said, his face professionally suspicious. “You didn’t see who killed the man?”

  “No, I just told you where I was. I couldn’t see anyone.”

  “And you didn’t do for him yourself? Just in a temper perhaps?”

  “Of course not. Why should you think that?”

  “It’s only that you’ve got blood on you, sir.”

  He pointed with his pencil, and Drew looked down to see his coat and one formerly pristine shirt cuff were smeared with blood. Good heavens, the man couldn’t really think he—

  “I carried the body inside, Constable, and I must have gotten blood on me then. That hardly means I murdered the man.”

  “You’ve admitted you didn’t get along, sir. Tempers flare and next thing we know a man lies dead. It’s been known to happen. In my experience—”

  “Just how many murder investigations have you conducted?”

  “That’s well beside the point, sir.”

  Drew managed not to say anything unseemly. “Delwyn in there had not one but two actual fights with the man in the past few days. I don’t see you questioning him.”

  “Mr. Delwyn don’t have blood on him, sir. You see my difficulty.”

  This wasn’t going well, not in the least. And where in the world was Nick just now? Drew could use an ally. “Perhaps you should interview Miss Midgley. She can tell you I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You want me to ask the blind girl to tell me what she saw, sir?”

  “You could ask her what she heard and also what she noticed before she came out of the house and after. It might be quite useful in a murder investigation to question all the witnesses.”

  “And we will be interviewing Miss Midgley, all in good time. For now I’ll have to ask you to come along with me.”

  Drew blinked at him. “What?”

  “To the station, sir, if you would. On account of Mr. Midgley being dead and you being the only one caught red-handed, as it were, I’m obliged to have you in for questioning. Are you armed, sir?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, man. I didn’t kill him.”

  “I must ask you to be civil while we are attempting to investigate a serious offense. Now, are you in possession of a fi
rearm?”

  Drew took the Webley from his pocket with two fingers and handed it over. “Do bear in mind that Midgley was stabbed, not shot.”

  “That’s as may be, sir.”

  “I still didn’t kill him.”

  “I understand your position,” Watts said. “I do hope you’ll understand mine and come along quietly.” He moved to take Drew’s arm, but Drew was already on his feet.

  “Look here, you have no reason to arrest me. Just talk to the girl. She knows I’m innocent. She heard what happened.”

  “The young woman has had a shock, sir. I’ll have to send the doctor by to look at her, and when he says she’s ready to be interviewed, I will see to it. For now—”

  “Talk to her. She has had a shock, I grant you, but she’s not hysterical. There’s no reason you cannot ask her whether or not I killed her father. Just that.”

  Watts looked dubious. Obviously this was not recommended procedure.

  “Good heavens, man, I came here to solve a murder, not commit one.”

  The constable still looked reluctant, but he finally nodded. “I’ll just ask her about what happened. Just a question or two, mind you, until the doctor’s come to say she’s fit.”

  “Fair enough. Shall I fetch her?”

  Watts shook a thick finger at him. “You just stay where you are, sir, and don’t be getting too close to the door. I’ll get Miss Midgley.”

  She was already at the bedroom door with Delwyn at her elbow.

  “I heard you talking,” she said thinly. “I’m ready to answer any questions you have, Teddy.”

  “You ought to sit down,” Delwyn urged, guiding her to a chair and then standing behind it.

  “Do you know who killed your father, miss?” Watts asked once she was seated.

  “No. I didn’t hear very much. Just a voice from out in the yard.”

  Watts took down what she said. “Did you know this voice?”

  “I—I’m not sure. I might have heard it before, but I really couldn’t tell much about it. It was an educated voice. Not a country fellow. I’m sure of that.”