But now it is time for me to put aside love and what I want out of life, at least for the moment. There are more important things to concentrate on. I slip off the bed and start getting dressed.
“There. I’ve driven you away with my babbling. Forgive me. I truly do love—”
“Get dressed. It’s time to go.”
He stares at me and then looks to the window before stating the obvious.
“It’s nighttime. Dark outside.”
“Yes, it usually is about eleven o’clock in the evening, everywhere, I’m told, except those places that enjoy the midnight sun.”
I grab his pants off the chair and toss them to him.
“We have to get out of here when Archer isn’t looking.”
“We’re not teaming up with him?”
“Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?”
He gets off the bed and starts hopping into his pants. “I suppose I should have known you were lying. You do it so well. But, pray tell, sweet Nellie, shouldn’t we wait until the crack of dawn to sneak out?”
“Archer is not a stupid man.” I think about that statement. “More sly like a fox than bright, I suppose. And the fox in him will tell him we’ll make a getaway about the time the sun is rising. I told him we’d meet him after breakfast, but I’m sure he took that with a grain of salt.”
We continue dressing as we chat.
“You don’t believe that there is any advantage in teaming with him?” Wells asks. “Remember, there’s a killer out there. Archer is an ex-policeman and I’m sure he can handle himself. He may even have a gun.”
“If he has one, he’ll probably end up using it on us. And yes, I’m sorely tempted to team up with him, but I also keep reminding myself that he smacks of criminality, starting with the mugging I got from him. People tend to stay consistent in life; criminals tend to commit more crimes. That means we can never trust him and will always have to be watching our backs. Worse, when he does betray us, we may be defenseless.”
“What about the diary? It may have more information.”
“I don’t want to be clutching for the diary with my dying breath and I have a feeling it will end up that way if we let him lead us around with it like a donkey with a carrot. Besides, I don’t believe he has much more to tell us from the diary. What he told me about Hailey’s infatuation with Lacroix rang true. Hailey was immature in many ways and dealing with a man in a romantic situation is just one of them. But she apparently wrote nothing in the diary about how to find Lacroix or where his laboratory in the moors is. If she had, Archer wouldn’t need us.”
“Quite, but, as I’m sure you are aware of, we are only going to shake him temporarily. He’ll find us again and he’ll still have the diary. You’ll still have an opportunity to find out if there is any more to grasp from it.”
I give a bit of thought to the idea of running into Archer after we run out on him. He doesn’t strike me as a particularly forgiving man.
“My dear Wells, I do believe that our next meeting with Mr. Archer will not be on a friendly basis.”
“Point taken.”
What I don’t convey and he knows as well as I do, is that we shall be lucky just to get away and stay away from the man long enough to find Lacroix.
53
We had left our purchases for the trip with the buggy at the stable, so we didn’t have to haul anything more from our room than our valises.
After we’re dressed, we pack up our clothes for a quick escape.
As quietly as possible I open the door a crack and check the hallway to make sure the coast is clear. There are only eight rooms, four on each side of the hallway with a set of steps at each end. Since I don’t know which room is Archer’s or even if he has returned to his room, I hesitate, wondering which direction we should take.
For all I know he could still be in the bar below and if he is, he might see us going out the front because the exit passes by the double-door opening to the bar.
To my left the hallway leads to the stairs that would take us back downstairs and through the lobby, past the hotel’s small front desk and the wide doors to the pub.
To the right is a set of stairs that I’m guessing leads to a rear door.
Our room is already paid for, so we don’t have to stop at the front desk.
“We’ll go out the back,” I whisper to Wells.
As we hurry down the hallway I can’t resist the temptation to glance back and see if Archer’s head is poking out of a doorway. It isn’t.
The hallway is dimly lit with gaslights at each end. The stairway is a dark pit and we have to watch our footing going down.
At the bottom of the stairs we get an unpleasant surprise—the rear door is locked, bolted tight. It takes a key to get out.
“Damn,” Wells hits the door, “should have guessed. Keeps people from running out on their rent.”
“I don’t suppose you learned how to pick a lock from one of those books you read?”
Wells shakes his head. “Only cutting up salamanders.”
“Then we have no choice, we’ll have to risk going out the front.”
“In that case, I think we should wait a couple of hours until after the bar closes. Archer struck me as the type that hangs around to the very end. We call them pub closers.”
“We can’t. The stable will be closed. The stableman’s not going to be happy and if we wait any later he won’t answer the bell, period. Besides, it’s already dark and it’s getting foggy. We need to make our way to another inn before it gets worse.”
“And what is your plan if he catches us red-handed?”
“We’ll pretend we’re coming to see him.”
“With our luggage?”
“We tell him we have to leave now because we’re afraid the police are coming, but stopped by to tell him where we’re headed.”
“Amazing…”
“What?”
“How you do it.” He walks down the dimly lit first floor hallway shaking his head.
“Do what?”
“Come up with these lies.”
I don’t volunteer that I doubt that Archer would fall for the lie, but it will at least give him pause.
Wells is ahead of me and he is going by the open door to the men’s water closet when he comes to an abrupt halt.
“Good lord!”
“What? What’s the matter?” I rush up beside him.
Archer is sitting on a toilet. Motionless. Dead.
“Oh … my … lord…”
The handle of an ice pick is sticking out his right ear. Blood is running down the side of his neck. He is staring straight ahead, blankly, dull eyed. The expression on his face is one of permanent surprise.
“We have to keep going.” I give Wells a push.
We start to rush away when I stop. “The diary! We have to get the diary.”
I turn back and go in. My whole body shaking, I slowly approach Archer’s body. He appears to be staring directly at me and I almost lose my nerve. Giving out a slight yelp, I reach inside his coat where I’d seen him put the diary.
It’s not there.
I pad his chest to find it. Nothing. His weight shifts and he starts to fall forward. This time I cry out and push him back.
Wells grabs my arm and pulls me out of the room. He closes the door and turns the sign on the outside from UNOCCUPIED to OCCUPIED.
“It’s not there,” I tell Wells as we move quickly down the hallway. The diary Archer stole and so blatantly boasted possession of had cost him dearly.
My knees are trembling and I’m afraid they will give out, but I force my feet ahead with sheer willpower.
Just before we come out of the hallway I stop.
“We need to compose ourselves.”
Once we get our breathing in order we move forward at a speed I hope doesn’t look like we are running from a fire—or a murder.
We pass through the dining room and as we go by the open doors to the bar I pause and look in. M
y eyes automatically go to the shoes of men, looking for cowboy boots. Thank God I don’t see a pair because I don’t know what I’d do.
As we head for the exit the innkeeper, who’s behind the front desk, looks up from an accounting book and asks, “Are you leaving?”
“Mother’s sick,” Wells says. “Must rush to her bedside. We’re taking the train.”
“You won’t be getting a refund on your room. Stay a minute, stay the whole night, it’s same to me.”
“Thank you,” I respond inanely and then realize I’m not supposed to say anything because of my accent.
The stable is half a block away and it is everything I can do to keep from breaking into a run, but even running would not have gotten us there any quicker than the swift stride Wells sets out for us.
We get lucky—the stableman is working late to make repairs on a carriage wheel. Our buggy is still loaded and the ponies are quickly harnessed.
As we come out of the stable yard a man bursts out of the hotel and runs down the street away from us. It’s the innkeeper.
“Going for the constable,” Wells says. “Change of course.”
He quickly steers the ponies in the opposite direction.
“Please tell me you have an idea of where we are going.”
“No, but I’m sure that somewhere ahead will be a road that can take us north.”
I know we will get lost, I just feel it, but there are no other options than to head out blindly.
We wander for a while, trying to find the road without finding the constable first. It’s an hour before we reach a simple wood sign at a crossroad that says POUNDSGATE and has an arrow pointing left. We haven’t passed an inn.
Wells and I exchange looks. No words are needed. The only certainty about turning left is that we will leave a small town for a long, poorly maintained road with few accommodations on it. But if we continue straight, we’re certain we’d end up at the train station.
Taking a train back to London is tempting. We could leave all this chaos behind, Wells would return to teaching, and I could catch a ship back to New York.
“I don’t think we will be able to make out what is ahead on the road.” I stated the obvious.
My rational mind knows that probably little will change in terms of the scenery of the moors after we leave Ashburton, but the part of my brain that sometimes imagines the unimaginable tells me that the night has grown darker, the fog thicker, the road more deserted.
“Maybe we should pull over and wait ’til morning?” I’m still trying to put off the inevitable.
“And let the constable find us … I don’t think so.”
“When you and Dr. Doyle were perusing routes for us to take, did he tell you anything about Poundsgate?”
“A small but comfortable inn, good ale. And the devil.”
“Why does that not surprise me? Is the Dark One the innkeeper?”
“Giving equal credit to each sex for evil, I’m not certain Satan is a ‘he’ as opposed to a ‘she,’ but we can refer to him as a ‘he’ to keep things simple.”
“Just tell me about the devil. It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s creepy and I’m sure there are things out here that would give pause to Satan himself.”
“It’s said that the devil stopped at the Poundsgate inn on his way to collect a soul in Widecombe, which is farther north.”
“How did the innkeeper know it was the devil?”
“His cloven heels were a tip-off. He was dressed in black and rode a black horse. As he downed a mug of ale all in one long chug, the barmaid heard a hissing sound. He left money on the bar that appeared to be coins but turned out to be dried leaves when she picked them up. The mug he set on the bar left a scorch mark. After he left the bar, he found the man whose soul he’d come for at church services in Widecombe. He collected the man after causing damage and a death or two in the church.”
“Other than the cloven hooves and his bad bar manners, is there anything to corroborate the visit of the Dark One or can we just attribute it as another old wives’ tale?”
“There is the matter of the ball lightning.”
“Which is?”
“Our image of lightning is of long, narrow flashes. There is a rare variety which appears as a fiery ball. The earliest know verification of ball lightning happened that day when a ball of fire went through a church window and wreaked havoc at Widecombe.”
Cloven hooves, ball of fire, it was good enough for me.
“No rest for the wicked,” Wells states flatly.
“I wish you hadn’t put it that way.”
We turn left, heading for the wild moors.
It occurs to me that left-handedness has always been associated with the devil.
54
The moors … the dark side of the moon as far as I’m concerned.
On this chilly, foggy, gloomy night with just the ghost of a full moon sailing through a sea of ashen clouds, our Dartmoor ponies somehow manage to maneuver down a dark, dirt road without breaking a leg, an axle.
Mr. Poe, genius of the horror and the macabre, could hardly have imagined a night with more unseen but felt terrors. The most frightening element of all is that we can see so little. We have no idea of what lies before us and I mean right before us. Everything is shrouded, distorted by dense fog. The effect is otherworldly, nothing which I have experienced before.
I look at Wells whose eyes are trying to focus on the dirt road ahead. “I feel like we have entered into the Dartmoor mist you were telling me about.”
“Quit.” Is all he says. His back is ridged and his hands grip the reins tightly as he leans forward trying to focus on what lies ahead.
What my eyes don’t see, my mind imagines—which is nothing good. Nor does my imagination stop flaring up with the landscape—images of the black beast of a hound are conjured in my head every time I hear the howl of a farmer’s dog, the ice pick killer on his horse whenever something appears to move in the dark. On occasion, there is the eerie howl of a hound that sends quivers up my spine and causes me to edge closer to Wells.
“We should have bought a gun,” Wells says.
Should have, would have, could have. “But we bought a compass,” I try to say in a cheerful voice.
“Wonderful, we can ward off demons and murderers by leading them in the wrong direction.”
Wells’s attempt at humor does nothing for either of us.
Instead, just the mention of demons and murderers brings horrible images to my mind. I keep seeing the ice pick in Weekes’s back and the one in Archer’s head. The ice picks are left as a boast and a trademark, Wells concluded earlier.
Which brings up a question—what direction has the ice pick killer taken?
If Lacroix is in Okehampton and the murderer is returning to his nest, he could be taking the direct route across the moors just as we have. Could he be on horseback? I regret not asking the stableman if another man had picked up his horse shortly before we arrived. He could have headed out in any direction—especially ours, since he has now twice appeared at the same location as we have.
“Is he following us?” I ask Wells. “Or are we on his heels?”
It takes him a moment to realize who I’m talking about.
“He … or … they?” he asks. “Why must we assume there is only one? If it is the Whitechapel gang, there may be more of them out there.”
“Out there” of course included where we are.
“The ice pick and cowboy boots serve a number of purposes for the London gang,” he continues. “It’s a trademark and a boast, making it easier to intimidate people. But what if in our case it’s also a red herring?”
“Something to throw us off?”
“Throw suspicion on the Whitechapel bunch and direct the police, and us, to look for the wrong person?”
“Thank you, Wells. A moment ago I was watching out for a killer with an ice pick and cowboy boots. Now I have to worry about everyone on the planet.”
There’s
an edge of humor to my remark, but there is nothing funny about the situation. While I had not found Archer to be the most admirable or finest specimen of humanity, he didn’t deserve to die, nor did the artist Weekes, who seemed like a pleasant fellow who just wanted to enjoy life and paint.
“Why not us, too?” I ask Wells. “He—they—wanted to keep the artist from revealing the location and wanted the diary from Archer. Is it just a coincidence that they were killed after talking to us or did we lead the killer to them?”
“Perhaps both.” Wells readjusts his body on the wooden buggy seat. “If it is the Whitechapel gang, there’s probably more than one involved. They could have been following both us and Archer.”
“Wait, I just remembered, when we talked to the shopkeeper in Linleigh-on-the-moor, he said something about strangers in town. I was sure he was referring to us and only one other person because he talked about the stranger with the full-sized horse. I didn’t think anything of it because I assumed that anyone we had to fear would be following us and no one had passed us on the way.”
“You think the killer got there before us because Lady Chilcott spilled the beans.”
“Yes, I’m sure of it now. But that still doesn’t answer why they haven’t tried to kill us yet.”
“There’s an answer as to why they haven’t attacked you.” Wells’s voice seems to be relaxing a bit. Maybe it’s because we’re talking instead of sitting in silence, letting the ghostly thoughts and images feed our imaginations.
“A couple deaths in small Dartmoor towns are a tragedy,” he continues, “but they will not be a national issue. The police could even consider them random killings by some sick bastard who kills whenever he gets the opportunity. But the murder of a famous American reporter would cause a sensation and an intense investigation, especially since you’ve made it obvious to the police in both London and Bath that you suspect Lacroix and the spa in the death of your friend.”
The Formula for Murder Page 24