Death Devil's Bridge
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
HISTORICAL NOTE
REFERENCES
More praise for ROBIN PAIGE’S Victorian Mysteries
“Death at Daisy’s Folly is eminently satisfying. It contains an intricate mystery, a delightful pair of sleuths, a wonderful sense of atmosphere and place, and a nice romance to sweeten the plot. Discerning readers who appreciate finely crafted historical mysteries will treasure this addition to a wonderful series.”—Gothic Journal
“I read it with enjoyment ... I found myself burning for the injustices of it and caring what happened to the people.”
—Anne Perry, author of At Some Disputed Barricade
“An absolutely charming book ... An adventure well worth your time ... You’re sure to enjoy it.”—Romantic Times
“Absolutely riveting ... An extremely accurate, genuine mystery, with well-drawn, compelling characters.”
—Meritorious Mysteries
“An intriguing mystery ... Skillfully unraveled.”
—Jean Hager, author of Blooming Murder
“I couldn’t put it down.” —Murder & Mayhem
“Wonderfully gothic ... A bright and lively recreation of late Victorian society.”
—Sharan Newman, author of The Devil’s Door
The Victorian and Edwardian Mysteried by Robin Paige
DEATH AT BISHOP’S KEEP
DEATH AT GALLOWS GREEN
DEATH AT DAISY’S FOLLY
DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE
DEATH AT ROTTINGDEAN
DEATH AT WHITECHAPEL
DEATH AT EPSOM DOWNS
DEATH AT DARTMOOR
DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE
DEATH IN HYDE PARK
DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE
DEATH ON THE LIZARD
China Bayles Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert
THYME OF DEATH
WITCHES’ BANE
HANGMAN’S ROOT
ROSEMARY REMEMBERED
RUEFUL DEATH
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
CHILE DEATH
LAVENDER LIES
MISTLETOE MAN
BLOODROOT
INDIGO DYING
AN UNTHYMELY DEATH
A DILLY OF A DEATH
DEAD MAN’S BONES
BLEEDING HEARTS
SPANISH DAGGER
CHINA BAYLES’ BOOK OF DAYS
Beatrix Potter Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert
THE TALE OF HILL TOP FARM
THE TALE OF HOLLY HOW
THE TALE OF CUCKOO BROW WOOD
THE TALE OF HAWTHORN HOUSE
Nonfiction books by Susan Wittig Albert
WRITING FROM LIFE
WORK OF HER OWN
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the authors
PRINTING HISTORY Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 1998
Copyright © 1998 by Susan Wittig Albert and William J. Albert.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-440-67297-2
BERKLEY ® PRIME CRIME Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks go to Robin Barker, for the generous loan of the 1895-98 issues of The British Journal Photographic Almanac, and to Charles Albert, for his help with engineering details. We are also grateful to the many readers who have written to comment on the technical and historical authenticity of this series. We very much appreciate your interest and support.
Bill and Susan Albert aka Robin Paige
MAJOR CHARACTERS
THE GENTRY
Sir Charles Sheridan, of Bishop’s Keep and Somersworth
Lady Kathryn Ardleigh Sheridan, aka Beryl Bardwell, of Bishop’s Keep
Lord Bradford Marsden, of Marsden Manor
The Honorable Miss Patsy Marsden, of Marsden Manor
Roger Thornton, Squire, of Thornton Grange
SELECTED EXHIBITORS, COMPETITORS, AND GUESTS AT THE ESSEX MOTOR CAR EXHIBITION AND BALLOON CHASE
Herr Wilhelm Albrecht, German motorcar racer and driver of Lord Marsden’s Daimler
Mr. Arnold Bateman, Cambridge, inventor and driver of the Bateman Electric Car
Mr. Arthur Dickson, Sheffield, owner and driver of a Serpollet Steamer
Mr. Sam Holt, journalist, of Autocar magazine
Mr. Harry Dunstable, promoter of the British Motor Car Syndicate
Mr. Frank Ponsonby, bill-broker and driver of a Benz
The Honorable Charles Stewart Rolls of Trinity College, Cambridge, aeronaut and owner of a Peugeot
Mr. Henry Royce, electrical engineer, of Manchester
DEDHAM VILLAGERS
Dr. Braxton Bassett, surgeon
Harry Hodson, the Crown’s coroner
The Widow Jessup
Young Jessup
Edward Laken, Constable
The Reverend Barfield Talbot, Vicar of St. Mary’s Parish
Tom Whipple
SERVANTS AT BISHOP’S KEEP
Mudd, butler
Pocket, footman
Mrs. Sarah Pratt, cook
Amelia Quibbley, housekeeper
Lawrence Quibbley, mechanic to Lord Bradford Marsden and photographic assistant to Sir Charles Sheridan
1
Far behind them, Mole, Toad, and the Water Rat heard a faint warning hum, like the drone of a distant bee. Glancing back, they saw a small cloud of dust with a dark centre of energy, advancing at incredible speed.... It was on them! The “Poop-poop” of the horn rang with a brazen shout in their ears ... and the magnificent motor-car, immense, breath-snatching, passionate, with its pilot tense and hugging his wheel, possessed all earth and air for the fraction of a second, flung an enveloping cloud of dust that blinded and enwrapped them utterly, and then dwindled to a speck in the far distance, changed back into a droning bee once more.
—KENNETH GRAHAME
The Wind in the Willows
The sky was darkening over Dedham Vale as Bess Gurton hitched up her woolen skirt, climbed the stile, and set off along the margin of Dead Man’s Meadow. High overhead skittered an early and erratic bat, half-blind in the dying light Higher yet, in the tops of the horse chestnut trees, a few rooks offered somber good nights.
Bess tightened her grip on her willow basket. The ominous voices of rooks frightened some, but not her. “Rusty death a‘cawin’,” her neighbor Sally would say, looking up from her knitting when she heard the birds shrieking. “Sit-tin’ in judgment,” she would add with a shudder, and get up to close the casement. “Passin’ a death sentence on some poor lost soul.”
But about rooks, Bess knew better. As a girl, some thirty years ago, she had kept a rook called Figwort, a sociable bird with a bright, inquisitive eye. She had raised Figwort from a fledgling, and while he grew up to be a mischievous thief, stealing the odd bit of this and that, he was never the least bit malevolent. No, if the melancholy calls of the sleepy rooks in the dying twilight brought anything to Bess’s mind, it was an ancient longing that harked back to her childhood, a foolish, reckless wish, Sally would say, and surely quite wicked. Her neighbors in Dedham Village, Bess had learned long ago, were easily affrighted by what they did not understand and swift to suspect any impulse that seemed out of the ordinary.
And this wish was indeed an extraordinary one, at least by village standards. Audacious, intemperate as it might seem to those who did not dare think on such things, Bess wanted to fly.
“And why not, I’d like to know?” she would ask herself truculently. “Wot’s wrong wi’ it?”
And herself would respond, gently reassuring, “Nothing’s wrong with it, Bessie, me girl. Birds do it, angels do it, yer gammer’s done it. Now, stop shilly-shallying an’ git on wi’ it. If ye’r ever goin’ to fly, let it be now!”
The desire to fly was not uniquely nor even originally Bess’s wish. She had learned it from her grandmother, who had raised her from infancy in the whitewashed cottage on Black Brook which Bess occupied now, together with a company of cats, an ancient Jack Russell terrier named Fat Susan, and a milk cow named Patience. In those days, Gammer Gurton had had two cronies, both of whom could fly—or so Bess understood from the hushed stories she heard around the kitchen fire when she was quite a young girl. And Gammer herself had also flown, Bess was sure of it, for hadn’t she seen her with her very own eyes one moonlight night, astride a hurdle, skirts and cape snatching at the brambles as she sailed low over the hedge and into the Great Wood?
Others might have thought it a dream, but not Bess. She had never forgotten the sight of her grandmother silhouetted against the bright, full moon, but she was not exactly clear about the details—just how Gammer and her friends managed to get off the ground, that is. The task seemed easy enough, however, and Bess was a brave, strong girl. So she tried it herself, taking a running leap off Black Rock with Gammer’s ash broomstick under her. But all she gained from the experiment was a torn skirt and two badly scratched knees. Questioned at home, she confessed to her effort to get off the ground and begged Gammer to tell her how flying was done.
But Gammer, alarmed, sternly bade her hold her tongue. “Such un-Christian foolishness!” she cried. “Put it out o’ yer mind this instant, Bessie. Flyin’! Why, I niver heard sich nonsense in all me life!” The two cronies vanished from the cottage fireside, Bess never again saw Gammer soar over the bramble hedge, and not one more word was spoken on the subject. When the old woman died at last, in Bess’s thirtieth year, the secret of flight died with her.
During the next dozen years, Bess—who remained unmarried—was so busy with the work of supporting herself that she had little energy to spare for fanciful dreams of flying. Gammer had left her a dairy cow and some hens, and Bess made a small living from the milk, cream, butter, and eggs she sold in the village. She supplemented this income by peddling the asparagus, broccoli, and cauliflower from her garden and by harvesting the willows that grew plentifully along the River Stour, weaving the wands into baskets. She also raised bees, in neatly thatched wooden hives ranged on the sunny side of the wattle fence across the back garden.
Indeed, so bustling and busy and pleasantly earthbound was Bess’s life that her childhood ambition lay like a forgotten memory in the bottom of her heart—until, that is, the day she noticed a loose slate in the hearth and raised it to discover a cavity beneath. From this hiding place she lifted a curious leatherbound book, printed in black letter and unquestionably ancient, its brown pages annotated with spidery handwritten notes.
Reading was reserved for the candlelit hour before bedtime, which Bess always spent with the newspaper supplied by her friend Sarah Pratt, cook at Bishop’s Keep, several miles down the lane. Now, having discovered the book, Bess was so curious that she could scarcely wait until evening to read it. Unfortunately, however, the black-letter text and spidery annotations could not be deciphered by the light of her candle. So on the following day, Bess purchased a paraffin lamp, an acquisition she had deliberately postponed. She had an inborn distrust of modern inventions, such as the post-office telegraph which clattered so loudly that one could scarce make oneself heard, or Lord Marsden’s new horseless carriage, which he drove with such reckless abandon. But the lamp proved quite useful, and Bess sat down in its circle of light to decipher the ancient text.
To her disappointment, though, the mysterious book turned out to be nothing more than a collection of ancient recipes. She was about to cast it aside, when she turned a page and found “A Receipt for Flying Ointment.” Her eyes widened and, tilting the book to the light, she read the recipe with a swelling excitement. Some of the ingredients—honey, goose grease, thyme, basil, chicory—were familiar staples of her larder and garden. Soot (whatever could be the purpose of that ingredient?) could be had from her chimney, while plovers’ eggs, pig’s blood, and some of the less familiar plants (water hemlock, for instance) would have to be specially procured.
Breathlessly, Bess put down the book and considered. The ointment sounded perfectly odious, to be sure, but what did that matter if it got her over the bramble hedge and into the air, like Gammer Gurton? The biggest problem, of course, was gathering the more unusual ingredients without arousing anyone’s suspicion. And it was not just the fear of ridicule that caused Bess to proceed with caution. The last witch burned to death in England had been set afire near this very village, scarcely ten years before Queen Victoria took the throne. Bess had no intention of giving her neighbors the slightest excuse for honing their tongues on her doings. Whatever she did, she would do in secret.
So it was that Bess was out and about with her basket on this late-summer night, just as the full moon began to rise over Dedham Vale. Following the recipe’s instructions, she had scraped fr
om her chimney the pinch of soot, gathered the required number of plovers’ eggs, plucked the requisite wild herbs, and was at this moment on her way to Bishop’s Keep to obtain the pint of fresh pig’s blood Sarah Pratt had promised to save for her. The footpath was now almost completely dark, and she picked her way with caution, half-wishing she had not embarked upon this phase of her mission so late in the evening. But as the recipe specified that the monkshood should be gathered at moonrise and the spot where it grew was more than halfway to Sarah’s kitchen, the journey was necessary.
The path dipped steeply through a narrow opening in the dense hedge. Clutching her basket in one hand, Bess half slid down the embankment and into the lane. Bishop’s Keep was less than a mile away and Sarah would have a cup of hot tea and her pint of pig’s blood ready and waiting, no questions asked, no answers required. She shook herself, squared her shoulders, and began to march briskly up the road.
She heard it before she actually saw it. The sound—a loud metallic clatter and clank-reminded her of the noisy threshing machines that had replaced the hand-harvesting of the fall corn. But because the lane was so deep and the tall hedges grew nearly together over her head, the horrible sound seemed to reverberate all around, and she could not tell from which direction it was coming, or which way she should run.
Her breath coming short and fast, Bess pressed her hands against her ears, standing paralyzed with fear in the middle of the lane. It was only when she saw the bright white lights bearing down upon her that she realized that she was about to be run down by that most dangerous of modern inventions, a horseless carriage. She flung herself off the road, landing with a mighty splash in the water-filled ditch. Drenched, mouth and eyes filled with mud, she sat up, hurling curses after the motorcar—Lord Marsden’s motorcar—which had disappeared with a great clatter around the turn.