by Robin Paige
When they were well away from Princetown and had walked for a while, they came to a pile of benchlike granite boulders beside the path.
“Shall we sit for a few moments?” Kate asked. She looked at Evelyn. “Patsy was right when she told you last night that Lord Sheridan is convinced of your brother’s innocence in his wife’s murder. But the scientific evidence he has assembled is not yet accepted by the courts.”
Evelyn wrapped the fringe of her scarf around her gloved finger. “I thought perhaps his lordship might be able to tell me that himself,” she said in a low voice. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful to you,” she added hastily. “It’s just that—”
Kate put her hand over Evelyn’s, reaching for words that might help the other woman, words that could make her believe and trust. “He would have liked to talk with you, and in other circumstances he would have, gladly. But he feels he has to pursue Sir Edgar’s killer, in order to be sure that Dr. Spencer is not charged with that murder, as well. It is said across the moor that—”
“Yes, I know what they’re saying,” Evelyn interrupted bitterly. “I’ve heard them. At the grocery this morning, they were talking about it. About how Sam shot the man, then battered his face.” She lifted her eyes to Kate’s and straightened her shoulders. “Please thank Lord Sheridan for his confidence in my brother’s innocence. But since there is nothing to be done, Sam and I will just have to go forward with our plan and trust that—”
“No!” Patsy exclaimed urgently. “Your plan was a good one, Evelyn, and if it could have been carried out as you intended, it would have worked. You could have reached Plymouth just in time for sailing and been safely away while they were still searching the moor, before a watch was put on the ports.”
“But it’s too late for that,” Kate put in as firmly as she could, knowing that before the man could be persuaded, the woman had to believe. “Lord Sheridan says that they’re patrolling the docks at Plymouth and at other southern ports, and checking the identity of everyone who boards ship. You can still make the effort, of course, but the chances are very good that you will be caught. Both of you,” she added meaningfully. “And it is a felony, you know, to aid the escape of a prisoner.”
Evelyn’s face crumpled. “Then what?” she whispered desperately, and Kate saw that her blue eyes seemed very dark. “What’s to be done? If not Plymouth, where?” She spread out her hands as if in a plea. “How can we get away?”
“You and I will go with your brother to Okehampton,” Patsy said. “We will be three travelers who have enjoyed a long ramble in Cornwall and across the moor, with your baggage and my boxes and camera gear and the like. We’ll be cousins and have a great deal to say about our relatives in the west country and be very merry. We’ll make a great deal of noise about all the sights we’ve seen and all the places we’ve been together.”
“From Okehampton,” Kate put in, “you can take the train for London and then go on to Liverpool, the three of you together.”
“And from Liverpool?” Evelyn asked hesitantly. “Then what?”
“From there, you and your brother can book passage anywhere—to America, perhaps.” Kate added earnestly, “Lord Sheridan believes that Dr. Spencer is much less likely to be suspected if he is one of a group of holiday-makers than if he is alone or even one of a pair—and particularly if his disguise is good.”
“Oh, it’s good, all right,” Evelyn said with a small smile. “I glimpsed him from a distance two days ago, and I hardly knew him myself.” She looked at Patsy, her expression bleak. “But if it is a felony for me to aid his escape, it is a felony for you, as well. What if we are caught? What will happen to you?”
“We won’t be caught,” Patsy said easily. “We will not even be suspected.”
A gust of wind tugged at the hood of Kate’s coat, and she pulled it forward. “You must convince your brother that this is the right thing to do,” she said. “He has to agree. He has to trust both of you, or it cannot be done. And he has to be able to act the part, or the plan will fail.”
Evelyn’s face fell again. “I don’t know if I can convince him,” she said dejectedly. “He has insisted all along that it would be a mistake to enlist anyone else in our efforts. In fact, I’m sure he would be very angry if he knew that the three of us were talking like this.” She looked from Kate to Patsy. “I have come to know you over the past few days, so I feel I can trust you—that I have to trust you. But I’m not sure that Sam will ever be willing to put his fate into anyone’s hands but his own.”
“Then he will be recaptured,” Kate said decidedly. She stood up. “And you have to tell him so. You have to persuade him that his best hope is to trust us, Evelyn, just as you do.”
Evelyn stood too. “I’ll try,” she said, gathering her skirt in her hand and picking up her basket. A smile flickered around her mouth, then disappeared. “That’s all I can promise.”
“I’ll go with you,” Patsy said. “I think I can persuade him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Evelyn said tartly. “If I can’t win him over to the idea, no one can. Why, he’s never even laid eyes on you! What makes you think—”
“Yes, he has,” Patsy said in a firm, quiet voice. “Your brother and I spent the greater part of the afternoon together, the day before yesterday, walking on the moor. I found him ... quite attractive. And I believe that the feeling was mutual. I think—no, I am sure that he will listen to what I have to say.”
It was as if, Kate told Charles afterward, Patsy had suddenly set off a firecracker in their midst. She and Evelyn both stared at their companion, openmouthed.
“You’ve met him?” Evelyn asked at last. “You’ve talked to him?” She pulled in her breath. “Then all that business last night was just a pretense. You—”
“I had no idea who he was when you and I began to talk,” Patsy said. “As I told Kate, I thought he was an engineer who was staying in Tavistock, come to Dartmoor to inspect the old tin workings. I didn’t realize that he was your brother until you showed me the picture in your locket. But now I know, and I want to persuade him to let us help him.” She looked at Kate. “Evelyn and I will go on together.”
“Then I wish you both good luck,” Kate said whole-heartedly and kissed them. “Go with my love.” She watched them as they went along the path that led farther across the moor. When they were out of sight, she turned back in the direction of Princetown. The sky had darkened again, and the damp air was filled with mist. She wrapped her coat more tightly around her, thinking of the innocent man out there on the moor, the man who had to decide whether to trust his fate to a woman he barely knew, or go on his way with his sister, to almost certain capture.
How would he choose?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
And yet the motives of women are so inscrutabie.... How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.
“The Adventure of the Second Stain”
Arthur Conan Doyle
Back in her rooms at the Duchy Hotel, Kate took off her coat and stood indecisively at the window, lifting the curtain to look down at the street. She and Beryl Bardwell had been turning over several story ideas, and if they intended to do any writing, this morning was a good time.
But Kate had too much to think about to be content at her writing desk. It wasn’t just the Spencers—Evelyn and her brother—who occupied her thoughts, or even Patsy’s sudden revelation and her own knowledge that her impulsive young friend was probably in love with the escaped prisoner. It was what had happened the night before: Mrs. Bernard’s sudden and unexpected death. And not just her death, but what Mrs. Bernard had known about Sir Edgar.
Kate dropped the curtain, frowning, and turned back into the room. How had she known? Had it been some sort of psychic vision? Had there been some sort of connection—a telepathic connection—between Mrs. Bernard and Sir Edgar that allowed his terrible experience to be
communicated so forcefully to her that she could feel it? And if so, had that brutal shock driven her to the brink of death? For Kate could not otherwise understand Mrs. Bernard’s dying. Other than her slight cough, she had been well, too well to die thus suddenly, thus inexplicably.
She shivered, suddenly cold, and took her shawl from the back of the nearby chair, wrapping it around her shoulders. She had added more coal to the fire and was about to pour herself a cup of tea from the cozy-covered pot when she heard a timid knock at the door. She opened it and was surprised to see two women standing in the hallway, both wrapped in long, brown, hooded cloaks, one standing behind the other.
“Jenny,” she exclaimed, “and Avis! What in the world brings you here?” Then, recollecting herself, she opened the door. “Do come in by the fire and have a cup of tea. You look very cold.”
“Us‘ns doan’t want t’ be a bother t’ yer ladyship,” Jenny said. She turned and shut the door behind them with care, as if to make certain that the sound of it would not be heard. She glanced at Avis. “But us’ns thought... that is, Avis has something to tell ye—”
“Come to the fire and warm yourselves before you say another word,” Kate said firmly. Several moments of cloak-shedding and hand-warming and tea-pouring were required before all three were settled with their feet on the fender. But by this time, Kate’s two visitors seemed to be seized by either timidity or fear, for when she turned to them expectantly, both found it necessary to gaze at each other and then at the fire.
At last, and speaking as gently as she might to a pair of skittish kittens, Kate said, “I know that whatever has brought you out this morning must be important. Who would like to begin? Avis, Jenny said you had something to tell me? Is it about poor Mrs. Bernard?”
Avis had emptied her teacup quickly, and now she looked into it as if for inspiration. When she glanced up, her eyes were troubled. She shook her head, then frowned and nodded. Jenny nudged her with her elbow, and she shook her head again. “Not ‘bout Mrs. Bernard,” she said in a low voice. She spoke slowly, as if she were weighing her answer. “Not really, m’lady. No.”
“I see,” Kate said gravely. And then, thinking that it might be easier for Avis to speak of other things first, she remarked, in a cheerful tone, “You were employed at Thornworthy, I think Jenny told me. How long did you work there?”
Avis nodded eagerly. “Since, oh, three years?” She frowned a little, calculating. “Three years come May Day, that’s when ’twuz.”
“And your position?”
“Upstairs maid,” Avis said with some pride, “for th’ master an’ mistress.”
Kate nodded. The life of an upstairs maid was not easy, for she was responsible for making the beds, dusting the floors and the furniture, shaking out the curtains, cleaning the grates, emptying the slops, supplying the rooms with soap, candles, towels, writing paper, and anything else that might be required. But it was a respected position in the household, easier in many ways than work in the kitchen, and it meant that Avis knew something of the habits of her master and mistress.
“Did you enjoy working for Sir Edgar and Lady Duncan?” Kate asked, leaning forward to poke the fire.
“Fer Sir Edgar,” Avis replied with a sadness in her voice. She turned her cup in her hand, running her thumb around the rim.
Kate heard the omission and recognized that Avis had not enjoyed her relationship with her mistress. But that by itself was not remarkable, for she knew from her own experience that it was the mistress who ensured that the maids did what was expected of them and disciplined them when necessary.
“Sir Edgar was a very kind man,” Kate said, feeling her way. “I knew him only slightly, but he seemed quite mild-tempered”
“Oh, that him wuz,” Avis said, and her voice trembled. “Even when him wuz provoked.” She fell silent, chewing on her lower lip.
Jenny poked her sister with her elbow. “You must tell it, Avis,” she said in a low voice. “That’s wot us come fer. An’ there’s nobody else, y’ know that.”
“I’m sure that there are matters that you are reluctant to speak of,” Kate said encouragingly. “I’ll be glad to help in any way I can.”
There was another long silence. Outside in the street, a moor pony whinnied loudly and cart wheels rattled on the cobblestones. Avis looked up but did not quite meet Kate’s eyes, and Kate read in her glance a good servant’s unwillingness to carry tales—and behind that, an anguish that she was afraid to reveal. Unfortunately, servants were often mistreated, even in the best of households. Had someone threatened her? Had someone hurt her?
At last, Avis said, “I left Thornworthy cuz I wuz afeard.”
“Afraid?” Kate asked gently. “What were you afraid of, Avis? Was ... was someone cruel to you?”
Avis began to cry.
Out on the moor, Evelyn and Patsy had developed a plan. Evelyn set the basket of supplies into the kistvaen that she and her brother used as their cache and then joined Patsy in a nearby stone hut, one of the abandoned tin workings left by the Old Men. She pulled her cloak tightly around her and sat down to wait, silently, for she and Patsy had agreed not to talk for fear that her brother might come upon them unaware and overhear their conversation.
Evelyn hoped he would appear soon, for the day was growing colder and the damp mist was creeping down the shoulder of the nearby tor, and in spite of Patsy’s reassurances, she was desperately apprehensive at having brought the other woman here. She knew her brother, and she could not imagine that he would take kindly to the idea that she had shared their secret with anyone else. She could only pray that Patsy was right when she said that there had been some sort of attraction between them. Otherwise—
And then Evelyn saw him, moving deliberately and warily along the footpath from the direction of the River Walkham. As she had told Patsy and Kate, had she not known who he was, she would not have recognized him, with that abundance of brown hair, the unfamiliar sweater and jerkin, the dashing Tyrolean hat. She waited until he came upon the cache and had filled his pockets with the apples, cheese, and bread she had brought. Then she stepped forward, revealing herself.
“Hello, Sam,” she said quietly.
Samuel Spencer jumped and whirled. “Evelyn! What the devil—”
“I had to see you, Sam,” Evelyn said. She caught his hand and pulled him into the tin miners’ hut. “Don’t be angry, please. Everything’s changed. They’re watching the ports. We can’t get away as we planned. It won’t work.”
Spencer scowled at her. “You came here to tell me that? You risked being followed, being discovered—”
“No, not that. We have been discovered. That’s what I came to tell you.”
His face showed the prison pallor under the ruddiness of recent windburn. “Discovered?” His eyes narrowed. “Did you tell?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he grasped her arm hard, his fingers like pincers. She flinched, and he loosened his grip. “Sorry,” he muttered, pushing her arm aside. “Forgive me, Evelyn.” He half turned away. “Did you tell?”
“I don’t want a row, Sam,” Evelyn said quietly. “It’s all up, that’s it, and that’s final. Lord Sheridan knows what happened in Edinburgh, all of it. He knows why Malcomb did what he did, why you pled guilty—”
“You told him!” Spencer exclaimed, and pushed a hand under his brown wig, rubbing his head and cursing savagely. When he pulled the wig down, it was askew. “You gave me away. You betrayed me.”
“No!” Evelyn protested, indignant. “I didn’t give anything away, Sam! Lord Sheridan, the man who came to visit you in your cell, worked it all out himself, from fingerprints he got off the wall in Elizabeth’s bedroom and from your cup, and from the clipping he found in your cell. All about Malcomb, and your reasons—he just figured it out, that’s all.”
“Malcomb,” he growled. “I suppose Sheridan wants me to go back to court and say that Malcomb killed her after all, is that it? I suppose he wants to hurt Clemmy and Rachel and destroy thei
r—”
“No,” she said. She put out a hand to straighten the wig on her brother’s head. “He says that the court isn’t the answer, Sam, after all this time, and that there’s no way to get justice, not now. It’s too late for that, and the evidence won’t stand up. And he understands about Clemmy and Rachel and the need to protect them, even though Malcomb is dead.” She tried to smile, to lighten the tension between them. “Lord Sheridan is like Sherlock Holmes, Sam, only smarter. And more compassionate.”
“I suppose he was smart enough to figure out who you were, then?” Spencer said sarcastically. “Even that you brought the Bible to me?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, “even that. He found the Bible in your cell, and he looked at it, and the way I glued the flyleaf, and he knew there was a map or a note or something in it. I don’t know how he got on to me—to Mattie Jenkyns, I mean. But he did, and when I told them about the plan—”
“Them? Who the bloody hell are they?”
Evelyn looked at him. “Lord Sheridan’s wife and their friend, Patsy Marsden.”
“Patsy?” Spencer frowned, startled. “Patsy Marsden? But she’s the woman I—”
“Yes, that’s right,” Patsy said, stepping out of the darkness. “The woman you met on the moor the day before yesterday.” She held out her hand and he took it—he seized it, Evelyn saw. Patsy smiled. “I’m sure you’re as surprised as I was, Sam, when I learned that you weren’t an engineer, but rather a ... a doctor.”
“Not a doctor,” Spencer said in a low voice. “An escaped convict.” Watching her brother, expecting his anger, Evelyn was astonished to see that his eyes had lightened, his mouth had softened, and that he was still holding Patsy’s hand. “I thought I’d never see you again.”