Death Comes to Dartmoor Read online

  His formal tone was perfectly polite, but knowing him better than their host did, Merula could detect the hint of disapproval of Lamb’s behavior. Bowsprit himself would probably not have made a sound even if the spider had been real. His sailor’s years had taken him all over the world and put him in the strangest places and circumstances where his ability to keep calm and collected must have saved his own life and perhaps even that of others. During the search for Lady Sophia’s killer, his quick thinking had kept them out of the hands of the police so they could complete their investigation and unmask the real killer.

  Waving off Bowsprit’s explanation, their host nodded and returned to them, a deep disappointment etched in his face. He passed Merula without even seeing her. She made eye contact with Raven and formed Tillie? with her lips.

  Raven shrugged to indicate he had no idea who Tillie was.

  Merula frowned, her thoughts racing to deduce something from what she did know about their host and his household. Uncle Rupert had confirmed for Aunt Emma that the man they would be visiting was a lifelong bachelor—another reason why Lamb’s presence as a companion for Merula had been deemed essential—so Merula concluded that the female name couldn’t refer to a wife or even to a deceased wife.

  Besides, why would their host call out for her just because he had heard a terrified cry in the night?

  “So how have you been since your return?” Raven asked, seating himself opposite Merula but half turning in his chair so he could see their host, who had returned to his desk. “I realize now that you have not been properly introduced to each other yet. As I said, this is Miss Merula Merriweather, and my acquaintance here is called Charles Oaks. A well-traveled man who can show us many interesting specimens from other countries. Also butterflies. These latter are,” he added to Oaks, “Merula’s specialty. She bred some herself in her uncle’s conservatory.”

  After the disastrous lecture where Lady Sophia had died, though, Aunt Emma had forbidden Merula to pursue her passion for butterflies any longer. A stab of pain shot through Merula at the idea that she would never see one of those gorgeous creatures hatch again, climb carefully out of the cocoon and unfold its wings for the very first time. The stunning metamorphosis from hairy caterpillar to fairytale-like creature with delicate wings, which could even contain see-through patches, was something Merula could have witnessed time and time again. But that was all over. She had to reinvent herself somehow now. Keep science and discovery in her life, even if it wasn’t through butterflies anymore.

  “Pleased to meet you.” Merula smiled at their host. His pale face with the fervent eyes was uncomfortable to look at, but she forced herself to ignore his agitation and keep the polite conversation going. “I’m delighted you agreed to receive us here. If you have traveled for so long and are just recently returned, your household must still be in disarray. It’s very kind of you to receive guests at all.”

  She hoped this would hand Oaks a convenient excuse for the lack of servants and the other rather peculiar circumstances in which they had found him there. Aunt Emma had taught her always to avoid social disgrace and embarrassment for other people.

  “It must be hard under any circumstances,” Raven added in turn, “to get reliable servants in such a deserted place. I daresay that the men we saw on the beach are excellent fishermen and farmers, but I doubt whether they could run a household. A first-class butler has to know a little bit of everything and have a strict hand with the other servants at that. Not too strict a hand, of course, as he might drive them away.”

  Merula wondered if Raven was just trying to make conversation or was rather following her lead to offer their host an excuse for his apparently empty house.

  “Yes,” Oaks said. “Yes, it has been very hard. It’s superstition, you know.”

  “Excuse me?” Raven sat on the edge of his seat, his lean hands tightening on his knees.

  Merula also believed she mustn’t have heard Oaks properly. He couldn’t have said superstition, could he?

  “These people have lived all of their lives with tales of white women on the moors and ghostly hands of dead sailors reaching out from the sea to drag you down with them.” Oaks spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “They believe in the unexplained as firmly as they do in the tides and the seasons. They believe and they act on their beliefs. I can’t blame them for it. It’s the same in every culture. In South America, it was the spirits of the jungle. Here it is the dead sailors. Yes, I can understand.”

  Raven tilted his head. “Are you trying to say that superstition has something to do with these people not wanting to work for you?”

  “Of course. It was so hard to get guides, you know. We were after a ruin. Not even a temple. At least, I don’t think it was ever a temple. Just an old building in the jungle. Perhaps a palace? Or a plantation building? I don’t even know. But nobody wanted to take us there. And when one man offered, he was dead the next morning. The anaconda had slithered through his window and wound itself around his neck. Choked to death in his own bed.”

  Merula suppressed a gasp. At the estuary, she had been afraid of an adder hiding among the grass, but adders were relatively small. Snakes that killed by suffocating their victims were often as thick as a man’s shoulder and long enough to wind themselves around their prey in endless coils. Having seen a watercolor of an anaconda at a lecture of the Royal Zoological Society, she had immediately dreamt about it lowering itself from a potted palm in her conservatory and grabbing her arm, fixating her with its vicious little eyes.

  Their host stared ahead. “An anaconda in the heart of a village. I’ve always wondered if …”

  “Someone let the snake through the window? Because they considered the offer of their fellow villager to guide you to the ruin a betrayal?”

  Raven had spoken softly, and for a few moments Merula thought Oaks might not have heard him. He just sat there with that faraway look on his face, as if he were back in the heat of the jungle where such assassin snakes lived and could lower themselves from a tree to choke him to death.

  Then Oaks said, “Of course it was a betrayal. I should have understood that. People get killed for betrayals.”

  He hid his face in his hands and tried to breathe deeply. “It’s all my fault,” Merula thought she heard him mutter, “all my fault.”

  Raven looked at her and narrowed his eyes, as if to convey he wasn’t sure about the man’s mental state.

  Bowsprit entered the room with Lamb, whose cheeks were very red, probably because she was still embarrassed by her screaming about a painted spider.

  Bowsprit said to Oaks, “The botanical drawing which includes the spider is very well done. May I ask where it comes from and who made it?”

  Oaks sat with his head in his hands, not stirring, a picture of defeat.

  Bowsprit looked from the man’s slumped form to his master, his half frown silently asking what was wrong and how he might be of assistance.

  Raven said briskly, “Well, uh, if you don’t have staff, Bowsprit can make us something to eat. You help him, Lamb. Off you go.”

  Lamb looked doubtful, and when the two left, Merula thought she heard the girl whisper to Bowsprit that the kitchens had to be full of rats and that, if she saw or heard any, she’d scream again. “So loud they can hear it all the way in Cranley!”

  Merula suppressed a laugh at the idea of what the impeccable Bowsprit would have to say to that. Coming from a poor background in Rotherhithe, Lamb was used to critters and didn’t lose her nerve easily, but Merula now realized how much the excitement of all these new things must have gripped her. Perhaps Lamb wasn’t so much afraid of the darkness and what lurked there but of her new position and how she might possibly lose it again if she wasn’t good enough at the tasks ahead of her.

  Merula decided she’d address the matter with her in a roundabout way as soon as she could to take some of the pressure off the poor girl. After all, this was supposed to be a pleasure trip for all of them.

  But
now returning her attention to the still library, their distracted host and the strange atmosphere all around them—the search on the estuary beach, the confiscated notebook pages, the grim faces of the villagers on their way to church—she doubted there would be much pleasure in store for them here.

  CHAPTER 3

  When Merula awoke, she believed for a few moments she was in her bed at home. The blankets were warm, the mattress soft and comfortable, and the yelling voices outside had to be those of coachmen in a fight over a lack of space granted or peddlers who each claimed the same spot to sell his wares. That was the way of London.

  But slowly she became aware that these voices didn’t belong to just two or three men but to a whole throng of people, and that they weren’t arguing either—the voices rising and falling as they yelled insults or threats at each other—but chanting something, repeating it again and again: “Come on out. Come on out so we can hang you.”

  What on earth was this? A bad dream?

  Merula widened her eyes and pinched her own arm.

  Ouch! That hurt.

  Touching her face, she felt the familiar features, and slapping her cheek gently hurt as well. She was apparently wide awake.

  Her hands now ran across the blanket while her eyes searched the ceiling above her head. This wasn’t her bed. This wasn’t her room in her uncle’s house.

  And those voices …

  She got out of bed quickly and put on a dressing gown over her nightdress. When she was nearly at the door, someone knocked on it, a sharp urgent rap with the knuckles.

  She called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Raven. We’re in trouble.”

  She opened the door a crack and peeked out. Raven was dressed in a shirt over trousers that were half tucked into boots. He caught her glance and explained with a gesture across his attire, “I was going out riding. Our host has a few horses here, I know. But before I was even into my boots, I heard those voices. There’s a mob outside.”

  “A mob?”

  “Come on, then, and you can see for yourself.” Raven gestured for her to follow him, and she closed her bedroom door behind her and tiptoed after him. At the window looking down on the gravel in front of the house, Raven halted and slipped the heavy green curtain to one side. He nodded down.

  Merula came to stand beside him. The voices were louder now, their chanting a roar like the sea’s. There had to be about twenty of them, all carrying burning torches. Mostly men, but also one or two women among them with their hair loose and their faces streaked with dirt. They were wailing, raising their hands to the skies above. With dawn breaking, the deep blue was invaded by orange and red, mirroring the flickering torchlight.

  Merula’s mind raced to make sense of all of it. “You said the people looked so grave going to church last night. You mentioned prayer meetings in cases of disease. Do you think there is a contagious disease in the village?”

  “I’m sure we would not have been allowed to drive through it then. No. It’s not a disease. It’s something else. Something they blame Oaks for.”

  “Oaks?” Merula repeated. “Why? If what Uncle Rupert told me is anything to go by, he lives like a hermit, not associating with other people. Even if something befell the village, why would they blame Oaks for it?”

  “He said something last night about superstition.” Raven stared down on the shouting mob. “Such beliefs are strong in this region. People hang plants above their doors to ward off evil influences or have community bonfires. Perhaps something befell the village, as you so aptly put it, and they think Oaks somehow brought this bad luck upon them. By moving here. He’s not one of them.”

  “An easy scapegoat,” Merula agreed.

  The villagers brandished their torches and cried, “Come out now! Come out now!”

  The flickering light cast distorted shadows, hollowing their frantic eyes and widening their screaming mouths. A shiver went down Merula’s spine.

  Raven dropped the curtain in place. “I’ll go and talk to them.”

  “No!” Merula grabbed his arm.

  “Someone has to calm them before they do something rash. I’m not Oaks. They’re not after me.”

  “You have no idea how violent these people really are. They might grab you anyway and hurt you, just to satisfy their blood thirst. There’s twenty of them, and you’re alone.”

  “I’ll ask Bowsprit to come out with me. He’s an able man; he can fight.”

  “He can defend himself when attacked by two men, three at most. He can’t handle a raging mob who are carrying torches. If you open the front door and they throw a torch through the opening, the hall will be on fire. What then? We have no servants to help us douse it.”

  Raven held her gaze. “What’s your solution? They’re furious and they won’t just leave. They’ll just get more and more angry as time goes by and no one shows themselves.”

  Without waiting for her reply, he added, “I’ll go ask Oaks what he thinks.”

  Raven went down the corridor and knocked at a door. No answer.

  He knocked again, leaning toward the door to listen. Then he glanced at Merula. “I’m not sure he’s even in there.”

  He opened the door a crack and peeked in. Then he came over to her with long strides, anger flashing in his eyes. “He’s not there. The bed hasn’t been slept in. He ran. Leaving us to face the villagers. He must have suspected something like this was hanging over his head. That explains his distracted mood last night. Why didn’t he just tell us? We could have prepared. Now we’re defenseless.”

  Raven raced downstairs and threw open doors, bellowing for Oaks.

  Merula went to the library, vaguely hoping that he might be hiding in there. But there was no sign of Oaks there either.

  She heard Bowsprit’s voice below for a moment, talking to Raven; then the sounds were drowned out by banging on the front door. Voices cried out in a surge of abuse.

  Lamb rushed up to her, eyes wild with fear. “What’s happening? Are they going to kill us?”

  “Hush now; nothing is going to happen to you.” Merula arrested Lamb’s arm. “Stay calm. Take a deep breath.”

  The banging on the door grew louder. Were they trying to break it down?

  “They’re going to kill us!” Lamb wailed.

  Merula’s own heart was thumping under her chest bone and her mouth was dry. She had no idea what was wrong here, and even if she did, she doubted she could explain it to the mob out there. They didn’t want to listen. They wanted a victim.

  Raven came running back up. “Lock yourselves in the bedroom,” he said, his breathing ragged. “Stay there and don’t come out, no matter what happens.”

  “What are you going to do?” Merula grabbed his arm before he could run off again. “Raven, tell me.”

  “This is no situation for women to be in. Lock yourselves up and …”

  “And what if they set the place on fire?” Merula held his gaze. Lamb whimpered by her side. “Then we’re caught in a trap.”

  Raven exhaled in frustration but didn’t deny that she was probably right. “Let me talk to them,” Merula continued. “I’ll tell them Oaks has gone. They will not hurt me. I’m a woman.”

  Raven shook his head, but Merula had already let go of him and rushed down the stairs. Raven shouted, “Merula, no! I forbid you to do it.”

  Merula was at the front door. It was splintering under the weight tossed against it. She dragged it open.

  Two men who had been banging it with a tree trunk rolled into the hallway. They landed flat on their faces in front of her feet and stared up at her with bewildered looks.

  Outside, the yelling had stopped abruptly. Everything was deathly quiet. Like silence before the storm.

  Merula felt the curious gazes on her disheveled hair, her dressing gown, her bare feet. Using this moment of surprise, a lull in the rush of their anger, she said, “What are you doing, breaking down the door? Mr. Oaks is not here. He went out horse riding. I’m sure that if you
come back later, he will talk to you.”

  “Talk to us?” A man came up to her, spitting tobacco on the clean steps in front of the door. “We want his head. He’s the cause of all of it. The animal lives here.”

  “What animal?” Merula asked. For a moment she wondered if Oaks had a dog and it roamed at night and killed sheep. Perhaps the villagers were angry because they had lost valuable livestock? For a family with little means, the loss of a sheep or two could mean that hunger invaded their lives.

  But the man continued, “The creature that dragged the ships down into the sea.”

  Another man appeared behind him, adding, “And killed the girl.”

  “Girl?” Merula echoed, perplexed. Her heart started to beat even faster. What creature would kill a girl?

  The man shook his head. “It’s no good talking. We’ll burn this whole place down.”

  Merula’s spine tingled with cold, and her feet seemed to sink through the solid floor beneath her.

  She had once before been confronted with men who sought to destroy something they did not understand with fire. They had been city men, perhaps more reasonable than these frightened, superstitious country people. But they had done it. And these people would do it as well. She saw it in their quietly watchful faces as they stood there in the flickering torches’ light. That was what they had come for.

  The man who had spat on the steps moved. Merula knew he was going to throw up his arm as a signal. Then the mob would push forward, the men would rush in, they would drop the torches on the floor, and the flames would start to lick at everything they could grab.

  But a voice called out, loud and hard across the villagers’ heads, “Are you all mad? What is this? Stand back!”

  A well-dressed man on a big black horse forced his way through the crowd. The villagers made way for him, suddenly shrinking back, looking at each other as if unsure. The man halted his horse at the steps and jumped down. He eyed Merula.

  For a moment she believed she saw a lecherous gleam in his dark eyes, and then he roared at the mob, “Are you mad? To set fire to this house?”