Death at Dartmoor (24 page)

He opened the tinned beans and the ham, dumped them into a small pan, and balanced it over the fire. With cheese and bread and apples, it was a far better meal than any he'd had in the prison. He ate with gusto, washed down the last of the food with water from his canteen, and put everything neatly away.

Then, still in his clothing, he rolled himself in the blanket and stared at the dying fire, thinking about Malcomb and Elizabeth—poor little giddy Elizabeth, who had been frightened half to death by his bitter recriminations—and mulling over in his mind what he might have done to avert that final, frightful tragedy. A tragedy which had seemed, in its desperate unfolding, to be as inevitable, as irrevocable as a curse. A tragedy which was not only theirs but his, a prison in which he would be locked until his own dying day.

But it was ground that Samuel Spencer had gone over before, many times, and his searching yielded nothing new, nothing more, nothing that would comfort or illuminate. Tragedy, as Lord Byron had said in one poem or another, was always finished with a death. There had been two deaths already, three if one counted the baby, Malcomb's baby, dead in his mother's womb. He would do all he could to make sure that his would not be the fourth.

Then, outside the hut, he heard the sound of pounding rain, and with it, the rising howl of the wind, rushing free and unfettered across the open moor. And Spencer let go of the thought of his old life and of death and thought instead of freedom and new life, even, perhaps, of love. And as he fell asleep, the vision that danced into his dreams was not the pouting face of his dead child-wife but the laughing face of the woman he had met on the moor yesterday, a rare woman who had bewitched him with tales of her wild adventures across the Gobi and the Alps and the plains of West Africa, until he was dizzy with the desire to be as free and unfettered as she, to follow his heart just as she followed hers. Until he was half in love with a woman he knew he would never see again.

B
y the time Kate climbed out of the vicar's gig in front of the Duchy, it was nearly seven. Charles arrived a short time later, and they decided, instead of going down to the dining room to eat, that Kate would arrange for supper to be sent up—supper for three, as Kate had encountered Patsy on the stairs and invited her to join them. And then supper for four, when Charles thought of inviting Conan Doyle, so that they might talk over all the things they had learned that day and attempt to make some sense of them.

At eight o'clock, a casual buffet of Chantilly soup, sandwiches of tongue and chicken, a variety of cheeses, and fruit and sweets was set out in fine order on the sideboard, along with two bottles of white wine, chilled, in a wine bucket. The four of them helped themselves, then gathered around a cloth-covered table set up in front of the blazing fire.

“This is ever so much cozier than the dining room,” Patsy remarked, as she spread her napkin on her lap. “Rather like a jolly picnic, don't you think?” She cocked her head, listening. “That's rain, isn't it? I'm glad we're not going out tonight.”

“Thank you for including me, Lady Sheridan,” Doyle said courteously, lifting his wineglass for Charles to fill. “I feared I should have to dine alone this evening.”

“I'm sure that you and Charles have had a most interesting day, Dr. Doyle,” Kate said. “Patsy and I would like to hear about it.” She had tried to persuade him to call her Kate, but he had demurred. It was not that he was aloof or overly formal, she thought, just rather chivalrous and perhaps not very easy around women, like the men in his fiction. She added, as the thought occurred to her, “I enjoyed your friend Miss Leckie. She has returned to London?”

“Yes,” Doyle said, not quite meeting her eyes. “Her attendance was required at a social engagement of her parents, in Blackheath”

Kate nodded and suggested tentatively, “Perhaps, when we are all in London again, you and Miss Leckie might agree to dine with us. We don't often have large entertainments, but we do enjoy conversation with a few friends.”

“Thank you,” Doyle said with a slight smile and a brief inclination of his head. “I'm sure that Miss Leckie will be delighted when I tell her of your invitation.” He still avoided her eyes, but his answer was all Kate needed to understand that, whatever the relationship between Conan Doyle and his dying wife, he considered himself free to go about with Miss Leckie on social occasions. And now, since the affair was none of her business, she would let it drop.

Charles finished pouring the wine and joined them at the table. “Well, then, Kate,” he said, “I understand that you and Patsy have stories to tell.” He looked from one to the other of them with a twinkle. “I rather hoped that you would stay in Princetown and make a quiet day of it, but this seems not to have been the case.”

Kate and Patsy exchanged who-will-go-first glances, and Patsy spoke. “We had an interesting encounter with Miss Jenkyns this morning,” she said, and related the circumstances of their chance meeting on the moor and their walk into town, just in time to see the wagon bearing the dead body, coming up the street.

“We were all sure that someone had shot the prisoner,” Patsy added, “and Miss Jenkyns seemed terribly upset. But what struck me as strange was that she seemed just as disturbed—to the point of tears, even—when the constable told us that the dead man had been killed by the prisoner. Of course,” she added, “we didn't know it was Sir Edgar at that point. I only heard that later this afternoon, when I went out on the street. Everyone's talking about it, you know, all the townspeople. They think the convict killed him, and they're all angry and anxious. There's quite a hue and cry.”

“Unfortunate,” Charles murmured, buttering a roll.

“Miss Jenkyns?” Doyle asked, raising an eyebrow. “And who might she be?”

“A young woman whom I met on the moor,” Patsy replied. “Kate and I visited Grimspound with her. She has a great interest in archaeology, and she came down from London to see the ancient sites. She is expecting her brother to join her. He is on a walking tour of Cornwall, I understand.” She frowned. “But I do wonder.”

“Wonder what?” Kate asked curiously.

Patsy gave a little shrug. “It's probably nothing, but I can't shake the idea that I've seen Miss Jenkyns before, and in a context that had nothing to do with the moors or archaeology. The idea grows on me each time I've seen her, but I've racked my brain and I can't for the life of me recall where I met her.”

Charles put down his butter knife, his eyes on Patsy. “You say that Miss Jenkyns plans to meet her brother?”

Patsy nodded. “They are going away somewhere together. Switzerland, I think she said, although she wasn't very clear about it.”

Charles looked at Kate. “And did you have the same impression, Kate? That Miss Jenkyns was upset first by the idea that the dead man might be the escaped prisoner, and then that the escapee might have killed someone?”

“Yes,” Kate said, casting her mind back over the events of the morning, and later, her conversation with the vicar. “And when Mr. Garrett told me that it was thought that the prisoner may have obtained a gun through an accomplice, my first reaction was that Miss Jenkyns might be somehow involved.” She picked up her soup spoon. “Do you remember how she reacted the day you rode to Grimspound to see us home, Charles? You happened to mention that you might have the means to clear the prisoner of the crime for which he was convicted. I recall thinking that what you said seemed to upset her a great deal, which wouldn't make any sense, actually, unless she was somehow acquainted with the prisoner.”

Patsy was regarding Charles with thoughtful attention. “You're very interested in this woman, Charles. You must think she—” She broke off. “What is the name of the escaped prisoner?”

“He is Dr. Samuel Spencer,” Charles said. “According to a document I found today—his brother Malcomb's obituary—he has a sister named Evelyn M. Spencer.”

“Spencer... Spencer,” Patsy murmured. “Evelyn Spencer.” She looked up, her eyes widening. “Of course! Mattie Jenkyns is Evelyn Spencer! She gave an address at a meeting of the Association of Women for Prison Reform, in London.” She turned to Kate. “It was just before we went off to Egypt, Kate, so it would have been over two years ago.”

Doyle looked up from his soup, frowning. “But why would the lady assume a false identity?”

“Because,” Charles replied, “she didn't want anyone to guess that she had come here to help her brother escape from Dartmoor Prison. After the escape, no doubt, she planned to meet him somewhere, just as Miss Jenkyns said she planned to meet her brother, who is supposed to be tramping through Cornwall. And Switzerland wouldn't be a bad place for the two of them to go, although I rather think,” he added reflectively, “that South America would be better. Under the circumstances, I think that is the course I would take if I didn't expect to be able to obtain justice here.”

Kate gasped. “You're saying that Mattie Jenkyns is Samuel Spencer's
sister?”

“Quite so,” Charles said. “And it wouldn't surprise me to learn that she is also the Salvation Army's Prison Gate missionary.”

“Of course!” Doyle exclaimed. “The one who inserted a map, or something of the sort, in the Bible she handed to the prisoner!”

Kate glanced at Charles. “I don't think Patsy and I have heard about—”

“I think I'd better tell you the entire story, from the beginning,” Charles said and preceded to relate what he believed to have happened in Edinburgh on the day of Elizabeth's death, and afterward, at the trial. He recounted his speculations about Malcomb Spencer, who had drowned in the Thames soon after his brother pled guilty, and concluded with a description of the items he and the constable had found in the prisoner's cell, among which was a Bible. “It had been given to him recently by a missionary from the Prison Gate Mission,” he said. “The flyleaf had been glued so as to form a pocket into which a letter or a map might have been hidden. If a map, it may have marked the location of a cache of food and clothing, perhaps even a disguise.”

“And a gun,” Doyle said darkly. “Evelyn Spencer would no doubt wish to arm her brother, so that he could defend himself against capture. The very gun the man used to shoot poor Sir Edgar.”

Patsy, wearing a puzzled look, shook her head. “Somehow, I don't think Miss Jenkyns would have given her brother a gun. The woman I met in London was outspokenly opposed to guns, and even to hunting.”

“Then he stole it,” Doyle said definitively. “It would certainly be easy enough to break into one of the outlying farmhouses and make off with a weapon. I suppose Sir Edgar was unlucky enough to stumble across the escaped man and was shot to prevent him from raising the alarm.”

“Doyle and I do not agree on this matter,” Charles said in a mild tone. “Since I believe that Spencer gave up his freedom to protect the innocent, I cannot believe that he would murder an innocent man to regain his freedom.”

“There may be another possible suspect in Sir Edgar's murder, one with a property interest,” Kate said. “Perhaps I'd better tell you what I learned when the vicar and I went to Thornworthy this afternoon.”

“You went to Thornworthy with the vicar, Lady Sheridan?” Doyle seemed surprised.

“I tell you, Doyle, there's no restraining my wife,” Charles remarked. “When she learned that the vicar was headed in that direction, she probably threw herself into his gig and demanded that he take her with him.”

“I did
not,”
Kate retorted hotly, and then realized that Charles was joking. “Actually,” she said in a more measured tone, “I had to be persuaded to go. I only agreed when I discovered that you and Dr. Doyle were involved with the investigation of Sir Edgar's death. I thought you might like to know how the news was received at Thornworthy.”

“Aha!” Doyle exclaimed. “Off to do a bit of sleuthing.” He gave her a smile. “Another Watson, eh?”

Patsy, apparently feeling that the smile was patronizing, snapped, “Another Sherlock, more likely.”

“I'd like to hear about that other suspect,” Charles said.

Kate related, as fully as she could, all that had happened at Thornworthy that afternoon, together with as many impressions as she could recall. By the end of her story, all had finished their sandwiches and were engaged with fruit and cheese, all listening intently.