Missing Susan (18 page)

He approached the stragglers, radiating concern for their welfare. “Is everyone all right here? Miriam? Alice? If anyone would like to go back to the hotel, it’s straight down the hill behind you.”

Miriam looked doubtfully at the long stretch of grassland rolling before them. She was wearing a heavy sweater and her face glistened with perspiration. She looked doubtfully at her daughter. “Do you want to keep going, Emma?”

Taking the cue, Emma said quickly, “No, I think we’ve had enough exercise for one afternoon. We’ll walk tomorrow morning when it’s cool, if you like, Mother. Alice, do you want to come back with us?”

“I suppose so,” said Alice. “I’m not much on hiking if there’s nowhere in particular to go.”

“Go back then,” the guide said soothingly. “We shan’t be long.” Seven to go, he thought, as he watched the three-some wend their way back across the meadow to the blackberry lane. A few moments later he sidled up to Charles and Nancy Warren, who were chatting with Martha Tabram. Feigning a perplexed expression, he said, “According to my guidebook, there is an ancient stone circle somewhere in this
area. It is quite a beautiful ring of stones, set against imposing moorland scenery, and I’m sure you’d like to photograph it. Would you like to go off to the left and see if you can catch a glimpse of it. Susan is scouting in the other direction.”

Charles Warren looked at his wife. “That does sound like a good picture, doesn’t it, Nancy? Shall we go and look for it?”

Martha Tabram hesitated. “I seem to remember hearing somewhere that these moors could be dangerous. Are you sure it’s wise for us to separate?”

“Dangerous? Rubbish! Conan Doyle didn’t know what he was talking about.
Hound of the Baskervilles
notwithstanding, I assure you that not a single moor pony has ever been lost in the bogs here.”
A Land Rover and a couple of Danish hikers, yes, but not a pony
, he finished silently. “Off you go, then. If you find the stone circle, give us a shout, won’t you?” And it would have to be a very loud shout, Rowan reflected, because the circle he had described to them, the Nine Maidens, was a good ten miles away at Okehampton. He waved cheerily as the Warrens and Martha Tabram wandered away.

That left Maud Marsh, Kate Conway, Frances Coles, and Elizabeth MacPherson. He didn’t mind Maud or Frances because he fancied they’d be fairly useless in a quicksand crisis, but a trained nurse and a forensic anthropologist constituted a considerable nuisance for a wary assassin. He didn’t suppose he could get rid of them, though. Kate tended to dog his steps in a way that he might have found flattering had he not been otherwise preoccupied—and the MacPherson girl was determined to talk crime with him at every waking moment. He would have to divert them somehow. When the time came.
If it
came.

He scanned the moors for a sign of Susan, but she had disappeared between the fold of hills. Aside from the nattering
of Kate and Frances, all was quiet. He could feel his scalp prickling, and a shiver of dread rippled down his spine. She would be walking closer and closer to the deadly green circle, not attending to where she was going—she never did—and suddenly, a lurch, a plunge, and it would be all over but the screaming. The viscous mire of Dartmoor would envelop her in molten earth and melt inexorably away from her thrusting feet, as she clawed for a freehold. Quicksand they called it, and, indeed, the end would come swiftly. There were worse ways to go. Rowan clenched his fists, clammy with sweat, and waited for the cry.

“Damn!” Susan’s voice, unmistakable with its flat Midwestern accent, floated over the moors. “Oh, damn it! Help me, somebody!”

For an instant they all froze. Rowan could see his companions glancing at each other, wondering what to do, and he forced himself to stand still, ignoring the reflexes that urged him to run toward the cry for help. He would have killed for a cigarette.

“It’s Susan,” said Kate Conway, with her usual knack for stating the obvious.

“She’s in trouble,” said Elizabeth MacPherson. Another rocket scientist.

Rowan modulated his voice by sheer willpower. “Oh, I expect not,” he managed to say. “Probably got a run in her nylons, knowing our Susan.”

Ignoring all the idle speculation, Maud Marsh was striding briskly forward in the direction of the cries for help. Rowan realized that it would look too suspicious if he ignored Susan altogether. The thing to do, he decided, was to direct the rescue operation in order to irrevocably botch it. Throw Susan a branch and then manage to let go of it, for example. He hurried toward the slope, determined now to be first on the scene, while the others trotted in his wake.

As he reached the edge of the incline, preparing to stagger
down it, avoiding the dangerous mire, he nearly tripped over the kneeling figure of Susan Cohen, just below the crest of the slope. She was patting the short moor grass with both hands, cursing roundly, but distinctly unmuddied.

“Look out, damn it!” she snarled, peering up at him with one eye shut.

Rowan lurched to a standstill, waving his arms for balance and examining the surrounding turf for signs of quicksand. All seemed firm and dry: outcroppings of rock and scraggly gorse bushes dotted the hillside, but there were no ominous patches of emerald green.

Elizabeth, Frances, Kate, and Maud peered at them from the summit of the hill. “What is it, Susan?” Kate called out. “Did you sprain your ankle?”

“No!” yelled Susan. “Everybody stay back! I’ve lost a contact lens!”

For a quarter of an hour the six of them padded about the area on all fours, looking for the transparent lens, while Susan complained about the wind that blew dust in her face and caused her to lose the lens by rubbing the irritated eye. The Warrens and Martha Tabram drifted back to the group, announcing that they had found a hill with a view for miles in every direction, and there was no stone circle within sight. Rowan muttered something about modern vandals and continued to pat the heath with his fingertips. Finally, after everyone was thoroughly dusty from grubbing in the earth, and chilled by the evening wind at sunset, Susan herself found the offending object in the folds of her corduroy skirt, where-upon she announced that she’d had all the hiking that she could stand. As the weary troop straggled back across the moors toward the Manor House, a sore and bitter Rowan Rover looked earnestly for a pool of quicksand, with a view toward using it himself—but it had been a dry summer in Devon and the moors weren’t accepting any human sacrifices.

At nine that evening the Oak Room bar was empty except for the members of the mystery tour. Even Bernard had lingered after dinner, sipping a pint of bitter and listening to the general chat. Charles Warren was wedged on a small love seat between his wife and Martha Tabram, and the others occupied various armchairs, which they had pulled up in a circle round a coffee table. Susan, now restored to normal vision, wanted to compare the Manor’s restaurant to one in Minneapolis called Azur. Resolutely, Elizabeth MacPherson kept coming back to forensic anthropology and to murders in general, thus encouraging the few nontour patrons of the lounge to flee in a state of some anxiety. After half an hour of alternate monologues, a restful silence fell upon the group.

For once, it was Charles Warren who spoke up. “Talking about murders,” he remarked by way of introduction, “we called our youngest daughter this evening, and she gave us some news from the States. Seems there’s a mass murderer loose at the University of Florida.”

Immediately the group fell silent, and Rowan and Elizabeth looked like firehorses who’d just heard the alarm bell. “What sort of mass murderer?” asked Rowan, exhaling clouds of smoke.

“Sounds like another Bundy to me,” said Charles. “This past weekend he went on a rampage and killed four women students, I think, and one young man.”

“Young man?” echoed Elizabeth. “Oh! I suppose he was in the apartment with one of the women?”

“Right.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Collateral damage. He just happened to be in the way. I’d like to see the girls’ pictures, wouldn’t you, Rowan?”

“Only to verify that they look very much alike. They will, of course. Serial killers are very particular. Bundy liked brunettes with long, straight hair parted down the middle.”

Susan Cohen patted her blonde curls and laughed. “I guess I’m safe, then!”

“You are from Bundy,” said Elizabeth gravely. “So this guy killed five people over the weekend. They ought to have caught him by now.”

“They have,” said Charles. “Our daughter said they’d arrested an eighteen-year-old student on suspicion.”

“It’s not him,” said Elizabeth and Rowan together. Elizabeth nodded toward the guide, inviting him to explain.

“He’s too young,” said Rowan, gesturing with his whiskey glass. “Serial killers may start as young as eighteen, but I cannot believe that this is that murderer’s first killing spree. Doing away with five people in two days sounds very much like the fugue state one associates with the end of a serial killer’s career. To use our previous example, Bundy did just such a multiple crime just before he was caught. Psychologists think they do it subconsciously wanting to be caught.”

“If I were the Florida police,” said Elizabeth, “I’d be looking for a trail of missing women or unsolved crimes involving victims who resembled these latest murdered girls. Whoever did this had to work up to this kill spree.”

“Murdered women!” said Alice with a disapproving frown. “Always women! Aren’t there any female serial killers?”

Rowan Rover shrugged. “Little old lady poisoners. But they kill boyfriends or family members. I’d hardly classify them as sex crimes.”

Susan Cohen giggled. “What we need for true equality is a female serial killer!”

Elizabeth MacPherson looked thoughtful. “I suppose the closest we get to it is child killing, wouldn’t you say, Rowan?”

“As far as I know,” he agreed. “Although, nothing is too bizarre these days. Somewhere in New Jersey there may be a woman karate expert picking up unsuspecting male hitchhikers
and doing them in on stretches of lonely road. I find it hard to imagine, though. Yes, I should say that child killing is the closest female equivalent to the Bundys of this world. Were you, by any chance, thinking of Constance Kent?”

“I suppose I was,” said Elizabeth.

“Interesting. So you think she did it?”

“All right,” said Frances Coles, holding up her hand. “Time out. If you’re going to talk shop, you might as well let us in on it. Who was Constance Kent?”

Rowan Rover looked pensively into his empty glass. “I wonder if I might have another double Scotch first?”

Kate Conway volunteered to stand him a drink in exchange for the story, and after she had supplied him with a fresh glass, he settled back in the leather wingchair and began the tale.

“We shall be traveling within a few miles of her house,” he said. “She lived in a large house near Rode, a few miles south of Bath. This was in 1860. The murder occurred in that year—when Constance was sixteen. Her father was a factory inspector, but he insisted on living extravagantly, so that the family was always hard-up for money. I think Kent had five children by his first wife. After her death, he married the pretty young governess, Mary Pratt, and they proceeded to have several more children, including a son, Francis Savile Kent, born in 1856. In 1860 the boy was found with his throat cut in an outbuilding on the Kent property. The actual cause of death, though, was suffocation.”

“How could they tell that?” asked Frances.

“From the bleeding,” said Kate Conway absently. “The patient bleeds very little if cuts are made postmortem, because the heart has already ceased to pump the blood.”

Rowan smiled approvingly. “Thank you, Nurse Conway.”

“Why would anyone cut the throat of a dead person?” Frances persisted.

“To make it look like a stranger had done it, I expect,” said Kate.

“That was the police theory, certainly,” said Rowan. “But which member of the household did it? The crime was investigated at length by the local police, and the victim’s half sister Constance Kent was charged with the murder, but she was released for lack of evidence. Five years later, she astonished everyone by going to the police of her own accord and confessing to the murder of Francis Kent.”

“There!” said Elizabeth triumphantly. “You admit it. She confessed!”

“Oh, yes, she confessed,” Rowan agreed. “Whether or not she did it is another matter.”

“Oh, good! A real life murder mystery!” said Frances Coles. “Who do you think did it?”

“Before we discuss if further, I need to read up on the case again. I know the general facts, but I’m not well-informed enough to argue about it. Ask me again tomorrow night in St. Ives. I’ll try to have another look at a crime book by then. Perhaps we could discuss more familiar ones in the meantime.”

Martha Tabram stifled a yawn. “Not I,” she said. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. Good night all.”

Emma Smith and her mother also bade them a hasty farewell, saying that they wanted to do some walking in the early morning. Susan announced that there was a good television program coming on at ten and she wanted to watch it. The others settled back to hear more tales of crime.