A Proposal to Die For (18 page)

Suddenly there was the slamming of a door below, raucous voices calling out.

Alkmene pushed her forehead against the windowpane to look straight down on the scene in front of the inn.

Men came out, carrying a form in their arms.

A struggling form.

Someone called something she could not make out. Then the carried form was dropped into the horse trough that Jake had mentioned earlier. The men jeered a few moments, then turned and went to the inn again, laughing and slapping each other on the shoulder.

The form in the trough sat up, wiping water from his eyes.

The light from the lanterns by the inn's door illuminated his profile and his tall build as he rose and stood in the trough, dripping.

Alkmene suppressed a giggle. Turning away from the window, she grabbed the rough towel that the woman had put beside the basin with her hot water and rushed downstairs.

Nobody paid attention to her as she walked to the door and went outside.

Jake had clambered out of the trough and stood on the square's cobbles, water seeping from his clothes.

Alkmene handed him the towel. ‘I suppose they weren't eager to talk?'

Jake cast her a look, then accepted the towel and rubbed his face and hair. He sighed. ‘Oh, one of them was, but the others didn't like it.'

His breath was laced with alcohol, not beer, but strong liquor. Apparently he had felt obliged to drink to induce confidentiality in his drinking buddies.

Alkmene tilted her head. ‘What happened exactly?'

Jake lowered his voice. ‘One man in there seems to know a whole lot about what happened back then. He began to tell me about it, but the innkeeper's wife was not happy that he did. She kept prodding her husband with her elbow. Then he talked to a few men, they came over and dragged me out for this soaking. I think it is just a first warning. I am sure that if I were to go back in there and try again, they would add some bruises and a black eye to the account.'

Alkmene nodded. ‘I think this was enough for tonight. We have to see what we can do in the morning. Do you know the name of this man who was talkative?'

Jake nodded. ‘Wallace Thomson.'

‘Then we will go see Wallace Thomson in the morning. Come on.' She plucked at his wet sleeve. ‘You have to get in there now and change your clothes before you catch a cold.'

Jake huffed as he rubbed the towel over his neck. ‘I have been through worse for a story.'

‘I hope this is more to you than just a story.'

She looked at his chiselled features, the strange contorted shadows cast by the lanterns outside the inn. He held her gaze, his dark eyes deep with some emotion she could not quite identify.

Then he pushed the towel into her hands and walked ahead of her, head held high, back into the inn.

The next morning as Alkmene bustled down the stairs, she found the large room empty and just one table laid out with plates and cutlery.

‘Good morning,' she called out to the hostess who came from the kitchen with a jug of milk, pretending not to feel the coldness extended towards her. She walked to the fireplace and admired the painting over it, asking who had made it.

The woman seemed to thaw a little, even taking a moment to stand up straight and study the painting with a pensive expression. ‘My father. He was a fine painter.'

‘He was, indeed,' Alkmene said. ‘If there are any more of his works, looking like this one, I would like to buy one before I go back to London. My father is a botanist, you know…'

At the woman's blank look she added hurriedly, ‘He studies plants, and moorland is one of his favourite sort of environment to study. I think he would very much like a painting like this one to hang on his study wall.'

She ambled to the table and peered into the jug of milk. ‘Fresh, I suppose? We don't have that in the city. I have often wished to live in the countryside for a while and enjoy the fresh food. I suppose your eggs are also of your own chickens?'

The woman affirmed it with a nod. ‘I have a few scrambled for you if you will take them. I knocked on the door of your companion when I did on yours, but he is not showing.'

Alkmene smiled. ‘I think he drank too much last night and is still recovering. Men. You never know how they will behave.'

The woman scurried off, and Alkmene took her seat at the table. Shuffling her cutlery around, she wished Jake would show up so they could talk about small stuff and she would not feel so completely out of place. She tried to focus on the tasks for the day, the first of which was locating Wallace Thomson. She knew better than to ask her hostess where he lived, as the woman had obviously given her all last night to keep the talkative Thomson from revealing too much to the outsiders.

Just as the woman carried a bowl with scrambled eggs to the table, the door of the inn opened, and Jake strode in.

He wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches over a shirt without a tie. Around his neck were field glasses. He waved at her from the door and called out, ‘I saw a peregrine falcon. It will become a bright day. How about a stroll on the moor right after breakfast? I am sure we will see many more species.'

‘And I can look for the rare moss Father wanted to know about,' Alkmene added right away. ‘Splendid idea.' She gestured to the empty chair opposite to her. ‘Sit down and enjoy this fresh offering.'

Jake put the field glasses down on the table and sat, leaning over to her as soon as the woman had walked off back into the kitchen. He said, ‘I tried a tiny flower shop in a street turning off from the square. A woman was there putting out buckets with fresh flowers. I made sure she saw my field glasses as I started talking about having seen the nests of the barn swallows against the church tower wall, right under the edge of the extension. She engaged at once, telling me she loved those birds and had kept a record of their comings and goings ever since she was a little girl. I let her tell me all about it, biding my time, until I could say I had met one Wallace Thomson at the inn last night who had claimed to know the haunts of pheasants on the moor and to be willing to show me, but that I had been distracted by conversation with another man about hawks and Thomson had left the inn without telling me where he lived. I added with a smile that as he was native of course he had assumed I knew, but I did not. She was more than willing to point it out to me. So as soon as we have finished this, guess where we are going…'

His voice died down on the latter words as their hostess came back with black coffee and bacon that was a little burned at the edges but had a rich salty taste Alkmene had never experienced before. She was surprised that the woman who had appeared so rude last night was plying them with this big breakfast, but perhaps it was only a matter of money.

After all, Jake had paid for the stay.

She intended to recompense him in full on the way back home, but wasn't saying anything about that just yet. He was a proud man after all. After they had finished their breakfast, Alkmene went up to get a silk shawl, which she tied loosely around her neck. If they did hit the moor after their visit with Wallace Thomson, it would come in handy to protect her hair-do.

Downstairs Jake was talking to a tall man with a large salt and pepper moustache and a hunting dog by his side. She stayed a few steps away from them to give him the opportunity to finish inquiries if he was making some.

At last Jake took his leave, and they walked outside into the sunshine and the singing of birds in the
live oaks. Jake walked around his car a moment, before they took the cobbled street leading to the right.

‘That was the local constable,' he explained. ‘He had heard I had received a soaking last night and wanted to know if I was pressing charges against the assailants. I faked surprise and said that I had been drinking myself and so had the lads, and I supposed they had wanted to show me that I was now one of them by dunking me in the local waters. I pretended not to have got any message that I should stop poking around. I was curious if he would warn me to take it more seriously, but he did not. He said he was glad I understood the local customs and wished me a pleasant stay.'

Jake hitched a brow at her. ‘So either he wants me to run into more trouble or he doesn't understand anything about local sentiments.'

‘Possibly. If he came to work here after it all happened, he might not understand how sore the spot still is.' Alkmene fidgeted with the scarf around her neck. ‘How far is it to this Wallace Thomson's place?'

‘He seems to live on some small farm.' Jake shrugged. ‘She said we'd see it easily enough.'

They walked past the natural stone walls of the small front gardens belonging with the neat village cottages, then crossed a wooden bridge running over a fast flooding brook. Alkmene halted a moment to look down on the water that foamed white.

Jake picked up a pebble and tossed it in. It vanished in a moment.

Alkmene leaned her hands on the rough wooden railing, then said, ‘Hey, there are letters carved into this wood. You see? Initials.' She studied the scratches, some fresh, others age-old it seemed.

‘Must be initials of couples in love,' Jake said.

Alkmene studied a few closer. ‘I wonder if those two ever put their initials here. Silas Norwhich's brother and that woman.'

‘Mary Sullivan,' Jake said pensively. ‘Wallace Thomson seemed eager enough to share about her, while the others all took offence. I wonder what can be behind that.'

Alkmene straightened up, and they continued, from the bridge down a dirt track that led between hedges and rows of trees. In the distance they discerned a little house, sunken to one side as if it was about to collapse. A goat on a rope grazed outside it, and a few ducks were looking for insects in the tall grass.

There was a stone well on the left, with a bucket beside it on a bench covered with moss. Everything was weathered, like time had nibbled away at it and nobody had bothered to ever give anything a dash of paint.

Jake knocked on the door, calling out for Wallace. There was no reply, no sound of shuffling from the inside indicating the man was coming to answer the door.

Jake gestured at Alkmene to stay out front while he rounded the house and looked in the back. Alkmene stood with the sunshine on her face, closing her eyes a moment to soak up the warmth. The unhappy feeling of the other night seemed to wash away, and a pleasant relaxation spread through her system. She had to believe that Jake and she could solve this matter together. He had expertise and she had brains to help him unravel the clues. Now that Evelyn Steinbeck had been dismissed as a possible killer, she didn't feel so bad any more about bringing the culprit to justice. From Pemboldt's tale it had become clear that Fitzroy Walker was a scheming presumptuous young man, and the snippet of conversation she had caught herself had betrayed his predatory nature. If he turned out to be the killer, she would gladly see him arrested.

She inhaled the fresh air coming to her with a hint of herbs and flowers.

She thought she heard footfalls coming and snapped her eyes open. For a moment among the trees ahead of her something stirred, dark and solid, like the shape of a person, a silhouette of a man bundled up in a thick coat.

She blinked to see better, but whatever it had been it was gone now, the trees standing there without movement among their trunks, just the stirring of birds in the branches above.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she yelped, swinging round.

Jake grinned at her. ‘See. If an animal reared its head from a ditch in an excavation site, you'd be off like a hare.'

Alkmene shook her head. ‘There really was…'

But she didn't get a chance to finish her sentence as a thin wiry man with a red scarf around his neck came over to them, not walking, but sort of hobbling, like a gnome. He smiled at her and gestured to follow him, turning away from the cottage down a muddy track.

‘He will lead us to the spot,' Jake whispered to her. ‘A little money and…' He made a gesture.

The little man was surprisingly fast for someone who moved with such an odd gait. He seemed to have no trouble with the mud that sloshed around Alkmene's shoes and sucked at her soles with every step. She gave the moor an anxious once-over, wondering if there were stretches here that were so marshy you could get sucked into them, never to get out again.

Cold skittered across her back, especially thinking of the figure she believed to have spotted for a moment, watching her.

But if she told Jake, he'd only laugh at her again, thinking she was scared of her own shadow.

‘There.' The little man halted. ‘You can see it clearly. There where the scrubs are. She vanished right there. I saw it myself.'

He stood, lifting his hands to his face and blowing on them like it was the dead of winter.

‘You saw her drown?' Alkmene asked in awe and some surprise that he had not lent a hand to help.

The little man shook his head. ‘She vanished behind the brush, into the marshlands. You see, there are tracks you can follow that are perfectly safe. She knew. Her father was a hunter, for waterfowl. He knew all those tracks and he had taught them to her. She could traverse those paths like she was an elf, her feet never even touching the ground.'

His face was suddenly sad. ‘No, she was not an elf, she was a fairy. So pretty and blonde. He had no right to hurt her, that fancy gentleman from the city.'

‘I am sure he did not mean to hurt her,' Alkmene said.

But the little man spat, ‘He did hurt her. He took her away from us. She was one of us, but he came and promised her she could be one of them. She could live in the city in a big house with pretty things. Oh, she loved pretty things. A comb for her hair, a necklace. He had promised her a dressing table from the east inlaid with ivory. With elephant figures and tiny men riding them. A mirror over it with a golden rim to frame her face in fire. She told me all about it. She trusted me, you know.'