The Formula for Murder (28 page)

As he talks he picks up a folder and begins to leaf through what I assume are research notes.

“It’s been said that she beat her children regularly without cause and even disinherited them, a not very kind gesture toward those who looked to her for guidance and support. The sightings of her are between the clock striking midnight and the cock’s crow. Her ghoulish coach has been described as made from the blackened bones of the many husbands she murdered. It’s pulled by a great beast of a hound, a black dog with sharp fangs and fire in its eyes. I confess that my favorite version of the tale claims that Lady Howard, like our curmudgeon squire, runs through the night herself in the form of a hell hound. Ah, here it is, Lady Howard’s Devon ballad, passed down over the centuries.”

He reads from the notebook:

My ladye hath a sable coach,

And horses two and four;

My ladye hath a black blood-hound

That runneth on before.

My ladye’s coach hath nodding plumes,

The driver hath no head;

My ladye is an ashen white,

As one that long is dead.
²¹

This is all very interesting, but I am still on the edge of my chair waiting to hear why Lady Howard was an arrow shot by the artist.

“Do you see how simple it should be for the two of you to find the bog?”

“No,” Wells and I echo.

Doyle grins at us. “Why it’s elementary, my dear Watsons. Lady Howard’s ghost haunts the castle ruins of Okehampton! If the painter saw her ghost, he was most assuredly near the castle.”

46

“I have visited Okehampton Castle,” Dr. Doyle tells us, “some years ago. I wasn’t researching beasts of the moors stories at that time and now regret my stopover wasn’t between midnight and the cock’s crow. It would have gotten my creative juices flowing, not to mention my adrenaline, had I spotted the wicked old woman. Hopefully, my blood would not have flowed, too.” He asks Wells, “You’re not familiar with Okehampton?”

“Not at all, I’m afraid.”

“It’s a day’s journey, perhaps two, depending on how you intend to get there. Okehampton is almost due north of Buckfastleigh, thirty miles or so as the crow flies. But that direct route from here to Okehampton is straight through part of the wildest and most sparsely populated part of the moors. The path has few villages and even less civilized accommodations. However, if you took the train back to Exeter or to Plymouth to make a connection to Okehampton, you would travel much farther but also quicker and in infinitely greater comfort.”

Wells and I exchange glances and I can see that for once, we are in agreement. Neither of us wish to risk getting back on the train until we have something positive to report to the police to explain our strange behavior.

“I see,” Doyle says. “Trains are out. Unfortunately.”

He shows us a map of the region. No question, Okehampton is a straight shot, almost across the very center of Dartmoor. Doyle says the few markings of any sort between Buckfastleigh and Okehampton are mostly small villages, some of which are no more than a few houses clustered near crossroads.

“I dearly hope you understand the task you are undertaking if you attempt to cross the moors?”

“I’ve traveled in the Wild West and Mexico,” I proudly state.

“Yes, Nellie, and I’m sure rattlesnakes and bandits are bad hombres, but crossing the moors is probably more like trekking the badlands of Mars, if you will forgive the otherworldly analogy.”

“How so?”

“There is a reason the moors generate so many tales of the haunted and the horrid—it is a strange place. Strange as in eerie—as in haunted. Even in broad daylight the land is unusual, its vestiges twisted and grotesque. There are constant tales of ghosts. Here’s one related to me by another doctor: A patient brought his wife in because she was in horrible fright. It seems she wouldn’t believe the servants when they told her they wouldn’t go for milk in the late afternoon because a woman in a gray cloak walked on the road at dusk. Fed up, she decided to investigate the matter herself.

“One evening she went out to milk the cows and there on the road was a woman in a gray cloak. She followed her and the woman disappeared over an impossibly steep place. The woman went for help, but no body was found by the rescuers. The next night she went out again and once again there was the woman in a gray clock walking and again she ended up going over the steep place.”

He pauses and raises his eyebrows. “I know the woman and she is as sane as any of us. So a word of caution: Be very careful, you never know what you will find out there.”

“What about the bogs?” I ask. “Are they as dangerous as I’ve heard tell?”

“You read and hear about the trembling earth,” Dr. Doyle continues with his tale of horrors, “places where you suddenly find yourself walking on bogs without realizing that the greenery underfoot is not solid ground but is literally thin ice, ready to break with your footfall and send you sinking into a mire that feels as if it has grabbed hold of your feet and is pulling you under.” He raises his eyebrows. “If you should fall into a bog, be sure to remember to treat it as you would quicksand—don’t struggle because it’s counterproductive. Fighting the suction will just pull you under faster. I am told that the correct posture is to spread yourself out and try to lie upon it, spreading out your weight rather than pushing your feet down into it.”

“I hope it won’t become necessary for us to perform bog survival,” Wells says, “but we need to remember the advice.”

Wells gives me a look that raises my dander. I know what he is implying—I will not bother learning the survival technique until I am confronted with the danger. He is right, of course, but if I tried to learn everything thrown at me in life, I would have no room in my head for investigating and writing news stories.

“We’ll have to rent a carriage,” I say.

“Would be difficult, though you’ll only need a buggy, since I assume you won’t desire to make a round trip. I have a pony buggy you can use. Shall we go out to the stable?”

We follow Doyle as he continues telling us about Okehampton.

“In Okehampton, you can hire a man at the stable to bring it back to me. The long way, of course; you would have difficulty finding someone eager to come through the wild area.”

“It’s a Dartmoor pony buggy?” I ask.

“Yes, but I use two ponies to pull my large frame. Even though there’s an inn on your way, you’ll need bedrolls and extra food. With poor roads and uncertain weather, you might find darkness falling quickly and be in need of shelter short of the inn.”

“How long do you think it will take us?”

“The good part of two days, if it doesn’t rain hard and your buggy wheels don’t get too bogged down too often in mud. You’ll find, by the way, that the ruins of Okehampton Castle are a pretty picture. It’s atop a wooded spur above the River Okement. It was once the largest castle in Devonshire before its last owner ran afoul of Henry VIII and lost his head. His castle slowly dissolved into a ruin haunted by that rather nasty old woman I told you about.”

He helps Wells harness the two ponies as I make a list of items to obtain from the general store.

When the buggy preparations are done, he stands by, and we have a long moment of quiet. I have found Dr. Doyle to be an interesting person with many facets. Like Wells, he is someone whose intellect not only challenges me, but inspires me to reach deeper into myself when faced with a problem.

Conan Doyle tells us rather sadly, “You are going on an adventure. I’d love to come with you, but I have my medical practice on my back and a Sherlock Holmes tale in my head.”

He gives one pony a slap on the rump. “Go now, the game’s afoot!”

47

We drive away from the writer of mystery stories in silence, both of us wishing he had been able to join us.

It is late in the afternoon and we want to get on our way. We take the road to Ashburton which Dr. Doyle told us is a small town, but will be the largest community we pass through after we leave the main road and enter the very heart of Dartmoor. It will be our last chance to purchase the supplies we will need.

Before we left the house, Dr. Doyle pulled out a map of Dartmoor and went over it with us.

“The route will take you through some very small villages with accommodations and a number of settlements which have a few houses clustered together and others spread out on farmlands and grazing fields. Most of the settlements have no shops or lodging. As you already know, the roads will be very narrow. Depending on how you go, some dirt roads will become mere paths, but you should try to avoid those. It will probably rain and that makes the roads even nastier.

“Now, from what you’ve told me, you plan to go as much as possible the way the crow flies. I appreciate your need for expediency, but getting off of what passes for the beaten path in the wilds of the moors is not a good idea. You’ll need a compass and, of course, good waterproofs…”

So much has happened during the past few days, I feel a bit drained rather than chomping at the bit as I normally would, as we set off. Wells also appears to appreciate the solitude.

We are closing in on our goal, I am certain of that.

We are both convinced that we will find Lacroix at or near Okehampton Castle. I’ve mulled over Isaac Weekes’s remark about Lady Howard and I’m convinced that as a Dartmoor local, he would know that Lady Howard only appears at Okehampton Castle. If she had appeared somewhere else, I think he would have mentioned it.

Not that a ghost should be expected anywhere. And the skeptic in me has to wonder what he had imbibed that night before he saw the ghost.

A decision pressing on both of us is a realistic response to the question Dr. Doyle asked: What is our plan once we locate Dr. Lacroix?

I hardly plan to walk up to him with a list of people I believe he’s murdered—or had murdered—and ask him for a confession. Not to mention that he might slice me to ribbons with one of his scalpels if I were so bold or he might have some Whitechapel Rustlers hanging around, pronging the lice on their cowboy boots with their ice picks while they wait for the next victim to show up.

We said we’d go to the police, but only when we have solid information to hand them. We could reveal to the police that Lacroix isn’t on the continent, but that has doubtful consequences because he’s not a wanted criminal even if the Bath police have questions for him. The fact they are not actively seeking him is a good indication that they have nothing incriminating to firmly link Lady Winsworth’s death to the spa. And Dr. Lacroix doesn’t sound like the type who would run off the mouth during police questioning and incriminate himself.

“Thinking can be dangerous when it comes to you,” Wells says, interrupting my musing.

“I was thinking about Lacroix and Lady Winsworth. The police had the spa waters, the elixir concoction, the peat moss baths, all of them, tested and found nothing poisonous.”

“Correct. People take those types of products every day, by the many thousands if you count the number of people drinking and bathing in similar waters all over Europe and I imagine America.”

“So the only reason the spa is suspected is because she appears to have been in good health.”

“No natural causes like a heart attack or stroke were found. And she had taken nothing out of the ordinary except from the spa.”

We are moving along at a nice pace and Wells barely needs to hold onto the reins. The Dartmoor ponies seem to know where they are going and what speed they need. Wish I could take one back to America with me. Most children get a dog or cat for their first pet—mine was a pony from my dad. Because of that horses have always held a soft spot in my heart.
²²
When my father died I rode my pony alongside his casket.

His voice breaks my thoughts. “No evidence of a known poison was found by the medical examiner, either, though as Dr. Lacroix or any hematologist would tell you, the scientific analysis of blood for anything other than recognized diseases and toxins is very inadequate.”

“Then it wasn’t anything at the spa.”

“What? How do you conclude that?”

“Being around Conan Doyle has gotten my detective juices flowing. You told me that Sherlock Holmes says that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. It’s not possible that the spa’s stinky water and magic mud baths are the cause because everyone else gets them and hasn’t died or gotten sick enough to draw attention. What remains is the improbable conclusion that her death wasn’t from something at the spa.”

“All right. What’s on your list of causes
not
at the spa?”

“My short list includes a child.”

Wells nods. “Emma, the prostitute’s daughter. But, we don’t know what her role was there.”

“No, that’s not exactly true. I think that focusing on a connection between Emma and the spa misleads us. Her connection is more to Dr. Lacroix.”

He gives me a sharp look. “How do you know that? You’ve been withholding things from me again.”

“Not at all, I have simply looked at the evidence.”

“Now you are sounding like Sherlock Holmes. I guess that makes me Watson.”

We both laugh. It’s a nice interlude to our problems.

“There is no question that the child has a spa connection,” I tell him, “because she was solicited through the spa, but from what I determined from talking to Lady Chilcott, the child was never used as part of the cure routine at the spa.”

“Perhaps not for her, but how about others?”

“She socializes with others at the spa and I’m sure a child being used in treatment would have been a subject of talk. Besides, she’s not just a customer at the spa. Like your Lady Winsworth, she was a financial supporter of Lacroix and I suspect both the women were his lovers, too.”