The Formula for Murder (35 page)

I barely get into the cottage when there is a knock on the door.

It’s the inn’s maid. She seems a bit hurried. “Your friend sent me to tell you to come to the stable. There’s a problem with one of your ponies.”

“Oh no. Did he say what’s wrong?”

“No, madam, just for you to come quickly.”

I throw on a shawl and head for the stable which is only a hundred feet from the inn.

We named the ponies Adam and Eve and I dearly love them both. They belong together, they’re a team. Wells laughs at me for worrying about what will happen to them if they were separated. The most common serious injury to a horse is to its legs and I hope that isn’t the case. It is a given that a leg injury to a person can be healed, but for a horse it is almost certain death.

I confess, I love animals and unfortunately because I feel such a bond with them, I react emotionally to their injuries. They are like children, so helpless.

As I’m coming up to the stable I notice a black carriage parked off to the side of the building. It’s the most luxurious rig I have ever seen.

To my surprise I find the stable doors shut and bolted. I stop. A thought flashes that petrifies me—
I’ve been set up.

I didn’t tell the others I was returning to the cottage or leave a note for Wells that I went to the stable. No one will know where I am.

I spin around to get the heck out of here, when I hear a familiar voice. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”

A man steps out of darkness not reached by the oil lamp above the wide stable doors.

Burke—the ruffian from the spa.

“Ugh” barely escapes my mouth as a hand comes around from behind me and smothers my mouth, as a sharp point is thrust against my neck.

“Open your flap, dolly, and I’ll shove this all the way to your brain.”

Ice pick.

My heart stops. Horrible visions of Archer and Weekes flash before me.

Burke takes my arm and keeps the ice pick on me as the man behind releases me. “Now let’s calmly walk to the carriage and get in.”

With the ice pick to my throat, we make our way over to the carriage. A few times my knees feel like they are going to collapse, but I force them to move forward only because I know that if I fall I will be impaled with the pick.

A gold crest of nobility is on the side of the carriage.

I am shoved inside with the thug coming in behind me, still holding the ice pick.

The woman I had first seen getting out of the black coach at the spa entrance faces me. A small oil lamp takes the edge off the darkness in the carriage designed for the rich and noble.

She is elegantly dressed in black, the cloth being of fine lace. A veil most women wear for fashion alone is again hiding her features for reasons only she knows.

“What do you want from me?” My voice is controlled anger. If the ice pick wasn’t next to me I’d slap her. How dare she.

The woman raises the veil.

She is old and wrinkled at first glance, but as I take in more of her features I realize that she has aged prematurely because there is a youthfulness that is almost completely hidden behind the mask of old age.

She smiles at me.

“I want your blood, my dear.”

PART IV

The Laboratory of Dr. Lacroix

60

“What
exactly
did you tell her?”

Wells’s question to the inn maid, who delivered the message to Nellie, is asked in a grim, angry tone. The girl, cringing like a rabbit frozen in place as it stares at a predator, appears ready to bolt.

“Just what her friend asked me to tell her, sir.”

“How do you know he’s her friend?”

The woman is on the verge of tears and Oscar puts a restraining hand on Wells’s arm.

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Oscar tells the girl in a soothing tone. “You did exactly as you were told. But, my dear, Nellie has disappeared and we need to find her.”

“She probably went off with her friend.”

“There is no doubt she left,” Oscar says gently, “but the man wasn’t her friend. He’s a criminal and he has taken her.”

The maid gasps and covers her face.

“It’s all right, it was not your fault, but you want to help her, don’t you?”

“You can be sure of that!”

“What did the man look like?”

“I don’t know. He looked a little like my brother Jeremy. People say Jeremy is tough, you know what I mean, with his fists. But he didn’t dress like Jeremy. His clothes are London fancy.”

“How old is Jeremy?” Oscar continues.

“He’s my older brother, I think he’s ‘bout thirty.”

“Was anyone else with the man?”

“No sir, just him alone. Told me to go tell his friend one of the ponies is sick and she must come to help him. So, I did that. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, of course not, my dear. We are just trying to find out what you saw.” Oscar says in a sweet tone. The village girl had no knowledge of the murderous machinations.

“Was he wearing boots? Ones with pointed toes?” Wells asks, trying to control his frustration and anger at this maid for being so stupid as far as he’s concerned.

“Boots with pointed toes? I’ve never seen boots like that. I didn’t notice what he wears on his feet. I don’t pay attention to people’s feet.”

Wells and Oscar turn their attention to Conan Doyle who is hurrying toward them.

“There was a carriage,” he tells them, a little out of breath, “parked near the stable. An expensive rig with four horses. The innkeeper and stableman both say it doesn’t belong to anyone in the area and that they’ve never seen it before. Had some kind of emblem … a gold crest, they think, on it, but they couldn’t be sure in the dark and all.”

“No one saw Nellie?” Wells asks, his tone gripped with tension.

“No one. The maid?” Doyle gestures.

Oscar and Wells turn to see the maid darting away.

“Let her go. She knows nothing of importance,” Oscar says to Wells and then answers Doyle’s question. “Apparently a man about thirty, tough looking like her brother, said to tell Nellie a pony was sick.”

“It was a clever ploy,” Wells states bitterly. “Nellie loves animals. She rushed right into the trap without even thinking.”

“Boots?”

“She didn’t notice,” Wells answers Doyle’s question. “They must have taken her north. I don’t think they would have gone south, not in a big carriage, the road’s too rough. I’m getting my buggy and going after them.”

“Wait a moment, please.” Doyle grabs his arm. “The innkeeper tells me that it’s less than an hour to the main road to Okehampton. They probably made the road already. There’s no way our pony buggies can overtake a four-horse rig, especially on a good road.”

“I’ll get a horse—” Wells stops as Doyle shakes his head.

“I’ve asked. There are no full-sized horses in the vicinity. And not even a local constable. Okehampton has the closest police station.”

“No place to wire from here?” Oscar asks.

Doyle shakes his head again. “Okehampton is the closest. When we get there, we’ll send out a wire to every police station in the region. We can be there in less than three hours, but it will be the middle of the night and everything will be shut down and locked tight.”

“Then we shall awaken the entire town,” Oscar says. “We’ll organize search parties. Territory that would take us days to cover can be done by volunteers in Okehampton in hours.”

“We don’t even know where to begin,” Wells says. His tone is as worried as his gloomy expression. “We really don’t know if Lacroix’s laboratory is within a six-mile range of the castle. That’s an estimate based on the artist’s endurance. He could have visited the castle in a buggy, for all we know.”

Doyle turns to Wells. “The equipment for the type of experiments he conducts, does it involve any large or heavy apparatus?”

“No, I would think not. Nothing that can’t be easily lifted by a man. Why do you ask?”

“From what you’ve said, Lacroix must have known for some time that he could ultimately be traced to Dartmoor. You suspected the laboratory is in Dartmoor from the shipments you learned about. We believe the artist Weekes knew where the laboratory was because of the bog he painted. That leads to the theory that the facility is in this region, but begs the question as to whether it is still where it was when Weekes painted the bog.”

“You’re wondering whether he could have broken down the laboratory and transported it elsewhere?” Oscar looks at Doyle.

“My God,
yes
.” Wells throws his hands up. “It wouldn’t be that difficult. For the type of research Lacroix does, his entire laboratory could be boxed up and transported in one large wagon. Once he became aware that we were searching for it and had some idea of the location, he probably moved it. It could be anywhere.”

“Logically anywhere
in this region,
” Doyle offers. “Weekes was killed to prevent him from pointing the way to Okehampton, although he did so with the Lady Howard story. That and the other death implies that even if the laboratory was moved, it’s still in Dartmoor and most likely the northern part.”

“Then, my friends,” Oscar says, “if the lab is so easy to move and hide, it raises a most puzzling question.”

He didn’t have to put the question into words. All three men had analytical minds and extraordinarily fantastic imaginations. Not being a man of few words, Oscar spoke the question.

“If they can easily hide, why would they have exposed themselves to so much danger and police attention by kidnapping Nellie?”

Wells takes a turn at further stating the obvious. “They’ve had opportunities to kill her and haven’t done so.” He stares at the two men, his features a mask of dread.

“Vampires!”

“
What?
” Oscar and Doyle both exclaim at the same time.

“That’s what Archer kept toying Nellie and me with. He kept saying look for vampires.”

“And…?” Oscar asks.

“They want Nellie’s blood,” says Conan Doyle.

61

The dark night reveals no clue where I’m going as the carriage rumbles along. The only sign of habitation I can see out the carriage window is the occasional dim lamplight from a farmhouse.

I sit facing the countess, with Burke beside me.

The only other person on the coach is the driver, whose name I heard is Hare, a chip off the same hard-edged block as Burke. Both of the men wear cowboy boots. I haven’t gotten a good look at Hare, but I assume he is the man who killed Isaac Weekes.

An expensive coach pulled by a team of four moves surprisingly quick despite the narrowness and ruts on the road. I’m certain it’s making better time than Wells and I did with the small buggy despite the roughness of the track. From the turns it makes, I know the carriage is taking me north on a route that will connect to a more traveled road that flows west from Exeter to Okehampton and beyond. The same route we were taking to get to Okehampton.

The fact we are heading for Okehampton offers, I hope, one small advantage to me—it’s the route Wells and I were on and the natural one that he and the others will follow to affect a rescue, since we concluded that the laboratory was there.

I am frightened to death but won’t satisfy them by showing fear.

No word has been spoken except when Burke, sitting next to me, starts to light a cigar and the woman in black says, “No.” He immediately extinguishes the match.

The words she spoke to me when I was forced aboard are the cause of a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. From my conversations with Wells about the nature of Lacroix’s research I am certain I know what she meant.

While I keep my features impassive, my innards are convulsing and I fight to keep panic from gripping and paralyzing me. I am completely helpless at the moment but if a chance to escape arises, I need to be ready to take it. Screaming is futile, there is no place to run or hide, no one to shout to for help.

I am still stunned by their simple ploy to take me, how utterly clueless I was about the situation and so foolish to mindlessly walk away from the inn without even telling my companions.

My eyes keep going back to the woman in black.

Burke calls her “Countess” and never uses anything but the title. Strange, but I don’t think of her as having a name. I wonder if she is a widow or if the clothes are a reflection of her dark spirit.

An hour has passed and I am certain by now that my friends will have discovered I am missing. They are clever men, brave and resourceful. Fortunately, Dr. Doyle is also familiar with the area. I’m sure their immediate plan will be to get to the police and organize a search for the laboratory in the Okehampton Castle area that we have estimated its location to be.

Soon it becomes a much smoother road than the goat paths Wells and I seemed to have always been traversing in the heart of the moors. We now proceed at a quicker pace. I realize that we have reached the main road and a shock hits me—
we turned right onto the road.