Mists of Moorhead Manor Page 15

  I finally caught a glimpse of light moving toward me, and I nearly sobbed with relief. Foolish me, to worry so when it was nothing more than one of nature’s many holes in the ground.

  And then, at last, Robert emerged. If Vanessa could have drawn devastation, it would have been Exmere’s anguished face.

  “My mother,” he whispered. “She’s in there. The other is likely Quenton Ridgeway, though I can’t be certain. But I recognized my mother’s clothes, and a locket and two rings she always wore.”

  I put my arms around him and held him close. “Then they didn’t run off,” I said.

  “Perhaps they intended to, but . . . how can we ever know?”

  “Do you suppose they had a lovers’ tryst and were somehow shut up inside?”

  “With a ball of lead lying beneath his ribs, I doubt it.”

  “Oh, Robert, I am so sorry.” All other words failed me. I could only hold him close, offering the comfort of human warmth.

  I buried my face in his chest, too appalled to say what I was thinking. Robert said it for me. “They were murdered, Penny. Though how my mother died, I’m not sure.” His lips brushed my hair. “Let’s close this abomination and go home. I have to think about what’s to be done. Meanwhile . . .” He took me by the shoulders and set me from him, looking straight into my eyes. “Say nothing to anyone about this. I have some difficult decisions to make.”

  “But surely they must have a proper burial—”

  “Who’s to say they don’t already have one?”

  How could I have been so dense? He thought Hycliffe did it and could not, therefore, reveal the cavern’s secret to the world, for blood is inevitably thicker than the reach of the law.

  “Of course,” I murmured. “The secret is safe with me.”

  He squeezed my arm before gently moving me aside and thrusting the door shut, both wall and folly once again an unbroken line, sparkling white and beautiful under the westering sun.

  As we walked back toward the house, Robert’s hand squeezed tight around mine, the mists began to roll off the sea, creeping across the yellowed grass, slithering over walls, and licking at our feet. It came in so quickly that by the time we reached the kitchen door, Robert’s starkly blank expression seemed to waver into something more human, more tender, as he once again warned me to silence, adding a soft, “And, Penny . . . thank you.”

  A thank-you for helping him find his mother? A thank-you for being there when he did? My heart was too full for words as we parted, I, to climb the servants’ stairs with no wish to encounter anyone. And Robert . . . I paused, head down, and leaned against the wall. Robert was headed straight for his father. A certainty as chilling as any I’d had since my parents’ deaths. But my imagination balked at contemplating a confrontation so fraught with drama. How did a son tell his father his wife had never left Moorhead Manor? That her skeletal remains lay in a cave not a hundred yards from the house.

  How did a son say to his father, “Did you kill her? Did you kill them both?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  At dinner I felt as if I had fallen into a play in which only Robert, Lord Hycliffe, and I knew the plot, and all others were an unwitting audience. And since it was an extemporaneous play with no set lines for me to speak, I remained silent, listening to the banter between Kenrick and Huntley and their vain attempts to include Robert, while Vanessa cast puzzled glances toward the head of the table, where Hycliffe and Robert both glowered, not exchanging a single syllable.

  “I take it,” she said at last, directing her words to Exmere, “that no progress has been made on discovering the madman?”

  “Not that I know of. We have heard nothing from Ridgeway.” Terse words offered through nearly closed lips.

  “But surely a search of the moor—”

  “Would be useless. There are a thousand places to hide.”

  “But it is barren,” Vanessa protested.

  For a moment Robert’s face softened. “You have forgotten, dear sister, the gullies, the trees and bushes along the streams, the tangled gorse, the massive stone formations, and the niches formed by falling rocks. Believe me, a search is useless.”

  “And besides,” Kenrick drawled, “our Rob believes the murderer to be much closer to home.”

  Gasps echoed from Vanessa and Lady Emmaline. Lord Hycliffe’s fork clanked onto his plate.

  “I say, Rob!” Huntley exclaimed, vehemently protesting his brother’s insinuations.

  “This is scarcely a matter for dinner-table conversation,” Hycliffe declared in his most repressive tones. “Though I must admit the concept of a mad hermit lurking on the moor has great appeal. I only wish I could believe it.”

  To avoid any betraying glances, I kept my eyes fixed on my plate.

  “No-o,” Vanessa cried, ignoring her father’s edict, you cannot mean it. Not one of us!”

  Robert glowered. Just when I thought he would refuse to respond to his sister, he said, albeit with considerable resignation, “The deaths were not in village but on the moor and on the cliffs. Where only two families hold sway, the Wetheringtons and the Ridgeways, with the Tremaines most prominent among the farmers and sheepherders. If any of those who work for us had shown signs of madness, I believe we would know it. I have spoken with Thomas Ridgeway and Ben Tremaine. No problems among their people. Or ours.”

  “But surely madmen can be cunning—” I broke off, horrified that my unruly tongue had overruled my determination to keep silent.

  “Oh yes.” Robert nodded. “It’s said some madmen dissemble very well.” I understood his double meaning and once again kept my eyes cast down, my lips firmed in a straight line, even as goosebumps prickled my bare arms. Oh, dear God, did Robert think his father had killed them all? For I now had little doubt that Robert had long suspected his father had killed his mother and her lover

  A weak wave of Lady Emmaline’s hand, and a footman pulled back her chair. Vanessa and I followed her into the drawing room, where for a moment we simply stared at each other, our faces bleak.

  “David,” Vanessa called as he walked to his customary place along the wall, “does your father agree with Rob’s outlandish notion?”

  David turned, paused, his coal black hair and dark eyes gleaming under the chandelier’s many candles. “It may be easier to think a stranger has done this, my lady, but I must agree with Lord Exmere. It is quite possible a murderer walks among us.” David inclined his head in a polite nod and assumed his customary post, back to the wall, arms folded across his chest.

  Lady Emmaline, Vanessa, and I sat stiffly in our chairs, mouths closed, eyes looking anywhere but at each other. David’s declaration had the ring of truth, but none of us wished to admit it.

  “I say it’s Rob who has gone mad,” Vanessa grumbled. “And David follows his lead, as all of them do. A fine bunch of sheep—they should all cry, ‘Ba-a’!” On these final caustic words she turned her head and raised her voice to make certain David heard her.

  He stuck his chin in the air, feigning the role of a deaf man, which only incensed her further. “You’re a sycophant,” she cried. “Living off another’s catastrophe, a child of Hamlin following my brother into the sea—”

  “Vanessa!” I bounced to my feet, glaring down at her. “David is so devoted to you he’s like the answer to a prayer. What would do without him? You have no right to treat him . . .”

  My voice died away as I noted David was no longer standing against the wall. He was gone.

  While we were all staring at the empty space against the wall, the gentlemen came in and the surprise of David’s abandonment vanished under far more pressing problems. Robert would seek me out, I told myself. He would find a way to tell me what happened when he spoke to his father. He must.

  Instead, he seemed to have forgotten my existence. So many questions filled my mind I was ready to burst. Yet he was ignoring me! I hung back when the ladies went upstairs, only to be treated to the sight of Robert, Huntley, and Kenrick in close
conversation, their backs to me. Ostentatiously so, I thought. Lord Hycliffe had already left us, declaring that he had work to do in his study.

  I lingered in the doorway for nearly a full minute, my frustration mounting, until I accepted the message of Exmere’s deliberate avoidance and, with a huff, took myself off to my room.

  Five people dead, and yet we blithely sat down and dined with the possible murderer. Exmere could not sweep this under the rug, for I was nearly certain the killings would not stop. There might have been a gap of more than four years between the deaths in the cave and the death of Mary Perkins, but the latest murders were more closely spaced. I recalled an incident during one of those long idle winters in Portugal. Over a period of six weeks two camp followers had been found strangled, and I had overheard Papa say to Major Stinson, “Mark my words. There’ll be another killing. The bastard’s acquired a taste for it.” And two weeks later, a third murder occurred, just as predicted.

  Was that what was happening here? Six months between the deaths of Mary Perkins and Nell Ridgeway. Less than a month before Sal Billings was beaten to death.

  There would be another, I knew it.

  I had to speak with Robert!

  After a solitary breakfast the next day, I swallowed my pride and asked a footman to deliver a note to Lord Exmere. Assuming my most imperious manner, I handed over the small piece of crested paper from the desk in the morning room, making no explanations, no excuses. The footman could think what he pleased. But if I caught so much as a hint of a smirk . . .

  Robert was waiting for me when I entered the morning room at two that afternoon. He did not smile or even appear welcoming. More like a man on his way to the gallows. Where had the charming London beau gone? Or had it all been a façade, a curtain hiding the scars of a man too long at war?

  I had put on one of my more becoming gowns, a soft rose wool that hung in graceful folds and lent color to my cheeks. With my coiffure perfect, my carriage erect, and my gown carefully displayed against the sofa’s glowing gold brocade, I was reasonably certain my appearance was pleasing to the eye. But I was also well aware it would be fatal to pounce on him, so I folded my hands in my lap and offered a demure, “Well?”

  Alas, my machinations failed. Robert looked as if he wished me in Jericho. So much for my efforts to please him.

  “Father was shocked,” he returned stiffly. “Horrified, in fact. But he agrees that it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “You can’t!” I cried. “Not only should they have a proper burial, but the Ridgeways need to know what happened. You cannot keep this from them.”

  “Cannot?” Robert repeated softly. “Who is to say we cannot?”

  A frisson of fear rolled through me; my indignation wavered. “Robert,” I whispered, “you know this is not right. It cannot be right. It’s not just the past,” I continued doggedly. “It’s what is happening in the present. The girls who have been killed—”

  “Another problem entirely.” His azure eyes stared into mine, clear and confident, as if he truly believed it.

  “No-o.” I shook my head. “We don’t know that.”

  A shadow passed over Robert’s face; suddenly, he seemed haunted, as if the Devil himself looked over his shoulder. Reluctantly, as if I were pulling each word from him one at a time, he told me, “Hycliffe claims no knowledge of the bodies in the cave. He suspects some modern-day version of Abelard and Eloise. Ill-starred lovers who decided to end it all. Therefore, no possible connection to three murdered girls.”

  I sat silent, attempting to think the problem through. “Did you find a pistol?” I asked at last.

  “Why?” His reluctance to speak had shifted to belligerence.

  “If a suicide, the pistol would still be there.”

  Robert stood and strode toward one of the east-facing windows. “Penelope Ruth,” he declared without turning around, “you can be a great deal of trouble.”

  “The same sheer stubbornness that kept my namesakes faithful.”

  With the determined motion of a man who has made up his mind about a difficult problem, he turned and said, “Then let us speak in terms of other ancient tales. That cave is like Pandora’s Box. Only a stream of evil can come from opening it. As of this moment, only three people know of it. You, Hycliffe, and myself. And it must stay that way. Forever.”

  Dear God, no. My Robert could not be so duplicitous. “And if Hycliffe is a murderer,” I challenged, “you would allow him to go free?”

  “He is not, and there’s an end to it.”

  Liar. One last attempt at sanity. “Robert, we have to go back. We must look for the pistol, prove it was suicide.”

  “No!”

  “At least we would know your father is not a murderer.”

  He moved so swiftly he was on me before I had time to feel fear or even think of running. Eyes blazing, he grasped me by both arms, his fingers biting into my flesh. “Pistol or no pistol makes no difference. No one is going back into that cave. No one will speak of the cave or of what’s in it. Is. That. Clear?”

  “Very.” I glared right back. “Now let go of me.”

  One last searing look and he stepped back a few inches, his hands dropping to his sides. I had the distinct impression he was not convinced of my willingness to bow to his dictates.

  And he would be right.

  But my more immediate problem was the menace I felt rolling off him. How could I possibly feel menaced by the man to whom I had given my heart, no matter how foolish that gesture might be?

  As we stood there, eye to eye, the answer came all too swiftly. The emotions I felt were one-sided. For Robert, family and honor would always triumph over any attraction he might feel for his sister’s companion.

  I made a show of rubbing my sore arms, stuck my chin in the air, proffered a mockery of a curtsy, and exited the room, feeling my back a target every step of the way.

  Oh, Robert, how could you?

  Chapter Nineteen

  I thought my next half-day would never come. I dreaded what I must do yet longed to have it over, the mystery clarified. The days dragged by, a miasma of fear and gloom permeating every corner of the house. Queries into the death of Sal Billings had gone nowhere. Death by beating by person or persons unknown—all agreed that would be the verdict at the inquest, but as for suspects? As Huntley proclaimed one evening after dinner, the list of suspects could include the whole of North Devon. Which brought an instant challenge from Vanessa, to whom he apologized quite prettily, quickly amending his comment to “any male in North Devon.”

  Just to be contrary, I said, “You do not think she might have been attacked by a jealous female?” That brought stares from all four gentlemen in the drawing room, probably from David as well, though my back was to him and I could not see his face.

  “You think a woman capable of murder?” Lord Hycliffe asked, clearly startled by my question.

  “I have seen women come close to killing each other, my lord. Fortunately, there were always others there to stop the fight.”

  “Merciful heavens, Penny,” Lady Emmaline declared, startled out of her customary reverie, “such a strange life you have led.”

  “Come now, Penny,” Exmere said, “you saw the body. Surely your eyes told you that only the strength of a man could inflict such damage.”

  He was right, of course, so I closed my mouth and said no more. Had I actually proposed a woman as a suspect simply because I felt female capabilities were so often ignored? I feared I had. In some mad rush to defend female strength, I had suggested one of my own sex might be a murderer. Oh, well done, Penny, well done.

  Naturally, when my half-day came at last, the mists came with it, shrouding the house in a blanket of grayish white even more intense than the day I had first discovered the cave under the hill. “Oh, miss, y’r not going out!” Cook cried as I helped myself to a lantern.

  “Only for a few breaths of fresh air,” I told her. “I spent most of my life outdoors, you know. I
feel so confined inside.”

  “But ye’ll not go alone!”

  “A few steps is all. Don’t worry.” I edged toward the door.

  “Miss!” But I was gone, welcoming the fog that swiftly enveloped me, protecting me from being seen. Or followed.

  Unfortunately, it did not occur to me that it also kept me from seeing anyone else who might be wandering through the gardens of Moorhead Manor.

  Having negotiated the garden paths many times, I found the walled garden with no difficulty, and making sure I kept the satisfying crunch of pebbles under my half-boots, I found my way to the folly with little difficulty. It was equally easy to find the good-sized rock I had borrowed the day before from a gardener’s carefully assembled display and secreted behind a large plant directly across from the folly.

  Now came the hard part. I had never actually opened the hidden door, except accidentally. Robert had tried every carving, crack, and cranny and ended up using brute force. Well, why not? I squared my shoulders, drew a deep breath, and shoved the back of the left end of the bench with all my might.

  To my astonishment, with a grinding creak the wall beside the bench moved, revealing a gap just wide enough for me to slip inside. Now, at last, terror triumphed over righteous indignation. I had to be out of my mind. Lady Rothbury and Quenton Ridgeway had gone in and never come out. Perhaps the door had closed, trapping them inside? Perhaps someone had closed the door. Deliberately.

  Common sense said no one would make a door to a cave that could not be opened from the inside. But . . .

  After terming my common sense mere cowardice, I maneuvered the heavy rock into position against the door. There! No need for the butterflies flittering along my nerves. No need for pounding heart and roiling stomach. I was safe. That door was not going to close. I turned up the lantern wick and entered the Stygian darkness.