Death at Dartmoor (31 page)

“That'll do, Rogue,” Delany said, and the fierce-looking dog reluctantly lay back down, its hackles still raised, its nose resting watchfully on its front paws.

“Servants only cost money,” Delany continued with a wave of his arm. “And as you can see from the way I live, there is precious little of that commodity to spare.”

Charles noticed through the open doors that the other downstairs rooms were as sparsely furnished as this one, although there looked to be bookshelves, and books, in every room. It was cold, too—the kind of damp, clammy cold that testifies to small fires the winter through.

“You have lived here long, Mr. Delany?” he asked in a conversational tone.

“I was born here,” Delany said, pushing his flaxen hair out of his eyes. “Until his death, my father managed the Thornworthy estate for our cousin. I did the same for a few years afterward. Then our cousin died and—” He stopped.

“And Sir Edgar came into his inheritance and no longer required your services as estate manager?”

“Yes,” Delany said shortly. “Quite so.” Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he turned to face Charles and the constable. Charles saw what he had not noticed when they had met before, that his skin had an oddly gray tinge, there were fine lines around his mouth, and his eyes had the puffy look of a heavy drinker. “Has the convict been captured yet?” he asked. His tone was brusque, almost offensive.

“No, sir.” The constable spoke up. “But they'll get him. Not t' worry.”

“I'm not the one worrying,” Delany retorted. “It's the moor people hereabouts. They don't care for the prison much anyway, and when one of the prisoners gets loose, they make a hard time of it until he's caught. Of course, their fear is seasoned with a sense of drama. Something like this injects a little excitement into everyone's life, and Lord knows there's not much of that. We live very quietly here on the moor.”

He stopped speaking as a thin, raven-haired woman with a disfiguring scar across her right cheek and jaw appeared in the door. She was carrying a tray with teapot and cups, sugar and milk. Keeping her scarred cheek turned from Charles and the constable, she set the tray down and sent Delany an inquiring glance.

“Nothing else, thank you, Jane.” The woman left the room. Delany poured tea into three chipped cups and handed them around. “No lemon, I'm afraid,” he muttered.

“I doubt that the moor people have anything to fear from the escaped convict,” Charles said mildly. “It does not seem at all likely that he killed Sir Edgar.”

“Oh?” Delany lifted his head sharply. “I must say, you sound very positive.” He glanced at the constable. “Do you agree, Constable?”

“That's wot it looks like t' me,” the constable said.

“Well, then,” Delany replied. “What has led the two of you to that conclusion?”

“I have not learned anything to persuade me that the escaped man is armed,” Charles said evenly, spooning sugar into his tea and stirring it. He went to sit in one of the chairs, the large black dog following him warily with his eyes. The constable sat as well, taking a small notebook out of one pocket, and the stub of a pencil out of another. Delany went to stand with his back to the fire, and the dog sat up on its haunches, resting its head against its master's thigh.

“And then there is the fact of the battering,” Charles went on. “The escaped man would have had no reason to beat Sir Edgar until his face was unrecognizable. Nor, come to that, would he have had a reason to conceal the body. If he had somehow managed to get his hands on a weapon, he would have shot his victim and run.” He paused, thinking that the most difficult part of detective work—something that never seemed to bother the eminent Holmes—was developing the sympathy that allowed one to understand a man's motives, at the same time retaining one's objectivity. In situations like these, Charles found himself needing to know someone deeply, if not intimately, while still remaining impartial in judgment—and it was damned hard. He looked up at Delany. “Do you not agree?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Delany said. Holding his cup in one hand, Delany reached down to stroke the dog's ears with the other. “Who, then, do you think might have killed him?” His voice was taut.

Charles held Delany's eyes with his. “Your name has been mentioned as a possibility,” he said quietly.

Delany's eyes shifted. He raised his hand, and the dog stirred restlessly. “I thought you might have got that idea in your mind,” he said in a sour tone. “I suppose you think I did it to get my hands on Thornworthy.”

“Did you?” Charles asked. “After all, the body was found quite nearby—in sight of this house, actually.”

Delany frowned. “Of course I didn't. I was as shocked as anyone when I saw Sir Edgar laid out on that table in the Black Dog and realized who he was.” He shook his head, his mouth crooked. “Rotten luck, poor fellow. Didn't deserve it, no matter what he was up to with that woman.”

The constable cleared his throat. “That woman?” he asked in a deferential tone. Charles recalled that the vicar, when he had mentioned Sir Edgar's letter in the pub after the autopsy, had not detailed its contents. The constable was not privy to the information about the woman, and he himself had heard it only from Kate, who had managed to get it from the vicar.

Delany frowned, seemed to reflect for a moment, then said, “Jane Collins—my cook, who brought in the tea—told me that Sir Edgar wrote a letter to Lady Duncan, saying that he was leaving with a woman.” He looked from the constable to Charles. “Word gets around on the moor, you know. Servants talk. You can't keep a thing hid, no matter how hard you try. You'd be surprised at what these people know, although they're very close-mouthed with strangers.” This was followed by a silence, during which the sound of the constable's small scribbling might be heard.

“And did your Jane Collins know who the woman might be?” Charles asked.

“No, but I guessed that she might be Mrs. Redman. Sir Edgar was on ... friendly terms with her. She lives in Mortonhampstead.”

The constable's pencil paused. “Mrs. Redman?” he asked. “Is that wot ye said?”

“Yes, Redman. Laura Redman, I believe. She is a married lady who now lives with her brother.” A slight smile curved Delany's mouth. “She's said to have been deserted by her husband, although what the truth of that is, I'm sure I don't know. She had applied to Sir Edgar for help, apparently, and he set her up in a small millinery business in Mortonhampstead. Saw her several times a month, or so I believe.”

“And how do you happen to know all this?” Charles asked. “Not from your cook, I take it.”

“Her brother spoke to me of it, some weeks ago. He was not averse to his sister's receiving financial aid, but he was concerned about the continuing friendship. He seemed to fear that it might not have a positive effect on his sister's reputation. Knowing that Sir Edgar and I are related, he asked me if I might see my way clear to discuss the matter with my cousin, with an eye to persuading him to leave the lady alone.”

“And did you?”

Delany laughed without amusement. “Of course not. I'm no fool. I had difficulty enough with Sir Edgar, without adding that sort of further complication.”

“Do you know,” Charles said, “if the brother discussed his concerns with Sir Edgar directly?”

“I have no idea,” Delany replied. “You'll have to ask him. His name is Lyons, by the way. He's a shoemaker in Mortonhampstead.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. After a moment, he added, diffidently, “Will you now get your hands on Thornworthy, as you put it? Now that your cousin is dead, I mean.”

Delany seemed to take this as another accusation, for he frowned and said, in a sharply defensive tone, “Of course I'll inherit. Sir Edgar had no children, and I'm the only one left in either branch of the family.” He stepped away from the fire and went to the window. The dog, with a heavy sigh, dropped back onto the floor, still watching its master. “That's it,” Delany said, looking out the window. “You can see it from here. If you like, you can imagine my standing here, staring at it by the hour and wishing it were mine. You probably wouldn't be far wrong,” he added with a harsh chuckle.

Charles rose from his chair and went to stand beside him. Stapleton House was built on the side of a hill, and the window looked out across a stream and a broad, low valley. The gray parapets of Thornworthy could be seen rising abruptly on the other side of the stream, wreathed with drifting fog, a ghost castle.

Charles drank the last of his tea. “Not just the property and its income, I suppose, but a certain sum of money, as well?”

“Yes.” Delany, perhaps cheered by the sight of Thornworthy, seemed to have got himself under control, and he spoke matter-of-factly. “A handsome sum, actually. Enough to maintain me for the rest of my life, as long as I'm not profligate.”

“So you have,” Charles went on, “what the Crown's prosecutor might call a strong motive to wish Sir Edgar dead.”

Delany turned, his face impassive. “Yes, I suppose it might be called that. I expected to have received the estate four years ago, under the entail. But Sir Edgar's claim to it was honored over mine—on a technicality, I thought.” He chuckled sourly. “I didn't even have the money to buy the small piece of land he was willing to sell me, and he wouldn't accept my note.” He rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “You're right; I had reason, ample reason. But I didn't kill him.”

“But you
did
kill the man in Okehampton who reneged on the sale of another piece of property, isn't that the case?”

“That was an accident,” Delany protested. “The coroner's jury ruled—”

“So I understand,” Charles said dryly. He glanced in the direction of the gun cabinet, noting that there were several empty pegs. “Was Sir Edgar's death an accident, along the same sort of lines? Was there an argument, and a struggle for a gun, perhaps?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Delany said sharply. His temper had risen again, and he was making an obvious effort to hold it in check. “I haven't seen Sir Edgar since we were all together the night of the first séance—the night I met you. And anyway, if I had killed him, I wouldn't have beaten his face to a pulp, would I? Nor hidden his body, come to that.”

“I don't know.” Charles gave him an inquiring look. “Would you have done?”

“Of course not.” Delany snorted. He brought his hand to his chest in a gesture that struck Charles as rehearsed. “Who do you take me for? A bloody fool? If I'd killed my cousin to acquire Thornworthy, I'd want him identified right away, wouldn't I?” A note of triumph came into his voice. “A missing entailee would do me no good at all. I'd need a dead body to make good my claim.”

“I suppose that an attorney might make that argument in your defense,” Charles said thoughtfully. He carried his empty cup to the tea tray, put it down, and turned to look straight at Delany. “It would be a very clever way to deflect the suspicion that would naturally fall upon the beneficiary of the entail, wouldn't you say? Especially a beneficiary who has had to wait for so many years to gain the estate that he thought was his.” He smiled. “But there would no doubt be some on the jury who would be swayed by it.”

Delany's jaw tightened, but he made no answer.

“I have just one other thing to ask you about,” Charles said. “Lady Sheridan tells me that, at the second séance, Mr. Westcott's spirit contact suggested that you offer three hundred pounds for a property you are considering, instead of the four hundred that was asked. Did you make that offer, I wonder?”

Delany's frown was puzzled. “Interesting you should ask. I did, as a matter of fact. I had just three hundred pounds, and that rather cinched the deal.”

“What was the outcome?”

“It was accepted, just as that blasted spirit predicted.”

“And what do you make of that?”

“Make of it?” Delany laughed sarcastically. “I made a hundred pounds of it.”

“I see,” Charles said. “And you still don't know how Mr. Westcott's spirit came by that useful information?”

Delany shook his head. “He didn't get it from me, I'll swear to that. I didn't mention it to a living soul.”

“Wot about a dead one?” the constable asked.

“Very good, Constable,” Delany said. He smiled dryly. “But I'm afraid there's no go there, either. As far as I know, Sir Edgar knew absolutely nothing of my efforts to enlarge the size of my small holdings.” He shrugged. “I'm afraid that we'll just have to attribute this little oddity to the inscrutable universe, and let it go at that.”

“Perhaps,” Charles murmured. “Perhaps.”