Black Heather (20 page)

Elspeth had hurried out to run after Patrick and tell him that their suspicions were very likely right, when Meg Markham came in with Mrs. Famblechook, who was sobbing noisily and hanging upon Meg’s strong arm.

“Meg,” I said, “you haven’t seen Mrs. Sedley since yesterday, have you?”

“No, Miss. She said some’ut as how she’d have herself took to the inn, to see if it could be made habitable for your young ladies. But that was to be today.” She was turning from me to provide a handkerchief for the sobbing,
hiccupping
Mrs. Famblechook, when she added in a puzzled tone, “Miss, you wouldn’t credit the kind of tale that’s told these days.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seems as how them as come across Heatherton Moor for the arval today, talk of seein’ a female as like to the mistress as makes no matter. And awalking she was. Awalking and arunning, all hunched over like it give her pain to do so.”

This was marvelous news. It would go far to negate all the present suspicions that Sir Nicholas had snatched her away and buried her in some boggy place on the moor.

“Yes, Meg. Where?”

“It’s what I don’t credit above half, myself, Miss. Seems as if it was on the sheep track to the Hag’s Head, just above the rise on Seven Spinney.”

“What time? What time, Meg!”

She was bewildered at my vehemence and so confused at it that she let Mrs. Famblechook go. The wretched cook wheeled away onto the love seat in the passage at the foot of the stairs, with only little T
i
mothy to comfort her.

“Why, now, Daniel Fuller said it was close on dawn. Maybe earlier. Dan’
l
set out for Maidenmoor at half after midnight, for to be in time for the arval and all. He’s got a sheepcote on Heatherton Moor.”

Elspeth came back onto the staircase and asked us what we were arguing so loudly about.

“About your grandmother,” I said, cold, crisp, and clear. “About the person you said Sir Nicholas dropped into some muddy grave on the moor. She
has been seen
walking
—mind you!—upon the sheeptrack up to the inn.”

Elspeth looked from one to the other of us. She was very pale, and when she spoke, all the confident, slightly superior manner was gone.

“That is impossible. Grandmother would never walk so far.”

Meg shrugged. “Well, Miss, that’s the story being told. The MacLaidlaw saw her, same as Dan’l Fuller, and them is folk with mighty sharp eyes. And we do know the mistress was
that
put about to get to the inn herself. Maybe she just walked off in her sleep.”

I had a wonderful idea, and logical, I thought. “I think she went to the Hag’s Head to look for her daughter’s savings. The money both she and Mr. Kelleher and the Macrae have been wanting to find.”

“I tell you, it would only be the most extreme matter that would ever get Grandmother upon her feet for so long a walk.” Elspeth looked around as though hoping to find Mrs. Sedley suddenly sitting up in that comfortable bed of hers, giving us our orders in her sugar-sweet voice.

I said, “If we can get a man to go with us, I am perfectly willing to walk up to the Hag’s Head and prove Meg’s story is true. That is where we will find Mrs. Sedley, and I daresay she may even have walked up there in a kind of sleepwalking, which I’ve heard of people doing at times.”

Elspeth murmured thoughtfully, “That would
certainly explain the nightrobe, and the stout shoes for walking. She meant to walk about Everett Hall for some reason we do not yet know, and then
—
something
—made her follow on up to the Hag’s Head, either in
p
ursuit, or in a state of mental confusion. I must get Patrick before he leaves for York.”

She rustled down the stairs, through the passage, and out onto the street. I went to the window of Mrs. Sedley’s room and watched her until she was out of sight down the hill, past the graveyard. She was gone several minutes before I saw her hurrying up the hill again, but still alone; she must have been too late to fetch up Patrick Kelleher. She hesitated in front of the Owl of York, where so many of the black-clad men of the district were coming and going. Then she disappeared within. Remembering my own experience in there, I did not envy her, and I wasn’t surprised when she hurried out a few minutes later. I ran downstairs to meet her at the door.

“It’s no use,” she burst out, still breathing hard from her run. “Uncle Patrick left a few minutes ago. Gone to order up a runner, you know. I tried to get one of the men in the tavern, but of course, they will not leave while the drinking is free. What on earth shall we do?”

“Why, go ourselves, of course,” said I, surprised at her hesitation.

“Yes, but it will take so much longer by the high road if we use the horse and gig. And yet, if we take
the sheep track, we will not be able to bring Grandmother back ourselves. And she will be so tired. That is,” she added, with one of her heavy-lidded looks at Meg that boded no good for Mrs. Sedley’s maid, “if what you say is true, that they have seen her.”

“Well, then,” I said, having given it some thought. “You must take the gig and the horse, and I will go over the moor trail.” I had my reasons for this arrangement, for I suspected that Sir Nicholas might conceivably have been headed for the inn when we saw him this morning. If so, I hoped to stop him before he entered the inn and quarreled with Mrs. Sedley again over the inn’s destruction.

I guessed from her manner that Elspeth was confused, so many ideas being presented at once, and without her beloved Uncle Patrick to bolster her. But apparently, whatever troubled her was resolved, because she nodded, and when I had changed my shoes and put on an older coat, we went out upon the street together, she to have the mare harnessed again, and I to take the straight sheep trail over the heath and the rising moor to the Hag’s Head, this time without little Timothy to confuse my path—or, indeed, to warn me, in his feline fashion, when ghosts and haunts were abroad.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I was much m
ore familiar with the various crisscrossing sheep trails by this time, and I could take what I felt fairly confident was the correct path, while stifling a yawn or two; for the last night had scarcely been a period of much sleep for any of us at Everett Hall. However, though I yawned as I climbed the first rise above the hill-hugging village of Maidenmoor, I was not in the least sleepy but keyed to higher and higher nervous excitement. I knew that if I was able to reach a normal and clear-headed Sir Nicholas before Elspeth arrived with the conveyance to assist Mrs. Sedley, I must warn him of the difficulties about to be thrown in his way.

As I walked, huddling my throat and jaw closer into my coat collar against the winds of morning, I tried to reason out this idiotic obsession of mine that Sir Nicholas must be warned. My eyes and my wits had told me on several occasions that he might well be guilty of trying to frighten people into the very sort of accident that Macrae had met with yesterday. Why, then, did such “accidents” seem more the result of feminine trick than the weapon of a very masculine mind like that of Sir
Nicholas? He might even have been the murderer of Megan Sedley long ago when she would not leave her husband and go away with him.

Yet within my heart at this moment, I did not really believe that the man who was so gentle with me, who made me feel so protected and so admiring, could possibly be a murderer. Such is often the case, I believe, when one is kindly treated by another human being, more especially if that human being is well endowed and extremely handsome. I suppose that is how murderers often commit their crimes with such ease.

I had been thinking so deeply of my own responsibility for further crimes if I warned Sir Nicholas, that I had already climbed up around the little ridge where I had met the injured Macrae yesterday. The poor man! Was I actually becoming responsible for other such “accidents” caused, as I felt sure, by Macrae’s sudden and shocking sight of the Hag? And was the Hag actually an absurd but horrible disguise of Sir Nicholas, for purposes of his own, which must be more serious than the mere desire to obtain the inn and bu
rn
it to the ground? My
footsteps
faltered for the first time since I had left Maidenmoor. I felt keenly aware of the many dangers involved in my keeping secret my knowledge of Sir Nicholas. Yet he had been kind to me, and gentle, and so very much what any romantic young woman would dream about of nights.

I think it was my first good glimpse of the Hag’s
Head Inn, over across the intervening sea of dead black heather, that made me suddenly and terribly frightened, both for Sir Nicholas and of him. Before going on, I resolved to move warily from here, to tell him about the runners and warn him of the risks if he seemed in the mood he had generally used toward me since yesterday. If, however, he was up to some more deviltry, I would tell Elspeth and the others when they came and forestall further crimes. In this way, I hoped to salve my own conscience, both in what I owed to the people of the district and in what I owed to this man who had shown me, at moments, such kindness and tenderness.

I did not have long to wait before carrying out one or the other of my plans. As I walked around the hillock where I had met Macrae, and then picked out what I could see was the right sheep-track leading off across country toward the inn, I made out a tall figure far in the distance, somewhat to the north and east, and felt reasonably sure it was Sir Nicholas on the last part of his walk from Everett Hall toward the Hag’s Head. I hurried along, hoping the prickly heather and furze would hide my figure from his sight until I knew what my own actions must be. I did not yet know how I should prevent his meeting Mrs. Sedley within the Hag’s Head, if that was where we would find her, but I did think that if I appeared at the same time, playing the pesky intruder I actually was, both Mrs. Sedley and Sir Nicholas would find it difficult
to quarrel, for whatever else they might be, they were gentlefolk and knew what was expected of them in the way of good manners.

I could see that Sir Nicholas was going to reach the Hag’s Head before I did, for he had taken a shorter route than I expected, directly through the furze and up over the brow of a hill, which brought
him
out very close to the broken gate of the inn.

He stood there at least a full minute, with his gun across his arm, before he lowered it casually and studied the fa
c
ade of the old building.

Meanwhile, I picked up some time by cutting across the endless sheep tracks, losing sight of him and of the inn for a short time as I crossed through a dell where I was temporarily delayed by a herdsman and his flock. The man greeted me in friendly fashion, contrary to all I had heard of these lonely and self-sufficient people. As I was trying to pass him and his curly flock, he asked me if I had come from Maidenmoor, and then said sadly, “Ay, but if he’d been a male now, love, ye’d be where I’m
wishing I was. At the Owl of York for the grand arval.”

I smiled and hurried on, reflecting that he was probably not as hard of heart as he sounded, for a funeral celebration like the arval was in all likelihood the only “pleasant” happening in his hard and dreary life.

I had lost sight of Sir Nicholas, though, and I assumed that he had entered the old building. This made me excessively nervous, and I began to run
so fast that I knew I would be in no case to interfere between Mrs. Sedley and Sir Nicholas if I were this out of breath. When I began to climb that last little ridge where I would be plainly seen by anyone in the building, I had to stop and go carefully around to a
corner
of the inn where there were no windows and where I would be masked by the outbuildings, at least until I reached the small areaway between the stables and the inn itself. I huddled in the shadow on the west side of the still
-
room.

There was not a sound of any kind from the Hag’s Head as it loomed there before me, with the dark stains of the ancient fire still visible around the stone foundations. What on earth was Sir Nicholas doing in the old building? Had he met Mrs. Sedley? The silence reassured me only to the extent that I knew they were not quarreling—if, of course, Mrs. Sedley actually had reached this place of her daughter’s unhappiness and murder. I thought of all the barmaids and upstairs maids whom Megan’s husband had lured into sordid relationships of one kind or another, even on the day of Megan’s murder, and I wondered how I could ever have thought Patrick Kelleher was in the least an attractive person, whether in appearance or in manner. How superior, by comparison, was Sir Nicholas, if only I could be quite sure that he was not about to commit some terrible crime while under the influence of this sick and diseased old building!

Not a shadow, not even a mere flicker of light and darkness, crossed those windows of the Hag’s Head, where any persons inside might give me an indication that I was being watched, and yet, the instant I thought of this sinister possibility, I became convinced that there was someone there peering down at me. Surely, I thought, if it were Sir Nicholas who was watching me unseen in this fashion I should not be so frightened. Was it possible that someone else, or some
thing
else, was up on those top floors, waiting for me to blunder into the web?

I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and slipped across the intervening space between the out-buildings and the scullery of the kitchen. I was not an instant too soon. I had scarcely reached the door, which stood ajar, before I heard someone approaching the door. Then Sir Nicholas appeared. There was nowhere to hide except behind the door, and I only prayed that he would not slam it shut, exposing me in my hiding-place. I was shocked at his face, of which I had caught a glimpse as he stepped out onto the path. His normal healthy pallor was accentuated by the darkness of his eyes. He looked exactly as he had when I first met him in this house—strange, forbidding and quite capable of terrifying me if he ever turned that look upon me.

He must have quarreled with Mrs. Sedley after all, and if so, why did we hear nothing from her?