Death Devil's Bridge Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  REFERENCES

  More praise for ROBIN PAIGE’S Victorian Mysteries

  “Death at Daisy’s Folly is eminently satisfying. It contains an intricate mystery, a delightful pair of sleuths, a wonderful sense of atmosphere and place, and a nice romance to sweeten the plot. Discerning readers who appreciate finely crafted historical mysteries will treasure this addition to a wonderful series.”—Gothic Journal

  “I read it with enjoyment ... I found myself burning for the injustices of it and caring what happened to the people.”

  —Anne Perry, author of At Some Disputed Barricade

  “An absolutely charming book ... An adventure well worth your time ... You’re sure to enjoy it.”—Romantic Times

  “Absolutely riveting ... An extremely accurate, genuine mystery, with well-drawn, compelling characters.”

  —Meritorious Mysteries

  “An intriguing mystery ... Skillfully unraveled.”

  —Jean Hager, author of Blooming Murder

  “I couldn’t put it down.” —Murder & Mayhem

  “Wonderfully gothic ... A bright and lively recreation of late Victorian society.”

  —Sharan Newman, author of The Devil’s Door

  The Victorian and Edwardian Mysteried by Robin Paige

  DEATH AT BISHOP’S KEEP

  DEATH AT GALLOWS GREEN

  DEATH AT DAISY’S FOLLY

  DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE

  DEATH AT ROTTINGDEAN

  DEATH AT WHITECHAPEL

  DEATH AT EPSOM DOWNS

  DEATH AT DARTMOOR

  DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE

  DEATH IN HYDE PARK

  DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE

  DEATH ON THE LIZARD

  China Bayles Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

  THYME OF DEATH

  WITCHES’ BANE

  HANGMAN’S ROOT

  ROSEMARY REMEMBERED

  RUEFUL DEATH

  LOVE LIES BLEEDING

  CHILE DEATH

  LAVENDER LIES

  MISTLETOE MAN

  BLOODROOT

  INDIGO DYING

  AN UNTHYMELY DEATH

  A DILLY OF A DEATH

  DEAD MAN’S BONES

  BLEEDING HEARTS

  SPANISH DAGGER

  CHINA BAYLES’ BOOK OF DAYS

  Beatrix Potter Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

  THE TALE OF HILL TOP FARM

  THE TALE OF HOLLY HOW

  THE TALE OF CUCKOO BROW WOOD

  THE TALE OF HAWTHORN HOUSE

  Nonfiction books by Susan Wittig Albert

  WRITING FROM LIFE

  WORK OF HER OWN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the authors

  PRINTING HISTORY Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 1998

  Copyright © 1998 by Susan Wittig Albert and William J. Albert.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-67297-2

  BERKLEY ® PRIME CRIME Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Version_2

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Our thanks go to Robin Barker, for the generous loan of the 1895-98 issues of The British Journal Photographic Almanac, and to Charles Albert, for his help with engineering details. We are also grateful to the many readers who have written to comment on the technical and historical authenticity of this series. We very much appreciate your interest and support.

  Bill and Susan Albert aka Robin Paige

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  THE GENTRY

  Sir Charles Sheridan, of Bishop’s Keep and Somersworth

  Lady Kathryn Ardleigh Sheridan, aka Beryl Bardwell, of Bishop’s Keep

  Lord Bradford Marsden, of Marsden Manor

  The Honorable Miss Patsy Marsden, of Marsden Manor

  Roger Thornton, Squire, of Thornton Grange

  SELECTED EXHIBITORS, COMPETITORS, AND GUESTS AT THE ESSEX MOTOR CAR EXHIBITION AND BALLOON CHASE

  Herr Wilhelm Albrecht, German motorcar racer and driver of Lord Marsden’s Daimler

  Mr. Arnold Bateman, Cambridge, inventor and driver of the Bateman Electric Car

  Mr. Arthur Dickson, Sheffield, owner and driver of a Serpollet Steamer

  Mr. Sam Holt, journalist, of Autocar magazine

  Mr. Harry Dunstable, promoter of the British Motor Car Syndicate

  Mr. Frank Ponsonby, bill-broker and driver of a Benz

  The Honorable Charles Stewart Rolls of Trinity College, Cambridge, aeronaut and owner of a Peugeot

  Mr. Henry Royce, electrical engineer, of Manchester

  DEDHAM VILLAGERS

  Dr. Braxton Bassett, surgeon

  Harry Hodson, the Crown’s coroner
/>   Mistress Bess Gurton

  The Widow Jessup

  Young Jessup

  Edward Laken, Constable

  The Reverend Barfield Talbot, Vicar of St. Mary’s Parish

  Tom Whipple

  SERVANTS AT BISHOP’S KEEP

  Mudd, butler

  Pocket, footman

  Mrs. Sarah Pratt, cook

  Amelia Quibbley, housekeeper

  Lawrence Quibbley, mechanic to Lord Bradford Marsden and photographic assistant to Sir Charles Sheridan

  1

  Far behind them, Mole, Toad, and the Water Rat heard a faint warning hum, like the drone of a distant bee. Glancing back, they saw a small cloud of dust with a dark centre of energy, advancing at incredible speed.... It was on them! The “Poop-poop” of the horn rang with a brazen shout in their ears ... and the magnificent motor-car, immense, breath-snatching, passionate, with its pilot tense and hugging his wheel, possessed all earth and air for the fraction of a second, flung an enveloping cloud of dust that blinded and enwrapped them utterly, and then dwindled to a speck in the far distance, changed back into a droning bee once more.

  —KENNETH GRAHAME

  The Wind in the Willows

  The sky was darkening over Dedham Vale as Bess Gurton hitched up her woolen skirt, climbed the stile, and set off along the margin of Dead Man’s Meadow. High overhead skittered an early and erratic bat, half-blind in the dying light Higher yet, in the tops of the horse chestnut trees, a few rooks offered somber good nights.

  Bess tightened her grip on her willow basket. The ominous voices of rooks frightened some, but not her. “Rusty death a‘cawin’,” her neighbor Sally would say, looking up from her knitting when she heard the birds shrieking. “Sit-tin’ in judgment,” she would add with a shudder, and get up to close the casement. “Passin’ a death sentence on some poor lost soul.”

  But about rooks, Bess knew better. As a girl, some thirty years ago, she had kept a rook called Figwort, a sociable bird with a bright, inquisitive eye. She had raised Figwort from a fledgling, and while he grew up to be a mischievous thief, stealing the odd bit of this and that, he was never the least bit malevolent. No, if the melancholy calls of the sleepy rooks in the dying twilight brought anything to Bess’s mind, it was an ancient longing that harked back to her childhood, a foolish, reckless wish, Sally would say, and surely quite wicked. Her neighbors in Dedham Village, Bess had learned long ago, were easily affrighted by what they did not understand and swift to suspect any impulse that seemed out of the ordinary.

  And this wish was indeed an extraordinary one, at least by village standards. Audacious, intemperate as it might seem to those who did not dare think on such things, Bess wanted to fly.

  “And why not, I’d like to know?” she would ask herself truculently. “Wot’s wrong wi’ it?”

  And herself would respond, gently reassuring, “Nothing’s wrong with it, Bessie, me girl. Birds do it, angels do it, yer gammer’s done it. Now, stop shilly-shallying an’ git on wi’ it. If ye’r ever goin’ to fly, let it be now!”

  The desire to fly was not uniquely nor even originally Bess’s wish. She had learned it from her grandmother, who had raised her from infancy in the whitewashed cottage on Black Brook which Bess occupied now, together with a company of cats, an ancient Jack Russell terrier named Fat Susan, and a milk cow named Patience. In those days, Gammer Gurton had had two cronies, both of whom could fly—or so Bess understood from the hushed stories she heard around the kitchen fire when she was quite a young girl. And Gammer herself had also flown, Bess was sure of it, for hadn’t she seen her with her very own eyes one moonlight night, astride a hurdle, skirts and cape snatching at the brambles as she sailed low over the hedge and into the Great Wood?

  Others might have thought it a dream, but not Bess. She had never forgotten the sight of her grandmother silhouetted against the bright, full moon, but she was not exactly clear about the details—just how Gammer and her friends managed to get off the ground, that is. The task seemed easy enough, however, and Bess was a brave, strong girl. So she tried it herself, taking a running leap off Black Rock with Gammer’s ash broomstick under her. But all she gained from the experiment was a torn skirt and two badly scratched knees. Questioned at home, she confessed to her effort to get off the ground and begged Gammer to tell her how flying was done.

  But Gammer, alarmed, sternly bade her hold her tongue. “Such un-Christian foolishness!” she cried. “Put it out o’ yer mind this instant, Bessie. Flyin’! Why, I niver heard sich nonsense in all me life!” The two cronies vanished from the cottage fireside, Bess never again saw Gammer soar over the bramble hedge, and not one more word was spoken on the subject. When the old woman died at last, in Bess’s thirtieth year, the secret of flight died with her.

  During the next dozen years, Bess—who remained unmarried—was so busy with the work of supporting herself that she had little energy to spare for fanciful dreams of flying. Gammer had left her a dairy cow and some hens, and Bess made a small living from the milk, cream, butter, and eggs she sold in the village. She supplemented this income by peddling the asparagus, broccoli, and cauliflower from her garden and by harvesting the willows that grew plentifully along the River Stour, weaving the wands into baskets. She also raised bees, in neatly thatched wooden hives ranged on the sunny side of the wattle fence across the back garden.

  Indeed, so bustling and busy and pleasantly earthbound was Bess’s life that her childhood ambition lay like a forgotten memory in the bottom of her heart—until, that is, the day she noticed a loose slate in the hearth and raised it to discover a cavity beneath. From this hiding place she lifted a curious leatherbound book, printed in black letter and unquestionably ancient, its brown pages annotated with spidery handwritten notes.

  Reading was reserved for the candlelit hour before bedtime, which Bess always spent with the newspaper supplied by her friend Sarah Pratt, cook at Bishop’s Keep, several miles down the lane. Now, having discovered the book, Bess was so curious that she could scarcely wait until evening to read it. Unfortunately, however, the black-letter text and spidery annotations could not be deciphered by the light of her candle. So on the following day, Bess purchased a paraffin lamp, an acquisition she had deliberately postponed. She had an inborn distrust of modern inventions, such as the post-office telegraph which clattered so loudly that one could scarce make oneself heard, or Lord Marsden’s new horseless carriage, which he drove with such reckless abandon. But the lamp proved quite useful, and Bess sat down in its circle of light to decipher the ancient text.

  To her disappointment, though, the mysterious book turned out to be nothing more than a collection of ancient recipes. She was about to cast it aside, when she turned a page and found “A Receipt for Flying Ointment.” Her eyes widened and, tilting the book to the light, she read the recipe with a swelling excitement. Some of the ingredients—honey, goose grease, thyme, basil, chicory—were familiar staples of her larder and garden. Soot (whatever could be the purpose of that ingredient?) could be had from her chimney, while plovers’ eggs, pig’s blood, and some of the less familiar plants (water hemlock, for instance) would have to be specially procured.

  Breathlessly, Bess put down the book and considered. The ointment sounded perfectly odious, to be sure, but what did that matter if it got her over the bramble hedge and into the air, like Gammer Gurton? The biggest problem, of course, was gathering the more unusual ingredients without arousing anyone’s suspicion. And it was not just the fear of ridicule that caused Bess to proceed with caution. The last witch burned to death in England had been set afire near this very village, scarcely ten years before Queen Victoria took the throne. Bess had no intention of giving her neighbors the slightest excuse for honing their tongues on her doings. Whatever she did, she would do in secret.

  So it was that Bess was out and about with her basket on this late-summer night, just as the full moon began to rise over Dedham Vale. Following the recipe’s instructions, she had scraped fr
om her chimney the pinch of soot, gathered the required number of plovers’ eggs, plucked the requisite wild herbs, and was at this moment on her way to Bishop’s Keep to obtain the pint of fresh pig’s blood Sarah Pratt had promised to save for her. The footpath was now almost completely dark, and she picked her way with caution, half-wishing she had not embarked upon this phase of her mission so late in the evening. But as the recipe specified that the monkshood should be gathered at moonrise and the spot where it grew was more than halfway to Sarah’s kitchen, the journey was necessary.

  The path dipped steeply through a narrow opening in the dense hedge. Clutching her basket in one hand, Bess half slid down the embankment and into the lane. Bishop’s Keep was less than a mile away and Sarah would have a cup of hot tea and her pint of pig’s blood ready and waiting, no questions asked, no answers required. She shook herself, squared her shoulders, and began to march briskly up the road.

  She heard it before she actually saw it. The sound—a loud metallic clatter and clank-reminded her of the noisy threshing machines that had replaced the hand-harvesting of the fall corn. But because the lane was so deep and the tall hedges grew nearly together over her head, the horrible sound seemed to reverberate all around, and she could not tell from which direction it was coming, or which way she should run.

  Her breath coming short and fast, Bess pressed her hands against her ears, standing paralyzed with fear in the middle of the lane. It was only when she saw the bright white lights bearing down upon her that she realized that she was about to be run down by that most dangerous of modern inventions, a horseless carriage. She flung herself off the road, landing with a mighty splash in the water-filled ditch. Drenched, mouth and eyes filled with mud, she sat up, hurling curses after the motorcar—Lord Marsden’s motorcar—which had disappeared with a great clatter around the turn.