through her system. She had to believe that Jake and she could solve this matter together. He had expertise and she had brains to help him unravel the clues. Now that Evelyn Steinbeck had been dismissed as a possible killer, she didn’t feel so bad any more about bringing the culprit to justice. From Pemboldt’s tale it had become clear that Fitzroy Walker was a scheming presumptuous young man, and the snippet of conversation she had caught herself had betrayed his predatory nature. If he turned out to be the killer, she would gladly see him arrested.
She inhaled the fresh air coming to her with a hint of herbs and flowers.
She thought she heard footfalls coming and snapped her eyes open. For a moment among the trees ahead of her something stirred, dark and solid, like the shape of a person, a silhouette of a man bundled up in a thick coat.
She blinked to see better, but whatever it had been it was gone now, the trees standing there without movement among their trunks, just the stirring of birds in the branches above.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and she yelped, swinging round.
Jake grinned at her. ‘See. If an animal reared its head from a ditch in an excavation site, you’d be off like a hare.’
Alkmene shook her head. ‘There really was…’
But she didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence as a thin wiry man with a red scarf around his neck came over to them, not walking, but sort of hobbling, like a gnome. He smiled at her and gestured to follow him, turning away from the cottage down a muddy track.
‘He will lead us to the spot,’ Jake whispered to her. ‘A little money and…’ He made a gesture.
The little man was surprisingly fast for someone who moved with such an odd gait. He seemed to have no trouble with the mud that sloshed around Alkmene’s shoes and sucked at her soles with every step. She gave the moor an anxious once-over, wondering if there were stretches here that were so marshy you could get sucked into them, never to get out again.
Cold skittered across her back, especially thinking of the figure she believed to have spotted for a moment, watching her.
But if she told Jake, he’d only laugh at her again, thinking she was scared of her own shadow.
‘There.’ The little man halted. ‘You can see it clearly. There where the scrubs are. She vanished right there. I saw it myself.’
He stood, lifting his hands to his face and blowing on them like it was the dead of winter.
‘You saw her drown?’ Alkmene asked in awe and some surprise that he had not lent a hand to help.
The little man shook his head. ‘She vanished behind the brush, into the marshlands. You see, there are tracks you can follow that are perfectly safe. She knew. Her father was a hunter, for waterfowl. He knew all those tracks and he had taught them to her. She could traverse those paths like she was an elf, her feet never even touching the ground.’
His face was suddenly sad. ‘No, she was not an elf, she was a fairy. So pretty and blonde. He had no right to hurt her, that fancy gentleman from the city.’
‘I am sure he did not mean to hurt her,’ Alkmene said.
But the little man spat, ‘He did hurt her. He took her away from us. She was one of us, but he came and promised her she could be one of them. She could live in the city in a big house with pretty things. Oh, she loved pretty things. A comb for her hair, a necklace. He had promised her a dressing table from the east inlaid with ivory. With elephant figures and tiny men riding them. A mirror over it with a golden rim to frame her face in fire. She told me all about it. She trusted me, you know.’
His expression contorted. ‘Nobody ever listened to me talk. Silly Wally, they say, Wally, who is not right in the head. So she told me everything, because if I ever told another, they would not believe me. She told me all he had promised to her, what he would give her, once they lived in the city. How she would even have a carriage of her own, with a team of snow white horses, like a princess from a fairy tale. That is what she said.’
He stared ahead, sadly. ‘He married her too, she said. It was legal and just. There was a paper to prove it. That was why she allowed him to sleep with her and get her with child. Because he was her husband and it would be all right. His family would have to accept it.’
Jake shot Alkmene a glance. Neither of them said anything to drag the little man from his memories.
He let his hands dangle by his sides now, as he studied the moors ahead. ‘She sat there on the moor, weaving flowers into a crown, telling me all about it. The carriage, the horses and the pie she’d have, seven layers, all decorated with white marzipan flowers. And a bed for the baby with a lace curtain that would reach all the way to the floor. She laughed all of the time, so happy she was. She said she would at last leave this place, leave the people who never counted her for anything because she was just the hunter’s daughter, from the marshes. She said she’d be somebody, that she’d have pretty clothes and pretty things. She just wanted to be happy.’
He looked at them with watery blue eyes. ‘Can that be wrong?’
Jake shook his head. A muscle pulled in his jaw. Alkmene wondered if he was thinking about his own mother and his father. How they had met and what might have been promised. Another sad case of a woman led astray by pretty promises about a future that had never been?
Wally said, ‘She was sad after he left her, but she was sure he would send for her. He had only gone to prepare everything, buy her all the things he had promised her, and then she would follow him. She often told me I could not tell a soul about what I knew, that they had married and she was with child, that she would push me into the marshes if I told anybody. Hold me down under the mud until I died. I never told them, I swear.’
The little man’s face contorted with pain. ‘I never told anyone. I kept her secret. I cared for her. I would never have betrayed her. But she thought so. When that terrible man came from the city, with his heavy walking cane and his raised voice, she thought I had told and therefore he came. She yelled at me and then she ran away.’
‘So she fled from you when she vanished?’ Jake asked.
Wally hung his head. ‘She was so angry with me. She said I had ruined everything because I always talk too much. But I had never talked about her and the baby. I could not have. I cared for her.’
Alkmene bit her lip. There was something genuine to the man’s pain that made her believe him.
Jake said softly, ‘The man who came from the city had found out from his own brother. He did intend to take her to the city and give her all those things he had promised her. He did love her. But his family abducted him and made him forget her.’
‘How could he have? I would never have forgotten her.’
Jake said, ‘They forced him to marry another and then the brother came here to ask Mary to set her husband free. She believed it was your fault that they had found out, but it was not. I am sorry she thought so and she shouted at you.’
‘I saw her run away into the marshes,’ Wally said in a sad tone. ‘She ran fast; it was like her feet never touched the ground. She wore a white dress and she looked just like a bride.’
Alkmene asked, ‘Where did she go to?’
Wally looked at her, his eyes sharp with reproach. ‘You want me to betray her again?’
‘You never betrayed her, Wally,’ Jake said. ‘You loved her.’
The little man hung his head again. ‘People laugh at me about it. They think I was a fool to care for her, while she would never care for an ugly little dwarf like me. But I would have protected her, I would have…’
Jake waited a moment. ‘Is that what you told her? When she had met up with the brother and had heard her husband was not coming back, when she was sad and heartbroken and walking about here on the moor, did you tell her you would care for her and the baby?’
Alkmene