Page 35 of The Villain’s Fatal Plot (Gravesyde Village Mystery #1)
THIRTY-FIVE: RAFE
Setting out early the next morning, with Wolfie trotting beside his horse, Rafe returned to the caravan encampment he’d found yesterday, hoping his suspect had returned overnight.
The fire was cold. Maybe the old witch had fallen into the river. He could hope. His failure to locate one old woman infuriated him. He should have had Wolfie with him.
Yesterday, he’d had half the men in town scouring the hillside and fields around the caravan, without success. With nothing of the woman’s clothing to give the hounds for scent, they’d been useless.
He’d met the manor’s orchardist, Abe Bergstein, whose family land was across the highway from the camp. Abe claimed he only came down to visit when it was time to check the health of the new apple trees, and the manor folk verified it. He hadn’t noticed any caravan hidden behind the bend of the river and the trees, but he’d only just arrived.
Rafe had also talked to a pair of former soldiers camping among the boulders on the manor side of river and highway. Yesterday, they’d only acknowledged seeing the caravan, no more.
Today, in the mist of a cool dawn, without a pack of hounds around him, Rafe returned to question them again. At this hour, they’d had time to sleep off whatever they’d imbibed to knock themselves out the night before. He found them groggy and burning coffee grounds over a fire.
Dropping a sack of bread, cheese, and apples by the campfire, he swung down from his gelding and ordered Wolfie to stay. The hound obediently lay down in the grass and looked harmless.
“Old lady didn’t return last night?” Rafe asked as the soldiers dug into the bag.
“Not that we saw,” the grizzled older of the pair replied. He gestured in the direction of the caravan. “Can’t see her from here.”
Rafe crouched down, helping himself to an apple. He’d been a soldier recently enough to know how they communicated. “What’s she selling? Anything useful?”
The two shrugged and tore into the bread.
“Is her gin good? I almost miss the rotgut.”
The younger, with a missing arm, gulped his scalding coffee. “Better. She’s got a patent medicine takes away the pain. You gonna hang us for trading a coney or two?”
A patent medicine. Rafe’s internal claxons screamed an alarm. Miss Edgerton had ordered a patent medicine and warned others against taking elixirs. Could it be as simple as that? The teacher had threatened the Gypsy over bottled poison?
“Captain doesn’t hang people or shoot them either. We’re all old soldiers. Manor has an apothecary who can help with the pain.” Rafe gestured at his own injured arm. The bandage bulged under his old coat sleeve. “Just have to ask up there. No telling what the Gypsy puts in her medicines. Do you still have a bottle?”
The grizzled soldier looked cagey. “Ain’t cheap. You got coins to pay for it?”
He could probably search the caravan and find bottles, but Rafe dug around in his pocket for his meager coin purse and showed them two shillings. They wouldn’t take charity, but without coins, they’d sell the shirts off their back for more gin. “It’s all I have.”
The younger dug into his knapsack and produced a nearly empty bottle of Mrs. Bigelow’s Vegetable Compound. There was barely a splash left in it. “Reckon your apothecary can give us this?”
Rafe put the bottle in his coat pocket. “Better, most likely. I’ll have her test this, see what you need. If you’ll come up to the manor and ask one of your fellows, they’ll fetch it for you. Can probably find a bed for you up there too. Winter is coming.”
He’d learned that the captain had been working at housing the former soldiers who’d formed this encampment. A few had gained enough strength to move on. Others had nowhere to go and had taken up the manor’s offer of employment and beds. Some still dealt with their addictions. But men who had given everything to serve their country shouldn’t have to go cold and hungry once they returned home. Rafe despised the heartless government that had flung them out without a ha’penny, leaving them homeless and unemployed. He could have been one of them.
The pair shrugged and returned to their breakfast. He couldn’t force them to save themselves.
Ordering Wolfie to follow, he traipsed a rabbit track to a copse by the river where they’d found the caravan in yesterday’s search. The manor’s gentlemen had politely refused to enter it when no one answered their calls. Believing the law was all that separated men from animals, Rafe had always followed orders.
But he would chase a fox into its lair after it raided a chicken coop. If nothing else, the old woman had raided a garden and poisoned those men with her narcotics. In his mind, she’d given up her right to a bolt hole.
Wolfie sniffed around the outside with disinterest. Rafe didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign.
He’d rather be an innkeeper whose only responsibility was keeping order on his premises, but the captain paid him to protect the village. With only an ounce of guilt, he took the ax he’d deliberately brought and shattered the caravan’s meager doors.
No old woman leapt out at him. The place stank of drying herbs and unwashed flesh. He found men’s clothes that might fit Clement and stuffed them in his sack. Confronting the prisoner with them might produce some response.
A smelly batch of what was most likely more elixir filled a pot. He emptied it on the ground. Not trusting the drying herbs, he bundled up a few for Mrs. Walker to examine, then cast the rest into the river.
He broke the assortment of empty glass bottles she must have meant to store the elixir in. Destruction of property and trespassing... he was exceeding the law he was supposed to be upholding.
But thinking of all the people who wasted their meager coins on potions that cured nothing and most likely caused more harm than good, he couldn’t find it in himself to care. She could apply to the captain for recompense, if she dared.
Mostly, he thought about Miss Edgerton’s death and Verity’s losses. He couldn’t charge an old Gypsy with murder without evidence, just because she knew herbs and he had a suspicious mind. But he could make a thief pay.
Finding nothing to give him any idea of where she’d gone, he returned outside to examine the copse. Wolfie led him to where a horse had been tied recently. The dung was probably a day old, though. The ground was hard enough to resist prints, but the few he found showed shoes. He hadn’t thought Gypsies shoed their ponies, but he didn’t have enough knowledge to be certain.
He checked with the former soldiers for a description of the horse before he left. They were foot soldiers. The best they could offer was that the horse was dark and tall—not a pony, then.
Unease ate at his gut, the way it had before a battle. If fear of the unknown was cowardice, then he’d freely admit to it. But he thought this was fear for those he’d come to know, respect, and... Thinking of Verity’s tears and determination, he threw his bag over the saddle and mounted up.
She’d stayed at the manor again last night and come down early with a cart of the manor’s rubbish for refurbishing his inn. She wasn’t lazy or selfish. He’d left her helping sort the junk and carting it upstairs—with a broken foot. If she stayed put, she’d be fine. The lady had developed a tough hide somehow.
The road around the river and woods wasn’t direct, but Wolfie, and Rafe’s gelding, enjoyed the run. He arrived in the village as the farmers were setting up their carts in front of the mercantile.
He pulled up short, realizing that half the old women hawking vegetables and bread wore black old-fashioned skirts with petticoats. Poor people wore what they had until it wore out. The Gypsy could be any one of these women, and he wouldn’t know it. He’d only been here a week. He had no way to recognize a new one.
Damn, he hated his new occupation already.
Dismounting, Rafe tied up his horse and let Wolfie sniff his way around the carts. When the hound showed no sign of recognition, Rafe entered the mercantile. He had to wait until other customers paid for their purchases before he could speak to Mr. Oswald.
“New faces?” The old merchant peered through his fly-specked window. “They all only showed up this past summer, since the manor folk arrived with their big purses. Takes a heap of food to feed all them people. Good to see the old place lively again.”
“Do you know the names of the market ladies? Keep their accounts?”
With suspicion, Oswald regarded him over the top of his spectacles. ‘What do you want to know for? I keep proper books. Captain ain’t plannin’ on taxing them, is he?”
“I’m not a tax collector. I’m looking for a killer and a thief. We saw a Gypsy stealing from Miss Edgerton’s garden yesterday. She escaped and I’d like to question her.”
“Huh, imagine that, a Gypsy. Used to call the Bergsteins Gypsies, but they ain’t. They’re Jews. Your Gypsy can’t be no kin, I guess. Abe ran outta family. ”
Rafe tamped down his impatience at the old man’s rambling recollections. “So you know all the women selling from their carts and none of them have arrived recently?”
Oswald peered out the window again. “Reckon most attend church fair regular. Can’t say any one is exactly new. Who’s out there depends on what’s in season.”
Rafe gave up and headed for the door, then swung around with another thought. “Has anyone tried to sell elixirs?”
Oswald squinted at him. “That’s what set Annie off a week or two back. Said she’d heard I was selling them. I set her right. I don’t take to them patent medicines. If you want alcohol, Henri will sell it to you the way God meant for it to be drunk.”
Rafe didn’t question God’s commands about ale. “Why did she order a bottle?”
Catching his drift, the old man straightened his stooping shoulders in alarm. “She gave me an address, said she wanted to compare it with what I wasn’t selling.” He glanced out the window at the few carts. “You don’t reckon...”
“I have no way of knowing. Just keep your eye on them, if you will. And find the address you ordered from.” Rafe stamped out. He’d been here a week, bought vegetables off these carts, and the killer could have been right here all along. She may have handed him carrots.
All old women in black looked alike. He groaned at his stupidity.