Murder Most Discreet

cogito ergo sum 1

Thanks to my reviewers: cityofstarlight, StormerBeatsBad, anakinbridger541, Macca40, NJ2001, MaccasWeirdFriend, omgringo, Marisa_star78, ThisBirdHasFlown, PurlyandGirly, InmylifeIloveLennon, Swimmer girl 17, amymarr, and ive_just_seen_a_face.

PART II

cogito ergo sum

The car keys tumbled through the fog, glistening as a rare beam of sunshine broke through the Dartmoor mist. The keys collapsed into a young, calloused palm.

Paul tossed the keys idly into the air again and gazed into the distance, across the winding road to the windswept, green-brown moors.

Martha stuck her head out the back window of Paul's dark green Aston Martin and nudged his elbow with her wet, black nose. Paul missed the keys. They plopped onto the moist ground.

As Paul bent to retrieve them, a muddied thwap-thwap-thwap began to churn distantly through the mist.

"Sounds like the helicopter's finally here," beamed Paul, grinning at Martha before turning to gaze across the rolling, granite-topped tors. He absently pocketed the muddy keys.

Through the swirling clouds the source of the thwaps sank down to the desolate, cracked parking lot just across the road. Paul's mop top was tossed helter-skelter by the sudden wind gusts. As the chopper's blades began to slow, Paul, raced across the rain-drenched road to the helicopter's door.

Paul was about three meters away when the helicopter door slid open and a makeshift wooden ramp was lowered. Next thing Paul knew, one of his best friends was wheeling himself down the ramp to the asphalt below.

Paul beamed and jogged to the bottom of the ramp. George grinned up at him.

"Honey, I'm home," announced George sarcastically.

Paul laughed.

"D'you want me to push your chair, or —" started Paul.

"I can do it myself," interrupted George, gripping the rubber wheels and pushing himself forward with determination.

Paul nodded and walked slowly beside the wheelchair, trying to match his friend's pace.

"Oh look, you've brought the ball of slobbering fur," observed George, smiling at the sheepdog scrabbling excitedly at the car window-frame.

The chopper took off behind them as Paul pulled the car keys out of his pocket, wiped the mud off on his jeans, and unlocked George's door.

George gripped the inside of the door with one hand and the car chair with the other, carefully manoeuvring himself into the automobile.

A gust of wind rustled the hardy grasses and gorse of the moor and whistled through the chinks in the knobby granite tors.

"Could you put that in the trunk?" asked George, gesturing at the wheelchair.

...

"Where is this house, anyroad?" asked George, peering through the drizzle-spattered windscreen. The wipers elegantly swept across it, smearing the rainwater in dripping curves.

"Should be just up the road from here," replied Paul, risking a glance away from the road at the hand-drawn map balanced precariously on his knee.

"If your handwriting wasn't so messy I could do that part," pointed out George.

The guitarist looked off through the passenger window, staring at glimpses of desolate grass and granite through the fog.

Gazing out the window, he saw a solid row of craggy stone rectangles rising up from the rolling sea of fog. The weathered stone shredded apart the mist around it; the ghostly veil fell away from the structure, revealing a three-storey castle, hewn from the same granite as the neighbouring tors. Lichen clung tenaciously to the shadowy valleys of the manor's pockmarked façade.

The row of gap-toothed rectangles George had first seen rising ethereally from the fog were the crenellations surmounting the top of the castle's central portion. This middle wing seemed to be a gigantic block of rough granite; the thin, black, Gothic slits of windows seemed to be mere afterthoughts. In the middle of this central portion stood a huge, weather-beaten pair of oak doors.

Two smoother wings stuck out from either side of this imposing centre. The wings seemed much more polished, with large, rectangular windows designed to let in light, not to keep out flaming arrows. The tenacious lichen that clung to every irregularity of the Gothic centre seemed unable to gain a strong hold on the newer wings.

An incongruous turret stuck up from the middle of the roof of the right-hand wing. Peering out his car window at the moody granite, George guessed that the tower had been built onto the side of the original castle, and that the newer wing had simply been built around it.

"The turnoff should have been here, though!" muttered Paul, slowing the Aston Martin to a crawl and glaring at the map. Martha blearily awoke in the back seat and shook her shaggy head from side to side.

"That looks like a big old manor to me," said George, pointing at the ancient manor on his left.

Paul glanced up from the map.

"Yeah, that looks about right," he agreed. "D'you see a driveway anywhere?"

The Aston Martin inched along the road.

George was the first to hear a grumbling engine behind them.

"Paul, pullover!" the guitarist exclaimed, just as Paul cried triumphantly, "I see the driveway!"

Paul accelerated the Aston Martin and veered off the paved road onto the gravel drive. Martha fell off the backseat with a startled bark. Behind their car, a much older automobile zoomed past.

Paul and George glanced at each other. Paul put the car into park.

"What was he doing blazing down the road without his lights on in fog like this?" yelped Paul indignantly.

"How old d'you reckon that car was?" inquired George. "Was it from the '40s?"

Martha clambered back onto the seat, panting nervously.

The fog hovering over the moor dissipated a little, revealing the gloomy moor surrounding them.

"Time to go in then, I suppose," Paul broke the silence. He put the Aston Martin back into drive and guided his car along the gravel drive to the looming Corvusheim House.