In the Blood (24 page)

“And the other case?”

“The smaller one contained the murder weapon.
 
A silver cross on a leather cord.
 
The real thing, I believe.
 
I suppose that would have had some value.”

“Was anything else taken?

She seemed to think about it.
 
Then she shook her head.
 
“Just this one,” she said.
 
“Nothing else was taken at all, come to think of it.
 
Very odd.”

Tayte agreed.
 
Someone appeared to have targeted this display - this particular murder trial.
 
He felt the lump on the back of his head and wondered whether it was the work of the same person.
 
Either way, he knew he had to be looking in the right place.
 
He began to wonder at the identity of the thief and whether Mathew Parfitt had had any children of his own.

“I’ll leave you to finish up,” the woman said.
 
Then she left as quietly as she’d arrived on flat suede shoes.

Tayte went back to the trial proceedings and read that in summing up, the prosecution had painted a verbal picture for the court; of Jowan and Davy arriving with the ferry at Helford Passage that night, late and drunk, as character witnesses had stated they often were.
 
It was proposed that the two ferrymen had encountered the farmer waiting to cross the river and had learned of the verse he’d written about them.
 
The prosecution had then put it to the jury that an argument broke out and that together, Jowan and Davy had wilfully murdered Mawgan Hendry.

Tayte came now to the verdict and read how the jury had taken no time in their deliberations, retiring only to huddle in the corner of the courtroom briefly before returning their verdict of
guilty as charged.
 
Tayte pictured Jowan and Davy standing before the judge to receive their sentence, their wrists and ankles bound in chains.
 
In his mind he saw the judge place a nine inch square of black silk on his head: the black cap.
 
The court would then all rise and the judge presiding would pronounce their sentence.
 
The text was reproduced in full as it was spoken.

‘Jowan Penhale and Davy Fenton, you stand convicted of the horrid and unnatural crime of murdering Mawgan Hendry.
 
This Court doth adjudge that you be taken back to the place from whence you came and there to be fed on bread and water till Wednesday next, when you are to be taken to the common place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead; after which your body is to be publicly dissected and anatomised, agreeable to an Act of Parliament in that case made and provided; and may God almighty have mercy on your souls.’

The forced cough Tayte heard at the entrance told him it was time to go.
 
He stretched as he stepped away from the display.
 
Then as he collected his notebook he noticed the further reading that was hidden beneath it.
 
The passage heading read ‘Beyond reasonable doubt?’
 
The question mark at the end drew him in.

‘Three days after Jowan Penhale and Davy Fenton were hanged for the murder of Mawgan Hendry, a woman came forward proclaiming their innocence.
 
Tamsyn Brown, a lady’s maid from Maenporth, further claimed that she had been sent to Helford Passage on the evening of Mawgan Hendry’s murder by her mistress to recover a box that her mistress had given to Mawgan Hendry earlier that day.
 
She had said that her mistress was detained and that she had beseeched her to tell Mr Hendry that he was in danger.

When asked why she did not come forward sooner, either before or during the trial, when her testimony might have made a difference to the outcome, she had said that her cowardly silence was out of fear for her own life, until her great shame and guilt had become too heavy a burden to bear.
 
A post trial hearing of her evidence was scheduled for the following day, but the woman failed to show.
 
As no account was given during the trial to suggest that Mawgan Hendry was carrying any such box, and as no accusation or evidence had been formerly presented, the matter was dismissed.
 
Justice had rightly been served?’

There was that question mark again.
 
It left Tayte wondering, as it was supposed to, but it would have to wait.
 
This time he clearly saw the woman in the mint-green cardigan approaching.
 
He was on his feet before she arrived, already aware that he’d outstayed his welcome.

“I really do need to close up now,” she said.

There was a smile there somewhere, but Tayte had to look for it.
 
“Sure,” he offered.
 
“I’m just leaving.
 
Thanks for your patience.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

O
utside, the sky was leaden.
 
Tayte was pleased to see that the rain had stopped though as he made his way across the courtyard in the shadow of the towering granite jail.
 
His thoughts returned to the anecdote he’d just read.
 
It excited him to think that the box that had brought Amy Fallon to Bodmin might be the same box he’d just read about; the box Tamsyn Brown had been sent to recover from Mawgan Hendry the night he was murdered.
 
It could corroborate the maid’s story.

Tayte knew he had to see Amy again.
 
She’d mentioned that she ran the Helford ferry service so he figured he could ask around in the village tomorrow to find out where she lived.
 
He passed beneath the gatehouse archway and out into the car park.
 
There was just one other car there now; a cream Volkswagen Beetle next to his, which he supposed belonged to the woman in the museum.
 
It wasn’t until he was in his car and the engine was running that he noticed the folded slip of paper beneath his wiper blade.
 
He killed the engine and retrieved what he supposed was an advertisement.
 
Opening it, he knew at once that it was not.
 
The paper was dry; it can’t have been there long.
 
He pushed his door open again and launched himself from his seat, standing with one foot in the car and an elbow on the roof.
 
He looked around, hoping to see who had left it, but it was quiet.
 
A young couple with a dog passed by on the path next to the car park.
 
They looked over then back to the pavement.
 
A few cars drove anonymously past.
 
Whoever put it there didn’t hang around.

Tayte unfolded the paper.
 
It was a photocopy of an old newspaper page.
 
A section, circled in green highlighter pen, carried the heading, ‘Horrid murder!
 
Missing woman found’.

‘The body of Tamsyn Brown of Maenporth was yesterday discovered in woods near the village of Constantine.
 
The coroner’s report so declared that the deceased, a maid formerly in service at Rosemullion Hall, died at the hands of some inhuman monster after suffering repeated and barbarous attacks to her person, causing massive haemorrhaging of her internal organs.
 
The deceased’s neck was also found to have been crushed post mortem.’

Tayte checked the date at the top of the article.
 
It read, ‘Thursday, June 9th, 1803’ - little more than two weeks after the hanging.
 
He was puzzled as to why the note had been put on his windscreen, and by whom.
 
The lump on the back of his head told him he had few friends where this assignment was concerned.
 
He thought about the late arrival at the museum and easily convinced himself that the man’s behaviour was odd.
 
Whoever left this was clearly dropping him a lead, though, a firm connection to the Fairborne family through this maid, Tamsyn Brown, who worked at Rosemullion Hall.
 
Someone out there seemed to believe, or know, that the maid’s story was true.

Lowenna’s maid.
 
It fitted well enough.
 
He recalled Emily Forbes’s story about Lowenna and remembered that she’d said Lowenna had arrived without her maid.
 
Back then, a lady travelling without one was unusual and, according to Emily, the maid Lowenna grew up with hadn’t followed on later.
 
She hadn’t arrived at all.
 
But then, if Lowenna’s maid was Tamsyn Brown, how could she?
 
She was dead.

And if the maid’s story was true, Tayte considered, then the box Amy found had to be the same box that Tamsyn Brown was sent to recover; no other box could have led her to Mawgan Hendry.
 
Lowenna’s box,
Tayte thought.
 
Another connection to the Fairbornes.
 
And this was a connection that people were prepared to kill for.
 
He felt the back of his head again and reminded himself of the death threat that had been sent to his cellphone after he’d been attacked.
 
He considered then that if Amy was looking in the same places he was then she was in harm’s way too.
 
This could no longer wait until morning.
 
He had to find Amy and warn her.

On the A39, south of Truro, an electric-blue Mazda 323 was being pushed to its limits.
 
The driver was in a hurry to be somewhere and he gave little consideration to the rush hour traffic that was building around him.
 
As he swerved off the A39, heading for Helston, his excitement grew.
 
He knew who Amy Fallon was.
 
He’d been watching her long enough now, knowing all along how important Ferryman Cottage was to his final goal.
 
He knew the box had to be there at the cottage somewhere.

He cursed himself again for not managing to secure the sale of the Helford ferry business when it came onto the market.
 
If he had then it would all have been so much easier.
 
He could have turned Ferryman Cottage inside out and no one would have been any the wiser.
 
He would have found the box a long time ago, well before the American took an interest in the Fairbornes.

Fairborne.
 
He couldn’t help but smile to himself.
 
He knew he had more right to that name than any of them.

I must get that box!
he thought.
 
He was confident that it had surfaced at last.
 
Amy turning up at the record office looking for a house history search had excited him.
 
And the American...
 
If the box
had
been found, then he was sure he’d given him enough information to lead him to it and hopefully bring it into the open.

Chapter Thirty

T
ayte made good time getting to Helford Passage.
 
He’d parked along from the Ferryboat Inn and was standing on the shingle beach beside the ferry pontoon, wondering what to do next.
 
The empty ferry boat beside the pontoon looked tied off for the day.
 
He checked the time: ‘18:22’.
 
The notice-board in front of him told him he’d missed the last ferry by almost an hour and a half.
 
There was no one around.

His briefcase began to feel heavy.
 
He stepped away from the water and looked back at the Ferryboat Inn.
 
It was quiet, but there were several cars nearby.
 
Someone inside might know Amy.
 
He was about to head across the shingle and go inside when a last glance at the river stopped him.
 
He was looking at the ferry boat.
 
Beyond the canopy at the bow, a scattered plume of smoke drifted like chalk dust into the grey backdrop of low cloud.
 
Tayte was up onto the pontoon in a second, looking down into the boat at someone he supposed was in his mid-twenties.

The kid was lying on the moulded seats on the opposite side of the boat, nodding his head to whatever he was listening to on the iPod resting on his chest.
 
He wore blue-and-white shorts detailed with a swirling sea foam pattern, and a navy sweatshirt that had ‘Southwest Airborne’ printed on the front in mixed fluorescent colours.
 
Beneath the logo was an arty wire-line drawing of a hanglider.
 
It made Tayte cringe just looking at it.
 
The smoke was coming from something the kid no doubt knew he shouldn’t be smoking which, Tayte supposed, was why he was hiding out here where he thought no one could see him.
 
His eyes were shut tight, away with his tunes in whatever place the substance he was smoking had taken him.