Manna from Hades (16 page)

He returned just as the kettle boiled, and made the tea while Eleanor dialled the Launceston police. To her dismay, she was told that DI Scumble was already on his way to Port Mabyn.

“What on earth does he want now?” Nick asked crossly.

“They didn’t say. They’re going to tell him on the car radio that I want to speak to him.
Botheration!
I’d much rather deal with him at telephone’s length.”

“I won’t desert you.” He glanced at the window, where the sunny day was dissolving in a sea mist. “No one’s going to stroll about in this looking for the perfect painting for their sitting room wall. You know, I’d like to paint Port Mabyn on a misty day, but all the tourists want is sun, even if it rained every day of their holidays.”

Eleanor thought of the inspector driving from Launceston. Sometimes mist at sea-level left the moors in sunlight. Sometimes it enveloped the higher land in fog that rivalled the pre–Clean Air Act London pea-soupers.

She wouldn’t wish a Bodmin Moor fog on anyone, but wouldn’t it be nice if Scumble was sufficiently deterred to turn round and go back to Launceston!

EIGHTEEN

It was nearly five o’clock when DI Scumble at last arrived. He was not happy. He had indeed hit fog on Bodmin Moor. His cretin of a driver had missed the turn to Port Mabyn. They had been wandering about unsignposted back lanes for most of an hour before finding the B road again, and then had been unsure whether they needed to turn north or south.

“Tea, Mr Scumble?” Eleanor suggested soothingly. “I’ll make a fresh pot.”

“I won’t say it wouldn’t be welcome, ma’am,” Scumble conceded.

“What about your driver?” she asked, filling the kettle.

“He and the other two idiots I brought with me are doing some house-to-house. Going from door to door, asking a few questions,” he clarified.

“I hope they don’t get lost in the fog,” Nick said, in what seemed to Eleanor a purely inflammatory spirit.

The inspector glared at him. “And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Gresham?”

Before Nick could add fuel to the flames with the remark about protecting her from police harassment that she saw hovering on his lips, Eleanor said quickly, “Nick helped me unload the car and came up for tea.”

“Another load of donations? Any mysterious briefcases?”

Nick burst out laughing, and after a moment, Scumble grinned. “As a matter of fact, Inspector,” Nick said, “we kept a careful lookout for anything of the sort. No such luck.”

“No such
bad
luck,” said Eleanor, opening a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. “What did you want to see me about, Mr Scumble?”

“That can wait. What did
you
want to see
me
about?”

“I . . . um . . . remembered something.” She put the plate of biscuits on the table at his elbow as a peace offering.

“Hey!” said Nick. “How come I only got plain digies?”

“I know how you go through the choccy ones, Nick, so I never open a new packet just for you. Would you make the tea while I tell Mr Scumble? Restrain yourself!” she added as he nabbed a biscuit in passing.

“Well?” the inspector demanded impatiently, his notebook at the ready.

“It’s about the briefcase, actually. When you asked me to describe it, I forgot about the monogram.”

“A monogram! Do you realise that if you’d told me at once—?”

“It wasn’t very obvious,” Eleanor excused herself. “Embossed, not gilt or . . . or anything that stood out. And it was difficult to make out. Those curlicue-ish sort of letters, you know, all intertwined.”

“
What
letters?”

“
D
and
A
and a
W
.”

“
D A W
? In that order?”

“Not exactly.” She could picture it now. “Superimposed. There was a big D, with a W inside it, and the A was formed by a crossbar in the centre of the W.”

“Can you draw it?”

“Heavens no. I’m hopeless at drawing. I actually managed to fail art at school.”

“That would take some doing,” said Nick, setting down the tea tray. He whipped Scumble’s biro from his fingers and bent over the official notebook. “Something like this, Eleanor?” He held it up.

Scumble retrieved his pen and pad and studied Nick’s drawing. “So it could equally well be
W A D
?”

“I suppose so. Is that what you’re looking for?”

“It’s not important,” he said dismissively. “Call it useful, perhaps, but not vital. We’re already ninety-nine percent certain who the jewels belong to. The monogram makes it ninety-nine and a half. And it’ll confirm that the case is his, if we find it.”

“Oh.” All that angst for nothing. “Whose are they?”

“Now, now, Mrs Trewynn, you know I’m in the business of asking questions, not answering them.”

“So, what was it you came to ask me about?”

Leafing slowly back through his notebook, Scumble said, “It’s a bit of a discrepancy we have here. You claim you’ve never seen the deceased before?”

“Not to my knowledge. I said I didn’t recognise him. He may, for all I know, have crossed my field of vision without my noticing him. But whatever my failings, I have an excellent memory for faces. If I had ever had anything to do with him, I’d remember him, very likely his name if I had heard it, and probably whatever it was that brought us into contact.”

“Then how do you explain that five people are ready to swear they’ve seen him several times helping you carry goods from your car into the shop?”

“Megan said no one recognised him.”

“My men have asked a lot more people since then. So? Your explanation?”

“That’s easy. I’d be astounded if a single one of them actually noticed anything more than a thin boy with long hair and shabby jeans. It’s like policemen: How many people really look at the face under the helmet? What they see is a bobby, in the one case; a hippy, or a slacker, or some similar pejorative label in the other.” Eleanor warmed to her thesis. “If a tall African man were to walk down the street outside, and the next day you took round a photo of a completely different tall African man and asked if people had seen him, how many do you suppose would realise it wasn’t the same person?”

“All right, all right, you’ve made your point.”

“What’s more, I bet I can give you the names of at least two of those people who’ve told your men they saw the dead boy helping me.”

“There’s no need for that!” Scumble said hastily. “I gather you don’t deny having had a ‘thin boy with long hair and shabby jeans’ helping you?”

“Of course not. In fact—” She looked round as the door opened. “Oh, Joce, you’re just in time. Mr Scumble—”

“Back
again,
Inspector? I hope you’ve come to tell us you have arrested the murderer?”

“I might have by now,” Scumble growled, “if everybody had told me all they know right away instead of doling it out like . . . like Oliver Twist’s porridge!”

“Nicely put, Inspector,” said Nick. “You must have seen the musical. Tea, Mrs Stearns?”

“I read the book at school,” Scumble said acidly, turning back to Eleanor. “You were telling me about the victim’s double.”

“
Not
his double, Inspector. Joce, you remember when I found the body?”

“I’m hardly likely to forget it!”

“You remember,” Eleanor persisted, “at first I thought it was someone else?”

“You thought it might be Trevor. But as soon as you looked at his face, you knew it wasn’t.”

“A very superficial resemblance, Mr Scumble. Skinny, long darkish hair—”

“Scruffy jeans, yes. You know what they say, though: Birds of a feather flock together. There’s likely some connection. After all, someone knew whose car they put the loot in. It’s a great pity the sun was shining on their windscreen so that you couldn’t see them.”

“Not at all, Inspector,” Jocelyn protested. “Surely Eleanor would be in danger if she were able to identify them.”

“It doesn’t make much difference,” Nick pointed out, “as long as they think she can.”

“In any case,” said Scumble, “I’ll have to follow up this Trevor of yours. What’s his surname?”

Eleanor and Jocelyn looked at each other and shook their heads.

“He didn’t mention it, and we had no reason to ask.”

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Nick blandly.

Scumble gave him a black look. “You must know something more about him. I assume he didn’t live locally, or people would know him. Did he stay in the area often, or were all his appearances within a short period, a holiday?”

“I’d say on and off over the past couple of years,” said Jocelyn. “You’re the one who talked to him, Eleanor.”

“He’s not a talker. I gathered he came to stay with an uncle hereabouts, but whether the uncle’s a resident or a summer visitor, I’ve no idea.”

“And I suppose you don’t know the uncle’s name.”

“I’m afraid not. He never referred to him by name.”

“Nor where the boy’s home is,” Scumble said without hope.

“I’m afraid not,” Eleanor repeated. “He’s a nice boy, though. I’m sure he can’t have had anything to do with the jewel robbery.”

“Assuming the uncle lives outside Port Mabyn, how did Trevor get to the village? Car? Motorbike?”

“His uncle may have given him a lift sometimes for all I know, but he did mention walking and hitchhiking.”

“So you don’t know whether he could drive.”

“Sorry, no idea.”

The inspector sighed.

“Did you find the car, Inspector?” Jocelyn asked. “The one Eleanor saw that may have been the jewel thieves’?”

“Now what did I just say to Mrs Trewynn? I’m the one asking questions, not answering them. And my next is: Is there anything else she’s told you, Mrs Stearns—or Mr Gresham, come to that—that she hasn’t yet got round to telling
me
?”

“How can we know, Inspector,” Nick enquired pointedly, “unless you tell us everything you’ve found out so far?”

“I’m not that desperate yet,” snapped Scumble.

Megan was zipping down the north slope of the Mendip hills into the valley of the Yeo when Ken Faraday emerged from a sea of paper.

“Nice driving,” he said appreciatively, then ruined the compliment by adding, “Very much improved. I didn’t have to grab the edge of the seat once. Of course, in this toy car I couldn’t fall off it if I tried.”

“You never fell off when I was driving in London.”

“I always gripped the edge of the seat. You must have been practising. Have you got yourself a car of your own?”

“No, but I’ll have to splurge soon if Dr Beeching keeps wielding his axe in the name of economy. They’re threatening to close down every railway in Cornwall, even the main line from Plymouth to Penzance!”

“Disgraceful,” said Ken with a grin.

“It is. Most people can’t afford a car, and we don’t want any motorways. Ah well,
revenons à nos moutons
. Have you read all the reports?

“Just about. Your chaps seem pretty thorough, but there’s one thing . . . Meggie—oops, Megan—who’s this starving artist type who keeps popping up? Grisham—no, Gresham. He seems to be very much in the thick of things, and I gather no one has investigated him thoroughly.”

“He’s a friend of Aunt Nell’s.”

“Oh, an old fogey.”

“Not at all. He’s about our age. I wouldn’t say he’s starving. He appears to be doing better than merely keeping body and soul together.”

“ ‘Appears to.’ Many a crime’s been committed for the sake of keeping up appearances.”

Megan laughed. “I can’t imagine many people less likely to care about keeping up appearances.”

“Scruffy is he? Like the victim?”

“Not at all. Paint-splotched, usually, but he cleans up nicely.”

“He would have cleaned up, presumably, to take your aunt out to dinner. That’s odd, isn’t it? That he should invite an old lady out? Gay, is he?”

“I have no idea,” Megan said coldly. “He’s Aunt Nell’s neighbour and friend.”

“Or trying to ingratiate himself with a childless elderly widow.”

That made Megan laugh again. “If you mean, with an eye to a legacy, you’re way off target. Aunt Nell put every penny she owned into buying the cottage and getting the shop going. She’s living on a pension, and I think there’s a small annuity her husband set up.”

“All right, so they’re friends. But he knew she’d found the jewelry in her car—”

“Not till the following day.”

“So they claim. And he very neatly got her out of the way while a murder was committed on her ground floor. Living next door, he must have known the dog would rouse her if there were intruders in the night.”

“Ken, you’re flogging a dead horse,” Megan said, exasperated. “Let’s concentrate on identifying the victim. Then we’ll have half a chance of working out who topped him and why. Now shut up, would you? I need to concentrate on driving. Have you got the directions handy?”

They found their way through the city to the main police station, where they were expected. The desk sergeant had a street map waiting, with the tobacconist and the pub, the Sailors’ Rest, marked on it.

“It’s not the nicest part of town,” he said, addressing Ken but looking at Megan. “Down by the docks. Going to be redeveloped soon. You want a couple of our lads along?”

“No, thanks. We’re not looking for aggro.”

“Yeah, but is aggro looking for you?”

“Doubt it. We’ll find out, won’t we.”

“Up to you, mate. You get your blocks knocked off, we’ll give you a nice funeral.”

“Kind of you,” said Ken sardonically. “Thanks a lot.”

When they reached the dockyards, they understood the sergeant’s remarks. The area was indeed uninviting, to put it kindly. Most buildings were dilapidated, many obviously unused, with a shuttered look, just waiting for demolition. Every flat surface was covered with graffiti.

Behind and among the warehouses stood cheerless rows of stevedores’ dwellings and sailors’ rooming houses, opening directly onto the pavement. Those that were still occupied gave an overwhelming impression of dinginess. Most of the residents were probably on the dole. Almost all ground-floor windows of the abandoned houses were broken. Shards of window glass and shattered beer bottles flashed in the incongruous evening sunshine as Megan and Ken drove by. Litter scurried and swirled before a brisk breeze.

The only people they saw were a shabby boy kicking a rusty tin along the street and an equally shabby couple of men standing on a doorstep arguing. The pubs were open by now. No doubt they were full.