Authors: Carola Dunn
“Walked back down the hill and up to Chin’s. Oh, we stopped en route to drop off Teazle.”
“You
what?
”
“We stopped to drop off Teazle,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Your aunt’s dog? We took her to the pub, but Chin’s is a restaurant, so we left her at home.”
“ ‘Left’ as in put her inside the street door, or ‘left’ as in ‘took her up to the flat’?”
“ ‘Left’ as in I waited by the street door while Eleanor took the dog up to the flat. She didn’t mention it?”
Cultivate inscrutability,
Megan reminded herself sternly. He shouldn’t have been able to guess from her manner that at last she had garnered a tidbit of new information. She ignored his question and asked another of her own.
“Did you go into the passage?”
“No. The evening was still remarkably pleasant for April. I stood outside and admired the moon. The door was open, though, and I think I’d have heard if anything violent was going on in the stockroom.”
“Could anyone in there have heard you?”
“I doubt it. I don’t remember saying much, certainly not loudly. I mean, I didn’t call out to Eleanor, nor she to me. I don’t recall hearing her footsteps in the passage or on the stairs—she walks very lightly. And I oiled the hinges for Mrs Stearns just the other day, the street door and both doors off the passage.”
A regular Boy Scout—Inspector Scumble would have said it aloud, sarcastically. Megan was alarmed to find herself thinking it, sarcastically. Scumble’s view of the world was contagious. “They’d have heard the door close, though, wouldn’t they?” she said quickly.
“Maybe. She didn’t slam it, just pulled till the latch clicked.”
“And locked it?”
He pondered. “Now that I can’t tell you. I have a picture in my mind of her locking it, and another of her not locking it, but which belongs to that particular moment I couldn’t say.”
“Try putting the moon in your picture.”
He raised his eyebrows. “All right.” Another moment’s thought brought forth: “Good idea. I can see the moonlight glinting on the keys. She locked it that time. Which means I didn’t leave the keys in the car,” he added, his tone self-congratulatory.
“Had she unlocked it previously, when you stopped after the pub to leave Teazle?”
“I think not, but I wouldn’t be prepared to swear to it either way.” He grinned. “Isn’t it lucky I’m not a policeman?”
“Very.” He really was a most irritating man.
“I expect Mr Chin will be able to tell you what time we got to the restaurant,” he said soothingly, “and how long we were there. He’s good with numbers. If you go Dutch with a group, he can work out in his head what each of four or five people owe. And he keeps his eye on the clock, I daresay. Restaurateurs usually do.”
“We have someone asking him.”
“Look here, you don’t think I had anything to do with this murder, do you? I’m a pacifist.”
“Don’t tell the inspector. He was hit over the head with a nuclear disarmament sign by an Aldermaston marcher.”
“Strewth, you’re having me on!”
“It’s a fact. It’s much too early for us to rule out anyone, but in answer to your earlier question, I doubt DI Scumble suspects Aunt Nell in particular, even if it did happen in her house. In his view, a woman’s weapon is poison, not ye olde blunt instrument.”
“That’s what was used, is it?”
Oh hell, she shouldn’t have said that! And he knew it, judging by his knowing smile. Her cheeks felt hot. But she refused to ask him not to tell Scumble. “We won’t know for certain what killed him till after the autopsy,” she said haughtily.
“Don’t worry, I shan’t tell on you. If you’re finished, I’d like to get back to work.”
Megan was sure there must be more probing questions she ought to ask, but her mind was a complete blank. “You can’t think of anything at all out of the ordinary, or anyone, that you heard or saw?”
“The only unusual thing was that it wasn’t raining. I had a delightful evening with your aunt and I just hope you catch the bugger who’s disturbed her peace of mind.” With that, he turned back to his painting, immediately engrossed.
Ignored, Megan took herself out through the shop. Nicholas Gresham had no social graces, she fumed. If he was so self-absorbed painting one of his tourist daubs, what would he be like when working on his arty-farty abstracts? Unbearable! His one redeeming quality was his concern for Aunt Nell.
She went to look for Scumble.
A uniformed constable Megan didn’t recognise—from Bodmin, presumably—guarded the street door into the passage beside the LonStar shop. “Move along, please, miss,” he said to Megan in the automatic monotone of words oft repeated. “No one allowed in until further notice.”
“Detective Sergeant Pencarrow. I’m working with DI Scumble.”
“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.”
In silence Megan took her warrant card from the pocket of her suit jacket and held it up six inches from his nose.
His eyes crossed and he moved back half a step, till his back was pressed against the door. “Oops, sorry, miss. No one told me we got lady detectives nowadays. No offence meant.” Saluting, he moved aside.
Megan wasn’t sure of the truth of either statement, but he wasn’t openly grinning, so she let it pass. She’d met the same attitude before in the few months since she moved from London back to Cornwall, in spite of her promotion to sergeant. Perhaps because country manners were still old-fashioned compared to the modern lack of manners in the city, so far no one had been openly rude. Until and unless that happened, she had decided the best way to deal with it was to ignore it.
At least the present oaf had reached behind him as he moved to swing the door open for her. She had feminist friends who would have objected to the assumption that a woman was incapable of opening a door for herself, but Megan was not looking for confrontation. With a nod of acknowledgement, she went in.
The door from the passage to the shop was open. Within, surrounded by racks of second-hand clothes and shelves of second-hand books and china, Scumble stood glowering at a bin of colourful woolly animals. A grass-green, yellow-bellied, goggle-eyed frog grinned back at him.
Megan stopped in the doorway, behind the counter and cash-register. The inspector transferred his scowl to her.
“Dusted! Everything in this place that can be polished has been polished within an inch of its life,” he said gloomily.
“Mrs Stearns,” Megan assumed. “Did the intruders get into the shop, sir?”
“Probably not.” His gaze returned to the frog and its companions. “We haven’t found anything they might have been after. I’m wondering whether there could be something hidden in one of these ghastly animals. No doubt Mrs Stearns will disembowel me if we disembowel them.”
Megan was stunned by this evidence of a sense of humor, however grim, in her grumpy boss. “Couldn’t we just squeeze them?” she asked cautiously. “That would catch anything but a very small piece of paper. Or drugs.”
“Drugs are a possibility. The boy ponged of Mary Jane, remember, though the doc didn’t find any obvious sign of the hard stuff. We’ll have to impound them, at least until we find out where they came from. Anything helpful from Mrs Trewynn’s arty boyfriend?”
“Not her boyfriend, sir!” Megan realised too late that he was just trying to get a rise out of her. And succeeding. Lamely she added, “Just a friend. He’s half her age.”
“What’s wrong with him that he can’t get a girlfriend his own age? A pansy, is he?”
“Could be, I suppose. I don’t think so.”
“Drugs?”
“Not noticeably. The smell of turpentine in his studio would cover pot, but I can’t see him smoking in there, with customers in and out of the gallery.”
“All right, get on with it.”
Megan gave her report. She knew she hadn’t extracted much useful information from Nick Gresham, but under Scumble’s sceptical gaze it shrank to virtually zero. “At least we know Aunt—Mrs Trewynn locked the street door when they went to the restaurant,” she finished in desperation.
“Unfortunately,” he pointed out, “we still don’t know whether she locked the back door. You didn’t ask whether he waited long for Mrs Trewynn to come back down?”
“No, sir. Uh, why?”
“Oh, just in case he said she came straight back, and she said she was gone for several minutes, feeding the dog, say.”
“Sir, you can’t think he was downstairs knocking the victim on the head while she was upstairs feeding the dog!”
“You never know. However, having forgotten to mention bringing the dog home, your aunt is not in the least likely to remember how long she took about it.” He went over to the door to the stockroom and stuck his head in. “Not finished with that bloody list yet?”
“The list’s just about done, sir,” said Chapman, the scene-of-crime sergeant, “except we’re still going through all the blasted pockets.”
“Well, don’t be all day about it. What have you found in the way of possible weapons?”
He went in. Megan followed him. Laid out on the long, narrow table were a rolling pin; a bundle of brass stair-rods tied with garden twine; an old-fashioned flatiron; an even more old-fashioned copper warming-pan, for which some rich American might pay a pretty penny; and a bent golf club that could conceivably be of use as a garden stake.
“That’s it?” Scumble demanded. “Load of rubbish. Any blood or hair?”
“Not that we can see, sir.”
“None of ’em looks likely, but we’ll let the experts decide. Where’s the man who went to the Chinese and the pub?”
“Golloping or gulging,” said PC Killick enviously. A true Cornishman, he was given to deliberately incomprehensible pronouncements in the local dialect, though not attempting the renascent Cornish language.
“He better not be,” said Chapman, who apparently understood at least those two words, as did Megan. After all, she had grown up in Cornwall.
“Eating or drinking,” she translated discreetly to Scumble, who was turning crimson.
It did not noticeably decrease his choler. “He’d better not be!” the inspector seconded the sergeant.
“All the same, sir,” said Chapman, “is it okay if we get some pasties in from opposite?”
“I suppose so. Let’s have your list of the stuff in here. When the house-to-house people come in, and that includes the grub and booze man, get their reports. If we’re not back, bring them to the vicarage. DS Pencarrow and I are going there now.”
His sigh was deep enough to have originated in the Antipodes.
Eleanor was invigorated by the walk up the hill with Jocelyn to the vicarage, Teazle trotting at their heels. The sea breeze was refreshing and she didn’t mind that it brought with it the beginnings of a sea mist. Crookmoyle Point and Slee Head, to the south of the harbour, were already invisible, and from the lighthouse came the hollow moan of the fog-horn. But the village would probably suffer no worse than a pervading dampness in the air.
The Reverend Timothy Stearns, tall and thin and swathed in yellow oilskins, awaited them on the vicarage’s front step. In front of him in the street stood his tan Vespa motor scooter, polished to a gleam. He raised a hand in greeting as he caught sight of them.
“Good morning, Mrs Trewynn,” he called out with punctilious courtesy, coming to meet them, then asked anxiously, “Jocelyn, can this be true? Three parishioners have telephoned to say a body has been found at the LonStar shop. Surely they must be mistaken?”
“I’m afraid not,” his wife said grimly. “Eleanor found him in the stockroom.”
“Who . . . who is it?”
“A stranger, dear.”
“Oh dear! Should I . . . I wonder . . . last rites, do you think?”
“It’s much too late for that. He was dead when he was found, and for some time before that. Besides, they’ve already taken him away.”
“My dear Mrs Trewynn, what a terrible shock.” He held out both hands to Eleanor, dropping his sou’wester. “May I offer . . . That is, do you feel a need for the consolations of religion?”
She took his hands, gave them a gentle squeeze, and released them. “That’s very kind of you, Vicar.” Though she attended Christmas and Easter services at the little grey stone church because she liked the hymns, Eleanor was not a communicant. In fact, after a Congregationalist upbringing, a Quaker school, and her world-wide travels, she leant towards Buddhism, if anything. “But, truly, I’m over the worst effects of the shock, thank you. I’ll be all right.”
He nodded gravely. “Jocelyn, do you suppose there’s a family in need of support?”
“He hasn’t been identified yet, dear. I think you’d do best to get on with your regular rounds. It’s your day for St Endellion, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I was about to leave when I heard . . . Don’t you think I ought to . . . ? But old Mrs Lockhart is expecting me . . .”
“You mustn’t disappoint her, Timothy. Off you go, now.” Jocelyn picked up the sou’wester. She kissed his cheek, plonked the hat on his head, and tightened the strap under his chin. “Ride carefully, and if it gets very foggy, wait till it clears.”
“Yes, my dear. A little medicinal brandy, perhaps, Mrs Trewynn . . . ?”
“I’ll take care of Eleanor, dear. Goodbye.”
At last the vicar seated himself on his Vespa and started its tiny motor. Teazle backed away, barking her head off. He buzzed away, crouched over the handlebars, like a giant yellow grasshopper as Nick Gresham had once remarked. A benevolent but indecisive grasshopper, he had three parishes in his charge. Without Jocelyn, Eleanor thought, he wouldn’t be able to cope even with one.
They went into the vicarage, a cosy, comparatively modern bungalow that had replaced a huge, hideous, draughty Victorian house. The sitting room was furnished in eclectic style, a few good inherited pieces and some cheap odds and ends from the Stearns’ early married days, filled in with once good but slightly shabby charity-shop finds. Two of Nick Gresham’s paintings graced the sitting-room walls. One was of Mevagissey; the other of Rough Tor—unless it was Brown Willy, Eleanor was never sure which was which—in sunshine, with a shaggy pony in the foreground. A Welsh dresser displayed a Royal Doulton dinner service, inherited from Jocelyn’s parents. The blue-grey broadloom carpet was courtesy of the Church Commissioners.
Jocelyn had somehow woven these disparate elements into an attractive whole. To Eleanor, who had sat on cushioned divans with turbanned sheiks and on mats on mud floors with loin-clothed Africans, it all seemed very comfortable.
In the depths of one chair, a grey-and-black-striped cat dozed. When Teazle went over to sniff, he opened yellow eyes in an unblinking stare. Samson and Teazle were old acquaintances, if not friends. Much the same size, they tolerated and generally ignored each other.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drop of brandy, Eleanor?”
“No, thanks. And no more tea. I’m awash.”
“You know where the loo is.”
Eleanor retired. One could never be too grateful for modern plumbing.
Returning to the sitting room, she found Jocelyn gazing out of the window. “The mist’s getting thicker,” she said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have encouraged Timothy to go out.”
“His little put-put doesn’t do much over thirty, does it? I doubt he’ll come to grief, even if he hits a sheep. Anyway, St Endellion is inland. It’s probably clear there.”
“Yes.” She turned away and they both sat down. “I suppose I’ve just got the wind up because of that poor boy. Death can come so suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s something we need reminding of now and then.”
Eleanor didn’t want to talk about the murder. Soon enough the police would reappear and it would be unavoidable. “That reminds me, Joce, can’t you persuade him to call me Eleanor, so that I can call him Timothy? I’ve asked him, but he just murmurs vaguely. I do feel awkward calling him ‘Vicar,’ when I’m not, strictly speaking, one of his flock. We’ve known each other for nearly two years now. Isn’t that long enough?”
“It’s not a matter of time. If you live in his parish, he counts you one of his flock, whatever your beliefs or unbeliefs. More to the point, he has to consider his parishioners—the actual members of the church, I mean. If he called you Eleanor, you wouldn’t credit the petty jealousies that would arise. Many of the older people would be offended to be called by their Christian names, yet they’d regard it as a sort of favouritism if he used yours, or anyone’s over the age of twenty.”
“There are places in the world where people only have one name. They seem to manage quite well.”
“I daresay, but you’re in England now.”
Eleanor sighed. “I suppose I’ve lived out of the country too long. All right, ‘Vicar’ it is, and evermore shall be so.”
“There’s no need to feel awkward about it. Think of it as a sort of nickname.” Joce smiled. “If you can call your car the Incorruptible, I don’t see why you can’t call Timothy ‘Vicar.’ ”
“Maybe I’ll shorten it to Vic,” Eleanor said with a laugh.
“Don’t you dare! The ructions—Well, I can’t begin to imagine! Now, let’s be practical. We don’t know when the police will let you back into your flat, whatever the inspector said, so you’d better reckon on staying here tonight. And as long as you like, of course, if you don’t feel comfortable there.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Certainly not! Do you?”
“No. So why should I avoid going home as soon as the police let me?”
“My dear Eleanor, I suppose—” She stopped as a piercing shriek came from the kitchen. “Ah, the kettle. That’s the water for the peas. You don’t mind frozen, do you? I hadn’t anything planned for lunch as I was to be at the shop and Timothy’s out for the day—Mrs Lockhart always gives him a pasty or a sandwich—so I thought we’d just have an omelette.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“You must eat to keep up your strength, my dear. An omelette will be just the thing.”
Eleanor abandoned useless protest. Offering to help, she was sent out into the back garden, dripping now, to pick some mint for the peas and parsley for the omelette. Teazle accompanied her hopefully but failed to find a single rabbit hole.
Since Jocelyn cooked as competently as she did everything else, the omelette was delicious. They were sitting over coffee and slices of home-made Bakewell tart when the doorbell rang.
“That will be the police, I imagine.” Jocelyn went to open the front door.
Eleanor could hear but not see what followed.
“Mrs Stearns?” enquired a cocky young voice with a touch of West Country in it. “David Skan,
North Cornwall Times.
I understand you were—”
“A reporter! You people are shameless! How dare you come bothering—”