The Last Mrs. Summers

by Rhys Bowen

  “That’s fine with me, sir,” the policeman said. “Sorry to have disturbed you. Thank you for your help. We’ll be getting along, then.”

  “I’d better be going too,” I said to Jago.

  “Are you going back to Trewoma?”

  “I was heading into Truro but I think I’ll stay at White Sails tonight. It’s quite upsetting about the old man.” I started to walk away, feeling awkward as Jago’s guests were joining him. I crossed the lane, heading back to my motorcar.

  “Quite a little adventure.” An American woman was allowing one of the men to help her over the stile.

  “For God’s sake, get the motorcar before we are soaked,” the German woman said huffily. “Why didn’t any of you men think of bringing an umbrella?”

  “It’s not too bad, Helga. We can walk back along the road. Come on,” one of the men said. There was something about his voice that made me look back.

  Then I almost stepped into the water-filled ditch beside the road. It was Darcy.

  Chapter 28

  OCTOBER 19

  WHITE SAILS

  I think I might be going mad. I know what I saw.

  He had his hat low over his face and his collar turned up, but the man looked just like my husband.

  “You are such a brutal slave driver, Mr. O’Connor,” the German woman said and took his arm.

  The man she had called Mr. O’Connor said, “I enjoy it, Frau von Dinslaken.” He did not appear to have noticed me. I hesitated. I stood and watched them. He walked at a brisk pace, propelling the German in her fur coat, never once looking in my direction. Jago had run on ahead. The rest of the group followed, hurrying toward the main gate of Trengilly.

  I reached Brutus, fumbled with the door lock and half fell into the driver’s seat. My heart and my thoughts were racing. I sat, gripping the steering wheel, staring out ahead of me. Was I going mad? Was all this worry and staying at Trewoma affecting my brain? Surely I recognized my own husband but there had not been one flicker of recognition in his eyes that I could see. Had I made a mistake? After all, the light was poor and his hat was shading his features, and his voice did sound a lot more Irish than the way Darcy usually spoke. I had to tell myself that I was wishing him to be here, fooling myself.

  I started the motor and drove to the village shop. The proprietress was just closing up and wasn’t too happy about serving me, so I had to make some quick decisions—which wasn’t easy in my current state of mind. I came away with a tin of soup, six eggs and a treacle tart. Not exactly a balanced meal but it would have to keep me until the next morning. There was no sign of life as I passed Trengilly this time. The gates were shut and no vehicles were parked nearby. I kept on driving, past the last of the houses, past the gates of Trewoma and up to the headland.

  “Round Little Rumps,” I muttered to myself as I slowed to a crawl, letting the headlamps cut a beam of light into the utter blackness ahead of me. We had laughed at that, not a care in the world only three days ago. It seemed like another age.

  Now the rain was coming down hard and I was conscious of the fearful drop on my side of the road. What on earth had made me think it was a good idea to spend the night at White Sails? I knew the answer to that one. Because old Harry’s body had washed up on the rocks and because someone who looked a lot like Darcy was staying nearby. Both of those things had to be examined in daylight.

  I almost drove past the little gate leading down to White Sails. I cursed myself for not having a torch and left the headlamps on as I took the steps one by one and then located the front door. I opened it with Belinda’s keys. Once inside I found matches and managed to light the lamp before I braved the steps again and brought down my luggage, carefully locking the front door behind me. Now I was safely inside I got the fire going and cooked myself boiled eggs and soup over the hob. It felt very lonely and remote, sitting by that fire with the hissing light of the oil lamp, but I told myself that Belinda would be feeling so much worse, spending the night in a prison cell. When would the telegram reach her father? I wondered. When would her solicitor come? Would they be able to arrange bail for her?

  And if they couldn’t? Would she be shipped to London to face trial at the Old Bailey? In my mind I went over the events of the day. Rose appearing behind me on the cliff top and, most disturbing of all, the old man’s body washing up on the rocks at Trengilly. He had been frightened of “her.” She had threatened to have him locked up but he had never said anything about what he saw. Had he seen Rose pushing Jonquil over the cliff? And now paid for it with his life . . .

  Outside a great gust of wind buffeted the cottage. I should be making plans. Tomorrow I would visit Belinda, but did I have anything hopeful to tell her? Just my suspicions. And the fact that she did not kill old Harry. But then the police would say that nobody did. He was always wandering around on the seashore. Perhaps he fell and hit his head on a slippery rock and a wave took him. There would be no way to prove that his death wasn’t accidental. I sighed, carried my dishes over to the sink and decided that I was not going to bother to heat water before the morning. Then I undressed for bed, wishing fervently that there was a hot-water bottle in the place. I curled into a little ball and lay listening to the wind and the waves.

  I suppose I must have eventually drifted off to sleep when something woke me. Was it the creak of a floorboard? The lamp must have run out of oil and I was in complete darkness. I held my breath, remembering those steps coming up from the cave that would admit any intruder who knew about them. I thought I could hear breathing over the noise of the waves. I held my own breath, but nothing seemed to be moving. Then I felt the bedclothes cautiously lifted as someone was trying to slip into bed beside me. I sat up. “Jago, is that you again?” I demanded.

  “So Jago has been visiting you frequently in bed, has he? I must speak to him about that,” said my husband’s voice as Darcy slid into the sheets beside me.

  “Darcy!” I exclaimed. Then I did the sort of thing one does on such occasions. I flung my arms around him and burst into tears. “It was you. I knew it was you,” I said. “Why didn’t you let me know you’d seen me? I thought I was going mad.”

  He was stroking my hair, kissing my cheek. “Don’t cry. It’s all all right. And thank you for not recognizing me. It would not only have compromised what I’m doing but put me in danger.”

  “You said you were going on a boat train,” I said, still allowing the occasional sob to escape. “I thought you’d be in South America or somewhere.”

  “I did take the boat train, to Paris,” he said, “to meet up with certain gentlemen.”

  “They called you Mr. O’Connor.”

  “I’m an Irish gunrunner, working with the Republican Army,” he said. “And some of these gentlemen are making a good living by trafficking in arms.”

  “You are dealing with smugglers?”

  “It appears that way.”

  “So Jago was smuggling guns! Belinda was right,” I exclaimed.

  Darcy gave a little chuckle. “Jago? This is strictly entre nous but Jago is one of us.”

  “As in . . . ?”

  “Yes. And not another word about it. He’s in deeper than I am. And, by the way, what was that about his getting into bed with you again?”

  “The first night we were here he didn’t know the cottage was occupied and he tried to climb into bed with us in the middle of the night. We were all equally scared.”

  “I see. I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it—the part about being scared, I mean.” He paused. I felt the warmth of his arm around me, his sweet breath on my cheek. “I had no idea you were in Cornwall. I had as big a shock as you did. Look, I only heard a little of what’s been happening. Belinda arrested for murder of a local man? What on earth is this about?”

  “Oh, Darcy, it’s been so awful,” I said, and told him the whole thing. The words came out i
n such a rush that I’m sure he had trouble making sense of them.

  “Hold your horses a minute,” he said. “So you didn’t go down to Cornwall with the intention of staying with these people?”

  “No. We came down to see this cottage. Belinda has just inherited it. We had no idea it would be this remote or so primitive. How did you get in, by the way? I locked the front door.”

  “I came up from the cave. Jago told me how to. I borrowed a speedboat to get here. Quite nasty clambering over those rocks in the dark, let me tell you. So you came to this place, and . . .”

  “It obviously wasn’t suitable for us at the moment and we went into the nearest village and bumped into Rose Summers. She recognized Belinda. They chatted and she insisted we come to stay.”

  “Insisted?”

  “Yes. Belinda wasn’t at all keen. Rose had been the cook’s daughter and was apparently not all that nice as a child. But Rose wouldn’t take no for an answer and we had nowhere else to stay in the neighborhood so we went to Trewoma. That’s the name of the house. They all have funny names down here.”

  “So Belinda hadn’t seen Rose since childhood? What about the man who was murdered?”

  “Ah, well, that was slightly different,” I said and told him the truth about the affair.

  “Crikey. That’s bad. That gives her a perfect motive, doesn’t it?”

  “She managed to get away with not telling the police the whole story about that—only that she met him in London, but I think they guessed. Her name and address were in his book, for one thing, and if they ask his London friends, perhaps one of them would have known about her. But it only lasted a couple of weeks and it was several years ago. She did the right thing. She stopped seeing him when she found out he was engaged.”

  “So she stopped seeing him because he was about to marry Rose?”

  “No, he was about to marry Jonquil,” I said.

  “Jonquil? Who is she? Where does she come into this?”

  After a lot more explaining and a lot more questions Darcy said, “So you think that Jonquil’s death is somehow linked to Tony’s?”

  “I think it has to be, don’t you? She was wonderfully athletic, apparently. Why would she fall off a cliff?”

  “And who could be behind two such different murders? One is stealthy and sneaky and one is brazen and violent.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “Maybe I’m wrong and Jonquil’s death was an accident, but then there’s old Harry—”

  “Who is he?”

  “The old man whose body you found today. He wasn’t quite right in the head but he was clearly afraid of someone—a female, he called her ‘she,’ and he promised he’d never said anything about what he had seen. So Belinda and I thought he might have seen someone pushing Jonquil.”

  “And that person decided he was a bit too much of a risk?”

  “Exactly. After the second murder the person is either becoming desperate or no longer has any qualms about killing. It would have been easy to finish him off. He’s often wandering on the seashore and it wouldn’t be hard to drop a rock or two on him and let the tide carry him away. We had a trickle of stones come down on us once when we stood on the beach. Rose thought that someone was up there, spying on us. We thought at the time that it was only maybe seabirds, but now I wonder . . .”

  “So they arrested Belinda today. Why did you come here?”

  “I couldn’t very well go on staying at Trewoma, could I? It felt so awkward as the friend of the accused. Besides, Rose’s mother arrived and I was no longer needed to provide company.”

  “So you didn’t move out because you didn’t feel safe?”

  “It did cross my mind that I could be in danger,” I confessed, “but then why me? I had no connection to anybody there.”

  “It’s bloody cold in here.” Darcy shifted position so that we were both under the covers. “Why didn’t you go to a decent hotel?”

  “I was going to stay close to Belinda in Truro,” I said, “but after old Harry was killed and then after I thought I’d seen you I wanted to stay nearby.”

  There was a silence, then Darcy said, “Georgie, are you sure Belinda didn’t do it?”

  “Absolutely,” I retorted. “She was taking a bath when he was killed. Actually he did come to her room earlier and try to suggest that they get back together, for old time’s sake, but she told him to get lost. So how or why he ended up naked on her bed is a complete mystery.”

  “Unless someone saw him going into her room earlier and decided that it would be perfect to implicate her in his murder.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You must suspect somebody. Who else was in the house?”

  “Only Rose and the servants,” I said. “Belinda’s window had been opened, so we wondered whether anyone had come in from the outside. But then how would they have managed to get a naked Tony into her room?” I paused. “I’ve been thinking, Darcy, and it has to be Rose. She likes to say that she’s not very bright, but I think she’s quite clever really. What if she has managed to pull off this whole thing?” And I went through my train of thought, from pushing Jonquil, claiming she was frightened of Tony, insisting that Belinda come to stay so she’d have a perfect setup for murder, to my own encounter with her on the cliffs and old Harry.

  Darcy grunted. “It does make sense, if she had reason to believe he wanted to divorce her. But how would you ever prove any of this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think she could just have managed it physically if she ran up the servant’s staircase, but I was a bit out of breath when I went up those stairs. If she’d had to kill her husband in his bath, lift him into a wagon she had previously hidden nearby, drag him the length of a hall and arrange him on a bed, then go back the same way and appear with a mug of cocoa in her hands she would at least be breathing heavily. And she wasn’t. She sounded quite relaxed when she came up the main staircase toward us.”

  “Interesting,” Darcy said. “Do you think she might have enlisted someone’s help? She was a cook’s daughter, after all. Might she have been chummy with one of the servants? Actually brought them in for this very purpose?”

  “It’s a good point,” I said. “The housekeeper has been with the family for ages—she used to be Jonquil’s nursemaid, I gather, and she doesn’t approve of Rose—getting above her station, you know. I tried to talk to one of the maids. She’s a young local girl. Her brother works in the garden. The footman is another young local lad. I haven’t met anyone else. There could be another gardener or chauffeur or someone. I do know that the staff were replaced not too long ago. The old faithful retainers were all let go.”

  “There you are, then. That gives us a good lead to follow. I’ll try and get in touch with a chap I know at Scotland Yard.”

  “There is already an inspector from the Yard here,” I said. “His name is Watt.”

  “Watt?”

  “Precisely. Belinda and I laughed about it.” I sighed. “Oh dear. Poor Belinda. We must do something quickly, Darcy.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but obviously I don’t have much time at the moment. I’m a guest at a house party with some pretty interesting people. And if I don’t want to wind up floating in the river like old Harry, I have to tread rather carefully.”

  I touched his cheek. “Oh, Darcy. Please be careful.”

  “I’m always careful,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. You have enough on your plate.”

  “But if these people are smuggling guns . . . Do you think you should go back before you are missed?”

  “Before daylight, yes,” he said. “But before I brave the murky ocean I’m not going to waste the chance of being in bed with my wife.”

  And after that we didn’t talk for quite a while.

  Chapter 29

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20

  IN TRURO
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br />   Things are finally happening! It’s so wonderful to know that Darcy is close by.

  When I awoke in the morning Darcy had gone. I found myself still smiling as I got out of bed. He was nearby. That was all that mattered. Until I was rekindling the fire and remembered that he was probably in a lot of danger. Why oh why did he have to take such stupid assignments? Why couldn’t he settle down and be a farmer like Binky? I knew the answer. Because he enjoyed what he did. He loved the thrill.

  We had arranged to meet at the village shop in Rock at noon. He would do what he could to help, but obviously he had to be extra cautious at the moment. “If necessary and I can’t get away, you can give a note to Jago,” he said. “He’s a good man. Quite trustworthy.”

  I made tea and ate an egg plus the last of the treacle tart for breakfast, then set off for Truro. I encountered no vehicles on the road before I reached the village of Rock. As I passed the gate to Trengilly I slowed and glanced inside but there was no sign of movement that I could see. I felt a pang of apprehension that Darcy was in there with a group of potentially dangerous people. I had seen how easy it is to have a body wash up on the shore here. I had to tell myself that he knew what he was doing. This was old hat to him.

  After that, I followed the signposts, leading me through villages with more unbelievable saints’ names until I came to the city of Truro, nestled between hills with the three spires of its cathedral rising above the narrow streets. I was startled to hear the sound of church bells and realized that it must be Sunday. I had lost all track of time, shut away at Trewoma. The day was confirmed by smartly dressed people walking toward the cathedral.

  I found a policeman directing traffic, and he showed me the way to the Crown Court, a little out of the center of the town. I asked to see Belinda, half expecting to be turned down, but a nice policeman led me to a room with a table and chairs in it. I sat and waited and after a little while Belinda was escorted in to sit opposite me. She looked hollow eyed and so scared and I wanted to get up and hug her, but the burly attendant stood right behind her.