A Colourful Death_A Cornish Mystery

by Carola Dunn

  “Uh, worried, sir?”

  “That he might be right. We’ll look at the rest of this stuff before we count our chickens, but the way it looks, it’s worth doing my damnedest to prove Pearce wrong.”

  NINE

  “Wuff?”

  Eleanor opened her eyes to see Teazle’s bright brown ones under their white fringe, peering anxiously at her from a few inches away. The dog had slept on the bed as usual, with Margery’s permission.

  Margery. Yesterday’s events, never far from Eleanor’s dreams, flooded back to her consciousness. She felt as if only an hour or two of sleep had intervened, though it was broad daylight outside the open window.

  The feeling was probably perfectly accurate, she thought. She had gone to bed very late, and June nights were short.

  From below came the sound of movement, doubtless what had roused Teazle.

  “Wuff?”

  “It’s all right, girl. I expect they have to milk the cows or something. No need for us to get up yet.” Except that, now she was awake, she was going to have to make the trek downstairs and through the kitchen to the loo.

  She sat up, pushed back the covers and felt with her feet for the slippers Margery had lent her, reached for the blue candlewick dressing-gown. How kind the Rosevears had been. They were friends of Nick’s, of course. Or had been. Could the friendship survive the suspicion that now hung over him? They also had been friends of the murdered man. When the police let Nick go, as they were bound to once they bothered to listen to her, would anyone truly believe he wasn’t guilty? Once the police had someone in their clutches, if he was let go and no one else was arrested, people always assumed he must have been released for lack of evidence, not because he was innocent.

  No doubt it would all get into the newspapers, too. What if it spoilt Nick’s chances of selling his pictures in London?

  Yesterday’s sense of urgency returned full force. Here she was in the heart of Geoff’s territory. Margery seemed to think all her lodgers would be eager to show off their arts and crafts, regardless of the sudden demise of one of their number. Eleanor had the perfect opportunity to find out whether any of the inhabitants of Upper Trewithen Farm had a motive to kill him.

  She wondered whether she ought to wait until she had spoken to the police. Once she had provided Nick’s alibi, she would be no threat to the murderer. However, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to see her. If she delayed, her opportunity might evaporate.

  Besides, now she thought about it, it seemed unlikely that any of them—even Stella and the Rosevears—had any idea as yet of Eleanor’s part in the business. She tried to remember exactly what she had said last night. Surely only that Nick hadn’t done it, no more than what she might be expected to say in his support regardless of whether she actually knew anything about it. Anyway, she wasn’t going to be in any danger in broad daylight. Everyone else would know where she was and who was with her.

  Opening the door at the foot of the stairs, she found Margery already busy in the kitchen. She looked frazzled, as if she hadn’t slept much. Eleanor asked her whether she should let the dog out the back door or the front.

  “The back is better, unless she’s afraid of other dogs.”

  “She doesn’t usually pay them much heed.”

  “She’ll be fine, then. If Doug’s farm dogs are there they’ll want to investigate, but they won’t harm her.”

  The door at the end of the passage opened onto a kitchen garden bright with the scarlet blossom of runner beans. To the left was a row of fruit trees; to the right, washing lines, with a view of moorland rising beyond. A flagged path led back to a gap in a hedge of red and purple fuchsias, giving a glimpse of a muddy yard surrounded by the metal buildings Margery had mentioned.

  Teazle ventured out of the house. Alerted by canine radar, two black and white collies dashed over from the yard, barking.

  Teazle met them with unconcern. They stopped barking to sniff. Since there was no growling, snapping, or snarling, Eleanor left them to it. As she closed the door, she heard a whistle and someone shouted for the farm dogs.

  Since Margery was up and about, Eleanor decided she might as well have a quick wash and go and get dressed. But when she returned to the kitchen, Teazle once more at her heels, Margery had just made tea.

  “Here’s some bits and pieces for the dog, and I thought you might like a cuppa. Take it back to bed with you if you’re not ready to face the world.”

  “Thanks, that’s just what I need. I’ll drink it here, if I won’t be in your way.”

  “Not at all. I’ll join you.” For a few minutes they sat sipping in silence, while Teazle polished off a bowl of ham scraps. Then Margery said in a low voice, “I didn’t sleep a wink. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was horrible! All that blood … I understand why Nick was upset. Geoff was a bastard, but you don’t go round killing people because they’re a pain in the neck. Nick’s always seemed so laid-back. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “What do you mean? Are you feeling all right? I was right there.”

  “Come on, you can’t leave it at that. What did you actually see, with your own eyes?”

  “Nicholas Gresham standing over the bloody body of Geoff Clark.”

  “If you walked into a room where someone was apparently lying on the floor in a pool of blood, what would you do?”

  “Faint.”

  “I don’t think so, Mrs Rosevear. Margery. I almost fainted, and you dealt with the situation calmly and competently. And kindly, I might add.”

  “I suppose I’d check his pulse.”

  “So what would the next person coming in see?”

  “Me, standing over the body,” she said slowly. “But Stella said she saw Nick kill him.”

  “Would you consider her to be totally compos mentis at the time?”

  Margery frowned. “No. That’s hardly likely, when her … boyfriend was weltering in his own blood—”

  “It wasn’t blood.”

  “What do you mean? That much I did see with my own eyes. Bright red, not the colour of dried blood, and glistening. A great pool of blood.”

  “On the contrary,” said Eleanor, shaking her head. “If anything’s certain, it’s that the red wasn’t blood.” Not that she had checked for herself. In fact, on seeing it she, too, had taken it for blood, but she wasn’t going to admit that. She trusted Nick, though it was a pity he hadn’t been able to identify the substance. “The police won’t have any trouble telling the difference.”

  “Then why did they arrest him?” Margery’s tone suggested she was now just humouring Eleanor.

  “They didn’t. He’s helping them with their enquiries.”

  “Everyone knows that’s the same thing. Look, Mrs Trewynn, I don’t want to believe Nick’s guilty any more than you do, but you have to face facts.”

  Eleanor had thought she was doing brilliantly at leading Margery to grasp the truth. Discouraged, she realised they had just gone round in a circle. She made one more attempt.

  “It’s not a matter of belief. I know Nick didn’t kill Geoffrey.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “I was waiting for my turn to answer their questions, but they packed it in for the night before they got to me. It’s the little-old-lady syndrome. You just wait till you’re white-haired and over sixty and you’ll discover lots of people—men in particular—assume you have nothing to contribute that can possibly be worth their time. I didn’t kick up a fuss, because as soon as Inspector Pearce consulted the policemen who actually went to the gallery he was bound to find out Stella was talking through her hat.”

  “Jerry Roscoe, our local sergeant, was at the gallery.”

  “But he barely glanced into the studio. I noticed.”

  “Well,” said Margery doubtfully, “we’ll see.” She turned with obvious relief to the two women who came in through the front door at that moment. “
You’re up with the lark this morning.”

  “Is it true what Quentin told us?” demanded one of the two, a short, thin woman with very short dark hair, wearing trousers and a man’s striped shirt.

  “This is Mrs Trewynn,” Margery said in a tone of slight reproof. “Leila and Jeanette.”

  As they exchanged greetings, Eleanor tried to recall what her hostess had told her about these two yesterday evening. The second, Jeanette, was tall, sturdy, and rather pale, with fair, flyaway hair cut in a pageboy, the refusal of which to lie sleek probably caused her much anguish. Shell-work, Eleanor thought. And Leila must be the one who painted abstracts to compensate for the sentimental puppies that paid her bills.

  Leila returned to her question. “Well, is it true?” Away from the back-lighting of the doorway, she was obviously older than she had first seemed, in her forties, at least, though it was difficult to tell, as she appeared to have spent a lot of time in the sun.

  Eleanor hoped no one could call her vain, but she was glad she had grown up before sun-bathing became fashionable. Spending so much time in the tropics, she had always worn a hat. Crinkles at the corners of her eyes from squinting against the glare were the worst damage the sun had inflicted on her.

  “Is what true?” Margery temporised.

  “Quentin says Stella told him Geoff is dead and she saw Nick Gresham stab him.”

  Margery glanced at Eleanor. “It’s true that Geoff is dead, and Stella says she saw that happen.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Jeanette was obviously upset. She was considerably younger than the other two, in her late twenties, perhaps thirty.

  “It’s true that that’s what Stella’s been saying.”

  “I can easily believe that. What I can’t believe is that Nick killed Geoff. He wouldn’t! Even though Geoff mucked about with Nick’s pictures, he just wouldn’t.”

  “Come off it, Jeanette,” Leila sneered. “Everyone knows you’ve had a lech for Nick forever.”

  “Leila, must you be so vulgar? Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I’m running a home for deliquent adolescents!”

  Jeanette was scarlet. “What about you and Geoff, then, Leila?” she retorted. “At least Nick’s a nice person. I’d like to hear either of you two say as much of Geoff.”

  The other two looked at each other sideways, not quite meeting each other’s eyes. Eleanor watched with interest. What did it mean?

  Neither answered directly. Leila muttered, “Nice?” though whether she wondered if the word could be applied to Geoff or merely scorned its feebleness was not apparent.

  “I suppose you want breakfast,” said Margery. “What about you, Mrs Trewynn?”

  Eleanor realised she was still draped in the borrowed dressing-gown, several sizes too large. “I’d better get dressed,” she said hastily.

  No doubt she was old-fashioned—and certainly she had been in many parts of the world where women wore a great deal less—but the men would be coming in soon, she assumed. She’d feel more comfortable asking them about Geoff if she were fully dressed, though she risked missing whatever else Margery, Leila, and Jeanette had to say about him.

  As she went out, she heard Leila say, “I’ve got to get down to the cove while the tide’s low, Marge. Any hope of a lift?”

  Which suggested that Leila, not Jeanette, was the shell artist. So much for appearances, though it would explain her tanned face.

  Teazle scampered up the stairs ahead of Eleanor, already quite at home. Eleanor had hung up her blouse and skirt to air, and in the hope of getting rid of some of the wrinkles. The results were not entirely successful. She really ought to try to get over her prejudice against dacron and terylene. Everyone said they were so easy to care for, and she wasn’t one of those people like Jocelyn Stearns who could wear a linen suit all day and emerge uncreased.

  On the other hand, slightly crumpled cotton was less likely to arouse mistrust in a colony of artistic types than Joce’s immaculate smartness. No one could guess from her appearance that the vicar’s wife clothed herself almost exclusively from the LonStar shop.

  Eleanor dressed and went down, again preceded by Teazle. At the bottom, Teazle waited at the closed door. A babble of voices came from the kitchen, both male and female. Pausing with her hand on the doorknob, Eleanor heard Nick’s and Geoff’s names, and once her own, but she couldn’t make out much else. She opened the door and went in.

  For a moment no one noticed. Then, abruptly, silence fell. The only sound was the spitting of frying bacon on the range and the click of Teazle’s nails on the stone floor as she headed straight for the heavenly aroma.

  “Gosh,” said Eleanor, “I do adore the smell of bacon. It always makes me ravenous.”

  Someone laughed, uncomfortably.

  A tall, muscular man—the large-scale sculptor with the rich aunt?—stood up from the table, pulled out the chair next to him, and said, “Mrs Trewynn, I presume. Do come and sit down. I’m Quentin. These chaps are Tom, Albert, and Oswald. You’ve met Jeanette and Leila, haven’t you? And Margery, of course. That’s the lot of us, except Stella … and Geoff.”

  “Good morning,” said Eleanor and wondered how on earth she was going to keep them all straight. “I’m sorry you’ve lost … one of your number.”

  Amid a general murmur, one voice—male—emerged: “No great loss.” It was the oldest person present, other than Eleanor. He looked about her age, on the small side, balding, with a face like an intelligent monkey. His clothes were the most conventional present, a suit of pale grey, lightweight summer worsted, with a pale blue shirt open at the neck. “I won’t miss him.”

  “Really, Albert,” said Margery, “that’s not very nice.”

  “But true. It’s a loss to you, of course, Mrs Rosevear. You’ll have to find another tenant for the bungalow. But, to call a spade a spade, Geoff had a nasty tongue on him and I defy anyone here to claim otherwise.” Albert had a trace of an accent that was not Cornish. North of England, Eleanor thought; Yorkshire, perhaps.

  No one contradicted him.

  Leila stood up and leant with both fists on the table. “He was an arrogant pig. Albert’s right. Now, is anyone going to drive me down to Trevone Bay while the tide is low?”

  “I will,” Albert offered, “assuming the bus is available.”

  “Doug doesn’t need it till this afternoon,” said Marge.

  “You can drop me off at the shop,” said Quentin, Eleanor’s neighbour at the table. “It’s my day and I don’t mind getting there early.”

  “Shouldn’t we stay closed today?” proposed Jeanette tentatively. “Out of respect, I mean.”

  “No!” There was nothing tentative about red-bearded Oswald’s outburst. “He chose not to belong to the co-op. Even Quent does his day in the shop, though he doesn’t have anything to sell. I don’t see why we should lose sales because Nick Gresham did us all a favour and did away with Geoff.”

  Eleanor was going to suggest that everyone should stay at the farm until the police had come to question them. However, DI Pearce had said nothing last night about wanting to see Geoffrey’s colleagues, if that was the right term. As soon as he found out Nick was not the killer, he would certainly need to check where they had all been at the time of the murder, especially once Eleanor told him how unpopular the victim had been.

  Before she decided whether to speak up, Marge placed in front of her a misshapen plate of bacon, fried egg, fried bread, sausages, and baked beans. “Help yourself to toast,” she said. “There’ll be fresh coming up in a minute. Leila, get Mrs Trewynn coffee or tea, will you?”

  “Coffee, please.” She would need her wits about her this morning. “Milk, no sugar.”

  Leila presented her with a huge mugful. Quentin, standing up to leave for his stint at their co-op shop, passed her a toast-rack, butter and home-made marmalade, all in various pieces of peculiar pottery.

  In the face of this overwhelming hospitality, Eleanor felt a bit guilty for her intention of reporting the ge
neral dislike of Geoff to the police. She hoped she wouldn’t have to open the subject, but if she was asked, she couldn’t lie about it. Not that Pearce seemed very interested in what she had to say, but once she’d provided Nick’s alibi, perhaps he would change his mind. She wished she could explain everything to Megan—if it weren’t that Megan came with DI Scumble attached.

  Quentin, Leila, and Albert departed.

  The potter, Tom, hitherto had been silent as he ate his way through an even larger plateful of breakfast than the one Eleanor was bracing herself to tackle. Now, his fingers permanently stained with clay, he wiped up the last of the egg yolk with a final piece of toast and asked, “Where’s Stella?”

  “She was asleep when I went down earlier to check.” Margery at last sat down with her own breakfast. “She was in such a state last night, I gave her … something to help her sleep.”

  Something illegal? Eleanor wondered. It was none of her business. Anyway, in many parts of the world, marijuana was regarded as a useful medication.

  “I was just thinking,” Tom went on, “will she be fit to work this weekend? Because if not, maybe someone ought to phone. She’s always on about how the place couldn’t function without her.”

  “By someone, I suppose you mean me,” said Margery resignedly. “You have a point, though. I wouldn’t want all those convalescents to be without proper care. But I don’t want to get the doctor in a fuss over nothing, either. I’ll go over a bit later and ask Stella if she feels up to it.”

  “Stella works in a convalescent home?” Eleanor asked. “I remember you said something about her being a nurse.”

  “She’s not a Registered Nurse,” Jeanette said. “She got bored with the training before she qualified. She made quite a habit of dropping out of various courses, I think. But she got a job at the Riverview Convalescent Home, near Wadebridge. They have a hard time getting staff for the weekends. The people aren’t that ill. I mean, obviously, they’re supposed to be getting better or they wouldn’t be there.”