A Colourful Death_A Cornish Mystery

by Carola Dunn

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, not then. I chickened out. My studio is at the end so I just sneaked in and got to work.”

  “You didn’t speak to anyone. Did you see anyone, or might anyone have seen you? Or heard you working?”

  “Someone might have looked through a window, I suppose. I wasn’t chipping or grinding, just polishing, so I wasn’t making any noise. But like I told you, I started worrying about just how mad Nick would be. I worked out that if he arrived in Launceston at about four, then went home and discovered the damage, he wasn’t likely to get to Padstow before half five. So I went and told Marge and we talked Doug into going with us to the pub, so I could keep an eye on Geoff without him knowing.”

  “And in fact, you saw Nick Gresham arrive at Clark’s gallery, though some time later.”

  “If only we’d got across the street quicker! Doug had gone off to the gents and Marge wanted to wait for him. I had to haul her along and by the time we got there—”

  “It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. I’m sure you must know by now that Gresham did not stab Clark just as you arrived in the studio. Whatever you saw, it was not that. The medical evidence shows he died long before.”

  “Oh, medical evidence!” Stella said scornfully. “You forget, I’ve worked with doctors. I know they’ll give a wrong diagnosis rather than admit they don’t know the answer.”

  “I assure you, there is absolutely no question that Clark died before four o’clock, and probably before three. No one is blaming you for jumping to conclusions when you saw him lying dead with Gresham beside him. You were in a perfectly understandable nervous state. But I would advise you not to go on claiming that Gresham killed Clark. In fact, I’d like you to think back to that moment which you misinterpreted and try to tell me what you actually observed, rather than what you imagined.”

  That was too much for Stella’s composure. “I can’t, I can’t,” she wailed. “I don’t want to think about it.” She buried her face in her hands and started to sob. “It was horrible. Horrible!”

  Megan had overestimated the woman’s sangfroid. Once she had pulled herself together, she had seemed so cool and calm! The ever-unsympathetic Scumble might just as well have come himself, she thought, for all the good she’d done.

  “I realise it’s difficult to think about it so soon after it happened,” she said. “I won’t press you now, but we’d appreciate it if you’d really try to picture the scene, as soon as you feel up to it. You’d be surprised how much detail people remember when they put their minds to it. I’m sure you must be eager to see the murderer brought to justice.”

  “What difference will it make?” Stella moaned. “It won’t bring him back.”

  This response was not uncommon and it always irritated Megan. She suppressed her irritation. “All the same, we’ll be back. Either I or Detective Inspector Scumble. We have to make quite sure to get every scrap of information you can possibly provide. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. Don’t move, I’ll let myself out now.”

  Head still bowed, Stella didn’t stir as she left.

  She was about to start down the stairs when a tall, lean man appeared at the foot, about to come up. He stood aside with a smile and a slight bow, gesturing for her to go first. He was in his late fifties at a guess, very well dressed in a formal style, with silver hair still thick. He gave an impression of being well pleased with life.

  As Megan neared the bottom, he said in a friendly way, “You must be a friend of Miss Weller?”

  She smiled at him. “Not exactly. I dropped in on a matter of business. You must be Dr Fenwick? My name’s Pencarrow. I hope you don’t mind my coming here.” Because if he did, next time it would be the Wadebridge nick for Stella.

  “Not at all—” He glanced at her left hand. “—Miss Pencarrow. Miss Weller is bound to have a few matters to be cleared up at such a time. I trust she’s not in any difficulties?”

  An odd way of putting it when Stella had just lost her lover in grim circumstances! But she didn’t want her employer to know she was upset. Megan quite understood. She herself wouldn’t want Scumble to know if she was upset over a personal matter; it was bad enough that he guessed something of her former relationship with Ken Faraday, alias the boy wonder. Fenwick might not even know about Clark’s place in Stella’s life. “Living in sin,” as he’d no doubt call it, wasn’t exactly a recommendation for a responsible job.

  As Megan wasn’t about to arrest her, she said, “Not that I’m aware of. I may have to come by again, but I’ll do my best not to disrupt things. You have a beautiful place here.”

  “Thank you. I’d give you a tour, but as you say, we don’t want to disrupt things. My guests are assembling for dinner. I dine with them on Fridays so I must be down again in a few minutes. I find it the best way to discover if there are any little, niggling discontents to be remedied. Good evening, Miss Pencarrow.” With a nod of farewell, he went upstairs, a surprisingly youthful spring in his step.

  Megan went out to the car. PC Lubbock had parked it to one side under a tree, where Dr Fenwick, even if he had happened to look out, might well have overlooked it and so not known of the police presence. The constable was leaning against the far side of it, whistling softly and tunelessly.

  Lubbock straightened not quite to attention and gave a sort of sloppy salute. “Message from the inspector, ma’am. He won’t need you again this evening. I’m to take you to Launceston so you can type up your reports and statements ready for a meeting with Superintendent Egerton in Bodmin at eight ack emma. You’re to pick him up at home at seven.”

  With a groan, Megan got into the panda. She’d be lucky to get five hours’ sleep.

  The radio went on muttering to itself. They were nearly in Launceston when their call signal was heard and Lubbock turned up the volume.

  It was Wilkes, announcing that Leila Arden had been found. She had sprained her ankle on her walk home from Trevone Cove, naturally on a rarely frequented stretch of footpath overlooked by no houses and no farmer’s fields.

  “Damn,” said Megan. Yet another lead had evaporated.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Eleanor’s telephone rang at five past ten the next morning. As usual on a summer Saturday, she was not planning one of her donation-collecting drives in the countryside. The roads were too busy with tourists arriving and leaving. She had just finished a shopping list and was about to go out. Teazle was waiting at the door with her lead already clipped on.

  “Eleanor, it’s Nick. I need help!” He sounded desperate.

  “What on earth’s wrong?”

  “The press. I’ve got reporters coming out me ear ’oles.”

  “Oh dear! It must have been in this morning’s papers.”

  “It was. With a picture of yours truly, and one of Geoff’s shop with King Arthur’s glower glimmering through the glass. I haven’t got time to deal with them, and I can’t afford to shut up shop—”

  “Didn’t you say you have nothing left to sell?”

  “I was exaggerating a bit in the heat of the moment. Eleanor, dear Eleanor, please pretty please could you come over and sit in the shop so that I can lock my studio door?”

  “Nick, you know cash registers don’t like me!”

  “If things go as far as actually making a sale, you can call me in.”

  “But I don’t understand your good paintings. I can’t possibly explain them. I take it you’ve found enough of them undamaged in the studio to move to the shop.”

  “Just tell people I have similar work hanging in a major London gallery. That should bring in the punters.”

  “I’d hate to lose you any sales.”

  “I’m going to lose all sales—or my mind—if you won’t come.”

  “And you expect me to deal with hordes of reporters, too?”

  “I’m pretty sure they don’t know you’re involved. You just have to play ignorant.”

  “Oh, all right. But—”

>   “But me no buts. If you don’t come quickly they’ll be bashing down my door.”

  “I’m on my way,” Eleanor said valiantly.

  As Nick had said, hordes of reporters were ravening at the door or champing at the bit, or both. Eleanor had scarcely stepped inside Nick’s shop when several recognised her from her previous brief notoriety. Protected by the police, she had then managed to avoid all but one, David Skan, a nice young man from the North Cornwall Times. She had given him an exclusive comment, if no information, more or less in exchange for his promise to press his editor to let him write an article about the LonStar shop and LonStar’s good work.

  He had succeeded, though the article had focussed more on the “Little Old Lady Saves Starving Billions” angle than Eleanor would have preferred. Still, the embarrassment was mitigated by the rush of business to the Port Mabyn LonStar shop. Though the rush had soon abated, Eleanor had noticed an increase in donations of goods to sell and Jocelyn said visitors, receipts, and monetary donations were still higher than before, as was the number of volunteers.

  The moment Eleanor appeared on the threshold of Nick’s gallery, David Skan took her under his wing. A local reporter among the London crowd, he had only what authority his height and a voice as yet unmarred by cigarette smoking gave him, but it was enough to clear a path to the counter. He helped her up on the high stool behind the terrifying cash register.

  She found herself faced with seven or eight men and a couple of women, all peppering her with questions.

  “Why did the police release Gresham after arresting him for murder?”

  “What did Gresham have to do with Geoffrey Clark’s murder?”

  “Can’t you persuade him to give us a statement?”

  “Was Gresham jealous of Clark’s commercial success?”

  “Why won’t he give us a statement?”

  That she could answer, and was happy to do so. “Mr Gresham is extremely busy because…” she started. They were too busy shouting out more questions to listen. She had always found a soft voice ultimately more persuasive than a loud one, but obviously that tactic didn’t work when confronting a pack of newshounds on the scent of a crime story.

  “Shut up, you lot!” yelled Skan. “Let the lady get a word in edgeways!”

  Silence fell.

  “Mr Gresham is extremely busy,” Eleanor began again, “because he’s working on an important commission from America and has a deadline to meet. Now that the merit of his work is recognised in London…” She continued to tout the importance of Nick’s work, even bringing in his contribution to the Export Drive (hadn’t she heard something about an Export Drive recently? There usually seemed to be one on).

  The national reporters turned away, disappointed. One muttered something about notifying the Arts Page people, another mentioned his paper’s financial editor, and a third glanced for the first time towards the paintings, apparently calculating the odds of picking up something cheap before everyone caught on. Three local people, Skan, an elderly chap from southern Cornwall, and a woman from Plymouth, clustered round Eleanor. A couple who had hovered in the background, actually examining Nick’s work, drifted closer.

  “‘Local Artist Makes Good,’” said the woman reporter, scribbling in her notebook. “Can you give us some details, dear?”

  “‘—Hits the Big Time,’” the elderly man preferred.

  “‘—Fame Spreads Worldwide,’” Skan said enthusiastically.

  Eleanor told them about Alarian’s illustrious art gallery in Albemarle Street, and surprised herself by finding words to describe Nick’s serious work that seemed to be intelligible to her listeners. Either that, or they were as ignorant as she was and pretending to understand.

  She was about to run out of things to say—and three of the national reporters still lingered hopefully—when the couple interrupted.

  “We’d like to buy a painting,” the woman said hesitantly.

  “Oh, good!” said Eleanor, then stared in dismay at the lurking cash register. If she called Nick to come and deal with it, the reporters would nab him. But who could tell what sort of a mess she’d make of things if she tried to tackle it.

  “What’s the matter?” Skan whispered.

  Eleanor, feeling silly, whispered back an explanation.

  “Never fear, Gallant Reporter Rushes to Rescue. My dad’s a greengrocer. Let me at it.”

  In the meantime the other two locals left. The woman’s husband, a military-looking man, short but very upright, with a bristling grey moustache, had put his arm round her shoulders. Eleanor saw that her eyes were filling with tears.

  “Not if it’s going to make you cry,” he said firmly.

  “Oh no, it’ll be a comfort. Please, George.” She turned away to stare at the folding screen hung with wildflower miniatures and a fresh set of landscapes.

  In a low voice, George said to Eleanor, “Sorry. The one we want is Slow Movement, Shostakovich Second Piano Concerto. We’re both rather keen on Shostakovich. My wife feels a special connection with the second piano concerto—he wrote it for his son’s nineteenth birthday, you know. Maxim, the pianist. Our son was killed in the war when he was just nineteen. Shostakovich expresses the grief of war like nobody else. And Gresham’s painting … She sees something in it. I don’t know if it’s what he intended, and it doesn’t really matter, but it seems to Jessie to show the composer’s wife—a woman, anyway—standing at a window with a baby in her arms. Goodness only knows whether that’s what was going on in the composer’s mind. If she thinks it’ll bring her comfort, I’ll take it.”

  David Skan was scribbling madly in his notebook. “Sir,” he said, “I don’t want to intrude, but I’m going to be writing an article—I’m a reporter for the North Cornwall Times—about Mr Gresham’s work. I would really appreciate your permission to mention what this particular painting means to you, and if you wouldn’t mind giving me your name…?”

  “No names. But otherwise go ahead, if you can make it anonymous.”

  “Sure. May I photograph the painting before you go off with it?”

  George havered. “I’ll ask Jess if she’d mind,” he said in the end.

  His wife gave her permission. Skan was obviously disappointed when he saw the painting, a nebulous affair with a square of dazzling white that could be a window looking onto the endless snows of Russia and beside it what could, indeed, be the figure of a woman cradling a child in her arms. As a newspaper photograph, it would probably come out as nothing but a blur. He took a couple of shots anyway—the North Cornwall Times didn’t run to photographers, even for what was supposed to be a sensational local murder story.

  Wrapping the picture in endless quantities of white paper from the roll she found under the counter, Eleanor marvelled at the emotion both the music and the art could evoke. She’d have to listen to Nick’s record of the concerto sometime.

  Not till he was finished with Land of Hope and Glory, though.

  True to his offer, Skan dealt with the couple’s receipt and deposited a very nice, fat cheque in the drawer of the till. Then he helped George carry the painting to their car.

  “I’ll be back,” he said to Eleanor as he left. “You owe me!”

  The woman turned to Eleanor before following them. She had mastered her tears. “Please thank Mr Gresham for me,” she said softly, holding out her hand. “I’ll … I’ll try to write to him.”

  Eleanor pressed her hand. “I’ll tell him,” she promised.

  The other reporters had given up and gone off, so Eleanor went and knocked on Nick’s studio door. There was no response.

  “Nick, it’s me! I’ve sold a painting.”

  “Are they gone?”

  She didn’t need to ask who. “Yes. At least, for now. Have you got another picture to hang in the space?” She was quite proud of herself for thinking of that practical detail.

  He opened the door, turning the knob with a cleanish rag. “Good work. What did you sell?”

 
; “The Shostakovich concerto.”

  “Good heavens! Really? What did they pay?”

  “The price on the back. Isn’t that right?”

  “Without haggling? Good heavens, I regard that more as a pious hope than bearing any relationship to reality. Must be my new notoriety—or your salesmanship. Can I employ you?”

  “Of course not, Nick. It was very touching.” She told him the couple’s story. “And she said to thank you.”

  He nodded. “As a matter of fact, that is pretty much what it was supposed to be. There’s a sort of tenderness about the music … How gratifying that someone else would hear and see it just the same way. You managed to work the till all right?”

  “Actually,” Eleanor said guiltily, “Mr Skan did it for me. The North Cornwall Times reporter.”

  “Hell! What’s he going to expect in exchange?”

  “Just a nice little exclusive,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway. “I won’t keep you from your work for long, Gresham, but there must be something you can tell me without bringing down the wrath of CaRaDoC on our heads.”

  A look of fiendish glee crossed Nick’s face. “Yes, indeed. Might even do us some good in certain quarters. You can say that I was arrested on false charges by a—let’s see, I think overzealous is the word I want—yes, by an overzealous detective. I won’t tell you his name, but he’s based in Bodmin and I’m sure a shrewd chap like you can find out. And you can say that I have every confidence that the murderer will soon be collared, now that Detective Inspector Scumble, ably assisted by Detective Sergeant Pencarrow, is in charge. That should make Scumble mind his manners next time he grills me.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” said Eleanor.

  “No, you’re probably right. Anyway, that’s all I have to say, except thanks for helping Mrs Trewynn to sell my picture, so be a good fellow and hop it.”

  “Okay. It’s not much but it’s more than anyone else has got out of you. They’ll be back, though, so you’d better lock your door again.”