Manna from Hades

by Carola Dunn

  “Other?”

  “Other than the Trelawney Arms, which is where Donna lives. Which is why—But you don’t want to know that.”

  “What don’t I want to know?” the inspector asked suspiciously.

  “Just that we went to the Wreckers, which is up the other hill and slightly more expensive, because Donna . . . er . . . she’s taken a bit of a fancy to Nick, I’m afraid.”

  “She’s a little hussy,” said Jocelyn in her forthright way, “and blatantly pursues him.”

  “You’re right,” Scumble admitted. “I didn’t want to know.”

  Eleanor beamed at him, seeing Megan, safe behind his back, smother a giggle. “We had a drink at the Wreckers,” she said, “then walked back down and up this side to Chin’s, the Chinese restaurant, where Ivy and Lionel live. We had a very nice dinner. Much nicer than practically anything I ever ate in China.” She was torn between launching into her speech on poverty in China, followed by a plea for a donation, and teasing the detective by starting to list what she and Nick had eaten, followed by an assertion that he didn’t want to know that. Megan’s agonised expression deterred her. “Then we came home.”

  Unaware of his narrow escape, Scumble said gloomily, “I suppose you don’t know what time any of this took place.”

  “My dear Inspector!” Jocelyn was shocked. “It’s terribly rude for a woman being taken out for the evening to keep her eye on the time. Unless,” she added, to be fair, “she has an urgent appointment.”

  “I didn’t,” Eleanor put in quickly, before Scumble could explode. “I came up here—”

  “You didn’t notice anything unusual on the way up? The door was still locked?”

  “Oh dear! I’m afraid I’m not sure. In fact, I’m not at all sure I locked it when I left. I know, Megan, Joce, I promised, and I do try, but the trouble is, I’ve spent so many years in places without doors, let alone locks—”

  “Am I to understand,” asked Scumble in despair, “that both the street door and the door to this flat may or may not have been locked when you left and when you returned.”

  “Exactly,” said Eleanor.

  “And the stockroom?”

  “I’m sure I locked that.” She gave a guilty glance at Jocelyn. “Fairly sure. I distinctly remember locking something.” The car?

  “None of the doors shows any sign of being forced. I shall be asking you, Mrs Stearns, who has keys to the shop and storeroom. Now, Mrs Trewynn, did you go out again for any reason?”

  “No. Well, yes. Not really. I let Teazle out of the back door, at the end of the passage, by the stockroom door, and I stood at the door watching her. The light was on up here, and she being white, I could see her though it was dark out. She came at once when I called her—she’s very good about that—but when she came in she started to snuffle at the stockroom door. I thought perhaps we had mice again. I called her away and we came up and went to bed.” She bit her lip. “If I’d investigated, could I have helped—?”

  “No. He appears to have died more or less instantly. The dog’s behaviour would seem to indicate he was killed while you were out for the evening. You’re sure you didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary while you stood at the back door, or after you came upstairs?”

  “Quite sure. I wouldn’t hear anything downstairs after I went to bed, though. My bedroom is upstairs, under the roof, with a dormer window. And Nick had his record-player on. Or perhaps his wireless. He was listening to a piano concerto last night, Shostakovich, I think. He knows I don’t mind being able to hear his music.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it. What about this morning?”

  “When I took Teazle down to let her out first thing, she was even more interested in the stockroom door. It was difficult to get her to come away. I was sure there must be mice, and so I told Jocelyn—Mrs Stearns—later. I said not to let her in there without me or she’d create chaos. When I went to start sorting the new stuff, she came with me—”

  “Mrs Stearns?”

  “Teazle. Mrs Stearns was busy in the shop by then. Teazle came with me. She started sniffing around at the back, and then she began to whine. I called her away and made her lie down by the door. I started tidying a pile of clothes, and that’s when I saw him.” All too clearly, Eleanor recalled those pathetically bony ankles. She reached for Jocelyn’s hand. “I don’t think . . . I can’t remember if I touched him. I didn’t move him. I called Joce—”

  “And I rang the police,” said Jocelyn decisively. “I was not acquainted with the victim nor did I recognise him. I arrived here at approximately quarter to ten. The vicarage is just two minutes walk. I came in through the street door, which I found locked and unlocked myself. All our more responsible volunteers have keys to that door, so that they can come in to work in the stock-room without going through the shop. I have a list of names and addresses in the shop.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I went up the stairs and knocked on Mrs Trewynn’s door. When she called out ‘Come in,’ I entered. I have a key—as a friend, nothing to do with the shop—but the door was not locked at that time.”

  “That was after I’d taken Teazle down for her morning run,” Eleanor explained.

  Scumble gave a nod. “Apparently you had locked the street door when you came in last night. Did you lock this door, the door to your flat?”

  Eleanor tried to think. She could picture herself putting the key in the lock and turning it, but was that last night? Or the night before? Or when she went out yesterday? “I have no idea,” she said a bit crossly, “and the more you ask, the more I can’t remember.”

  Raising his eyes to heaven, Scumble turned back to Jocelyn. “Please continue, Mrs Stearns.”

  “I exchanged a few words with Eleanor—Mrs Trewynn—and then went down to the shop. I entered through the door from the passage. It was locked. Only I and Mrs Davies have keys to that door. Mrs Trewynn does not.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t need one. I never work in the shop because I have only to look at the cash register for it to malfunction.”

  Scumble looked as if he wasn’t in the least surprised.

  “I dusted a bit and checked the change Mrs Davies had left in the cash register yesterday at closing time. I should explain that as there’s no bank in the village, whichever of us is in charge takes home the greater part of the day’s takings. In any case, it’s rarely enough to tempt a thief.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “I put up the blinds and opened the shop at ten precisely,” Jocelyn went on. Scumble again looked as if he wasn’t in the least surprised. “I served one customer—I can give you her name if necessary—and then I heard Eleanor calling from the stockroom. I had unlocked the connecting door earlier. Again, only I and Mrs Davies have that key. One or the other of us is always here when the shop is open. I went through. Eleanor had found the body. I immediately put up the CLOSED sign, locked the door of the shop, and telephoned the police in Launceston. I wish to make it clear that I rang Launceston not because of any lack of faith in PC Leacock’s competence, but Mrs Leacock frequently answers the phone and she is quite incapable of keeping a still tongue in her head.”

  “Understood.”

  “Eleanor was in a state of shock. I brought her up here and made tea, which I consider a far more efficacious remedy than brandy.”

  “I don’t have any brandy anyway,” said Eleanor, “but I did drink several cups of tea, so if you will please excuse me for a moment . . .” Gathering what little dignity was left to her, she went up the stairs to her bedroom and, more important just now, her bathroom. Teazle, who had been sitting subdued at her feet, naturally followed her.

  Behind her she heard Scumble ask whether anything was missing or disarranged in the shop, and Jocelyn telling him all was as it should be, down to the last penny in the cash register. Eleanor reflected on the curious fact that she, who had seen much unnatural death, was so much more shocked than the vicar’s wife. P
erhaps Jocelyn was shielded by her religion, though in Eleanor’s experience, most Christians were as reluctant as those of any other faith—or none—to depart this world for the next.

  A few minutes later, Teazle scampered down the stairs ahead of her, as if determined to put the morning’s unpleasantness behind her. She gave Megan an ecstatic greeting, embarrassing Megan and making Scumble scowl.

  “Mrs Trewynn,” he said, “are you aware of anything missing from your flat, or not in its usual place?”

  “I don’t think so.” She looked around. How could she tell after Jocelyn had tidied?

  “We’ll have to do a thorough search of the premises, the flat and the shop. We’ll try to disarrange things as little as possible. We’ll need your fingerprints, both of you, for elimination purposes. Constable?”

  Megan took their fingerprints, a process Eleanor had been through more than once in some of the places she had travelled, but which exasperated Jocelyn.

  “So messy!” she objected.

  “Can’t be helped, I’m afraid, madam. Now, Mrs Trewynn, is there somewhere you can go while we—?”

  “Eleanor will come home with me,” said Jocelyn.

  “You’re the vicar’s wife, madam?”

  “Yes, the Reverend Timothy Stearns. Our house is the vicarage. Anyone can direct you.”

  “Good,” Scumble grunted. “We’ll probably have more questions for both of you.”

  “You’d better pack up a few things for the night, Eleanor. You won’t want to sleep here.”

  “Oh no—It’s very kind of you, Joce, but I’d rather come home, if Mr Scumble says I may.”

  “Possibly, though I doubt it. In any case, please don’t remove anything just yet. If necessary, DS Pencarrow can fetch what you need later.”

  “There, then, that’s settled. I’ll just get Teazle’s lead. Come on, girl, let’s go and see Uncle Timothy.”

  The little dog bounced to the door and looked back impatiently. Uncle Timothy carried biscuits in his pocket for any stray children he happened to meet. He could often be persuaded to grant well-behaved dogs the status of honorary children.

  “You’d better give me your keys, Mrs Trewynn,” the inspector said dryly, “so we can lock up when we’re done. I’ll see they’re brought to you at the vicarage.”

  “Yes, of course. Er . . . I wonder where I put them?”

  Scumble’s eyes once again turned up to the heavens. “If,” he said to the ceiling, “they are anywhere on the premises, we shall find them.” He stood up, crowding the room. “Good day, ladies. Please don’t discuss the incident with anyone, especially the press.”

  FIVE

  As the door closed behind her aunt, Megan braced herself for a scathing comment from the inspector. All he said was, “You know this artist chappy next door, Sergeant?”

  “Not much more than to say hello, sir.” Long hair and the smell of turps did not attract her.

  “Seen his work? Any good? You reckon he makes a decent living at it?”

  “I’ve never looked around the gallery. It’s mostly tourist stuff—picturesque villages, cottages, fishing boats, heather-covered cliffs, I gather. You know the sort of thing, old stone bridges, donkeys at Clovelly.” She gestured towards Aunt Nell’s painting.

  “That one of his?” The floor creaked as Scumble crossed for a closer look. “Hm. I’ve seen worse.”

  “It’s quite good of its kind. I can’t think why he’d go on painting it if he wasn’t making some sort of living.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that his other stuff is quite different, sir. Abstract, Aunt Nell—Mrs Trewynn—told me. More . . . well, high-brow, I suppose. “

  “Ambitious, eh?”

  “I don’t think he sells much of it.”

  “You reckon he’d take Mrs Trewynn out for the evening deliberately to leave the place clear for a confederate to burgle?”

  “Surely not, sir! He’s not stupid. If I were a burglar, I wouldn’t choose a charity shop to rob. I doubt if there’s anything here worth more than ten quid or so.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t turn burglar,” Scumble said with a return to his sour manner. “You’d better not be involved in searching your aunt’s place. Go and interview Gresham.”

  “Yes, sir.” Megan escaped with relief.

  Halfway down the stairs, she stopped. Ambulance men were carrying a stretcher out of the stockroom, manoeuvring with difficulty around the corner into the narrow passage. The skinny, dirty, pathetic boy was just a lumpy bulge under a strapped-down sheet. Was someone, somewhere, wondering why he hadn’t come home? Or had they given up on him months, perhaps years ago?

  Megan followed the men along the passage and out into the street, now completely blocked by the ambulance. She heard the collective gasp from the crowd, a mixture of locals and early visitors by the look of them, held back by the police barriers.

  No one said, “It’s not So-and-so, is it?”

  Just some feckless runaway from God-knows-where. They might never discover his name.

  She turned down the hill to the gallery next door.

  The bell on the door jangled as she entered. Nick Gresham was behind the counter at the back, busy making change for a customer. He gave a casual wave to acknowledge her arrival.

  She had met him a few times, over polite afternoon tea at Aunt Nell’s. They had treated each other with the wariness of dogs wondering whether they were going to have to defend their territory. She had never been in the gallery before, and she looked around with interest.

  On the walls and a couple of folding screens hung paintings of Cornish beauty spots, aimed at emmets, as the Cornish call tourists. They were better than most of their kind. Somehow the artist had caught the transparent blue light of Cornwall, sea reflecting sky reflecting sea, never far off even when no sea was visible in the picture. A panel of one screen displayed a number of miniatures of wildflowers. A shelf held sleek porpoises, seagulls, and seals, carved from serpentine mottled and streaked in blues and greens and browns; drawing-pinned to the shelf was a card with the sculptor’s name. Not a Cornish piskie, a fake horse-brass, nor a lighthouse table-lamp in sight, she noted.

  Half listening as Gresham assured his customer that he knew nothing about what was going on next door, but it was bound to be on the local telly news, Megan wandered behind one of the screens. The painting on the wall opposite her stopped her in her tracks.

  It was all dark greys and purples and black, slashed with white, and somehow suffused with brilliant light. It should have been gloomy, even frightening, but it projected a magnificent, powerful energy. She read the title card pinned up beside it: Storm over Rough Tor. Yes, there in the lower left corner was a hint of massive solidity—not a clear depiction of the huge, heaped boulders of the tor but enough to anchor the whole in reality. Though she didn’t know much about painting, this was obviously of a quite different order from the sunlit seaside scenes behind her. She stepped back to get a better view.

  When Aunt Nell first told Megan about her neighbour, she had described Nicholas as making her think of a Georgian aristocrat. Knowing he was an artist, Megan had pictured a foppish dilettante, but the vigour of this picture was a reminder that Georgians were also swordsmen—duellists—and neck-or-nothing riders.

  The jangle of the doorbell as the customer left interrupted her contemplation. She emerged from behind the screen. The proprietor had vanished.

  “Hello?” she called.

  “I’ll be with you in half a tick.” Nick Gresham’s voice came from somewhere to the rear, beyond the counter. A door stood open, through which he entered a few moments later, wiping his paint-stained hands on a paint-stained rag. There was a dab of blue on one cheek, too. “Sorry. Most people like to look about a bit before I pop out of my . . . Aha, I didn’t recognise you for a moment in that garb. It’s your policewoman incarnation. Or do you prefer ‘lady detective’?”

  “Detective Sergeant Pencarrow, sir,” said M
egan through gritted teeth, taking her notebook from her shoulder-bag.

  “Come to give me the third degree, have you?”

  “Do I need to?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. How is Eleanor holding up?”

  “Pretty well. She’s not exactly your common-or-garden little old lady.”

  “Far from it.”

  “Mrs Stearns has swept her off to the vicarage.”

  “Good. I hope your . . . er . . . large companion doesn’t consider her a suspect?”

  “He wouldn’t discuss it with me if he did. And not only because she’s my aunt. He doesn’t believe in women in the police, let alone as detectives. In fact, he doesn’t even really believe we should be allowed behind the wheel of motor vehicles.”

  “Do I detect a note of disgruntlement?”

  Megan pulled herself together. “I’m supposed to be asking the questions.”

  “Go ahead. But come on back to the studio. I can’t afford to lose the light, and there’s been a stream of customers this morning, wanting to know what’s up next door.” He led the way. “I’ve sold three pictures!”

  Contrary to her expectations, the room Nick called his studio was reasonably tidy. The far wall was mostly windows, with a view of the slope rising to the headland, like Aunt Nell’s. Several paintings leant against the low wall below the glass. If she went over close to the windows, Megan thought, and looked down to the left, she’d be able to see the inlet, with the sheer rock wall on the far side and the crooked finger of the quay, and perhaps the inner harbour. Two easels stood facing the windows, one draped with a length of unbleached muslin, frayed along the visible end. The other held a canvas, of which she could see only the back. Beside it was a high wooden stool with a palette and a jar of brushes on it.

  One side wall was taken up by wide, deep drawers below open shelves crammed with paints, brushes, a bottle of linseed oil, and a large tin of turps—the smell was quite strong in here—and various paraphernalia Megan couldn’t readily identify. The other wall, the one he shared with the LonStar shop’s stockroom, was occupied by stairs going up, with a sink and a workbench below, where he apparently framed his own pictures.