“Why? And how?”
“Because they may talk.” Maltravers stood up as he replied and went into the kitchen and examined a local tide chart Helen had pinned to a minute cork board. “As to how, it’s high tide at six thirty, so they won’t be able to go right down on to the beach, even assuming they’d all be able to scramble over those rocks.”
He returned to his chair. “Which means they will presumably stop near the bottom of the coombe where the ferns are thick enough to hide a regiment, let alone me.”
Tess stared at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” he said. “Their emotions will be exposed. Agnes may be an old memory, but Martha Shaw’s death is very close to them. I can’t see them just standing there and saying nothing about it.”
“But what do you expect them to say?”
“God knows.” He shrugged. “Perhaps they’ll just get nostalgic and sentimental. Some of them may even cry, although I wouldn’t bet on it. But they’ll be on their own and may say things to each other they would never say when anybody else is around.”
“Is it really possible that one of them killed Martha?” Tess shook her head in continuing disbelief. “Even if they did, would they confess it to the others?”
“I don’t know,” Maltravers admitted. “But Mortimer’s convinced me that Martha was murdered and I’m cast in the Sam Spade role. The obvious place to look is among the people who knew her best.”
“Are you certain they’ll be there?”
“Helen says they’ve never missed it yet and they’re all still fit enough to make it.”
“Well, they all seem to be faintly mad so you hiding in the bushes seems suitably bizarre. Don’t sneeze.”
As Tess returned her attention to the paper, Maltravers stretched out long legs and body, staring at the patch of bright blue sky visible through the open top half of the front door, and began to examine the ragbag of what he knew. Most of it was probably irrelevant, the difficulty was deciding which pieces had to be held to the light in a certain way so that they revealed something unexpected. He felt like an archaeologist trying to reassemble a collection of broken fragments without knowing what their original shape had been. But, however broken and distorted by time, there must once have been a shape. While his instincts kept sending him off in pursuit of the shadowy figure of Agnes Thorpe, common sense told him to concentrate on those who were certainly still alive. He stood up.
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Well I can’t come. I’m expecting that phone call this morning. Where are you going?”
“Edward Cunningham’s studio and souvenir shop first. He’s one of the School I haven’t met so far. Then I’m going for lunch at the Steamer where I should find Belvedere. He’s part of the fixtures and fittings.”
“What do you expect to find out?”
“Possibly nothing.” Maltravers flipped open a pack of cigarettes to make sure there were enough in it. “But they’re not going to come to me, so I’ve got to make the running.”
Tess took hold of his hand as he leaned down to kiss her. “Just be careful. Mortimer warned you this would be dangerous.”
“I should be safe enough with a couple of pensioners just about old enough to be my grandfather,” he said. “If they turn nasty, I’ll kick their walking frames away.”
“Don’t joke. You still think one of them could have killed Martha.”
“Which you think is mad.”
“Yes. But it’s more mad if it happened. And that sort of madness is frightening, darling.”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “What can happen? Cunningham braining me with one of his pots? Belvedere clubbing me with his stick? I’m just a visitor having an innocent chat with them.”
“But you could be treading on dangerous ground.”
Maltravers pulled her long hair gently as he walked to the front door. “If I’m not back by nightfall, organise search parties.” A shout of “Idiot!” followed him down the path.
The harbour front was experiencing one of its regular traffic snarl-ups as a minibus negotiated the sharp left turn to leave Porthennis, inching backwards and forwards as the driver swung his vehicle through the gap with the straining delicacy of a limbo dancer working at minimum altitude. Maltravers picked his way between a queue of cars waiting for the manoeuvre to be completed, then walked past the Steamer to where the road wound between houses to the other side of the harbour. Porthennis Potteries was in the corner of a small cobbled courtyard which it shared with a teashop and a diminutive Post Office and souvenir shop. There were only two people inside and they left a few minutes after Maltravers walked in. Conscious that the elderly man behind the counter was watching him, Maltravers spent several minutes examining some vases before picking up the most expensive.
“This is a limited edition I see,” he said.
“That’s right. Twenty-five only.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Casually he carried the vase to the window to examine it in better light. It was shaped with the grace of a shell, translucent white, the glaze shining like a mirror, roses pale as though seen through mist skilfully baked into its surface. Could a man who crafted such a thing also be a murderer?
“There’re cheaper ones if you want.”
“No. I think I’ll have this. It’s magnificent.” As Maltravers turned, he saw the look of satisfaction his decision caused. “I assume you made it? Edward Cunningham? I’m staying with Helen Finch and she’s told me about you.”
“I know Helen. Good painter.” Cunningham took the vase and began to wrap it in tissue paper. His mood had changed from indifference at just another customer looking around to proper attention for one who spent good money. “You’re a friend of hers?”
“Distant relation.” Maltravers took out his chequebook. “Seventy-five pounds wasn’t it? Payable to?”
“Porthennis Potteries.”
Maltravers began to write. “I bought a book on the Porthennis School the other day. You were one of the founders weren’t you?”
Cunningham’s eyes flickered disparagingly as he placed the vase in a carrier bag. “That’s ancient history now.”
“But there are still several of you alive.” Maltravers tore out the cheque and handed it across the counter with his bank card. “Most of the founder members as far as I can make out.”
“We’re down to six. It was seven until the other day.”
“Pardon?” Maltravers affected momentary puzzlement. “Of course Martha Shaw. I heard about that, but I don’t know the full story.”
Cunningham was copying the number from his card on to the back of his cheque. He did not look up as he spoke again. “Piece of rock she was working on fell on her.” He straightened up and handed the card back. “Accident.”
“That’s what the police say is it?” Maltravers pushed the card back into his wallet. “I assume they were called?”
“That’s what they say. What else could it have been?” The hands holding the bag hesitated, almost as though the wrong answer would mean the vase would not be released.
“Nothing I can think of,” Maltravers replied equably. “Same thing nearly happened to a friend of mine in London once.”
“There you are then. Accidents happen.”
Maltravers wondered if other of Cunningham’s customers had raised the subject of Martha Shaw’s death. The brief conversation had contained the suggestion of prepared responses to questions, like a government spokesman voicing the official line on something; an official line which was not to be questioned.
“They do indeed,” he agreed, and was rewarded by the release of the vase. “Would you mind holding on to it for me? I don’t fancy carrying it round the rest of the morning. I’ll pick it up later.”
“It’ll be safe here.” Cunningham accepted the bag back and placed it under the counter. “If I’m not in just see my assistant.”
Maltravers left the shop clarifying his impress
ions of Edward Cunningham. Originally bantamweight body now carrying the settled ballast of what had started as middle-age spread; just enough hair remaining to defy baldness; a crease of faded scar tissue across one cheek giving what would otherwise have been an unremarkable face a highlight of drama. Another durable specimen of the old school, mentally alert, well preserved and able to produce pottery of real quality; the purchase of the vase had been a means of lowering barriers, but had also been well worth the money. And had there been overtones in his reaction to even an oblique suggestion about Martha Shaw’s death? There had certainly been a sense of defensiveness, even defiance at any possible alternative to an accident.
As he strolled past cars parked on the harbour wall, until he was looking down at seawater washing softly through its entrance, Maltravers pondered the ramifications of his murder theory. A group of artists — eccentric perhaps, but not known to be actually lunatic — growing old together in a Cornish fishing village, then one of them suddenly killing another of the tribe? It was obviously implausible, but where else was there to look for suspects?
A little girl and her mother walked up behind him to join a man fishing, the little girl attacking a pink cloud of candy floss as big as her head. Watching the angler’s rod flick weight and bait through a long arc into the water, Maltravers’s sense of disproportion deepened. People came to Porthennis for innocent pleasures, not dark and inexplicable passions; artists sold postcards and prints, they didn’t murder each other; old people could be infuriating, but were harmless, even loveable if you were lucky. What could drive someone nearing the end of their life to kill a woman they had known for nearly fifty years? Lacey had talked of evil … Maltravers felt a prickle of apprehension, wishing he could conceive other motives, outrageous but less malevolent. Across the harbour, the windows of the Steamer glinted in the sun and he suddenly felt in need of a drink as well as talking to Belvedere Scott.
Slouched against the bar, the oldest of the old frowned uncertainly as Maltravers joined him, then made the connection with Helen.
“Hot again,” he grunted. However unorthodox, he still instinctively responded to the British habit of comment on the current day’s weather.
“And getting hotter,” Maltravers replied as Jack Bocastle approached from behind the bar. “What’ll you have?”
“Same again.” Scott emptied his glass and pushed it across the counter and the landlord automatically refilled it from the rum bottle inverted into its optic measure. Maltravers ordered a pint of bitter and for a while let the conversation wander at Scott’s pace and direction. With no audience to play to, the artist was in low gear, a performer relaxing between acts. Gradually, Maltravers edged the talk towards Martha Shaw, but Scott was uninterested. It had just been another death in a long life, unexpectedly precipitated, but it would have happened eventually anyway. It almost seemed to have been forgotten. Then Maltravers mentioned Agnes Thorpe and noticed a flinty wariness glitter momentarily in the rheumy eyes.
“It’s always tragic when a body is never found. It seems incomplete somehow.”
Maltravers made the comment casually, deflecting any suspicion that he could be especially interested by ordering more drinks for them both. Scott said nothing until the refilled glass was back in his hands, as though he had been weighing the remark and deciding how to respond.
“You’re still dead, body or no body,” he muttered sourly. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not all going to rise from the grave at the last trump.”
“But there must have been a period when you all clung to the hope that she might still be alive,” Maltravers added. “She could have been washed up exhausted somewhere.”
“Well she wasn’t.” Scott nodded towards the sea, visible beyond the harbour through the pub window. “She’s out there somewhere. What’s left of her. She got her theatre, which was all that mattered to her.”
“Are you really sure of that? That she’s out there?” Maltravers decided he had nothing to lose by a frontal assault. “It seems to me that without a body, it could mean she never even went in the sea that night.”
Scott’s slouched, decrepit body visibly tensed. “What the hell are you on about?”
“She could have run away for some reason. Perhaps there was something she wanted to get away from. I know she was supposed to have had cancer, but Helen says they never found the doctor who —”
“She drowned!” Scott amplified the blunt assertion by slamming the base of his glass on the bar. “She’d got nothing to run away from.”
“Well, you’d know of course,” Maltravers replied, defusing Scott’s sudden animation with respectful agreement. “You and the rest of the Porthennis School must have known her better than anyone.”
“Ay,” Scott agreed. “We knew her.”
The third rum was swallowed and Maltravers wondered how much it would cost him to get Scott drunk and if it would be worth the expense anyway; the possibility of indiscretion might only dissolve into the reality of alcoholic confusion; and was there anything to be indiscreet about? He was whistling in the dark and possibly becoming confused by echoes. There were no concrete facts; however much Mortimer Lacey conjured up curious powers of knowing, there was only his unprovable insistence that Martha had been murdered as a starting point and Agnes Thorpe’s disappearance had vanished into some twilight of legend. And were the two connected, apart from the fact that both women had belonged to the Porthennis School? He could see nowhere to go, but having made contact with Scott, decided to pursue matters and hope that something might possibly emerge.
“I’ve been reading about you in the booklet on the School,” he said. “Is there any chance of seeing some of your work? Do you sell it?”
Scott snorted. “Yes, if you like third rate crap.”
“No I don’t,” Maltravers told him. “But you weren’t always third rate were you? Have you kept any of your old work?”
“There’s a few still up at the cottage.” Scott sounded dismissive. “But they’re not for sale.”
“And not even for looking at?” Maltravers let the question hang in the air for a few moments as the artist remained silent, then added, “I really would like to see how good you were once.”
“What the hell for?”
Maltravers shrugged. “Because … no, it doesn’t matter. They’re your paintings, nobody else’s. If you want to keep them to yourself, that’s your business.”
The rum appeared to be starting to have an effect, even on a system almost pickled in it.
“Yes, they’re my paintings.” It was as though he was speaking to himself and there was a reflective sadness in the words totally out of character with the abrasive, impossible old man. Maltravers caught Jack Bocastle’s eye and another drink was poured. Scott stared into the contents of the glass for a long time before picking it up.
“Perhaps,” he said.
Maltravers ignored the implied invitation and began talking about Helen, Tess, himself, anything but the Porthennis School. He bought Scott lunch and more rum, letting him lapse into his adopted role of mendacious raconteur and loveable local character. When they left the Steamer together, Scott was amiably lost in his own make-believe world and insisting that they both return to his cottage.
*
“There’s absolutely damn all.” Doughty gave his boss the information before he had finished reading. “We’ve looked everywhere and there’s no motive. Nobody wanted to kill Martha Shaw.”
Emsley ignored the remark and read on, then tapped a paragraph on one of the sheets of reports. “There’s still this row in the pub that Jack Bocastle told you about.”
“They’re always bloody rowing,” Doughty protested. “You know what old people can be like and that Porthennis lot have it in spades. Most of the time they just do it to amuse the tourists. Anyway, they were half pissed.”
“What does Mike Nicholls think? He’s the local beat copper.”
“That it was irrelevant,” Doughty replied. “He remembe
rs one night a couple of years back when he had to tell them to pipe down when they were shouting their heads off about Martha Shaw making some sculpture for the head office of a London bank. Next day they’re all pals again.”
Emsley turned the page and read on for a moment. “And could that rock have fallen on its own?”
“Not on its own perhaps,” Doughty corrected. “But if she’d been bashing away at it, anything could have happened. Those ladders of hers are lethal. Fall over as soon as you look at them.”
“But it still could have been pushed.” Emsley looked up sharply. “Couldn’t it?”
“Yes, but who by?”
“Who was around? Ruth Harvey for starters.”
“No way.” Doughty sounded totally incredulous. “They were in love with each other. Had been for years.”
“But we’re not buying that without examining the goods,” Emsley told him. “Lovers fall out and lovers kill. We know that well enough.”
“Everybody says they were still devoted to each other,” Doughty argued. “Ruth Harvey worshipped Martha Shaw — and we know she hardly benefited from her death. There’s no motive there at all.”
There were indications of agreement in the humming sound Ensley made in the back of his throat.
“And both a bit past it for someone else to have come in on the scene,” he acknowledged. “All right, she looks highly unlikely … What about this character Charlton who was working in the garden. Bit shady isn’t he?”
“Yes, but that’s as far as it goes,” Doughty replied. “He’s never stepped out of line to our knowledge. Criminal Records say he’s clean as a whistle.”
“Doesn’t look it,” Emsley observed drily.
“We can’t pull him in for questioning just because of the way he looks. They’d have us for dwarfism.”
Emsley grinned. “Yes, tricky one that. But he was there.”
“And there was nothing unusual in it,” Doughty pointed out. “He’d been doing the garden regularly for some time, and they weren’t the only ones in Porthennis he did it for. Let’s face it, he’s got to take what work he can. When you get down to it, the poor bugger’s crippled.”
The Dying of the Light Page 10
