Buried in Cornwall

by Janie Bolitho

  Hardly aware that the television was still on, she wondered whether it was suicide or an accident. She might have fallen from the rocks or drowned in the sea. The bulletin had given no clues. The phone rang again. She let it, hearing the machine click into action once more. The sound was down so she had no idea if it was the same caller or a different one.

  The small clock on the mantelpiece with its brass base and domed glass cover chimed the hour. Seven o’clock already. She would be late for Laura. Throwing on a raincoat she grabbed her handbag and left the house, slamming the kitchen door behind her.

  The street lights were reflected in the water of the harbour and on the glistening pavements which had not yet dried after another brief shower. Three cars came up the hill, thumping music pulsating from one. Another, badly corroded by the salty air, spluttered noisily and belched fumes from a faulty exhaust. The driver of the third tooted but had passed before Rose had a chance to see who it was.

  She reached the Strand and hurried to the pub. The Swordfish was unusual in that it had retained two bars. The smaller lounge was carpeted and cosy and might almost have been someone’s front room. The long public bar was far more basic with its wooden floor and jukebox. Laura was perched on a high stool talking to two of Trevor’s friends. Rose knew them by sight and smiled. They moved away after saying hello.

  ‘The usual?’ Laura asked, getting out her purse. She ordered a glass of wine and paid for it then looked Rose full in the face. ‘What is it? Are you still upset about last night?’

  ‘No.’ Rose turned and dragged a spare stool hearer to Laura. Both women were in jeans and sweatshirts, their hair feathery from the damp atmosphere. ‘They’ve found Jenny.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’ She paused and met Rose’s eyes. ‘Jesus, not good, I take it.’

  ‘No. She’s dead. It was on the news this evening.’

  Laura shook her head and her hair, held high on her head in a band, danced wildly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They didn’t say, only that her body had been found.’

  ‘Has Jack said anything about it?’

  ‘No.’ Rose wondered if it had been him on the telephone rather than one of the St Ives crowd.

  They sipped in silence for a while, oblivious to the rock music blaring out and the crashing of the table-football game in progress. ‘Laura, I think I’ll go home if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not. You shouldn’t have come, you could have rung me.’

  They parted company in the street and went their separate ways. Rose had a lot to think about. Why, for instance, had Jack made such a point of searching the shaft and who was the woman they had found? What relevance, if any, did their findings have to Jenny’s death?

  But most puzzling of all were those screams. Why would anyone wish to draw attention to the place even if they hadn’t known what lay beneath the ground?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maddy Duke had rung Peter Dawson to ask him to accompany her to Rose’s party. He had agreed to do so. When she rang a second time to invite him to her own party, arranged on the spur of the moment for Boxing Day, he had been surprised to hear himself accept another invitation because he was not gregarious.

  He was considered to be eccentric, even by Cornish standards. Yet as an artist he was far from flamboyant; he cared little whether his work sold or not because his love was the act of painting, not the income received from it. He lived alone in a two-bedroomed house perched high overlooking the sea between St Ives and Zennor. His abstracts sold for a lot of money, maybe only one or two a year but he knew the danger of flooding the market. Many of his pieces were kept from the public eye until he believed it was time to produce another. He had investments which provided an adequate income for his basic lifestyle and he preferred to live where he did rather than in a better property which would be too big for a single person. He had no intention of sharing his home with anyone and, although many might not agree, it was comfortable enough for him. Now and then he needed a woman but usually went out of the area to find one because the local available females knew better than to expect more than one night in his bed. If he succeeded in seducing Maddy Duke he knew that she was unlikely to prove to be the exception. However, there was something about her which appealed to his baser instincts. She struck him as a passionate woman, one who, involved in her own business, would not make demands on him or expect more than he had to offer. This, he supposed, had been at the back of his mind when he had accepted the invitations. Dress was informal, she had told him, but then it usually was. Peter only bothered with a suit on his rare trips to London.

  His house was built of granite and was simply furnished but was not without its touches of luxury. A modern heating system ensured that it was always warm in winter and that there was a constant supply of hot water. He ate well and the cigars he smoked were bought from a specialist shop in Truro. His single malt whisky was delivered by the case from an off-licence in Penzance. With an occasional woman thrown in, Peter Dawson could not imagine what else any man could possibly wish for.

  He stood gazing critically at his latest, as yet incomplete, work which was propped on a chair. Whatever the cynics may think, the shapes and colours displayed on the canvas made perfect sense to him. His head on one side, his chin in his hand, he decided that there was a definite pattern in what seemed like randomness.

  He moved languidly across the room, cigar smoke trailing behind him and masking the smell of oil paint and turpentine. From his window he saw the lights of a fishing-boat as it returned to the harbour and a scattering of stars which promised a cold night. He would be warm, not so Jenny Manders who would now be in the mortuary in her refrigerated container. He had heard the news on Radio Cornwall as he pottered around in the kitchen making a list for his next visit to the shops.

  Jenny had spent the occasional night in his bed and he had fond memories of her. She had been undemanding, accepting that all that was in it for her was the chance to share a few drinks, a simple meal and his body. The arrangement had suited them both and neither of them was offended when they spoke of other lovers. In fact, he thought with a grin, between us we knew enough to make a lot of people sweat.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his short hair. It was greying now, but not noticeably so because it was fair and had once been the colour of ripening wheat. Poor cow, he thought, knowing that in reality Jenny had only ever loved Nick. But I understood her, he realised. Loving Nick had not stopped her from sleeping with other men, but her conquests had been born out of insecurity. With Jenny, nothing ever lasted although the fault had lain with her. She had the male trait of being able to compartmentalise her life; love and sex were not the same thing. She ought to have been a man, he concluded, before walking over to the table which held his drinks and pouring another half-tumbler of Scotch. He sat back in the brown leather settee which had altered its shape to suit his and speculated upon how Jenny could have antagonised someone enough to kill her. In Peter’s mind there was no doubt it was murder. Jenny was no fool, apart from which she loved life. And, being so much a part of the place where she was born, she knew the dangers, she would not have been walking along perilous clifftops when the wind was off the land. Yes, she could be irritating, but so could most people. Revenge for an illicit love affair? It seemed unlikely in this day and age although men and women had been known to kill for less. No, Jenny may have been casual but she was careful and no one could accuse her of avarice. Initially it had crossed his mind that she may have stooped to blackmail but he soon saw how out of character this would have been. And as far as men were concerned, apart from one indiscretion with Daniel Wright, married men were not on her agenda. On the other hand Stella Jackson was an unknown quantity. She may well be financially independent of her husband and feminist enough to prefer to keep her own name but would she have tolerated an affair? Peter shook his head. It was highly unlikely she had found out. Nick Pascoe? he mused. No, too level-headed, he decided, and he had nothing to gai
n by it. Or had he? Had Jenny, who wanted him back, been making a nuisance of herself? And hadn’t he occasionally sensed that violence lurked beneath the surface of Nick’s urbanity?

  He would miss Jenny and her contrary ways. As awkward as she could be at times, she still had had the capacity to mock herself and to make him laugh. Rumour had it that Nick was now seeing a woman from Newlyn, a fellow artist called Rose Trevelyan, one who, apparently, had allowed her talents to lie idle for too long. Naturally this might have upset Jenny but she was a fighter. It was six months since their relationship had ended but if she had set out to win Nick back, Peter doubted if the small matter of another woman would have troubled her.

  In a couple of weeks he would meet this Mrs Trevelyan, possibly sooner if she was at Maddy’s on the 26th. A widow. He grinned. ‘You never know,’ he said with a contented smile as he nudged the compact cylinder of ash off the end of his cigar with his little finger.

  With his drink beside him he tried to calculate how long it would take the police to discover his relationship with Jenny. Perhaps, he concluded, they never would.

  ‘Dead? She can’t be dead.’ Nick stared around the room as if it was strange to him or else the walls might provide the answer to what seemed like the present madness.

  All three men were standing: himself, Inspector Pearce and another man whose name he had already forgotten. Despite the horror and outrage at what he had heard, Nick saw that some strong emotion also gripped the inspector beneath the grimness of his expression.

  Jack Pearce was assessing his man, unsure how genuine the shock was. Everyone who had known Jenny would be interviewed although they would not yet be aware that this was a suspicious death. Her body had been found by a couple out walking. It had lain on the shoreline, her clothes and hair saturated, and the initial assumption had been that she had drowned. With the arrival of the police surgeon, a reliable man from Redruth, this had become less certain. He expressed his doubts and suggested that higher powers than his become involved. Jack had not digested the medical technicalities but had put the wheels in motion anyway. They had been lucky to find a pathologist to do the post-mortem early that afternoon. The police surgeon’s suspicions had been confirmed. Jenny was dead before her body was immersed in water. Two blows to the back of the head had killed her. They had been barely detectable as the bleeding had stopped quickly in the icy salt water which had also washed away the blood. Her mass of hair had concealed the injuries which had not had time to swell. Tests on her lungs and stomach proved conclusively that she had not drowned.

  A suspicious death, Jack thought, but not necessarily murder. There was the slim possibility that she had fallen, landed on rocks, then been washed out to sea and brought back to land when the current was right. It was unlikely, though. A fall serious enough to kill someone ought to have produced other injuries and there were none: no bruises or scratches anywhere else on her body. She had been dead for at least three days.

  Nick Pascoe had been asked to make a formal statement. As her most recent lover and the man who had reported her missing, he was the obvious starting point, if not, Jack thought, the most obvious suspect in view of the fact that she had tried to revive their relationship. Nick Pascoe had not been interested. Because of Rose? Jack asked himself.

  And Rose knew these people, had known Jenny, and had been one of the last to see her alive. What sickened him was that she, too, had a motive. If she was desperate for Pascoe she might have felt the need to remove the younger, more attractive competition. Not that he believed that himself, Rose was far too pragmatic, but he knew how it might look to his colleagues. He could not protect her, she would have to be interviewed along with everyone else.

  Those screams, what did they mean? Rose had reported them; Nick had reported Jenny, missing. Were they in something together?

  Almost in imitation of Nick Pascoe, who was near to tears, Jack ran a hand through his thick, dark hair and sighed. He wanted nothing more than to go home and shower and get something to eat. But that luxury was hours away yet.

  Stella Jackson was unaware of a conversation which had taken place between Daniel and Rose some weeks previously. Daniel had already forgotten it. He was not a man who had much recall when it came to things he had said.

  ‘It’s for the best, I think. Don’t you agree? Under the circumstances,’ she added with a touch of spite.

  Daniel merely nodded. What a mess it all was. What a fool he had been. Thank goodness only the two of them knew. He was not a natural liar and neither was Stella but this he was more than necessary. They agreed to stick to the same story. The only person who could have invalidated their story was dead. Having listened to the news they knew it would not be long until the police arrived.

  Rose stepped into her brightly lit kitchen, removed her raincoat and reached for the half-full bottle of wine she had opened for Laura the night before. It seemed more like a week ago. Then she lit a cigarette. Armed, as she called it, she went to the sitting-room to listen to her messages, cheered by the chintz of her upholstery and the low lighting. She depressed the play button.

  ‘Stella here. Will you ring me?’ A bleep was followed by a second voice. ‘Hi, it’s Maddy. Your having a party gave me an idea. I’m having one Boxing Day afternoon. Do come. Let me know. Cheerio.’

  About to erase the messages, she realised there had been a third call in her absence. ‘It’s Jack. Did you listen to the news? I can’t talk now but I’ll be in touch later.’

  Rose knew he used the word later in the local way. It might mean this evening or any time during the next month. Am I up to returning these calls? she wondered, then decided she might as well in case people rang back when she was in bed. She longed for another early night and couldn’t understand why she was so tired lately.

  Stella answered on the second ring as if she had been hovering by the phone.

  ‘I got your message,’ Rose began.

  ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘About Jenny? Yes.’

  ‘Isn’t it awful? What on earth can have happened?’

  Rose wished Stella hadn’t bothered to contact her if all she wanted to do was speculate.

  ‘And poor Maddy. She was the last one to see her alive. And to think she seemed fine when she left here.’ Rose assumed she was now talking about Jenny. ‘It’s hard to imagine something like that happening while we were tucked up in our beds.’

  ‘They didn’t say when she died.’

  ‘No, but it seems logical. Why else wasn’t she seen after Thursday night? Anyway, don’t let all this affect your work. You’ve got a long way to go yet.’

  Rose made some excuse and hung up. It was true that things occurred in threes: the screams, the unknown woman in the shaft and now Jenny. Jenny had certainly been knocking back the drink at Stella’s; if she had taken a walk along a cliff path she might have lost her footing, especially on the narrow muddy path. But it hadn’t been raining then, Rose remembered. Stop it, she told herself. It isn’t your problem. But something Stella had said was playing on her mind. ‘When we were tucked up in our beds.’ Surely Daniel had told her that Stella, nervous beforehand and wound up afterwards, always went for a long walk after a preview because she was unable to sleep. Rose shook her head. Stella was her mentor and an intelligent, highly talented woman. Why would she wish harm to an innocent girl? This is ridiculous, she thought. I don’t even know how she died.

  She felt a rumble of hunger. It was almost nine and time to think about food. As she opened cupboards it dawned on her that this would be her first Christmas alone. She planned to make it a hedonistic day, a day of small luxuries, and she would save her new novels until then.

  Bone weary, her limbs feeling heavy, she had decided that scrambled eggs would have to suffice, but they would also have to wait. The phone rang again. It was Jack. At least he hadn’t arrived in person. He, too, sounded exhausted and said he was ringing to warn her she would be required to make a statement.

  ‘Yes, I was
expecting to have to. Jack, does this mean what I think it means?’

  ‘Rose, you know I can’t …’

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’

  There was the slightest hesitation before he said, ‘Maybe I could arrange to interview you myself. You knew them all.’

  ‘They know each other better.’

  ‘But they don’t have your knack of seeing things that others don’t.’ This was not flattery. Rose had an eye for details, in what people said as well as in the way they looked. And she might be more formcoming with him than in a formal interview.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. I’ll let you know.’

  Rose said goodnight and returned to the kitchen where she had got as far as cracking the eggs before she realised that, without actually saying so, Jack had let her know that Jenny Manders had been murdered. She threw the shells in the bin. I forgot to invite him to my party again, she thought, then wondered how she could possibly be thinking about such a thing after hearing the awful news.

  ‘Oh, don’t, love.’ Angela Choake, now Manders since they had married quietly in Penzance register office, sat down beside her husband and put her arm around his shoulders. She hated to see a man cry, especially one who was as outwardly tough as Alec. His body was firm, his muscles taut, and his face showed strength of character. She could not begin to imagine how he must feel because she had no children herself. She had not wanted them and this was one of the reasons her first marriage had ended. She did not like to admit that childbirth terrified her and she had had no intention of losing her figure.

  Patting Alec’s shoulder she got up and searched in the sideboard, unexpectedly finding some brandy. Alec rarely drank and his mother had not allowed alcohol in the house, or so he had told her in the days when their relationship had been a secret, although not as well-kept a secret as they had supposed. Probably the brandy was for medicinal purposes. Either way she needed it even if Alec refused it.