Buried in Cornwall

by Janie Bolitho

  She studied the room to the accompaniment of the clink of china and cutlery and the whine of the electric kettle as it came to the boil.

  All the furniture was old-fashioned but not out of place with the building and although the windows were small the room was not as dark as it might have been because the curtains were hung well to the sides of the windows and did not cover the panes. On the floor was an old cord carpet, beige in colour. It was more practical than aesthetic but overlying it were a couple of bright rugs.

  The ornaments and artefacts suggested no particular theme but were simply a random selection of pieces which Maddy liked. Rose had time to take this in before Maddy returned bearing a tray of coffee and a plate of cheese and biscuits. ‘I couldn’t be bothered to cut bread,’ she admitted.

  By the look of her face it seemed she had been crying. ‘I’m seeing Stella this afternoon,’ Rose said, trying to initiate some conversation. Something was seriously troubling Maddy. Guilt? Rose wondered, or guilty knowledge? Should she press her about Nick?

  Maddy glanced towards the window, sticky with salt which had blown in with the wind and rain. ‘You’ll be lucky by the look of it. You know Stella won’t get wet.’ Her hands trembled as she picked up a cracker and a knife. ‘Have you seen much of Nick lately?’ She coloured, hating herself for asking the question.

  ‘No. He’s not ill, is he?’ Rose frowned, unsure what Maddy was getting at.

  ‘Oh, no, he’s not ill.’

  ‘Good. Anyway, I’ve been busy, I said I couldn’t see him until Saturday.’

  Maddy jumped to her feet, knocking her plate to the floor.

  Rose was startled. Surely her harmless comment could not have caused such a reaction.

  ‘So you’re playing that little game, are you? Keeping him on a string, just like Jenny.’

  Fighting the urge to get to her own feet and feel at less of a disadvantage, Rose tried to remain calm, tried to assess what turbulence was going on within the angry woman opposite her. ‘No, I don’t play games.’

  ‘No, I don’t play games.’ Maddy mimicked her voice perfectly. ‘Stringing him along, another bloody temperamental artist.’

  ‘Maddy, I—’

  ‘Oh, shut up. I know your sort. You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself. You use people, just like Jenny.’

  So now we come to it, Rose thought. She equates Jenny with me because Nick was interested in us both. Rose was no longer sure if he was still interested in her, but this was irrelevant if Maddy believed otherwise. And Maddy was jealous, more than jealous. Was it the type of obsession which leads to insanity, even to murder?

  Something was nagging at the back of her mind, some small action that Maddy had begun but not completed as they had entered the room. But something else struck her, too, her thoughts on Maddy having been at the mine. If she felt so strongly about Nick perhaps she had tried to entice Rose near the shaft hoping she would fall – or, worse, with the intention of pushing her.

  Only seconds had passed. Maddy approached, shaking and white-faced. ‘You deserve to die as well, you’re just like that bitch.’

  Rose tried to stand but it was too late. Strengthened by rage, Maddy grabbed at her throat, her strong potter’s hands encircling it. Rose could not breathe. She knew that to panic would make matters worse. She had to fight back. Digging her heels into the base of the sofa she tried to force herself to her feet but only succeeded in sending the sofa backwards on its castors. She heard the sound of breaking porcelain. Maddy was on top of her, smothering her, but she had relinquished her grip. Her body was limp. ‘Maddy,’ Rose whispered. ‘Oh, Maddy.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ she muttered before sobs shook her body and she started crying noisily into Rose’s shoulder.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘That’s odd.’ Stella replaced the receiver. It was unlike Rose not to ring if she couldn’t make it. Stella shrugged, her glossy black hair fell forward. Well, it wasn’t the end of the world if something more important had cropped up.

  Having already arranged to take the afternoon off she decided to go out anyway. The rain seemed to have stopped at last. Downstairs in the gallery her assistant was talking to a potential customer. Stella stopped to chat, hoping that the presence of the artist herself might help clinch the sale. With a smile she said goodbye and stepped out into the narrow, winding street. To err on the safe side she was wearing a shiny black raincoat and carried a folding umbrella in her bag. She made her way down towards the harbour, taking pleasure in window-shopping, stopping to stare into one of the bakers’ as she tried to decide if she was hungry. Stella believed people ought only to eat when they felt like it, not at regulated times. The smell of hot pasties was tempting but she knew she would not manage a whole one, not even a small one. Her stomach had been in knots for days.

  Like Rose, she appreciated the individuality of the shops, all of which were small. There was none of the impersonality of the chain stores which offered the same goods in every town.

  Stella almost tripped on the cobbles as she passed Maddy’s place. She was still trying to work out how the girl had managed to be at all successful. Surely there was a limited market for the goods she sold, even the ones she made herself. Seeing a figure behind the counter she was about to wave when she realised it wasn’t Maddy. She carried on until she came to the lifeboat station where she stood staring at the sand and the sea, wondering how it would be possible to bear it if she was ever to be parted from such beauty. A few minutes later she turned left, having decided to visit the Tate Gallery where there was a new exhibition. According to the newspapers the gallery had attracted literally millions of people to the area and she had to admit that the design of the building was terrific. Inside, if you stood to one side of the concave semicircular glass frontage, the bay was reflected in the glass opposite, as had been the architect’s intention. Visitors took pictures of this but Stella doubted if they would show the full effect of the architecture.

  Engrossed in the paintings of an artist unknown to her, she remained in the gallery for an hour and a half. As she left, she glanced back at the white edifice of the gallery which many people had so wrongly predicted would fail.

  Crossing the road she stepped down on to the fine, white sand. Her low heels sank into its softness and left tracks, the indentations of which were far larger than the size of her boots. Only when she reached the tide line were her footsteps reduced to normal dimensions as they stretched out behind her in the wet sand. A slight breeze ruffled the surface of the water but any surfers would have been disappointed that day. The frills of spray were only inches high. Despite the clarity of the air a vague headache lingered, the after-effects of last night, she thought. She and Daniel had sat down over a meal she had cooked with care and an expensive bottle of wine and talked out their differences. There was much that had needed to be said. Daniel had not previously understood the depth of the pain he had inflicted by his affair with Jenny. He had, he realised, been a fool to admit it, but it was over by then and he had wanted to tell Stella himself rather than have her hear it from another source. He and Jenny had been extremely careful, but that did not guarantee secrecy in a community where everyone knew each other.

  Stella and Daniel had come to an agreement. They had sworn to try to put the affair behind them. But one thing was certain, it must not become known to the police. They would stick to the story that they had not been apart after the last guests had left the gallery. There was little chance that anyone could break their alibi. Stella had not passed a soul that night and there were certainly no people out on the cliffs. She smiled and dug the toe of her boot into the damp sand before turning and walking back up the beach.

  We need to get away, she decided. Rarely did she and Daniel leave Cornwall and then usually not together. One or other of them made infrequent visits to a city if they were showing their work but they had not had a holiday for many years. The trouble is, she thought, this county of mine makes you that way. It wea
ves its spell, making you feel that you can’t leave the place. She knew many outsiders who had to return time and time again, most of whom had ambitions to retire to the area. The trouble was, what was there to go away for? No scenery could be better, no beaches more beautiful, no coastline more spectacular. And where else could you be so at peace? But that was just what was lacking at the moment, and Stella needed peace badly.

  She turned to look back at the white specks of gulls drifting on air currents high in the sky. Then she walked on, the incoming tide following slowly on her heels as it swept up over the sand.

  There was still no answer from Rose when she telephoned again, only her cheerful voice on the answering machine, but Stella felt certain that she wouldn’t have forgotten their arrangement. Did she suspect something and prefer to keep out of the way? Rose Trevelyan was too observant for her own good, Stella thought. Perhaps she ought to find out just how much she knew. Telling Daniel she was going out in the car and she wasn’t sure how long she’d be, she had to repeat herself. Working away at his sculpture, he hardly acknowledged her existence but Stella was not annoyed. She reacted in much the same way if she was disturbed. They would be all right, their marriage was back on solid ground and she intended it to remain that way.

  Jack and his team began to feel they were losing impetus. As the days passed they found that tongues were loosened, that people were not quite so reticent once they knew they were not the ones under suspicion. But instead of finding themselves nearer a solution, they merely discovered how many people had had cause to dislike Jennifer Manders. Not, they claimed, because she was unlikeable, far from it, it was agreed that she was good company, fun to be with, but her morals were a little questionable. And now it had been decided that Rose Trevelyan might hold the key. Her involvement appeared to be with not one, but both the corpses and, albeit inadvertently, she had led them to the first woman’s burial place.

  During that afternoon a detective sergeant tried Rose’s number on six occasions but only got the answering machine. He did not leave a message. Inspector Pearce heard him grumbling to himself about people never being where you wanted them to be. Jack recognised the number on the display on the telephone. ‘No luck?’ he inquired, placing a file on the desk.

  ‘Been at it since just before lunch.’

  Jack frowned. ‘Leave it with me.’

  It was the sergeant’s turn to frown. He had heard rumours that Jack and Mrs Trevelyan had once had a thing going; for all he knew they still did.

  Jack glanced at the large round clock on the wall. Four thirty and daylight had long faded. Returning to his office he tried the number himself with no result. Then he left the building, shrugging his arms into his coat as he did so. His mind turned to the statement Alec Manders had made. What sort of a father was he to have virtually ignored Jenny in the years when it mattered, to have allowed his own mother, rather than the girl’s, so much say? Jack had wondered about that. Renata Manders had disappeared, that much was common knowledge, and with another man. But Jack’s suspicions had proved groundless when he had asked to see the marriage certificate and the divorce papers.

  It had crossed his mind that the woman in the shaft might have been Renata. If she and Manders had not been married but had only lived as man and wife, there would have been no need for Manders to produce a decree absolute in order to marry Angela. If he had lied it might have been because Renata had never left the area and he had used the non-existent divorce which was supposed to have taken place six years later as an alibi. Jack was disappointed when he was shown the documentary evidence which proved his theory wrong.

  Of Jennifer he had learnt little. It was as if her father had hardly known her. Despite the fact that they lived so close to one another they rarely came into contact. Jenny’s friends had borne this out. Why, Jack had wanted to know, had Jenny not gone to her father when her financial situation had reduced her to living in a squat? Alec said he did not know.

  And as for the mystery woman, there seemed, for the moment, nowhere else to turn. It was time to concentrate on the weeks leading up to Jenny’s death and probe a little more deeply into the alibis of those who had known her. It made Jack feel sick. Rose was without an alibi and she had now admitted that she had known Jenny was with Nick when he telephoned. There was no one to say she had not got back into the car and driven over to St Ives to wait for her to leave.

  Traffic was building up. He cursed at the slow-moving queue at the roundabout by Tesco’s. When he finally reached Rose’s house he saw at once that she wasn’t at home. There was no car in the drive and no lights shining from the windows. A sixth sense told him that she would not let matters rest, that she would end up in danger. He ought not to have ignored her for so long. If he had made more effort she would have confided in him or at least alerted him to her plans. Laura might know, he thought, and used his mobile phone to contact her rather than waste time by driving to her house.

  ‘I’m sure she said she was taking a day off and going to St Ives. Jack, is she in trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t want to cause alarm. ‘Do you know exactly where she was going?’

  Jack’s stomach muscles knotted. Knowing Rose she would start asking questions, would antagonise people and possibly place herself in danger. He had to find her. It was not like her to be out all day unless she was working, but as it was dark that was now an impossibility. ‘Thanks, Laura.’ He started the engine and headed towards St Ives. But which of them to approach first?

  The interior lights of Stella’s gallery were off and the sign on the door said ‘Closed’ but a spotlight illuminated a single large painting in the corner of the window. He rang the bell and waited. A man appeared in the dimness and unlocked the door. Ever observant, Jack did not miss the flinch as Daniel Wright’s eyes registered instant recognition.

  ‘Come in, please.’

  Jack followed him up the spiral staircase. By the window, staring out into the darkness, was Stella, her tall willowy figure dressed in black, relieved only by a scarlet and gold scarf at her neck. Her hair gleamed and from behind she might have been oriental.

  ‘Ms Jackson?’ He hated the appellation but in this case could not think of a more appropriate one. ‘I have to tell you that I’m here unofficially so you have every right to refuse to answer my questions. I’m trying to find Rose Trevelyan and I wondered if you had any idea where she might be.’

  ‘How odd. I’ve been trying to get hold of her myself.’ Stella walked across the polished boards of the floor and sat down, her posture as elegant as a model’s. ‘You see, she was supposed to come here this afternoon. We’d arranged to meet at two and go out somewhere.’ She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I thought she’d changed her mind although I was very surprised she didn’t ring me to say so. When she didn’t arrive by three I tried ringing her and again twice since but I only get her answering machine. About tea-time I drove over to her house but there was no one there. Do you suppose something’s happened to her?’

  Does she mean anything by that? Jack asked himself. At least this confirmed what Laura had told him, Rose had been making for St Ives. Then where the hell is she? he thought. There had been no road traffic accidents that day, at least none that warranted police attention, so that ruled out one possibility. Besides, Rose had her mobile phone. He was sure he knew Rose better than Stella Jackson did and he would have sworn that she would have let Stella know if she had decided not to come. ‘So you don’t have any idea where she might have gone instead?’

  ‘No. I suppose you could try Nick Pascoe. Other than that I can’t help. I don’t know her friends in Newlyn.’

  Jack’s jaw tightened at the mention of Nick’s name. What if it was that simple, that Rose was there with him now, and he barged in to find them in a compromising situation? He did not think he could cope with that. But he must find Rose, he must know that she was safe. It was Daniel who showed him out, now smiling and chatting easily, his relief at not bein
g questioned all too obvious. Jack decided to think about that later. Never again would he accuse Rose of meddling. Right now he was doing precisely that himself.

  In order to regain his professional objectivity he drove around aimlessly for a few minutes, preparing himself for what he dreaded discovering at Pascoe’s place. Seconds after he passed the car-park he stopped dangerously quickly, relieved that there was no car behind him. Had he seen right? Finding a place to turn he went back. Rose’s car was parked neatly in an allocated space. The doors, when he got out to check them, were locked. Then she is with Nick, he thought. Controlling his anger at the idea of them together and her lack of consideration for Stella, he drove to Nick’s small stone house. The curtains were open and as he approached the front door Jack saw a man in shirt-sleeves moving about the room. He knocked and waited. Pascoe opened the door. He was unshaven and looked a mess and he rubbed his eyes as he spoke. His breath smelt of alcohol, but not offensively so. A cigarette trailed smoke in an ashtray. ‘Come in. Excuse the state of the place.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Pascoe?’ The man seemed exhausted, although it might be the physical effects of fear.

  ‘Yes and no. Nothing serious. Insomnia, the bane of my life. I almost resorted to that—’ he indicated a bottle of gin – ‘but decided against it after two glasses. It won’t solve anything and I’ll only feel worse in the morning.’

  ‘Mr Pascoe, I’m trying to locate Rose Trevelyan. Have you any idea where she might be?’

  ‘No.’ He sounded genuinely surprised. ‘I haven’t seen her all week. She said she couldn’t see me until Saturday.’

  Jack’s face was expressionless. He was pleased to hear that but also disappointed that she intended seeing Nick again.