Death on the Lizard

by Robin Paige

  Grand sport, sailing, Andrew thought. He should do more of it—and the Lizard, with its bays and inlets, its deep rivers, was the perfect place. When all this was over, he would come back here, and drop round at Penhallow, and see how Jenna Loveday was getting on, and whether she had—

  He frowned and tightened up on the jib. See Jenna Loveday? He was a fool. The lady was in love with someone else, someone who would inevitably break her heart. Even if he warned her, if he told her to beware of the fellow, she would not listen. Even if he told her who he himself was, and why he was watching Wolf (or Niels or Hans or whatever name the man had given her), it would make no difference. Even if he told her about the man Wolf had murdered, about—

  The luff of the mainsail rattled as the wind shifted forward by a point, and Andrew fell off a bit to fill it, sailing farther in toward the rocks, then putting the helm down and tacking back to starboard. Settling himself, he took out a cigarette and lit it, turning his shoulder against the wind and cupping the match in his hands. He was a fool twice—once for loving her, and once again for imagining that he could change her mind and her heart. He would stop thinking of her, forthwith. Instead, he would think about the plan he and Charles Sheridan had discussed the night before, and this morning at breakfast. He would review its details and devices, try to see where it might go wrong, or how it might be improved. He would—

  But of course, Andrew did nothing of the sort. He tried to concentrate on the plan, and failing that, on the magnificent cliffs and the booming surf and the seabirds flinging themselves joyously into the clearest of clear blue skies. But he could think of little else but Jenna Loveday as he sailed past The Manacles and Black Head, past the wireless station on Bass Point, past the light at the tip of the Lizard, and far enough out into the gray waters of Mount’s Bay to jibe and let the mainsail full out for a fast run past Mullion Island and into Mullion Cove.

  It was only as he began to occupy himself with dropping sail and the tricky business of maneuvering around the sea wall into the shelter of the cove that he was able to give his whole mind to the task at hand. He secured the painter to one of the iron mooring rings fixed in the sea wall, dropped the fenders over the side, and made sure that everything was stowed below. Then he climbed the stone stairs and followed the track which led past the lifeboat station, up the cliffside to the top and along the edge of the cliff, around Pollurian Cove, to the Poldhu Hotel. It was lunchtime, or perhaps a little past, and he was guessing that he’d find Dick Corey in the hotel pub.

  He was right. Corey was sitting by himself, a glass of ale at his elbow, greedily tucking into a fragrant shepherd’s pie. Andrew leaned over the table.

  “Mr. Corey?” he asked pleasantly.

  Corey looked up, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Aye, Corey. That’s me.”

  “Good,” Andrew said, and without waiting for an invitation, pulled out the chair and sat down. “Wolf sent me,” he said. “I’m to tell you that there has been a change in plans.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Rule, Britannia, Britannia rule the waves.

  James Thompson, 1700-1748

  Kate would not have thought that Jenna had the strength to walk, after her fright, but she was running— to the French doors, out onto the terrace, and through the garden. The blue ribbon which tied her hair had come loose and her long locks flew around her shoulders.

  “Where are we going?” Kate cried, running after her.

  “To Frenchman’s Creek,” Jenna said, over her shoulder. Her voice was high and breathless. “Don’t ask questions, Kate. And please, don’t say anything.”

  Frenchman’s Creek! Beryl exclaimed. It’s the pirate, Kate! The man she’s in love with. Niels!

  Niels? Kate thought blankly, as a branch whipped across her arm. Does she think Niels has been murdered?

  No, you ninny. She thinks he’s the murderer!

  “Oh, God,” Kate whispered. “But then who . . . who did he kill?”

  The man who wanted to go to Bavaria. Whoever that was.

  Kate’s breath caught. Beryl’s leaps of fancy were often wrong, but in this case, she had to be right.

  The path angled more steeply as they neared the water. Kate held her skirt up out of the leaf-litter and grabbed at a sapling to slow her forward momentum. The trees were thick around them, the leaves like a green vault overhead, shutting out the sky and throwing an eerie shadow, like a green veil, across everything. An unnatural stillness seemed to have fallen over the woods. No leaves stirred, no birds called, no squirrels chattered. The only sound was the rustle of their passage along the path, and the sound of their breathing.

  Then Jenna, ahead of her, stopped and put up a hand. Kate stopped, too. Through the trees, she saw the bright glimmer of sunlight on water, and off to the left, a little distance away, the outline of a sailing yacht, moored to the bank under an overhanging oak.

  “Shall I wait here?” Kate asked in a low voice.

  “No,” Jenna said. “Come with me, please.” She turned with a brittle smile. “Oh, he’s not going to hurt us, if that’s what you’re concerned about. I wouldn’t put you in danger, Kate.”

  Kate shook her head. “I only thought you might want . . . privacy.”

  “No,” Jenna replied, and held out her hand. “Actually, I need you with me to keep me true to my purpose. What I’ve come to do is painful. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it.”

  Without a word, Kate took her hand. The path leveled out and made a turn to the left, to follow the shoreline. As they came within ten yards or so of the boat, Kate smelled the rich odor of coffee brewing and bacon frying. Jenna raised her voice.

  “Niels,” she called. “Niels!”

  A moment later, a man in a gray woolen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, put his head and shoulders out of the galleyway and turned in their direction. Kate got a good look at his face. He was blond and sun-browned, and his eyes beneath the brim of his yachting cap were an almost brilliant blue. His face crinkled into a smile as he saw Jenna, but the smile faded when he realized that she was not alone.

  “Jenna,” he said, in a foreign-sounding voice. He turned to look full at Kate. They were standing on the bank, now, within arm’s reach of the boat’s mooring. He studied Kate. There was a fierceness behind his eyes, she thought, and something so cold that she felt chilled through. Then he seemed to dismiss her, as if she were of no consequence. He turned back to Jenna. “You’ve brought a friend. Well, good.” The smile was back. “You can both join me for breakfast. The coffee is ready, and there’s—”

  “No, Niels.” Jenna’s hand tightened on Kate’s. “I’ve come to tell you that you must . . . go. Today. Now.”

  He came up another step out of the galleyway, and his face showed the first signs of emotion. But it was not deep concern, or disappointment, or even regret. He was, Kate thought, merely puzzled. “But I thought we had agreed—”

  “No,” she said.

  The man’s eyes, now wary, went to Kate, as if he were considering what he could say in her presence. “Is it your daughter’s death? I’ve told you I had nothing to do with that.” His voice became stern. “It was not your fault, either, Jenna. You cannot—”

  “I know,” Jenna said. She cleared her throat, and Kate could feel her trembling. “That isn’t the reason, Niels—if that’s your name. You’ve killed a man. There’s blood on your hands.”

  “Blood?” He looked at his hands, then held them up, palms out, as if to show her that they were clean. Kate caught the flash of a gold ring. She could not be sure at this distance, but she thought it was a match for the ring Jenna wore. He tilted his head. “How melodramatic. Really, Jenna, I hardly think—”

  “The man on the cliff,” she said. “You pushed him off. I saw it.”

  His smile, suddenly vivid, showed very white teeth. “Oh, come now, my dear. You could have seen nothing of the sort. You weren’t . . . it didn’t happen.”

  “You’re right,” s
he said. “I wasn’t there. But it did happen and I saw it, Niels. All he wanted was to go back to Bavaria, and you killed him.”

  “Bavaria!” The man’s mouth hardened and he took another step up the galleyway, into full view. Kate suddenly found herself wishing that they were somewhere else. Jenna might be confident that they were not in danger, but she was not so sure. He wore a holstered pistol on his hip.

  “If you are so confident of the facts,” he said stiffly, “I suppose there is no point in attempting to argue, to make you see reason.” His eyes flicked to Kate and back again to Jenna. “What do you mean to do about it, my dear?”

  Jenna spoke with a surprising authority, Kate thought, especially considering the gun. “You have until noon to leave, Niels. After that, you’ll have to deal with the constable. I don’t want to, but I’ll tell him everything.”

  “An empty threat, without proof,” he said dryly, as if he were amused. “So. You are giving me fair warning. Is that it? Slip my mooring and be gone, or else?”

  “I am giving you fair warning. Because I . . . loved you once.”

  “Past tense, is it?” He sighed. “I am truly sad, Jenna. I hoped you would come with me, when my work was done here. We could have had at least some time together. It would have been . . . such a pleasure.”

  Jenna appeared not to have heard. “But only until noon. Do you understand?”

  His face hardened into grimmer lines. “I do. But you don’t, you know. There’s a great deal at stake here, my love, and much more to this than you can possibly—”

  “Yes,” Jenna said, and now the fierceness was all in her. “And I don’t want to know it. All I want is never to see you again, Niels.”

  There was a faint trace of feeling in his face now, but whatever emotion he felt twisted his mouth into a wry shape and brought a deep bitterness to his voice. He put his hands on his hips, the tips of the fingers of his right hand brushing the gun.

  Kate tensed, ready to flee. But he could aim and fire faster than they could run. If Jenna was wrong about him—

  But she wasn’t.

  After a moment, Niels dropped his hands, shrugged, and half-turned, taking a step backward down the galleyway. “Very well, my dear,” he said lightly. “I’m not the sort of man who outstays his welcome.” He raised his cap. “Goodbye, Jenna Loveday.”

  And then he disappeared down the galleyway. In a moment, they could hear him whistling cheerfully.

  The tune was “Rule, Britannia.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice.

  “Nothing,” said Alice.

  “Nothing whatever?” persisted the King.

  “Nothing whatever,” said Alice.

  “That’s very important,” the King said, turning to the jury.

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Lewis Carroll

  Bradford’s visit to the Helston gaol was a brief and entirely satisfactory one. The gaol was ordinarily used to confine the drunken and disorderly, and the Helston constable, Mr. Clifford, confessed to Bradford, in an apologetic tone, that he was unable to provide proper accommodation for a lady.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Bradford said carelessly reaching into his pocket and taking out a cigar. “Miss Chase is no lady.”

  “Ah,” said Constable Clifford. “Ah, yes, I see.” He accepted the cigar with a knowing look. “You’re wantin’ to have her released, then.”

  “Not at all, not at all,” Bradford assured him. “I should like to see her, alone. I shall stand surety against her escape.”

  The constable was now more certain of Bradford’s intention. “You’ll be wantin’ privacy.”

  Bradford laughed shortly. “Not that sort of privacy. Only the sort required to write a letter. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

  Bradford’s errand did, in fact, require only a few moments. The lady was so chastened by her experience in the gaol—“Rats!” she exclaimed in undisguised horror. “The place is simply crawling with rats!”—that she agreed to his demand without any argument. She sat down and wrote, at his direction, to her cousin in London, describing the box in which the letters were kept and instructing her to send the entire box and everything in it, posthaste, to Mr. Marsden, at the Poldhu Hotel, Mullion, Cornwall.

  “Very good,” Bradford said with satisfaction, watching her address the envelope.

  Miss Chase stood. “Well, then,” she said eagerly, attempting to smooth her disheveled hair. “I can go now?”

  “No, my dear,” Bradford said, with a shake of his head. “Not until I receive the letters.” He smiled significantly. “Just in case, you know, that your cousin is not able to locate them from the description in your letter.”

  Miss Chase fixed him with a silent, narrow-eyed gaze. Then, without a word, she ripped open the envelope and pulled out the letter-paper. She sat down, scratched out several words, and added a sentence at the bottom of the page before returning it to the envelope.

  “Thank you,” Bradford said courteously. He pocketed the envelope and raised his voice. “Constable! Your prisoner is ready to return to her cell.”

  “Oh!” cried Miss Chase, shrill with vexation, and stamped her foot. “Oh, you wretch!”

  “Do unto others, my dear,” Bradford said. “I shall arrange for your release as soon as I have received them. All of them.” He watched with a smile as the constable escorted her away. When he returned, Bradford put the query with which Charles Sheridan had supplied him, although he had to confess that he still did not understand why it was worth the bother.

  The constable frowned, scratched his head, and wrinkled his nose. “Corey? I know nothing about a Corey in Helston.”

  “No Corey?” Bradford asked in surprise. “But I’m told, on good authority—” He took out another cigar. “Perhaps a little incentive—”

  “Incentive or no,” the constable said, gazing covetously at the cigar. “I can’t tell you how to find a Corey when I don’t know a Corey, now, can I?”

  Allowing in a regretful tone that this was so, Bradford handed over the cigar anyway. “Where else might I inquire?”

  The constable, satisfied, tucked the cigar into his pocket. “Well, I’ll tell you. Walk straight down Coinagehall Street to the Post Office, and ask Miss Clara Standish to tell you whether there are any Coreys in Helston. She’s been puttin’ up the post for three decades, you know. If there’s a Corey living in Helston, she’ll tell you, straight off.” He grinned. “Miss Standish don’t smoke cigars, but she do like a bit of chocolate now and then. Moyle’s Confectionery, on your right, just before the Post Office.”

  Forewarned was forearmed, Bradford thought, so when he presented himself at the Post Office and inquired for Miss Clara Standish, he was supplied with ten-pence-worth of chocolate drops. Miss Standish proved to be a rotund, white-haired lady with wire spectacles perched on the end of her nose. She accepted the chocolates without hesitation, listened to Bradford’s query, and shook her head.

  “Never been a Corey in Helston,” she said definitively, opening the bag and taking out a chocolate drop. She frowned. “Mrs. Moyle didn’t have any chocolate mints, then?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bradford said penitently. “I didn’t know you had a favorite.” He paused. “You’ve never heard of a Richard or Dick Corey, who works at the Marconi wireless station in Mullion and comes to visit his brother, who lives here in Helston?”

  She put the offending chocolate back into the bag and closed it, her mouth set. “If there was a Corey in Helston, I should know him,” she said firmly, stowing the bag under the counter. “And since I don’t, there isn’t. Now, do you want a stamp for the letter you have in your hand, or is that all your business for the day?”

  “I’ll have a stamp, please,” Bradford said meekly, and gave a great deal of attention to applying it properly.

  It was too bad, he thought, that he had not been able to carry out Charles Sheridan�
��s errand. That small failure aside, however, he had certainly accomplished what he had come to do. When he dropped Miss Chase’s letter to her cousin into the post box and drove off in the Panhard—which, parked, had become the town’s most intriguing attraction—he felt he had every right to be pleased with the outcome of his errand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers which you have just been reading about; and when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, “It was a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it’s getting late.”

  So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Lewis Carroll

  Alice had spent as little time as possible with the washing up and sweeping and dusting that morning, for she was bent on finishing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in order to start reading the book all over again. She had quite forgotten Treasure Island and The Water Babies and felt that there was no book in the world quite as marvelous as Alice. So she took a packet of biscuits and an apple and clambered into the willow tree beside the cottage, where she often went to read on a dreamy summer’s day, comforted by the sound of the wind in the leaves, and the birds wheeling overhead, and the fragrance of the roses which climbed the cottage wall.