A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery (21 page)

“I doubt it, but if he does, he’ll blame Wilkes.” Or Aunt Nell. “Not you. Now, let’s hear what you really saw last night.”

Mrs Rosevear sat down at the table and waved Megan to a chair. “Sorry about the mess, I’ll deal with it later. I feel simply terrible about accusing Nick Gresham. It’s no excuse, but Stella was so adamant … We were all too horrified to think straight.”

“Let me briefly recap, Mrs Rosevear,” Megan said, “to make sure I’ve got it straight. You withdraw without reservation your statement that you saw Nicholas Gresham stab Geoffrey Clark. When you entered the studio, immediately behind Stella … Weller, you saw—looking past her and Mrs Trewynn—Gresham standing or kneeling beside the prone body of Clark. On and around the body was a good deal of something bright red with a sheen, which you assumed to be fresh blood.”

“Assumed to be? You mean it wasn’t blood? Or wasn’t fresh? It certainly wasn’t the colour of dried blood. What was it?”

“I’m not allowed to answer that sort of question, Mrs Rosevear, but I’ll remind you that Clark was a painter.”

“Paint! No, more likely that ink he uses for the adverts.”

“You have some technical knowledge of painting?”

“Impossible not to, with the company I keep. But actually, I wanted to go to art school. I passed my School Certificate just after D-Day, though, so I went into the Wrens, still hoping to study art after the war. That’s where I met Doug. He was in the Navy. We got married as soon as we were both demobbed. I’d never had anything to do with farm life and I stupidly believed I’d have plenty of time after feeding the chickens at least to dabble in painting.”

“You were always either too busy or too tired.”

“Or both. Doug’s mother had died several years earlier. His sister was engaged and only too anxious to escape. Everything Doug’s father considered woman’s work landed on my shoulders, and he was dead set against modern inventions. Doug did manage to get him to buy a tractor when the carthorses were on their last legs. But even when the mains electricity came, he swore we couldn’t afford a washing machine or hoover, let alone a deep-freeze for garden stuff. He’d go on and on about not wasting the cupboard full of jars his wife had always used to preserve fruit until I could have killed him. You’re not married?” She glanced at Megan’s left hand.

“No.”

“Well, if you ever feel the urge, make sure you meet your future in-laws before you commit yourself.”

Megan wasn’t learning anything about the murder, but finding out what made a suspect tick was often useful. Besides, Scumble had told her to apply a sympathetic womanly touch. Doubtless he’d expect her to offer to help with the washing-up, but she had to draw the line somewhere. “Sounds like good advice,” she said.

“I wish someone had given it to me! When he died, we found out he’d made out very nicely, thank you, during the war, what with importing food being so difficult. After we’d had a bit of a spending spree with farm machinery and mod cons for the house, we had enough left, with a loan from the bank, to carry out my grand idea.”

“Collecting a com—colony of artists.”

“I hoped it might help me ease into the art world. All that happened is that they created enough extra work to counterbalance the mod cons. It was when that realisation struck that I went a bit off the rails.” She gave Megan a slightly mocking glance. “I haven’t forgotten you’re a police detective, you know.”

“Nor have I.”

“You’re not writing all this down.”

“Sometimes it’s better just to listen and remember. I’ll start taking notes again when we get back to your revised statement.”

Margery Rosevear’s lips tightened. “I’m not just rambling, you know. I’m telling you all this for a reason.”

“So I assumed.”

“I know sooner or later you’re going to ask me my opinion of Geoff, and it’s no good lying about it, because everyone here knows. So I was just sort of preparing the ground, so to speak.”

“Very understandable,” Megan said soothingly, “and commoner than you may imagine. Would you like to go ahead and tell me why going ‘off the rails’ made you hate Clark enough to make us suspect you of murdering him? Or shall we polish off your revised statement first?”

“For heaven’s sake, let’s finish it! I don’t know how we got off the subject in the first place.”

“It doesn’t matter. You saw Clark’s body and heard Miss Weller cry out—” Megan consulted her notes. “‘My God, Nick, you’ve stabbed him.’”

“Or words to that effect.”

“Then you realised Mrs Trewynn was faint and you turned away to deal with that. Can you give us any explanation of why you said you had seen Nick—Gresham—in the actual act of stabbing?”

Mrs Rosevear hesitated. “All I can say is, I still have a vivid mental image of the act. If I can’t possibly have seen it, then it must be my imagination. Don’t you ever form a picture in your mind of something that isn’t actually in front of you?”

“Not so vividly I’d confuse it with reality. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never had the least artistic ability.”

“Perhaps I haven’t either,” she said bitterly, “only a vivid visual imagination and vain pretensions. I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out.”

Megan had no comfort to offer. Fortunately, it wasn’t her job to offer comfort. She went on briskly—she hoped not brusquely—to cover the rest of the amended statement, which from that point on didn’t differ significantly from the original. Then she requested, “Tell me about Geoffrey Clark.”

It was a sorry little story. The artist came out of it revealed as what Megan’s father would call a rotter, bounder, or cad, or even all three. Not that it came as a surprise, given what he’d done to Nick’s paintings.

Margery Rosevear had been badly treated, though, admittedly, she had treated her husband badly. However, Megan couldn’t help wondering whether she herself would have behaved any better had she been married when Ken turned up in her life—always supposing he would have pursued her. To give Ken his due, fickle as he was, she had never known him to chase after married women.

But her infatuation with Ken was over and done with, and she bore him no ill will. Not much, anyway. Margery Rosevear obviously still hated Clark’s guts, hardly surprising when he had flaunted his new lover under her eyes.

“How long ago did this happen?” Megan asked.

“Nearly two years. His lease is almost up, thank heaven. Oh, but that doesn’t matter anymore, of course. It’s almost a pity. I was looking forward to throwing him out.”

Two years. Megan didn’t see her as someone who would wait, brooding, until her anger reached murderous proportions. She might have lashed out when Clark first dropped her, but she didn’t seem the kind of person who nursed a grudge, feeding it with bitter memories and storing up new slights. Still, you never could tell. All Megan could do was report her impressions to the gov’nor.

She was eager now to meet Douglas Rosevear. It was pure stereotyping—where did the image come from of the slow-moving, slow-thinking, stolid farmer?
Cold Comfort Farm
, perhaps, or that wireless show with the character whose inevitable line was “Oi think the answer loies in the soil.”
Beyond Our Ken
, that was it. Arthur Fallowfield.

Whatever the truth or fallacy of the stereotype, surely driving a tractor round and round a field allowed considerable scope for brooding. Where Mrs Rosevear saw the end of the lease as good riddance to bad rubbish, perhaps Rosevear saw it as Clark escaping his clutches before he had got round to wreaking vengeance.

While Megan thought, her abstracted gaze had rested on the other woman. Mrs Rosevear was beginning to get a little twitchy. She jumped visibly when Megan asked, “Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

She wet her lips. “What—what time?”

“Let’s say between midday and four.”

“Is that when Geoff was killed? Sorry, silly question, of course it must be. I gave Doug his dinner at noon, as usual. He gets up early at this time of year. We were late today, what with everything … Afterwards, about half twelve, I suppose, I washed up. Then I worked in the garden. There’s always something, weeding, staking, deadheading, what-have-you. I was there till Tom came and said he was ready to go.”

“Go where?”

“He had crates of dishes to deliver in Wadebridge—he’s a potter. I’d told him earlier I had shopping to do in Padstow.”

“What time was this?”

“It must have been about twenty to two. He’d already loaded his crates, and it takes ten or fifteen minutes to drive down to the village. A bit more, perhaps, when I’m at the wheel. I’m a cautious driver. The shops were just beginning to open when we got there.”

“If Tom was going onwards, why did you drive?”

She laughed. “He always sits on the floor bracing his boxes against the jolts. You came up our lane, you know its condition, and besides, the bus’s springs aren’t much to write home about. On a properly made road, it’s not a problem.”

“All right, you drove to the village with Tom—”

“And Jeanette. She had to post off some sketches to her publisher. Leila said she had an errand in Padstow but she’d walk down—it’s about a half-hour walk by the footpaths—and meet us for a lift back.”

“So who was left here?”

Mrs Rosevear thought for a minute. “Just Quentin and Albert. And Leila.”

“And your husband.”

“Doug wasn’t
here
. He was out in the fields, haymaking. The forecast was for rain last night—not that Doug needs the forecast on the wireless. He’s a farmer, and was a seaman. He reads the sky and the wind. He couldn’t leave the haying, risk not finishing it, to go to Padstow on the off-chance Geoff might be alone in his studio.”

A good point, Megan thought, but all she said was, “We’ll be talking to Mr Rosevear in due course. You drove to Padstow, and then?”

“I stopped outside the shop, in Duke Street.”

“The shop? Nick—Gresham mentioned a co-op shop.”

“That’s it, a real cooperative. They sell everyone’s creations and take it in turns to staff it. Even Quentin does his day—he’s there now—though it’ll be a miracle if he has anything to sell in this century.”

Megan raised her eyebrows.

“He’s working on a massive granite sculpture, ‘working’ being a euphemism to keep the allowance coming from his rich aunt. Even if he ever finishes it, which I doubt, he’ll have a hell of a time moving it, and it couldn’t possibly fit into the shop.”

“Is Miss Weller part of the cooperative?”

“Yes. Geoff isn’t—wasn’t.”

“He didn’t help with the co-op, and he had the bungalow and his own gallery.”

“His own car, too.”

“Did people resent it?”

“Envy, certainly. Not resent. He earned them by his own efforts. Advertising pays well. He was clever enough to make sure he kept all the rights, too, so when the brewery came up with the contest idea, they had to pay him to make the changes.”

“Rights? Contest? You’ve lost me.”

“Sorry. You can’t be interested in all this.”

“I am. One of my instructors at the Detective Training School was very keen on ‘Know your victim.’” Megan had been lucky to get into the training, as officially there was no such thing as a woman detective in the Metropolitan Police. Come to that, she had been lucky to be one of the few WPCs seconded to the CID in the first place, even if it had led to her meeting Ken.

She was lucky that CaRaDoC was not so hidebound, but CaRaDoC was also lucky to have her. Never in a million years would Scumble have drawn so much information from Mrs Rosevear as had the “sympathetic womanly touch.”

Mrs Rosevear explained about the rights of an artist in his own work. “As for the contest, it’s informal word-of-mouth, not advertised, but every time Geoff comes—came up with a slightly altered picture, the brewery gave a prize to whoever found the most differences. Like one of those puzzles for children.”

“Clever! A crate of beer, I expect. Let’s see, you, Jeanette Jones, and Tom Lennox—Who was on duty at the co-op shop yesterday?”

“Oswald.”

“Did Leila meet you?”

“Yes, she was at the shop at about quarter past four when Tom came back to pick us all up. I don’t know what time she reached Padstow, though.”

“You arrived before two and didn’t leave till four fifteen. That’s quite a long time for shopping in a village the size of Padstow.”

“I like to walk along the quays and watch the boats and the people, especially the children. We’ve never had any. Perhaps that’s another reason why I had my fling—out of frustration, that is, not hoping to get pregnant with another man’s child! I suppose when I started gathering artists, I had a subconscious idea they might take the place of children, as well as inspire me. But though they’re childish at times, they’re no substitute, as I should have known.” She sighed. “But you don’t want to listen to me psychoanalysing myself. Where were we?”

“Let’s go back to when you stopped the mini-bus outside the shop.”

“Jeanette and I got out and Tom moved into the driving-seat.”

“He drove on? And Jeanette?”

“The post office is just opposite the shop, but she needed something at the stationer’s before she could post her pictures. I assume that’s where she went. I walked down to the quay and sat down on a bench to people-watch, as they call it, and to finish a library book that was due back, just a few pages. Then I went to the library to drop off my books and choose two more.”

“Before shopping?”

“Yes, I did that first because it’s uphill and I didn’t want to carry my shopping up. Then I went to the chemist’s, the grocer’s, a fishmonger, and the ironmonger. Not the greengrocer, because we grow most of our own. The shops were quite busy. Wednesday’s early closing, so people who usually shop in the afternoon were out in force. By the time you’ve stood in a few queues, a couple of hours isn’t all that long.”

Even if any of the shop assistants remembered her coming in, they weren’t likely to have noted the time or how long she was there. The librarian was a better bet. She, or he, would have to be questioned, but Mrs Rosevear was unlikely to have stayed at the library till after three, the latest time for the murder, according to Dr Prthnavi. In any case, she could have dropped in at Clark’s gallery before going there, or even before sitting on the quay. Megan wished she knew the layout of the village better.