A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery (3 page)

Jocelyn was behind the counter, ringing up a sale. She nodded and smiled at Eleanor. Having completed the business, she asked, “Good haul?”

“Not bad. I didn’t fill the car, as I had to leave room for Nick and his baggage. Joce, my friend, the London art dealer, has accepted the paintings he took with him!”

“I trust Nicholas is duly grateful for the introduction. What’s up next door? I noticed the gallery closed early, and Nicholas came past with a face like thunder just now.”

“He’s annoyed because of the early closing,” Eleanor hedged. Sooner or later, Jocelyn—and indeed the entire population of Port Mabyn—would find out what had happened, but with luck not until Nick had simmered down. Though she might have told Jocelyn, another volunteer and two customers were at the back of the small shop. “His friend promised she’d be able to cover for him the whole time he was away.”

“I’m not surprised he’s annoyed. It may not be the height of the holiday season yet but business has been pretty brisk this afternoon. I even managed to get rid of that appalling muu-muu, the one with palm trees and Hawaiian dancers in grass skirts.”

“Congratulations! It’s amazing what people will buy. I must go and put on the kettle. Nick’s coming to tea. He’s going to tell me all about Mr Alarian,” Eleanor invented hurriedly, hoping Jocelyn wouldn’t wonder why Nick hadn’t told her everything on the way home from Launceston.

Fond as she was of Joce, she didn’t want her popping in for a cuppa while she was trying to smooth Nick’s ruffled feathers. The vicar’s wife wouldn’t be interested in the artist’s negotiations with the London gallery owner.

“Tomorrow’s Mrs Davies’s day for the shop,” said Joce. “Come and have a cup of coffee with me at eleven.”

Eleanor accepted and went upstairs to her flat.

Teazle was on the landing outside the front door, impatient to get in. She headed straight for her water bowl in the kitchen, the front part of the room that stretched from back to front of the cottage. The windows were open and the breeze blowing off the sea was beginning to feel a little chilly, so Eleanor closed the back ones. She paused for a moment to enjoy the view up the rough slope to Crookmoyle Point and down to the left to the inlet and harbour with their sheltering cliffs. How lucky she was that this cottage had been vacant just when she needed it!

Returning towards the kitchen, she stopped again, to study the painting over her mantelpiece. Nick had given it to her. It was one of the “tourist” pictures he scorned, but which provided his bread and butter. A little grey-brown donkey trotted down a steep cobbled street in Clovelly, between white-washed stone cottages splashed with the scarlet of geraniums in window-boxes. Eleanor loved it and didn’t care if it wasn’t high art.

She put on the kettle, and stowed away her shopping, remembering with a smile Ivy’s grave warning. Her father, Mr Chin, though born in London, was an excellent Chinese chef. No doubt he’d impressed on the children the care that must be taken in storing food.

Her smile faded as she took down a plate for the chocolate digestive biscuits she had bought to welcome Nick home. His favourites—but the present circumstances were not conducive to the enjoyment of simple pleasures.

Who was the man he was so sure had wrecked his work? Why had he done it? Could Nick find proof of his being responsible, so as to be able to demand restitution? Was the damage repairable, or would all those beautiful paintings have to be thrown away?

More important, who could possibly dislike Nick so much, and why?

Surely such destruction must be a crime. Vandalism, perhaps? As soon as he came in, Nick ought to report the damage to Bob Leacock.

She looked out of the window into the street. Nick was just crossing, from directly opposite the passage door below, thus avoiding having to walk past his desecrated gallery. He didn’t even glance that way, his gaze fixed directly ahead, his face set. Several people in the street, a couple of them local, gave him curious looks.

“
Wuff?
”

“Do you want your dinner, girl? It’s a bit early, but we’ve had a busy day.” She was opening a tin of Chum when Nick came in.

The kettle began to whistle, a wavering, rising note that would quickly become a shriek. Nick turned down the gas. “I’ll make the tea.”

“Thank you, dear. I must just grate a bit of carrot for Teazle’s dinner, and reach me down the rolled oats, would you?”

“Nauseating mess,” he said, “but she seems to thrive on it. Eleanor, what am I going to do?”

“Concentrate on making the tea,” she said sharply. “Scalding your hand won’t help matters.” Or perhaps it would, preventing serious mayhem.

“No. Sorry. I must sound very self-indulgent. When I think of the people LonStar is trying to help—”

“Nick, it was a beastly thing for anyone to do. Who is it you suspect? And why?”

Without replying, he set the teapot on a mat on the table between kitchen and sitting room. He added mugs, milk jug, sugar basin, and the plate of biscuits, and pulled out a chair for Eleanor. Too well-mannered to sit down before she did, he waited for her to finish preparing the dog’s dinner. However, he absently took a biscuit and crunched, too accustomed to the casual ways of the times to be conscious of the lapse from old-fashioned etiquette.

Since Eleanor had spent a good deal of time in cultures where no mere female would dream of touching a morsel before every male had eaten his fill, she paid no heed.

She sat down and poured. “Is it someone I know?” she asked, passing over his tea.

He stared into his mug. “I think you’ve met him. I’m pretty sure it must have been Geoff, Stella’s boyfriend.”

“The rather greenery yallery young man?”

Startled, Nick looked up with a laugh. “That’s him. ‘Greenery yallery, Grosvenor Gallery.’ A would-be Pre-Raphaelite, born a century too late. Corduroys, flowing cravats, and a velvet beret, and he spells his name the mediaeval way,
G
-
e
-
o
-double
f
-
r
-
o
-
i
-
e
, though to my certain knowledge it’s
r
-
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-
y
in his passport. His real surname isn’t Monmouth, either.”

“Why him?”

“He’s always been—I suppose you’d have to call it envious. He makes a lot more money than I do but it’s from commercial art, paintings for adverts. His other work just doesn’t sell. He has an inferiority complex or something because I can actually live on the proceeds of my work, even if most of it comes from tourist stuff. He’s always making snide comments, supposed to be joking but … You know?”

“With an edge?”

“Exactly. I don’t think I’m being oversensitive…”

“I shouldn’t think so, dear. I really didn’t take to him.”

“Of course that’s not enough to make me suspect him, but if you add that Stella’s the only person I’d told about Alarian and that Geoff’s quite likely to have popped in to see her in the gallery. On his way to Tintagel, perhaps. It’s a favourite haunt. If he came, she’d have told him.”

“And you’re afraid your prospective success in London would be enough to incite him to violence?” Eleanor asked doubtfully. She took a comforting gulp of tea.

“Violence! I’m not saying he’d have slugged me if I’d been there, but attacking my work … Well, I can’t read his mind. Who can tell what will be the tipping point for someone else?”

“Surely Stella wouldn’t stand by and let him do it?”

“No, of course not. We’ve always been on reasonably friendly terms and she’s done quite well by selling her things in my shop. Perhaps she went upstairs to the loo, or to get a cuppa or something, leaving that stupid nit in charge. In any case, I wouldn’t expect her to shield my stuff with her body against a knife-wielding maniac.”

“Good heavens no! But don’t you think it’s odd that she just walked out, without a word to you? And taking her sculptures, too.”

“He may have made her. She may have left a note, in the cash register or the studio. I didn’t look.”

Eleanor felt herself pale. “We didn’t look in the studio. Oh, Nick, what if—?”

“For pity’s sake, don’t start imagining horrors,” Nick said irritably, taking another biscuit, his fourth. “He’s crazy about her.”

“It was you who talked about a knife-wielding maniac.”

“True. I was exaggerating. I can’t really see Geoff running amok. Slashing pictures, yes. Slashing throats, no.” He didn’t sound entirely convinced by his own argument. He stood up, half the biscuit in his hand. “All the same, before I go to Padstow to confront him I’d better look around—just in case Stella left a note.”

“Nick, you ought to report the damage to Bob Leacock.”

“The police? Later.” Suddenly he was in a hurry. “I’ll be right back.”

His haste suggested to Eleanor a possibility much more disturbing even than Stella lying dead on the studio floor. Suppose she was injured, quietly bleeding to death while Nick and Eleanor indulged in tea and biscuits?

She decided she had better go, too, in case her help was needed.

Nick had picked up his rucksack from the landing and was at the bottom of the stairs before Eleanor shut her front door behind her. She was too flurried to make Teazle stay behind, so the dog was at her heels as she rushed down. Her regular practice of Aikido kept her fit enough to take the stairs at speed, but Nick had much longer legs. When she reached the street door, he was already unlocking his shop door. The bell jangled as he opened it.

Turning to lock it behind him, he found Eleanor right behind him. He was pale.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“If she needs help…”

His face turned—as Eleanor had once heard Donna singing—a whiter shade of pale. “I wish you hadn’t said that! I was thinking of my stuff in the studio. I hadn’t thought—Stay here. Keep Teazle here.”

She picked up the dog, only too glad to comply.

He strode straight past the cash register without pausing to glance at his desecrated work, let alone to check for a note. The door to the studio, behind the gallery, was locked.

Could Stella have run through, locked it against the marauder, and escaped by the back door onto the path that ran up and down the hill behind the row of shops? Yes, thought Eleanor in relief, that must be what happened. When Nick returned, looking equally relieved, she presented this suggestion.

“Possible,” he conceded. “But when would she have taken her sculptures? I’m inclined to think she just went off with him. Failing a body, let’s see if she left me an explanation.”

The cash register pinged as he opened it. He took out a couple of cheques, muttering gloomily, “I hope these don’t bounce. I’m going to have precious little coming in while I replace what’s done for. I’ve just lost four days’ painting running after vain hopes in London, too. Ah, here. Written on the back of a blank receipt. Typical! That’s going to muck up the numbers in my records. Ah well, let’s see what she’s got to say for herself.” He read it and passed it to Eleanor.

“‘Not fair!’” Nick said bitterly. “What the hell does he expect? I knew it was him.”

“Did he…” Eleanor hesitated, hardly daring to ask. “Your studio?”

“No, she seems to have managed to keep him out of there, thank heaven! I’m going to have it out with him right now. Come on, if you’re still willing to drive me, or I’ll get my bike.”

“I’ll take you. And I’ll drive. I wouldn’t trust you behind the wheel just now.”

He managed a crooked smile. “You’re probably right.”

Too impatient to wait for Eleanor to fetch Teazle’s lead, he provided a bit of parcel string. Teazle sniffed at it suspiciously, but did not seriously object to the ignominy. They walked down the hill. Nick, after moving ahead, tempered his long stride to Eleanor’s shorter pace.

Few people were about in the street. The shops were closed and Nick and Eleanor didn’t pass either of the pubs. As they came to the bottom of the hill and the narrow stone bridge over the stream, Eleanor saw a couple of smacks preparing to set out for a night’s fishing when the tide turned. Two seamen were stacking lobster pots to one side of the life-boat slipway. The air smelled of tar, fish, and seaweed, and herring gulls screamed overhead. One of the big grey-and-white birds perched on the wall of the bridge, watching Nick and Eleanor with an impudent, sceptical stare.

Out on the jetty that protected the small harbour, several figures in bright holiday clothes were strolling, watching the swells break booming against the rocky sides of the inlet. Others, more hardy, hiked the path on the south side, leading at first gradually then steeply up to Crookmoyle Point, saved from builders by the National Trust. Darkness would not fall for hours on this June evening.

Nick and Eleanor crossed the bridge and turned into the car-park. Eleanor rented a ramshackle shed on the far side for the Incorruptible, but Nick hadn’t garaged the car, proof of his determination to go to Padstow. Further proof was that he had the keys in his pocket, having kept them when he came up to the flat after parking, instead of hanging them on the key hook by the door.

With a sigh, Eleanor gave up hope of deterring him. She drove up the hill, past the Wreckers Inn, and out of the town. The lane was bounded by high banks overgrown with cow parsley, red and white campion, toadflax, foxgloves, and nettles. A resplendent cock pheasant dashed out from a gateway and scurried along in front of them, then ducked aside into the undergrowth. The Incorruptible reached the top of the hill and found its second wind.

They turned south on the B road. To their right, rough grassland criss-crossed by drystone walls sloped down to the invisible cliffs and glimpses of the boundless sea beyond, ruffled with whitecaps. The gentle breeze had turned into a steady blow from the southwest. A dark line on the far horizon suggested rain before morning.