A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery (7 page)

BOOK: A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery
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Pearce swung round. “I can’t let you go quite yet, I’m afraid. I’ll make it as short as I can. I must read the sergeant’s report, and then there’ll be just a few questions.”

“We’ve already told Jerry Roscoe everything.”

“Regulations, madam. It’s my duty to get the information first-hand. It will be taken down and used to prepare statements which you’ll be asked to sign. The signing can wait till tomorrow.”

“I should hope so. We’re first in line, I hope.”

“Inspector,” Nick intervened, “Mrs Trewynn should be first, on grounds of age and—”


Not
infirmity, Nick. Besides, it doesn’t really matter, because I don’t see how I can get home tonight. The car’s on the other side of the river, the ferry must have stopped long since, and all the hotels will be closed. Not that I have any money with me. So I might as well stay here, where at least it’s warm. If Sergeant Roscoe will have me, that is.”

“Happy to, ma’am. The missus’ll make you up a cosy bed on the sofa in our parlour next door.”

“No need for that,” said Marge. “You must come up to the farm, Mrs Trewynn. There’s no one in the spare room at present.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Eleanor, with a doubtful look at Nick. She didn’t want to appear disloyal. “But I’m not sure—”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Eleanor,” he advised. When she had accepted the invitation and thanked the Rosevears, he added in an undertone, “You can do a bit of snooping around up there. After all, that’s where he spent his time when he wasn’t in his shop and studio. His bungalow’s on farm land. You might get a lead on who could have done the fell deed.”

“How many people live there?” she asked, surprised.

“I told you, it’s a sort of commune, an artists’ colony. There’s a certain amount of coming and going, but I should think there’s at least half a dozen or so in residence at any time.”

“Mr Gresham!” Pearce, at the counter, looked up from Roscoe’s report. “If you won’t stop talking to Mrs Trewynn, you’d better come over here.”

Meekly, Nick obeyed.

Pearce quickly finished reading the report. He asked Roscoe about facilities in the office upstairs, then sent him home to his cottage next door, not to mention his wife and his dinner. Of the men still waiting, with varying degrees of patience, by the door—Bixby had taken a couple of them with him—Pearce sent one detective to King Arthur’s Gallery, to find out how the Scene of Crime team was getting on. Leaving a detective and a uniformed officer on guard, he ushered Stella up the stairs, followed by DC Wilkes, notebook at the ready.

Eleanor was disappointed. She had hoped to hear what everyone said. She knew, though, that she was getting close to the point of exhaustion where she couldn’t concentrate anyway. It was very fortunate that she didn’t have to lie for Nick, because she’d never have been able to remember what she was supposed to say.

Would she lie for him if she had any doubt about his innocence? He was a dear friend, but murder was murder. It would depend, she supposed, on the circumstances. She couldn’t imagine … any … possible … She jerked awake just in time to save herself from falling off the chair.

“Eleanor!” Nick was there, on his knees, supporting her.

He was a good friend. She had been thinking so when she nodded off. There was something else … but it was gone.

“I’m all right, dear. Just closed my eyes for a moment.”

Letting go of her, he stood up. “Officer—I don’t know which of you is in charge—Mrs Trewynn can’t go on sitting on this grotty chair all night. She’ll drop off and break her neck.”

“I’d be all right if I was just allowed to talk to someone. Just something to keep me awake … A cup of tea, perhaps?”

“I could do with one, too,” Doug observed querulously. “I’m a farmer, up with the sun, and that’s early this time of year. And I just finished the haymaking this afternoon. I haven’t had my supper yet.”

“I’ll go up and make another pot,” Marge offered.

The plainclothesman shook his head. “Mustn’t interrupt DI Pearce. I daresay he’ll be calling for you, Mrs Rosevear, any moment. Mrs Trewynn, suppose I come and sit beside you and we have a nice chat.”

He brought over the other metal chair and dropped into it with a sigh of relief as Nick moved back to lean against the counter. Teazle woke up and raised her head to inspect him.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Weddell, ma’am.”

“Have you been on your feet all day, Mr Weddell?”

“Not to say all day, but a good bit of it.” He leant down to scratch behind Teazle’s ears and she rolled onto her back to allow him to rub her tummy. “You’ve been busy yourself, I dare say. This little girl, now, I bet she likes her daily walkies.”

Teazle sprang to her feet with a short, sharp bark, bright-eyed and ready to go.

“She does,” Eleanor agreed. “Not now, girl. False alarm. Lie down.”

“Oops, should know better than to say that word,” DS Weddell apologised. “Me and the wife, we’ve got a spaniel, Welsh springer. Loves to swim in the river, he does. You can give him his exercise just standing on the bank throwing sticks. Not that he brings ’em back, half the time.”

They talked dogs for several minutes. Then Stella came down the stairs, her eyes red and swollen. She ran across to Margery, who met her with open arms.

DC Wilkes followed her down. Weddell went over to have a word with him.

He looked at Eleanor and nodded. She hoped she was about to be summoned, but he said, “I’ll tell him, Sarge. Mr Rosevear, the inspector will see you now.”

Doug tramped up after him.

Eleanor no longer felt somnolent. Now, twitchy would be nearer the mark. She was anxious about what Doug was going to say to the inspector. Apparently, Stella had managed to convince herself that she had actually seen Nick stab Geoff. The question was, had she convinced Margery and Doug that they had witnessed it, too? Sergeant Roscoe had taken one look and backed out, sure he’d seen a lake of fresh blood. What evidence could the scientific people provide to refute such preconceptions?

Even if they did, plenty of people would listen to rumours and believe Nick was guilty, as long as the real murderer was at large. How lucky that Margery had invited Eleanor to the farm. If only she had some notion what she should be looking for in the way of clues!

Surely nothing so easy to find as the weapon, which had been left in the body. With fingerprints all over the haft, Eleanor remembered. Had Stella mentioned to DI Pearce that she had grabbed it? Or had she left the police to find out for themselves, and if so, how was she hoping to explain it?

Naturally one wouldn’t want her to get into trouble for such a mistake, especially when she was so upset by the death of her boyfriend, but if it served to divert suspicion from Nick—

“Are you okay, Mrs Trewynn? Not falling asleep again?”

“Oh!” Eleanor was startled. “No, thank you, Sergeant, I’m fine. Just thinking.”

Doug came down and Margery went up. Eleanor wondered whether she or Nick would be next. She tried to prepare herself, sorting out in her mind what were her own impressions, which needn’t be passed on unless they were helpful to Nick, and what were facts that must be told to the police, however detrimental. It was no good trying to suppress facts. They’d winkle them out, and then their having been suppressed would make them look worse than they really were.

They were bad enough. Eleanor shuddered as she recalled the viciously slashed pictures, those that were his livelihood and those irreplaceable few that expressed his dreams. In someone less well-balanced than Nick, they might indeed appear to provide sufficient motive for murder.

And, unfortunately, he had been quite sure Geoff was the destroyer.

She needn’t tell the police so, need she? It wasn’t exactly fact, just an expressed belief. No one but Eleanor herself had heard him. She wished she could consult him, to make sure they agreed on exactly what must be reported.

But that, of course, was why the police didn’t allow them to talk.

Suddenly she remembered Stella’s note. That was an indubitable fact she could hardly suppress, so she’d have to tell them Nick knew who had wrecked his work.

Margery came down, followed by DI Pearce and DC Wilkes. Wilkes looked over at Eleanor with a grin and a wink.

What on earth did he mean to convey?

She soon found out. Pearce announced, “That’ll be all for tonight. We can’t have Mrs Trewynn complaining that she was questioned when half-asleep. You’ll be spending the night at the Rosevears’, madam?”

“Yes, I think … You’re sure that’s all right, Mrs Rosevear?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Then please remain there in the morning until someone has come to take your statement.” The inspector turned to Nick. “As for you, Mr Gresham, I’ll have to ask you to accompany us to Bodmin.”

“Under arrest?” Nick demanded.

“Oh no, sir, merely helping the police with their enquiries. Not under arrest. Not yet.”

SEVEN

The Rosevears’ vehicle was a mini-bus. Judging by the effluvium, it had recently been used to transport pigs. At the best of times, Eleanor did not travel happily in a mini-bus. She just hoped she could hold out until they reached Upper Trewithen Farm. It was just as well her stomach was empty.

Luckily, even the worst Cornish lanes were an improvement on many she had been driven over in the Third World, and English drivers were less inclined to leave their own and their passengers’ fates in the hands of Allah. Still more luckily, the farm was just a couple of miles outside Padstow. The last few hundred yards, though, were over a rutted, potholed track that tried Eleanor severely.

As Doug helped her down, she swallowed a last attempt of her stomach to rebel and thanked him.

There was just enough light left in the west to see that they had stopped in a cobbled yard in front of a two-storied house. On either side ranged outbuildings of various sizes and shapes, three or four of them with squares of light, some curtained, some bare.

“Soup and cocoa,” Margery said decisively.

Her offer nearly undid the good effect on Eleanor of cessation of motion and escape from the smell of swine. She was firm with herself. She had eaten nothing but a couple of biscuits since lunchtime. If she was to do Nick any good, she must keep up her strength. She accepted.

Then she wondered whether so much liquid so near to bedtime was a good idea. Did the farm have indoor plumbing? Stumbling about in a strange place in the dark was not an attractive prospect, no matter how often she had done it in deserts and jungles. She had been younger then.

Margery opened the front door of the house and flipped on an electric light switch. She led the way into into a wide, slate-floored, dark-beamed kitchen-living room, with a huge Aga on one side, old wooden settles, and a couple of comfortable, overstuffed chairs on the other.

Following her, Eleanor said, “Mrs Rosevear, I must wash my hands before supper. And—oh dear! I haven’t any night things.”

“We’ll rustle something up. The bathroom and loo are through that door there. Light switch on the left. You’ll find a clean towel in the airing cupboard and there should be a new toothbrush in the drawer. Stella, dig up a pair of pyjamas for Mrs Trewynn. You’re nearer her size.”

Stella, drooping gracefully in the doorway, pouted. “I don’t see why I should be expected—”

Eleanor closed the door on Margery’s sharp retort. Teazle sticking close to her heels, she found herself in a white-washed corridor with two doors on either side and one at the far end. The farther door on her right stood open. At a peek, it appeared to be the farm office. On the left were a fully modernised bathroom, created, she suspected, from a scullery, and a loo that had probably once been a pantry. The latter was windowless but had a circular ventilator, the kind with a fan that revolves at the slightest breath of wind, high in the thick stone wall.

All electrically lit, thank heaven. Eleanor remembered well the pre-war days of paraffin lamps and even candles to light one to bed in the country.

Here is a candle to light you to bed
,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head …

The sinister old rhyme focussed a sense of unease she hadn’t recognised, being preoccupied with her uneasy stomach. It dawned on her suddenly that she might conceivably be in danger at the farm. Margery Rosevear’s invitation had seemed an unmixed blessing. Yet here, in the community where Geoffrey had lived, was surely the most likely place to find someone who had hated him enough to kill him.

Suppose the murderer were to realise that Eleanor was the only person who could give Nick an alibi and thus force the police to look elsewhere? Too late, Eleanor wished she had insisted on giving her statement that evening.

With her Aikido experience, she was reasonably confident of foiling most attacks from in front, barring firearms, and unarmed attacks from behind, but a silent knife in the back was another matter.

Apart from vigilance, the best course of action was to find out as much as she could about the residents at the farm. With any luck she might work out who, if anyone, posed a danger to her. Since only Geoffrey’s killer had any cause to silence her, identifying him would also serve her primary aim: to convince the world of Nick’s innocence.

Her course of action settled, Eleanor looked around the bathroom as she combed her hair. It seemed surprisingly clean and neat for a communal situation. She had never come into contact with an English commune before, though she had seen similar living arrangements in other countries. The Bushmen of the Kalahari, for instance, survived in rigorous conditions without much of a hierarchy, at least until they came into contact with agricultural communities.

However, in individualistic Britain, she would have expected everyone to leave uncongenial tasks to someone else. Perhaps one of the residents actually enjoyed housework.

Or perhaps the commune wasn’t any more truly communistic than the ones in the Soviet Union. Nick had called it “half-baked,” she recalled, and had also referred to it as a colony. Doug Rosevear owned the farm so perhaps, as well as keeping pigs and making hay, he ran the colony and kept its artistic members up to the mark. He hadn’t struck Eleanor as a very forceful personality, though.

BOOK: A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery
4.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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