A Cornish Revenge (The Loveday Ross Cornish Mysteries Book 1) (8 page)

  ‘It is…. believe me. But that doesn’t stop me caring about him. I can’t turn my back on him, Keri.’

  Laura Bennington was the museum’s curator, and older than Loveday, but they had become friends since their first meeting almost a year ago when the magazine covered a special geology exhibition. She was now approaching their table looking flustered. Strands of her long ash-coloured hair had escaped from her normally immaculate French pleat and her expression was worried.

  ‘I hoped you two would be in this morning,’ she said, lowering her voice and glancing round the room to ensure they could not be overheard, before pulling up a chair and sitting down.

  Loveday reached out to touch her friend’s wrist. ‘Whatever’s wrong, Laura?’

  ‘We’ve been vandalised,’ she whispered, leaning closer to speak confidentially. ‘One of our paintings have been spray painted…It’s awful. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Have you reported it to the police?’ Loveday asked.

But Laura hesitated before shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what to do. That’s why I’m so glad to see you two. If I get the police involved and this is made public…well,’ She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘We have some important exhibitions coming. If the organisers think we can’t handle security they might change their minds and cancel.’

  Her eyes were wide as she looked across at Loveday. ‘There’s more,’ she said, and bit her lip before going on. ‘It’s Lawrence’s painting that’s been damaged!’

  Loveday stared at her and then leapt to her feet, her pulse racing. ‘Can we see it?’

  ‘Of course. Follow me,’ Laura said, hurrying ahead through the maze of ground floor exhibits to the stairs that led to the upper galleries and the art exhibitions.

The local artists’ section had been cordoned off with a thick red rope and a sign had been put up that read ‘Gallery Temporarily Closed.’  Laura unclipped the rope and stood aside to let Loveday and Keri pass. The paintings were displayed on sturdy green partitions, high enough to give the impression that they were fixed walls. They stopped before two paintings that Loveday knew from previous visits were studies of some of the old mine workings around the Borlase Cliffs area. Lawrence’s brooding style was usually instantly recognisable – but not on one of them, not any more. The picture had been almost totally obliterated by angry splashes of red paint. She turned to look around her. None of the other pictures had been touched. The vandal seemed to have targeted just Lawrence’s work. Loveday shook her head and gave an involuntary shudder. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. It just felt so violent. Who could hate Lawrence enough to violate his work?

  She understood Laura’s instinct to protect the gallery’s image, but this was a police matter. Anyone capable of such wanton vandalism might could be capable of …well, anything!

  ‘Call the police Laura. You must call them now!’ she said.

Cassie was at her kitchen window and gave Loveday a wave as she pulled up by the side of the cottage later that evening. She got out of her car and walked across to the house. The kitchen door opened before she could knock  ‘Come in,’ Cassie said. ‘I’m organised for once and Adam is putting the monsters to bed.’

  Adam Trevillick was the town’s GP, and Loveday pictured him now, in one of the multi-coloured waistcoats he always wore, sitting on Sophie’s bed reading her and her little brother, Leo, their ritual bedtime story.

  Cassie looked at her friend with an expression of concern and drew her into the kitchen. ‘I’ve a bottle of wine in the fridge just waiting to be poured. You sit there,’ she ordered, pushing Loveday down on one of the chairs at the kitchen table, ‘…and tell auntie all.’

  As they sipped their cold wine, Loveday recounted the day’s events and watched Cassie’s eyebrow arch higher with each revelation.

  ‘I know Lawrence can’t be mixed up in all this, but the police still haven’t let him go. I keep thinking of that painting on the Blue Lady and wondering if there’s a connection.’ She met Cassie’s eyes and said solemnly, ‘If you know anything, Cassie, you must tell me.’

  But Cassie shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more than you, but I’m going to see Magdalene tomorrow. Maybe she’ll know more.’

   ‘Can I come with you?’

  Cassie put down her glass and studied her friend. ‘What are you up to?’

Back in her cottage Loveday peeled off her jacket and stepped out of her shoes. She had no idea how meeting Magdalene might help Lawrence, but at least she’d be doing something.

She hadn’t heard the car arrive so the knock on her front door took her by surprise. Only strangers came to the front. She opened the door and found a smiling Abbie, bottle of wine in her hand, and the more reticent figure of Kit behind her.

  ‘Just a thank you,’ Abbie said, proffering the bottle.

  Loveday raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘For pointing us in the right direction…all those sightseeing ideas,’ she went on breathlessly, ‘We would never have found all those wonderful places if we had stuck to the tourist trail everybody else follows.’

  She forced a smile, standing aside to let them come in. So much for her quiet evening in.

Kit’s eyes lit up when she walked into the cosy room ‘This is lovely. You’re so lucky having a place like this. Our apartment is dingy by comparison.’

  Loveday thought she noticed Abbie flick her companion an irritated look, then decided she might have imagined it. ‘I was lucky to find this place,’ she murmured.

Kit sank into the armchair, but Abbie remained standing.

  ‘Would you like a drink? I’ve got tea, coffee…wine. What’s it to be?’

  Kit glanced hopefully at Abbie and she nodded. ‘Tea would be fine,’ she beamed.  

  In the kitchen, Loveday opened the new box of Earl Grey and took down the mugs. She’d also been looking forward to a hot shower, but it would have to wait.

‘I see the police have identified the body in the cove,’ Abbie called through. ‘Did you know him?’

  Loveday appeared with the tea and shook her head.

  Bur Abbie wasn’t ready to give up her subject. ‘I wonder if they are any closer to finding the man who killed him?’

  Loveday stiffened, remembering Lawrence, who as far as she knew, was still in police custody. ‘Not as far as I know,’ she said stiffly.

  She saw the women exchange looks.

  ‘Do you know something?’ Abbie’s voice was eager.

  ‘No…I…They’ve been chasing a few false trails, that’s all.’

  ‘What kind of trails?’ Kit asked, her eyes widening.

  Loveday was on the point of telling them about Lawrence, but hesitated. She didn’t know these women. They were strangers to her. If they were just being nosey, then it was ghoulish.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Abbie interrupted her thoughts. ‘You obviously don’t want to talk about this…and we don’t blame you. It was horrible.’

  Out of the corner of her eye Loveday saw Kit shudder. Abbie was right. It had been horrible, but it was an ordeal that they had shared with her. She felt guilty for imagining their interest was unreasonable. ‘The police have been questioning one of my friends.’ she said quietly.

  Abbie stiffened. ‘They surely don’t think he could have done this?

  ‘Of course not. They are just ruling him out of enquiries.’

  Abbie was watching her closely. ‘So they’re letting your friend go then?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Loveday said. ‘But they will.’ She hoped she was right. She had no idea what another night in police cells would do to Lawrence.’

  By the time the women left Loveday’s appetite had returned and she cut herself a chunk of blue cheese and put two oatcakes on the plate, poured herself a glass of chilled Chardonnay and took the supper back through to the sitting room. Something was bothering her. She was trying to remember what it was, but she knew forcing the issue was hopeless. It would come to her when she was least expecting it. She had to find out why the police were still questioning Lawrence.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Bentine’s property was impressive. Loveday gave an appreciative whistle as Cassie’s big green four-wheel-drive crunched up the gravel and came to a halt by the front door. The place looked deserted.

‘I think she’s out,’ Loveday said.

  But Cassie frowned. ‘No. She knows we’re coming. I rang her this morning.’

  As she turned off the engine the front door opened and Magdalene came to meet them, leading them back into a sitting room of antique elegance, where gilt framed pictures adorned the walls and two large cream sofas faced each other across a low glass-topped coffee table. Light flooded in from a high bay window that looked out over the front garden.

Magdalene Bentine was younger than Loveday had expected, or perhaps it was just her trim frame and fine boned face that gave the illusion of youth. When she spoke her voice was low and refined.

She indicated they should sit on one of the squashy leather sofas. ‘Now, what would you like to drink…tea…coffee?’ She glanced at the drinks’ table behind the sofa. ‘…Or something stronger?’

  ‘Tea will be lovely,’ said Cassie, speaking for both of them, ‘…But later.’ She patted the cushion beside her. ‘Come and tell us how you are.’

  Magdalene sat down and stared across the room, a far away look in her huge blue eyes. She shrugged. ‘It’s like a dream…I still can’t take it in.’

Loveday studied her as she spoke. She couldn’t imagine this fragile looking woman as the tough, successful career woman Cassie had described. But people reacted differently to loss, and Magdalene had to deal with not only her husband’s death, but also knowing he’d been murdered, although to Loveday’s mind, the woman looked more shocked than sad. Perhaps the grief would come later.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here on your own,’ Cassie was saying, her voice full of concern.

  ‘Couldn’t one of your family come to stay for a while?’ Loveday asked gently.

  ‘I have no family.’ Magdalene bit her lip and her voice trembled. ‘My father died before we left Cambridge. There’s no one else.’

It was the first sign of real grief she had shown since Cassie and Loveday arrived. But it wasn’t for her murdered husband. Magdalene Bentine was still anguished at the loss of her father.

  ‘Friends then?’ Cassie cut in quickly.

  ‘No, I’d rather be on my own.’ She jumped as her mobile phone rang. It had been lying on the coffee table as though she had been expecting a call. She made a grab for it, but not before Loveday saw the name Martin flashing up. Magdalene clicked it off quickly and beamed an uneasy smile at them, ‘Friends…’ she said with a shrug, ‘they keep ringing…I’ll get back to her.’

  Loveday smiled. Magdalene’s business was her own. But if she did have a man friend she didn’t want others to know about then it might explain the lack of grief. She wondered just how happy the marriage had really been.

  Magdalene was on her feet now. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m going to have a real drink.’ She moved to the drinks’ table and held the gin bottle aloft. ‘Join me?’ she invited.

  Cassie and Loveday shook their heads and Magdalene poured a large measure of gin into a crystal glass and splashed tonic into it. Her mood had changed and Loveday wondered if it was the call from Martin that had raised her spirits.

Cassie was making moves to leave, but Loveday was reluctant to go before accomplishing the reason for her visit. She turned to Magdalene. ‘Forgive me for asking at a time like this, but do you remember Lawrence Kemp…he’s a friend of mine…an artist.’

  Magdalene looked at her and frowned, trying to remember. Then her eyes lit up. ‘Lawrence…Yes of course I remember him. What about him?’

‘The police are holding him for questioning…maybe in connection with your husband’s death.’ The murder word was too stark to use.

  Magdalene’s eyes widened. ‘Lawrence…kill Paul…never! They can’t seriously believe that he had anything to do with this.’

  ‘I know. It’s ridiculous. I don’t suppose he even knew your husband.’ It was a shot in the dark, but she had to try.

  ‘Oh, he knew him all right. It was Paul who defended him during his terrible court case.’

  It was Loveday’s turn to stare. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cassie’s mouth gape open. Magdalene put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I assumed you knew all about Lawrence’s past…you being a friend of his, I mean.’

  When they both shook their heads Magdalene raised her eyes to the ceiling trying to remember the details.

‘It was a long time ago…when we all lived in Cambridge. There was an accident.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘A terrible accident. Lawrence had been driving and crashed his car. His passenger, a young woman was killed.’ She sipped the glass of gin, hardly noticing it. ‘It was worse…the woman had been expecting twins. None of them survived the crash.’ She touched her temple as though that would help release details of the trial in her head.

  ‘Paul represented him in court, but he pleaded guilty…death by dangerous driving…He was sentenced to eight years in prison.’ She looked at the shocked expressions on Cassie and Loveday’s faces. ‘Poor Lawrence,’ she said. ‘I could hardly believe it, Cassie, when you recommended him to me to paint the Blue Lady.’

  ‘You never said you already knew him,’ Cassie gasped.

  ‘No, it wasn’t my business to bring up the past, anyway, he’d been punished enough. If Lawrence could make a new start here in Cornwall then I was certainly not going to spoil it for him. I didn’t even tell Paul,’ she added wistfully.  

  Loveday could feel herself warming to the woman. Lawrence would have appreciated Magdalene’s discretion.

Loveday needed some thinking time to make some sense of everything. Could Sam Kitto really be putting Lawrence in the frame for a bizarre murder simply because he had known the dead man?

Back in her cottage that night Loveday made a list of everyone she knew was connected to the case and then studied it. If there were any clues here then she couldn’t see them. Her head hurt and her tummy rumbled. There was salmon in the freezer and she went to prepare it for supper.  While it was baking in foil she showered and put on her pyjamas. She deserved an early night.

  Her mobile rang as she washed up after her meal, and she made a grab for it when she saw whose name was flashing. ‘Lawrence! At last! Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine, they’ve let me go.’ His voice sounded flat and exhausted. ‘I knew you’d be worried, but don’t be because everything is fine now.’

  ‘Where are you. Do you need a lift?’ She looked down at her pyjamas.

  ‘I’m still in Truro but the police are organising a car to take me home. I’m waiting for it now.’

  She could hear him sigh.

  ‘Can we meet up tomorrow? We need to talk, Loveday.’ He suggested the same pub where she’d had supper with Abbie and Kit.

‘About noon?’ Loveday suggested.

‘Sounds great,’ Lawrence said, and rang off before she had a chance to ask any more.

The pub car park was busy when Loveday arrived there next morning. Being close to the coastal cliff path it was a good stopping off place for walkers. She spotted Lawrence’s battered old vehicle at once and pulled alongside it to park, before walking through the beer garden and around the building to the little door that led into the bar. He was sitting at a table in the furthest corner and got up, holding his arms out to Loveday as she walked in. He looked paler than usual and she guessed he hadn’t slept much over the past few days.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he said. ‘What’s it to be?’

  ‘A glass of orange juice, please.’

She watched him at the bar as he waited for their drinks. He appeared older than when she had last seen him. Fragments of Magdalene’s story flitted through her head. Loveday felt she was looking at a stranger.

    ‘How much do you know?’ he asked, putting her drink in front of her and sliding into the bench seat opposite

  Loveday stared into the glass and imagined she could see her reflection in its contents. ‘I know about the accident…and the prison bit.’

  Lawrence sank back into his seat and stared at her, his eyes questioning. ‘How…?’ he said, his brows drawing together. ‘…How long have you known?’

  ‘Since yesterday. Magdalene Bentine told us...Cassie and me, I mean. We went to see her.’

  Lawrence was watching her face intently for any sign of anger…maybe even disgust, but he saw none. ‘What exactly did she tell you?’

  ‘That there had been an accident. That you were driving. That a woman in the car with you had been killed.’

  He wondered if Magdalene had sweetened the pill by not mentioning the circumstances.

  ‘Did she tell you about the babies? Did she tell you the dead woman had been expecting twins?’

  Loveday nodded, her expression grim. A couple dressed in walking clothes brought their drinks to a nearby table and settled themselves down. Lawrence glanced uneasily at them.

  ‘Let’s walk, Loveday,’ he said, reaching for his jacket.

  They left the bar and took the rough track behind the pub that wound past ancient boulder-strewn fields and ended by the cliff path. The air was bracing and tasted of salt. Loveday zipped her jacket against the wind, plucking at strands of dark hair that had blown across her face.

  ‘This is quite a place,’ he said, his eyes narrowing as he took in the expanse of wild terrain. The sea was to their right, waves crashing noisily over the rocks below. Suddenly Bentine’s body was there again in her mind, a ghoulish image on that shingle beach. She looked away, trying to shut out the sea and the awful recurring horror it provoked.

  Lawrence was still tracking the horizon, his eyes narrowed against the wind. ‘Did you know it was Paul Bentine who represented me in court?’

She nodded.

‘I was at Borlase the night he was killed.’

  Loveday stopped in her tracks, and looked up, staring at him. Had she heard right? He couldn’t have been at Borlase that night…he’d been with her at the gallery in St Ives…at his exhibition. That’s what she had told the police. But Lawrence had arrived late…She remembered how moody and distant he had been all evening.

  Her eyes never left his face. ‘You didn’t kill him, Lawrence! Tell me you didn’t kill him!’

  Lawrence let out a gasp. ‘Of course I didn’t kill him! I didn’t even see him that night.’

  ‘Then why…?’

  ‘It’s a long story, but…in a nutshell, Bentine had been blackmailing me.’

The path was close to the cliff edge and Lawrence picked up a stone and hurled it out into the surging sea.

  ‘There was a letter,’ he went on. ‘Someone pushed it through my door. I thought it was from him.’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘It said if I didn’t want my past to be made public then I had to meet the sender at the pub at Borlase that evening. I wanted to finish this thing with Bentine once and for all, so I went along. I sat there for half an hour nursing a pint, but no one turned up to meet me.’ He shrugged. ‘So I left.’ 

The wind whipped at Loveday’s hair. ‘I don’t understand. What thing with Bentine?’

Lawrence zipped his jacket to his chin and turned up the collar, watching the waves cresting as they hit the rocks below.

  ‘After prison, I came to Cornwall to start a new life. Nobody knew me here - and that’s how I wanted it. I changed my name.’ He looked at Loveday. ‘I’m Lawrence Kennet.’

  She swallowed as he described his meeting with Cassie on the beach at Marazion.

‘Anyway, after that she put some more work my way…painting a picture of the Bentine’s boat for one, although, at the time, I’d no idea it had anything to do with Paul Bentine. As far as I knew it was a commission from a local businesswoman, Magdalene Carruthers.

‘The Blue Lady had a mooring down at Helford Passage at that time and I was doing the preliminary sketch from the beach when someone came up behind me. It was Bentine.

There was a large boulder on the path ahead and they sat on it.

  ‘Bentine was threatening to blackmail me, Loveday.’ He said flatly. ‘He was quite blatant about it…said I could be useful to him. He was smiling…he said he could go to the police and tell them everything any time he wanted.’

  Loveday’s brows creased. ‘I don’t understand. How could he blackmail you about something the police already knew?’

But Lawrence smiled grimly and shook his head. ‘The police didn’t know everything.’ He looked up at her, the strain etched on his face. ‘You see, it wasn’t me who crashed the car that day. I wasn’t even there.’

  Loveday’s mouth dropped open, but she did not interrupt him.

  ‘It was Anchriss,’ he said softly, ‘My wife.’

  Lawrence had never mentioned a wife.

  ‘She’d been drinking,’ he continued softly. ‘Normally she never touched the car when she was drinking, but this was an emergency. Meredith Teague – she and her husband, Brian had the cottage next door – came hammering on the door. She was in labour…the babies were coming and she was all alone. She was panicking and begging Anchriss to drive her to hospital.’

  He spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘…And the rest is history. I was out in the woods sketching and heard the bang. Anchriss had been thrown clear and was hardly scratched…but Meredith. I told Anchriss to get off home and call an ambulance. Everyone just assumed that I was the driver, and I didn’t tell them any different.’