Churchyard and Hawke (18 page)

Deeply unhappy now, Woods said, ‘If you’ve got the truth out of Peggy then you’ll know that when she thought she’d got me in a drunken stupor she went off to see that fancy-man of hers, just as she’s done many times before.’

‘So you know about him?’ Amos said.

‘I’ve known for a long time,’ Woods admitted, ‘She was sweet on him before we were wed and I’ve often suspected she only married me to prevent a scandal and stay on at Laneglos to be near him. On the night after the ball she was forcing drink on me, telling me as how I’d been working so hard I deserved it. I knew she was wanting me to pass out, so she’d be able to go off and see him. I thought I’d go along with her and pretend to drink far more than I did. Then, when she believed I was sleeping it off and went out to see him I’d follow her and catch them at it.’

‘Is that what you did?’ Amos queried.

‘That’s right, I saw them both go into the hay barn behind the stables. I was going to go in after them. . . then I started thinking of what might happen if I did. I mean . . . chances are I’d have taken a beating from Harry Clemo, him being a whole lot bigger than me. I’d certainly have lost Peggy and my job here at Laneglos, and so would Peggy - and Harry. That would mean his wife and kids ending up in the workhouse. . . and they don’t deserve that. Dot Clemo is a good woman.’

‘Are you saying they were in the hay barn and you knew what they were doing, yet did nothing about it?’ Tom’s voice revealed his disbelief.

The Laneglos footman nodded miserably, ‘It sounded as though they were only talking. I thought of coming back inside the house and bolting the kitchen door after me so Peggy couldn’t get back in again, but that would have been the end of us at Laneglos because she wouldn’t have been able to explain it away to me, even if she wasn’t caught out.’

‘It might have caught out more than your wife.’ Amos commented. ‘She said the bolts were drawn when she went out, so either someone else was having a clandestine meeting - or they’d been drawn to let burglars into the house. By bolting the doors again you might well have lost your wife, but you could also have prevented a burglary and perhaps saved the life of Enid Merryn - which reminds me . . . you once had quite a reputation for seducing young female servants. How well did you know Enid?’

Aware of the implications in Amos’s question, Chester became very frightened, ‘What are you trying to say, sir . . . that I had something to do with the death of Enid? No! No. . . I never had anything to do with her like that. Not before I was married, nor afterwards, I swear to that! ‘

‘Well somebody did - and you are my prime suspect. Unless more evidence comes in to me you will remain under suspicion and are likely to be arrested in the very near future . . . Oh, there’s one more thing. How long was it after you returned to the house that Peggy came in.’

‘I can’t say for certain, sir. It might have been five minutes, or a few minutes more, but it wasn’t long. If I’d left it any longer I would hardly have got back to our room and settled in bed before she came in. But I didn’t do anything to Enid, on my life I didn’t. . . I wouldn’t. All right, so I’ve had a good time with some of the maids we’ve had at Laneglos, but there wasn’t one of ‘em who wasn’t willing . . . and they were all pretty much of a type . . . not exactly like Peggy, but built something like her. You know . . . big strong girls. Not at all like poor Enid. No, sir, I felt sorry for her . . . I wouldn’t have touched her for worlds.’

‘Well, you can leave . . . for now, but we’ll be wanting to talk to you again, so if you learn anything that will put you in the clear you had better tell me right away, you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I will, sir. . . .’

Chester Woods was halfway to the door before he slowed . . . stopped . . . then turned around and addressed Amos. ‘When you were talking about poor Enid you said that somebody had certainly touched her . . . does that mean she was expecting when she was killed?’

‘You tell me. Do you know something?’

‘I don’t really know anything, but Peggy said some time ago that one of the kitchen-maids had told her Enid had been asking a whole lot of questions about having babies, and that sort of thing.’

‘Peggy has never said anything about this and neither have any of the kitchen-maids. How long ago was this . . . during the time Jimmy Banks was working here?’

Chester Woods shook his head, ‘No, he hadn’t started work here then, so it must have been about three months ago . . . or even more.’

Amos and Tom exchanged glances before the former said, ‘What is this kitchen-maid’s name?’

Woods needed to think for some moments before saying, ‘Connie. . . Connie Dawes.’

Leafing through his pocketbook, Tom looked up and said, ‘I’ve got no Connie Dawes down here. We can’t have seen her.’

‘You wouldn’t have.’ Woods replied, ‘She left soon after that young London thief came to work here. She’d got herself pregnant and although she managed to hide it for a long time, eventually she couldn’t stop it from showing, so Miss Wicks got rid of her.’

Leaning back in his chair, Amos expelled his breath in disbelief, ‘What sort of a house is this?! Are there any servants at Laneglos who are not either having affairs with each other, or getting themselves pregnant?’

‘It’s no worse than any other big house, sir.’ Woods said, ‘and you can’t put all the blame on the servants. If a man-servant gets a maid pregnant he’s usually made to marry her. When there’s no marriage and the maid leaves, then it might be that the father is a lad from the village, but it’s far more likely to be someone in the family of the house who is responsible. Mind you, when that happens the maid’s likely set up for life and won’t need to think about going out to work again. The master of the house will see she gets money enough to keep both her and the child - and if there’s some man willing to marry her and take responsibility for the both of them the gentry can be very generous. There’s more than one publican hereabouts who owes his living to some gentleman’s bastard.’

‘Do you think that someone in the family, or a family friend, was responsible for getting this kitchen-maid pregnant and where will I find her, is she living locally?’

‘I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, sir, but you can be sure Miss Wicks does.’

Flora was able to confirm that Connie Dawes had returned to her former home in a remote cottage close to the village of North Hill, on the eastern fringe of Bodmin Moor where her widowed mother earned a meagre living washing and ironing clothes for a few busy wives of farmers in the area. In reply to Amos’s question the Laneglos housekeeper refused to speculate on who might have been responsible for the kitchen-maid’s condition.

Amos decided he would pay a visit to Connie Dawes the next day, leaving Tom to return to Laneglos and interview the estate gamekeepers. Tom’s main purpose would be to speak to Harry Clemo and confirm that his version of events corroborated the stories told by Peggy and Chester Woods, but he would interview all the gamekeepers. This would not only prevent rumours circulating about Clemo, but might possibly provide new information should any of the men patrolling the vast estate during the night of the robbery have seen or heard anything out of the norm. They were a group of estate employees who had not been questioned in depth at the time the body of Enid Merryn had been discovered.

On the way back to the Bodmin police headquarters, Tom said to Amos, ‘If we believe what Chester and Peggy Woods told us we are no closer to solving either the burglary or the murder of Enid Merryn. In fact it seems that as many of the Laneglos servants were gallivanting around the countryside as were tucked up in their beds!’

‘It’s certainly given us a fascinating insight into life in the great houses of the country.’ Amos agreed, ‘but I don’t think we’ve wasted our time. We’ll see what our amorous gamekeeper has to tell us - and find out whether Enid Merryn said anything to this Connie Dawes about the father of the baby she was carrying. My hope is that when we have collected all the different bits of the jigsaw puzzle we’ll be able to fit them all together and find we have the complete picture.’

CHAPTER 25

Amos’s journey to North Hill took him across the wide expanse of Bodmin Moor. Here ponies and sheep grazed untended on empty wastes of coarse grassland where two thousand years before men and women had lived out their short lives in the harsh and unrelenting upland landscape.

There were still people living on the moor. Hardy farmers and their families eked out a lonely and precarious existence in the extreme weather conditions which prevailed here in winter. There were miners working here too, although in recent years they had concentrated more and more on the fringes of the moor. Evidence of their present endeavours could be seen in the distance where plumes of smoke rose from tall, but for the most part unseen, engine-house chimneys on mines where men were toiling in shafts and tunnels hundreds of feet beneath the moor hacking out tin and copper ore for the mine "adventurers" and speculators who would make or lose fortunes by the labours of the miners.

Following a faint narrow path which skirted weathered granite tors, his horse eventually picked its way down from the high moor and crossed a narrow wooden bridge across a river that had not yet lost the speed it had gathered tumbling over its own rocky path from Bodmin Moor.

North Hill was a small, sleepy village with an impressive church and it was here, in the graveyard, Amos found someone from whom to ask the way to the cottage occupied by Connie Dawes and her mother. A bearded and perspiring gravedigger, only head and shoulders above the ground, looked up at Amos suspiciously and countered his question with, ‘What be wanting of they, then?’

‘I want to ask Connie about one of her friends, a girl she used to work with.’

‘This maid you’re talking about . . . she in trouble?’

Amos knew that in such a small community anything said about the true purpose of his visit to the Dawes house would be repeated, misquoted and start wild rumours circulating within hours, so he said, easily, ‘No, her friend has spoken of her and as I happened to be passing close by I thought I’d call in on her.’

It took the gravedigger a while to make up his mind, but then he directed Amos back the way he had come, it seemed the Dawes cottage was in a wooded hollow off the path that led down from the high moor.

Thanking the gravedigger, Amos went back the way he had come but before he was out of sight he glanced back and saw the man still leaning on his long-handled shovel and peering over the edge of the newly-dug grave, watching him ride away. He formed an opinion that his informant had not fully believed his reason for going calling on Connie Dawes.

The Dawes cottage was in a poor state of repair. Paint was peeling from the door and window frames, and thriving green weed was taking over the ragged thatch of the roof. Despite this, there was a flourishing vegetable garden and it was here Amos found Connie.

The former Laneglos maid looked pale and ill and when she straightened up to see who was visiting the cottage a hand went to the small of her back and she grimaced painfully. It was quite obvious she was no longer pregnant and Amos thought the baby must be inside the house.

At that moment an older woman came to the door of a small outbuilding attached to the cottage, the sleeves of her dress rolled up and strands of damp hair hanging down across her face. A few wisps of steam escaped from the doorway around her and she had a clean and almost colourless copper-stick in her hand.

‘Hello, can we help you?’ It was the older woman who spoke.

‘Thank you, but it’s actually Connie I’ve come to speak to. Let me introduce myself, I am Superintendent Hawke of the Cornwall constabulary.’

At his words, Amos was astonished to see an expression of terror come to Connie’s face and she immediately looked to her mother.

‘What are you wanting with Connie - she’s done nothing wrong?’ There was aggression in the expression on the face of Mrs Dawes, but Amos thought he also recognized another emotion there. He believed she too was frightened by his unexpected arrival at the cottage.

Their fear was something he would inquire into later. His immediate concern was with a murder.

‘I want to speak to her about poor Enid Merryn . . . you have heard about what happened to her?’

Both women exchanged glances and this time it was Connie who replied. ‘I haven’t heard anything about her since I left Laneglos, we’re too far away to get any news from over there . . . What’s she been and done?’

‘Enid hasn’t done anything, it’s what been done to her I’ve come to see you about. She’s dead . . . Murdered.’

Connie’s reaction to Amos’s blunt statement left him in no doubt that her shock was genuine. Staggering backwards until she was able to lean upon the cob wall of the cottage for support, her mouth opened and closed several times without uttering a sound before disjointed words came forth.

‘Murdered . . . ? Someone’s killed Enid . . . ? Why . . . ? Enid never did a bad turn to anyone. Who did it?’

‘That’s what I am trying to find out, Connie. I was hoping you might be able to tell me something that would help.’

‘Me?’ The fear had returned to her face again, ‘What could I possibly know about a murder at Laneglos, the house is miles away from here and I’ve been left for nigh on a couple of months?’

Her manner puzzled Amos. She was obviously very shocked about the death of Enid but he did not think it was the murder of the Laneglos scullery-maid that was frightening her.

‘Shall we go inside and have a talk about it, Connie? Then you can sit down while I talk, you look as though you’ve been working too hard in the garden.’

Again there was an exchange of glances between mother and daughter before Mrs Dawes spoke, ‘She hasn’t been very well just lately. You go on into the cottage and make the gentleman a cup of tea, Connie . . . I think we have enough leaves left from the last pot we had. I’ll be in just as soon as I’ve rinsed this washing and hung it out to dry. I’ve promised to have it back with Winnie Hodge by tonight.’

Amos needed to stoop to pass in through the doorway of the low-ceilinged cottage. The door opened into a room that obviously served as living-room, kitchen and dining-room. It was sparsely furnished with old and clumsily repaired rustic furniture, but there was a scrubbed slate floor and the room was clean.