Murder on the Cliffs (2 page)

The humble cottage of Ewe Sinclaire failed to engender the same response in me as the mysterious house on the cliff.

Hopes of stumbling upon such a grand house were partly the reason why I’d come to this remote part of Cornwall, to explore the abbey records and the great houses, churches, quaint villages, old manors, and medieval inns— anything of historical value or interest. In truth, I had far too many interests to possibly hope to study in a mere life of sixty or eighty years, but I had decided to begin here.

My family thought me mad. Why should I give up a London season for a holiday in the country? And not even for a grand country house party, mind. I’d been to plenty of those, but unless the invitation included a castle, house, grand estate, or something of historical value, they left me feeling bored, depleted, and wholly dissatisfied.

When I’d read the article in
The Times
of the lonely abbey on the Cornish coast bearing magnificent records dating back to Charlemagne’s era, I had to visit. On my own, at my insistence.

My mother gaped in horror at the suggestion.

“You’d
skip
the season to do what? Crawl through dusty old records? Daphne, Daphne, however are we to snare a husband for you when you’re forever poking into ancient things?” Shivering, she raised her eyes to the drawing room ceiling of our London house. “No. I demand you speak to your father at once. This notion of your going
on your own
and
staying at an inn,
I won’t have it. It’s not right, nor is it proper.”

Proper. I hated heeding protocol. It was nineteen twenty- eight! I wanted to shout that we’d been through the Great War and that the world had changed. Life was no longer the Victorian stringency of the past— bomb blasts and death killed the old world’s romanticism, thrusting everybody into a bleak reality. “Mama, Heidi Williams went to Crete by herself last year—”

“But she was meeting friends,” my mother despaired. “You propose to go off camping like a gypsy.” She raised her hand, signaling the end of the discussion.

Discussion, thought I, glum-faced as I left her to seek out my father. It wasn’t a discussion but a flat “no.”

I found my father where he always was at this time of the morning: in his study, preparing papers for the theater and busy packing his bag. He always had a soft spot for me, the dreamer, the silent adventurer in mind and spirit. I was different from my sisters, and he sensed the difference whereas my mother did not. My father and I shared a sacred bond.

Sir Gerald du Maurier, who loved the theater and all its theatrics, listened sympathetically to my need to escape this particular London season.

“But Daphne, my darling, you’re
twenty-one.
Time to find a husband!”

“A husband,” choked I, abhorred by the notion of becoming solely dependant on a man.

“Yes, a husband,” my father continued, observing me rather curiously. “Don’t you want one?”

I considered it.

“No, not really.”

He lifted a startled brow. “But it’s not as if you don’t have admirers. . . . ”

That was true. I did have, considering the circles we moved in and my father’s great and influential contacts. The “admirers” he referred to were largely oversized, overrich, divorced, or too full of themselves to care for a wife. What they wanted was a showpiece, and I certainly was not going to become any man’s showpiece.

Upon further discussion, he agreed to my plan, intrigued at the prospect of my digging up something “exciting” at the abbey.

“You never know”—he winked—“might even find something to use in a play.”

My father, an actor and stage manager, and a large bear of a man, eccentric and lovable, understood art in all of its forms and wasn’t afraid to take risks.

He waved me off with a jovial hand, my mother, still disapproving, by his side, having consented only on the basis of my staying with Ewe Sinclaire— an old nanny of hers who lived in a village not far from the abbey.

“She’s a dreadful old gossip, that Ewe,” my mother warned. “But I know you’ll be safe with her and do promise to write, won’t you? Your father and I will worry.”

“I will, Mama,” I promised, looking forward to meeting this “dreadful old gossip.”

As I arrived, Ewe Sinclaire, a large robust woman bearing an enormous bust and bustling similarities to the character of Mrs. Jennings in Austen’s
Sense and Sensibility,
huffed at the white picket fence gate.

“Well, there you are, dearie!” She paused to catch her breath and fan herself. “I’ve been waiting
all
day. What took you so long?”

I blushed, not wanting to confide I’d been drinking a cider at the local pub to absorb the atmosphere. “Oh, the train took longer than I thought.”

I lowered my gaze. I didn’t lie very well, did I? I’d have to work on correcting this failing, for the shrewd little sharp dagger eyes of Ewe Sinclaire devoured and conquered everything in sight. Wiry charcoal hair framed the merry rolls of her white fleshy face where a squat nose dwelt amongst twitching lips that seemed forever amused.

I liked her at once.

“Welcome to My Little House, Miss Daphne. My! How like your mother you look, though she were
real
pretty, Muriel Beaumont. Not saying that you’re not, but you’re different in your own little way.” Appraising me again with those shrewd eyes, she nodded, as though silently satisfied with my appearance, and grabbing my bag with a large brusque arm, she bounded down the path.

The tiny stone path was lined with all kinds of florid overgrown flowers, shrubs, and midsized fruit trees. I paused a moment to savor the wild abandon, lingering in the wake of Ewe’s windstorm, wanting to appreciate the gentle afternoon light enchanting the little whitewashed cottage with its signature thatched roof. A peaceful place, warm and inviting, even if it did appear, upon first entering, to be full of defects.

Stepping over a partially broken wooden floorboard inside the front door, I heard a tap dripping somewhere and a clanging pot sound in the distance.

“Oh, that
stupid
kettle!”

Waddling into the first room on her left, Ewe pushed open the door with an almighty shove. “Here’s your room. There’s the lounge and kitchen over there. I’ve got a small parlor, too,” she said, and nodded, proud, dumping my bag on the tiny framed bed. “Not much room in here, but you’re no snob- nose from what I’ve heard, are ye?” Her keen eye interrogated me. “Bookish type by the looks of it and you’re pretty, which is a good thing, for it’s not nice for a girl to be ugly or
plain,
as they used to say. Or was it unhandsome? Handsome! Why ever did they use that word for a woman when it belongs so obviously to men?”

I smiled. I could see the days ahead . . . no escape from the ram-blings of Ewe Sinclaire’s mouth until she fell asleep. Did she wake talking, too, I wondered?

Hovering at the door after instructing me to wash and change for tea before dinner, she asked me how long I intended to stay.

“Well, you can stay as long as you want or as short, if you fancy. I don’t mind. I don’t really
do
anything. I used to do things, useful things in the community, but now I’m practically a . . .” she considered at length, “
busybody.
Yes, that’s what I am. I just go around and drink tea all day. Busy myself in other’s affairs because they’re a great deal more interestin’ than my humdrum old life.”

“Did you ever marry?” I thought to ask as we sipped tea in her tiny parlor laden with everything lace: lace curtains sweeping back from the murky panes of the two cottage windows, lace borders sewn around photograph frames, lace doilies on the coffee table and skinny mantelpiece, and lace- edged cushions on the three- setting burgundy couch she confessed had been a splendid buy from the proceeds of Treelorn Manor. “Did you ever marry, Mrs. Sinclaire?” I repeated the question, since she seemed to have drifted off into a world of her own.

“Oh, bless ye, dearie,” she squawked. “
Me?
Marry? Who’d marry a silly duck like me? Tho’ there was one or two fishes . . . but they slipped away into the moonlight. Married other girls. I got left on the shelf. Not that I mind— I’ve seen too many
disastrous
marriages to care— if a man weren’t man enough to take on Ewe Perdita Sin-claire, then that was his fault. Not mine.”

I set down my tea, examining the faces of the children in her photographs.

“Oh,” she beamed, “they’re my sister’s.
Angels,
aren’t they? They’re like my own and they come to visit from time to time. My sister married a good fellow of Dorset— he works in a men’s store, a manager really— and my sister and he have a charming little place of their own in town with their two angels.”

“Any other family?”

She reflected, an unusual serious shade pulling over her merry eyes. “Yes. Always. I’ve been a nanny since I were eigh teen years old. Every house I’ve served . . . every child I’ve reared . . . they’ve been my family. That’s what we nannies are like. We
become
part of the family. It’s just how it is.”

“But you’re retired now?”

“A retired busybody,” she chortled, staring into the cracks of her ceiling. “But what interests me, Miss Daphne du Maurier, is why are you really here? You can’t expect me to believe a young gel as pretty and as connected as you would bury herself down here for the holiday unless you intended to meet a young man?”

The question hung in the air, her incessant winking compelling me to snort. “No! You’ll find I’m not like the others. I’m different. My parents can’t believe I want to be here, rummaging through old abbey records instead of ensnaring a husband. Husband! Who’d want a man? They all expect servitude and I have too much to accomplish to be trapped in a prison.”

“Ha!” Ewe exploded. “When love takes ye, dearie, it will take you with a
big fall
. Mark my words now, but you enjoy yourself while you’re here, under my roof, delving into these abbey records of so much interest to you. But beware, you never know what lies around the corner within these silent parts.”

I should have heeded her words.

However, the following day I blindly set out, early, before she rose, in search of the first glimpse of the ancient abbey.

I walked through the village green and into the woods, a luxuriant forest bearing new green leaves heralding the spring, the bark smelling of fresh rain, rejuvenating and tantalizing to the nose.

Discovering an ancient path by a gigantic cypress, I trudged my way through the thick shrubbery and out toward the sea.

I hadn’t expected Ewe’s home to be so close to the sea. Hidden on the borders, resting beside the village green, the cottage reminded me of the one in the fairy tale
Hansel and Gretel
. It possessed a quaint aura about it and I knew I’d love living here for a time.

No signpost existed for the abbey. I half hoped an old piece of timber nailed to a tree would guide my way, but the roaring ocean invited, and grinning, I abandoned my search for the abbey and headed toward the spiraling cliffs. Down and down I went, the windswept long grass tickling my legs, and eventually, I made it to the beach.

There was something very soothing about a stroll on the beach, the rush of the water about my ankles. I’d just jumped at a sudden wave when I heard the scream.

It was the scream that led me to Padthaway.

Though I’d accompanied Lianne to that great house and delivered the bad news on my meander back to Ewe’s, I still questioned whether the event had actually transpired. They say shock takes hold of you, and dazed, I stumbled into the village, shivering at the remembrance of that beautiful face resting in the silent repose of death.

“Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ewe remarked, asking me if I preferred cucumber to ham or egg for noonday sandwiches.

I sat down on the stool inside her kitchen.

“What? Find a dead body?”

“Actually, I did,” I heard myself say.

Chuckling, merry, she shook her head. “Ye mother said you were a dreamer. Dear girl. There’s not been a dead body found here in Windemere since 1892, when Ralph Fullerton, a sailor, was found washed up in the cove. ’Twas a horrid sight by all accounts. Bloated up like a puffer fish!”

“Ewe, I did
really
see a body today.”

“And you know,” Ewe went on in her blithe fashion, “he stunk out the church for a whole week ’cause that’s where they carted him before burial. There’s an account of it in the abbey. You should look it up if you’re interested in bodies.”

“I daresay I will,” I sighed like a heroine in a melodrama before sliding out of my seat and placing my hands firmly on her shoulders. “Ewe, please
listen
to me. This is no fabrication. A young girl and I found a body out there . . . the body of a woman, washed up on the beach.” I paused, my face no doubt a visible white.

Comprehension slowly dawned upon Ewe. “A body? Who? What? Where?”

“By the cove.” Shuddering, I summarized what had happened and my brief visit to the great house, sinking into the welcome support of the kitchen bench.

“My goodness gracious me.”

Slinging a tea towel over her ample neck, Ewe shepherded us both to the parlor. “My, my, this requires more than a
cup of tea,
I reckon. Glass of sherry?”

Without waiting for my answer, she saw that I was settled, reminiscent of a doting grandmother, and raided the tiny glass cabinet on the opposite wall where she displayed her finest few precious pieces of china. Taking out the crystal decanter and two matching, highly polished glasses, she poured the drink and we sipped in silence.

“Victoria Bastion . . .” Ewe murmured, meditative. “Drowned, do you think?”

I tried to recall the details of the body. “She
seemed
intact. . . .She might have fallen from the cliff and broken her neck.”

“Were there bruises about her neck?”

“Not that I saw. She just looked beautiful, even in death. And it can’t be suicide for why would she give up,” I blushed, “a handsome fiancé, a
magnificent
estate soon to be hers, and—”