To Perish in Penzance
Read To Perish in Penzance Online
Authors: Jeanne M. Dams
Table of Contents
The Dorothy Martin Mysteries
THE BODY IN THE TRANSEPT
TROUBLE IN THE TOWN HALL
HOLY TERROR IN THE HEBRIDES
MALICE IN MINIATURE
THE VICTIM IN VICTORIA STATION
KILLING CASSIDY
TO PERISH IN PENZANCE
SINS OUT OF SCHOOL
WINTER OF DISCONTENT
A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO
THE CORPSE OF ST JAMES'S
MURDER AT THE CASTLE
A Dorothy Martin Mystery
Jeanne M. Dams
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First published in the United States of America in 2001
by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.
This eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2001 by Jeanne M. Dams
The right of Jeanne M. Dams to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0098-3 (ePub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
Since I have used typical Cornish names for many of the characters in this book, I must stress all the more strongly that the only character who remotely resembles any real person is Lord St. Levan. Mentioned in passing, he really is the head of the St. Aubyn family and suzerain of St. Michael's Mount.
The Landscape, on the other hand, is as real as I can make it, and all the hotels, pubs and restaurants, and so on, really exist, though the antique shops are fictitious. Moreover, though I've barely scratched the surface in describing Cornwall's smuggling history, such details as I have given are accurate.
My version of the Mousehole legend is based on the charming book
The Mousehole Cat
by Antonia Barber, delightfully illustrated by Nicola Bayley.
S
EPTEMBER
in England can be quite a lovely time of the year. The roses pretend that June is only just past, the trees cling to their green summer drapery, the flower beds delight both eye and nose with their extravagant profusion. Days have grown a bit shorter, true, but twilight lingers long in sweet, gentle melancholy, and when night comes, the air is still soft.
On the other hand â¦
“If it rains for another five minutes, I am going to go stark, raving mad!” I threw my book on the couch beside me, startling Esmeralda, my British blue, out of my lap. She skittered over to the hearth rug where Samantha lay dozing and cuffed her on the ear. Samantha, who is half Siamese, uttered sounds indicating she was being killed (diva fashion, dying on a high E-flat) and joined battle.
“Ah,” said Alan placidly, shifting in his easy chair and turning a page of the
Evening Standard.
“In that case, I'd best ring up the asylum and arrange for you to be admitted straightaway. The
Standard
says rain for the next four days at least.”
“Alan, for pity's sake put down that paper and talk to me. Quite honestly, if I sit here any longer listening to that miserable rain, I'm going to lose my temper. Enough is enough, and a week of steady rain is far too much. I'm going stir-crazy.”
“Anything you say, my love. What would you like to talk about?”
There are certain characteristics that even the best of men share with their less pleasant brothers. They won't ask directions, they can walk right past a mess without seeing it, much less cleaning it up, and they don't understand that talk needn't be
about
anything.
One must make allowances. I sighed and pointed to the
Standard
. “Isn't there anything interesting in the paper?”
“I haven't finished reading it,” he said pointedly. “Nothing in particular has struck me thus far. Politics and scandal and crimeâthe mixture as before.”
“Crime. Now, there's a subject that ought to pique your interest.”
For Alan, before he retired, was a policeman, and an exalted oneâchief constable for the county of Belleshire, in southeast England. The story of how I, Dorothy Martin, an American widow, came to live in Sherebury, Belleshire's principal town, and meet and marry the widowed Alan Nesbitt, is a long and absorbing one, at least to me. But since Alan and I both knew it, it wasn't good conversational material. Crime was much more promising.
“Not the sort of crime in tonight's paper.” He slapped it in disgust. Sam instantly abandoned her mortal battle with Emmy and jumped on the nice rattly paper. Alan stroked her absentmindedly. “An old lady's handbag was stolen in Canterbury, actually in the cathedral, which I suppose is a piquant touch. Football louts are at it again in Liverpool. Some poor soul jumped off Tower Bridge. They think he'll survive, by the way, if he doesn't die from the germs he swallowed along with several pints of the Thames.”
“No juicy murders?”
Alan moved his hand in a dismissive gesture; Sam attacked it. “Now, now, madam! Sheathe those claws, if you please. One murder in London. Domestic. A drunken brawl. Man who'd been beating his wife for years finally killed her. Disgusting, horrifying, but not what I'd call interesting.”
“No.” I shivered. Alan dumped Sam out of his lap and got up to put another log on the fire, but my cold was internal and not so easily warmed. “What a lot of pain there is in the world, Alan.”
“Pain and evil. It isn't fashionable these days to talk of evil as a noun, an entity, but it exists. Lord knows I've seen enough of it in my time.” He poked the fire expertly and then came to sit by me, draping one long arm across my shoulders. “We're very lucky, my dear.”
I snuggled nearer to his comforting bulk. “We are, indeed. I can't even begin to imagine what you must have had to deal with in your career. We've never talked about it much.”
“Most of it doesn't make good listening. A policeman's lot is not a fascinating one. Long stretches of boredom alternate with short stretches of horror. Neither aspect is dinner-table conversation. Speaking of which, are we going to eat at some time in the near future? You may not be hungry, but the cats and I could both do with some sustenance.”
I heated up some stew while Alan fed our two little tyrants, and we settled down to a homely but satisfying meal in our warm, cozy kitchen. As we were polishing off the last of the apple crisp, I broached the subject again.
“Alan, I'd be interested in your storiesâif you don't mind talking about them, of course. I know you loved your job. There must have been at least a few interesting cases inâwhat, forty years?”
“About that.” He stirred his coffee, staring at the Aga. I knew he was seeing, not a stove, but a life.
“I joined the force in the late fifties.” He sat back and tented his hands, fingertips pressing to fingertips. It was his narrative pose. I sipped my coffee and prepared to listen.
“I lived in Cornwall then. I've told you that, haven't I? My father was a fisherman. I was brought up in Newlyn, where fish and crabs are the main source of income, and I suppose the smell of fish is one of my earliest memories. My mother couldn't get it out of Dad's clothes, no matter how hard she tried.
“And she did try. She was an educated woman, taught music in the local primary school, and she wanted us and our house to be clean and neat. I was the only child, and she had ambitions for me, too. I think she wanted me to go to university, but I had no inclination toward the academic life, not then, anyway. I'd wanted to be a policeman always. I can't remember making the decision; it was simply what I knew I wanted.
“So as soon as I left school, I joined the force as a lowly constable in Penzance.”
“Penzance? As in
Pirates of
?”
“The same. But whatever Gilbert and Sullivan may have made you think, pirates are actually much less important in Cornish history than smugglers. Smuggling is an old and honored tradition in Cornwall, though there's far less going on there now. The glory days for Cornish smugglers were back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nowadays it's airports we have to watch, mostly for guns, drugs, uncut jewels from Holland, the odd piece of artâprosaic stuff. At any rate, I had nothing to do with smugglers. I walked a beat, tried shop doors to make sure they were locked, saw the occasional drunk safely home, directed lost American tourists, the lot. Not exciting, but I learned the town and the people like the back of my hand.
“Gradually I worked myself up the ladder. I was keen on my job and was promoted to sergeant rather early on, and then, when I showed a bit of aptitude for working out puzzling situations, to detective inspector. And after a couple of yearsâmurders aren't two a penny in this country, you know, the way they are in Americaâin due time, I was given my first murder case. And I came a cropper.”
I expressed suitable astonishment and waited for him to go on.
“In sixty-eight, it was. We were beginning to have our hands full about then with drugs problems. Cannabis was the most popular, and the hardest to trace and eradicate. Still is, for that matter. But LSD was growing to be a serious problem, and we worried more about it than the cannabis. So many young peopleâit was almost always young peopleâwere having bad trips and getting into all sorts of trouble. A few were badly injured from jumping out of windows, thinking they could fly.”
I nodded. “That happened back home, too, only one student died in Hillsburg. Well, a student
from
Hillsburg. He was visiting some friends in Chicago who lived in a high-rise apartment. They had a party on the seventeenth floor, and ⦔ I spread my hands.
“That, more or less, is what happened in Penzance, late one evening in July 1968. Or at least what was thought to have happened. A girl of about twenty apparently jumped off a sea cliff onto the rocks far below. No one saw her jump, and her body wasn't found until several days later, but from the nature of the injuries it was easy enough to deduce what had happened.
“We were inclined at first to consider it a suicide, but when the autopsy turned up large quantities of LSD, it looked like death by misadventure.” Alan got up and made more coffee.
“Wait, I thought you said it was a murder.”