To Perish in Penzance (2 page)

“I'm still convinced it was, but we were never able to prove anything. In the end there was an open verdict. The case was never closed, so far as I know. I used to look it up now and then, throughout my career. Turn over what we knew, see if there was anything we'd missed. Never came up with a single lead.”

“What made anyone think it was murder, then?”

“There were anomalies. For one thing, we never identified the girl. She wasn't local, that was certain. We circulated her description, of course, but we couldn't circulate a meaningful photograph.”

I made a face. “Fish, I suppose, if the tides had gotten at the body.”

“Fish, and crabs, and simply the abrasive action of water and rock. All in all, there wasn't much left of her face. We tried to match her up with all the missing-person reports, but nothing came of it. When we learned about the LSD, of course, the investigation slowed down.”

“Yes, it would.” I thought for a moment. “Why the delay in finding her body? I'd have thought she'd have been found right away. Isn't Penzance something of a seaside resort, with people all over the place?”

“Very much so, but she didn't go over actually in Penzance. I've misled you. The Penzance police dealt with the case because we were the nearest town of any size. She jumped, or fell, or was pushed at a place called Prussia Cove, about five or six miles east of Penzance. Fetched up in a smuggler's cave, rather a famous one used by a gang of brothers in the nineteenth century.”

“Oh, so there must be a village or something there. At the top of the cliffs, I mean. A place where the smugglers could take their booty.”

“Actually, no. A few farmhouses, widely scattered, and an abandoned hut. That's all. In fact, that's the main reason I was never satisfied about the case.”

He sat down, poured out fresh coffee, and tented his fingers again. “The weather had been wet for a solid week when she was found. Everyone was upset about it; bad for the tourist trade. Anyway, the pathologist said she'd died probably four to five days earlier. Now why, I said to myself and anyone else who'd listen, why would a girl dressed for a party go clambering about on cliffs, miles from anywhere, on a wet night?”

“Oh, she was in party clothes? You didn't tell me that.”

“Well, they hardly looked festive when she was found, but one of her boots was still more or less intact, and it was white patent leather, calf-length. Enough of her skirt was left to show that it was a Mary Quant knockoff—remember Mary Quant?”

I nodded. “Carnaby Street, miniskirts, all the girls wanting to look like Twiggy—all that.”

“This girl did in fact look like Twiggy. At least her figure did, or the lack of it. She might have weighed all of six and a half stone—that's ninety pounds or so to you Yanks—and that despite the fact that she'd borne a child, according to the autopsy, only three or four months before she died. I could never see the appeal in the starved look, myself, but a lot of chaps did. Her hair had probably been beautiful, long and blond and I suppose ironed straight before the sea snarled it. I remember she'd been wearing beads, a long strand of rather pretty, carved red ones, old-fashioned looking. They'd been strung by hand, and the string had broken, of course. The beads were scattered about the cave. Rather pathetic, that.”

“Poor child! All dressed up, and the only place she ended up going was over a cliff.”

“Yes, and how did she get there? That was the other thing. We could never trace where she'd come from or how she'd got to Prussia Cove. No car left behind, no bicycle. She couldn't have walked far in those boots; three-or four-inch heels they had. We were never able to turn up a taxi driver or anyone else who would admit to driving her out there.”

“No one saw her that night?”

“Well, remember we couldn't say for certain which night it happened. Too much time had passed by the time she was found, and the sea and the rocks had changed the body too much. The pathologist could narrow it down to only a two- to three-day span, and that made things much harder. Besides, asking at a seaside resort in the late sixties about a tall, slender blond in a miniskirt, white boots, and scarlet beads was like inquiring after a particular seagull. Everyone had seen someone who might have been our corpse, but no one could tell us anything useful.”

We sat in silence listening to the rain dripping dispiritedly from the stopped-up gutter. “I applied for a transfer not long after that,” Alan said finally. “No one blamed me over the case. There was no blame going, actually. The whole thing was too nebulous for that, but I couldn't quite get the taste of what I considered a failure out of my mouth, and I wanted away. So I did a stint with the Metropolitan Police, then went for a command course at Bramshill, got one of their scholarships for university work—one thing led to another, and I ended up in Sherebury as chief constable.”

He finished his coffee and started clearing the table. “I'll do the washing up, my dear, if you'll choose a video we might enjoy.”

I chose one with lots of sunshine in it and lots of laughter, but as we sat and watched I brooded, and later, after Alan had drifted off to sleep, I lay awake and made plans.

I
TACKLED
my husband the next morning, just as soon as he'd ingested enough caffeine to be reasonably alert.

“I have an idea,” I announced brightly.

“Mmm?” He was deep in
The Times
.

“I'd like to get away for a little while. This weather's getting to me.”

He put the paper down and looked at me consideringly. “I suppose the budget would run to a week or so in the south of France. No rain there this time of year. Or Spain might be cheaper.”

I've lived in England for several years, but this notion of casually taking off for France still leaves me breathless. He was suggesting a trip no longer than, say, from southern Indiana to somewhere in Iowa, but Going to Europe sounded to me like a wild, exotic adventure. It also sounded appealing, but I stuck to my plan.

“I was thinking of somewhere much closer. Like, perhaps, Cornwall.”

Alan's eyes narrowed.

“I've never been there, and I've always wanted to see Land's End up close. Frank and I used to see it from ships or airplanes, sometimes, that lonely spit of land with the lighthouse. It looked so romantic, one's first glimpse of England after an eternity of ocean, and it was always a welcome sight because it meant we were almost back in the place we loved.”

“Dorothy, you'd hate Land's End now. They've Disneyfied it, put up ‘attractions.' It isn't a bit the way you imagine it.”

“Well, St. Ives, then. Who knows, we might meet a man with seven wives. Or Mousehole. I've been looking at the map, and I'd dearly love to visit a place called Mousehole.”

“It's pronounced Mowz'l, not mouse-hole, and it's about as big as our Cathedral Close.”

“Well, I didn't exactly expect Manhattan, did I, not with a name like Mousehole—or Mowz'l—and anyway, who cares? It sounds picturesque. And St. Michael's Mount is nearby, too, I've heard a lot about that, and—”

“Dorothy.”

I closed my mouth.

“What do you think you're up to?”

I tried to look innocent. “I'm tired of rain, and we were talking about Cornwall last night, so I looked up the weather in the paper this morning, and it isn't raining there, it's lovely and warm, and I just thought—”

This time he simply looked at me.

Then he sighed. Heavily. “My dear, I appreciate your concern, truly. Yes, I do still worry now and again about that old case. Yes, I do still wish I'd been able to solve it. But the thing happened over thirty years ago, love. There is nothing more to be done. Some things in life must simply be accepted, and I long ago accepted the fact that we will never know who that girl was, or what happened to her.”

I ought to have known better than to try to put anything over on Alan. The bells of the cathedral, ringing almost over our heads, reminded me that honesty is often the best policy. “All right. It's your call. But everything I said about Cornwall is true, you know. I have honestly wanted for years to visit the West Country, and I do honestly have a bad case of cabin fever. And the sun really is shining there, according to
The Times.
Besides, it was your home, and I'd like to see it.”

He smiled. I love Alan's smile and the way his eyes crinkle up at the corners. He put a hand on mine. “Very well. As soon as we come home from church, I'll book us into a hotel you'll like in Penzance, if you'll talk to Jane about the cats. And if you can get leave from your job, of course. But we're going for a holiday. Right?”

“Right,” I said solemnly, and if my fingers were crossed, it was only metaphorically.

After church I cornered Mrs. Williamson, my boss at the cathedral bookshop. “Willie, Alan and I would like to go away for a few days, two weeks at most. Do you think you could get along without me? We'd like to leave tomorrow. I'm sorry to give such short notice, but something came up rather suddenly.” I was a little uncomfortable about asking. It's a volunteer job, and I put in only a few hours a week, but I do try to be reliable.

Willie was nice about it. “I think we can manage. Business has been a trifle slow. Nothing's wrong, I hope?”

I thought of the incessant rain, and then I thought about Alan's face when he talked about the old murder case. “Nothing serious. Thanks so much. I owe you one. Several, in fact.”

“Oh, I shall collect, never fear!”

My next task was easy. Jane Langland, our crusty, lovable next-door neighbor, has often looked after our cats, though she's more of a dog person. When I knocked on her back door that afternoon, I was announced with assorted barks and snufflings from her tribe of bulldogs. Jane's spent so many years with the breed she actually looks a good deal like them.

“Come in, Dorothy,” she called. “I'm up to my elbows.”

She was, almost literally. Her hands, sticky and floury, were in the pastry bowl, scraping a batch of bread dough onto the board to be kneaded. She took my request in stride, as I'd been sure she would.

“Always happy to oblige with the moggies, you know that. Where are you off to this time?”

“Penzance. I talked Alan into a little holiday where the sun's shining.”

Jane snorted and gave the lump of dough a sharp jab with a powerful fist. “Don't know what's got into the weather. Ought to be fine, this time of year. My chrysanths have gone all scraggy in this rain, heads down in the mud, most of them. Time to cut them off and start again.”

“If the rain stops long enough to get out. Jane, is there a way to look up old police records? I mean really old, from years ago?”

“Quarreled with Alan, have you?”

“Of course not! What a question.”

“Why're you asking me, then? He'd be the one to know.”

“I don't want to tell him what I'm doing. I'm trying to find out something about an old case of his, one that was never solved. I think he's worried about it, and I'd like to try to help.”

Jane worked at her bread for a few seconds, every punch and thump an eloquent comment. “No curing you, is there?” she said eventually. “Have to poke your nose in. Suppose the murder or whatever it was happened in Penzance.”

“Near there, over thirty years ago. Alan was talking about it last night. He says there's nothing to be done, and that he's accepted the fact, but he isn't happy about it, Jane. I'm not, either. It isn't just nosiness, though I admit to my share of curiosity.”

Jane gave the bread dough another eloquent thump.

“All right, maybe more than my share, then. I know I tend to get mixed up in things that are none of my business, but it's because I believe in justice. The thought of someone getting by with a crime eats at me. It's not
right
!”

Jane gave the bread one last pat and covered it with a cloth. “Have you ever thought,” she said deliberately, capturing my attention with a complete sentence, “that there are some stones better not turned over?”

“I—what do you mean?”

“If there's a criminal out there who's not been caught in thirty years, you could go stirring up more trouble than you dream of, lass, and not just for yourself.”

I filed that sobering thought away as I went back home to pack.

We got a late start Monday morning, drove slowly through blinding rain and snarled traffic, and put up for the night in Dorchester. It was as rainy there as in Sherebury; we didn't linger on Tuesday, but set straight out for the promised delights of Cornwall.

The promises were true. Penzance, when we arrived in late morning, was a miracle of hot sunshine, sparkling blue sea, and flowers in brilliant profusion. The tourists were taking full advantage of the weather, too. The Queens Hotel, an elegant Victorian hostelry just across the street from the beach and the promenade, was crowded with vacationers, many of them retired couples like ourselves. Alan had stretched the budget to indulge me, so we had a lovely room, luxuriously furnished with a four-poster bed and a bay window overlooking the busy street below and, just beyond it, the sea.

If his intent was to take my mind off old crimes, he succeeded. I looked out the window and was instantly enchanted.

“Oh, Alan, look! That has to be St. Michael's Mount. Way over there to the left, see?”

He joined me and peered. “Yes, indeed. It's quite near, you know. Two miles, two and a half, something like that. We could easily walk it this afternoon if you like. We'll want to take our sticks; it's rather a stiff pull up to the castle. How is it that you know St. Michael's Mount? Most Americans I've met have never heard of it.”

“Frank and I had a friend who went there, years ago, and took pictures. One of them was published in the
Hillsburg Herald
, and somebody wrote in, very indignant, and said it ought to be called by its proper name, Mont St. Michel.”