To Perish in Penzance (23 page)

“You don't think a chambermaid stole it, do you? They all seem to be nice women; I'd hate to think …”

“I'm a reasonably nice woman, too, and you thought for a moment that I'd stolen it. No, it's all right. I know this has all been hard for you. We'll sort it out, I promise. Meanwhile, would you like some tea?”

Eleanor did not want tea. She wanted to rest. I was concerned about her condition, but she refused to let me call the nurse back, so there was nothing to do but leave her to her own devices and go back to our room.

“Alan, we'd better go back to that antique store right away! Somebody might buy it!”

My husband can be infuriatingly calm at times. He reached for the telephone. “There's a better way. Yes, operator, could you give me the number for the police station? You can connect me? Thank you.”

“What are you doing to do?”

He put a finger to his lips. “Hello? Alan Nesbitt here. I need to speak to Superintendent Cardinnis, please.”

“But, Alan—”

“Hello? Oh, hello, Colin. I'll make this brief; I know how much you have on your plate. I hope you've managed to catch up with the bank robbers. Oh, what a pity; I
am
sorry, Colin. I'm calling about your other major headache, actually. Have you had any luck finding Pamela Boleigh? Yes, of course, early days yet. Well, you see, I think I may have some information about her. It's likely that she called on an antique shop in Mousehole on Saturday. Yes, to sell them a piece of jewelry of some considerable value.”

The light dawned. Of course! Pamela stole it! Though how she knew Lexa had it, when it was hidden … or maybe Lexa gave it to her. She was riding a high, something she'd never experienced before. Her judgment would have been impaired. She might have taken it out to show Pamela, and then … oh, we didn't know enough. But Alan was being brilliant, anyway.

“… yes, it belonged to Alexis Adams, apparently. Mrs. Crosby can identify it. Very well, I'll be here.”

He hung up the phone. “Colin will send someone to fetch the cross and bring it here. If it does turn out to be Lexa's, and it was brought in to the shop on Saturday, as the shopkeeper said …”

“Pamela, almost certainly. There's our motive, right there. Unless … oh, Alan, it could have been the man from the club!”

“It could, though if he was responsible for Lexa's death, he'd have been very stupid to sell something so easily identified as hers, so soon after her death.”

“Criminals are not rocket scientists.”

“Most of them are not, which is fortunate for the police. However, it's pointless to speculate. The shopkeeper will remember who sold him the cross, the police will show him a photograph of Pamela, and we'll soon know.”

“Will they keep us informed?”

“I'm sure Colin will do his best. You must remember that he's working something like twenty hours out of the twenty-four. They've caught up with those bank robbers, but there's no sign of the stolen cash, so that investigation is still very much alive.”

“Was this what it was like when you were working, Alan?”

“The details changed as I moved up the ladder. The pressure was always the same. Crime never takes a holiday.”

Nor, apparently, can we, I thought with some resentment. Here we were in one of England's beauty spots, the famous West Country, and we couldn't get away from crime and tragedy. I had come to Penzance to help Alan resolve his feelings about an old crime, if I could, and now we were embroiled in several new ones.

Alan saw what I was thinking. “Buck up, darling. I remind you that we mustn't make it our personal tragedy, or we'll lose our objectivity and our effectiveness. While we wait for Colin's information, what about a cream tea?”

I allowed myself to be seduced by food. We went to the wonderful tea shop down the street and I ate a great many things that were bad for me, but while Alan chatted about a possible jaunt to St. Ives, I kept thinking about that cross, and how soon we could know anything.

Alan finally gave up his efforts to distract me. “Very well,” he said. “We may just as well go back to the hotel and wait for the phone to ring. You're acting like a cat on hot bricks.”

“I know. I'm sorry. It's just that I think we should be there when they show Eleanor the cross. She has a strong sentimental attachment to it, and she'll be upset.”

“Right you are. After you, love.”

Colin had been busy while we idled. There was a message waiting for us.

Alan took it from the desk clerk and frowned. “When did this come in?”

“Not five minutes ago, sir.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“What?” I said, trying to look over Alan's shoulder.

“They have the cross. Colin's sending a sergeant over here with it any minute—and here she is, if I'm not mistaken.”

The woman coming in the door was not in uniform, but her trim business suit might almost as well have had brass buttons, and she bore herself with military discipline.

“She'll have to loosen up some to be a good detective,” I whispered to Alan. “She sticks out like a nun at a bikers' convention.”

Alan smiled, apparently at the policewoman, and moved toward her with outstretched hand. “My name is Alan Nesbitt and this is my wife, Dorothy Martin. I believe you must be Detective Sergeant Blaine?”

“Yes, sir.” She didn't salute, quite. “I'm relieved that you've returned. Superintendent Cardinnis said it would be best if you accompanied me to call on Mrs. Crosby. We have rung up to tell her we were coming.”

I wondered if that was the royal “we,” or the one so infuriatingly used by some nurses, as in, “How are we today?” I didn't dare ask. The sergeant's manner was so strictly business that I might instead have apologized for our dereliction of duty in leaving the hotel, if Alan hadn't favored me with the bland look that says “Keep quiet.” Instead I nodded and meekly followed the two of them to the elevator.

Alan let Sergeant Blaine handle the interview, only explaining, briefly, that we had recognized the cross from Eleanor's description as one we might have seen, and the police had brought it for her to identify.

She recognized it the moment Sergeant Blaine took it out of her pocket, even though it was enclosed in a small plastic bag. “Yes, of course that's Lexa's cross. What a relief!” She held out her hand. “Where did you find it?”

The sergeant did not answer the question. “Is there any way that you can identify it positively, Mrs. Crosby?”

Eleanor sighed. “How many pieces of jewelry have you ever seen that looked like that? Of course it's hers. Where did you find it?”

“It was found under circumstances that leave its ownership in doubt,” said the sergeant firmly. “I know you described it to us over the telephone, and to Mr. Nesbitt and Mrs. Martin. However, it would help greatly if there were some detail you could give us that would prove this piece belonged to your stepdaughter.”

“Dorothy, I'm not well enough for this,” said Eleanor in exasperation. “What is the woman talking about?”

“I suppose she means is there a scratch or something like that, some small mark that isn't obvious but that only Lexa, or you, would be likely to know about.”

“Why didn't she say so? Yes, there's a tiny
L
scratched just at the bottom of the ring the thing hangs by. Lexa did it when she was a teenager. Someone had told her that real gold was soft, and she got a pin to see if her cross was real gold. When it scratched easily, she added a short second scratch at the bottom because it made her initial. I scolded her when I found out about it, I can tell you. I've always thought the thing was probably worth a few pounds, if only for the gold. But you still haven't told me where it was found.”

I looked at the sergeant. She nodded. “The scratch is there, and we have checked with some of Miss Adams's coworkers, who have confirmed that she always wore the cross. This was the property of the deceased, without doubt. You may tell Mrs. Crosby, if you wish.”

I took a deep breath. “Alan and I saw it yesterday, Eleanor, by the purest chance. We were window-shopping at an antique store in Mousehole, and it caught my eye. Are you ready for a small shock?”

She frowned.

“The stones are rubies, not garnets. The dealer said it was sixteenth-century German work, and he had it priced at three thousand pounds.”

She absorbed that in silence with only a widening of her eyes. Remarkable, I thought. Truly the English are schooled to be in command of their emotions.

“And how,” she asked after a pause for consideration, “did Lexa's cross come to be in an antique shop in Mousehole?”

“We've speculated about that rather a good deal,” said Alan. “I don't know if Sergeant Blaine can add anything to our guesses.”

“It was brought in for sale two days ago, on Saturday. The person who sold it matches the description of Pamela Boleigh, and the shopkeeper identified her photograph.”

“Pamela,” said Eleanor, passing her tongue over her dry lips and turning to me. “That is the name of the girl who was with Lexa at the club. The one you told me about, who has gone missing.”

I nodded.

“Then why,” said Eleanor to the sergeant, “are you wasting time here when you might be out looking for that girl? For Lexa's murderer?”

N
ONE
of us tried to argue with her. There was no point in upsetting her further, and besides, she might well be right. I did insist on ordering up some tea, and Alan and I stayed with her to drink it and make sure she ate something.

Sergeant Blaine had taken the cross back to the police station, over Eleanor's bitter protests.

“It's the only thing of Lexa's that I want! Why am I not allowed to have it?”

“It is evidence in a crime investigation,” Alan explained patiently. “It will be returned to you, but for now it must be examined by the forensics experts.”

He didn't mention to her what he said to me when we were once more alone.

“You know, it's possible that Eleanor may never get that cross back.”

“But why? It clearly belonged to Lexa, and her mother before her.”

“Ah, yes, but how did the mother get it? Eleanor said it was a gift from Lexa's father, didn't she?”

“Yes, but—”

“And Lexa's father is emerging as a more and more unpleasant character, isn't he?”

I nodded, beginning to catch the drift.

“So where did he get it?”

“Yes, all right. If he stole it—but that would have been years ago! Isn't there a statute of limitations? Possession is nine points of the law, and all that.”

“The laws are a trifle murky on the subject. There have been endless lawsuits, for example, about Nazi art treasures. Those things were looted perhaps sixty years ago and are now in the possession of legitimate buyers, or at least buyers whose lawyers will claim till the last trump that the works were bought in good faith. Of course, if the cross is a treasure trove, which it might well be, given its probable age, it belongs to the Crown, no matter who has possessed it since it was found.”

I groaned. “Eleanor doesn't have the time to wait until some court makes a decision. It could take years, and she has weeks, or days.”

Alan said nothing. There was nothing to be said, and nothing much to be done about it, either. I changed the subject. “The case against Pamela is looking worse, isn't it?”

“So much worse that the police have doubtless redoubled their efforts to find her. She is now not only a missing person, but a suspected thief, at the least, and murderess, at worst.”

“Mr. Boleigh will be having seven fits, if he knows. How much will they tell him?”

“Virtually everything, I'd guess. If he were simply any ordinary John Bull, no, but given who he is, he'll have demanded constant and full reports, and he'll probably have got them.”

“Would they part with some of that information to lowly beings like us?”

“
Whom
are you calling a lowly being, wench? I will remind you that I am, in these parts, The Chief, and am treated with due respect.”

“Right. Will they tell you anything?”

He grinned. “Probably, if they're not too busy with other such Extremely Important Individuals. I'll ring up.”

I went to the bathroom, and when I got back, Alan was just putting down the phone. His face had lost its good humor. “What's wrong?”

He sank down on the bed. “They've found her.”

“Oh.” There was no need to ask whether she was alive or dead. I sat beside him and took his hand. “Where?” I was terribly afraid he would say Pamela had been found in the same cave.

“Near Sheffield.”

“Sheffield! What would she be doing way up north in Sheffield?”

“Not that Sheffield. This one's a village—well, scarcely that, a hamlet—a little less than a mile from Mousehole.”

“How?”

“It'll take an autopsy to be sure, but they found heroin and syringes in her car.”

I stood up in sudden fury and began to pace. “So she overdosed and died! The little
idiot!
All the money in the world, a doting family, and she goes and gets mixed up with drugs. With
heroin
, of all asinine things! And then she decides life isn't worth living. At age sixteen, when she's hardly lived at all! And now we'll never know how Lexa died, or anything about the cross, or—”

“Dorothy.” Alan strode to the corner of the room where my pacing had taken me, and took both my arms in a strong grip. “Calm down.”

When he uses that tone I obey, albeit reluctantly. I closed my mouth and glared at him.

“Listen to me. We
do not know
how Pamela died. If the pathologist finds that it was an overdose of heroin, we still won't know immediately who administered it, or whether the overdose was accidental or deliberate. But you have forgotten that the dead and their surroundings can speak, often eloquently. Before you dive in off the deep end, wait for a little more information.”