To Perish in Penzance (5 page)

“The superintendent was very complimentary.”

“He's a nice chap,” Alan admitted. “From a police family. His grandfather was the super here when I first joined the force, and when the old man retired, the job passed on to his son. Now young Colin holds the reins, and I suspect he'll make as good a job of it as his father and grandfather did before him. I beg your pardon, but are these seats taken?”

The last was addressed to the others at the nearest table. They shook their heads and smiled, and then one of the women took a closer look at Alan as we sat down. “I don't imagine you'll remember me, Mr. Nesbitt, but—” And he was off again, trying to keep afloat on a tide of reminiscences, many of which might have existed only in the mind of the teller.

That was when Lexa drifted away from her tableful of admirers, pulled up a chair next to me, and sat down with her glass and plate. The men at our table, including Alan, leapt to their feet at her arrival. Most of them were roughly our age and would probably have stood up for any woman, English manners being what they are, but I doubted they would have moved quite as fast for anyone but the ravishing Lexa.

She distributed dazzling smiles all around and then devoted her attention to me. “I thought you looked stranded,” she murmured.

“I felt that way. But weren't you having a good time?”

She shrugged delicately. “I suppose. Men are all alike, aren't they?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, well …” She glanced at Alan, who was once more submerged in conversation, and made a face. “Perhaps not all.” She picked up a fork and toyed with her food.

“Cheer up. You're too young to be cynical about life.”

“What would you like to wager on that?” She turned to her champagne glass, which was filled with something that looked like her usual water, sparkling this time. Her mood had changed; she was suddenly withdrawn. I looked at her averted face and applied myself to my plate.

With one silent companion and one all too busy with other people, I had no recourse but eavesdropping, which is, I confess, one of my favorite entertainments. You can sometimes hear amazing things, especially in a place where there's enough noise that everyone has to shout, and where most people have a little alcohol in their systems.

This evening the noise level was almost too high. I could hear little that made sense except the conversation immediately behind me, a diatribe delivered by the rector of St. Martha's to the police superintendent—I couldn't remember their names—about the escalating drug problem in Penzance.

“It's these raves!” shouted the rector. “As if the parties weren't bad enough with that frightful noise they call music, there's this dreadful ecstasy taking over the minds and bodies of our young folk. It's a scourge, and it's got to be stopped.”

I was briefly startled until I remembered that ecstasy was the street name for a drug popular among teenagers, especially at the all-night dance parties called raves. I didn't know much about any of it, except I'd heard that ecstasy could be dangerous. Had some kids died of it, or was I imagining that part?

“It's the clubs,” said the superintendent patiently. “If we could shut them down, we'd be streets ahead of the game, but they move from place to place, and even when we find them it's not easy to get proof of illegal activity.”

“Hmph! Shouldn't think you'd have trouble finding them, the amount of noise they make.”

“We can't be everywhere. If no one complains about the noise, we may never know. Then, too, our young people haven't much to do here in Penzance. We'd have more juvenile crime if we took away their music and dancing. It's a knotty problem.”

“It always was,” Alan murmured, as much to himself as to me. He had freed himself for a moment from conversation with our table partners. “The drugs change with time, the kids involved change. The problems don't. One is amazed at how people forget.”

I knew he was thinking about his old case and tried to give him a comforting smile, but he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were on his plate, but he was, I thought, seeing the body of a young woman in a cave.

“You're right,” said Lexa unexpectedly. Her voice was low, but intense. “About drugs, I mean. They destroy people. I know. I could tell you—” She broke off and bit her lip just as Mr. Boleigh appeared at my elbow.

“Do help yourselves to more food if you'd like, but the musicians are ready to begin. I hope you're having a pleasant evening, Miss Adams?”

Lexa murmured something appropriate and smiled her practiced smile, but I went on worrying over her remarks about drugs.

Could we be wrong about her mother? Could she be an addict? The thought flashed through my mind, followed by another even more horrific. Not Lexa herself?

I glanced at her and immediately dismissed the thought. No. That perfect skin, those clear eyes—those spoke of health, of youth uncorrupted by poison. She looked tired just now, and worried, but she was no addict, not even a moderate drug user. She had said she took no drugs, and I was prepared to believe her.

Well,
could
she have been thinking about her mother?

I couldn't ask. She had moved away from me. Oh, she was still sitting there at the table, her chair crowded close in to mine, but Lexa herself was somewhere else, even as Alan was.

I moved my hand over to Alan's. I needed to know that he was there, warm and alive and with me, even if his mind was remote.

The evening dragged to its conclusion. The musicians were excellent, but string quartets are not my favorite entertainment, I confess. I've always preferred brass. Alan, who is something of a musical snob, tells me my taste is low, but given a choice between Schubert and Sousa, I'll choose the marches anytime.

Of course, I didn't say so to Mr. Boleigh when we were saying good night. I mouthed polite insincerities, certain that he was paying no attention, anyway. His eyes were on Lexa, for which I couldn't say I blamed him.

“You sounded,” said my loving spouse when the three of us were tucked into our car, “exactly like a little girl at a birthday party. ‘Thank-you-very-much-I-had-a-lovely-time.'”

“I was well brought up,” I said, and yawned. Lexa said nothing.

A dispirited drizzle began before we reached our hotel.

I had wanted, next day, to go to Mousehole, but the good weather had deserted us. We woke to pouring rain, with a fierce wind that blew the rain into horizontal sheets and raised monumental waves. We sat sipping coffee at a window table in the dining room and watched the high tide crashing over the seawall.

“So much for getting away from the weather.”

“It's the hurricane,” said Alan, turning a page of his newspaper.

“A
hurricane?
” My voice rose to a squeak and I pushed back my chair. “Alan, if a hurricane's coming, what are we doing here? Hadn't we better go somewhere inland?”

“Not our hurricane, love.” He tapped the newspaper. “The backlash of South Carolina's. American coastal weather usually reaches Penzance a few days later. Gail, I believe this one is named. Appropriate.”

“Oh.” I collected myself and poured some more coffee. “So when is this particular gale going to blow itself out?”

“Late tonight, probably. We'll plan on Mousehole tomorrow, shall we?”

“It isn't much fun walking around in the rain,” I said doubtfully.

“It won't be raining. I can virtually guarantee it, and not just because
The Times
says so. Don't forget, I spent a fair part of my life in Cornwall. I know how these things behave.”

“Of course you do. Sorry. Alan, should we ask Lexa to go to Mousehole with us, or do you think she's tired of our company? She didn't have a good time last night.”

He shook his head. “No, but I don't think that had anything to do with us. There's something wrong with that girl, more than simply her mother's illness. I can't put my finger on it.”

“I had an awful thought last night.” I lowered my voice. “You don't think her mother has a problem with drugs, do you?”

“Only legal ones. They're certainly bad enough, the chemotherapy drugs, nearly worse than the disease, but they don't make a person look the way cocaine does, or heroin, or any of the street drugs.”

He looked bleak, and I was sorry I'd raised the subject. “Well, you'd know. I think I'll try to get Mrs. Crosby talking today, since we'll all have to stay in the hotel. Maybe I can find out what's wrong with both of them. Now, don't look at me that way. It isn't prying! I'm concerned.”

“I know you are, love, but be careful how you go. They're friendly enough, those two, but they value their privacy, all the same.”

“I'll try not to go stomping in with both feet, then.” I looked out the window. The storm was getting worse. “But it's a long day ahead, and everyone will be bored. If I can't get her to talk at all, I'm losing my touch.”

As it turned out, I didn't get the chance. I saw neither Lexa nor her mother all day. And by the next day it was too late.

T
HE RAIN
abated gradually as the day passed, but the wind and waves increased. Alan and I sat in the sun lounge (woefully misnamed on such a day) and watched the violent motion of the sea and the clouds. Hoping to find Mrs. Crosby or Alexis, I made forays from time to time into the other lounge, the lobby, and the bar. After a listless lunch at which neither woman appeared, I went upstairs to read and fell asleep over my book, waking in midaftemoon in a panic lest I had missed the Crosbys. Alan assured me he had seen nothing of them.

By dinnertime I was heartily sick of the hotel and wanted a change.

“There must be a decent restaurant somewhere nearby,” I suggested. “Let's go out to eat. I'm going to scream if I have to stay indoors one more minute.”

“Dear me,” said Alan calmly. “Can't have that, can we? There's a nice little tandoori 'round the corner, or there used to be an Italian cafe on the promenade, just down the street from here.”

“Italian,” I decreed. “We'll be able to see the waves from there, and I like to watch them. Just not from the hotel.”

“I'll go up and get our coats.”

“And umbrellas, in case the rain starts again!” I called after him.

He returned sans umbrellas.

“My dear,” he said at my reproachful look, “can't you see the wind! They'd be torn inside out and snatched from our hands the moment we set foot outside the door.”

“No, I can't see the wind, and neither can you. Shades of Christina Rosetti! ‘Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I.' Et cetera. But I take your point.” It was reinforced the minute we stepped outside. I had to hold on to my hat with both hands, and we were pushed along so briskly I was almost running when we got to the restaurant.

Inside it was warm, cheerful with red-checked table-cloths, and pleasantly redolent of garlic and herbs, but not very busy. The storm was discouraging patrons, I surmised. We sat at the bay-window table, ordered Chianti and food, and sipped our wine, watching the tempestuous sea just across the street.

The waves seemed higher than ever. As they battered the seawall, foam leapt up, spraying the promenade just this side of the wall and even, sometimes, the cars parked along the curb. Small groups of children ran along the promenade, deliberately trying to catch the spray. When a wave broke over the wall and spray drenched them, they would duck, scream, and run a little farther to do it again.

The waitress brought us our dinners. “They look like they're having a wonderful time,” I commented with a nod out the window.

She smiled. “I used to do the same thing when I was a kid. I'd get dripping wet and my mum would have a fit, but I had fun. Enjoy your meal.”

“Not such fun for the owners of the cars,” Alan remarked as he started on his veal parmigiana. “Salt water's death to the coachwork, not to mention what it'll do if it finds its way under the bonnet.” He gazed out the window, shaking his head.

“Don't tell me about salt damage to cars,” I said. “They use it on the roads back home when it snows, and—”

“Dorothy!”

There was a very odd note in Alan's voice. Urgency, even fear. I caught my breath and reached my hand out to his. “What? What's the matter?”

“No, it's nothing,” he said. “That girl—I thought—but I'm only seeing things.”

“What girl, where?”

He pointed. “Just passing the window now—no, she's out of sight.”

“For you, not for me.” I craned my neck, looking over Alan's shoulder at the figure just disappearing around the corner. All I could really see was a pair of dark, high-heeled boots, a short, dark skirt, and a swirl of blond hair tossing madly in the wind. “What about her? You sounded so—I don't know. I thought something was wrong with you.”

“Sorry, love. It's just—well, I'm seeing things, as I said. The wind, the waves—I've not seen a storm like this since I left Penzance thirty years ago. I suppose my mind was wandering, but I saw that girl walk down the street toward me, and just for a moment—” He waved his hand. “Never mind. Stupid of me.”

Boots. Miniskirt. Long blond hair. “It reminded you of that girl. The one in the cave.”

“It was in a storm something like this that she went over the cliff, that's all. I'm going 'round the bend in my dotage.”

“Dotage, hah!” I picked up my fork again and attacked my lasagne. “Funny, she reminded me a little of Lexa. Though I can't imagine Lexa in an outfit like that. She dresses more conservatively.”

“What I can't imagine is where Lexa would be going on a night like this, all by herself. One would think she'd stay in and eat her dinner with her mother at the hotel.”

“We came out.”

“Together. It makes a difference.”