Malice in Cornwall Page 15

  Polfrock, slack-jawed, stared at Powell as if mesmerized.

  Powell drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “There's something decidedly Freudian about a gun,” he went on.

  “In any case, one should really have a gun safe. Like that one over there.” He motioned casually toward the escritoire.

  Polfrock began to gulp spasmodically like a fish out of water. “It—it was y-you!” he stammered. “I forget to lock the safe, just the once, and … Do you realize that I haven't been able to sleep wondering who …”

  “My wife is always getting after me for rearranging things around the house. I seem to have this compulsion to turn things topsy-turvy. But look at the bright side, George—better me than Mrs. Polfrock. A stroke of luck, you might say.”

  Polfrock colored. “My God! If Agnes ever found out, she'd kill me!”

  Powell smiled. “Surely not, Mr. Polfrock. Your wife strikes me as a reasonable woman.”

  Polfrock looked terrified. “What do you want from me? I've burned the whole lot. I've learned my lesson, I promise you!”

  Powell didn't believe a word of it. He fixed him with a distasteful look.

  Polfrock imploring now. “Look, I'd do anything to keep her from finding out!”

  “Anything, George?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Where were you on Saturday afternoon between noon and four o'clock?”

  “I can't remember, I—”

  “I'd advise you to try,” Powell said sharply.

  “Oh, I remember now! I was up along Mawgawan Beach. Bird-watching.” He made an almost comical attempt to sound blase.

  A knowing smile from Powell. “Exactly what kind of birds were you watching, George?”

  “I don't know what you mean!”

  “Tony Rowlands tells me there's a group of kids camping out there.”

  “Oh, him.”

  “You didn't happen to see Nick Tebble on Saturday, by any chance?”

  “No, of course not, that's the day he was …” A look of panic.

  “Yes?”

  “I hardly knew him!”

  Powell sighed. “How long have you lived here, George?”

  “All my life,” he said grudgingly.

  “I don't suppose you knew Ruth Trevenney, either.”

  A long pause then an inaudible response.

  “You'll have to speak up, George.”

  “Yes, I knew her.”

  Powell leaned back in his chair, assessing Polfrock's demeanor. Mined out, Powell concluded, like all the tin mines in Cornwall. “There's just one more thing, George.”

  There was an anxious look in Polfrock's eyes.

  “The magazines. Rowlands gets them for you, doesn't he?”

  Polfrock hesitated, then he nodded weakly.

  Powell gestured in a dismissive manner. “Watch yourself, George.”

  After Polfrock fled the room, Powell sat motionless in his chair. Eventually, he lit another cigarette. There was a movement at the door. He looked up. It was Butts.

  “We've found something, sir. At the Old Fish Cellar. Nearly ten thousand quid hidden under the floor.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “If it wasn't for the bloody Riddle, this would be a relatively straightforward case,” Butts asserted. “At least the line of inquiry would be obvious. Linda Porter is fooling around with Rowlands. Her husband comes home unannounced on Saturday morning and catches them in the act, but mistakenly thinks it's Tebble. Before he can confront them, he's interrupted by Black, here. Porter stews about it for a while then drives out to the Old Fish Cellar later that afternoon and does our Nick.” Butts paused to take a swig of ale from a long-necked brown bottle. He had persuaded his sister-in-law to provide some suitable refreshment to lubricate the mental processes. “Or maybe,” he continued, “it was Tebble who was shagging her, and Rowlands is the jealous one.”

  Black looked doubtful. “There has to be more to it than that. The Riddle, all that money, it can't be a coincidence. What about the phone call to Roger Trevenney about Ruth's diary? Perhaps it was Tebble. If he knew something about Ruth's murder, he could have been blackmailing someone. That would explain the money.”

  Butts shook his head. “That money's been there for quite some time, by the looks of it. One of my lads is a numismatist; just by looking at ‘em he reckons the notes are more than twenty years old. We're checking the serial numbers. If Tebble was a collector, himself, he had a penchant for ten-pound notes. And there's one more thing, sir. I did a bit more poking around out there, as you suggested. Behind the shed under a tarp there's a pile of old logs with some black stuff that looks like shoelaces growing all over it.”

  “Rhizomorphs,” Powell observed sagely. He leaned back in his chair. “So what have we got? Tebble concocts the Riddle to draw attention to Ruth Trevenney's murder. Roger Trevenney gets a call recently from someone who claims to have information that implicates his daughter's killer. Jim Porter discovers, if he didn't already know, that his wife has been unfaithful with Tebble, or Rowlands, or God knows who else. Tebble is killed and we discover that he's been sitting on a tidy sum of money at the Old Fish Cellar. Rowlands, at least, appears to have an alibi of sorts. Have I missed anything?”

  “I still think we need to follow up on the smuggling angle, sir,” Black said.

  Powell nodded. “Butts, I think it might be best if you talked to Rowlands about that. You know the territory better than we do. And determine his whereabouts Saturday afternoon. He could easily have slipped out for the half hour it would have taken to drive out to Tebble's, do the job, and get back to the Head.”

  “Right.”

  Black looked disappointed.

  “Cheer up, Bill. I've got a juicy one for you. I'd like you to talk to Jim Porter. We need to confirm whether it was him you saw ducking up the back lane on Saturday. It's clearly a crucial point. See how he reacts, then proceed as you see fit.”

  Black, apparently mollified, nodded.

  “Also, have a word with Colin Wilcox. According to Dr. Harris, Wilcox has been out to the Porters' recently. Find out why.”

  Black grinned. “No need, sir. I ran into him in the High Street yesterday. Young Wilcox seems to know his way around Penrick, so in a roundabout way I took the liberty of questioning him about the Porters. He wasn't able to add much, but during the course of the conversation it came out that he'd been out to the Porters' recently to quote on a plumbing job.”

  “That's interesting. The Porters don't have indoor plumbing, as far as I know.”

  Black shrugged. “Maybe they're thinking of having it put in.”

  “Perhaps. Did you believe him?”

  “I didn't have any reason not to, sir.”

  “It seems to me it's a question of motive,” Butts ventured. “If, for the sake of argument, Tebble was using the Riddle to blackmail someone in connection with Ruth Trevenney's murder, why kill him after the fact?”

  “Perhaps he raised the stakes.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  Powell frowned. “To be quite honest, I'm not sure what I mean. I think we'd better just take it a step at a time and see what develops.”

  “Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day,” Black intoned solemnly.

  “Powell—this is a pleasant surprise.” Jane Goode opened the door wide. “Welcome to my garret.”

  An unmade bed, lunch dishes, books and papers strewn everywhere.

  “How goes the novel?”

  She sighed. “It's coming, but so's my deadline. How are things with you?”

  “Getting interesting. I was hoping I could persuade you to take tomorrow off.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I've been meaning to have a look around the old mine where Ruth Trevenney … I mean, it wouldn't be quite as grim as it sounds,” he went on quickly. “I thought it would be a break for you. We could pack a lunch, do a bit of exploring.”

/>   She thought about it for a moment. “I'd love to, I really would, but I am under the gun, I've only got three weeks.” A strained silence.

  “Of course, I understand perfectly. Well, I'll leave you to it, then.” He felt like an idiot.

  Jane Goode closed the door slowly and reluctantly.

  The next morning around ten o'clock, Powell set out on the loop road. The sky was gray and equivocal. There was nothing on the radio and his mind was in a turmoil. What was it that Black had said? Something had twigged at the time, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. All he knew was, something didn't fit. It was as if he was dealing with two entirely separate cases, two lines that converged at the death of Nick Tebble; a contemporary tale of adultery and jealousy, and a murder that happened thirty years ago. Was Tebble killed because somebody thought he'd been screwing around with Linda Porter, or was it because he'd known something about Ruth's murder? Or were the two questions somehow related? Powell braked suddenly.

  Just past the turning to Dr. Harris's, a well-used Land Rover was parked beside the road and a man was digging out the mouth of a drainage ditch at the point where it discharged from the adjacent field into the roadside ditch. It was Jim Porter.

  Against his better judgment Powell slowed to a stop, on the pretext of asking directions to the mine. He got out of the car. “Good morning,” he said.

  Porter leaned awkwardly on his shovel and nodded warily. In response to Powell's query, he uttered some terse directions.

  “I spoke to your wife yesterday …” Powell remarked. He left it open-ended.

  “She didn't mention it.”

  “We'd like to have a word with you about Nick Tebble;”

  “I'm rather busy right now …”

  Powell smiled. “I understand. My associate, Detective-Sergeant Black, was hoping to catch up with you later today, if it's convenient.”

  Porter shrugged. “I'm not going anywhere.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “He went to see you at your cottage Saturday morning, but there didn't seem to be anyone around.”

  Porter's eyes narrowed. “He should bloody well call first, then, shouldn't he?”

  “It was about this time of the morning, as I recall,” Powell continued.

  “What are you playing at?” Porter snapped.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you think it's easy? Trying to make your own way in life when they want you to fail. When everyone's against you, bloody everyone! I've heard the gossip—I know what people are saying. But I'm not stupid. Do you think I don't know what's going on? You don't have to rub my nose in it!” His eyes turned wild. “I'm not going to stand for any more of it, I tell you!” Tears welled up. He suddenly lifted his shovel, brandishing it at port arms.

  Here, thought Powell, is a man at the end of his rope. He made some soothing noises and departed as decorously as possible under the circumstances. A quick call on his mobile phone to alert Black to Porter's emotional state. Best to hold off for the time being, he decided. He put it as tactfully as possible. He was stealing Black's thunder in a sense, but it was evident that Porter would need careful handling. The man was clearly over the edge, and Powell had little doubt that in his present state of mind he was quite capable of committing an irrational act. But murder? he wondered.

  He passed the turning to the Old Fish Cellar and then swung east on a rough, overgrown track that headed off into the hills. Just ahead, beyond a slight rise, he could see the upper brick portion of the round chimney that marked the location of the old engine house. He drew up to a rusted wire mesh fence marked with a faded sign that announced somewhat ambiguously: DANGER KEEP OUT.

  The fence had fallen down in several places and he had no difficulty finding a place to get through. The view to the southwest was spectacular, a steep grassy slope speckled with wildflowers, then the edge of the cliffs and the sea below. The road back toward Penrick was hidden behind a small hill. He tried to visualize the miles of shafts and tunnels lying beneath his feet and to imagine the life of a Cornish tin miner a hundred years ago. Adits sunk beneath the ore bodies and draining to the sea were used to de-water the shafts where the miners worked. Shafts sunk below the drainage level were pumped by steam engines in the engine houses. In some cases, the workings extended for several fathoms below the seabed itself, and he had read somewhere that the miners could hear the sound of the surf crashing above them.

  Powell walked over to the engine house. It was remarkably well preserved and largely intact. Roofless, the building itself and the lower two-thirds of the cylindrical chimney were built of gray granite stone, the upper part of red brick. He peered into the gloom. The opening of the shaft work appeared to be boarded over, for safety reasons he presumed.

  He spent the next half hour looking around the mine site. He could hear the occasional car passing by on the road. There was a variety of rusting machine parts strewn about the site whose precise origin and function were the subjects of considerable speculation on his part. And there were numerous shallow depressions in the ground, spaced randomly as far as he could tell, each about ten feet in diameter and choked with gorse and brambles. Some were marked with faded DANGER signs, some not. These marked the location, he guessed, of old shafts. He though about Ruth Trevenney. He wondered which one of the depressions concealed the tunnel that opened to the sea in the cliffs near Mawgawan Beach. He realized now that he should have asked Butts for more specific directions, although locating the exact spot where Ruth's body-had been hidden seemed a bit academic three decades after the fact. He thought about it for a moment. Many of the shafts, if not all of them, were presumably drained by the same adit system. Drop something down any one of them and it might well end up in the sea eventually.

  He sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette. He looked at the sky. Dark and ominous. If he didn't shift he was going to get wet. A raw, gusty wind had picked up, and he felt the first drops of rain. He got to his feet and turned up his collar. Just as he was about to start back for his car. he noticed a larger patch of brush just beyond the engine house. He decided to investigate.

  It was really more of an overgrown swale about thirty feet in diameter with gently sloping sides covered in brambles and gorse bushes that were nearly as tall as a man on the bottom. The ground was slightly mounded around the perimeter of the depression, with the exception of the uphill side, where periodic runoff from the hillside above had eroded a channel. Could it be? Powell wondered. One could easily imagine the opening of a shaft beneath the tangle of brush. Starting in from the edge, Powell picked his way carefully through the brambles. The depression had a gravelly bed sloping slightly inward toward the center. The wind was moaning steadily now, driving the rain in dark sheets across the hillside.

  Stumbling slightly, he felt something catch his leg, then the tearing of cloth and skin against a thorny branch.

  He looked at his trousers and swore; he'd only just bought the bloody things a month ago. He bent down to inspect the damage. Had he not been so fastidious, he might have noticed the slight movement behind him. As it was, the blow caught him on the back of the head just as he started to look around. He fell forward, arms flailing amongst the branches.

  As unconsciousness filled his head like an expanding cloud of black ink, he experienced the curious sensation of not stopping where the ground should have been.

  CHAPTER 18

  The next thing Powell was aware of was an excruciating pain in his right knee and a pounding in his head. He lay on his right side on a bed that was hard as rock. He could hear the hollow sound of water trickling in the darkness and there was a salty taste in his mouth. He held his hand up in front of his face. Nothing. He suppressed a rush of panic. Perhaps he was only dreaming. He turned his head painfully. There was a suggestion of something above him. He blinked slowly. A diffuse smudge of brightness on the ceiling like a moonlit skylight and faint streaks of reflected light down dark, shiny walls. Where am I? he wondered groggily
. He closed his eyes and tried to think. His head whirled and he could hear the blood roaring in his ears amidst a hundred jumbled associations. He opened his eyes again and attempted to get his bearings. He stared at the fuzzy light above him, imagining that it was bathing his pineal gland with revitalizing rays—or was it the pituitary gland? He slowly began to remember. Driving to the mine that morning, smoking a cigarette in the rain, thrashing through the thorn bushes,and then falling … He supposed he must have tripped on something. Suddenly, the sobering certainty of it, dashing any remaining hopes that he might simply be having a nightmare. Good Christ, he realized, I've fallen down a bloody mine shaft!

  Breathing deeply, he took a moment to take stock. He decided that he'd better not try anything rash, like moving more than an inch. He felt light-headed, and the whimsical thought occurred to him that he could already be in purgatory, in which case he might just as well pop over the edge to check out the next level of the Inferno. Best not to jump to conclusions, though. Besides, it was too bloody cold—no fire and brimstone within a hundred miles. He slowly straightened his legs. A stab of pain in his right knee induced an involuntary grunt, the sound reverberating eerily in the gloom. He'd twisted something, all right. He groped with his left arm behind his back. There was a smooth rock wall, cold and damp. Then he felt around in front of him. There was an impression of another wall, too far away to reach. His vision was slightly blurred. He blinked several times, but it didn't help. He touched the rock on which he lay. It had a gritty texture. He slid his hand slowly away from him, stretching his arm out. The rock ended abruptly about two and a half feet away; there was just a rough edge and then nothing. He shifted position slightly so that he could reach down with his forearm over the edge. A vertical wall like the one behind him. Not daring to think about what it meant, he felt around for a pebble but could find nothing large enough. He reached into his trouser pocket and extracted a coin. He held his breath and dropped it over the edge. Silence for a few seconds and then a faint tinkle far below.