Malice in Cornwall Page 3

  “What brings you gentlemen to Penrick—business or pleasure?” Rowlands inquired easily.

  Powell explained that they were policemen and had come to investigate the so-called Riddle.

  Rowlands was suddenly tight-lipped.

  “Mrs. Polfrock says it's bad for business,” Powell ventured.

  “That depends on how you look at it. After all, I've just got two new customers, haven't I?”

  Powell raised his glass. “Soon to be regulars, I think.”

  “Well, you've come to the right place, Chief Superintendent,” a feminine voice piped in. The sturdy blonde barmaid, who looked like she was genetically predisposed to pull pints, came over to their table. “I couldn't help overhearing that you gentlemen are from Scotland Yard, here to investigate the sightings. I was the first to see it, wasn't I, love?”

  Rowlands rolled his eyes but said nothing.

  Powell reached over and pulled a chair out from the table. “Please sit down, Miss, er… ?”

  “Thompson. But you can call me Jenny.”

  “Right then, Jenny, why don't you tell us all about it?”

  “It was a week ago last Monday after closing time— two weeks ago today that would be,” she began breathlessly. “I went for a walk along the Sands, down toward the Head. The tide was in, so there was just that narrow strip of beach to walk along. I was just coming around a small point of rock when I saw a faint light at the water's edge, sort of a greenish glow. I wondered what it was, so I went a little closer. Well, I nearly fainted on the spot! It was someone or some thing trying to crawl out of the water. It was all furry and wrinkled, with a strange halo all around and “—she shuddered—“it didn't have a head!”

  Detective-Sergeant Black cleared his throat politely.

  Powell ignored him. “Are you sure, Miss, er, Jenny?”

  She nodded earnestly. “I know she didn't! I swear to God, her neck just sort of ended and—”

  “You said she” Powell interjected.

  Jenny seemed slightly taken aback, as if it had just struck her for the first time. “I don't know why. exactly, but I'm sure it was a she.”

  “You said it was trying to crawl out of the water.” Powell said gravely. “Are you certain it was moving of its own accord?”

  She looked indignant. “I wasn't about to stick around to find out, was I?”

  “No, I suppose not. What did you do next?”

  “I ran back here as fast as I could to tell Tone. Didn't I, Tone?”

  “That's right,” Rowlands said. “The poor girl looked like death warmed over—”

  ‘Tony!” Jenny admonished.

  He smiled. “Sorry, love, figure of speech. Anyway, I grabbed a torch and my twelve bore and went back to look for it. I'm pretty sure I found the right spot, but I'm damned if I could find anything. At the time I thought that Jen was seeing things, but the next night it was spotted again by somebody else. Isn't that right, love?” He gave her a sharp slap on the bottom.

  A gesture of familiarity or admonishment? Powell wondered.

  Jenny looked none too pleased. “That's right, Tone.”

  Rowlands shrugged. “That's the goods. It's been seen on the Sands several times since, between here and the Head, always at night.”

  “What do you make of it?” Powell asked.

  Rowlands regarded Powell shrewdly before replying. “The damn thing gives me the creeps, if you want to know the truth, but I think it's pretty obvious, don't you?”

  “Go on.”

  “It's something drifting in and out with the tide. It turns up here and it turns up there.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  Rowlands shifted uneasily in his chair. “You tell me.”

  The surf crashed riotously against the rocks and Nick Tebble pulled smartly, expertly timing his strokes so that the tiny skiff rode the swells as smoothly as any Malibu surfer. Gulls clamored overhead, wheeling and plunging as if harrying a school of herring. He stayed his oars momentarily. “Bugger off, yer greedy bastards,” he shouted above the din.

  The birds took no notice so he began to row again, straining at the oars now and making for a small cove, perhaps fifty feet wide and twice as deep, that had suddenly opened up in the looming cliff face. A dozen more pulls and the skiff was deposited abruptly on a patch of shingled beach in front of a gray stone house that looked like it had grown organically from the surrounding rock. Above the door, carved in the granite lintel, were the words THE OLD FISH CELLAR and, underneath, DULCISLUCRI ODOR. A lane behind the house climbed steeply to the turf-covered heights above.

  He clambered out and dragged the boat a few feet farther up the beach. Trailing the bow rope behind him like an umbilical cord, he trudged toward the house. The shingle gave way to shelving rock slabs up to the base of a stone wall taller than a man, encrusted with barnacles and stained black with lichens above the tide line. The wall was surmounted by a narrow set of steps. He tied the line to a rusted iron ring set into the wall and then looked back down the beach with squinting eyes. There was one more thing he had to do. but it could wait until he'd had a drink.

  Hadn't his grandfather been a fisherman in these waters during the heyday, and his young father a huer. directing the boats from the clifftops to the vast shoals of pilchards that had once filled all the bays and coves along the Cornish coast? “Heva! Heva!” they'd cry when the fish were spotted, then the boats would encircle the schools with their seines—countless thousands of them flashing silver like precious coins. On a good day they'd haul in a million or more. Then one year, mysteriously, the pilchards vanished, never to return again. Caught by the Frenchies, Tebble reckoned. Nothing left but a few mackerel and sharks for the tourists to catch and the ghosts of once bustling harbors up and down the coast.

  And what about the foreigners that had knacked the mines when the ore ran out with never a thought for Cousin Jack? Now they returned by the thousands every summer like vermin, plugging up the lanes so you couldn't move in the village. (Just last year, one of them had got his car wedged tight in Plover Street, demolishing old Mrs. Vivian's flower boxes and launching her geraniums like red rockets into the street.) They threw their money around as if to mock every Cornishman who'd ever tried to make an honest living in the earth or on the sea. And the only ones to profit by it were the scum that lived off them.

  He drew himself up. But wasn't he a fair-trader, just like them that had gone before him? He spat and grinned slyly. And he had all the time in the world. Or so he thought. Hunched and careful, he made his way up the slime-coated steps.

  CHAPTER 3

  The needles of water made her skin tingle. She ran her hands lightly over her breasts and felt the nipples harden. Marvelous little items, she thought; brilliantly utilitarian, exquisitely responsive to both physical and emotional stimuli—not to mention air conditioners—and the latest preoccupation of the fashion world. One went to considerable lengths, it seemed, to deal with erect nipples, either to conceal them or to flaunt them, as the case might be. The last word on the subject was undoubtedly the recent declaration in the Sunday Times that it's no longer considered rude to point. Although she didn't feel strongly about it one way or the other, she was prepared to stand up and be counted (she had, after all, no particular interest in discounting potential assets).

  She looked down at the curve of her belly and frowned. Not as flat as it used to be; still, she was thirty-five and had held up pretty well, all things considered. Physical appearance had never been that important to her. but then she supposed she was more fortunate than most in that department. In the end it didn't seem to matter much; she hadn't exactly been lucky in love, and these days she could hardly be bothered.

  But all in all, she was basically content with her life. A small inheritance from her father provided her with almost enough to live on, and she had her writing to sustain her intellectually and creatively, if not yet financially. There were times when she wondered if that rose-covered cottage she longed for would
n't get a bit lonely during the long winter nights, but she tried not to feel too sorry for herself. She had made certain choices and was prepared to live with them. And besides, she still had a few good innings left.

  She located a minute sliver of soap and began to lather herself vigorously. Suddenly she let out a piercing shriek. “Bloody hell!” In an instant the shower spray had turned from tepid to ice-cold. Swearing creatively between clenched teeth, she fumbled with the knob and eventually managed to staunch the glacial flow. Out of all the guesthouses in Cornwall, how in heaven's name had she ever picked this one? She had been seeking a quiet, seaside setting to get the creative juices flowing, not a bout of pneumonia!

  She squeezed out of the shower stall and wrapped herself in the undersized towel that had been provided. A few spring weeks in Cornwall before the hordes of holidaymakers descended, to work on her book—a sort of romantic comedy about a thirtysomething professional couple who chuck sophisticated London for a life of self-sufficiency on the Cornish coast. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. She'd be free to get up when she wished, write when she felt like it, and generally soak up the atmosphere that was so important to her as a writer.

  Her first novel had been published the previous year to some modest acclaim, and she was now under considerable pressure from her publisher to produce another. But after the first blush of success had faded, the enormity of the task had proven daunting. In fact, there were moments when she wasn't sure she had another book in her. Looking back, it seemed as if the first one had written itself, perhaps because she had thought about it for so long, to the point where she had basically composed the entire story in her head before sitting down at the keyboard. Even though it had taken nearly three years to finish, working in fits and starts with the usual frustrations and rejection slips, all she could remember was the heady rush of creativity that had characterized that period in her life. Now she was working to a deadline, which was quite a different matter. Her worst fear was that she'd exhausted her store of ideas, used up all the clever turns of phrase and erudite allusions that she'd assiduously filed away over the years. She finally concluded that the only thing for it, if she wasn't to bog down completely, was a stint in Cornwall to steep herself in the setting of her new book.

  So here she was in Penrick on the north coast of Cornwall, a spectacular spot with a romantic history of shipwrecks and smuggling and plenty of atmosphere a la Daphne du Maurier. It was just as she had imagined it. There was a catch, of course, as there always is. But in this instance it turned out to be a rather large one: the Polfrocks. The perils of Agnes the Dragon Lady were obvious and fairly easily countered, but the husband, George, who appeared to play a secondary role at the Wrecker's Rest (but apparently not, in the absence of any evidence of little Polfrocks, a procreative one), was more of a problem. His chief hobby seemed to be creeping about and mentally undressing any woman—save his wife, one presumed—who came within a hundred yards. Jane had to continually suppress the paranoid notion that Georgie Boy was accustomed to having it off behind peepholes in the rooms of his female guests.

  But there had been trade-offs. Almost unbelievably, she had met a couple in the pub who had dropped out of the rat race a few years ago to make their living growing flowers up near Towey Head! They had provided a well of useful information for her book. And she had been in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the Riddle of Penrick, as she had so described the mysterious apparition on the Penrick Sands in her debut as a journalist.

  While reading English literature at university she had taken a course in journalism, spending a summer working for one of the London tabloids as a sort of general dogsbody. The experience had proven memorable in more ways than one. She had made a number of contacts at the newspaper, some of which she had maintained. One in particular had been romantic—and an unmitigated disaster, as it turned out. She still occasionally bumped into the bloke, who was now a senior editor at one of the larger London dailies.

  When the Riddle was first sighted a few days after she had ensconced herself at the Wrecker's Rest, she called Michael to tip him off to a possible story. He had been preoccupied with some Royal hijinks at the time and suggested that she take a stab at writing the story herself. If she agreed to file an exclusive report with his paper, he had promised to recycle any subsequent installments for the wire services on her behalf, under her own byline, assuming of course that the story turned out to be more than just a one-day wonder. For old times' sake, as he had put it. Fancying herself quite the starving artist, she had swallowed her pride and leapt at the chance to make a few quid. It would get her mind off the novel, and at least she would be writing.

  As a news item, the Riddle had so far remained a minor curiosity relegated to the back pages, but even so, she had managed to sell a few lines. A reporter from the local paper in St. Ives had put in a brief appearance but soon lost interest, so she more or less had the field to herself. It was almost certainly a hoax of some kind (which she was determined to get to the bottom of) but a fortuitous and welcome diversion nonetheless. And one never knew, she might be onto something that would eventually rival the Beast of Bodmin Moor in notoriety. Jane Goode, freelance journalist, informing the curious masses. It seemed rather romantic, and it was all grist for the mill. Perhaps she could work the idea into her novel somehow.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans and then selected a particularly shapeless jersey to frustrate Mr. Polfrock. She smiled grimly. She was looking forward to having a word with the Dragon Lady about the so-called amenities of the Wrecker's Rest. All mod cons, like hell!

  After lunch Powell set out along the Sands toward Towey Head, leaving Sergeant Black behind to explore Penrick. He strolled along the beach, familiarizing himself with the territory and mulling over his initial suspicions about the strange sightings on the Penrick Sands. He had already concluded that there was something decidedly fishy about the entire business.

  The tide was well out and the sky was a hazy gray dome speckled with screaming gulls. A gusty wind was whipping up white horses on the blue curve of sea, which sat like a meniscus atop a yellow band of sand. What nautical instincts he retained from his university sailing days told him a change of weather was in the offing. A few hardy souls were on the beach, clinging to deck chairs or huddled behind colorful nylon windbreaks that flapped wildly like kites straining to take off.

  To his left was an area of wasteland, the towans, a mixture of sand and sea rush heaped high by the wind into a chaotic jumble of dunes. The effect was a bit eerie, a half-mile wall of sand, up to twenty feet high and several hundred yards wide, that effectively isolated the beach from the base of the low cliffs beyond. In the distant past, hurricanes of sand had inundated stretches of the northern Cornish coast, and in places whole farmsteads (and even a lost city, it is purported) had been overwhelmed and now lie buried, preserved like villas in Pompeii. One could only marvel at the caprice of nature.

  “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  Powell smiled thinly. Sergeant Black would no doubt appreciate Shelley's sentiment.

  The Sands gradually petered out and the beach became rockier in character where the cliffs pinched in toward the sea before soaring to the summit of Towey Head. Beneath the promontory, a seashore clutter of bungalows lined the little cove that formed the southwest corner of Penrick Bay. Most were still boarded up for the season.

  An elderly man pottered about with an outboard engine near a small shed beside one of the cottages. It was better kept than its neighbors—its fenced-off garden bright with sea pinks and lavender.

  He had gray hair slicked back and bushy eyebrows. In his early seventies, Powell guessed. “Good afternoon,” he called out.

  The man looked up from his work, then wiped his hands on a greasy rag. He eyed Powell's tweed ja
cket critically. “It's going to rain, you know,” he rejoined sternly.

  “Ah, well, I'm not easily deterred.”

  “I suppose you're another one of those newspaper people.”

  “Good heavens, no!” Powell looked genuinely shocked. Then he smiled. “It's worse than that, actually.”

  The man looked irritated. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I'm a policeman.”

  At first the man looked surprised, then he nodded knowingly. “Oh, I see! I was wondering when you'd show up. The name's Harris.”

  Powell, slightly puzzled, introduced himself. “You weren't expecting me by any chance, were you, Mr. Harris?”

  “Well, not you personally, Chief Superintendent, but somebody like you. And it's Dr. Harris, by the way. Come inside the house so we can chat.”

  Mildly intrigued, Powell turned to follow his host into the cottage, and as he did so something caught his attention. Someone was standing in the small front window of the cottage next door, but as he turned his head to get a better look, the figure moved away, merging into the shadows.

  Dr. Harris's tiny sitting room, cluttered with books and papers, had a distinctly nautical flavor: a tarnished brass telescope mounted on a tripod at the front window, and on the adjoining wall a Victorian barometer, a ship's clock, and several framed photographs of a sleek ketch— the Dulcinea—crewed by a young man (a younger Dr. Harris?) and a smiling woman. At Harris's invitation he took a seat on a threadbare settee.

  Powell stared at the wall behind Dr. Harris, transfixed. In a small alcove to the right of, and not visible from, the doorway hung a stunning painting of a familiar scene.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  Harris smiled. “Be my guest.”

  Powell got up and went over to examine the painting. It was a watercolor, approximately two-and-a-half by three feet in size and simply breathtaking in its conception and execution. The artist had employed the brilliant transparency of light and the shifting fluidity of water to permeate and absorb the merest suggestion of solid shapes, which hardly seemed to be seen at all. Sea-swept cliffs, a colorful splash of cottages, and in the foreground a yacht, the whole overshadowed by the looming presence of Towey Head. The perspective seemed slightly odd, as if the artist had set out to show the space between objects as a greater or lesser concentration of light rather than simply as physical distance. “It's bloody marvelous!” he said.