Too Clever by Half

by Will North

  “Come off it, Guv, she’ll be out sooner.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Morgan. Others have weighed in on this case….”

  LATE IN THE afternoon a few days later, Morgan Davies and Terry Bates drove into the yard of Bobby Tregareth’s farm. Patricia Boden from Truro’s Royal Cornwall Museum sat in the back seat with the lawyer, Jeremy Rothenberg. They climbed out of the car and Davies knocked on the kitchen door at the back. Davies was surprised to find that Beatrice Masters answered it, the boy Archibald in her arms. Something savory was simmering on the cooker.

  “Oh, hello! You’ll be wanting Bobby. He’s just texted to say he’s on his way home. Will you have tea while we wait?”

  Beatrice put the child into a springy suspension contraption in which the boy could work his plump little legs and bounce. The child seemed supremely happy.

  Just as Beatrice served, Bobby Tregareth came through the back door, kicked off his Wellies in the mudroom, and padded into the kitchen in his socks.

  “What’s this then?” he said when he saw the visitors. “Bea?”

  “They’ve come to see you, Bobby.”

  “About what?”

  “Come on then, love, and take a seat,” Beatrice said as she set a mug on the kitchen table. Tregareth remained standing.

  Morgan closed her eyes for a moment. Bobby Tregareth seemed to have found the woman who fit him best. It had never been Joellyn. It was meant to be Beatrice all along. She wondered when each of them noticed. Who was first? Or did it just emerge in the midst of their dual tragedies. She opened her eyes and watched the new couple: I’m getting mushy and romantic, she thought. This is all Calum’s fault.

  “We…all of us,” Morgan said finally, gesturing to the others who’d accompanied her, “we think we have some news for you Bobby…and Beatrice.”

  “What’s that then?” Bobby had learned to be wary.

  “Perhaps you’d like to sit down?”

  “Fine I am, right here. What’s this about?”

  “Bobby,” Beatrice said, her hand light upon his shoulder. “Sit. These are not our enemies.”

  Morgan nodded thanks to her and took a breath as Bobby finally sat. He’d not touched his tea.

  “We are here to tell you, Mr. Tregareth,” she began, “that your son, Archibald Robert Tregareth, is the sole beneficiary of the late Archie Hansen’s estate. You are the boy’s fiduciary manager. This means that all of Hansen’s property, as well as his cash assets, whatever they may be, belong to your son and to you as your son’s legal representative.”

  Tregareth blinked several times. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, “but can you spell this out in plain English?” He looked at Beatrice. “For both of us?”

  The lawyer, Rothenberg answered: “It means that the land you have leased is now yours and your son’s, as is all of Hansen’s own land. His house as well. They are all yours and at your disposal, for the benefit of your son. My legal firm represented Mr. Hansen and we will be happy to help you sort this all out.”

  Tregareth was dumbstruck. Beatrice wrapped her arms around his neck but said nothing.

  “I…I’m sorry,” Tregareth stuttered, as if trying to gain control of his tongue, “…I.”

  “But there is something else,” Patricia Boden added.

  “I remember you,” Tregareth said. “You’re that museum lady….”

  “I am, yes sir. Do you remember that chamber Hansen found?”

  “Course I do. Beginning of all this sadness, that was…”

  “I understand, and you have my sympathy, truly. But I think the outcome may alleviate some of that sadness. As it happens, Mr. Hansen found items in that underground chamber of great value. Relics from the Iron Age: jewelry, coins. The police recovered them from where they were hidden and returned them to the Crown.”

  “Good, and good riddance, I say. Nothing but trouble we had after he found that hole.”

  “You may wish to change your mind about that, Mr. Tregareth,” Boden continued. “It will take a couple of years for the British Museum’s full evaluation but, Hansen being dead and your son his beneficiary, the full value of that Iron Age hoard will come directly to him. It is of course, now your son’s land and therefore whatever was found there belongs to him.”

  “I’m sorry. What does that mean?”

  “At least a million, Mr. Tregareth, and likely much more.”

  “TRY THE KELTIK,” Davies said. “Smooth, almost comforting, as ales go.”

  “I’m not much of a beer drinker,” Terry Bates said as they stood at the bar of the Blisland Inn.

  “I wasn’t either, until I moved here. Trust me.”

  Publican Garry Ronan was suddenly beside them. “I don’t know whether I can permit two such lovely women in my pub at once. Could cause fisticuffs among the regulars!”

  Bates lifted an eyebrow. Davies laughed.

  “That’s just Garry being Garry, luv. Take no notice.”

  “Oh, I am cut to the quick!” Ronan complained.

  “I know it’s hard, but do try to control yourself, Garry. This is my rather splendid assistant, detective constable Terry Bates. I won’t have her getting any bad impressions of you or my village local, you hear? Now, what’s on for supper, and make it good.”

  Ronan threw a bar towel over his left forearm, in the manner of a waiter and bowed. “I should think the Shepherd’s Pie would do you. Fresh local lamb, new Maris potatoes, veg, all savoury and luscious.”

  “You make it sound X-rated, you knave,” Davies joked.

  “You shall not be disappointed.”

  Davies and Bates found a small table by the hearth; fall was upon them and there was a wood fire smoldering in the grate. Davies grabbed an iron prod and shook the fire to life.

  Bates stared at the creamy foam in her pint jar for a bit, then looked up.

  “Something about this afternoon at Tregareth’s I wanted to ask you about.”

  Davies sipped her pint and smiled. “I was wondering when you’d get around to it. It’s why I asked you here.”

  “The DNA evidence.”

  “What of it?”

  “It was never entered in the trial and you said nothing about it to Tregareth this afternoon.”

  Davies stared at the fire for a few moments.

  “Did you see those three today? Bobby, Beatrice, the bouncing boy?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Do you honestly think Tregareth’s never noticed that youngster’s bright red hair? He knows Hansen’s the father. It simply doesn’t matter to him. He loves that boy and, unless I miss my guess, he loves Beatrice as well.”

  Morgan looked at Terry and smiled: “What would you have said?”

  Keep reading for an excerpt from the next book in the Davies & West Mystery Series.

  Trevega House

  A Davies & West Mystery

  An excerpt from Book 3 in the Davies & West

  Mystery Series

  Prologue

  IT WAS, ALMOST everyone in Boscastle later agreed, a great mercy that death was so quick.

  That late spring morning, the sky sapphire blue and the grazing meadows emerald with new growth, Roger and Anne Trelissick, on their way to the shops up in Camelford, had just reached the top of the long gravel drive from their home, Bottreaux Farm, when an empty dump truck going far too fast failed to negotiate the B3266’s steep ninety-degree left turn toward the village. The truck lifted and tipped over to the right, became almost airborne, gave in to gravity, crushed the Trelissick’s Land Rover where it waited to enter the main road, and rolled once more before resting finally upside down in one of their fields, scattering the cattle that had been grazing there.

  Incredibly, the driver survived. Roger and Anne Trelissick did not. Roger died instantly, Anne before the emergency aides could cut her free from their mangled farm vehicle.

  The Cornish village of Boscastle was nearly a year into a reconstruction project following an epic and massively destructive flash
flood, one of the worst in British recorded history. In a single afternoon, thanks to a bizarre meteorological convergence, nearly half a billion gallons of rain fell in a few hours and funneled from the hilltops into the Valency River Valley uprooting trees, rolling boulders like so many marbles, carrying dozens of cars out into the Atlantic, and ultimately destroying many buildings that had stood firm beside the harbor mouth for as long as five centuries. The task of rebuilding, of clearing the rubble, re-channeling the river, dredging the tiny harbor, and reconstructing underground utilities, had involved removing tons of mud, rock, crushed cars, and other debris. The heavy lorry and dump truck traffic roaring up and down the steep valley had thundered daily for months, right through the winter and spring. To residents trying to rebuild their lives and businesses, it was the thunder of hope. As spring advanced, apple and ornamental plum trees were blooming and the emerging new leaves were the freshest bright green. Life returned.

  To everyone’s amazement, the flood had killed no one.

  Until the Trelissicks.

  While the police picked their way around the accident scene, one of the emergency service officers, Jimmy Poundstock, a Boscastle native, pulled out his mobile and called Janet Stevenson, the young vicar at Boscastle’s Forrabury Church where he worshipped. Stevenson listened, said a silent prayer, and went out to her car to fetch the Trelissick’s only child, Lilly, a strong-minded girl who demanded to be called “Lee,” from the primary school she attended on Fore Street, just below the church. But she stopped beside her car first and placed a call to Nicola Rhys-Jones and Andrew Stratton. She knew that the couple, she a painter and he an architect, both ex-patriot Americans and dear friends of the Trelissicks, would come immediately to care for the girl. Lee had spent part of her Christmas holiday with them at their new home near St. Ives taking painting lessons from Nicola. They were practically family to Lee and they, too, were flood survivors.

  WHEN IT BECAME clear, a week later, that the little parish church would never be able to accommodate what turned out to be almost the entire village for the memorial service, the event was moved to the newly restored Wellington Hotel. This did not trouble the vicar; she knew her parishioners and she knew Roger and Anne. They’d have wanted a joyful remembrance with lively, heart-soaring music and plenty of refreshments, both in ample supply at the Welly. She offered a simple celebratory prayer to the assembled crowd and reminded those gathered that another Trelissick, young Lee, remained and needed their love.

  It was Jack Vaughan, the bearded singer and musician locally called the “Boscastle Busker,” who finally cried Amen and ordered the gathered musicians to play. He sat Lee beside him in the family room of the hotel’s bar and the celebrants first sang Amazing Grace in full throat. Then they launched into their weekly singing of the seafaring songs, a tradition so old no one could recall its beginnings.

  Jack, who raised money from his music for a cancer treatment center, wanted life and normalcy to prevail over tragedy and he knew and loved Lee and her parents: what better vehicle than their regular Wednesday night sing? As if to a lifeline, Lee clung to the tradition as well. She slapped her palm against Jack’s knee to the tunes, brightening with each familiar song, and at the bar the drinks flowed. Jack had organized a similar community gathering a few days after the flood the previous year. That time they’d held it in the middle of the street by the hotel because the bar had been destroyed by a tributary stream called the River Jordan, which tore through the lower floor of the hotel. They’d built a bonfire from the wood remnants of the bar and a local brewery donated kegs of ale to the stricken village.

  But now, toward the end of the sing, as was their custom, the villagers began, slowly and then with more heart, for it seemed more appropriate than ever before, their traditional closing number: “The Shipwreck of the Mary Carter.” The guitars thrummed, a flute and a fiddle sang, and the voices rose until they reached the final stanza:

  Rise again, rise again,

  Though your heart, it be broken,

  And your life about to end;

  No matter what you’ve lost,

  A home, a love, a friend,

  Like the Mary Ellen Carter,

  Rise again…

  Jack scooped Lee into his lanky arms and held her as she finally cried. Everyone else applauded, their eyes brimming, too. The whole village was Lee’s family this night. Jack handed the girl to Nicola and Andrew and, once again, everyone cheered. With them, they knew, she’d be safe.

  One

  IT HAD TAKEN almost an hour of climbing for him to reach the moor top. The pale granite tors along the summit ridge were so weathered that their edges were rounded and their strata so eroded that they looked like stacks of petrified flapjacks. They rose from the heather, gorse, and bracken-cloaked slopes like the bones of some ancient beast stripped bare by eons of relentless storms. The ancients had revered these tors, given them magical names, built settlements nearby and fortresses atop, and buried their chieftains beneath cairns and quoits on the high ground facing west to the Atlantic.

  He leaned against a rock face and took in the view far below: the lush meadows of the farm, the stone mansion house, and the assortment of outbuildings that dotted the Trevega Estate north and south along the coast. As he watched, he beat his right fist against the stone like a pulse until the knuckles were nearly worn raw. He barely noticed. Anger rose like a fever:

  They don’t belong.

  “YOU ALL RIGHT, Lee?” Nicola asked. The now eleven-year-old at the table was staring out the kitchen window as if into another plane of existence.

  It had been many months since Lee’s parents had been killed, but the girl had surprised everyone by being as resilient as a willow whipping in a high wind. She missed them, of course, but she also accepted her loss with a strange equanimity unlike any other child her age might have done. Something of an old soul, Lee reckoned that her loss was a bit like the turn of the seasons: there was death in winter and rebirth in spring. The loss of her parents, she reasoned—because she was a thoughtful girl—was like the natural cycle of things: the world turns; things change. Sometimes change hurt. That was also to be expected. But she had Andrew and Nicola now and that was everything. Their love was warm as a thick down duvet on a stormy Cornish night. And she had this new home by the Atlantic cliffs.

  It was a chilly Friday evening despite being early summer, and Nicola was spooning out beef stew from a heavy Dutch oven. The updated but cavernous old kitchen on the ground floor of nineteenth century Trevega House was redolent tonight with the comforting aromas of their own farm beef, onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and new peas. Atop the stew were eight fluffy dumplings.

  “No, I’m fine, really,” Lee said, finally.

  Nicola had got used to this sort of delayed response; it was as if the girl chewed for a while on the gristle of every question, giving it thought before composing an answer. At her new school, she stood back from the chatter of her classmates. Her teacher was concerned that she did not blend in. The truth was that Lee could sense what her classmates really felt or cared about and for the most part it bored her silly. What she cared about were the lessons and there she excelled.

  “It’s just something I saw out on the coast path this afternoon,” she continued.

  The Southwest Coast Path, one of Britain’s many National Trails, edged the cliffs and hollows along the whole length of Cornwall and Devon’s Atlantic and English Channel coasts for some six hundred thirty miles. The Trevega Estate bordered the cliffside path above the Atlantic and ranged for nearly half a mile north and south along a gently sloping grassy plateau a few miles south of St. Ives. The plateau itself was the remnant of a shelf of beach from eons before, when a prehistoric ocean lapped at its shore. Now it stood high above the Atlantic and was crisscrossed by stone field walls, some of which dated to the Iron Age and possibly before. The verdant meadows, sequined by drifts of tiny white English daisies no higher than the grass blades, s
upported Trevega’s large herd of Black Angus cattle, a hardy breed and a major source of income for the estate.

  Having finished serving, Nicola sat and sipped from her own wine glass. A shapely woman a bit taller and more broad-shouldered than most, she had thick brown hair so dark it seemed almost black. It fell in gentle waves to between her shoulder blades. Raised in a poor Italian enclave in North Boston, her maiden name had been DeLucca. During an arts fellowship in Florence, Italy, she had met and later married Jeremy Rhys-Jones, the son of Sir Michael Rhys-Jones, an investment banker. The marriage had not gone well. She lived now at Trevega, the family’s “country house.”

  “So what did you see?” she asked.

  “Someone walking north. I’d just come ‘round Mussel Point on the way to Zennor when Randi noticed this walker far away to the south above that gully at Tregarthen Cliff. I was watching the pink thrift dancing in the wind at the cliff edge—they’re beautiful right now. The wind came at us from the south and maybe Randi caught a scent. He barked once, then twice, his warning bark, you know, and when I looked up,the figure had turned and was hurrying back the way it had come.”

  “It’s a public footpath,” Andrew said, looking up from his plate.

  “Plus, our big Siberian husky can be pretty intimidating,” Nicola added.

  “But from a tenth of a mile off?” It was like the girl thought them both idiots. She shook her head and continued eating.

  “What did you see of this walker? Male or female? Tall or short?” Andrew asked.

  “No idea, Drew. Dark trousers, olive green anorak I think, hood up because it was sprinkling.”