by Will North
“Probably just a tourist at the end of a walk, avoiding the rain and heading back to the Tinners Arms for a pint,” Andrew said.
“Yeah. Probably. Yeah, that makes complete sense.” Lately, Lee liked things to make complete sense. So much of her life recently hadn’t.
“Did you continue on to Zennor?” Nicola asked.
“Me?” she said, laughing and shaking her head. Lee had let her previously close-cropped sandy hair grow to a bob after her parents’ death and now it danced along the line of her fine-cut jaw. As she matured, her features were becoming chiseled and angular, as if cut from the granite cliffs all around her.
“No, me and Randi, we turned inland around Treveal Farm and came straight up our valley to home. When Randi speaks, I listen. He’s very wise, Randi is.”
“Randi and I,” Andrew corrected.
Lee made a face. “Like I didn’t know?” Lee had gained a good three inches in the past year and a half and had loose, gangly limbs that suggested she hadn’t quite got used to her new body. She’d also begun to develop a certain resistance to what she thought was expected by the adults in her life, no matter how much she loved and needed them.
But Nicola heard Lee say “home” and it warmed her heart. She’d never had a child, nor had Andrew. In their mid-forties now, they never would. But they had Lee, and they could not imagine a finer daughter. Not that they had a clue how to raise one, especially a rare one like Lee.
Nicola and Andrew had lived together ever since the flood. Nicola’s former father-in-law, who was among other things a financial advisor to Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, had arrived in Boscastle with the Prince’s entourage a few days after the catastrophic flood to survey the damage. While the Prince moved through the shattered village talking with residents, Sir Michael stepped away to check on his beloved ex-daughter-in-law, Nicola, who had lived alone in a cottage near the harbor’s mouth ever since he had arranged for her divorce from his abusive son, Jeremy. But the flood had torn her house apart and there was no sign of her.
When he found Nicola at last, battered, in shock, but alive, and met the man who’d rescued her, the visiting American architect Andrew Stratton, he begged the two of them to move to his family’s country estate, Trevega House, just south of the historic artists’ colony of St. Ives. The estate had been neglected, and he directed Andrew to begin its restoration. Andrew recruited his stone wall-building mentor, Jamie Boden, to join him, along with his partner, Flora Penwellan. They all now lived on the estate.
This particular evening, Drew, as Lee always called Andrew, clutched a glass of red wine in his right fist but did not lift it. Nicola noticed his hands were raw and gave his arm a squeeze. She could tell he was exhausted. He hadn’t had time to bathe and his thick mass of curly salt and pepper hair was tinged with grit. He and Jamie had been heaving stone all day to rebuild a collapsing wall in the estate’s old gardener’s cottage so it could be converted to a rental unit. Lee, too, school now being out, had helped them most of the day. The girl had loved stone work ever since she’d watched Drew and Jamie working on that new wall behind the tourist car park in Boscastle, the unfinished wall that was washed away as if it were made of nothing of substance in the flood that had nearly destroyed her home village and so much else of what Lee once believed was rock-solid and permanent in her short life.
NICOLA PUT HER fork down and turned her attention to her partner: “How’d you and Jamie get on with that wall at the gardener’s cottage?”
Andrew shook his head; grit fell from his hair. “That Jamie is a genius. I was sure we’d have to tear down the whole west-facing wall and remove the roof, it was all so weathered, but old Jamie just said, ‘trust the stone.’ He rammed a vertical supporting timber beneath the roof’s end-rafter and we’ve rebuilt the upper half of the exterior stone wall beneath it, as if the roof were floating above us. It’s taken a few days but when we’re done he’ll ease out that support and the old timber and slate roof will settle down onto the new wall right as rain, completely stuck and sturdy. That’s what he says, anyway.”
“And you, Mr. Architect,” Nicola teased, “Did you serve as his structural engineer?”
“No way; I’ll never stop learning from that wily old man. And this young lady,” he said, nodding at Lee, “she was with us all the way. Her spatial sense is amazing.”
“What’s that mean?”
“This girl of ours can see in three dimensions. She can turn space around in her head and tell you where a particular stone will fit as if it were meant to be sewn there. It’s a rare talent, Jamie says.”
“Wow!”
“Whatever,” Lee said to her plate.
“She could be an architect,” Andrew added.
The girl smiled but did not look up.
“Where’s Jamie’s Flora tonight?” Nicola asked.
“Off to one of those pagan meetings she goes to once a month,” he said. “’Moots’ they’re called. I don’t know if Jamie’s a believer or not; he doesn’t say. But tonight he’s off to the Tinners for supper and a pint or three with the neighbors while she’s out. Bit of a reprieve from the witchcraft for him, I suppose.”
Nicola locked her ebony eyes on him: “Listen, you: I believe in her and in her faith and skills. She lifted a great burden from my soul after the flood…and made it possible for me to trust and love you. If that’s witchcraft, I’ll take it.”
“It wasn’t my inherent charm?”
She relaxed: “Yes, well, maybe a bit of that too….”
Andrew marveled at the woman beside him: her feisty Italian edge was never far beneath her smooth, slightly olive skin. Andrew’s ex-wife had been tall, slender, and cold, but his Nicola was a comforting warm armful when they curled up together at night. He especially loved waking up early in the morning to see her long dark brown hair, burnished with tints of copper in the sun, splayed out across her pillow. That’s when he wanted her most, but he let her sleep and slipped off to brew tea for them. It was little ritual of theirs, having tea in bed to begin each day, a still point of catching up, looking forward, and being together before their worlds started turning again.
Lee watched the two of them banter and considered how lucky she was that these quirky grownups had adopted her. The formal process was not yet complete, she knew, but what seemed like half the population of Boscastle had turned up for the hearing at the Family Proceedings Court at Bodmin to support Nicola and Andrew’s petition. Lee’s own grandparents said they were too old to look after the precocious girl and endorsed Andrew and Nicola wholeheartedly. It was only a matter of time now before the order would be final. It hardly mattered to Lee, though; Andrew and Nicky were her anchors now.
What she did not know, and what they had not told her yet, was that the settlement from the accident that killed her parents, when it finally wound its way through the courts, would likely protect her financially for the rest of her life. Others of the company’s drivers were on record reporting that the truck that had lost control had continually leaked brake fluid. In response to their warnings, the owners had simply topped up the reservoir as needed and ignored them. A corporate manslaughter charge would be heard in Truro Crown Court. Psychiatrists for the injured and emotionally shattered driver had already been deposed and they doubted the young man would ever be the same.
As for Bottreaux Farm, Lee’s home, the rich land above Boscastle had been rented quickly by a neighboring farmer, and the farmhouse itself had been purchased and turned into a posh bed and breakfast venue…where no one spoke of the tragedy. The proceeds of the sale, and the rental income, went to a trust fund for Lee established by Sir Michael.
AS SHE ATE, Lee could not stop thinking about Flora’s pagan moots. She just knew somehow, like an itch beneath her skin, that she was meant to attend those meetings, too. There were things she knew, things she sensed, but she did not yet have the words or the courage to talk about them. Only Flora understood.
Flora Penwellan ha
d worked behind the bar at the Cobweb Inn at Boscastle dispensing drinks, food, and sage advice in roughly equal measure for as long as anyone could remember…until the flood nearly destroyed the pub and swept her finally into Jamie Boden’s arms. The two had flirted with each other for years but had both been too shy, and thought themselves too old, to act on their attraction. In the end, all it took to bring them together was a disaster that could have killed them both.
Jamie Boden was as wiry and tough as a goat, lean but strong from years of stone work. His weather-beaten, freckled face possessed an almost perpetual look of mischief and his unruly thinning red hair, touched now with threads of white, was like a storm swirling around his head. Just encountering Jamie Boden made you smile.
Full-figured Flora—“strapping,” some might describe her—was what locals called, privately, a “village wise woman,” one of several in this part of Cornwall… someone you could count on to lift an ache from your soul or a curse from a neighbor, among other maladies: in short, a witch. And, although she was almost sixty, she had also been Lee’s closest adult friend both before and after the flood. It was simple: they loved and respected each other. Plus, Flora had already sensed that Lee was unusual. She kept an eye on the child as if the girl were her own, and now that they all lived on the Trevega Estate that was easier to do. She loved that Andrew and Nicola had wrapped their arms around the orphaned girl and given her their hearts, but she did not believe they understood, at least not yet, how different the girl really was. And it was Flora’s job, she believed, to protect and nurture that difference. It was, she felt, the last big task of her life.
That, and maybe Jamie.
HE CLIMBED BACK over the ancient stone hedge and stood at the edge of the coast path, admiring his handiwork. It had been harder than he’d expected and he was winded, even a bit frightened by what he’d done. But he smiled nonetheless:
It’s a first step. There will be more.
And then he strode south, careful not to be seen.
Two
NIGEL LAWRENCE, THE thick-set young farm manager for the Trevega estate, knocked at the kitchen door of the big house early on Monday morning. He and his wife Annabelle and their toddler Jesse lived above the valley in the estate’s farmhouse. Low-slung under its lichen-encrusted slate roof and looking like it had grown out of the rocky landscape rather than having been built upon it, the stone house was more than a century older than Trevega House, almost a museum piece. Nigel managed the estate’s cattle for Sir Michael.
“Nigel!” Nicola said, opening the door. “Come in! Tea?”
“That would be fine, Nicola, thank you. Andrew about?”
“Of course. Just changing into his work clothes. Be down any minute.”
She poured him a mug. “Something more than tea, Nigel? Toast?”
“Nah. My Annabelle fixed me a breakfast to last all day.”
“A fine and lovely woman she is, Nigel.”
She paused and added, “Plus Annabelle saved me from Jeremy. I’m forever in her debt. And yours.”
“I’m so sorry we didn’t know sooner that he was beating you…I’d have throttled the bastard. So unlike his dad, Sir Michael, who’s such a good and noble soul.”
“All in the past now and long gone, Nigel. Anyway, I should have said something back then, but I was too afraid. Annabelle helped me to find my voice. Then again, look at all the good that’s happened since…Yes?”
“Mighty glad we are about you and Andrew. And Lee, too, despite her terrible loss. Landed safely with you two, me and Annabelle think. Reckon we’d like her as babysitter for our little Jesse sometimes, if she’s interested. Loves her, that little boy does. How’s she faring, then, our Lee?”
“Hides a lot inside, I think, Nigel. But she soldiers on. She’s a strong girl.”
“And smart, too, I reckon. Comes up to the farm and wants to learn all about the herd. Lovely company she is as well, and the animals they take to her. You should see it: they gather around her, their big ginger heads bobbing, and they lick her boots. She has a way with them.”
Andrew came down the back stairs to the kitchen. “Nigel! How are you, my friend?” He thrust out his hand.
Nigel had not yet quite got used to this overt American custom. Diffident nods were more a Cornishman’s habit of greeting. Given its smuggling history, wariness was culturally ingrained. At some point in the distant past maybe you had to worry if someone who extended one hand might have a knife in the other.
“Reckon I’d like a word, Andrew,” he said, taking the proffered hand. “On a farm matter.” He looked at Nicola. “Outside, maybe?”
“Of course!” Andrew said.
“So much for tea,” Nicola groused. “Go on, you two…”
A crushed gravel terrace separated the back of Trevega House from the overgrown formal garden a few steps below. Renovating the garden was Nicola’s next task. The rear terrace was where they parked their vehicles, near to the kitchen door. Nigel stopped in the middle of the yard, as if there were a mark there where he should stand and speak.
Andrew joined him. “What’s up, Nigel? What is it?”
The farm manager looked across the yard and then turned to Andrew.
“Reckon it’s murder, Andrew.”
“What?”
“One of our bullocks dead this morning in a field down by the coast. Throat slit. Couldn’t even have bawled out for help, the poor devil,” Nigel said, his voice catching, as if his own child had been slain. “It was Lee who told me. She’d been out walking early with Randi. Came right up to the farm, she did, told me, then left. I moved the rest of the cattle from that field. They were gathered around the dead one nudging it, wanting it to live.”
Andrew put his arm around the man’s shoulders and led them farther away from the house. “Good Lord, Nigel, why? What’s the point? Do we have enemies?”
“None what I know of, truly, Andrew. Folks hereabouts are proud of how you’re restoring Trevega. The old place is full of life again. That’s good for everyone in the district. They’re always talking at the Tinners about all that you and Jamie are doing. Admiring, everyone is.”
“But this?”
The farm manager raised his hands. “No idea, honestly. Such a beautiful, harmless beast.”
Nigel was a stocky Cornishman in his mid-thirties, ruddy-faced from the weather and so heavily muscled it was as if he didn’t just raise cattle but wrestled them as well. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and looked off across the overgrown garden.
“This could be just someone’s filthy prank,” he said without conviction.
“Maybe, but I think we’d best report it to Sir Michael anyway,” Andrew said.
“We’ve plenty more cattle, Andrew.”
“Still, he’ll want the police in. Don’t move the beast, okay? And let’s get your veterinarian to have a look as well. We’ll need something official.”
“Already called the vet.”
“Why am I not surprised…?”
“Has Lee been back yet?”
“I didn’t know she’d been out, honestly.”
“You’ll go look for that girl, won’t you? She were powerful upset finding that bullock. Troubles me more than that beast, to be honest. Find her.”
Acknowledgments
The Davies & West mystery series is set in contemporary Cornwall. I love this far southwestern tip of England, a place of mystery itself—wind-whipped on its Atlantic side, pastoral on the Channel side—a place where Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age sites litter the landscape. I know this world well, but that does not mean I’m an expert. For expertise, I depend on a splendid team of local advisors who make sure everything I write, from police procedure to ancient archaeology to contemporary paganism, is spot-on accurate.
First among these equals is and must be Devon and Cornwall Police Crime Scene Manager detective sergeant Martin South, a gentleman of deep experience, even deeper patience with an American novelist, and by now a dear fri
end. Other members of existing and former members of the Devon and Cornwall Police to whom I am indebted for this particular book include Neil Best, former Criminal Investigation Division (CID) detective inspector; David O’Neill, former CID detective sergeant, and Falmouth-based CID detective sergeant Helen Shears. On matters of forensic science and autopsy procedure, I thank Dr. Amanda Jeffers, forensic pathologist, and Kevin Hammett, mortuary manager at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.
Archaeology plays a key role in this story, and on that subject I was capably guided by James Gossip, senior archaeologist at the Historic Environments Service of the Cornwall Council; his team of volunteers from the Meneage Archaeology Group who generously invited me to carry very heavy buckets of rubble at the excavation of an underground chamber, a “fogou,” on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall; and Chris Hoskin, the owner of the farm where that chamber was found and a generous host. In addition, I am grateful for the friendships made with members of the Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network (CASPN), who invited me to join their annual walk connecting three sacred wells on the Lizard Peninsula and taught me so much along the way.
As guides to the deep and continuing culture of paganism in Cornwall, I thank Ronald Hutton, professor of history specializing in paganism and magic at Bristol University, and Andy Norfolk, Cornish expert in Druidry.
At the center of this mystery is the discovery of an Iron Age hoard, a treasure trove worth millions. For guidance on both the law and the valuation of such ancient relics, I thank Roger Bland, Keeper, Departments of Prehistory & Europe and Portable Antiquities and Treasure, and Dr. Michael Lewis, Deputy Head, Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure, both with the British Museum in London; Mark Harrison at English Heritage; Anna Tyacke, Finds Liaison Officer, Royal Cornwall Museum; and Christopher Martin, Chairman, UK Antiquities Dealers Association.
And for a springtime local flora tutorial and walk through the valley of the Helford River, I thank botanist Amanda Scott, a delightful guide.