Hawke's Tor
Page 1
By the same author
THE MUSIC MAKERS
CRY ONCE ALONE
BECKY
GOD’S HIGHLANDER
CASSIE
WYCHWOOD
BLUE DRESS GIRL
TOLPUDDLE WOMAN
LEWIN’S MEAD
MOONTIDE
CAST NO SHADOWS
SOMEWHERE A BIRD IS SINGING
WINDS OF FORTUNE
SEEK A NEW DAWN
THE LOST YEARS
PATHS OF DESTINY
TOMORROW IS FOR EVER
THE VAGRANT KING
THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL
NO LESS THAN THE JOURNEY
CHURCHYARD AND HAWKE
THE DREAM TRADERS
BEYOND THE STORM
The Retallick Saga
BEN RETALLICK
CHASE THE WIND
HARVEST OF THE SUN
SINGING SPEARS
THE STRICKEN LAND
LOTTIE TRAGO
RUDDLEMOOR
FIRES OF EVENING
BROTHERS IN WAR
The Jagos of Cornwall
THE RESTLESS SEA
POLRUDDEN
MISTRESS OF POLRUDDEN
As James Munro
HOMELAND
© E.V. Thompson 2011
First published in Great Britain 2011
Hardback ISBN 978-0-7090-9279-7
Paperback C Format ISBN 978-0-7090-9373-2
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of E.V. Thompson to be identified as
author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Typeset in 11/16.8pt Palatino
Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group,
Bodmin and King’s Lynn
Table of Contents
By the same author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Prologue
‘HUSH NOW. THAT’S quite enough of your noise. I swear I’ve never known such a teasy child! We’re going out to meet your father but if you keep up that noise he’ll be in an even worse mood than the one he’s had these last few weeks.’
Completing the task of wrapping a woollen shawl about her baby, Kerensa Morgan picked him up so roughly that, taken by surprise, he ceased his grizzling immediately.
‘That’s better. You stay quiet like that and I won’t feel so inclined to throw you in the river when we cross over the bridge.’
Despite her stern warning and rough handling of him, Kerensa hugged the two-month-old baby to her and kissed his smooth-skinned forehead. When he responded with a lop-sided smile, she said happily, ‘That’s much better. You keep that smile when you grow-up and you’ll capture the heart of every young maid you meet up with, Albert Morgan.’
Unimpressed by his mother’s forecast of what life might have in store for him in the future, baby Albert began to protest once again about the restrictions placed upon the movement of his limbs by the tightly bound shawl. However, moments later he was carried from the house and, captivated by the sounds and movement of rooks that had their nests in a tall elm tree that towered above the lane outside the cottage occupied by the Morgan family, immediately became quiet.
The lane led to the wooded slopes of Bodmin Moor from the tiny, scattered hamlet of Trelyn, which was at the heart of the vast country estate from which it drew its name.
There were only two isolated cottages between the Morgans’ home and the River Lynher. Beyond the river a belt of thick woodland covered the north eastern slope of the moor for as far as could be seen.
Kerensa walked past the second of the cottages with the baby, keeping her glance firmly fixed ahead of her, aware that the occupier, the elderly spinster Jemima Rowe, would be watching from behind the lace curtain of the sitting-room window. If she thought Kerensa had seen her Jemima would beckon for her to come inside with the baby and keep her talking for far longer than she could afford to be held up.
Jemima was a tall, autocratic woman who until her retirement had been housekeeper at Trelyn Hall. An inveterate gossip, she missed nothing that happened around her and no one who passed by her isolated retirement cottage. Kerensa tried to tell herself the retired housekeeper meant well, but there always seemed to be a thinly disguised malicious element in whatever she said about anyone. It was a trait with which Kerensa felt uncomfortable.
At the lowest point of the lane, Kerensa stopped to look over the bridge which crossed the river there. Only a short distance upstream from where she was standing, the waters of the Lynher were augmented by the Witheybrook which tumbled from the moor in a series of chuckling cataracts, adding an urgency to the river’s progress which had hitherto been lacking.
For a minute or two she watched a dipper, bobbing obeisance to the river before deserting its precarious perch on a water-polished rock to plunge into the fast moving waters and walk against the current on the shallow river-bed, searching for sustenance.
Moving off, Kerensa continued along the lane for only a short distance before turning onto a path that climbed between the trees, heading up a steep slope towards an impressive outcrop comprised of giant slabs of weathered granite piled one upon another and known as Hawk’s Tor, which dominated the outline of the moor above her.
Dusk was not very far away but the path here was easy to follow, its centuries-old course having been further defined by horses owned by the Trelyn estate, as they dragged off huge tree trunks, felled by woodsmen in a tree-felling operation on the upper fringes of the wood.
Kerensa had no fear of losing her way, she knew this path well and had walked it on very many occasions before today.
Emerging on to the high moor from the shadow of the trees, she paused for a few moments to regain her breath and look about her. It had been a steep climb, especially with a baby in her arms. The path continued across the moor, but when Kerensa regained her breath she turned off it, to wander in a seemingly aimless manner across the carpet of coarse grass that lay between her and the tor that soon towered like a non-accessible fortress high above her.
The warm rays of the sun had not yet abandoned the upland and she enjoyed its warmth until she detected a movement in the shadows immediately below the tor. Increasing her pace, she hurried towards the spot.
Entering the ribbon of shadow she paused for a moment having lost the movement among the scattering of free-standing granite boulders, some of which were twice the height of a man.
When she arrived at the place where she thought she had seen the movement, she paused, puzzled, and called out, startling the baby she carried in h
er arms.
Albert, frightened, began to cry and for a few moments Kerensa turned her attention to the baby, anxious to pacify him.
He stopped momentarily and, suddenly, she heard a sound behind her.
Turning abruptly, a greeting on her lips, she stopped before it was uttered and her eyes opened wide in an expression of disbelief … which quickly turned to horror.
She opened her mouth again, this time to scream, but it was already too late. A fiercely wielded rock struck her a bone-shattering blow on the forehead … and Kerensa knew no more.
Twenty minutes later Hawk’s Tor and the surrounding moor was silent and deserted, as though nothing untoward had ever occurred there. But hidden among the boulders beneath the tor and cloaked by the deepening shadow of darkness, the body of Kerensa Morgan lay still, her life’s blood soaking into the earth that lay beneath the coarse grass of Bodmin Moor.
Chapter 1
THE WEEKLY REPORTS from Cornwall’s police districts to the Bodmin headquarters rarely contained anything of great interest and Superintendent Amos Hawke found the task of sifting through them one of his more boring tasks. The vast majority of arrests listed were for vagrancy offences, committed by penniless and homeless veterans of the Crimean War, drawn to Cornwall in increasing numbers recently, the county’s perceived warmer climate attracting those who were forced by circumstances to live at the mercy of the elements.
Other offences involved drunkenness among the hardworking, hard-living miners who were also responsible for fifteen cases of assaulting constables, this being one of their most popular diversions, especially on pay days when much of their money changed hands in the many grog-shops, beerhouses and kiddleywinks which had sprung up like weeds around the often remote mines. There were also many petty thefts – usually blamed on the vagrants – and reports of absconding apprentices.
Amos also noted three reports of missing persons. One was an old man with failing mental faculties, who he remembered as having gone missing on a number of previous occasions. Another was a young woman believed to have eloped with a gypsy lover.
But it was the third missing person’s report which claimed his attention. A young married woman had gone missing with her two-month-old baby and this report was only a few hours old, having been hastily added to the Launceston police district’s return that very morning, just before it was despatched by mounted messenger to the Bodmin headquarters.
It was possible Amos took particular interest in this item in the first instance because there was so little of note in any of the other reports, but the scanty details of the report informed him that the twenty-four year-old missing woman was the wife of the estate steward responsible for Trelyn, an estate owned by one of Cornwall’s most influential landowners and who was also a county magistrate.
Amos had just finished reading the sketchy details and was giving it some thought when there came a knock upon the open door of his office and Sergeant Tom Churchyard, the headquarters superintendent’s clerk who was also Amos’s right-hand man, entered the office with a batch of papers in his hand.
‘Ah! You are just the man I was thinking about, Tom,’ Amos said, by way of a greeting, ‘Are you particularly busy at the moment?’
Tom Churchyard shrugged, ‘Not really, I have been dealing with two sheep-stealers from up on the moor, but now they’ve been committed to the Assizes and remanded in custody I can forget them for a few weeks. There is a complaint from a mine manager up at Caradon Consuls about someone deliberately damaging mine machinery and tampering with the man-engine, which he says could endanger the lives of his miners. I was thinking of going up there tomorrow but I believe the sergeant at Rilla Mill is already dealing with it.’
‘Caradon, you say? That’s not very far from Trelyn, the private estate owned by Magistrate Trethewy. A woman went missing from there last night, taking a baby with her. I have an uneasy feeling about it.’
Tom looked at him in surprise, ‘Any particular reason why?’
Amos shook his head, ‘Nothing that makes any sense. Call it an ex-detective’s intuition if you like. Of course, I could be wrong. She might just have gone off to visit her mother, or something similar, thinking she’d told her husband about it, but as her husband’s employer is a magistrate it won’t do any harm to show we’re taking the report seriously.’
Looking at the clock on the wall of his office, Amos said, ‘Let’s go out there together right now, Tom. I haven’t had the horse out for almost a week and a gallop across the moor is just what it needs. You can take the new pony that was bought last week for the chief constable – but don’t get too reckless on it. Hurt yourself or the pony and we’ll both have some awkward questions to answer.’
The Cornwall Constabulary was a force formed only four years before, in 1857, and all members below the rank of superintendent were expected to go about their duties on foot. Indeed, one constable had actually been dismissed for accepting a lift on a farm cart when on his way to investigate an incident.
Nevertheless, Tom Churchyard held a unique position in the force. Officially Amos’s sergeant clerk, he was unofficially a detective, carrying out investigations on his superior’s behalf. It was work not approved of by the county’s police authority, being considered an unethical intrusion into the lives of the residents of the county, many of whom were still resentful of a constabulary forced upon them by a government in London.
Although after four years it was now grudgingly recognized by some as serving a useful purpose, when Amos had raised the question of having a small detective force, the police authority had declared firmly that ‘policemen were there to be recognized, wearing an official uniform in order to prevent crime, not skulking about spying upon innocent people’.
Nevertheless, the Metropolitan Police’s Scotland Yard had already proven the value of such a unit within a police force; Amos had himself been working for them when called to Cornwall to help solve a series of brutal murders before the Cornwall Constabulary’s formation. It was his success in this investigation that had led to his appointment as the new Cornwall Constabulary’s senior superintendent.
He had later recruited Tom Churchyard from London to help him with another difficult case, making use of Tom’s extensive knowledge of the criminal world.
Now, putting the remaining police district reports to one side, Amos was confident that if there was anything suspicious about the disappearance of the wife and child of the Trelyn estate steward, Tom Churchyard was the best man to help him investigate the matter.
It was mid-afternoon when the two policemen arrived at the small hamlet and Tom declared it to be the prettiest place he had seen since coming to Cornwall from London, two years before. Comprised of no more than ten tidily thatched cottages, some hidden among the trees but each with a neat and well-tended garden, Trelyn possessed an air of settled tranquillity.
Making their way to Trelyn Hall, a very imposing house built in the river valley immediately below the hamlet, they slowed their horses as they rode up the driveway to the house and, inconsequentially, Amos counted the windows on the front of the house. There were thirty-nine and thinking about the number there must be on the other three sides of the house, he decided a full-time window cleaner must be employed to work on them.
When the two policemen reached the building Amos hesitated for only a moment before choosing to ride up to the front entrance and not to the kitchen door. He wanted Magistrate Trethewy to see them and know they were taking the report of his estate steward’s missing wife seriously. The influential landowner would also no doubt wish to know what action they intended taking in order to find her and the steward’s baby son.
The door was opened by the family’s butler who made it clear by his frosty manner when Amos and Tom identified themselves that he felt it beneath his dignity to open the door to policemen. However, when Mrs Trethewy put in an appearance, she immediately invited them inside the house, informing Amos that Colonel Trethewy was absent on magisterial duti
es but before leaving had expressed serious misgivings about the missing woman and child. Despite her own evident concern, Amos gained the impression she did not entirely approve of the estate steward’s wife.
During conversation with Mrs Trethewy the two policemen were surprised to learn that a police sergeant had recently been stationed in the village by the inspector in charge of the district and after assuring Mrs Trethewy the police would do everything in their power to find the missing woman and child, Amos and Tom made their way to the sergeant’s home.
Sergeant Dreadon lived close to the village farm with his wife and two sons, in a house that had a separate lock-up cell built at the rear of the building. Amos quickly learned the policeman had been one of the first to join the Cornwall Constabulary when it was formed, four years earlier, and had been quickly promoted to his present rank.
When Tom expressed his surprise that at a time when the force was experiencing problems in recruiting enough constables to bring it up to strength, a sergeant should have been detached to serve in such a tiny, out of the way hamlet, Francis Dreadon smiled. ‘Out of the way Trelyn certainly is, but Colonel Trethewy lives here and he is not only an important landowner but also a magistrate; Deputy Lieutenant; former High Sheriff of Cornwall – and a member of the police authority. Need I say more? The chief constable makes certain he is well looked after.’
‘Of course!’ Amos was fully aware just how important the goodwill of Colonel Trethewy was to the Cornwall Constabulary, ‘but what do you know of the missing woman, Kerensa Morgan, is she a local girl?’
‘Very much so, she was born less than a mile from here, at North Hill, and has lived in the area all her life.’
‘What about her husband, the estate steward? Is he local too?’
‘Horace Morgan? No, he was brought in from Wales by Colonel Trethewy, a couple of years back. He was working as a land steward there, although I believe he spent some years in India before that. It didn’t go down very well with the men around here when he was appointed. As far as I can gather the estate steward at Trelyn has always been a Cornishman, so Morgan has never really been accepted by the locals.’