Digging her knuckles into a mound of dough being kneaded on a dusting of flour scattered upon the scrubbed table-top, she commented, ‘I’m not one to speak evil of the dead, but if ever a girl brought about such a violent end to her own life, it was Kerensa Tonks.’
‘That may be so,’ Amos agreed, ‘but she did not deserve such a death – and the baby certainly never harmed anyone.’
‘Then he’s assured of a place with the Lord … although he might not be dead. It could be that he has found a good life right here on earth – and that’s more than he could look forward to with his mother.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
The ex-housekeeper’s thin-lipped mouth clamped shut as though to indicate she had said enough, but Amos persisted. ‘Do I need to remind you this is a murder case, Jemima?’
From the cross positioned above the fireplace and the framed religious tapestries adorning the walls of the cottage, Amos had assumed the ex-housekeeper was a practising Christian and he added, ‘I think I’m right in saying that the sixth commandment declares, “Thou shalt not commit murder”.’
‘The seventh says “Thou shalt not commit adultery”,’ Jemima retorted, ‘but she paid no heed to that one, so don’t quote commandments to me when you’re talking about Kerensa Tonks, young man. I’ve spent my whole life living by them, but I doubt whether she had even heard of them.’
‘Then we should feel sorry for her, Jemima, but my job is to uphold the law here in Cornwall and the most serious crime that can be committed against that law coincides with one of the Commandments. Whatever Kerensa Morgan had done, she is the victim of a very serious and particularly violent murder and it’s my duty to bring whoever did it to justice. It is your duty, both as a law-abiding citizen and a Christian, to give me all the help you can, so I’ll ask you once more. What did you mean when you said baby Albert Morgan might be able to live a better life than the one he had with his rightful parents?’
For some moments Jemima Rowe remained silent and Amos thought his pleas had fallen upon deaf ears, but suddenly her shoulders sagged and she said resignedly, ‘You’re right, of course, I’m being unchristian. I’ve never liked the girl, but no one deserves to die the way she did and the baby might have brought some real happiness into her life – there was little enough of it there before he was born.’
‘Wasn’t she happy with her husband?’
‘Him? Horace Morgan gave her his name and a respectability she hadn’t known before, but little more than that. He wasn’t a generous man in any way. He was as tight with his money as he is with praise for anyone who does anything for him.’
‘Yet he gave her baby Albert.’
It was a policeman’s baited statement, and Jemima responded as Amos had hoped.
‘As long as Horace Morgan believes that it’s not for anyone else to say otherwise, whatever they may think.’
‘Is there any other man you can think of who might have been the father?’
Jemima gave an unladylike snort of derision. ‘I’m trying to be charitable towards the girl’s memory but there are limits! Had Horace Morgan not come along when he did a great many men would have been quaking in their boots for fear she’d name them as the baby’s father.’
It hardly narrowed down the list of possible suspects for Kerensa Morgan’s murder and Amos returned to his earlier line of questioning. ‘Explain what you meant when you spoke about the possibility of the baby being better off now … if he’s still alive.’
Jemima looked uncomfortable, ‘I was referring to something that happened years ago … just gossip, no more.’
‘I’d still like you to tell me about it.’
‘All right, but it happened some years ago and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the disappearance of Albert Morgan.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ Amos persisted.
‘Well, as I said, it was no more than a rumour concerning simple Annie Dawe, daughter of Harold Dawe who farms at Bowland, out on the moor. She wasn’t seen for a long time and word went around she’d got herself in trouble – by her own father some said. Then the Dawes were snowed in for weeks during the bad winter we had some years ago and when folks were able to get about again Annie told old Bessie Harris, the midwife at North Hill, that she’d had the baby and her father had paid one of the gypsies camped out at Sharptor to take it away and give it to someone he knew who desperately wanted a child.’
Amos frowned, ‘You’re not suggesting this gypsy might have murdered Kerensa Morgan just to get hold of a baby for someone?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just telling you what I heard happened to the Dawe girl’s baby, as you asked me. It was rumoured at the time that it wasn’t the first unwanted baby this particular gypsy had got rid of for someone in trouble – and I believe he’s still around.’
Amos thought about what Jemima had told him. If Kerensa had been killed by a man with a good reason to murder her, but who could not bring himself to murder a baby – possibly even his baby – it could have been a way to dispose of Albert Morgan.
‘I don’t know, Jemima, it’s one thing to take a baby from a girl who’s got herself in trouble, but something quite different when it means getting involved with murder. Every gypsy I’ve ever known would be far too astute for that.’
‘I suppose it would depend how much money he was offered,’ Jemima retorted. ‘Anyway, as I said, it was probably just gossip.’
‘Nevertheless, it might be worthwhile having a chat with this gypsy, do you know his name?’
‘I can’t say I ever heard it mentioned – and you won’t be able to get it from poor, simple Annie. She hanged herself in her father’s barn only months after all this was supposed to have happened. Bessie Harris is the one to speak to. She still lives at North Hill and delivers most of the babies hereabouts … both those that are wanted and those that are not.’
Chapter 5
WHILST AMOS WAS interviewing Jemima, Tom was having a frustrating time at Trelyn Hall, where Horace Morgan had an office at the rear of the great house.
After dismissing Tom’s words of sympathy with an impatient gesture, Morgan demanded, ‘Have you got anywhere yet with your search for Albert?’
‘We have a great many men working on it and are pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, Mr Morgan, but I’m here to fill in some of the background of both you and the late Mrs Morgan, to see if we can find any possible connection with the tragedy you’ve suffered.’
‘I suppose that’s a long-winded way of saying “no”,’ Morgan commented, curtly. ‘Well, you’re not going to find him here so you’d be better out there with the others.’
The estate steward showed evidence of having had very little sleep since the murder of his wife and the inexplicable disappearance of his baby son. Tom would normally have shown great sympathy towards the man, but he found it difficult, and Morgan was a suspect and, so far, the only one they had.
‘I’ll try not to take up any more of your time than is absolutely necessary, Mr Morgan, but we all want to discover what happened up there on the moor, and why. Can you think of anyone who might have had any serious grudge against either you or your wife? Is there anything you can think of that might have happened before you came to Cornwall, perhaps, that might throw any light on what has happened here?’
For just a moment Tom thought Morgan hesitated, as though he might have thought of something, then the estate steward shook his head vigorously. ‘Nothing at all. Besides, as far as I know nobody I’ve ever known is even aware I am working in Cornwall. I have no relatives and there was no reason for me to tell anybody else.’
‘How about before then … when you were in India?’
Morgan was startled now. ‘How did you know I had been in India – and how can that possibly have anything to do with what has happened here? Anyway, it was so long ago everyone I knew there will have forgotten me.’
At that moment the door to the steward’s office
opened and a short, dapper man with a ruddy face and a bristling moustache entered the room. He was dressed for riding and Tom immediately recognized him as Colonel Trethewy, magistrate and owner of the Trelyn Estate. He and Tom were acquainted with each other by sight, the latter having given evidence against defendants in the magistrate’s courtroom.
Colonel Trethewy had come to visit his steward, but it was Tom to whom he spoke. ‘What are you doing here, have you found Morgan’s missing child yet?’
‘No, sir, but we have every available man out on the moor searching – as we had yesterday.’
‘I trust you also have men searching vehicles leaving the county – especially the caravans of those damned gypsies who’ve been making such a nuisance of themselves in these parts lately. My head gamekeeper tells me they have been setting so many snares around the estate it’s a wonder I have any game left.’
‘There are constables on every bridge across the Tamar, sir, and we are searching all gypsy camps around the moor.’
‘You are unlikely to find anything now, it’s probably far too late. They will have spirited the boy away long before the body of his mother was found, but what are you doing here?’
Aware that Colonel Trethewy was one of the men of influence who had been bitterly opposed to the formation of a police force in Cornwall, and who stood with those who refused to allow a detective branch to be set up, Tom realized he needed to be careful how he replied.
‘Superintendent Hawke is personally looking into the murder of Mrs Morgan, sir, he’s sent me here to ask Mr Morgan a few questions.’
‘What sort of questions?’ Colonel Trethewy demanded.
‘Whether there is anyone who might nurse a grudge against him, or who might hate him sufficiently to want to attack his wife. After all, he has an important post here with you, and important men make enemies.’
‘So they might, but very few enemies resort to murder. Besides, I told Morgan when I took him on that I did not want him becoming too friendly with any of the local people, or taking on employees he might have worked with in the past. Morgan has orders to neither ask nor offer favours because of the post he holds at Trelyn. I am satisfied he has heeded my words by breaking all links with his past and taking a local wife with no family to come begging for favours. In other words, he has proven himself to be an ideal man for the post he holds at Trelyn. In view of this you need trouble him no more, Sergeant, he has more than enough to distract him from his duties right now, although had he not been adamant that he needs something to take his mind off the tragic happenings of the last couple of days, I would have insisted he take time off. The last thing he wants right now is to have you here asking questions of no consequence to distress him. I suggest you return to Superintendent Hawke and tell him he is to concentrate on gypsies and vagabonds in his search for whoever killed Mrs Morgan and abducted the child.’
‘We were lucky to escape with only a “suggestion” from Colonel Trethewy,’ Amos commented to Tom, when the two men met later that morning at the police house home of Sergeant Dreadon. ‘Vagabonds and gypsies are his pet hates – although policemen are not far behind them. Anyway, we now know we can eliminate anyone in Morgan’s background from the inquiry.’
‘I don’t think we can,’ Tom replied. ‘As a matter of fact I believe we should look into his background very thoroughly.’
Surprised by Tom’s positive response, Amos asked, ‘Why? If he broke all links with his past when he came here it’s hardly likely anyone with a grudge will have found him. Trelyn is about as far as you can get from anywhere.’
‘I might have agreed with you half an hour ago,’ Tom explained, ‘but I’ve just had a cup of tea with Sergeant Dreadon and he happened to mention that when he was speaking to the letter carrier the other day, the man was impressed to have just delivered a letter from the Honourable East India Company addressed to Morgan, at Trelyn Hall. It means Morgan was not telling the truth when he said nobody was aware of his whereabouts.’
‘It could be he didn’t feel the East India Company counted as “a person”,’ Amos commented.
‘Perhaps … but I’m not convinced. I felt all the time we were talking that there’s something in Morgan’s background he’d rather we knew nothing about.’
Amos had known the sergeant for too long to dismiss his hunches out of hand. ‘Well, we need to follow up every possible lead, Tom. Write a letter to the East India Company and see if they can tell you anything about Morgan. If there’s anything worth looking into further I’ll ask the chief constable to authorize you to go up to London and dig a little deeper. We’ll go to North Hill now and have a chat with a certain Bessie Harris. Jemima tells me she’s the one who is sent for when a baby is being born. It also seems she knows of a gypsy who takes babies from unmarried mothers – for a sum of money, of course – and sells them on to women who are desperate for a baby but unable to have one themselves.’
‘Now that could explain baby Albert’s mysterious disappearance, ’ Tom declared. ‘Although I would never have thought of such a thing as a possible explanation!’
‘Don’t get too excited about it, Tom, Jemima’s information is a few years old, but it’s worth checking out. When we’ve done that we’ll see if the landlord of the Ring o’ Bells at North Hill has a private room where we can get something to eat. It might also be a useful opportunity to learn something more about Kerensa Morgan. She worked there before she was married and – again according to Jemima – it seems she did a lot more there than satisfy the customers’ thirst. We might learn something of significance.’
Chapter 6
BESSIE HARRIS’S HOME was a tiny thatched cottage at the edge of North Hill village. The front garden was occupied by a grey-muzzled dog of uncertain breeding, which looked through clouded eyes in the general direction of the two policemen and, as they opened the gate, barked ferociously, at the same time wagging its tail in greeting.
The sound brought two cats to the window-sill inside the house and Amos and Tom would learn they were only one-fifth of the number kept by the woman who during a long lifetime had brought most of the residents of the surrounding villages into the world.
Bessie was a short, grossly overweight, grey-haired woman who waddled rather than walked when she led the two men across the single downstairs room, shooing cats off the two chairs on which she invited her visitors to sit after she had somewhat reluctantly allowed them inside her home.
The room was cluttered with knick-knacks gathered from a lifetime and smelled uncomfortably strongly of the animals which shared the cottage with her. Tom wrinkled his nose in distaste and it did not pass unnoticed by Bessie.
Addressing Amos, she said sharply, ‘I don’t suppose you came here just to clutter up my cottage, so what is it you’re wanting?’
‘Information, Bessie. We’ve been told you might be able to give us the name of a gypsy who’s been known to find homes for unwanted babies.’
‘Me? How am I supposed to know something like that? I just help mothers best I can to bring their babies into this world. What they do with them afterwards is their business, not mine – nor anybody else’s as far as I’m concerned.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with that, Bessie,’ Amos replied, adding soothingly, ‘From all I’ve heard you’re probably the best midwife in the whole of Cornwall and I am not here to make any accusations against you. The women around here are very lucky to have you, but Sergeant Churchyard and I are investigating a murder, a particularly brutal murder, as well as the disappearance of a baby you will have helped to bring into the world – Albert Morgan.’
‘I did, and a right screamer his mother turned out to be … but I mustn’t speak ill of the dead, not even if it is Kerensa Morgan, but what’s this gypsy you’re talking about got to do with her, or with me?’
‘I want to speak to him to see if he knows anything about Mrs Morgan’s death, or can give me any clues as to the whereabouts of her baby….’
Bessie’s mouth im
mediately became a tight-lipped thin line and Amos added, hurriedly, ‘… I am not interested in the babies he’s found homes for, especially if they’ve gone to homes where they’re wanted. They’ll no doubt live better lives than they might otherwise have had, but I am seeking a murderer and this gypsy has to be a suspect, even though he is not the only one right now.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. I could name you half-a dozen women who have wished Kerensa Morgan in her grave … not that they’d actually be ready to put her there,’ she added hastily, ‘… and as for Jed Smith, he wouldn’t hurt a soul.’
Amos now had the gypsy’s name and, nodding at Tom to make a note of it, he asked, ‘Where can I find this Jed Smith?’
Aware she had given away the gypsy’s name, Bessie made no further effort to keep anything about him secret. ‘He has a caravan over at Slippery Hill, a couple of miles up the road towards Launceston. He married a non-gypsy woman from out Temple way and his people wouldn’t have much to do with him after that, not even after she died, a year or so back. He used to have his caravan up at Sharptor, but as his daughter grew older and prettier she began attracting too many of the miners who work up that way, so he moved off. Like I say, he’s not the sort to murder anyone – or steal any babies, either. You hit the nail on the head when you said the babies he’s passed on go to better homes than they would have had with their natural mothers.’
Bessie had said far more than she deemed was wise and now she added hurriedly, ‘Not that I’ve ever had anything to do with that sort of thing myself, but I know the man. I think I can promise you he doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. If he can possibly help you find Albert Morgan, he will.’
‘Thank you, Bessie, you have been very helpful – but you mentioned half-a-dozen women who would have wished Mrs Morgan in her grave … can you give me names?’
‘That was just my foolish way of saying Kerensa was disliked by a great many women; I wasn’t saying any of them would have actually killed her!’
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