‘The only person from North Hill I’ve seen go in there is old Bessie Harris. Everyone else has stayed in behind closed doors. The mourners are all servants and workers from Trelyn Hall, attending the funeral on the orders of Colonel Trethewy. It wouldn’t be good for his image if no one turned out for the funeral of his estate steward’s wife, especially when no one in North Hill even bothered to come out to pay respects to the coffin as it passed by. I’ve never known such a thing before, not even when they buried an unknown Irish navvy who got drunk, wandered out on the moor and died in the snow when they were putting the railway in, down by Liskeard.’
‘Did the villagers really hate Kerensa Morgan so much?’
‘The men certainly didn’t and that’s the trouble. I can’t think of one woman in the village who was ever friendly to her and there’s not a man who’d dare come out and show respect for fear of what he’d suffer from the woman in his life!’
‘Well, my superintendent is at the funeral to show that the Cornish Constabulary haven’t forgotten her … but talking of the women in our lives, I must congratulate you and your wife on your son. He’s a bonny little chap. I must admit a family resemblance is not immediately obvious, but no doubt most people who see him will say he favours your wife’s side of the family, just to please her. But, of course, you’ll be aware of how he looks already, having been at Liskeard railway station when Jed Smith handed him over to her.’
The pewter mug being cleaned by the inn-keeper landed on its rim on the slate floor, severely distorting the drinking vessel. Leaving it lying where it had fallen, Alfie said, ‘You’ve seen Florrie and the baby? But … they’re in Wiltshire!’
‘That’s right, Alfie, she and Harry are staying with her sister in Laverstock, at least, they were when I saw them. Florrie was very helpful, she told me all sorts of interesting things about baby Harry – and Jed Smith. Things you seem to have forgotten when Superintendent Hawke and I spoke to you. In fact I could be quite cross with you for not being truthful to us at the time.’
Alfie’s first instinct was to plead innocence but he realized it would not only be futile but likely to antagonize Tom.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to lie to you, but if word got around here about what we’d done, me and Florrie, there would always have been a stigma attached to the baby, and we wouldn’t want that. We intend bringing the baby up as our own, him never knowing the truth and having no one else know, either.’
‘You wouldn’t get away with that, Alfie, at least, not if it’s your intention to stay around here. Bessie Harris isn’t the only one who’s sceptical about Florrie’s pregnancy and there would always be a chance the baby’s real mother would hear the gossip, put two-and-two together and one day decide she wanted to see how he’s growing up.’
‘Me and Florrie have spoken about that and now she seems to be happy in Wiltshire with the baby I intend selling up here and taking a better class public house there, so Florrie can be closer to her family. But I suppose that depends on you, and what you decide to do now you’ve found out all about it.’
‘Quite frankly it’s likely to be out of my hands. You could still be of help to us, but having lied to us before I don’t know whether my superintendent will believe anything you say to us in the future. Mind you, if you can possibly help us in any way then he and the chief constable might decide to forget anything else you’ve done. If they don’t…?’ Tom shrugged, ‘The chief constable could object to you getting a licence to run a public house – and that would influence the magistrates in any other part of the country.’
‘But that would take away my livelihood!’ Alfie was genuinely dismayed.
‘A licensee needs to be an honest pillar of the community, Alfie. Lying to the police doesn’t exactly fit that bill, nor does keeping anything from them. You must learn a lot from the men who frequent this inn. Drink has a habit of loosening a man’s tongue so I doubt if there’s a rumour going around about anything in the community that you don’t know about. The murder of Kerensa Morgan and the disappearance of baby Albert is one of the most shocking things ever to happen in this area and men will talk about it whenever and wherever they meet up. You must hear a lot of the talk and know what everyone is thinking. I’d like to know about it, Alfie. Something someone says could well tie in with what we already know and so prove helpful in catching the murderer and getting baby Albert back.’
‘I hear talk, of course I do, but don’t take too much notice of it.’
‘Well I suggest you do in future. Let me or Sergeant Dreadon know about any of the rumours that are going around and let us decide whether there’s truth in any of them. It could make my chief constable change his mind about you.’
Alfie Kittow remained silent but, as Tom turned to leave, he said, ‘Was Florrie upset by you going to Laverstock to see her?’
Turning back to the concerned inn-keeper, Tom said, ‘I think she was afraid I was either going to take the baby away from her or tell her sister the truth, but once I’d reassured her she told me all about how she came by him. Had we known earlier it would have saved the Cornwall Constabulary the money that was spent going to check whether or not the baby was in fact Albert Morgan.’
‘You thought he might have been Albert and you told her that? Oh, poor Florrie!’
‘I told her about Kerensa’s murder and that her baby had gone missing, but she was far more upset at the thought that Harry might be taken away from her. Had you told me the truth in the first place, and of Jed Smith’s part in it, you could have saved Florrie all the distress she was caused. Talking of Jed Smith … when did you last see him? Was it after he gave the baby to you and your wife?’
‘I had no reason to see him again once I’d paid him at Liskeard railway station.’
‘So he never said anything to you about anyone else he might be getting a baby for?’
‘No, but he wouldn’t, would he? I mean, the most important thing about what he does is to keep it quiet so that nobody ever knows where it’s come from, or gone to. But if you think Jed might have had anything to do with Kerensa’s murder you’re absolutely wrong. He makes money by finding homes for unwanted babies – and might do one or two other things that aren’t strictly honest by our standards, but he isn’t a violent man. He’ll go out of his way to avoid violence in any shape or form. Everyone who knows him will tell you the same.’
Tom thought Zillah would be touched to know what Alfie and others thought of her father, but he did not respond to Alfie’s assessment of the gypsy’s temperament and left the Ring o’ Bells after reminding Alfie once more of the importance of listening to any gossip he heard in his public house and telling him to pass it on to Sergeant Dreadon at Trelyn.
Neither Tom nor Amos would pursue an investigation into the manner in which Alfie and Florrie had obtained baby Harry, nor would they suggest to their chief constable that he have the publican’s licence revoked, but it would do Alfie no harm to think that either might happen. It meant he would be anxious to bring anything he learned about the case to their attention.
Chapter 21
THE FUNERAL SERVICE at the North Hill church had ended and Kerensa Morgan laid to rest in the tiny churchyard by the time Tom left the public house and was riding to Trelyn. He passed groups of Colonel Trethewy’s servants and workers walking back to the estate.
Amos was talking to Sergeant Dreadon outside the entrance to the police house when Tom arrived there. Tying his horse on a loose rein to the post outside the garden gate, he joined them and told both men of his meeting with Alfie Kittow and the suggestion he had made to him.
‘I’ll make a point of visiting the Ring o’ Bells more often on my beat,’ Dreadon said. ‘Just in case he’s a bit shy of coming to visit me here. It’s one of my duties anyway, but there’s rarely any trouble there. Alfie Kittow runs a good inn and is quick to bar any troublemakers.’
‘Well, let’s hope he comes up with something of use to us,’ Amos commented. ‘We don’t seem
to be progressing very well at the moment with our own inquiries – but you were telling me what has been going on here, at Trelyn. It sounds as though things have been very quiet.’
‘That’s what I was saying,’ Sergeant Dreadon agreed, ‘but I think it’s about to change!’ He nodded to where a horse which possessed more skin and bone than flesh, was executing a shuffling trot along the lane towards them, a gnarled little old man dressed in farming garb jolting up and down on the animal’s saddle-less back. ‘It’s Ebenezer Pender who farms up Slippery Hill way. He’s always got problems with something or other and expects us to sort out everything from the weather to a poor harvest.’
When the horse was pulled to a halt in front of the police house the rider slid to the ground and scuttled along the path towards the waiting policemen as fast as legs shaped to the body of his pony, would allow.
‘Well now, Ebenezer,’ said the sergeant. ‘That’s the first time in all the years I’ve been stationed here at Trelyn that I’ve ever seen you in a hurry about anything, so I’m guessing you have something of importance to tell me.’
‘It’s important all right,’ Farmer Ebenezer declared, ‘and I daresay you’ll think so too when I tell ’ee. I haven’t been able to give my cows nothing to drink this morning because of it and they’ve got no water up there in the top field behind the old mine.’
‘Well now, I know we’ve had no rain for nigh on four weeks and things are becoming critical, but it’s the Lord’s doing and there’s nothing even a police sergeant can do about it.’
‘I’m not talking about the weather,’ the red-faced farmer declared, ‘and it don’t much matter whether there’s rain or no. That well’s never dried up in all my lifetime, no, nor my father’s or grandfather’s neither. ’Tis the reason why I can’t get no water that I’m here to tell ’ee about – and though the Lord will no doubt be having plenty to say to the man involved about all the things he’s done in his life, right now it’s you who’ll need to be sorting my water out.’
‘I’m sorry, Ebenezer, you’re not making any sense. What is it you think I can do about your well?’
‘If you’d been listening to me there’d be no need for you to be asking damn silly questions. I want you to come to the well on my farm, up by the old mine explosive store and take away the body that’s in there, stopping me from raising the bucket.’
‘A body?’ This time it was Tom who spoke. ‘Do you have any idea who it is?’
The farmer gave Tom a disdainful look, ‘It may not be a very deep well, but we don’t have lanterns down wells here in Cornwall so I can’t say as I recognized him, or even saw his face, but he seems to be lying on top of the bucket, which is why it wouldn’t come up, and there’s a red scarf caught on the stonework a little way down, the sort of scarf worn by a gypsy. The only gypsy I know of around these parts is that Jed Smith, who has his wagon on Harriet Hocking’s land, beyond my place….’
The three policemen, aided by a couple of farm labourers finally succeeded in retrieving the body from the bottom of a well that was enclosed by a low wall, close to what had once been a small but sturdily built explosives store on an abandoned mine on Ebenezer’s farmland, not far from Slippery Hill itself.
Sergeant Dreadon was able to identify the body immediately as being that of Jed Smith – but his was the second body recovered from the wall. Lying on top of the dead gypsy in the narrow well was another … that of a baby boy.
Hurriedly summoned to the scene Horace Morgan arrived accompanied by Colonel Trethewy, travelling in a light, four-wheeled open carriage. He immediately identified the second body as being that of his missing son, Albert.
Distraught and bewildered, he demanded, ‘Why…? Why kill Albert as well as Kerensa? I know Kerensa made enemies during her lifetime, rightly or wrongly, but why Albert? He was just a baby who had never done a wrong deed to anyone. Why kill him too? He had so much to live for….’
‘There’s no sense trying to read the mind of a man like that,’ This from Colonel Trethewy who had joined the men at the well. ‘He could not possibly have had anything against either of them, it is just the way these gypsies are.’
From the moment the bodies had been discovered, the thought uppermost in Tom’s mind had been how he was going to break the news of her father’s death to Zillah, and the magistrate’s words angered him, but before he could respond to the statement, Amos said, ‘Sadly, it would seem that Jed Smith was a victim too.’
‘Nonsense!’ Colonel Trethewy spluttered, any grief he might have felt at the discovery of baby Albert outweighed by satisfaction that a gypsy had suffered a similar fate. ‘You have the body of Morgan’s son and there’s a dead gypsy in the well with him. It’s obvious he killed the baby after murdering its mother, then slipped and fell in the well himself after disposing of the baby’s body.’
‘It’s a shallow well, Colonel, neither wide nor deep enough for anyone to go floating around and changing their position. The man who went down there on the rope found the baby’s body lying on top of the gypsy. That means that baby Albert went into the well after Smith. Someone killed the gypsy and threw him into the well, then tossed the baby in after him.’
For almost half a minute Colonel Trethewy sought for a flaw in Tom’s reasoning. Then, with a curt, ‘Well, it’s your case, you sort it out. I’ve told you what I think’, he turned on his heel and stalked off, heading for his carriage.
Without turning his head towards Amos, Sergeant Dreadon watched the departing landlord and said, ‘There have been many times when I would have liked to tell Colonel Trethewy that he was talking a load of nonsense but I’ve never had either the nerve or the courage of my convictions that I was right. You’ve just given me a moment to savour, sir. It’s a memory I shall cherish.’
Tom was only half listening to his colleagues. He realized Amos’s observations were correct, which meant that someone was responsible for the deaths of both Albert and Jed Smith and undoubtedly Kerensa Morgan too, but he knew Amos would ask him to ride to Gassick Farm and bring Zillah to the old explosive store to make a positive identification of her father.
It was not a task he relished.
When Tom arrived at the moorland farm, one look at his unhappy expression told Zillah even before he began apologizing for being the bearer of the worst possible news. She listened with increasing anguish as he told her of Ebenezer’s grisly discovery and explained to her that although Sergeant Dreadon had said the body was that of her father, she needed to come with him to make a positive identification.
Not until they were almost halfway to the well, with Zillah riding bareback on a moorland pony beside him, did she ask, ‘How did he die?’
There was no kind way of telling her and Tom replied, ‘We think he was struck on the back of the head with an iron bar before being thrown down the well. We found what we believe to be the murder weapon at the scene.’
‘So he was murdered … but why? He had more friends than enemies and I can think of no one who would want to kill him.’
‘I can think of someone with a very good reason, Zillah. The man who called at your wagon the night Kerensa Morgan was murdered. If it is your father – and I am afraid there is little doubt about it – he and Kerensa were both killed by the same man. The fact that the body of her baby was also in the well, lying on top of your father is significant. It’s possible your father was called out to take the baby and find a home for it but realized who it was. If that was the case he would know who the murderer of Kerensa was. He was probably the only one who did. Because of this the murderer had to get rid of him too. So, you see, it’s more important than ever that you remember every single thing you can about the night that man came to your caravan, no matter how unimportant you believe it to be. The murderer has killed three times now and for all we know may well strike again.’
‘To the best of my knowledge Dado never ever saw Kerensa’s baby and we never knew she had been found murdered when he was called out.’
‘But why call Dado out at all if he was going to kill Kerensa’s baby anyway?’
‘That’s one of a great many questions I can’t answer just yet, Zillah. The whole thing is thoroughly baffling at this point.’
He did not voice a growing unease he had that the murderer might consider the possibility that Zillah could have seen him, or would recognize his voice if she heard it again. If it crossed the murderer’s mind then she too would become a victim.
They travelled in silence for much of the remainder of the journey to the old mine and once there Zillah tearfully confirmed that the body found in the well was that of her father. She tried very hard to contain her grief but did not succeed and, taking her arm, Tom led her away as the others waited for a farm cart belonging to Ebenezer to arrive and carry the bodies away.
When they were some distance away from the others, Tom asked, ‘What will you do now, Zillah? Would you like me to ride with you back to Gassick Farm?’
‘What is going to happen to Dado now?’
‘There will be an autopsy carried out on him to find out how he died and an inquest will be carried out by a coroner. When that’s over the … your father’s body will be released to you.’
Struggling hard to remain in control, Zillah queried, ‘How long will all that take?’
‘I honestly don’t know, Zillah. Much will depend on the findings of the surgeon carrying out the autopsy and then it’s up to the coroner to decide. There will certainly need to be an inquest, but he could release the body before then. I wish I could be more specific but sometimes these things take time.’
Digesting this information, Zillah finally asked, ‘When was he killed?’
‘Again, I couldn’t say for certain but I suspect it happened on the night he went off with the man who called at your wagon.’
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