Making up her mind, Peggy was no longer the tough aggressive Irishwoman feared by her fellow servants, ‘Alright, I’ll tell you . . . but I’m trusting you and your sergeant to keep your word and not repeat what I say to anyone else.’
Her glance went to Tom who nodded in uncertain agreement. Satisfied, Peggy began. ‘When I first came to Laneglos I was a young, raw Irish girl who knew no one here and found it difficult to make friends because of how I speak and because I didn’t know the ways of the people I was working with. I was very lonely, grateful to anyone who was at all kind to me. One of the gamekeepers, Harry Clemo, was kinder to me than anyone and, being a simple Irish girl, I suppose I let him become more familiar with me than I should have done, for all I knew he was married. Eventually people began to talk but I put a stop to it by marrying Chester . . . and I’ve made him a good wife, he’ll tell you that himself, yet I haven’t been able to wean him off the drink and sometimes I need someone to talk to . . . can you understand that? Well, Harry has always been there for me, so sometimes I slip away to meet him . . . and it helps.’
‘You go out late at night . . . or even in the morning, leaving a drunken husband in bed, just to talk to another man?’ Amos asked, sceptically.
‘I didn’t expect you to either understand, or believe me.’ Peggy replied with a hint of her earlier spirit, ‘That’s why I never told your sergeant the truth in the first place.’
‘Oh, I think I understand well enough.’ Amos said, ‘but, tell me, what does Mrs Clemo feel about her husband’s role as a comforter of unhappy women?’
‘You’ll not be telling her?’ Peggy said, showing concern once more.
‘Not unless I have to,’ Amos replied, ‘My business is catching criminals, not breaking up marriages. Where did you and gamekeeper Clemo meet and at what time?’
‘It must have been soon after eleven. Everyone in the house went to bed early that night, and we met in the hay barn behind the stables.’
‘How did he know where and when to meet you?’
Aware that her reply gave the lie to her story that she only turned to the Laneglos gamekeeper in moments of unhappiness Peggy said, ‘We made the arrangement when Harry delivered half-a-dozen rabbits to the kitchen earlier in the day.’
‘I presume you used the kitchen door when you left the house to meet with him?’
When the assistant cook nodded in response to his question, Amos said, ‘So it was you who drew the bolts on the door?’
‘No, they were already drawn.’
It was an unexpected reply and Amos said sharply, ‘The kitchen door wasn’t bolted . . . even though everyone was in bed? The butler has already made a statement saying he personally bolted the door just after ten o’clock.’
‘So he might have done,’ Peggy retorted, ‘but it wasn’t bolted when I went out . . . and it’s the truth I’m telling you.’
Unsure whether or not to believe her, Amos asked ‘Didn’t you think it unusual to find the door unbolted when everyone in the house was in bed?’
‘Not really. The kitchen door has always been used by house servants with sweethearts among the out-of-house staff, or from the nearby villages. It’s probably been used for as long as the house has been here without causing anyone any trouble before this. The servant who unbolts it always makes sure they bolt it again when they return. For that very reason I didn’t stay out of the house for very long, just in case whoever unlocked it came back before I did and locked me out. It’s happened once or twice to the maids and they’ve had to shiver outside until the scullery maid came out with ashes from the kitchen fire, first thing in the morning.’
‘Are you telling us the butler and Miss Wicks were aware of what went on, but said nothing to us about it?’ The question came from Tom.
‘I’d say the butler didn’t want to know. As far as he was concerned he’d done his duty by bolting the door last thing at night.’
‘. . . And Miss Wicks?’ Tom persisted.
‘I doubt she would have known.’ Peggy replied, ‘Had it come to her notice she would have done something about it, so the servants keep it very much to ourselves. There’s little enough freedom for us to enjoy as it is.’
‘But your husband would have known about it too?’ Amos suggested, ‘I believe he once had something of a reputation as a ladies’ man. How well did he know Enid Merryn?’
Tight-lipped, Peggy replied, ‘Chester was no better, nor no worse than any of the other servants at Laneglos. He knew Enid, of course he did, you can’t be living beneath the same roof for months on end without getting to know everyone else who’s living here, but I’d swear on me mother’s life there was never anything going on between the two of ‘em . . . and he certainly had nothing to do with the killing of her. Except for the drinking he’s behaved himself as well as any husband should since we’ve been married and I don’t let whatever he did before then trouble me. Besides, as I’ve told you, he was fast asleep in bed when I left him - and he was still there when I got back, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes later.’
‘And you saw no one else when you left the house - or when you returned?’
Peggy Woods shook her head emphatically, ‘No one.’
When she had been allowed to leave the study, Tom made a gesture of despair, saying to Amos, ‘That widens our list of suspects and could even mean that no one in the house deliberately opened the kitchen door to Alfie and Jimmy Banks. Jimmy would have learned of the use made of the kitchen door and he and Alfie could have slipped in when whoever it was went out.’
‘Perhaps.’ Amos was non-committal, ‘but it still doesn’t explain what Chester Woods was doing outside the house when Jimmy Banks saw him. It’s not only Peggy Woods who has been lying to us. Let’s have Chester in and see what he has to say to us now.’
Amos found it difficult to equate Chester Woods with the man Flora Wicks had described as being a womaniser until his marriage to the ebullient assistant cook. A small, thin man with a tired expression and an ingratiating manner, the word ‘weasely’ immediately sprang to mind.
When Amos explained to him that, in common with the other Laneglos servants, he had been called to the study in order that the two policemen might go over his statement once again, the footman said, ‘Of course, sir, I am as eager as any of the other servants to have those who robbed Laneglos and murdered poor, dear Enid brought to justice, but I really can’t think of anything I can add to what I have already told Mr Churchyard.’
‘Really?’ Amos raised an eyebrow quizzically, ‘Sergeant Churchyard and I believe there is a great deal more you are able to tell us. Matters that you not only failed to disclose when you were last interviewed . . . but which you actually lied about.’
Startled out of his urbane manner, Chester Woods protested, ‘What do you mean. . . ? I never lied.’
‘Don’t get deeper into trouble than you already are, Woods. A witness saw you outside the house when you claim to have been sleeping . . . and we have just spoken to your wife who has changed her statement and told us she was not in bed with you for the whole of the night. I think you had better give us a true account of what you were doing out and about, otherwise I will arrest both you and your wife and keep you in custody until we have it.’
Deeply unhappy now, Woods said, ‘If you’ve got the truth out of Peggy then you’ll know that when she thought she’d got me in a drunken stupor she went off to see that fancy-man of hers, just as she’s done many times before.’
‘So you know about him?’ Amos said.
‘I’ve known for a long time,’ Woods admitted, ‘She was sweet on him before we were wed and I’ve often suspected she only married me to prevent a scandal and stay on at Laneglos to be near him. On the night after the ball she was forcing drink on me, telling me as how I’d been working so hard I deserved it. I knew she was wanting me to pass out, so she’d be able to go off and see him. I thought I’d go along with her and pretend to drink far more than I did. Then, when she believ
ed I was sleeping it off and went out to see him I’d follow her and catch them at it.’
‘Is that what you did?’ Amos queried.
‘That’s right, I saw them both go into the hay barn behind the stables. I was going to go in after them. . . then I started thinking of what might happen if I did. I mean . . . chances are I’d have taken a beating from Harry Clemo, him being a whole lot bigger than me. I’d certainly have lost Peggy and my job here at Laneglos, and so would Peggy - and Harry. That would mean his wife and kids ending up in the workhouse. . . and they don’t deserve that. Dot Clemo is a good woman.’
‘Are you saying they were in the hay barn and you knew what they were doing, yet did nothing about it?’ Tom’s voice revealed his disbelief.
The Laneglos footman nodded miserably, ‘It sounded as though they were only talking. I thought of coming back inside the house and bolting the kitchen door after me so Peggy couldn’t get back in again, but that would have been the end of us at Laneglos because she wouldn’t have been able to explain it away to me, even if she wasn’t caught out.’
‘It might have caught out more than your wife.’ Amos commented. ‘She said the bolts were drawn when she went out, so either someone else was having a clandestine meeting - or they’d been drawn to let burglars into the house. By bolting the doors again you might well have lost your wife, but you could also have prevented a burglary and perhaps saved the life of Enid Merryn - which reminds me . . . you once had quite a reputation for seducing young female servants. How well did you know Enid?’
Aware of the implications in Amos’s question, Chester became very frightened, ‘What are you trying to say, sir . . . that I had something to do with the death of Enid? No! No. . . I never had anything to do with her like that. Not before I was married, nor afterwards, I swear to that! ‘
‘Well somebody did - and you are my prime suspect. Unless more evidence comes in to me you will remain under suspicion and are likely to be arrested in the very near future . . . Oh, there’s one more thing. How long was it after you returned to the house that Peggy came in.’
‘I can’t say for certain, sir. It might have been five minutes, or a few minutes more, but it wasn’t long. If I’d left it any longer I would hardly have got back to our room and settled in bed before she came in. But I didn’t do anything to Enid, on my life I didn’t. . . I wouldn’t. All right, so I’ve had a good time with some of the maids we’ve had at Laneglos, but there wasn’t one of ‘em who wasn’t willing . . . and they were all pretty much of a type . . . not exactly like Peggy, but built something like her. You know . . . big strong girls. Not at all like poor Enid. No, sir, I felt sorry for her . . . I wouldn’t have touched her for worlds.’
‘Well, you can leave . . . for now, but we’ll be wanting to talk to you again, so if you learn anything that will put you in the clear you had better tell me right away, you understand?’
‘Yes, sir. I will, sir. . . .’
Chester Woods was halfway to the door before he slowed . . . stopped . . . then turned around and addressed Amos. ‘When you were talking about poor Enid you said that somebody had certainly touched her . . . does that mean she was expecting when she was killed?’
‘You tell me. Do you know something?’
‘I don’t really know anything, but Peggy said some time ago that one of the kitchen-maids had told her Enid had been asking a whole lot of questions about having babies, and that sort of thing.’
‘Peggy has never said anything about this and neither have any of the kitchen-maids. How long ago was this . . . during the time Jimmy Banks was working here?’
Chester Woods shook his head, ‘No, he hadn’t started work here then, so it must have been about three months ago . . . or even more.’
Amos and Tom exchanged glances before the former said, ‘What is this kitchen-maid’s name?’
Woods needed to think for some moments before saying, ‘Connie. . . Connie Dawes.’
Leafing through his pocketbook, Tom looked up and said, ‘I’ve got no Connie Dawes down here. We can’t have seen her.’
‘You wouldn’t have.’ Woods replied, ‘She left soon after that young London thief came to work here. She’d got herself pregnant and although she managed to hide it for a long time, eventually she couldn’t stop it from showing, so Miss Wicks got rid of her.’
Leaning back in his chair, Amos expelled his breath in disbelief, ‘What sort of a house is this?! Are there any servants at Laneglos who are not either having affairs with each other, or getting themselves pregnant?’
‘It’s no worse than any other big house, sir.’ Woods said, ‘and you can’t put all the blame on the servants. If a man-servant gets a maid pregnant he’s usually made to marry her. When there’s no marriage and the maid leaves, then it might be that the father is a lad from the village, but it’s far more likely to be someone in the family of the house who is responsible. Mind you, when that happens the maid’s likely set up for life and won’t need to think about going out to work again. The master of the house will see she gets money enough to keep both her and the child - and if there’s some man willing to marry her and take responsibility for the both of them the gentry can be very generous. There’s more than one publican hereabouts who owes his living to some gentleman’s bastard.’
‘Do you think that someone in the family, or a family friend, was responsible for getting this kitchen-maid pregnant and where will I find her, is she living locally?’
‘I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, sir, but you can be sure Miss Wicks does.’
Flora was able to confirm that Connie Dawes had returned to her former home in a remote cottage close to the village of North Hill, on the eastern fringe of Bodmin Moor where her widowed mother earned a meagre living washing and ironing clothes for a few busy wives of farmers in the area. In reply to Amos’s question the Laneglos housekeeper refused to speculate on who might have been responsible for the kitchen-maid’s condition.
Amos decided he would pay a visit to Connie Dawes the next day, leaving Tom to return to Laneglos and interview the estate gamekeepers. Tom’s main purpose would be to speak to Harry Clemo and confirm that his version of events corroborated the stories told by Peggy and Chester Woods, but he would interview all the gamekeepers. This would not only prevent rumours circulating about Clemo, but might possibly provide new information should any of the men patrolling the vast estate during the night of the robbery have seen or heard anything out of the norm. They were a group of estate employees who had not been questioned in depth at the time the body of Enid Merryn had been discovered.
On the way back to the Bodmin police headquarters, Tom said to Amos, ‘If we believe what Chester and Peggy Woods told us we are no closer to solving either the burglary or the murder of Enid Merryn. In fact it seems that as many of the Laneglos servants were gallivanting around the countryside as were tucked up in their beds!’
‘It’s certainly given us a fascinating insight into life in the great houses of the country.’ Amos agreed, ‘but I don’t think we’ve wasted our time. We’ll see what our amorous gamekeeper has to tell us - and find out whether Enid Merryn said anything to this Connie Dawes about the father of the baby she was carrying. My hope is that when we have collected all the different bits of the jigsaw puzzle we’ll be able to fit them all together and find we have the complete picture.’
CHAPTER 25
Amos’s journey to North Hill took him across the wide expanse of Bodmin Moor. Here ponies and sheep grazed untended on empty wastes of coarse grassland where two thousand years before men and women had lived out their short lives in the harsh and unrelenting upland landscape.
There were still people living on the moor. Hardy farmers and their families eked out a lonely and precarious existence in the extreme weather conditions which prevailed here in winter. There were miners working here too, although in recent years they had concentrated more and more on the fringes of the moor. Evidence of their present endeavou
rs could be seen in the distance where plumes of smoke rose from tall, but for the most part unseen, engine-house chimneys on mines where men were toiling in shafts and tunnels hundreds of feet beneath the moor hacking out tin and copper ore for the mine "adventurers" and speculators who would make or lose fortunes by the labours of the miners.
Following a faint narrow path which skirted weathered granite tors, his horse eventually picked its way down from the high moor and crossed a narrow wooden bridge across a river that had not yet lost the speed it had gathered tumbling over its own rocky path from Bodmin Moor.
North Hill was a small, sleepy village with an impressive church and it was here, in the graveyard, Amos found someone from whom to ask the way to the cottage occupied by Connie Dawes and her mother. A bearded and perspiring gravedigger, only head and shoulders above the ground, looked up at Amos suspiciously and countered his question with, ‘What be wanting of they, then?’
‘I want to ask Connie about one of her friends, a girl she used to work with.’
‘This maid you’re talking about . . . she in trouble?’
Amos knew that in such a small community anything said about the true purpose of his visit to the Dawes house would be repeated, misquoted and start wild rumours circulating within hours, so he said, easily, ‘No, her friend has spoken of her and as I happened to be passing close by I thought I’d call in on her.’
It took the gravedigger a while to make up his mind, but then he directed Amos back the way he had come, it seemed the Dawes cottage was in a wooded hollow off the path that led down from the high moor.
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