The Cornish Secret of Summer's Promise

by Laura Briggs

  The dogs scurried up hopefully as the doors to the shed were lifted. Mic and Bugsy jumped up on the old, disgraceful sofa in the corner, while Kip sprang onto the workbench, tail wagging madly the whole time. He sniffed the air, as if trying to catch Sidney's scent in the vicinity while gazing at the opening facing the sunny garden, with an expectant attitude.

  "Sorry, guys," I said, stroking his ears. "He's not coming home today." I heard a mournful, low howl from Moby Dick, whose arthritic limbs had parked him directly in the doorway behind us.

  Sidney's workspace was filled with the usual rusty hardware, broken clay pots, garden tools, and spanners and screwdrivers littered across the bench. An assortment of appliances in need of repairs were stacked to one side — the pink lamp from the vicarage guest room, an old-time radio with missing knobs. It reminded me too much of the transistor device used to jam the security signals — I wished that Sidney had repaired this one first and returned it to whomever it belonged.

  Anson combed through the pile, shaking old hoovers with broken bags and burnt-out toasters that held only crumbs. I emptied the pots in the stack on the shed's far side, and rummaged through empty burlap bags, none of which revealed any sign of the missing papers from the auction.

  We sat down outside the shed, on a low bench in the sunshine. Kip sniffed around my shoes, still gazing watchfully towards the garden path leading from the shrubbery to the church's lane.

  The detective sighed. "My confidence regarding the whereabouts of the other missing item has been shaken," he confessed. "I think we have searched your friend's house as thoroughly as possible."

  "What do you think it means?" I tucked my hands in my cardigan's pockets and eyed the detective as he gazed at the distant shrubbery with the look of a man who sees something else in its place. This discovery might be a mere miscalculation in his theory that didn't matter at all; but any doubts seemed to put Sidney in further jeopardy.

  "Possibly I have missed something in this case — it might be significant or unimportant," he answered. "I can't be sure what it means that they have kept this item, but not the jeweled dragon. Either they meant it to be clever ... or they deliberately meant to take her personal object as well."

  He tapped his pencil against his notebook, twice. "There is something not quite right about this case," he said. "This theft, the manner in which it was conducted — it tells me there is more to this case than meets the eye. But what? What escapes my eye in this picture which explains their strange actions? These are the things they want us to see, the missing personal objects, the missing jewels ... but what is it they wish to conceal by drawing our attention to them?"

  "You don't have a theory?" I said.

  "Not yet," he answered. "Not until I determine which things are necessary to consider, and which ones are merely sand thrown in the eyes of our thief's pursuers."

  I sighed. I didn't meant to do it, but it escaped me nonetheless. We were no closer to an answer than before. Maybe the real thief collected celebrity memorabilia, or maybe he grabbed something from the case just to further the damage to the auction house's collection. Perhaps there was no secret motive behind any of these decisions, only a desire to steal things. Either way, it didn't help Sidney immediately, unless Anson could divine a suspect from a missing piece of paper and a stolen silver dragon.

  If writers had minds akin to those of detectives, mine wasn't working properly. The only reason I could see for stealing one of the actress's personal possessions was that of covetousness or sentimentality — that didn't seem to fit with the image of a desperate diamond thief.

  "The authorities in your village seem keen on assuming your friend is capable of crime," remarked Anson. "It surprises me. The church groundskeeper seems an unusual scapegoat for an investigation such as this. Does your friend have a criminal record that would lead them to finger him so swiftly?" He looked at me intently.

  "No," I said, although I no more knew this with certainty than anything else about Sidney's former existence. "But he has a reputation in the village. He's sort of a wanderer by nature ... he just wandered in one day and stayed. They look at him as a stranger who can't be trusted. A gypsy traveler who doesn't have a home."

  "He has a home on these grounds, and an employer," observed Anson.

  "The vicar wouldn't have hired him unless he had trusted him," I said. "And Sidney ... he's different. He's not really like the way they think of him. He has such a truly kind heart, and an honest soul beneath all the pretending. I think he would do anything for anybody who needed him."

  I couldn't explain about all the little things that came into my mind, from the church's soup kitchen to Mrs. Primmer's face aglow for her Christmas tree's lights and the birds flitting to her gardens feeders. And Dean — without Sidney's friendship, he would have nothing at all, because he had pushed away everything else. Right now, the one thing in life he still cared about was removed beyond reach, in danger of being lost to him like all the rest.

  "The rumors about him are those of theft?" Anson asked.

  I stared at my hands, folded on my lap. "No," I said. "The rumors are something ... more personal ... about him." My tone of voice probably told the detective more than this vague phrase.

  Sidney the heartbreaker, the Casanova of Oxford University — a working-class student sent down for romantic pursuit of rich daughters and dons' wives in his life of parties and raucous living in the company of a wilder set. The reason why village gossips and strict souls sent those glances of contempt his way and whispered about him behind the hedges. They probably whispered about me, too, the poor American tourist-turned-maid who was next in line for a broken heart. Had I been paying the slightest bit of attention this past year, I would have heard it all by now, and friends and coworkers like Brigette wouldn't have been biting their tongues against saying anything, wondering if I was naive or simply having a little friendly fun.

  They were wrong about him. I knew the real Sidney; I felt instinctively that I did, and that I could trust the connection with him, whatever his past had been. Doubts might make me tremble, but the depths of this feeling were begging me to trust, to let it be the winning decision.

  The others were wrong. Weren't they?

  "A reputation in the past is enough to turn certain people away from defending a friend," said Anson, reflectively. "I hope that your friend is forgiving when he is free again."

  "He knows what they say about him," I said. "It's nothing new." That contempt in Sidney's voice, which I had heard occasionally before, held the same bitterness that roused itself deep in his eyes for his 'mysterious facet' that never fully emerged. Sad, strange emotional chemicals had compounded to form it — a metaphorical Caligari's cabinet smashing its vials together in the dark.

  "He won't mind life in the village after some of its citizens suspected him? It's a small village," said Anson.

  "He won't," I answered. "Not Sidney." The toe of my shoe scuffed against the grass below, which settled back into place afterwards as if I had never disturbed it.

  ***

  "Are you still reading that awful book?" Riley snatched it from Brigette's hand as he laid a guest's letter for mailing on the desk. Lady Marverly's Eternally Yours had returned from the lost and found box.

  "I'm not reading it!" Brigette protested this accusation vehemently once more. "Someone left it in the service pantry and one of the kitchen staff returned it. It appears that people have been stealing from the box in the office, which is reserved for forgotten items and is private to management." She snatched the book away from Riley, who had been flipping through its pages.

  "Are you accusing me?" said Riley. "I borrowed it from Molly. She's your thief — though what she saw in this baffles the mind, as it were. Is this your fantasy bloke, Brigette?" he asked. "Some English chappie with rippling biceps and tawny chest who lives in the wreckage of a pirate's ship?"

  "Don't you have a tray that needs carrying to Mrs. Finny's office?" retorted Brigette.

&
nbsp; "Condemn me to hard labor, then. Be cruel to a lad who lacks a few centimeter's height and has a lean swimmer's build instead of the body of Vin Diesel," said Riley, pulling his expression into a look of profound injury. "See what injuries you've done me, all because I kept my roguish charm in check for you."

  Brigette made no reply as she tucked the offending romance novel beneath the front desk. "Molly, from now on, please leave guest's neglected belongings in the box," she said.

  Molly, who had been helping me move one of the heavy fern pots into place again, blushed fire red.

  "Sorry, Brigette," she said. "I shouldn't have let him borrow it — only nobody had claimed it, so I thought maybe no one cared to have it back."

  "It is only a silly paperback, so I suppose that's probably the case," said Brigette, as if she hadn't been reading its pages with deep attention seconds before Riley's interruption.

  Molly glanced at me. "I don't suppose — that's not the sort of book you're writing, is it?" she asked. "You didn't say what kind of novel it was."

  "It's not," I answered. I released the pot's edge, now that the fern was back in place. "It's ... well, it's sort of a blend of gothic literary themes and fantasy ones."

  "Gothic. That's sort of vampire stuff, isn't it?" said Molly. "No, wait — it's like the old books. The ones about castles and haunted rooms and doomed heroes and houses with curses. I read some of them at school, when we had to read Austen's books."

  "Close," I said. "Mine is fleshing out one of those haunting tragedies. Only with an ending that's only half tragic, I hope." Unlike my story, for the time being. I sank down on the sofa. "It's based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. I'm dramatizing his most famous poems in a fictionalized historical setting."

  "Isn't he the bloke who wrote the poem about the talking raven?"

  "Exactly."

  Molly sat down beside me. "Do you ever put real people in your stories?" she asked.

  The inevitable question. "I don't, honest," I said. "I didn't put you in one, or anybody else I know." Not since that mistake of letting pieces of Sidney appear in my work this past autumn. "Not in a piece of fiction I would show to a publisher."

  I hoped that if Molly ever found out about my private journal she would know it was just that — private, and not meant for anybody else to read in its raw form.

  "Oh. I was sort of hoping you put me in one," said Molly, sounding a little crestfallen. "I suppose I wouldn't fit very well in a gothic or adventure-y sort of story, though."

  "I don't know. I think you'd make a nice heroine," I answered, smiling, even though talking about writing — and writers — made me feel the last vestiges of sadness and sickness whenever it drifted too near the recent encounter with Alistair Davies. "You have hidden depths, Molly. That's what every good character needs."

  "I don't have to be a heroine," she said. "Just a tiny little part is fine. You probably don't need depths to be a character who only speaks once or twice, do you?"

  "What character?" Brigette spoke up. We realized that she had been listening to us from the desk — now that the novel was tucked out of temptation's reach.

  "In Maisie's novel," answered Molly, simply, without any awareness that she was only one of two people in the village who knew about it.

  "Maisie's novel?"

  "The one she's writing."

  "Maisie — is that true?" Brigette sounded astonished.

  Clearly, my secret would never be contained back in its box, unlike the keys I kept in the little tin TARDIS Sidney gave me last summer. I would have to confess to everyone. Unlike Molly, however, most of them wouldn't ask for copies of my work — probably not, that is.

  The phone rang, which was the only thing that saved me from further questions from Brigette. She became her business self again as soon as she answered the call from one of the hotel's rooms.

  "Maisie, take a tea tray to the Blue Suite, please," said Brigette. "Mr. Torking doesn't feel like dining in the main hall tonight."

  "Wind burn on the beach today," Molly confided to me. "He sent Gomez for some lotion this afternoon."

  I carried a tray of spinach and chorizo shepherd's pie upstairs to the blue room, and, afterwards, a chicken filet in cream sauce with mushrooms to the room of the young actress. She gazed pensively out the window as I placed the tray on the table.

  "Would you like anything else?" I asked. She broke away from her thoughts, suddenly, as if remembering I was in the room.

  "No, thanks," she said. "Your tip is by the door." A small fold of bills lay beside a Chinese figurine. The tablet computer lying on the sofa a few feet away had a screen filled by an airline's website, a familiar jetsetter logo at the top. No script this time. The actress mustn't be waiting around for the exhibit and auction of her hero's things to be reopened — if it ever would be.

  A standing order for a cup of coffee to be delivered to the Hollywood rep Blane's room. A note left for someone was taped to its door, simply reading Gone out. Emergency. Be back by dawn. I took the coffee downstairs to the kitchen again.

  Trays then had to be delivered to the investigators trying to recover Mr. Tiller's lost fortune, but the security guards minding the doors to the still-closed exhibit now ate food purchased and prepared only by members of their team. I didn't blame them or Mr. Tiller, given what happened last time someone on staff had served them their nightly repast.

  "Take this one up as well, Maisie," said Janine, placing a silver tray covered by a dome on the kitchen's stainless steel counter. "Grilled chicken caesar salad with wheat roll and marmalade. The Bay Suite at the end of the hall." She glanced up. "Is that my jumper?" she asked.

  "Sorry. It is." I pulled it off, hanging it on the hook again. "I borrowed it earlier and forgot."

  "Not your shade of green, love. Next time, borrow my orange one." She grinned and stepped away again to garnish the next plate for the dining room, leaving me with my latest delivery, one I couldn't pawn off on Riley no matter how much I might wish to do so.

  I gazed at the order ticket lying beside it, the number at the top. With a sigh, I lifted the tray and carried it away.

  What I had said to Molly was true, though I had left out the most important part. The page is the only place where any and all secrets in the human depths are good ... in fiction, they can't hurt anyone the way they can in real life. The secret of Sidney, and the secret I now held about Alistair Davies, were the best examples I could give of its truth. On different levels, each one cost me peace of mind and gave me pain, although the one which involved the famous author was entirely on my side and entirely my fault.

  Literary heroines inevitably face their darkest hour on the page, having no choice under the writer's pen. Most survive to the story's end ... mostly. In real life, I would have to face mine, without any more choice than that of my tragically-fated Annabel.

  I knocked on the door. "Room service," I called. I opened it when bid to enter, and placed the tray on the nearest table. Alistair Davies looked up from an open journal on her lap. The silk scarf was draped across the sofa's back, and a pile of travel brochures and catalogs covered the adjoining cushion.

  "Your salad and dinner roll, and your glass of white wine," I said. "Is there anything else you need?"

  "Not at all," she answered. "Feeling better?" she inquired.

  I nodded. "Much," I said. I took a step to leave, then braced myself. "I'm sorry," I said. "For what happened yesterday. I ... I made assumptions, and I took a position that I had no right to take. It's not as if it was any of my business if someone entered this room, even as a member of staff. I should've kept my nose out of other people's business. I have a bad habit of it ... as you learned that night in the dining room."

  "Oh, yes. The girl with the brilliant memory," said Alistair. "Paige's opera remark." She closed her journal.

  "Again, I apologize. I'm sorry I troubled you," I said. "It won't happen again."

  Another smile of amusement. "No offense was taken, my dear girl," sh
e said. "These things happen in life. If we went about blaming each other for our mistakes, quite soon the whole human race would be on very poor speaking terms."

  I turned to go, but the sound of her voice stopped me. "Might I ask," she said, "given that you've ferreted out my secret, obviously ... how did you know that this room belongs to Alistair Davies?"

  "The name in the register," I said. "Basil Pendleton. Uninvited Hauntings. There were at least two more in the register when I leafed through it — Irene Lanscombe and Sullivan Drinkwater."

  "And you deduced from merely these names the identity of the suite's occupant?" said Alistair. "Clever girl."

  I hesitated. "There's more," I said. "I had this, too."

  Reaching into my apron pocket, I pulled out a folded envelope, slightly creased and a little smudged in places. There would never be a second chance if I didn't do it now, and it couldn't possibly make things worse for me after my apology had been accepted. I held it out to Alistair, who slipped on her glasses and examined it after taking it from my hand. Her handwriting on the outside, the international mail stamp in its corner.

  She withdrew the letter from inside, the one with the hotel's crest printed at the top, and unfolded it, reading the lines she had written to me nearly a year ago. I could see the surprise dawn faintly on her face.

  "I remember you," she said. "I do. I remember this letter." She looked at me. "Did you come here looking for me?"

  All right, things could get slightly worse for me. For instance, if Alistair Davies believed I was a crazy stalker. Maybe giving her that letter was a mistake.

  I lowered my gaze. "I did in the beginning," I said. "But you had left already. I stayed on because I found there was more to this place than famous authors writing manuscripts in its rooms. I found adventures of my own. I hadn't even thought of meeting you again, truthfully, until I sneaked into this room to avoid someone in the hall."