Elizabeth MacPherson 06 - Missing Susan

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Even if some famous murderers were in Dartmoor, the prison officials wouldn’t let you talk to them, Elizabeth,” Susan pointed out. She had settled into the seat behind Bernard with a paperback crime novel and the chocolate bar from her room.

  Kate Conway shivered at the thought. “Why would you even want to talk to a convicted killer?”

  Elizabeth considered the question. “I don’t know. I know they’re probably all crazy. I guess I’m just curious to see what a murderer would be like in person. Would he seem like everybody else? Would it be frightening just to be in the same room with him? What do you think, Rowan?”

  He looked startled by the question. “I suppose it would depend,” he stammered. “I’ve known one or two gangsters who had put people away. They seemed rather crass and insensitive, but then, so do many bankers and minor bureaucrats, so it’s difficult to say. Some of my friends in the constabulary say that the safest prisoners to be around are those who’ve killed just one person, a girlfriend or a family member. They’re usually model prisoners, and they seldom repeat their crime.” And I wouldn’t either, he promised silently, to whatever fates might have been listening.

  The only stop that morning was at Postbridge, just over halfway between Moretonhampstead and Dartmoor Prison. “Photo opportunity,” said Bernard, pulling the coach into a graveled lot alongside a country store. “People always want to take snaps of the old bridge.”

  The three-arched stone bridge over which the road ran seemed old enough, but fifty yards downstream from it was such a quaint-looking span that everyone sprinted from the coach, cameras in hand, to examine it. It was a footbridge over the River Dart, consisting of three thin slabs of granite laid end to end across the water, supported by two piles of balanced stone slabs in midstream and an additional pile of rocks at each bank. Had the river not been visibly shallow, no one would have ventured onto the bridge, but the sight of a retriever wading happily near the bridge encouraged the group to brave the stone span. They spent a happy quarter of an hour photographing the bridge, each other, each other on the bridge, and the red-berried rowan tree at the edge of the field (with Rowan in the foreground, as a visual pun).

  As their guide herded them back to the bus, they bolted into the roadside shop for an orgy of postcard purchasing, but since the store’s merchandise was limited and its floor space minuscule, they soon emerged and climbed back aboard with reasonable punctuality.

  A few minutes later, before Susan had begun her nap or Frances had finished her first postcard, Rowan Rover was on the microphone again, calling their attention to an assortment of four-storied gray buildings across an expanse of fields on the left side of the road. “There it is, ladies and Charles,” he said with a dramatic hush in his voice. “With the gorse in bloom and the grass still summer green, it doesn’t look like such a forbidding place, I suppose. But one prisoner called it the Siberia of England. I assure you that winter on Dartmoor can be very bleak indeed.”

  The tour members craned their necks for a better look at the circular granite compound, reminiscent of a nineteenth-century factory complex.

  Rowan consulted his tour notes. “When I was at home this weekend, I found this quote in one of my reference books. It was written by a young American prisoner named Charles Andrews, kept here during the War of 1812. ‘You feel the cold of the place in your marrow. Driving rain comes through the windows, the wind rattles the slates, the walls are damp. In winter the place seems always under fog which penetrates everything. It has driven many a prisoner crazy …’ I expect all of that is still true today.”

  “How old is it?” asked Charles Warren.

  “It was built in the early 1800s to house prisoners from the Napoleonic wars,” said Rowan. “It has been modernized over the years, of course. I believe the chief problem now is overcrowding.”

  “Does England have the death penalty?” asked Susan, looking up from her novel.

  “No. It was abolished in the mid-Sixties.”

  “Too bad. It would have solved the problem.” Susan went back to her book.

  Bernard took a side road that enabled them to circle the prison and to come back out on the main road again. Charles and Elizabeth snapped photos from the moving coach, but the others seemed to lose interest in the prison after their first look. Rowan, too, was glad to leave the ominous compound behind. In another hour they would cross the River Tamar and go into Cornwall, where his attempts to murder would begin in earnest. Just after lunch, in fact.

  Busy with his own thoughts about the remainder of the day, Rowan Rover left the group alone to doze or enjoy the scenery from Princetown to Tavistock, and for most of the way up to Launceston, where they would pick up the A30 that led all the way through the Cornish countryside to their destination in St. Ives. Just after Dunterton, though, when the road crossed the River Tamar, Rowan Rover’s sectarian feelings for his home province won out over his preoccupation with his personal plans and he felt compelled to infuse the group with enthusiasm about his native Cornwall.

  “Cornwall has always been a place apart,” he began. “It is surrounded on three sides by the sea and cut off from neighboring Devon by the River Tamar, which we just crossed. But the separateness is more than mere geography. Until the eighteenth century, the people of Cornwall spoke another language as well. Old Cornish is a Celtic tongue, akin to Welsh and Breton.”

  Susan Cohen rolled her eyes. “Oh, God! We’re going someplace where they don’t speak English?”

  “On the contrary,” said Rowan Rover, holding in his temper with a deep breath. “English is all they speak. The Cornish language died out two hundred years ago. However, other traces of the ancient culture do survive. There are dolmens and great stone circles dotting the landscape. Holy wells, remnants of a pre-Christian faith, are found all over the countryside, and in the place names and the oral tradition, you can find the remnants of the old legends. One of the legends is the tale of King Arthur.”

  “The Sword in the Stone,” said Kate Conway, whose acquisition of culture seemed entirely cinematic.

  “Let us not forget Camelot and Excalibur, while we’re at it,” snapped Rowan. “However, for purposes of this tour, there are some less savory Cornish traditions that we should discuss. It was a culture of fishermen and seafarers, but others also depended on the sea for a living. I mean, of course, the smugglers and wreckers.”

  “What are wreckers?” asked Frances, scanning the road for hot-rodders.

  “Ship wreckers,” Rowan explained. “Back in the old days, any goods washed ashore from wrecks were considered common property, so a foundering ship would bring the entire village out to congregate on the beach, awaiting the storm-tossed booty. It was inevitable that sooner or later someone got the idea of helping ships to wreck. Tradition has it that they tied a lantern around a horse’s neck and led it along the cliffs, so that a ship would mistake its light for the lighthouse, and wreck on the rocks.”

  “Nag’s Head,” murmured Elizabeth MacPherson. “That’s the name of a beach off the North Carolina coast. Apparently, the custom went to the colonies with the Cornish immigrants.”

  Susan laughed. “So you’re descended from crooks?”

  “Times were hard in those days,” said Rowan, ignoring the jibe. “Smugglers and wreckers made a better living than fishermen or those poor sods who worked in the Cornish tin mines. Anyhow, today we shall visit Jamaica Inn, a fabled haunt of these outlaws, and, although it isn’t on the schedule, I thought I might take you into some actual smugglers’ caves tomorrow.”

  The mystery tourists looked doubtfully at each other. “Caves?” said Frances Coles.

  Rowan gave her a magnanimous smile. “Yes. Won’t it be exciting?” Ignoring their uneasy glances, he went on. “Besides the tales of saints and giants, we have a few great villains as well.”

  Alice MacKenzie raised her hand. “About these smugglers. Are there any precautions we ought to take?”

  “They don’t do it anymore,” sighed Ro
wan, wondering if there were anything Americans wouldn’t believe. “That was in the eighteenth century. There aren’t any more robbers around here.”

  From the driver’s seat came Bernard’s hearty laugh. “I dunno, Rowan. Have you seen the prices some of these places charge tourists?”

  “I stand corrected,” said Rowan. “You will be robbed, but you will participate voluntarily, and to show for it you will have: postcards, cheaply turned-out horse brasses, souvenir key chains, and imitation shrimping nets, suitable for wall decoration.”

  A few miles farther on, the scenery changed from tree-lined hills and lush green valleys to a treeless open moorland of gorse and bracken: Bodmin Moor. Bernard pulled the coach into a gravel parking lot next to a two-story gray building with a stone courtyard in front of it. “Jamaica Inn,” he announced. “Go and have lunch in the Smugglers’ Bar.” Turning to Elizabeth, he whispered, “The gift shop is right next door.”

  “Oh, goody!” said Elizabeth, snatching up her purse.

  “That’s right,” snapped Rowan. “Go and buy some horse brasses and Old Cornish tea towels!”

  Elizabeth made a face at him. “I like shopping.”

  “Well, don’t be too long about it,” said Rowan to the rest of the group. “After lunch, if anyone fancies a walk, I’ll take you to Dozmary Pool, and tell you the story of Jan Tregeagle.”

  The tour members were delighted with the white-lettered inscription painted above the doorway to the old coaching inn: THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASSED SMUGGLERS, WRECKERS, VILLAINS, AND MURDERERS. BUT REST EASY … T’WAS MANY YEARS AGO.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” muttered Rowan Rover, as he watched his charges taking each other’s pictures beneath the inscription.

  He allowed them half an hour in the red-carpeted Smugglers’ Bar, with its ancient wooden tables and exposed beams hung with kettles and old pewter tankards. The group ate ploughmen’s lunches of bread, cheese, and pickles, or Cornish pasties, washed down with ale. Rowan himself wolfed down a pasty and a pint of bitter before escaping outside to smoke in the cobblestone yard. He savored a quarter of an hour’s solitude, before routing the group out for the afternoon hike.

  Susan squinted at the bright noonday sunlight in the inn yard. “How far is it to this stupid pond?” she demanded. “I bought some postcards and I need to get them written.”

  “Oh, perhaps a mile,” said Rowan, halving the actual figure on the theory that distance is a state of mind. “There is a connection between this pool and our next stop, Roche Rock. Incidentally, according to legend, Dozmary Pool is the home of the Lady of the Lake, and it is from there that King Arthur received the sword Excalibur.”

  “Let’s go,” said Maud Marsh, swinging her cardigan over her shoulder. Thus shamed into obedience, the little group trudged off behind her.

  As they crossed the busy A30 to the narrow lane that led to the pool, Rowan Rover began his tale of Cornwall’s legendary villain. “Bodmin Moor is haunted, ladies and Charles, by the spirit of Jan Tregeagle. Whether or not he sold his soul to the devil, I cannot say, but it is beyond question that a local magistrate of that name actually existed in the early seventeenth century. They say he murdered his family and seized the estates of defenseless orphans, but he took pains to bribe the local priests and got himself buried in consecrated ground. Not that it did him much good.” Rowan Rover paused, thinking of his own recent promises to the Deity. He put the parallel firmly from his mind.

  “Was he murdered?” asked Elizabeth hopefully.

  “No, but after the life he led, he hadn’t a hope of heaven. Anyhow, they say he was called back from the dead to testify in a court case that he had participated in when he was alive. He sat there in court with the smell of the charnel house clinging to his shrunken features and he testified that he had swindled the litigants in the case. The judge decided the matter and dismissed the participants, but Tregeagle remained in court. The man who summoned the ghost said that he considered Tregeagle a problem for the court. And he left.”

  “I suppose they summoned an exorcist?” said Kate, who was reminded of yet another movie moment.

  Rowan glanced around at the party. They all seemed to be keeping up reasonably well. No one seemed out of breath. Still, he slowed his pace, knowing that there was more than a mile to go. “They called in the clergy,” he said. “And those learned gentlemen decided that their duty was to save Jan Tregeagle from Hell, and that the only way to accomplish that was to give his ghost a task that would keep him occupied for all eternity. They gave him a broken shell and commanded him to empty Dozmary Pool. In order to keep him at his task, they set a pack of demon hounds to watch over him, ready to attack if he stopped bailing.”

  “But the pool is still there?” asked Charles, smiling. “Has old Jan emptied much of it?”

  “No. Legend has it that a great storm frightened him one night, and he took off across Bodmin Moor, with the devil hounds in hot pursuit. He made it to Roche Rock, a holy place about seven miles west of here. We shall be going there next. They say that he got his head into the window of the clifftop chapel, but his body would not fit through, and the hounds tore at him constantly.”

  “There’s a mystery by Mary Stewart called The Gabriel Hounds,” Susan began, with the air of someone about to deliver a plot summary.

  Three people spoke as one to head her off. Alice MacKenzie, loudest of the trio, said, “So he’s stuck up there on Roche Rock, being attacked by hellhounds?”

  “There’s more to the story,” said Rowan quickly, realizing that it had been a close call. “After a few days of listening to Tregeagle’s screams, the holy man of Roche Rock sent for one of Cornwall’s saints to move Tregeagle elsewhere, and he was set to weaving ropes of sand on the beach at Padstow. But Padstow’s patron saint grew tired of listening to the spirit’s howls of torment, so he shipped him off to Berepper, where he was ordered to clear all the sand from the beach. Unfortunately, during his labors he dropped a sack of sand and managed to permanently seal off the entrance to Helston Harbour with a sandbar.”

  “Evicted again?” asked Emma Smith, a folklore enthusiast.

  “Yes. He’s at Land’s End now, sweeping the sands from Porthcurno Cove into Mill Bay, but the ocean currents defeat him. They say you can hear his bellows of rage when gale winds blow the sand back on the beach.”

  Emma looked thoughtful. “I suppose Jan Tregeagle is really the personification of some ancient Celtic god. The geographic connections to the story make it seem much older than seventeenth century.”

  “Very likely,” Rowan agreed. “But he makes a colorful villain, doesn’t he?”

  Susan piped up again. “In Minnesota, we have a legendary figure associated with lakes. He’s an Indian called Hiawatha. There’s a poem about him that I had to learn in the eighth grade. It’s by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Have you heard it?” She cleared her throat, and hastened on. “By the shores of Gitchee Goomee, by the shining big sea waters, stood the wigwam of Nokomis, daughter of the moon, Nokomis …”

  The others contrived to lag as far behind Susan as they possibly could for the remainder of the walk, but her flat voice carried very well across the moors, adding another dimension of agony to the haunted moor. Several members of the group were heard to mutter that they would much prefer to be set upon by hellhounds than listen to another stanza of “The Song of Hiawatha,” and for one altruistic moment Rowan Rover felt guilty about taking Mr. Kosminski’s money.

  After a somewhat perfunctory admiration of Dozmary Pool and a few dutiful photographs taken by Charles Warren, the group trudged back to the Jamaica Inn car park, where Bernard was waiting, enveloped in a rock ‘n’ roll cloud.

  “We shan’t be going far this time,” Rowan told the driver. “The turnoff for the village of Roche is about seven miles up the A30. I’ll direct you from there.”

  “Right you are,” said Bernard, switching back to a classical lullaby. “Did everyone have a nice hike? What was the pool like?�
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  Alice MacKenzie paused on her way to her seat and scowled. “I was reminded of Lake Superior,” she snapped, stalking away.

  Recognizing this reference to Minnesota, the others stole furtive glances in Susan’s direction and fought to keep straight faces.

  Rowan Rover, pleased with the tide of popular opinion, reached for his trusty microphone and began to describe the next exhibit. “Our next destination is Roche Rock which is, as I told you, the summit to which Jan Tregeagle fled when he escaped from Dozmary Pool. It was also the home of a succession of Celtic saints, including St. Roche or St. Conan.”

  “Why do Celtic saints always have two names?” asked Emma Smith.

  “Probably because the Latin clergy always wanted to translate everything into their own language, the bureaucratic old perishers. Anyhow, Roche Rock is a stark pillar of rock rising above the flat landscape, and at the top of it is a ruined chapel, carved into the rock itself. That dates from 1409. Perhaps the hermit in residence kept a light burning in the chapel to guide travelers across the moors.”

  “Not another walk!” moaned Susan Cohen, fanning herself with a postcard.

  “Not at all,” said Rowan cheerfully. “A climb.” Several minutes later, Bernard turned off the main road and guided the coach through the narrow lanes of the village of Roche. A few hundred yards farther on he turned left, at Rowan’s instruction. Almost immediately Martha Tabram cried out, “There it is!” and pointed to a barren spire of rock set among a tangle of underbrush in the wide plateau of open fields. The great pinnacle stood about sixty feet high and loomed dark and sinister between them and the afternoon sun.

  Rowan leaped to his feet and motioned for Bernard to open the doors. “Here we are!” he announced, somewhat unnecessarily. “An ancient Celtic chapel that is not a tourist trap.” He smiled at Miriam Angel. “As you can see, there are no guides, no gates, and no admission fee. It is a simple country relic.”

  A dirt trail led upward through the tangle of bushes to the foot of the rock, about a hundred yards from the road. Rowan led the way, answering questions about the shrubbery, and giving them more facts about the area. Finally, when they were all assembled on a small hill at the foot of the towering rock, the guide turned to the group and said, “Ready to go up?”