The Dying of the Light

by Robert Richardson

  Helen began to replace the sketches in her portfolio case. “Keep telling me that or I’ll give up.”

  “Don’t you dare, young lady.” Edith smacked her wrist lightly. “There are no short cuts to being an artist. It’s work. Look at this.”

  She led Helen to an easel bearing an almost finished painting of a kingfisher, brilliant with colour.

  “This is the … sixth time, I think that I’ve tried to do it,” Edith said. “Sometimes I’ve told myself that those colours only occur in nature and you can’t find them in paint. But every time, I’ve got a bit nearer, and one day I’ll make it. If I live long enough.”

  “You’ll live to be a hundred. All of you will … oh, I’m sorry.” Helen stopped and looked apologetic. “I’d forgotten about Martha.”

  “Don’t apologise.” Edith made what seemed an unnecessary adjustment to the position of the easel. “It was a great shock, but we’re all coming to terms with it.”

  “Even Ruth? I really must go and see her.”

  “Then just remember she’s very distressed,” Edith said sharply. “Don’t take too much notice of what she says.”

  “In what way?”

  “Nothing particular. Just that …” Edith shook her head. “She seems to have some idea that it might not have been an accident. So silly.”

  Helen did not say anything for a moment, but thoughts rocketed through her mind. “What on earth does she mean, Edith?”

  “That … No, it’s just too ridiculous. I just felt I ought to warn you that she’s being a little irrational at the moment. Just humour her. Now, you must excuse me, because I’ve got —”

  “Edith,” Helen interrupted firmly. “You can’t just leave it like that. If Ruth thinks it wasn’t an accident, what does she think?”

  Edith Hallam-West sighed impatiently. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “But is she saying that she thinks someone pushed the statue over deliberately?”

  “How do you know she’s saying that?”

  Helen frowned, startled at the force of the question. “I don’t,” she replied carefully. “But you said Ruth didn’t think it was an accident, so what else was I to think?”

  Edith turned away. “Yes. Well. I expect you’re right. But, however upset Ruth is, it’s inexcusable. Martha had no enemies. Who on earth could have wanted to kill her?”

  “Nobody I know of.” Helen decided to give Edith a way out. “But Ruth’s emotional at the best of times and losing Martha must have upset her dreadfully. Don’t worry. I’ll try and calm her down.”

  She smiled and kissed Edith on the cheek. “Thanks for your help again. I’ll keep doing it until I get it right as well.”

  Edith did not speak as Helen left the studio, then gave a moan of dismay as the door closed and she heard her footsteps walking away.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she cried aloud as tears of tension erupted out of her. She crossed to the window and looked at the view without seeing the blurred blue horizon where the waves of Mounts Bay merged into the English Channel and distant Atlantic. The mention of Martha Shaw and Helen visiting Ruth Harvey had caught her off guard and she had revealed what Ruth was privately saying to plant the suggestion that it was ridiculous in Helen’s mind. But she had done it all wrong; in trying to dismiss it, she had shown too much concern. Helen was too observant to have missed that, but surely she would not pursue it? Surely she would simply accept that Edith had been upset by Ruth’s hysteria and its implications? Surely she would be understanding and sympathetic? Surely she would never suspect there had been anything more to it? Surely, she … ?

  “Stop it,” Edith told herself firmly as her imagination began to run riot. “It’s all right. She can’t know anything.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You stupid, bloody thing!” The toe of Helen’s soft canvas shoe made violent contact with the front of her automatic washing machine and she hopped in pain. “Ouch!”

  Maltravers’s head appeared enquiringly round the door of the minute wash-house on the other side of the narrow passageway behind the cottage. “Something wrong, dear heart?”

  “Oh, you’re back.” Helen glared at the machine. “This damn thing’s playing up again.”

  He looked down at stubbornly silent electric gadgetry. “A case of it toils not neither does it spin?”

  “Very funny, but I’m not in the mood,” Helen snapped crossly. “I’d ask you to look at it if you weren’t so hopeless. You’d probably plunge the whole of Porthennis into a power cut.”

  “Don’t underestimate me,” he corrected. “Turn me loose with some instrument of advanced technology like a screwdriver and the entire West Country would be at risk. Why don’t you revive ancient traditions? Take the clothes down to the river bank and beat them between two stones, singing the traditional chorus of the Cornish washerwoman.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll use the launderette in Penzance.” She groaned. “But the car’s in for service. That’s why I’m at home today. Giving me a chance to do the damned washing.”

  “I cannot bear to see a maiden in distress,” Maltravers told her. “I’ll run you into Penzance.”

  “Maiden?” Helen repeated cynically. “Come on. Even my memory’s not that good. All right, thanks. Half this lot is yours and Tess’s anyway. I’m looking forward to ironing a man’s shirt again.”

  Maltravers looked reflective. “Didn’t you once put a white one of mine in with a red blouse and it came out a rather fetching mottled pink?”

  “I was very young at the time.”

  They bundled up the washing and, as they were leaving, Helen commented on the carrier bag Maltravers had left on the chaise-longue.

  “It’s a vase I bought from Edward Cunningham,” he explained. “It’s superb. I’ll show you later. I’ve also been enjoying Belvedere’s company … and perhaps something came out there.”

  “Oh, I’ve got something to tell you as well,” Helen said. “I took some of my drawings up to Edith earlier. She’s given me a lot of help in the past. By chance Martha’s death came up and there was … I can’t quite explain it, but it made me uneasy. It was as though she felt she had to convince me that Martha’s death really was an accident.”

  Maltravers stopped by the gate. “Edith? But I got those sort of vibes out of Belvedere. We’d better exchange notes.”

  By the time Maltravers had parked in Penzance and they had reached the launderette, they had listened to each other’s experiences and bounced ideas around until possible patterns had crossed the borders from bizarre to insane.

  “The trouble is,” Maltravers said as he helped load the clothes, “if Martha was murdered by another member of the School, the roots of it almost certainly go back a long way and how do we investigate it? There has to be more to it than that row in the Steamer about her becoming a Catholic. That sanitised booklet doesn’t tell me anything and, as you’ve said, they all guard their secrets.”

  He shut the circular glass door and began to feed coins into the machine. “And from where I’m standing, Agnes Thorpe still won’t go away. I know it doesn’t make sense, but with Mortimer around who’s looking for normal? Anyway, it’s occurred to me that there could be other people in Porthennis, who aren’t connected with the School but who were here when she vanished. If there are, I’d like to talk to them and see if anything comes up. Any suggestions?”

  “The obvious one is George Trevithick,” Helen said. “He’s been retired for years, but he was the local bobby when Agnes vanished.”

  “Was he indeed?” Maltravers looked at her questioningly. “How’s his memory?”

  “Fine as far as I know. He was certainly still perfectly lucid when I saw him a few weeks ago.”

  “And the Agnes Thorpe case was probably the biggest thing in his career,” Maltravers added thoughtfully. “I can’t imagine that policing Porthennis and the neighbouring villages was as hectic as patrolling downtown Chicago. He’s goin
g to remember it.”

  “But what’s he going to remember?” Helen asked.

  “I don’t know, but there’s a permanent loose end with Agnes Thorpe. Her death was presumed, but never proved. It would be interesting to find out exactly what the police thought about that off the record.”

  “Gus, we’ve been through all this,” Helen argued. “If Agnes Thorpe didn’t drown —”

  “Then what happened to her?” he interrupted. “Obviously we can only guess, but if you take that possibility, however remote it is, as your starting point, you’ve got a whole new ball game. If I could find a reason why Agnes might have wanted to get away from Porthennis — and convince people she was dead — then maybe a few more things would fall into place. She was part of the Porthennis School, in fact she began it. Mortimer’s now convinced us that Martha Shaw was murdered and the most likely suspects all worked with Agnes. To our certain knowledge, two of them are getting twitchy. Chasing after Agnes may be a shot in the dark, but what else is there to go on?”

  For a few moments, Helen watched the internal gyrations of the machine in front of them.

  “All right, it doesn’t make any sense, but I expect it’s worth trying,” she agreed finally. “And there’s somewhere else you can look. Somebody wrote a book about Agnes. It was only published locally and I can’t remember its title or the author, but the library should have a copy.”

  “Did it cover her disappearance?”

  “As far as I know it did.”

  “Where’s the library?”

  Helen pointed down the street outside the launderette. “Morrab Road. About ten minutes walk that way. On your left.”

  “Don’t let the washing burn. I’ll be back shortly.”

  After he left, Helen picked up a magazine from the bench where she was sitting and idly read her horoscope. “This is a week when you will feel increasingly bewildered and uncertain. An old friend will return into your life and bring excitement, but beware the risk of hasty romance. There is unexpected news from a strange quarter and you will face difficult decisions which will affect the lives of others. Lucky colour blue, lucky day Tuesday, particularly the afternoon.”

  She was quite impressed until she looked at the magazine’s cover; it was nearly six months old.

  *

  Hand on the raised lid, Ruth Harvey sat in front of the desk as the brass carriage clock on top of it struck seven slow, mellifluous notes. The instant she had seen the inside, she had known something was wrong. The desk had belonged to her parents and Martha had never used it; amid the casual, comfortable disarray of the cottage, its contents were the only things kept impeccably in order, a legacy of childhood conditioning carried for a lifetime. While it was not now untidy, things were fractionally out of place. The corner of a piece of paper protruded over the edge of a closed drawer, a tin lid containing postage stamps was not in front of its usual compartment, a half-used packet of envelopes had been pushed back into its slot so that the flap of one was bent.

  As she looked, other tiny irregularities visible only to her began to appear. She tried to remember if she had opened the desk since Martha’s death, distressed and indifferent to how she left it, but it was only now that she had decided she could face starting to write the inevitable letters. Then she remembered she had returned home to find Nick Charlton in the room. He had been standing … Where? Over there, by the telephone table under the window? No, much nearer the desk. And he had dropped something as he was talking. What had it been? A gardening glove. But once when she had offered him a pair, he had told her he never wore them, holding out strong, clumsy hands, resistant to scratches and dirt, mute evidence of years of manual work.

  “Oh, no,” she groaned. Nick Charlton had been trying to rob her, taking advantage of her grief and vulnerability. His offer to help had only been a way of deceiving her, of gaining access to the cottage to probe for valuables. What had he taken? There was nothing worth stealing in the desk, but … She hurried upstairs to her dressing table. Her mother’s engagement ring, the diamond pin Martha had bought her in Hatton Garden, her dead brother’s gold watch … all safe in the worn morocco jewel case in the drawer. And so was the money, nearly three hundred pounds in a roll of notes, withdrawn to pay a workman who wanted cash but still had not turned up to collect it. Anxiously, she tugged off the elastic band and counted them; none had been taken.

  She closed the drawer, eyes taking a mental inventory of ornaments and valuables. Nothing appeared to be missing. She had been out that afternoon for more than two hours and Nick Charlton could have stolen anything he wanted. If it had not been for the evidence of the desk, she would not have thought about it, and weeks might have passed before she became aware that some familiar object had disappeared.

  Slowly she went downstairs again, trying to understand. Was Nick just one of those people with an obsession to glimpse other people’s lives? Had he been looking for — she grimaced with distaste — women’s clothing? It made no sense, but she had no doubt that he had searched her desk, although there was no sign he had been anywhere else. What had he hoped to find? It was only after turning the riddle round every way she could, that the fact he had been working in the garden the day Martha had died came back to her. And she had been busy baking. Which meant she would not have noticed if he had gone into the studio and …

  And deep down, the conviction that someone had murdered Martha had hardened into certainty.

  *

  “Interesting?” Helen asked. Maltravers did not reply as he flicked over another page and continued reading the biography of Agnes Thorpe, a mind honed against the deadlines of journalism rapidly absorbing essentials and discarding irrelevancies.

  “Good writer,” he murmured appreciatively. “Sticks to the facts.”

  He turned back several pages. “At first the police apparently considered the possibility that she’d not died, but went off the idea after the suicide note turned up. But that proves nothing. If she wanted to give the impression she’d killed herself, that’s exactly what she would have done. Where does this ex-copper of yours live?”

  “George? End of the terrace next to the Methodist chapel at the bottom of Fern Hill. You can’t miss it. It’s got a pair of painted sailing boats set in the pillars on either side of the front door.”

  “Can you come with me? If he knows I know you, he might be more agreeable.”

  “All right, but I still think you’re wasting your time. Even if Agnes Thorpe didn’t die, why on earth should she suddenly come back now and have some connection with Martha’s death? Surely you’re not suggesting she murdered her?”

  “I’m not going that far,” Maltravers assured her. “At least not yet. But is the idea that some other member of the School may have killed her any more outrageous?”

  “No,” Helen admitted cautiously, then shook her head. “But not Edith. She’s a sweetie.”

  “Don’t let that fool you. Underneath, Edith Hallam-West is as tough as old boots. They all are and …” Maltravers glanced through the open top half of the front door as he heard the latch click on the gate. “Ah, the very man. Mortimer, we need to pick your brains. Or your senses.”

  Lacey leaned his elbows on the bottom half of the door. “What have you found out?”

  “Odds and ends which don’t make much sense, but what would your instant reaction be if I mentioned Agnes Thorpe?”

  “Agnes Thorpe?” Lacey savoured the name like a connoisseur assessing some rare vintage. “It’s so long ago that it’s buried too deep in people’s minds for me to pick anything up about it. But I’ve never been completely satisfied that the whole story has ever come out.”

  “Gus thinks she might not have died,” said Helen.

  “I wouldn’t … say that was impossible.” Lacey opened the door and stepped into the cottage. “But that’s just my feeling. Have you got anything more definite?”

  “Frankly, no,” Maltravers confessed. “I’m just collecting pieces of the jigsaw and
wondering how — or if — they fit together. Not having the picture on the lid doesn’t help.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you by saying you’re on the right track,” Lacey told him. “But I can’t say you’re on the wrong one either.”

  “Very useful,” Maltravers said drily. “Are you a Libran?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. So am I. The problem with Librans is that they’ll always give you a definite maybe.”

  Lacey grinned. “Astrology? I wouldn’t have thought you believed in that.”

  “I don’t, but I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. Which is just as well, because I’m dealing with multitudes here.”

  “Six is a rather small multitude,” Lacey commented. “You must have narrowed down your suspects to the Porthennis School.”

  “Yes, but I’m discounting Ruth,” Maltravers replied. “The sixth has got to be Charlton, our miniature joker in the pack.”

  “But he certainly had no connection with Agnes Thorpe,” Lacey pointed out. “I’m not certain how old Nick is, but I don’t think he was even born when she disappeared, and by Porthennis standards he’s still a newcomer to the place.”

  “True,” Maltravers agreed, then stood up with a grunt of frustration. “Seen through a glass darkly, this is all incredibly complicated, but I think it may be quite simple if I can just find the bloody key.”

  “Is murder simple?” asked Helen.

  “At the bottom line, yes,” Maltravers said. “Or at least the reasons behind it are. The motives of killers are positively pedestrian.”

  “Only if they’re pedestrian killers,” Lacey added quietly. “But not if they’re mad.”

  “Mad?” Maltravers echoed. “You mean that?”

  “Oh, yes.” Lacey sniffed. “Can’t you smell madness in the air round here?”

  “No, and I don’t think I want to.”

  “Well it’s there.”

  Maltravers dropped his shoulders in mock despair. “Mortimer, you’re as much comfort as an empty bottle to an alcoholic.”