Trevega House

by Will North

  NICOLA PUT HER fork down and turned her attention to her partner: “How’d you and Jamie get on with that wall at the gardener’s cottage?”

  Andrew shook his head; grit fell from his hair. “That Jamie is a genius. I was sure we’d have to tear down the whole west-facing wall and remove the roof, it was all so weathered, but old Jamie just said, ‘trust the stone.’ He rammed a vertical supporting timber beneath the roof’s end-rafter and we’ve rebuilt the upper half of the exterior stone wall beneath it, as if the roof were floating above us. It’s taken a few days but when we’re done he’ll ease out that support and the old timber and slate roof will settle down onto the new wall right as rain, completely stuck and sturdy. That’s what he says, anyway.”

  “And you, Mr. Architect,” Nicola teased, “Did you serve as his structural engineer?”

  “No way; I’ll never stop learning from that wily old man. And this young lady,” he said, nodding at Lee, “she was with us all the way. Her spatial sense is amazing.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “This girl of ours can see in three dimensions. She can turn space around in her head and tell you where a particular stone will fit as if it were meant to be sewn there. It’s a rare talent, Jamie says.”

  “Wow!”

  “Whatever,” Lee said to her plate.

  “She could be an architect,” Andrew added.

  The girl smiled but did not look up.

  “Where’s Jamie’s Flora tonight?” Nicola asked.

  “Off to one of those pagan meetings she goes to once a month,” he said. “’Moots’ they’re called. I don’t know if Jamie’s a believer or not; he doesn’t say. But tonight he’s off to the Tinners for supper and a pint or three with the neighbors while she’s out. Bit of a reprieve from the witchcraft for him, I suppose.”

  Nicola locked her ebony eyes on him: “Listen, you: I believe in her and in her faith and skills. She lifted a great burden from my soul after the flood…and made it possible for me to trust and love you. If that’s witchcraft, I’ll take it.”

  “It wasn’t my inherent charm?”

  She relaxed: “Yes, well, maybe a bit of that too….”

  Andrew marveled at the woman beside him: her feisty Italian edge was never far beneath her smooth, slightly olive skin. Andrew’s ex-wife had been tall, slender, and cold, but his Nicola was a comforting warm armful when they curled up together at night. He especially loved waking up early in the morning to see her long dark brown hair, burnished with tints of copper in the sun, splayed out across her pillow. That’s when he wanted her most, but he let her sleep and slipped off to brew tea for them. It was little ritual of theirs, having tea in bed to begin each day, a still point of catching up, looking forward, and being together before their worlds started turning again.

  Lee watched the two of them banter and considered how lucky she was that these quirky grownups had adopted her. The formal process was not yet complete, she knew, but what seemed like half the population of Boscastle had turned up for the hearing at the Family Proceedings Court at Bodmin to support Nicola and Andrew’s petition. Lee’s own grandparents said they were too old to look after the precocious girl and endorsed Andrew and Nicola wholeheartedly. It was only a matter of time now before the order would be final. It hardly mattered to Lee, though; Andrew and Nicky were her anchors now.

  What she did not know, and what they had not told her yet, was that the settlement from the accident that killed her parents, when it finally wound its way through the courts, would likely protect her financially for the rest of her life. Others of the company’s drivers were on record reporting that the truck that had lost control had continually leaked brake fluid. In response to their warnings, the owners had simply topped up the reservoir as needed and ignored them. A corporate manslaughter charge would be heard in Truro Crown Court. Psychiatrists for the injured and emotionally shattered driver had already been deposed and they doubted the young man would ever be the same.

  As for Bottreaux Farm, Lee’s home, the rich land above Boscastle had been rented quickly by a neighboring farmer, and the farmhouse itself had been purchased and turned into a posh bed and breakfast venue…where no one spoke of the tragedy. The proceeds of the sale, and the rental income, went to a trust fund for Lee established by Sir Michael.

  AS SHE ATE, Lee could not stop thinking about Flora’s pagan moots. She just knew somehow, like an itch beneath her skin, that she was meant to attend those meetings, too. There were things she knew, things she sensed, but she did not yet have the words or the courage to talk about them. Only Flora understood.

  Flora Penwellan had worked behind the bar at the Cobweb Inn at Boscastle dispensing drinks, food, and sage advice in roughly equal measure for as long as anyone could remember…until the flood nearly destroyed the pub and swept her finally into Jamie Boden’s arms. The two had flirted with each other for years but had both been too shy, and thought themselves too old, to act on their attraction. In the end, all it took to bring them together was a disaster that could have killed them both.

  Jamie Boden was as wiry and tough as a goat, lean but strong from years of stone work. His weather-beaten, freckled face possessed an almost perpetual look of mischief and his unruly thinning red hair, touched now with threads of white, was like a storm swirling around his head. Just encountering Jamie Boden made you smile.

  Full-figured Flora—“strapping,” some might describe her—was what locals called, privately, a “village wise woman,” one of several in this part of Cornwall… someone you could count on to lift an ache from your soul or a curse from a neighbor, among other maladies: in short, a witch. And, although she was almost sixty, she had also been Lee’s closest adult friend both before and after the flood. It was simple: they loved and respected each other. Plus, Flora had already sensed that Lee was unusual. She kept an eye on the child as if the girl were her own, and now that they all lived on the Trevega estate that was easier to do. She loved that Andrew and Nicola had wrapped their arms around the orphaned girl and given her their hearts, but she did not believe they understood, at least not yet, how different the girl really was. And it was Flora’s job, she believed, to protect and nurture that difference. It was, she felt, the last big task of her life.

  That, and maybe Jamie.

  HE CLIMBED BACK over the ancient stone hedge and stood at the edge of the coast path, admiring his handiwork. It had been harder than he’d expected and he was winded, even a bit frightened by what he’d done. But he smiled nonetheless:

  It’s a first step. There will be more.

  And then he strode south, careful not to be seen.

  Two

  NIGEL LAWRENCE, THE thick-set young farm manager for the Trevega estate, knocked at the kitchen door of the big house early on Monday morning. He and his wife Annabelle and their toddler Jesse lived above the valley in the estate’s farmhouse. Low-slung under its lichen-encrusted slate roof and looking like it had grown out of the rocky landscape rather than having been built upon it, the stone house was more than a century older than Trevega House, almost a museum piece. Nigel managed the estate’s cattle for Sir Michael.

  “Nigel!” Nicola said, opening the door. “Come in! Tea?”

  “That would be fine, Nicola, thank you. Andrew about?”

  “Of course. Just changing into his work clothes. Be down any minute.”

  She poured him a mug. “Something more than tea, Nigel? Toast?”

  “Nah. My Annabelle fixed me a breakfast to last all day.”

  “A fine and lovely woman she is, Nigel.”

  She paused and added, “Plus Annabelle saved me from Jeremy. I’m forever in her debt. And yours.”

  “I’m so sorry we didn’t know sooner that he was beating you…I’d have throttled the bastard. So unlike his dad, Sir Michael, who’s such a good and noble soul.”

  “All in the past now and long gone, Nigel. Anyway, I should have said something back then, but I was too afraid. Annabelle helped me t
o find my voice. Then again, look at all the good that’s happened since…Yes?”

  “Mighty glad we are about you and Andrew. And Lee, too, despite her terrible loss. Landed safely with you two, me and Annabelle think. Reckon we’d like her as babysitter for our little Jesse sometimes, if she’s interested. Loves her, that little boy does. How’s she faring, then, our Lee?”

  “Hides a lot inside, I think, Nigel. But she soldiers on. She’s a strong girl.”

  “And smart, too, I reckon. Comes up to the farm and wants to learn all about the herd. Lovely company she is as well, and the animals they take to her. You should see it: they gather around her, their big heads bobbing, and they lick her boots. She has a way with them.”

  Andrew came down the back stairs to the kitchen. “Nigel! How are you, my friend?” He thrust out his hand.

  Nigel had not yet quite got used to this overt American custom. Diffident nods were more a Cornishman’s habit of greeting. Given its smuggling history, wariness was culturally ingrained. At some point in the distant past maybe you had to worry if someone who extended one hand might have a knife in the other.

  “Reckon I’d like a word, Andrew,” he said, taking the proffered hand. “On a farm matter.” He looked at Nicola. “Outside, maybe?”

  “Of course!” Andrew said.

  “So much for tea,” Nicola groused. “Go on, you two…”

  A crushed gravel terrace separated the back of Trevega House from the overgrown formal garden a few steps below. Renovating the garden was Nicola’s next task. The rear terrace was where they parked their vehicles, near to the kitchen door. Nigel stopped in the middle of the yard, as if there were a mark there where he should stand and speak.

  Andrew joined him. “What’s up, Nigel? What is it?”

  The farm manager looked across the yard and then turned to Andrew.

  “Reckon it’s murder, Andrew.”

  “What?”

  “One of our bullocks dead this morning in a field down by the coast. Throat slit. Couldn’t even have bawled out for help, the poor devil,” Nigel said, his voice catching, as if his own child had been slain. “It was Lee who told me. She’d been out walking early with Randi. Came right up to the farm, she did, told me, then left. I moved the rest of the cattle from that field. They were gathered around the dead one nudging it, wanting it to live.”

  Andrew put his arm around the man’s shoulders and led them farther away from the house. “Good Lord, Nigel, why? What’s the point? Do we have enemies?”

  “None what I know of, truly, Andrew. Folks hereabouts are proud of how you’re restoring Trevega. The old place is full of life again. That’s good for everyone in the district. They’re always talking at the Tinners about all that you and Jamie are doing. Admiring, everyone is.”

  “But this?”

  The farm manager raised his hands. “No idea, honestly. Such a beautiful, harmless beast.”

  Nigel was a stocky Cornishman in his mid-thirties, ruddy-faced from the weather and so heavily muscled it was as if he didn’t just raise cattle but wrestled them as well. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and looked off across the overgrown garden.

  “This could be just someone’s filthy prank,” he said without conviction.

  “Maybe, but I think we’d best report it to Sir Michael anyway,” Andrew said.

  “We’ve plenty more cattle, Andrew.”

  “Still, he’ll want the police in. Don’t move the beast, okay? And let’s get your veterinarian to have a look as well. We’ll need something official.”

  “Already called the vet.”

  “Why am I not surprised…?”

  “Has Lee been back yet?”

  “I didn’t know she’d been out, honestly.”

  “You’ll go look for that girl, won’t you? She were powerful upset finding that bullock. Troubles me more than that beast, to be honest. Find her.”

  LEE WAS RIGHT where Flora had “seen” her.

  Flora Penwellan was unaccustomed to overland hiking. Nonetheless, she’d plodded, heavy-footed and wheezing, down through the valley to the coast, stopping now and then to curse the girl and catch her breath, until she’d found the cliffside spot she’d seen in her “mind’s eye.” Her “mind’s eye” was a phenomenon she mostly found annoying but for which today, at least, she was grateful.

  And there Lee sat, clutching her skinny legs on a grassy shelf a few feet below the clifftop at River Cove and high above the Atlantic breakers. Sea thrift edged the shelf and the heather burst with magenta florets. Just south of the ledge a stream slender as a finger flung itself off the cliff edge and lost itself in mist on the rocky beach more than a hundred feet below. There was a scarred bit of path leading to the shelf. Randi sat beside the girl, panting, as if troubled by the height.

  As Flora looked down, a hand touched her shoulder and she jumped.

  But it was only Nicola. The noise of the wind and surf below had drowned out her approach.

  “What are you doing here?” Flora hissed.

  “I followed you. I’m sorry. I heard about Lee and saw you. You seemed on a mission…”

  Nicola peered over the cliff edge. “What is she doing down there?” she whispered.

  “Calming herself, I reckon, Nicola. This is her special place. Most kids have one: where they go to be alone with their thoughts. It had to have been quite a shock, finding that poor dead beast…”

  Nicola leaned over the edge and tried not to panic from the height.

  “Lee, sweetie?” she called, “it’s time to come home now, love. We know what happened. It must have been awful for you.”

  “That poor animal…” Lee shouted above the surf. “Death out of nowhere, for no reason!” Her anger vibrated in the air.

  And Nicola heard the echo from Lee’s own loss—random, inexplicable, grossly unfair deaths. Her family gone in an instant.

  “I can’t imagine, Lee.”

  The girl looked up toward the cliff edge, her face pinched and angry: “We must imagine,” she yelled. “We must imagine who wanted to do this. I’ve been thinking about this and I don’t think it’s about the animal; nothing to do with it at all. Something to do with us. Someone who wants to do us harm. Someone evil.”

  Nicola looked at Flora.

  Flora shook her head and leaned over the edge: “That’s enough, now, girl,” she called, “you get your sorry arse up here and let those who love you look after you! The cow’s gone but we’re all still here breathing, right? You okay getting back up here on your own, because, let me tell you, I’m too old to climb down to fetch you!”

  The girl stood and climbed, followed by Randi, and, to Nicola’s surprise, she came to her and hugged her.

  “Thank you for coming for me,” Lee whispered.

  Nicola’s eyes filled.

  “Can we all go home now?” Flora barked as if exasperated but controlling her own emotions. “Is there a bus or something due along here soon? It was downhill to get here but it’s nothing but uphill to return.” She cuffed Lee’s bony shoulder. “You need to respect your elders, girl!”

  “THIS WAS JUST plain malicious,” the large animal vet, Dr. Bethany Richards, said later that morning as she stood after examining the dead bullock. She was a sturdy woman of perhaps forty, a tight cap of close-cut brown hair, dressed in dark green coveralls and a tan t-shirt, manure-splattered Wellies on her feet. Her hands, Andrew noticed, were strong and rough-skinned but the fingers were tapered, almost delicate. Still, not the sort of vet you’d call if your Siamese cat were ailing.

  “No one was trying to butcher this handsome fellow. The steps are all wrong.”

  “What steps?” Andrew asked.

  The vet looked at Nigel. Nigel shook his head.

  “More than you want to know, Mr. Stratton.”

  “No, please…”

  She shrugged. “All right, you don’t cut a live animal’s throat, okay? You render it senseless first, a bullet center of the forehead above the eyes, us
ually. Then you plunge a strong, very sharp knife into the throat and cut away from yourself and outward severing the carotid. You don’t come at it the way this happened, just sawing across the neck from behind. Some bastard just killed the beast and let it bleed out. Brutal. Cruel. It sickens me.” She drew a heavy green tarp over the carcass like a priest covering the body of someone who’d just passed on.

  Andrew watched and noted how gentle she was. “Police next?” he asked.

  “Without question,” Richards said, gathering her kit. “This is criminal, this is. Make sure the police find him before I do…”

  “Him?”

  “Someone strong.”

  Three

  “YOU’RE JOKING, RIGHT?” Detective Inspector Morgan Davies barked as she stormed around Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Penwarren’s office at the Devon and Cornwall Police Operational Hub at Bodmin later that morning. Davies didn’t walk: she stalked, leading with her head, the rest of her following as if trying to catch up.

  “Some toff has a problem—a problem with a dead cow for Christ’s sakes!—and suddenly CID’s involved? Come off it; my job’s murder, not livestock!”

  “He’s not a ‘toff,’ Morgan,” Penwarren said, his voice modulated, calming. “He is a citizen, and a friend. A very good friend.”

  “So what?” The imposing detective, her short and bleached blond hair spiked and stiff as quills, her arms clamped beneath her generous breasts, stood her ground. “And what are we supposed to do, anyway? Have Calum West’s SOCO boys do a search and then take the damned cow up to the Treliske mortuary? Have Dr. Duncan do a postmortem? Why not just put a uniformed constable on it and have the beast hauled away to a butcher shop?”

  DCI Penwarren sighed. “Look, there’s more to this, Morgan. When you’ve calmed down, come back. It’s complicated. This may not be some sort of sick vandalism….”