Trevega House

by Will North

  Morgan sipped from her pint, looked at the fire, and let the quiet gather for a moment.

  “So do you reckon a stranger’s caused this mischief, then? Someone who’s stopped in here on occasion in the past few weeks, perhaps, that you didn’t know?”

  “Lots of strangers come through here in summer,” Eldridge said. “Like you.”

  “Eldridge!” Alice said, elbowing him.

  He ducked his head: “Meant no offense.”

  “None taken,” Morgan said, smiling.

  “You’ll need to ask David,” Alice said, nodding toward the bar. “We’re not here at lunchtime, when it’s most busy. Loads of visitors then—coast path walkers, folks visiting the ancient sites up on the moors, church lovers here to see St. Senara’s or come for the Sunday morning change-ringing. There’s six old bells in the tower and Billie here,” she nodded to the younger man, “he pulls the tenor bell, he does. Genius, he is, at it. The change ringing goes on for, what Billie, twenty minutes or more? Lovely it is.”

  Silent Billie blushed.

  “You should come back in the autumn,” Alice said. “Quiet here then. Just the neighbors and the occasional walker, right Eldridge?”

  Her husband nodded.

  “Thank you, my friend,” Morgan said patting Alice’s spidery hand. “And I might just take you up on it. But now I think I’d better order something for dinner. Any recommendations?”

  “The duck breast is brilliant,” Alice said. “Local, it is.” She winked and then she and Eldridge finished their pints and rose.

  “Lovely meeting you, Ms. Morgan,” Alice said. Eldridge tipped his cap again. Billie hesitated. “Come on now, Billie, don’t be getting any ideas with this lady,” Alice teased. Billie nodded a shy goodbye and followed them out.

  She went up to the bar to order.

  “Heard a bit of what you all were talking about and I agree with my neighbors: a mystery this is. What’ll you have?”

  “I’m told to try the duck breast.”

  David grinned. “They’re good advertisers, those three. They’re Billie’s ducks, as it happens, and the finest. Bit of a loner, Billie is, but knows his ducks. We cook the duck breast fast and rare with a light mushroom Marsala sauce. Garlic mashed potatoes and new peas with fresh tarragon.”

  “How can I resist?” Morgan said. “Mind if I sit with you here at the bar?”

  “I’d be honored. Reckon among other things you’re mighty decorative. Might encourage the customers to stay…” She noted he had no ring on his left hand.

  “You’re an impossible flirt, David, but I do have a question…”

  “Thought you might, but let me take your order to the kitchen. Be right back.”

  She sipped her pint and looked around. She’d seldom been in a cozier or more naturally welcoming pub. It was partly just sheer antiquity; the place almost sagged with the weight of its nearly nine centuries of history. There were no blaring sports video screens, no noisy slot machines with their whirring fruit pictures. It was a smaller version, she suddenly realized, of the Blisland Inn, her new local up in Bodmin: genuine, unpretentious, a kind of community living room for the neighbors. And it was slowly filling.

  “Now then,” David said when he returned. “Another pint?”

  “Yes, and thank you.”

  He served a queue of newcomers, chatting them up, and returned: “You said you had a question,” he said as he brought her a fresh pint.

  Morgan slipped her warrant card across the bar. He bent to look at it and cleared his throat.

  “I need to have your confidence.”

  The landlord nodded once, looking around. “Reckon you’ve got it, Inspector.”

  “It’s still ‘Morgan,’ David. Now then, this Trevega House,” she said, her voice low: “We’re looking into these strange incidents. No one here seems to be able to fathom them.”

  “That’s right. We all talk about it when the tourists aren’t about, usually early evening, when folks like Eldridge and Alice and Billie come up for a pint and a bit of a chin wag before the dinner crowd arrives.”

  “That Eldridge: not very talkative. Nor Billie.”

  “There’s a reason Billie’s still a bachelor, I reckon. Too shy to make conversation, mostly. Maybe something else, too, but I’ve never questioned it. Keeps himself to himself but raises lovely fat ducks on a rocky bit of upland not fit for grazing. But Eldridge, he’s always been a man of few words. Reckon Alice does his talking for him. Private, Eldridge is. Spends his free time walking the moors, not that he has much what with all those cows. Hard job that is, dairying, especially after he bought up Bert Trevean’s land and cows at Boswednack after Bert dropped dead. Bit off more than he could chew, is what we hear, struggles with the debt now. But he’s that sort of farmer always wants more land. Then again, maybe he’s trying to change history…”

  “Change history?”

  “His ancestors owned the land that’s now the Trevega estate. Forced to sell out to the Rhys-Jones’s in the nineteenth century.”

  “So Alice said.”

  “Long ago and far away, that was: the Rhys- Jones’s had the money, the Biggins’s needed it. Or so it’s said. Reckon he still resents it and is still trying to make up for the loss.”

  “In my line of work, we learn families have long memories.”

  “True enough, especially down here…”

  “But let’s get back to what’s been happening at Trevega House; I gather none of it makes sense to folks hereabouts?”

  “Correct.”

  David paused to pull two more pints for arriving customers.

  “What about strangers?” Morgan asked when he was free.

  “Lots of them this time of year, you see. Look around. And thank goodness, too; the summer trade keeps us going the rest of the year. Mighty quiet in winter, we are here: filthy weather…storms, gales. The locals, though they’re few, are loyal and keep coming, bless them, but if it wasn’t for the summer trade, we’d go under.”

  “Anyone new lately maybe but not just a day tripper? Anyone unusual hanging about? Someone who sticks out?”

  David thought and finally shook his head. “Honestly, no. So many people come through here, you see, and not just Brits, either. We get people from all over: Italians, Americans, and especially Germans. German telly filmed stories by a writer lady name of Rosamunde Pilcher that were set here in Cornwall. She was born just down the road at Lelant. Lives in Scotland now, I hear. The shows were popular in Germany, so we get a lot of Germans.

  “But I’ll also ask Clare. She’s behind the bar at lunch and afterward. I’m only here in the evening, see. During the day, I’m usually upstairs ordering and doing the accounts. Maybe she’s noticed something or someone, though she’s said naught to me.”

  “If something occurs to you or her, something that stands out or seems the slightest bit odd, you’ll let me know?” Her palm crossed the bar. Her card was beneath it.

  He pocketed the card. “Bloody right I will, Morgan. We’re fond of those folks at Trevega, and that funny young girl.”

  “Lee?”

  “The same. Something special about her, you know? Older than she should be, if you take my meaning…wiser somehow.”

  “So I hear.”

  He leaned forward: “And by the way, your room’s on the house. An honor to help you with this…”

  “Can I still claim it on my expense account?” Morgan said, grinning.

  “I thought you were with the law…”

  THE TINNERS’ BEDROOMS were in the “White House,” an adjoining early nineteenth century whitewashed cottage. Her small but luxuriously-appointed ensuite room, also white, with fancy white bed linens and thick white Turkish towels, faced the church across the lane. The room should have felt arctic, all this white, but instead she found it calming. Vases with late spring flowers added color. She’d turned off the lamps and now watched the moonlight silvering the church tower from an old rocking chair, also white, by the d
ormer window.

  Calm, however, was not how she felt. She wished she’d brought a nightcap up from the pub. Something to slow her brain. The paid mini-vacation was fine but it was hard to take pleasure from it. It wasn’t a break anyway, just a nicely furnished investigation venue. She often felt like the proverbial shark that had to keep swimming just to stay alive. And she was getting nowhere. She could see her faint reflection in the window pane. The reflection scowled.

  Butchered cow. Suspicious fire. Random. Totally random. Otherwise intelligent people claim that “everything happens for a reason.” It drove her round the twist: Calum’s wife’s death and his two motherless daughters; did that happen for a reason? Her own family destroyed in the Aberfan coal tip disaster? Did that happen “for a reason,” other than the incompetence and malfeasance of the Coal Board?

  She thought back over her chat with the locals: No explanation for the dangerous events at Trevega. Nothing. Hell, the entire population of Zennor parish was fewer than two hundred souls and, as Alice said, everyone knew everyone else. No grudges. No motives. No suspects. None she’d uncovered, that was certain.

  She rose and turned toward the bed.

  Bloody waste of time…

  Eight

  MARY TREVEAN WATCHED from her kitchen window late Thursday afternoon until she saw him climb over the stile from the Coffin Way and turn down her gravel farm track. He walked every day, sometimes all day it seemed. She wondered where he went, and why. He had binoculars around his neck and a small backpack. Maybe he was a birdwatcher. His strides were long and so fluid it was like watching water flowing. It was nearly six and the western light was growing golden, honeying the tops of the stone hedges edging both sides of her lane. His shadow stretched far behind him until he turned into the cottage gate.

  She continued looking up the empty lane, trying to make up her mind. She’d baked a chicken pie, rich and thick with potato, carrots, peas, parsnips, onion and herbs, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and topped with a short pastry crust into which she’d kneaded fresh rosemary. Now it rested on the counter in an earthenware baking dish, still steaming. It was meant for the two of them. She waited a while, then took a deep breath and, wearing a short black skirt and white cotton blouse slightly ruffled at the neck, picked her way up the lane in low black kitten heel sandals she usually reserved for funerals.

  She knocked but there was no answer. She stood at the threshold a few moments more, but then lost her nerve. She left the pie on the doorstep and retreated. She’d only gone a few yards when she heard: “Maria! Aspetta! Sono qui!”

  She turned and he was standing bare-chested in the cottage doorway with a white towel around his waist. Of course: he’d been showering after his walk. Out of eagerness, she’d come too soon. She felt foolish and stupid.

  He beckoned her with his free arm; the other clutching the towel. “Non ti preoccupare! Sta bene! Vieni sta bene!”

  She retraced her steps. He took her hand, pulled her toward him, kissed her forehead, then pointed to the container on the step: “ E questo? Che cos’e?”

  She looked at the writing on a piece of paper in her hand. She’d researched it on her home computer: “Una cena intima?”

  She picked up the casserole and he bowed: “Per piacere, vieni indictor cara.”

  While he dressed, she sliced open the chicken pie with his big chef’s knife and scooped portions out into two bowls, the crust resting on top. She suddenly wished she knew something about presentation. She should have had a parsley garnish or something, at least, to dress up the meal. Bert had never cared; food was only fuel for him. But before she could let that worry fester, Geremio returned wearing, this time, clean blue jeans and a close-fitting black tee-shirt. She thought he looked rather dashing, despite a softening belly and graying hair.

  He reached around her waist and pulled her hard against him: “Grazie, cara mio.” Then he turned to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of white wine. The bottle was shaped like a woman’s figure. A Verdicchio, he said.

  After dinner, and after they made love again, he walked her home. The moon was full and the farm lane looked coated in mercury. Their own faces, bleached by the moonlight, were as pale as ghosts’. She wanted to pull him in through her own door, but he bowed instead, kissed her hand, said, “Buonanotte, amore,” and then was gone. She watched him stride back up the lane and wondered how he could be so passionate one moment and yet so distant the next. Again, their lovemaking had been almost brutal but, for her, also transporting. She hoped it had been for him too, but could not tell. He was a mystery to her, but a mystery she longed to unravel.

  JAMIE BROUGHT FLORA home the next day. He hadn’t told anyone beforehand; Flora didn’t want a fuss made. Nicola was teaching a painting class at the light-infused waterside studio Sir Michael had given her some years earlier in the old port of St. Ives. Andrew was miles to the south in St. Just doing an estimate for a landowner who wanted a high stone hedge built to protect his wife’s perennial border garden from the Atlantic storms.

  But when Jamie helped Flora from his car Lee was there waiting for them. She’d been sitting on the granite doorstep of their cottage with Randi for nearly half an hour. Now the big Siberian husky danced around the car, barking, his whole body an expression of joy. Jamie grabbed and hugged him. Randi licked his face.

  Lee ran up to the older woman, her arms wide, but then stopped. “Wait,” she said. “You hurt. I feel that.”

  “How do you know?”

  Lee shrugged: “I just do. And I knew you were coming home. Me and Randi, we waited.”

  Flora took the girl’s face in her bandaged hands and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, darling girl. Thank you for dragging me out of the fire. I don’t know how you found the strength. I only learned later what you did. You were so brave.”

  She stood back: “But I still want to thrash you for risking your young life for an old lady like me, you idiot child.”

  Lee grinned. “But you won’t.”

  Flora put an arm around Lee’s shoulder and gave her a light hug. It was all her skin could tolerate. “Let’s go inside, shall we? I need to rest.”

  THAT FRIDAY EVENING, Arthur Penwarren settled into a leather-padded pale birch dining chair at the small, round, linen-draped table he’d reserved in the glassed-in conservatory section at the front of his friend’s now famous “Seafood Restaurant” in Padstow, the Atlantic harbor town at the mouth of the Camel River. Just over half an hour drive west of his office in Bodmin, Padstow was a world away from his work there and was now his home.

  The renowned restaurant with the modest name sat at the edge of the harbor. There were sailboats skittering like white moths across the wide estuary. Penwarren owned a small flat at the top of a three story nineteenth century granite building that once had been the Harbormaster’s headquarters. It had just one bedroom, but it featured a high, cathedral-ceilinged sitting room and a tall, arched, multi-paned window big enough for a cathedral that looked directly across the harbor toward the village of Rock just downstream. Furnished simply with a few overstuffed chairs and a sofa all covered with tailored white denim slipcovers, one pale blue wall lined with his books, a small coal fireplace opposite, a sand-colored sisal rug on the floor, the room was his sanctuary, its soothing colors and tones meant to blend with the seascape outside.

  “Artie!” a voice called from across the dining room. It was Rick Stein, his old mate from the Harrow School just outside London. Rick had never quite fitted in at Harrow, any more than Penwarren had. They’d both been bright but lower middle class “Bursary Boys” whose tuition fees were paid by the school. Accepted as intellectual equals they’d nonetheless always felt out of place with the upper-class nobs who were the majority: famous names, lots of attitude. But after graduating they’d each found their own way in the world and had discovered work at which they excelled. Rick had wandered down to Cornwall and had run a disco there for a while in the early Seventies before he discovered his love of cooking
and the bounty of local fish. Now, his wildly successful restaurant, augmented over the years in the tightly-packed old fishing village by a café, a bistro, a fish market, an upscale fish and chips shop, a cookery school, a cookware store, and two small but posh hotels, had given the press to calling the waterside town “Padstein.” He even had his own gourmet chef show on telly.

  This evening, Rick was his usual casual self. He wore baggy khaki trousers and an obviously un-ironed pink Oxford shirt with Ralph Lauren’s polo pony emblem on the chest. No chef’s whites, Penwarren noted; he must be doing front of house tonight.

  “Good Lord, Rick, look at you,” Penwarren said, rising and embracing Stein’s shoulders. “The more success you have the less hair. You’re nearly bald!”

  Stein laughed. “That’s just me pulling it out by the roots on bad days. And you with all that long silvering hair: you trying to make up for my loss? You look like an aging Beatle. How do you get away with it in the force?”

  Penwarren smiled. “They’re tolerant. They know I won’t be there much longer.”

  “Bollocks. They know you’re the best chief inspector they have, is why.”

  Penwarren smiled and shook his head.

  “How’s the back, then?” Stein asked as Penwarren eased into his chair.

  “Stiff. Sore. No change. I’m okay. It’s just age and arthritis. Otherwise fit as a fiddle.”

  Stein nodded. “My staff tell me you’re a regular here now. That’s lovely. Thank you. We appreciate it.”

  “Your people cook just a little bit better than I do, Rick.”

  “I should hope so!”

  “Plus, it’s a bit of a break from real life, honestly. I can sit here by the windows, watch the river and the world go by, and not think.”

  “Like you ever stop thinking…How’s work?”

  “Got a troubling case.”

  “Another murder?”

  “Not unless you count a dead cow.”

  “Somebody killed a cow and Cornwall’s best is on it?”