Trevega House

by Will North

  “It’s an honor, and a pretty good gig as well…except for having to listen to this damned American ‘architect’ go on and on about…well, whatever he goes on about, like I didn’t already know. Bloody technical hogwash it is to me, sir, pardon my language….”

  Andrew shook his head and started the engine.

  Beside him, Sir Michael chuckled. “You two deserve each other. But thank you, both. Let’s go see our ladies; I need to catch that return flight to Gatwick.”

  BACK AT THE garden cottage they had begun rebuilding, Jamie lifted a shapely block of granite, set it down atop the new wall, and listened for the satisfying chock a stone makes when it’s found its rightful home. Then he turned to Andrew: “So, what do you reckon?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sir Michael.”

  Andrew smiled: “Not much gets past you, does it my friend?”

  “I’m thinking Michael’s son made a hasty exit from Italy because of that assault charge, sure. But MI5’s not a babysitter for troublesome sons…”

  “I know. But maybe this isn’t an MI5 matter at all. Maybe this is Sir Michael being contacted through MI5 and asked to work through back channels, of which I suspect he has many. Maybe the Italians, via Interpol, asked Scotland Yard for help locating Jeremy and the Met, in turn, contacted Sir Michael. If that’s the case, it’s a police matter, not MI5’s. That may be why he had a local police driver today. Maybe Devon and Cornwall police are cooperating.”

  “But why would this Jeremy come here?”

  “I don’t know, honestly. Someplace he knows well and would feel safe?”

  “Not the estate, certainly; he’s been dispossessed.”

  “But Michael said Jeremy doesn’t know. I can’t imagine why not. But I’m the newcomer here, remember; I don’t know Michael’s reasons.”

  “If he has been, might he go after his father?”

  “I reckon Sir Michael is well-protected and not likely in danger. But you’re also forgetting the ‘unstable’ part Michael mentioned. Coward or not, Jeremy could go after Nicola somehow. Michael’s love of her, and perhaps his guilt about what Jeremy did to her, is what put us all here at the estate, that and the flood. Nicola’s an easier target if the son’s bent on some kind of revenge, and anything that happened to her would shatter Sir Michael. It would be a victory.”

  “He didn’t tell us much in the end, did he, that Sir Michael?”

  “No. No, he didn’t…”

  Nineteen

  THE CAMBORNE POLICE station was a long, three story building wedged between the B3303, the old through-road before the A30 bypass was built, and the main rail line north from Cornwall. There was nothing graceful about the structure which Morgan, a frequent visitor, described to herself as “blockhouse modern.” Despite a lame attempt at landscaping, the nearly blank ground floor exterior looked fortified, but against whom or what she’d never gathered. It was like the architects expected the place to be stormed. The offices and interview rooms, and the few windows, were all upstairs. The top floor had a patently phony mansard shingled roof to make it look “Queen Anne Modern.” If that was the objective, it failed: the building was severe and forbidding.

  Technically, the station was not open to the public on a Saturday, but Morgan buzzed Eldridge Biggins and Novak in at the back entrance and gave Biggins her hand in greeting. His was cold.

  “Mr. Biggins, hello again and welcome.”

  Biggins nodded and looked around. He’d never been in a police station before.

  “Shall we go upstairs and talk?” she said as she turned. It was not a question. Novak, in uniform, followed.

  They reached the interview room and Morgan said, “Thank you Constable, that will be all for now, but please remain; we shall need you to return Mr. Biggins to his home in Boswednack.”

  The interview room was stark: two wooden chairs that looked like they’d come from an old schoolroom and a scratched steel table. She wished the room were warmer; she did not want Biggins to feel intimidated. Only a year ago they’d had a more congenial interview suite, decorated like a sitting room, in a converted house just up the road in Pool, but it had been closed down and sold: budget constraints.

  “Please excuse this not exactly welcoming room, Mr. Biggins. It is normally used to interrogate criminal suspects. Let me make it clear you are not one. For legal reasons, I have to read you your rights, but please understand this is not an interrogation; it’s just an interview.”

  Biggins looked around the room, speechless, while she did so. There were no windows. The walls looked covered in what looked like perforated cork board painted beige. The air was close. He had a bit of a problem with claustrophobia.

  With a sideways turn of her head, Davies had the technician in the recording room next door begin recording and filming their conversation.

  “We are interviewing you, Mr. Biggins, along with others, to learn more about the death of your neighbor, Mary Trevean.”

  “How’d she die? Heart attack like her Bert?”

  Morgan did not hesitate: “No, Mr. Biggins. The evidence suggests she was murdered.”

  Biggins twitched like he’d been slapped but sat stone-faced, his eyes focused off somewhere over Morgan’s shoulder. He shook his head and took a breath.

  “This’ll shatter my Alice; they were that close.”

  Morgan noted he hadn’t asked how Mary had died.

  “I’m sure it will, sir. What we’re trying to sort out, and why we are speaking with people who knew her, like yourself, is to ascertain why she was killed. We understand she was well-loved in the neighborhood. So, let’s talk about Mary Trevean. You helped our scene of crimes people as they investigated Mary’s property, is that right? Showed them around?”

  “Came to my door and asked about her, they did.”

  “You were close?”

  “Close neighbors and friends for years, yes: our farm’s just south of theirs on the coastal plateau. Both dairy farmers, we were, Bert and me. That and sheep grazing is all you can do on these thin soils. A plow is useless. When Bert died, I bought up their land and took on their cows. Mary, she needed the money, see?”

  “Plus, it added substantially to your own holdings.”

  “Yes. But I had to borrow to purchase all that. Still, it was good, rich pasture and their herd was healthy. I was certain I could make a success of it, just like Bert had.”

  “And have you?”

  Biggins looked aside. “Not yet; a lot of debt to pay off, you see. But soon.”

  Morgan made a note to check on Bert’s bank account and switched tactics: “Mary was an attractive woman, barely middle-aged, and I’m just wondering how she fared, personally, after Bert died. Some people, you know, after a partner dies, they just pull inside themselves. That happen to Mary?”

  “Did that for a while…well, that’s only natural. But we all…”

  “We all?”

  “Me, Alice, the other neighbors, well, we worked to bring her out again after a while. It took time, but after a bit she were back there with us of a Saturday evening at the Tinners, having a pint and laughing with us all and our nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?”

  “Oh, you know, trivia night competitions at the pub; that sort of thing. Very quick and bright she is…was. We all wanted her on our team.” The man’s eyes suddenly sparkled.

  Morgan caught that. “Were you fond of her, Eldridge?” she asked quietly.

  She watched his face. A smile grew almost shyly where she’d expected surprise.

  “Reckon I was, she were that sweet and pretty and lively. But I’ve got my Alice and that’s all I’ve ever needed. Still, you ever have someone in your life seems more dear to you somehow than your own sister or wife? Someone you always feel at home with? That were Mary Trevean and me. Deep friends, is what we were.”

  “Mary Trevean was a lovely woman, as you’ve said. She’d been single for a while. I should think men would have approached her, even neighbors, perhaps. You
and she were close. Are you telling me no one courted her? No one showed an interest? She never mentioned?”

  “Sold off her land and livestock, didn’t she? What did she have to offer to another man?”

  It was everything it took for Morgan not to rise and slap him but the recording was still going. Was this “much loved” Mary Trevean merely the sum of her property assets to him: the woman as chattel?

  MID-AFTERNOON THAT same Saturday, Terry Bates sat cross-legged on the slate kitchen floor by the working hearth at Trevega House with Lee and her dog. The Siberian husky, Randi, was healing fast and fought against his lead but Lee calmed him, and he settled beside her, just outside the kennel that had been his prison for days.

  “He’s a beautiful and strong boy, your dog is,” Terry said, stroking his noble head. Randi rose to her hand in pleasure.

  “You’re not here to talk about my dog.”

  “No, you’re right. But I do think he’s rather splendid. If I had a dog I like him…”

  “But you don’t, do you? So what do you want?”

  Bates smiled. The girl was only eleven, going on twelve, and yet so intuitive and direct. Terry was full of admiration.

  “I want to talk about what happened on the cliff.”

  “What’s to talk about? I got hurt, just like Randi. Things happen.”

  “Yes, but sometimes things happen because someone causes it.”

  She saw Lee’s eyes redden and realized how insensitive that comment had been for a girl who’d lost her parents.

  “Someone had to set the leg trap that hurt Randi, didn’t they? Right beside the footpath where you two like to walk?”

  Lee blinked. “Okay. Right.”

  “And the stone that hurt you. It didn’t just come loose from the cliff. Our people checked.”

  Lee took a big breath and hugged Randi: “No, someone threw it down on me. I sensed it.”

  “Did you see who?”

  “No chance. First I sensed a danger, the way I sometimes do, and when I looked up the rock was already falling. I only had time to twist away.” She looked at her cast. “But not time enough.”

  “So you sensed something or someone?”

  “Someone. Yes.”

  “But you didn’t see anyone.”

  “No. Only the rock.”

  Terry considered a moment. “Lee, do you think that person you sensed was trying to knock you over the cliff to the sea below?”

  Lee looked at Terry as if she were daft.

  “You ever hear of Occam’s Razor?” she asked.

  Terry blinked. “Occam’s what?”

  Lee shook her head in disgust: “Razor. Jamie told me all about it. He teaches me lots of stuff, Jamie does. This Occam, he was a monk or something in the Middle Ages, like seven hundred years ago or more, I’m not sure. He was a thinker. Jamie’s a thinker, too. I watch him when we have a building problem. He just sort of becomes still and, in a few minutes, he has the solution.”

  “So, this Occam?”

  “Okay, he said something like: when you have a complicated problem the most simple solution is likely the right one.”

  Terry took this in. “And that applies here?”

  Lee looked at the detective, head tilted, taking measure. “A big stone, which did not fall off the cliff, drops through the air aimed directly at my head. You reckon it was meant only to scare me?”

  Twenty

  AN HOUR LATER, Terry pushed the white electric buzzer mounted on the frame of the Biggins’s farmhouse door and waited. She heard footsteps descending from upstairs and then a pinched, birdlike face peered through the barely cracked door.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Biggins?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Constable Terry Bates from Devon and Cornwall Police.”

  She showed the woman her warrant card and badge.

  “Yes?”

  We are talking to people who knew Mary Trevean in order to make sense of her death. I assume you know about that?”

  “Yes. Terrible that is, but Eldridge isn’t here; he’s gone up to Camborne. With one of your people.”

  “That’s true, but I wondered if we two might also have a chat?”

  Alice pulled the door open and smiled as if welcome for the company. She was wearing what once might have been called a housedress and a vinyl apron in a fading sunflower print.

  “I was just upstairs cleaning. Let me put on tea. Come through.”

  “That would be most welcome, Mrs. Biggins.”

  Alice filled and switched on the electric kettle in a kitchen that, to Terry, looked unchanged from sometime in the nineteen fifties, like in some show on the telly in the old days. But though outdated, the room was spotless and smelled faintly of cleaning fluid and bleach.

  “Live hereabouts do you?” Alice asked as she scooped loose tea into a teapot.

  “No, but I grew up nearby, to the south.”

  “Wait: Bates? From down Porthcurno way? I knew them! Your dad still farming there? Your mother passed young, if memory serves.”

  “No, dad sold up. Lives in a retirement community in Helston now.”

  “Do you live near him?”

  “No, I work and live in Bodmin now.”

  “Bodmin!” Alice gasped, as if it were in a distant country.

  “It’s only a bit over an hour; not much traffic of a Sunday.”

  “No, I expect you’re right. But Bodmin! Goodness!”

  Alice set the teapot and two mugs on a small rectangular table in the kitchen: stainless steel legs, Formica top, its surface pattern nearly worn through from years of scrubbing. “Please…” she said gesturing to a matching chair with a worn flat cushion.

  “So, Mrs. Biggins…”

  “It’s just Alice.”

  “Right then, Alice: I understand that you and Mary Trevean were close?”

  “’Course we were; she’s only a field away. We spent a lot of time with her and her Bert until…until he passed. She were so fragile after that, and my Eldridge and I looked after her, I guess you’d say. I made her suppers and Eldridge took them across the field.”

  “That was very kind.”

  “We’re all close down here.”

  “Can you imagine anyone wanting to harm her?”

  “Never!” Alice hadn’t even bothered to consider the question.

  “I gather Eldridge bought up her pastures and livestock after a bit?”

  Alice darkened. “I wasn’t in favor, actually. The cost, you see.”

  “But he went ahead anyway?”

  Alice shrugged and peered into her teacup. “He did, yes. That’s his nature.”

  “You said you didn’t approve.”

  “My Eldridge, he’s always after buying more land and expanding our dairy operation. Reckon that’s the ghost of his family history. Haunts him, I think. Not that he talks about it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “The Biggins’s, they lost the land that’s now the Trevega estate, you see. Way back in the nineteenth century, that was. Went broke and sold out. But Eldridge…”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s forever trying to restore his family’s name. And he’s a brilliant farmer, I’ll give him that. But to me it didn’t seem sensible in a business sort of way, buying up all that land. I keep his books, you see.”

  “But you’re doing well?”

  “Apart from the debt, yes. He knows his dairy farming, that’s certain.”

  “It must have cost a pretty penny to acquire the Trevean land.”

  “Prime grazing land, it is. We’ve a big mortgage with AMC to show for it.”

  “AMC?”

  “Agricultural Mortgage Corporation. Based in Hampshire. Loan terms are fair, but it is a stretch for us. We’re right on the edge, we are, scrimping and saving, but don’t tell Eldridge I said so; he wants so hard to succeed.”

  Terry switched subjects: “Your husband and Mary were close friends, I’ve heard. How did you feel
about that?”

  Alice looked away toward the kitchen window: “Those two? Joined at the hip, they were, almost, like sister and brother. Me and Bert, we understood and never had a worry. They had something special and we reckoned them lucky in their friendship.”

  Terry looked around the outdated kitchen, so different from Mary Trevean’s trim, updated house. Though Terry guessed Alice was not yet fifty, her narrow face was already etched with lines: forehead, edges of eyes, cheeks. She was rail thin as well. To Terry, she looked worn beyond her age.

  “You were never jealous?”

  Alice’s head whipped back to face her.

  “Never.”

  Terry thought the answer a reflex.

  “Eldridge has always been good to me. A fine man, he is. Lucky to have him. Not that many choices down here, anyway.”

  “Children?”

  “A son. Grown. He’s in finance, up in London, not that we see him. Too busy, I reckon. Plus, him and his dad, they fell apart…”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Keith—that’s his name—wanted nothing to do with the farm. But Eldridge, he’s all about heritage, continuity through the generations, you see. He pushed Keith hard to be the next in the long Biggins farming line. Keith wouldn’t have it. And he was right; he’s done very well up in London. Made bags of lolly. Sends me a bit on the quiet sometimes; Eldridge doesn’t know. Reckon Eldridge may be the last Biggins on this land.”

  She gazed across the room for a moment, then turned back.

  “I will say one thing about Mary…”

  “What’s that?”

  “She were glowing this last week, I swear. I took her some eggs, I did, from our chickens. We have tea together Thursday afternoons. We got into the habit when she were mourning her Bert and just kept on. But full of spunk she were this Thursday past, eyes dancing. I hope I’m not tellin’ tales out of school, but to my mind I wondered if she were seeing someone. You know what I mean? She were that alive.”

  TERRY’S LAST STOP late that afternoon was Billie Kerrow’s duck farm at the top of Trewey Hill high on the wind-thrashed moorland above Zennor. Alice had given her directions. The small stone house—Terry figured two rooms up and two down, probably mid-Victorian and a former miner’s cottage—stood right at the edge of the remote single lane road, as if waiting for someone passing to look in. Yellow and gray lichens pocked the granite walls and slate roof. The peeling, vaguely blue window casings looked like they hadn’t been painted in decades, maybe longer. She searched for a buzzer, found none, and knocked. There was no response.