St. Gomonda
From the cottage window I looked for the creature, holding my breath as my heart pounded in my ears. But the branch-antlers were gone, the fog already thinning.
I remembered the night I’d found Mr. Roscoe, and the movement I’d noticed beyond the wall. Then, too, I thought I’d seen antlers. Might this creature have had something to do with Mr. Roscoe’s death? Mr. Tregarrick thought another vampire had done it, but what if he was wrong?
He needs to know about this.
I would write to him. If Mrs. Moyle came again to check on me, I would put a letter in her hands for Mr. Carew. If she didn’t know him, she might ask around at the tearoom.
This decided, I sat down at the dining table with one of Mrs. Moyle’s notebooks and a stub of pencil, which she’d given me to practice my letters.
Yet it wasn’t long before I was sighing in frustration.
Reading was one thing, but writing—I could put simple things to paper, but a letter like the one Mr. Tregarrick had written was beyond me. At last I settled for:
I saw a creature on the heath. There is more to tell. Send your man to me and I will tell him.
M
I folded the note, put it in my pocket, and started on supper.
Just as I was pulling bacon-and-egg pie from the oven, the front door rattled. Next someone pounded on the door.
“It’s me, Mina,” called Jack.
I hurried over and opened it, eyeing him as he came inside. Though he smelled of ale, he was steady enough on his feet. I was relieved to see him home earlier than usual. Thus far he’d heeded my plea to come home before dark about as well as I’d heeded his to stay indoors.
“Supper’s ready,” I said in an easy voice. “Still hot, too.”
“All right.” His tone was even, but his brows knit.
I cut two thick wedges of pie and set them on the table. As I took my seat across from him, he said, “They found another one today.”
My eyes darted to his face, belly going cold. “Another what?”
“Another body. This one down near Coldvreath.”
“Oh, Jack. Who?”
He shook his head, cutting into the pie with his fork. “Don’t know yet. No one the constable could identify right away.”
I waited for him to answer the question burning in my mind, but it seemed he was going to make me ask. “Was it—were they . . .”
“Same kind of attack as the first one. But they say it happened before the solicitor, by the state of the body.”
“Who found it?” I asked thinly, feeling sick.
“A fella from Coldvreath. Friend of old Couch’s—mushroom hunter, I guess. His dog dug it up in some leaves and loose soil on the edge of Tregarrick’s property.”
I took an unsteady breath. “What did Mr. Hilliard say?”
Jack’s expression was grim. “That he’d asked the Police Watch Committee to send more men to look for the killer. Which is a waste of time, since we all know who it was.”
“Jack, you can’t still think—”
I broke off as his gaze landed hard on mine. “I don’t know what it is with you and him, Mina, but you need to start facing facts.”
“‘Facts,’ Jack? That people around here are too simple to do anything but suspect a man who’s minded his own business for years, all because of some old stories?”
His eyes flashed. “You calling me ‘simple’ now? You’re better than us, smarter than us, now you’ve read a few books and met the lord of the manor, is that it?”
“Maybe that’s exactly it!” I snapped, my bloody temper getting the better of me again. It mattered not at all that his “detective work” wasn’t too far wrong. I took a deep breath, simmering down, while he scowled at his plate. I could see that his anger was masking real hurt over my words.
Softening, I said, “I didn’t mean that, Jack. I just don’t see the point in making up our minds about anything—dragging a man’s name through the dirt—until Mr. Hilliard has had a chance to do his job.”
He glared at me. “By the time Hilliard does his job, somebody else will be dead.”
I sighed. Again, he wasn’t necessarily wrong. “I just don’t understand what makes you think you know more than the police.”
“This isn’t London, Mina. The police around here are no different from the rest of us, and there is no reason at all why their opinions should count for more.”
“How about the opinions of the only people who’ve actually had a conversation with Mr. Tregarrick, then? Me—who, I’ll remind you, he was kind enough to walk home after an accident on the heath—and the constable—who, if he thought Mr. Tregarrick a murderer, would have him in jail already.”
Shaking his head, Jack grumbled, “We’re talking in circles.” He gave his plate a shove, got up from the table, and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” He yanked open the door without answering, and I panicked. “Jack, don’t! It’s not—” Safe. The door closed on the end of my sentence.
I got up and started stacking the dishes, knocking them loudly together out of frustration—and fear.
If I’d said that I believed a creature on the heath was responsible for the killings, would it have stopped him?
Then I recalled that I’d suggested something very like that yesterday, and he’d laughed at me.
Fairies! Might as well call it an actual wolf, like some of the dullards at the tavern.
Maybe he’d even accuse me of making up a story to protect “the lord of the manor.”
It occurred to me that Mr. Tregarrick and I were living in a world apart from regular folk.
One Mum would likely have believed in. Jack and I had scoured our corner of the parish looking for fairies without success, and we’d grown out of believing in her stories.
Then I’d started seeing warnings in teapots. Then I’d met a vampire.
After clearing away supper, I went up to the loft with a candle and In the Leaves.
But I was too plagued by worries to follow it.
I reached under my pillow, where I’d tucked Mr. Tregarrick’s letter and the note I’d written him.
It began to feel even more urgent that I get word to him.
None of us would be safe until the killer was stopped.
And though I had been fussed over and warned to take care since Mr. Roscoe’s death, Jack was likely more at risk.
It was late when he pounded on the door to be let in. After he’d finally fallen into bed, I went back up and slept.
In the morning, once Jack had left, I took up Mum’s cross and removed the broken chain; I threaded a thin purple ribbon through in its place and tied it round my neck.
I went then for the paring knife, still in my basket, and tied a handkerchief around the blade before slipping it in my pocket with the note for Mr. Tregarrick. Finally, I put on my shawl.
I thought I might meet Mrs. Moyle on her way to our cottage, and if not, I’d go on to The Magpie and speak to her about Mr. Carew.
As I opened the door, I found Mr. Hilliard climbing down from his gig, and my stomach lurched.
“Miss Penrose,” he called. “You aren’t going out, are you?”
“Only for some air, sir,” I answered, wary. How many interviews with him would it take for me to get crossways with one of my own lies?
He joined me at the door, and I said, “Jack told me someone else has been found.”
He nodded, and I could see how tired he was. “May I come inside a moment?”
I stepped back in and held the door open for him.
“I won’t keep you,” he said, “but Jack spoke to me at the mine. He said he met Mr. Tregarrick recently, right here at your door.”
Oh, Jack. “That’s true, sir.”
“Can you tell me about that?”
Though faint, I could hear accusation in his voice. “Jack seems to think Mr. Tregarrick is going around murdering people. I think that idea was inspired by old stories, and it seems pretty foolish to me.”
The constable’s eyebrow lifted. “That may be, Miss Penrose. But right now I want to hear about anything unusual, and Mr. Tregarrick leaving his estate and mixing in with the rest of us is exactly that. Why did the gentleman come to your cottage?”
I matched his raised brow with one of my own. “He walked me home because I fell on the heath and hit my head. He wanted to make certain I got here safely. A man with murder in his heart, to be sure.”
“I’d ask that you dispense with the sarcasm, Miss Penrose.”
My face warmed. This isn’t helping, Mina. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hilliard. Jack and I have been arguing over it, is all.”
“I understand. Just try to answer my questions as straightforwardly as you can. When you say ‘on the heath,’ do you mean on the Tregarrick estate?”
“Aye, sir. I cross it sometimes, same as other people.”
“Whereabouts did you have your fall?”
“Near that pool with the big stone slab, between here and the chapel.”
“Mmm.” He scribbled in his diary. “That slab, and the piles of smaller stones right around there, are all that’s left of Tregarrick manor.”
I eyed him with interest. “I always wondered where the ruins of that old place were. And why they never built another one.”
“As the story goes, the family was beset by hardship after that and didn’t have the spirit for it. But it’s so many years ago, it’s hard to know for sure. Anyhow, what was it caused you to fall?”
Without thinking, I reached up and fiddled with Mum’s cross, and the constable’s gaze followed.
I let it go and shrugged. “I got hung up in my skirts stepping down from the slab, and I bloodied my head.” I touched the spot where the lump had been, still tender, and again his eyes followed.
“Mr. Tregarrick happened to be nearby and came over to help.”
“Did you have much conversation with him?”
“Only a little. But he seemed a kind man.”
“Did you talk about Mr. Roscoe?”
I hesitated, considering my words. “I told him how sorry I was about what happened. I could see how it weighed on him.”
He nodded and continued writing.