Chapter 6
When I return to the inn, reality comes rushing back.
Bridget is downstairs lamenting that the pancakes are cold, there’s no microwave, and she hates being ‘in the middle of nowhere’.
Connor manages to spill golden syrup all over the table, and then neither of them will help with the dishes let alone any other work around the house.
Eventually, Bridget reluctantly agrees to go with Connor down to the beach, dons a ridiculous white bikini underneath a see-through crochet wrap, and leaves the house shivering.
When the kids are gone, I get to work on making the house presentable. Whether to guests, myself, or an estate agent, I’m not sure, but either way, I need to attack the clutter and debris.
I clear the kitchen table and do the washing-up.
Then I find a roll of bin bags underneath the sink and steel myself to tackle the Welsh dresser.
I find years’ worth of old magazines, catalogues, coupons, and junk mail leaflets – for everything from double glazing to stairlifts to shower seats.
Everything seems right and proper for an elderly woman.
In one drawer, I find an address book with torn bits of envelopes and phone numbers scribbled haphazardly.
With some trepidation, I check to see if my name is listed – it isn’t.
This seems consistent with the theory that Victoria didn’t know of my existence until late in life.
But how did she find me – or even know to look?
Below the address book, there’s a folder containing receipts.
I find a ferry ticket to Brittany and an airline ticket to Cork, both from the last year of her life.
It seems odd that Victoria went on holiday while she was physically ailing, but perhaps she was visiting friends or…
I have no idea. I wish I knew more about her and that I had met her before she passed.
With a sigh, I put the folder back and close the drawer.
I should throw out the lot, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
Abandoning the dresser, I move on to clearing out the old newspapers from the downstairs entryway.
I flip through a few of them to see if there’s any rhyme or reason to what Victoria saved and what she didn’t, but if there is a pattern, I don’t find it.
It’s somewhat satisfying, however, to fill bag after bag, and slowly see the floor emerge.
Most of the ground floor seems to be covered with wide wooden planks at uneven levels, though the entryway has thick flagstones, which must be cold underfoot in winter.
As it is, after a few hours, I find myself sweating – and wondering how the kids are getting on.
In the ‘common room’, an old mantel clock chimes the hour – it’s noon already.
I shove a final stack of papers into a bin bag and wipe the perspiration from my brow.
I should make lunch, then go out and find the kids.
We’ll need more food and provisions so maybe afterwards, we can go into town—
The front door rattles… Someone is here… Have the kids returned? I hear the sound of whistling. Definitely not them…
‘Hello?’ I call out. ‘Cliff?’
The whistling stops but there’s no answer. I go to see who’s come in.
At first glance, the figure looks like a ghost – or at least a vision of the past. A tiny, grey-haired woman wearing a dust cap and a long dress with a laced bodice enters the inn, carrying a large copper pot.
She looks like she could be from any of the last few centuries – just not the current one.
But Cliff didn’t mention any elderly female ghosts haunting the inn, so it can only be one person.
‘Mrs… um… Elspeth?’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I don’t know your surname.’
The old woman chuckles. ‘Elspeth will do, maid. It will do just fine.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘I’m Juno Cartwright. Victoria’s great-niece.’
She gives me a long, considering look. ‘I thought I knew who you were,’ she says. ‘But now that I’m looking at you… I wonder…’
‘What do you mean?’ I say, alarmed. ‘That’s what I’ve been told.’
Elspeth shakes her head. ‘Vic kept her cards close to her chest. But you’re here now and that’s something.’
‘Yes,’ I say, my voice flat. ‘I suppose it is.’
She goes inside the area marked ‘bar’, which is a room I haven’t yet braved.
The vast, half-timbered space is stuffed to the gills with old furniture, boxes, museum rejects and tables messily covered with craft materials.
Clearly, this is where Elspeth makes the wax figures: she ambles over to one of the tables and sets the pot down.
From it, she pulls out a severed wax head.
‘Oh,’ I gasp.
Ignoring my reaction, she squirts some red paint onto a paper plate. She finds an old paintbrush and proceeds to dab the ‘blood’ around the base of the wax head.
‘So,’ she asks nonchalantly, ‘can I ask what you plan to do with the inn?’
‘In truth, I don’t know yet.’
She frowns. ‘I hope you’re not as slow as Victoria,’ she says. ‘For years, she’d been talking about fixing this place up and reopening. Never got round to it, as you can see.’
‘Yes, but if it was up to you, what do you think should be done?’
She shrugs. ‘You won’t find another spot like this. If I were you, I’d take advantage of it.’
‘It certainly is picturesque.’
‘It is. And, if I may say so myself, my museum’s unique. The pirate cave, when it was open, was always popular with locals and tourists alike. If you ask me, people would flock here if there was something to eat and wet their throats.’
While I secretly doubt the ‘flocking’ part, I focus on her other suggestions. ‘So you think that if the inn was reopened – with food and rooms – then it could be successful?’
‘It’s been that way for hundreds of years,’ she says. ‘Things aren’t so different now.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, ‘but if you think it could be profitable, then why did it close in the first place?’
‘Look around you.’ She gestures with her paintbrush.
‘Vic liked running the museum more than she liked the thought of cream teas, pulling pints, and changing bed linen. I kept telling her I’d take over that part.
And she’d say, “Yes, Elspeth, good idea, Elspeth.” But then it never happened.
And when that damn Penhelion called the council and had the cave shut down, that was the last nail in the coffin. ’
I picture the face of the dark-haired man I saw earlier haranguing Cliff and feel affronted all over again.
‘That’s too bad,’ I say.
‘Aye. It’s a shame she let another Penhelion make trouble – but then history does have a habit of repeating itself.’
‘What trouble did they cause before?’
‘Well, you’ve seen the painting, haven’t you? And the tableau Vic and I made downstairs in the cave?’
I stifle a shudder at the recollection of the grisly vignette. ‘Cliff said the girl in the painting wasn’t related to the Kernicks. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Elspeth says. ‘Bess wasn’t a Kernick.
She was a Trevelyn – from a fine and noble Cornish family.
But most of them had left Cornwall and their family estate, Polgothley, came to Bess’s aunt.
Bess married Lord Robert Penhelion and the estate was part of her dowry.
It passed to him by law. That’s how it came into Penhelion hands.
’ She shakes her head. ‘Bess was the last of the Trevelyns. The line died out with her.’
‘How sad.’ I feel secretly disappointed that we’re not related to the beautiful young woman in the painting.
‘Now the Kernicks – they come from generations of innkeepers and free traders. Their line goes all the way back to Old John Dog and his wife, Maggie Donaldson, who was landlady of this inn. They had sons, who had sons, and so forth. That’s who you’re related to.’
‘Oh.’ My skin prickles with ‘ancestor shame’. ‘Wasn’t Old John Dog a murderer?’
‘Aye, he was.’ She leans forward, her voice lowering to a whisper.
‘Old John Dog was a chancer and a ne’er-do-well with a fierce taste for the drink.
He made ends meet by doing odd jobs up and down the coast. But on stormy nights, he’d be out with his band of blaggards.
They’d light fires on the cliffs to lure a ship onto the rocks where she’d break apart and the cargo and crew’d be washed ashore.
They’d help themselves to the goods, and some say they also helped the crew on their way to the next world. ’
‘Is that really true?’
‘As true as you’re standing here. He and his lads would store their goods in the caves below the inn. It was an ideal place to hide things away from the revenue men – at least the ones who couldn’t be bribed. Then they’d ship the goods out again and no one would be the wiser.’
‘Oh.’
‘“Oh” is right. Because Old John Dog fell afoul of Lord Robert, who was the magistrate in these parts. He was one who couldn’t be bribed – at least, not with money. No… there was only one way to pay him off. And that was with favours.’
‘Favours?’
She leans in like the dead might overhear. ‘Like, when he needs his wife murdered, and it not be traceable to him.’
‘You mean Bess?’ I draw back, stunned. Cliff told us that Old John Dog made a pact with the devil, but I didn’t put two and two together. The devil was her own husband…
‘Aye.’ Elspeth recounts the tale as if it happened yesterday.
‘Lord Robert was a cruel man, by all accounts. If there was smuggling and pirating being done, you can bet he had a hand in it, was maybe even the ringleader. He was respectable on the surface, and marrying Bess secured his place among the old blood. But on the side, he made good use of those caves under Polgothley for moving his contraband. He also had shadowy connections with other notorious pirating families, like the Killigrews. All of them hiding their ruthless deeds behind a thin veil of respectability.’
‘That’s… terrible.’