Chapter Fourteen #2
“That’s not true,” she protested. “Though I’m glad his poor mother didn’t see him. I hope someone recognises the photo and breaks the news to her before she sees it.”
The two men stood in solemn silence for a moment, as if at a funeral.
The newsagent quickly regained his habitual cheeriness. “And here you are in the Guardian—No, I tell a lie. They didn’t put your picture in the Guardian at all!” he said indignantly. “Just your name, spelt with an i and one n. Must be the Telegraph I was thinking of. Let’s take a look—”
“Oh no, thank you, please don’t bother. I’ll take the Guardian.”
“Go ahead and take the Sketch, too, on the house. Business ain’t never been better since you found the dead burglar. You wouldn’t believe the people that haven’t read a paper in years coming in to get the latest. If you don’t mind me asking, did you help the police with their enquiries?”
“Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I helped them quite a lot.” Eleanor looked at their expectant faces and went on quickly, “But I can’t talk about it. Sorry.”
“Oh well, never mind, eh?” He turned to take a large jar off a shelf. “Here goes, Teazle, here’s your aniseed ball.” He tossed the reddish brown sweet.
Teazle missed the catch and it rolled across the floor like a small marble, the dog in hot pursuit, her short legs skittering on the slick floor. She cornered it under a display of magazines but couldn’t get it out with either nose or paw. The men thought her antics uproariously funny.
This was a regular game the Westie always lost. Eleanor was pretty sure Irvin rigged it. He was the local darts champion and could probably have bunged the sweetie into Teazle’s open mouth from twenty feet. Besides, she was usually good at catching.
Still, he had his fun. She didn’t mind being laughed at. And she always got her treat in the end. Charlie, still chuckling, went over and fished it out for her and it went down with a couple of crunches that made Eleanor wince. She hated to think what it was doing to the little dog’s teeth.
“Thanks,” she said anyway.
“Oh, by the way,” said Irvin as she turned to go, “when’s the shop reopening?”
“Today. Mrs Stearns just told me.”
“Good. I got some stuff for you.”
“Summat that fell off the back of a lorry?” Chin asked derisively.
Irvin gave him a withering look. “Come off it, Charlie. I wouldn’t land Mrs Trewynn in that kind of mess even if there wasn’t swarms of coppers all over the place.”
“Hey, just kidding. Tell you what, Mrs Trewynn, I’ll make you up a couple of posters to stick up saying it’s back to business as usual.” As well as his expertise in Chinese cookery, Chin was a talented calligrapher—in the Roman alphabet. He had never learnt Chinese characters.
Eleanor was thanking them when the doorbell jangled and in came the two women who had been chatting in front of the bakery. Both put on unconvincing expressions of surprise. One said, “Oh, Mrs Trewynn, you’re here!”
She wasn’t acquainted with either beyond saying “Good morning” if they came face to face in the street. As far as she knew, neither had ever donated to LonStar or volunteered her time. All they wanted was the latest gossip about the murder.
But Eleanor was never one to let an opportunity pass.
“I’ve just been telling these gentlemen that the shop will reopen today.
I’m sure you’ll be delighted that we’re able to accept donations again.
Now if you’ll just tell me when it will be convenient for me to pick up—Oh, Mr Irvin, I knew there was something else I needed.
One of those sixpenny notebooks, please. ”
She felt in her purse, but Irvin, grinning like the Cheshire cat, announced, “Consider it a donation, Mrs Trewynn. You’d better take the shilling one. It has a pencil attached.”
With the men watching gleefully, she wrote down the women’s names and addresses, grudgingly given, and the best time to call. “Perfect,” she said. “How kind of you. Well, I really must be on my way now. I’m collecting in the country today.”
“Back to work for me,” said Charlie Chin, and escorted her out so that the women had no chance to question her.
As they stepped into the street, she heard behind her Irvin enquiring, “Now, what can I do for you ladies this morning?”
“Got ’em in a corner!” Chin congratulated her. “Them two, they’re the gossipingest and the tightfistedest old cats in the village. You don’t get anything out of ’em, you just let me know. I’ll see they never hear the end of it.”
“Oh no, Mr Chin, that would never do. You can’t shame people into caring. It was very naughty of me to put them on the spot like that, but the alternative seemed to be to let them put me on the spot with questions I mustn’t answer. Thank you for helping me to escape.”
“Any time.” With a wave, he crossed the street and disappeared into his restaurant.
Eleanor looked cautiously around before proceeding down the hill.
Usually she enjoyed living in a small community where she was likely to meet an acquaintance every time she stepped out of doors, but it was a mixed blessing.
At present she would have been happy to swap it for a large, anonymous town where no one would recognise her—certainly not from that terrible photograph in the paper!
She made it down as far as the LonStar shop without being accosted. Though she had intended to go up to the flat to study the newspapers, the Guardian at least, she decided to keep going while the going was good. Once she reached the car, she’d be safe.
The old stone bridge over the nameless stream was due to be replaced with concrete as soon as the funds were allotted.
Built a hundred years ago, in place of a ford, it was little wider than the farm and fish carts for which it was designed.
In the tourist season it caused endless back-ups of traffic.
In quieter times, the wide walls were a popular seat for herring gulls and for elderly fishermen who had once battled the sea in mackerel smacks or crabbers.
When Eleanor reached it, old Mr Penmadden was there, wizened and weathered, basking in the early sunshine but bundled up warm in his reefer jacket over a seaman’s blue jersey, peaked cap on his head. She couldn’t pass him without a word.
Penmadden had a Cornish accent as softly opaque as a sea mist, but Eleanor had years of practice at understanding unorthodox English, besides having grown up in the Duchy. As long as he didn’t stray too far into the wilds of dialect, she understood him perfectly well. Few people took the trouble.
“Lovely morning, Mr Penmadden,” Eleanor greeted him.
He gave a sharp nod. “Aye, that it be. And a good thing, too. These lads nowadays—” He gestured contemptuously at the boats in the harbour, preparing to set out with the ebbing tide before they got stranded on the muddy sand.
“They can’t cope wi’ a spot o’ weather, for all their motors and their wireless radios!
Least bit of a blow and they go running down to Padstow for shelter. In my day . . .”
Eleanor, realising she’d let herself in for a new Rime of the Ancient Mariner, sat down beside him. The stone struck chilly even through her tracksuit. He fixed her with a faded but still alert blue eye and said unexpectedly, “I heard tell as how you found a corpse.”
“That’s right, I’m afraid,” she admitted, resigning herself to questions instead of reminiscences.
“Must ’a’ bin a nasty shock for a nice lady like you.”
“It was, a bit.”
“Though living in furrin parts like you done, I daresay you seen the like afore. Ah, there’s many a tale I could tell about pulling drownded corpses out o’ the sea.”
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with an emphasis on corpses didn’t bear thinking about, though Eleanor vaguely recalled Coleridge having a good deal to say on the subject. Wasn’t there a working crew of dead sailors at some point in the poem?
Old Penmadden surprised her again. “But you’ll ’a’ had enough o’ corpses for now. Going out in your little car, are you?”
“Yes. The police are letting us open the shop today, so I’m going out collecting.”
“You come round our place later, my lover. I found a couple o’ they glass ball floats t’other day. Harry up the Wreckers wanted ’em for his lounge bar. I told him he can buy ’em from your shop, same as any Christian.”
Eleanor was touched, knowing that the pensioner could have sold the floats or exchanged them for several pints. Thanking him, she promised to listen to his stories of shipwrecks and men overboard at a later date, when the recent unhappy event had faded from her memory.
He winked at her. “Don’t tell my girl. She don’t like me talking about such. Digging up dead men’s bones, she calls it. What I say is, they didn’t ought to be forgot.”
A good deal could be said for either point of view. Eleanor promised not to tell his daughter, who was her own age if she was a day, and went on her way.
On the far side of the bridge, upstream, the only flat piece of ground in Port Mabyn stretched along the bank of the brook for a hundred yards or so.
It was safe from development because in the winter it was often under a foot or two of water.
That was not a problem for the car park, as visitors were few and far between at that season.
At spring tides with an onshore wind, or at a forecast of heavy rain likely to swell the stream, Eleanor would drive the Incorruptible up to one of the car parks at the top of either hill.
At present the ground was somewhat soggy, but the daisy-starred turf was thick enough to reduce the hazard of getting stuck in mud.
Teazle scampered over to sniff at the rocks set along the edge of the stream. Eleanor had scarcely set foot on the grass when she was hailed.
“Mrs Trewynn, can you spare a moment?” called Mrs Davies.
Turning, Eleanor stifled a sigh. She wasn’t afraid the Methodist minister’s wife would start interrogating her about the murder, but there was no knowing what she wanted.
A keen worker at the shop, she resented playing second fiddle to Jocelyn, although she hadn’t half Joce’s organising ability.
Worse, she regarded the work as an extension of her or her husband’s “mission.” They had nearly lost several volunteers who objected to being asked to pass out a Methodist tract with every purchase.
Eleanor had had to intervene between the vicar’s wife and the minister’s wife, an uncomfortable position she hated.
LonStar was a strictly secular organisation for any number of excellent reasons.
They worked in countries with a wide variety of religious traditions, and the last thing they wanted was to have their efforts impeded by any suspicion of proselytising.
Likewise, many of their employees and volunteers were people of strong faith, who naturally would not put up with being preached at by those of differing faith.
Nor did the non-believers among them care to be regarded as if their sincerity were suspect.
All in all, it was best to keep religion out of the picture, but there were always some, like Mrs Davies, who found it difficult.
“Huw and I have been praying for you,” she said in a sombre tone. She was a young woman, not more than a couple of years older than Megan, but her mousy demeanour and her penchant for drab, old-fashioned clothes—cheap but new, not from LonStar—made her seem middle-aged.
“That’s very kind of you. Don’t you think, though, that the murderer is more in need of your prayers?
” Eleanor immediately wished the words unsaid.
Thank heaven at least she hadn’t suggested prayers for the victim.
It was only Catholics who believed in praying for the dead, wasn’t it?
She refused to become embroiled in a theological argument.
“Did Jocelyn tell you yet?” she went on hastily.
“The police are letting us open the shop today.”
“Yes, Mrs Stearns telephoned. It’s her day today. It’s my day for visiting.”
“You’ll be at the shop tomorrow, though?”
“Y-yes. Oh, Mrs Trewynn, I don’t think I can bear to go into the stockroom!”
“He was taken away long ago, you know. And if there are any signs at all left, I’m quite sure Mrs Stearns will clean everything up today. There will be nothing to see.”
“No, but . . .” She shuddered. “He was struck down. What if his spirit . . .” Her voice trailed away.
“Oh dear, you believe in ghosts?”
“No, of course not. But just suppose . . . I mean, no one really knows, do they?”
“It’s one of those unknowables, yes. Perhaps your husband could conduct an exorcism?” Though what Jocelyn would say to that beggared the imagination.
Fortunately, Mrs Davies exclaimed, “Oh no! Methodists don’t . . . You won’t tell Huw I was talking about gh—spirits, will you?”
“Good gracious, no!” Eleanor promised. “The less said the better. I don’t see why you need go into the stockroom for a while, though.
You’re in charge. You can send someone else back if anything’s needed.
You’re supposed to have two people on the premises at all times.
” Which was another bone of contention, as the rule didn’t apply to Jocelyn.
But with luck, Mrs Davies’s helpers would be less imaginative than she was.
“Now, I’m on my way to get the car out. Can I give you a lift anywhere? ”
“Oh no, thank you. I’m just going up there.” She gestured at the houses spreading up the hill away from the street, inaccessible to any vehicle bigger than the vicar’s moped.
“Goodbye, then. I’ll see you tomorrow I expect. Come on, Teazle.”
Ghosts! Just what she needed.