Chapter Twenty-Seven
TWENTY-SEVEN
Eleanor went up to the flat and explained Jocelyn’s plan to Camilla, whom she found looking very respectable in a green woollen skirt and pale yellow blouse.
“Gosh, I can’t believe Mrs Stearns came up with anything so . . . so . . .”
“Devious? Nor could I. I’ll go and tell Nick.”
“Is it all right if I come too? I’d love to see his pictures. I’ve never met a real artist before.”
They went out the back way, taking Teazle. Tail wagging, the dog headed straight to the semi-concealed DC Polmenna. He stooped to pet her and muttered a sheepish, “Good morning,” to Eleanor and Camilla.
They returned the greeting and proceeded a few yards down the path. Eleanor knocked on Nick’s window. As he came to open his back door, she had a dismaying thought.
“Nick, the flood! Will I be able to get the Incorruptible out?”
“I haven’t been down there today, but when I went to the pub last night the water was going down fast, already off the bridge. Do you need it now? Shall I go and check? Fend off the ravening hordes of customers for me and I’ll be back in half a tick.” He headed for the shop.
“Wait! Let me explain. Cam, why don’t you go into the shop and look around while I tell Nick our plan.”
“But what about the customers?”
Nick laughed. “They’re a myth. Don’t worry, if anyone comes in I’ll hear the bell and come rushing to the rescue. What’s up, Eleanor?”
“We want to get away from our watchers. Jocelyn suggested you should take the car up the other side, past the Wreckers, and leave it in the car park at the top there. Then Cam and I will walk up to the hairdresser—I can’t remember what Miss Hatchell calls it—”
“Delilah’s.”
“That’s it. Definitely a mistake. The chapel people won’t go there. We’ll get Cam a quick trim. Lord knows she could do with it! I’m sure Miss Hatchell will fit her in at noon prompt as a favour, if I ring her now. She’s only really busy in the summer. Then we’ll go out the back way—”
“Brilliant! This is Mrs Stearns’s plot? What devious minds the Anglicans have.
If there’s any shop the ’tecs won’t follow you into, it’s the ladies’ hairdresser.
I’ll go right away and move the car. Then I’ll bring you back the keys.
I’ll go up the street and come back the back way, so Wilkes will see me go but won’t see me return. ”
“What devious minds artists have! Here are the keys. Thanks, Nick. Anytime—”
“May the time I need help evading the police never come!”
“You never know. Cam! Let’s go.”
Camilla came through from the shop. “Thank you for letting me look,” she said to Nick. “I really like the scenery ones, but the others, the ones I don’t really understand properly, they’re super-special, aren’t they? They make you think.”
Nick looked startled and pleased. “You’ve got an eye for the real thing, Cam. A better eye than Eleanor, for one.”
“Oh dear,” said Eleanor, “I hope you aren’t going to decide to be an artist, Cam.”
“Don’t worry, I can’t draw for toffee. I’m not going to keep changing my mind now. I really and truly want to be a vet. Is everything arranged for our escape?”
“We’re all set. Now I have to go and put my mind to which route we’re going to take.”
They went back to the flat. Eleanor made a list of villages, some no more than hamlets, that she expected to pass through, along with a few isolated farms and summer bungalows where she might stop along the way.
She pictured the route as if she were driving it and had no difficulty recalling the places and the people who lived there.
The quirks of memory were inexplicable, she decided—of her memory, at least.
Shortly before half past noon, Eleanor, a newly shorn Camilla, and Teazle stepped out of Miss Hatchell’s back door onto a narrow asphalt path.
On the other side was a drystone wall with a white-painted gate, enclosing a tiny patch of garden ablaze with scarlet tulips.
An elderly woman looked up from her weeding and waved to them.
“A magnificent show, Mrs Pertwee,” said Eleanor, but didn’t stop to chat.
They turned right up the hill. The front door of the next cottage opened directly onto the path.
Just beyond, the path turned into steps.
At the top of the flight, they turned left on a cross-path, and so made their way upward by twists and turns and slopes and steps, past houses and pocket-handkerchief gardens, till they came out onto the road just opposite the car park. There the Incorruptible awaited them.
The car was a bit muddy around the skirts, but started immediately, “Which is the important thing,” said Eleanor.
She drove on up the hill a few yards then turned into a lane not much wider than the car, with hedge-banks on each side where primroses and violets were still in bloom, joined already by ragged robin, stitchwort, and great umbels of cow parsley.
They went without stopping, as directly as the wandering lanes allowed, until they had crossed the B road.
Then they started collecting, calling at Trewennan, Trekee, Treburgell, and Pengenna, picking up odds and ends which nearly filled the boot.
A farmer’s wife gave them the inevitable pasties for lunch, then they went on: Trewane, Trelill, Pennytinney, Trequite.
Donations crowded Teazle on the backseat.
“I’ll do St Kew on a separate trip,” Eleanor decided. “The village is big enough to fill the car on its own. We’ll go round by Brighter, then straight on to Bodmin.”
“Is Bodmin on the way to Taunton?”
“Bodmin, Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton. We’ve quite a drive ahead of us still. Perhaps I should skip Brighter. There’s not a proper road up to the farm and the track is probably knee-deep in mud after that rain.”
Between Trequite and the A39, the lane crossed over a small stream.
Just on the far side of the bridge, an isolated cottage stood on the bank, facing the stream, half hidden by golden-green willows.
Once derelict, it had been nicely restored and enlarged by a Londoner, who couldn’t be called either a summer visitor or a weekender, as Eleanor had found him there at odd times on weekdays and weekends, spring, summer, and autumn.
When the owner was there, he usually gave her something.
There was his sleek maroon Jaguar (she could tell the make from the emblem on the bonnet) parked on a patch of asphalt to one side.
Eleanor drove past and pulled the Morris Minor as far over to the side of the lane as she could. “I’m afraid I may be blocking the way,” she said to Cam. “If someone honks to get by, come and fetch me, will you, dear? I’ll just pop in and see if Mr Donaldson has anything for us.”
“We hardly have any room left. Never mind, Teazle can sit on my lap.”
“She’ll love that. Stay, Teazle. I shan’t be a minute.”
As she opened the gate with the name of the cottage, Withy’s End, painted on it, Eleanor cast her mind back to the owner’s previous donations.
He had several times donated jewelry, she recalled, nothing terribly valuable, mostly silver set with semi-precious stones, turquoise, cairngorm, onyx, jade.
He was a jeweller, and he had told her he brought items that weren’t selling to Cornwall specially to give to her for LonStar.
Unlike ordinary household donations, they required special paperwork.
She had seen his full name, and it was Wilfred A. Donaldson.
She started putting two and two together.
D A W, she thought—or W A D. Surely he must be the jeweller who had been robbed. What an odd coincidence that his jewelry had been recovered so near his holiday cottage.
A very odd coincidence indeed. Eleanor’s thoughts raced. It was not the only local connection—DI Scumble seemed convinced that her sometime helper Trevor was mixed up in the business.
Was Donaldson the uncle Trevor had told her about?
Trevor had always seemed such a nice boy, though a hopeless layabout. She found it hard to believe, but he and his friend must have held up, and beaten up, his uncle. What a horrible shock to the poor man.
But could it have been Trevor? According to the newspapers, the police were looking for a couple of tall, burly, well-dressed men. That description in no way fitted either Trevor or the dead youth. Had Mr Donaldson lied to the police, to protect his nephew?
What was it Trevor had said about him? He had promised Trevor’s mother, his sister, to take care of him.
Even in these appalling circumstances, he was trying to keep his promise.
Presumably he had come down to Cornwall to escape persistent questioning by the police, for fear of revealing something that would lead them to Trevor.
Which was exceptionally kind and generous of him, yet it didn’t explain why Trevor should have brought the loot to this part of the country. Wouldn’t the jewelry be much easier to sell in a big city? In fact, rural North Cornwall seemed about the most unlikely place in the world.
The only reason Eleanor could think of for Trevor to come here was to see his uncle. Suppose he had repented and decided to return the proceeds of the robbery, and his friend had refused to go along, leading to a quarrel, a fight, a death.
No, that didn’t work. Trevor must have been in Cornwall on Tuesday, when Mr Donaldson had still been in hospital in London.
How could the boy have guessed his uncle would come down here?
Surely it was much more likely that the jeweller would stay in town to monitor the police hunt for his valuables. Unless—
Unless the whole business had been engineered by Donaldson, for some fraudulent purpose Eleanor couldn’t even begin to decipher, ignorant as she was of the business world.
While thinking, she had unconsciously continued slowly along the path to the front door, and even raised her hand to knock.
Now she thought better of it. She ought to find a telephone box and report her theory to Megan.
Or even Scumble, though he would certainly castigate her for wasting his time with her guesswork.
She had started to turn away when the door was flung open.
Donaldson stood on the threshold, a short, tubby, balding man, who always wore a jacket and tie even in the depths of the country in the summer.
Eleanor had always considered his round pink face almost cherubic when he handed over his generous gifts to LonStar.
Now, however, blotched with yellowish green fading bruises, it wore a ferocious scowl.
“You! You’re the woman from that charity shop. It’s all your fault everything’s gone wrong!”
“My fault? I had no idea—”
“You can’t really imagine the police haven’t worked it out by now,” he raved.
“I’m not sticking around to be arrested as an accessory to murder because my idiot of a nephew killed the creep who beat me up!
I’ve got to get away.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the hall.
“I’m going to tie you up and hide you where you won’t be found till after I’ve left the country. ”
Eleanor had no intention of letting that happen.
What if she wasn’t found in time? Her reflexes were slower than they used to be, or she would have reacted the instant he reached for her, but though he was younger, a few inches taller, and heavier, those apparent advantages could be used against him, especially as he was obviously out of shape.
Better still, the way he stood and moved told her he had no training in the martial arts.
It was a pity she was wearing a skirt, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d just have to make allowances, to adjust her moves. As all this flashed through her mind, she was already stepping back into hanmi stance, knees bending to drop her centre of gravity—
“Uncle Wilfred!”
Still gripping her wrist, he swung round. “Trevor!”
Two to contend with, one of them young and capable of murder, though he looked more like a scarecrow than ever. Reassessing her tactics—and her chances—Eleanor broke Donaldson’s hold.
“Trevor! I’m so glad you’re here!” Camilla was behind her, blocking the doorway and the only way of escape.