Chapter Twenty-Nine
TWENTY-NINE
“I do wonder if I shouldn’t have gone after him,” said Eleanor, “if only to see which direction he went in.”
“His car’s a Jag, Mrs Trewynn,” Trevor repeated patiently the argument he had used to stop her pursuing his uncle in the first place. “Yours is a Moggie. You wouldn’t have seen him for dust.”
“Your car is blocking the lane,” Camilla pointed out, fondling Teazle’s ears. The dog had followed her from the Incorruptible. “Trev’s uncle didn’t have any choice about which way to go.”
At that moment the sound of an impatient car horn drifted through the windows of the kitchen, where they sat.
“There,” said Eleanor, “someone’s trying to get past now. I’ll go and move it.”
Camilla looked frightened. “D’you think he’s come back?”
“No, dear, not after the way he raced off.”
“I’ll move it,” said Trevor, hand out for the keys.
Eleanor hesitated. “Better not, dear. It would be a terrible temptation just to keep on driving. You’re going to have to stop running away and talk to the police sometime. The sooner you get it over with, the better.”
“But I—”
“Police!” Scumble’s instantly recognisable bellow from the front door was followed at once by DC Wilkes bursting into the kitchen through the back door. He stopped and stared.
“Cam, you’d better put more water in the kettle, please,” said Eleanor. “It looks as if we have company.”
Wilkes cast a swift, astonished glance at the assembled company, then grinned at her. “Everything under control, Mrs Trewynn?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr Wilkes.” She was relieved to see he still felt enough gratitude for the shelter she had provided to offset any resentment at her having tricked him and his partner. “We were just discussing what to do next. It looks as if that’s out of our hands now.”
“Donaldson’s here?”
“He drove off just a minute ago, in rather a hurry. As he was waving a gun around, it seemed unwise to try to stop him.”
Wilkes strode past them into the front hall. Eleanor heard him say, “Donaldson’s done a bunk, with a gun.”
Scumble growled something she couldn’t make out.
Heavy footsteps approached. He came into the kitchen, leant with both fists on the table, and glared at Trevor.
“Trevor Brand, you’re under arrest. I can’t spare the time now to deal with you, but if you try to hop it, you’ll be in even more trouble than you’re in already when we catch you.
And we will. Mrs Trewynn, your car keys, please. ”
Eleanor felt in her pockets, then searched her handbag. “I’m sorry, Inspector, I must have left them in the car.”
“You did,” said Camilla, turning from the stove with a look at Scumble as hostile as the one he had just sent Eleanor’s way. “I brought them.” She held them out towards Eleanor, dangling by the keyring from her forefinger. Scumble snatched them and left without another word.
In the hall, he yelled at someone unseen, “For pity’s sake, keep them all here till I get back!”
Jocelyn stalked into the kitchen. “That man!” she said indignantly. “He seems to think we’re in the Wild West and he can deputise me—if that’s the word—without so much as a by-your-leave! Eleanor, my dear, I’m so glad to see you safe and sound. What on earth is going on here?”
“I’d like to know what on earth you’re doing here, Joce!” Eleanor retorted.
“Showing that man how to get here. Nick’s in the other car with Megan. They seemed to think you were in trouble.”
“Sit down and have a cup of tea. Trevor was just about to tell us his story.”
“Yes, go on, Trev,” Camilla urged. “If the fuzz come back, they won’t let us hear it.”
“I need something to eat first.” Wan and exhausted, Trevor was even dirtier and more dishevelled than his usual state.
“I haven’t had any food for two days. I dumped the car and took the train to the Smoke, but Uncle Wilfred wasn’t there.
I ran out of money, so I’ve been hitchhiking and sleeping rough. ”
“I’ll see what I can scrounge,” said Camilla, heading for the larder. “He’s bound to have eggs, and cheese probably, and bread for toast. There’s gas so it won’t take a minute. But talk while I cook, in case they catch your uncle quickly.”
“I think it would be a good idea, Trevor,” Eleanor said gently. “You’ll get it all straight in your mind before you have to tell Inspector Scumble. He can be a bit . . . disconcerting. I made an awful muddle of telling him things.”
“You certainly did,” Jocelyn agreed grimly. “Go ahead, Trevor.”
The boy sank his head in his hands, staring down at the table. “It was all Uncle Wilfred’s idea. He’s been giving me an allowance since I left school, and he said he was having business troubles and couldn’t afford to keep it up unless I helped him.”
“Helped him do what?” Jocelyn asked impatiently.
“Let him tell it his own way, Joce.”
“He wanted me to take some jewelry off him. He was going to tell the fuzz he’d been robbed by a couple of big, burly toughs with short hair so they wouldn’t come after me. Then he’d get money from the insurance and sell the stuff abroad, and he’d be able to keep on with my allowance.”
“What made him think you wouldn’t take the jewels and run?” Jocelyn enquired. “He couldn’t very well change his mind about the robbers’ appearance and set the police onto you.”
Trevor raised his head to give her wounded look. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that, even if I knew where to sell them. He’s all the family I’ve got left, my mum’s brother. So when he said I had to hit him—”
“What?” Camilla whirled, wooden spoon in hand. “Trev, you didn’t!”
“Course not. I swore peace and love and that like you did, didn’t I.
After what my dad used to do to me before I ran away .
. . But Uncle Wilfred said it had to look like he’d tried to fight off the robbers.
That’s why I got my mate Norm in on it. He said he’d sock Uncle Wilfred in the nose and it’d bleed buckets and look spectacular.
But he went sort of mad. He kept hitting him and hitting him.
He had knuckledusters on. I never knew he even had any, I swear it. I thought I’d never get him to stop.”
“Oh, Trev!” The girl put a bowl of steaming tomato soup, toasted cheese, and a glass of milk in front of him and patted his shoulder. “How awful!”
“It was. Ta, Cam, this smells like heaven.”
Teazle agreed. She sat hopefully beside his chair, her nose quivering.
“The soup’s tinned—sorry. Wash your hands,” Camilla said, and he obeyed.
The rest of his story emerged between mouthfuls.
“After I pulled Norm off Uncle Wilfred, I wanted to phone for an ambulance, but he said he’d be all right and we’d better just tie him up and go.
His face was all swollen so he could hardly talk.
” Trevor shuddered. “He’d given us money earlier to buy an old car.
We got a mate to do that, so the dealer didn’t see us.
We were supposed to drive down to meet him here that Monday. I don’t know what day it is today.”
“Monday again,” Jocelyn told him.
“Only a week! It feels more like a month. We got here and he wasn’t here.
He never gave me a key. Norm wanted to break in, but I wouldn’t let him.
We didn’t want to hang about in case someone saw us, so we just drove around for a bit.
We slept in a barn and came back next day but he still wasn’t here.
We didn’t know what to do except it seemed safe to keep moving.
That was when we saw the police car, Mr Leacock’s panda?
Norm said he was staring at us. He got the wind up—well, I did too, rather, because of him knowing me. ”
“And the next thing you saw was my car,” said Eleanor, “and me and Teazle going off for our walk, so you decided to hide the case of jewels in it.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs Trewynn,” Trevor said earnestly. “I really am. I shouldn’t’ve told him about the shop and how you hardly ever remember to lock up.”
“Eleanor,” Jocelyn said severely, “none of this would have—”
“Oh no, Mrs Stearns, it didn’t matter if it was locked because Norm had a jemmy. It’s not your fault at all, Mrs Trewynn. It’s all my fault. We put the case under some stuff so you wouldn’t find it before you got home. Then we came back here to see if Uncle Wilfred had arrived yet.”
“Which he hadn’t,” Camilla put in. “He was in hospital, wasn’t he? That’s what it said in the chip paper.” She was listening with obvious disapproval, Eleanor was glad to note.
Trevor looked as baffled by the chip paper as Eleanor was, but he continued his story.
“We waited till dark, and went to Port Mabyn. We went round the back way, down that little path. The back door wasn’t locked and the light was on over the stairs.
We saw the case right away, standing against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. ”
“I put it down out of the way when I went to organise the children unloading the car. I meant to take it to the stockroom later, but what with one thing and another . . .”
“Norm was livid when it was empty. I said the stuff would be in the stockroom. We searched everywhere. We wore gloves because of fingerprints, and we tried to leave everything the way it was—”
“Good of you,” said Jocelyn acidly.
“—so no one would guess we’d been there.
We couldn’t find the jewelry anywhere. Norm said it must be in the shop but I remembered you said once you didn’t have the key to the shop.
It would’ve been closed by the time you got home, considering when we’d seen you.
He said he was going to go up to your flat and make you tell him what you did with it. ”
“But—” Jocelyn started, then pursed her lips as Eleanor shook her head at her.
“I told him he mustn’t. He just laughed. He had a scarf he found in the stockroom and he started tying it round his face like a bandit in a Western. He was going towards the door. I couldn’t let him go up, not after what he did to Uncle Wilfred, could I?”
“No!” said Camilla.