Chapter 5
May 1st, 2018
St. Austell, Cornwall, England
It would have been easier to jump on a plane back to Toronto and crawl into her king-size bed than uncover the Asheford family mystery. Unfortunately, Eva had the annoying habit of carrying through what she started, no matter how difficult the task.
That’s probably why she was good at fixing things. Give her a computer and she could take it apart and put it back together in a couple of hours. She couldn’t do the same with humans. Relationships, whether platonic or romantic, confused her. It wasn’t like she could take a person apart, study all their bits and bobs, and put them back together. Relationships required work, effort and patience. It required two people working in symbiosis. It was a truth that she struggled with, evidenced by her last boyfriend shredding her apart for not having a romantic bone in her body, calling her selfish and too independent. Whatever that meant.
It wasn’t her fault she had grown up a single child with a single parent in a dozen countries. Because of her dad’s career, she was dragged across the world, spending most of her teenage years with foreign tutors, kids she would never call friends, and crushes that were a one-time summer fling. More often than not, she was alone. Either doing homework, playing the piano or learning how to fix broken appliances around the house. It was a lifestyle she never regretted or faulted her dad for. The experience made her into the adult she was today: self-reliant, adaptable to new environments, capable of speaking four languages … shit, she sounded like she was describing the features of a robot. She sighed, leaned on the bar and thought about Jack’s words from last week.
Shouldn’t you know by now that it’s rude to string people along?
She wasn’t that selfish, was she? She knew how to love and care for someone. Hadn’t she done that with her dad? They always teased one another with stupid jokes. He played the oldies and whirled her around the house. As a child, she would build objects out of Lego, gift them to him and claim they gave him writing superpowers. When he developed his panic disorder, she helped him through the attacks with breathing exercises and made him hot cups of tea. Selfish be damned, there was no way she was that emotionally stunted. She could make meaningful connections if she wanted. The opportunity just never presented itself.
“Hey, pretty lady,” Gerry said. “Can I get you a beer?”
She smiled. “Thank you. That would be great.”
Gerry was the landlord at the Golden Lion Inn. He was a sweet-looking older man with salt-and-pepper hair, red cheeks and a belly that proudly stated, I have a love for beer. If she had made one friend in St. Austell, it was Gerry.
He returned and set a foamy pint before her. “Here for the game?”
“Nah, I’m not into soccer, or as you call it, football. I’ve come for a drink and to ask you some questions,” she said.
“Questions?” His blue eyes widened. “Gonna interview me for the Daily Gazette?”
“Sure, I thought you deserved your fifteen minutes of fame,” she smirked. “Plus, the world needs to know that your pub makes the best beer.”
He laughed and patted his belly. “We certainly do. So, what do you want to know?”
“I’m doing some research about the Asheford estate nearby, and since you’re a local, I was hoping you could fill in the historical blanks,” she said. “I’ve had no luck on the internet. There’s virtually nothing online about the family.”
“Let’s see.” He wiped the counter with a rag and leaned forward. “That old estate is quite the mystery. The lads and I used to ride our bikes onto the property back in the late fifties. The place was abandoned for many decades before a private investor bought it a few months back.”
“When was the last known inhabitant?”
“Not sure. I suppose sometime between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. As a young boy, Mum would warn us against the place, claiming it to be haunted and cursed.”
She snorted. “Haunted? C’mon, you don’t actually believe in ghosts, do you?”
“Aye, I do. Many of us locals have seen the spirits of the dead lurk about those grounds, dressed in their period clothes—” Someone approached the bar and gestured to Gerry. “One minute, love.”
Eva drank her beer. TheAsheford estate was haunted with the spirits of the dead, eh? That was unexpected. It also didn’t exactly line up with her dad’s work. He never wrote about the paranormal, only true crime with prolific gangsters, and the mafia with their eccentric crime lords. The research behind the whiteboard told that exact story – a game of cat and mouse between police and criminal.
Disappointed by the lack of direction, she brought her glass to her lips and gazed across the bar. A man’s ash-grey eyes practically skewered her.
Holy shit.
He stood at a table in the far back corner. Curls of sable-coloured hair poked out from under his flat cap, his strong nose was deep into his pint of beer and he continued to stare with a familiarity she could not quite pin down.
“Right, where was I?” Gerry’s voice came.
Eva flinched.
Gerry laughed. “Ha! I see my ghost stories have got to you.”
She forced a smile. “You’re talking to a girl who loves horror films; you won’t scare me that easily. Ghosts aside, do you know anything else about the Asheford family?”
“If memory serves right, they were a gentry family with old money from the trade industry that dated back centuries. They owned a large portion of the land east of St. Austell, with farms and huge meadows all the way to the cliff edge,” he said. “I suppose it depends on what century you’re looking into.”
“Late nineteenth century?”
“Oh, that’s when the history gets fuzzy.”
Her chest caved. “What do you mean?”
“That’s when the family disappeared.”
Just as she opened her mouth to speak, Gerry excused himself to serve a man across the bar.
An uneasy feeling prickled down her spine. Disappeared? The documents she had uncovered pinned behind the whiteboard mentioned that the family company, Asheford Sons, was a front for a lucrative smuggling business. It wasn’t clear what goods they were smuggling or to whom, only that in 1881 the London police were conducting a sting operation. It didn’t take a genius to assume the family could have fled to another country, or were arrested and left to rot in prison.
Her gaze returned to the back of the pub. The stranger with the striking grey eyes had gone. A wave of heat crossed her face, and she drank her beer to cool down.
Gerry returned and wiped his brow. “What was I saying? Yes, the lot of ’em disappeared.”
“There were no descendants?”
“No soul goes by ‘Asheford’ in these parts.”
“Ever heard rumours that the family could have been involved in organized crime?” she asked, trying her luck.
“Can’t say that I have, although it wouldn’t surprise me. No person with a good moral standing could have amassed that much wealth without dipping their hands into places they didn’t belong.”
“How rich are we talking?”
“Lord, between you and me, it would take us centuries to get on the same level of wealth they had. You should see the estate; it’ll give you an idea of what their golden years were like.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Is it open to the public?”
“No. The person who bought the property barred it under strict lock and key.” He leaned in and whispered. “But if you really want to get a closer look, there’s a hidden path by Polridmouth Cove that follows the cliff east toward the back of the Asheford property.”
Eva narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t that trespassing?”
He shrugged. “You’re a tourist who got lost.”
There was a smash.
Both Eva and Gerry looked at a man across the bar who had dropped his glass. Despite being blind in one eye, his scrutinizing gaze fell on her hard.
“Look at me, comin’ a cropper,” the man said with a voice as rough as sandpaper.
“’Tis no bother, sir,” Gerry said and went to fetch a broom.
The man at the bar brushed a hand through his greasy, stringy hair as he slowly licked his bottom lip. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Her stomach tightened. She forced herself to drink the rest of her beer, said goodbye to Gerry and left the pub.
The afternoon sun painted the yellow-stone building in a light shade of orange. She unchained her bike and cycled down the paved street toward her dad’s cottage. In the bike’s mirror, the ashen-eyed stranger appeared on the sidewalk.
What the hell?
She darted her head around and their gaze connected. In the bright outdoor light, he looked familiar. His features were oddly similar to the man in the photo that Jack had dropped, the one from behind her dad’s whiteboard.
A honk bellowed before her.
She swerved her bike toward the sidewalk. Her wheel hit the curb, and she roughly mounted the sidewalk in buckling bumps before crashing tire-first into the iron fence.
A small blue Toyota passed her. The driver, a woman with a head of fire-red curls, wagged her finger at Eva, shouting profanities behind her wound-up windows. A mountain of For sale signs lay on the Toyota’s backseat.
Heart pounding, Eva peered over her shoulder, but once again, the stranger had gone. Had she imagined him? Maybe Gerry was right about the ghost stories getting to her. With a swift shake of her head, she dislodged her front wheel from the fence and continued down the sidewalk. As she thought of plans to visit the Asheford property, Eva’s gaze kept straying to the rear-view mirror where the ghost from the photograph had disappeared.
***
Eva’s calves cramped from the steep climb up the cliff path. It hadn’t been difficult to find the hidden path from Polridmouth Cove and she had followed it up through the thicket of trees, dense brush and flinty walls. The path ended near the top of the cliff and she would need to jump a stone fence to continue, which was technically trespassing but, like Gerry said, she could play the dumb-tourist card. Not like you haven’t done that before.
She held onto the straps of her backpack and gazed out to sea. It was a beautiful, endless blue. But not any blue – a vivid storm-blue that knocked the air from your lungs and made your bones ache with wonder.
That morning she had decided that today would be the day to visit Asheford Hall. She didn’t expect the case to break wide open after seeing the manor for the first time. She knew she had to keep her distance since she was trespassing. But by putting herself in her dad’s shoes and walking the path of history, as he would often do, she may get an epiphany of sorts. And maybe that’s what she also needed to heal.
Of course, she was not stupid.
The events at the pub yesterday had left a sour taste in her mouth. She was on edge and therefore more wary of her surroundings. Her bag was loaded with items that made it a weighty object to slam in someone’s face. Among her toiletries, her dad’s research documents, solar cell-phone charger, headphones, and a one-litre water bottle, she had also brought her trusted Swiss Army knife and a flashlight that she could use against an attacker. For a quicker weapon to grab at a moment’s notice, she had a ballpoint pen stuffed in the back pocket of her jeans. Last but not least, she was wearing her black Doc Martens. A swift kick to the face with those suckers and you had an unhinged jaw, forced to eat liquids for months.
As she walked along the cliff, the gulls circled overhead. Their cries faded against the roar of the crashing waves below. The blueness of the sky faded into the soft glow of the approaching afternoon.
With the warm breeze in her hair and the saltiness of the sea on her lips, she relaxed. England was beautiful. She almost felt she could stay there forever and never return to Canada.
A white speck a little way off caught her attention. As she drew closer, she could see it was an abandoned, single-storey structure. Perched on the edge of the chalky cliff, the round building sat like a beacon of light amidst a patch of wild grass. The sash windows were long and narrow, stretching from ground to ceiling. A fine, web-like ivy clutched to the crevices of the crumbling roof tiles. Centuries of salty air had discoloured and weathered the pale, sandstone walls.
It was hauntingly beautiful, and it made her heart sore.
She walked straight up to the door. The paint on the wood had long since faded. It must have been a soft blue. Maybe robin’s egg. She pressed her hand against the splintered wood. Her heart thudded faster, imagining some distant, century-old memory of walking through this door.
Someone long ago must have loved this place…
A hand crawled around her mouth. She was yanked back, and her body collided against something hard.
“It seems I’ve ensnared a pretty bird,” someone whispered in her ear.
She violently jabbed her elbow to his jaw.
With a muffled grunt, he released her, and she jolted away from his grasp. She spun around to face her attacker, but he slapped her harshly across the face. She fell into the grass and landed on all fours.
“Someone is eager to skip formalities,” he said.
Heart pounding, she spat blood into the grass. She looked up at the man. It was the same weirdo with the one blind eye from the pub. Oh God.
“Then let me appease you by asking about your father,” he said.
“My father?”
“Where did he get those documents?”
Eva blinked. Unable to make sense of his words, she stayed frozen to the ground. The events of the last few minutes were a confused jumble in her head, and she tried desperately to make sense of it. One minute she had been alone, the next, attacked.
“Answer me,” he said and hoisted her up with a harsh tug of her ponytail.
On her knees and with her back pressed against his body, she squirmed to break free, but he held her firmly in place.
“I said, answer me,” he hissed, shaking her. “Where are the documents?”
She winced. “What documents?”
“Don’t play daft with me,” he said loudly in her ear. “I saw you hum and haw over evidence in that kitchen of yours, days ago.”
“You … you were watching me?”
“Oh, little bird.” He squeezed the sides of her cheeks. “I’ve been watching you for weeks. Tell me who gave your father those documents.”
“I don’t know—”
“But you do,” he said, running a hand across her neck. The calloused texture of his skin made her cringe. “You’re a curious little thing, aren’t you? Playing detective, asking questions and poking around the Asheford property.”
Her heart thumped harder. Holy shit. Had she unknowingly stepped into an active gang thing? Her breath came thick and fast, rising with the fear of her thoughts.
His finger brushed her lower lip. “You have such pretty lips—”
She smashed his face with the back of her head. He let go. She crawled away, then jumped up and reached for the hidden pen in her back pocket. Just as she turned to face him, he tackled her to the ground. She fell on her back with him on top. All the air escaped her lungs and she struggled to breathe.
“I’ll strangle you!” he howled as his hands curled around her neck. “I’ll bloody strangle you if you don’t tell me who gave your father those documents!”
Quick as a whip, her hand jabbed the pen into his right thigh.
He yelped like a wounded animal and his hands slipped from her neck.
Relief flooded through her. She immediately aimed her foot to his face but missed and donkey-kicked his chest.
There was a shock of electricity.
She cried out.
The pain shot through her foot, down her leg and into the tip of every nerve. The ground crumbled away beneath her with a rush of wind.
Oh my God, the cliff was giving way.
With a jolt of horror, she tried to grab hold of anything she could: grass, stones, her attacker’s arm. But the sensation didn’t stop. She squeezed her eyes shut. What a way to die, falling off the cliff with a killer at her neck.