A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery (29 page)

As they bumped down the track, she asked, “Did you come to any conclusions about the case?”

“Uh?”

“You were discussing the case with DC Wilkes.”

“I … um … we … No, um, not exactly.”

Which was a touch of revenge for all the male conversations she’d been shut out of because she had little knowledge and less interest in cars and sports. It was a bit unfair to take it out on the boy, though.

Boy? When had she started seeing new-fledged police officers as boys? What an alarming thought!

“What I wondered,” Lubbock said eagerly, “is, could they all be in it together? I mean, I don’t know much about it, but from what I’ve heard, they none of ’em’s sorry he’s dead.”

“That’s an interesting theory.” And not only highly unlikely, given the variety of personalities involved, but unnecessary. A single hand had sufficed to stick the dagger into Clark’s back.

An uncertain method of dealing death, now she came to think of it. A knife thrust in the back was liable to glance off a rib or two. Dr Prthnavi had said Clark died virtually instantly. Did that indicate luck or anatomical knowledge? Not that the latter would narrow the field of suspects much. Megan didn’t know much more about art than she did about cars and sport, but she did know art students usually, if not always, studied anatomy.

She had no time to follow the idea. She had to concentrate on remembering exactly what Stella had said in her statement.

When she had first read it, she had known very little about the case, only what was in Douglas Rosevear’s statement. In hindsight, she realised how little Stella had added to his story. Pearce hadn’t bothered to ask her a single question about the earlier part of the day, the incident in Nick Gresham’s shop that had set in motion the whole chain of events. He must have been in an almighty hurry to get home to his impatient totty.

On the other hand, she had to sympathise a little. According to a note added by the ubiquitous Wilkes, the witness had cried throughout the interview.

Still, even if Stella had been in no state to provide useful answers, Wilkes would have recorded everything Pearce said. The inspector, after swallowing whole her mistaken impression of what she’d observed without even taking a look at the scene, had simply failed to ask almost all of the obvious questions. There could be no excuse for such sloppy work.

It left Megan a clear field. Anything she found out would be fresh information, and she had the advantage that Stella had had time to get over her hysterics. Hadn’t she?

Perhaps not. Maybe that was why Scumble had sent Megan to talk to Stella instead of organising the search for Leila Arden, which she was perfectly capable of doing. Or maybe he just didn’t expect Stella to have anything useful to say.

“This looks like the place, Sarge.” Lubbock swung the panda left into a drive leading downwards. “Riverview Convalescent Home.”

“That’s right.” She was being ridiculously paranoid, she told herself. If the gov’nor had an ulterior motive for sending her, it was just the old “sympathetic female touch” nonsense. Stella was an important witness, the third on the scene, and there was a good chance she would have noticed something Gresham had not. With any luck, she’d have calmed down enough to remember.

The car pulled up in front of a largish, well-kept house. The grounds were well-kept, too. Obviously plenty of money here.

“Move the car to a less conspicuous place, will you? Then you can wait in it.”

Lubbock’s face fell. Another disappointment: no 1100 to drive, no helping with questioning a suspect. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Come on, in that get-up, you’ve got to stay out of sight.” Megan looked at the large young man squeezed in behind the wheel and took pity on him to the extent of saying, “You can get out to stretch your legs. Don’t go farther than you can hear our call signal on the radio.”

The door of the house stood open to the still-warm evening air. She stepped inside and looked around. Gleaming parquet, a big bowl of roses, delicious food smells emanating from somewhere beyond, all confirmed that there was no dearth of funds. There was, however, a dearth of people. Megan rang the bell on the table.

Nothing happened. She waited a couple of minutes and rang again.

A woman came out of a room to the left and asked impatiently, “Yes? What is it?”

Megan didn’t answer for a moment, studying her. She had red hair, the kind that might lead to the nickname “copper-knob” but couldn’t possibly be called carroty, done up in a careless-seeming chignon. She wore a no-nonsense white blouse with a paisley print ankle-length skirt in greens and blues and high-heeled sandals over nylon tights. Her face was striking—and vaguely familiar.

Holding out her warrant card for inspection, Megan introduced herself: “Detective Sergeant Pencarrow. I’d like to—”

“Oh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth and shook her head. “I can’t talk to you here,” she whispered. “I’m trying so hard not to let the guests—our patients—see how upset I am. And my employer…”

“Of course. I can see it might set the cat among the pigeons. We’ll go over to the Wadebridge police station.”

“I can’t leave. I’m on duty.”

“You must want us to find your … friend’s murderer as quickly as possible, I’m sure.” Megan kept her voice calm and friendly. The last thing she wanted was more hysterics, for her own sake, regardless of the patients. “You have a private room here, don’t you? We can go there, no problem. You’ll be close enough if you’re needed. Ought you to tell someone where you’ll be?”

“No. No, if they want me they’ll ring through.”

They went upstairs. Several doors led off the landing. One was a solid affair of polished oak, more like a front door than an interior door.

Stella noticed Megan looking at it. “That’s Dr Fenwick’s flat. The owner. He’s downstairs chatting with the guests before dinner. This is my room.” She unlocked a door.

No Indian bedspreads and cushions on the floor here. The bedsitter was very comfortably, even luxuriously furnished in the blues and greens that a redhead would naturally favour. Megan remembered Margery telling her that Stella was well paid because of the difficulty of getting weekend staff.

A couple of fashion magazines lay on a table, a third on the floor, half covering a pair of flat sandals, but no books were visible. Nor was either a wireless or a record-player, an odd omission in these days of ubiquitous music. What was it Shakespeare said about people who didn’t like music? Megan couldn’t remember.

On the wall hung a portrait in oils of the occupant. That was why she seemed familiar, Megan realised. At the scene of the crime, her image was everywhere. Megan glanced back at the subject of the painting. It was a good likeness, the colour looking somehow more natural than the touch of lipstick and dusting of rouge that Stella was now wearing.

Stella turned away, head bowed. Her voice trembled. “He’ll never paint me again.”

“I’m sorry. Let’s get this over with.” They sat down. Megan’s chair was almost too soft, like the Mama Bear’s, wonderful for lounging, but all wrong for conducting an interview. Taking notes was going to be difficult. She did her best to sit upright. “We’ll go back to yesterday morning.”

“Morning? But Geoff was killed in the evening!”

“I’m afraid I have to fill in all sorts of nit-picking details for my report. You were in Padstow, you told DI Pearce? How did you get there, and what time did you arrive?”

“I don’t know the time. A bit late for opening the gallery, if you want to know the truth, but it’s no good trying to hurry Geoff. He took me in his MG, because he was going to Tintagel to pick up that horrible, horrible dagger from the ironsmith. How I wish he’d never had the idea of getting the damn thing made! Just because he thought the light would reflect differently than from the sword.”

“You disagreed?”

“About the light? I expect he’s … oh, he
was
right. But who cares? A waste of money, if you ask me. And effort.”

“Did you go to art school?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m just trying to understand,” Megan said soothingly. She wasn’t quite sure why she had asked, but it linked somehow with something in the back of her mind.

“I took a few classes. Painting bored me, but sculpture was more fun.” Once she got going, she talked readily. “I love the feel of the stone when I’ve polished it really smooth. I see people in the shops fondling my seals and porpoises. They sell quite well. In fact, I sold one yesterday morning, at Nick’s shop.”

“That was before Geoffrey Clark returned?”

“Yes. He got there just before Nick phoned from London. I wasn’t expecting him so early. Usually when he goes to Tintagel he moons about the castle for ages, ‘catching the vibes,’ he says. Used to say. But he wanted to show me that damn dagger. He was unwrapping it when Nick rang. Of course I told him Nick’s news. He started spouting about how unfair it was, so I told him not to get his knickers in a twist. I guessed he was probably hungry—he wouldn’t answer when I asked but he tends to skip breakfast—and it was making him irritable. So I went across the street to pick up a couple of pasties. When I came back … Well, I’m sure you know by now what he’d done.”

“He wrecked several of Mr Gresham’s paintings.”

“I was horrified. I decided we’d better make ourselves scarce. I wrote a note to Nick and cleared out my stuff while Geoff fetched his car from the car park. Then I closed the shop and we drove to Padstow. The bastard was in such a hurry to have a go at painting the dagger, he wouldn’t drive me up to the farm, so I hitchhiked.”

“Why did you clear out your sculptures?”

“Well, obviously, Nick was going to be so furious he wouldn’t let me go on selling there. It wasn’t till later I started worrying that he’d be mad enough to beat up—”

Megan held up a hand to stop her. “We’ll get to that in a minute. Where did Clark park in Padstow?”

“The Strand. Hell, I suppose it’s still there!”

“Did you go to his gallery with him?”

“Yes. It wasn’t far out of the way to get to the Wadebridge Road to thumb a lift or catch a bus. I still hoped to talk him into taking me.”

“What time did you get there?”

Stella shrugged. “No idea.”

“Did you go in?”

“Just for a minute. I wanted to take off my tights for hitching. I wear them for work—here and in the shops, not for sculpting—but I hate them, hate nylon on my feet. And I got a drink of water.”

“Presumably the closedsign was up when you arrived. Did Clark flip it to open?”

“I … I don’t remember.”

“Never mind. Why did you hitch a lift, rather than phoning for someone at the farm to pick you up?”

“I couldn’t do that. Doug lets us have the bus if it’s arranged in advance, but he uses it on the farm, too, and he gets shirty if you push it. Besides, I like hitching. You meet some interesting people, though sometimes hereabouts you’re on the back of a haycart. Yesterday I was picked up by an Aussie tourist who took me all the way to the beginning of the track. He had a hired car and he wouldn’t risk it on the potholes. Luckily I was wearing flats.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“Bert? Pete? Mike? Something utterly unmemorable.”

She hadn’t noticed the make or colour of the car, hadn’t really listened when Bert or Pete or Mike had talked about his plans.

“To tell the truth,” she admitted, “I was still a bit rattled by what Geoff had done. I was thinking about what on earth I was going to say to the others.”

“What
did
you say?”

“Nothing, not then. I chickened out. My studio is at the end so I just sneaked in and got to work.”

“You didn’t speak to anyone. Did you see anyone, or might anyone have seen you? Or heard you working?”

“Someone might have looked through a window, I suppose. I wasn’t chipping or grinding, just polishing, so I wasn’t making any noise. But like I told you, I started worrying about just how mad Nick would be. I worked out that if he arrived in Launceston at about four, then went home and discovered the damage, he wasn’t likely to get to Padstow before half five. So I went and told Marge and we talked Doug into going with us to the pub, so I could keep an eye on Geoff without him knowing.”

“And in fact, you saw Nick Gresham arrive at Clark’s gallery, though some time later.”

“If only we’d got across the street quicker! Doug had gone off to the gents and Marge wanted to wait for him. I had to haul her along and by the time we got there—”

“It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. I’m sure you must know by now that Gresham did not stab Clark just as you arrived in the studio. Whatever you saw, it was not that. The medical evidence shows he died long before.”

“Oh, medical evidence!” Stella said scornfully. “You forget, I’ve worked with doctors. I know they’ll give a wrong diagnosis rather than admit they don’t know the answer.”

“I assure you, there is absolutely no question that Clark died before four o’clock, and probably before three. No one is blaming you for jumping to conclusions when you saw him lying dead with Gresham beside him. You were in a perfectly understandable nervous state. But I would advise you not to go on claiming that Gresham killed Clark. In fact, I’d like you to think back to that moment which you misinterpreted and try to tell me what you actually observed, rather than what you imagined.”

That was too much for Stella’s composure. “I can’t, I can’t,” she wailed. “I don’t want to think about it.” She buried her face in her hands and started to sob. “It was horrible. Horrible!”

Megan had overestimated the woman’s sangfroid. Once she had pulled herself together, she had seemed so cool and calm! The ever-unsympathetic Scumble might just as well have come himself, she thought, for all the good she’d done.

“I realise it’s difficult to think about it so soon after it happened,” she said. “I won’t press you now, but we’d appreciate it if you’d really try to picture the scene, as soon as you feel up to it. You’d be surprised how much detail people remember when they put their minds to it. I’m sure you must be eager to see the murderer brought to justice.”