Malice in Cornwall (19 page)

“I was just going to have a word with your husband, Mrs. Polfrock,” Powell remarked breezily.

Mrs. Polfrock's eyes narrowed. “Would you like me to sit it? Perhaps I could …”

Powell winked at her. “Man talk, I'm afraid.”

She turned on Mr. Polfrock and glared at him. “When you're done, I've got some chores for you to do.”

Powell noticed that Mr. Polfrock wasn't exactly turning cartwheels across the floor at the prospect of being interviewed, and he had definitely turned a whiter shade
of pale. “Now, then, why don't we step into the Residents' Lounge, Mr. Polfrock?”

The little man acquiesced silently, resigned apparently to whatever the fates had in store for him.

Powell arranged two chairs so that the escritoire in the corner of the room would be within view of them both and then invited Mr. Polfrock to sit down. He took a seat opposite and smiled evenly. “I've been looking forward to having this little chat for quite some time now.”

‘Oh?” Mr. Polfrock said in a small voice.

“You don't mind if I smoke?”

Mr. Polfrock looked alarmed. “Agnes doesn't…”

Powell lit a cigarette and reached over to the coffee table for a saucer to use as an ashtray. “Now, George, where to begin? You don't mind if I call you George?”

Mr. Polfrock shook his head nervously.

“You aren't a shooting man, by any chance, are you, George?”

Polfrock swallowed hard, seemingly unable to speak.

“Great sport, shooting. I have an old Westley Richards detachable lock gun. Inherited it from my father. It's over sixty years old, but it's as sound as the day it was built. Do you know what a gun like that costs nowadays? Five thousand pounds, I reckon, twenty thousand for a new one. I certainly couldn't afford it. Makes one think, doesn't it, George? One should really keep a gun like that locked up, don't you think? Any gun, for that matter. One can't be too careful with all the break-ins and burglaries these days. You don't happen to own a shotgun, do you, George?”

Polfrock, slack-jawed, stared at Powell as if mesmerized.

Powell drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “There's something decidedly Freudian about a gun,” he went on.

“In any case, one should really have a gun safe. Like that one over there.” He motioned casually toward the escritoire.

Polfrock began to gulp spasmodically like a fish out of water. “It—it was y-you!” he stammered. “I forget to lock the safe, just the once, and … Do you realize that I haven't been able to sleep wondering who …”

“My wife is always getting after me for rearranging things around the house. I seem to have this compulsion to turn things topsy-turvy. But look at the bright side, George—better me than Mrs. Polfrock. A stroke of luck, you might say.”

Polfrock colored. “My God! If Agnes ever found out, she'd kill me!”

Powell smiled. “Surely not, Mr. Polfrock. Your wife strikes me as a reasonable woman.”

Polfrock looked terrified. “What do you want from me? I've burned the whole lot. I've learned my lesson, I promise you!”

Powell didn't believe a word of it. He fixed him with a distasteful look.

Polfrock imploring now. “Look, I'd do anything to keep her from finding out!”

“Anything, George?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Where were you on Saturday afternoon between noon and four o'clock?”

“I can't remember, I—”

“I'd advise you to try,” Powell said sharply.

“Oh, I remember now! I was up along Mawgawan Beach. Bird-watching.” He made an almost comical attempt to sound blase.

A knowing smile from Powell. “Exactly what kind of birds were you watching, George?”

“I don't know what you mean!”

“Tony Rowlands tells me there's a group of kids camping out there.”

“Oh, him.”

“You didn't happen to see Nick Tebble on Saturday, by any chance?”

“No, of course not, that's the day he was …” A look of panic.

“Yes?”

“I hardly knew him!”

Powell sighed. “How long have you lived here, George?”

“All my life,” he said grudgingly.

“I don't suppose you knew Ruth Trevenney, either.”

A long pause then an inaudible response.

“You'll have to speak up, George.”

“Yes, I knew her.”

Powell leaned back in his chair, assessing Polfrock's demeanor. Mined out, Powell concluded, like all the tin mines in Cornwall. “There's just one more thing, George.”

There was an anxious look in Polfrock's eyes.

“The magazines. Rowlands gets them for you, doesn't he?”

Polfrock hesitated, then he nodded weakly.

Powell gestured in a dismissive manner. “Watch yourself, George.”

After Polfrock fled the room, Powell sat motionless in his chair. Eventually, he lit another cigarette. There was a movement at the door. He looked up. It was Butts.

“We've found something, sir. At the Old Fish Cellar. Nearly ten thousand quid hidden under the floor.”

“If it wasn't for the bloody Riddle, this would be a relatively straightforward case,” Butts asserted. “At least the line of inquiry would be obvious. Linda Porter is fooling around with Rowlands. Her husband comes home unannounced on Saturday morning and catches them in the act, but mistakenly thinks it's Tebble. Before he can confront them, he's interrupted by Black, here. Porter stews about it for a while then drives out to the Old Fish Cellar later that afternoon and does our Nick.” Butts paused to take a swig of ale from a long-necked brown bottle. He had persuaded his sister-in-law to provide some suitable refreshment to lubricate the mental processes. “Or maybe,” he continued, “it was Tebble who was shagging her, and Rowlands is the jealous one.”

Black looked doubtful. “There has to be more to it than that. The Riddle, all that money, it can't be a coincidence. What about the phone call to Roger Trevenney about Ruth's diary? Perhaps it was Tebble. If he knew something about Ruth's murder, he could have been blackmailing someone. That would explain the money.”

Butts shook his head. “That money's been there for quite some time, by the looks of it. One of my lads is a numismatist; just by looking at ‘em he reckons the notes are more than twenty years old. We're checking the serial numbers. If Tebble was a collector, himself, he had a penchant for ten-pound notes. And there's one more thing, sir. I did a bit more poking around out there, as you suggested. Behind the shed under a tarp there's a pile of old logs with some black stuff that looks like shoelaces growing all over it.”

“Rhizomorphs,” Powell observed sagely. He leaned back in his chair. “So what have we got? Tebble concocts the Riddle to draw attention to Ruth Trevenney's murder. Roger Trevenney gets a call recently from someone who claims to have information that implicates his daughter's killer. Jim Porter discovers, if he didn't already know, that his wife has been unfaithful with Tebble, or Rowlands, or God knows who else. Tebble is killed and we discover that he's been sitting on a tidy sum of money at the Old Fish Cellar. Rowlands, at least, appears to have an alibi of sorts. Have I missed anything?”

“I still think we need to follow up on the smuggling angle, sir,” Black said.

Powell nodded. “Butts, I think it might be best if you talked to Rowlands about that. You know the territory better than we do. And determine his whereabouts Saturday afternoon. He could easily have slipped out for the half hour it would have taken to drive out to Tebble's, do the job, and get back to the Head.”

“Right.”

Black looked disappointed.

“Cheer up, Bill. I've got a juicy one for you. I'd like you to talk to Jim Porter. We need to confirm whether it was him you saw ducking up the back lane on Saturday. It's clearly a crucial point. See how he reacts, then proceed as you see fit.”

Black, apparently mollified, nodded.

“Also, have a word with Colin Wilcox. According to Dr. Harris, Wilcox has been out to the Porters' recently. Find out why.”

Black grinned. “No need, sir. I ran into him in the High Street yesterday. Young Wilcox seems to know his way around Penrick, so in a roundabout way I took the liberty of questioning him about the Porters. He wasn't able to add much, but during the course of the conversation it came out that he'd been out to the Porters' recently to quote on a plumbing job.”

“That's interesting. The Porters don't have indoor plumbing, as far as I know.”

Black shrugged. “Maybe they're thinking of having it put in.”

“Perhaps. Did you believe him?”

“I didn't have any reason not to, sir.”

“It seems to me it's a question of motive,” Butts ventured. “If, for the sake of argument, Tebble was using the Riddle to blackmail someone in connection with Ruth Trevenney's murder, why kill him after the fact?”

“Perhaps he raised the stakes.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

Powell frowned. “To be quite honest, I'm not sure what I mean. I think we'd better just take it a step at a time and see what develops.”

“Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day,”
Black intoned solemnly.

“Powell—this is a pleasant surprise.” Jane Goode opened the door wide. “Welcome to my garret.”

An unmade bed, lunch dishes, books and papers strewn everywhere.

“How goes the novel?”

She sighed. “It's coming, but so's my deadline. How are things with you?”

“Getting interesting. I was hoping I could persuade you to take tomorrow off.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “What did you have in mind?”

“I've been meaning to have a look around the old mine where Ruth Trevenney … I mean, it wouldn't be quite as grim as it sounds,” he went on quickly. “I thought it would be a break for you. We could pack a lunch, do a bit of exploring.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I'd love to, I really would, but I
am
under the gun, I've only got three weeks.” A strained silence.

“Of course, I understand perfectly. Well, I'll leave you to it, then.” He felt like an idiot.

Jane Goode closed the door slowly and reluctantly.

The next morning around ten o'clock, Powell set out on the loop road. The sky was gray and equivocal. There was nothing on the radio and his mind was in a turmoil. What was it that Black had said? Something had twigged at the time, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. All he knew was, something didn't fit. It was as if he was
dealing with two entirely separate cases, two lines that converged at the death of Nick Tebble; a contemporary tale of adultery and jealousy, and a murder that happened thirty years ago. Was Tebble killed because somebody thought he'd been screwing around with Linda Porter, or was it because he'd known something about Ruth's murder? Or were the two questions somehow related? Powell braked suddenly.

Just past the turning to Dr. Harris's, a well-used Land Rover was parked beside the road and a man was digging out the mouth of a drainage ditch at the point where it discharged from the adjacent field into the roadside ditch. It was Jim Porter.

Against his better judgment Powell slowed to a stop, on the pretext of asking directions to the mine. He got out of the car. “Good morning,” he said.

Porter leaned awkwardly on his shovel and nodded warily. In response to Powell's query, he uttered some terse directions.

“I spoke to your wife yesterday …” Powell remarked. He left it open-ended.

“She didn't mention it.”

“We'd like to have a word with you about Nick Tebble;”

“I'm rather busy right now …”

Powell smiled. “I understand. My associate, Detective-Sergeant Black, was hoping to catch up with you later today, if it's convenient.”

Porter shrugged. “I'm not going anywhere.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“He went to see you at your cottage Saturday morning, but there didn't seem to be anyone around.”

Porter's eyes narrowed. “He should bloody well call first, then, shouldn't he?”

“It was about this time of the morning, as I recall,” Powell continued.

“What are you playing at?” Porter snapped.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you think it's easy? Trying to make your own way in life when they want you to fail. When everyone's against you, bloody everyone! I've heard the gossip—I know what people are saying. But I'm not stupid. Do you think I don't know what's going on? You don't have to rub my nose in it!” His eyes turned wild. “I'm not going to stand for any more of it, I tell you!” Tears welled up. He suddenly lifted his shovel, brandishing it at port arms.

Here, thought Powell, is a man at the end of his rope. He made some soothing noises and departed as decorously as possible under the circumstances. A quick call on his mobile phone to alert Black to Porter's emotional state. Best to hold off for the time being, he decided. He put it as tactfully as possible. He was stealing Black's thunder in a sense, but it was evident that Porter would need careful handling. The man was clearly over the edge, and Powell had little doubt that in his present state of mind he was quite capable of committing an irrational act. But murder? he wondered.

He passed the turning to the Old Fish Cellar and then swung east on a rough, overgrown track that headed off into the hills. Just ahead, beyond a slight rise, he could see the upper brick portion of the round chimney that marked the location of the old engine house. He drew up to a rusted wire mesh fence marked with a faded sign that announced somewhat ambiguously:
DANGER KEEP OUT.

The fence had fallen down in several places and he had no difficulty finding a place to get through. The view to the southwest was spectacular, a steep grassy slope speckled with wildflowers, then the edge of the cliffs and the sea below. The road back toward Penrick was hidden behind a small hill. He tried to visualize the miles of shafts and tunnels lying beneath his feet and to imagine the life of a Cornish tin miner a hundred years ago. Adits sunk beneath the ore bodies and draining to the sea were used to de-water the shafts where the miners worked. Shafts sunk below the drainage level were pumped by steam engines in the engine houses. In some cases, the workings extended for several fathoms below the seabed itself, and he had read somewhere that the miners could hear the sound of the surf crashing above them.