Malice in Cornwall (6 page)

“Goode. Jane Goode.” She pulled off her hood, loosing a flood of auburn hair. She smiled sweetly. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Powell. I'm always happy to assist the police.”

Powell looked her over with considerable interest. “As they say, Ms. Goode, the proof is in the pudding.”

“Truer words were never spoken, Chief Superintendent.”

He cleared his throat. “After you, then.”

“I'll just get my camera. I'll meet you in the front hall in two minutes.”

“Right.” Powell turned to Black with that chilling smile the sergeant knew all too well. “You stay here and keep Mr. and Mrs. Polfrock company. It's a filthy night; there's no point in both of us catching our death.”

Powell, feeling rather pleased with himself, headed up to his room to fetch his rain gear. As he climbed the stairs, he heard Mrs. Polfrock remark (somewhat incongruously, it seemed to him under the circumstances), “Look here, George, the bloody bitch has left a wet spot on the rug.”

Between Land's End and the east coast of Newfoundland there lies about three thousand miles of open ocean, enabling an ambitious late-season Atlantic storm, like the one that prevailed that evening, to take a serious run at the north coast of Cornwall. It occurred to Powell as he leaned into the gale, squinting against a driving mixture of rain and sand and trying to keep to the narrow beach path illuminated faintly in his torch beam, that the sudden appearance of Jane Goode had brightened considerably his dreary evening. He shone his torch momentarily at her back, which was on the verge of disappearing from view as she hurried ahead. He wondered idly what she looked like underneath her Barbour. The tide was well in, and big rollers were breaking on the beach. Rivulets of cold water streamed down his face. He ran the tip of his tongue over his upper lip and tasted the saltspray. Amidst the tumult of wind and rain, he could
hear the boom of the surf pounding against the rocks of Towey Head. Except for the glow of his torch beam and the occasional flicker of light up ahead that marked his companion's progress, he felt utterly alone with the elements. After his evening with the Polfrocks, the sensation was not entirely unpleasant.

Jane Goode stopped to wait for Powell. She shivered convulsively. It didn't take much to imagine that she was back in her drafty room at the Wrecker's Rest taking a shower. She jumped when she felt his hand on her arm.

“Well?” he said in a loud voice, to be heard above the storm.

“I think it's somewhere around here,” she shouted back. “I remember seeing the lights from those cottages.” She pointed.

Powell could just make out the ghostly shape of the towans off to the left and some faint lights wavering up ahead. “Right. Lead the way.”

She turned sharply right and began to zigzag systematically down the beach, like a spaniel quartering through a woodcock covert, her torch beam playing crazily over the rocks. After what seemed an interminable interval the light suddenly stopped moving. “Over here!” she cried.

Powell hurried toward the light and arrived, slightly out of breath, at her side. He began to say something, but his gaze was drawn to the pool of water at her feet and the object thus illuminated.

It was the most fantastic thing he had ever seen. Lying partially submerged in a shallow rock pool was a human torso, or rather what was left of one. Headless, with a gaping dark cavity where the neck should have been,
the left arm missing, and both legs gone cleanly below the knees. Ribbons of decomposing flesh hung from the exposed rib cage on the left side of the body; the skin on the right side of the chest looked more or less intact, although it was wrinkled and puffy like an overripe plum. And covering about half of the corpse above the waist was what appeared to be a woolly growth of dirty gray fur. It was evidently the body of a woman, albeit an inexplicably hirsute specimen, and it had obviously been in the water for a considerable length of time.

Powell blinked slowly to make sure his senses weren't deceiving him. “Shut your torch off,” he said in an unnaturally loud voice. He hadn't noticed that the wind had abated somewhat, making shouting no longer necessary. He pulled back the hood of his rain jacket. It had stopped raining.

Jane Goode complied without speaking. Then she froze, transfixed by the wondrous sight before her. “Good God,” she said.

There was no mistake about it. The corpse was glowing faintly with a preternatural blue-green light that seemed to emanate somehow both from within and without, like a ghastly aura of corruption. Powell felt the adrenaline rushing through his body as his mind raced wildly. There had to be a logical explanation for it. He knew that certain marine organisms gave off a kind of light; once, while sailing at night in the North Sea, he had seen the plankton sparkling in the water like a million stellar nebulae. Perhaps such organisms could attach themselves to a floating object and create a sort of phosphorescent effect, he speculated doubtfully, but it didn't seem very likely.

Without speaking, he knelt down beside the pool and began to examine the body, as well as the surrounding sand and rocks. From time to time he flicked on his torch for a few seconds and then extinguished it again.

Eventually, his companion could stand it no longer. “Would you mind telling me what in heaven's name you're doing?”

“Technical stuff,” Powell rejoined dryly.

“Remember who found the bloody thing,” she said. A nervous pause. “You don't think it's radioactive or anything, do you?”

Powell ignored her. “It's odd,” he said. “It doesn't seem to have much of a smell.”

She sniffed noisily. The only distinct odor she could detect amongst the general smell of salt and muck was the antiseptic iodine note of sea wrack, patches of which were scattered here and there over the rocks. “So?”

He shrugged. “Given the state of decomposition, one would have thought … I don't know, perhaps it has something to do with the salt water. Can you find me a stick?”

“What?”

“I need something to scrape up a sample with.”

“Oh, all right.” She shone her torch on the beach around her boots and then stooped to pick something up. “Will this do?” She handed Powell a thin piece of driftwood about six inches long.

“Perfect. Shine the light here.” He rummaged in his pocket and retrieved a small glass vial. He unscrewed the cap and then, using the stick, scraped some fragments of sand and debris from the body into the vial; he screwed the cap on and placed it back in his pocket. “Right. We'd
better get back. The tide's on its way out, so it should be all right to leave the body here for a little while—”

Suddenly there was a flash and the whine of a film-winding mechanism. After taking half a dozen photographs, Jane Goode said brightly, “Well, so much for the Riddle of Penrick.”

Powell got slowly to his feet and shone his torch in her face. “Surely not, Ms. Goode.”

“What do you mean?”

A melodramatic pause. “The riddle, I think, is who she is. And how she died.”

She blushed profusely. The thought hadn't occurred to her until that moment. She raised a hand to shield her eyes. “Would you mind shining that thing somewhere else?” she asked irritably.

With Powell leading the way this time, they set off back to the Wrecker's Rest, retracing their steps as closely as possible. At the point where they had first left the beach path, Powell built a little cairn of rocks. He whistled tunelessly as he worked. A few stars were glimmering through a tattered shroud of clouds.

When they arrived back at the guesthouse, Powell briefed Sergeant Black and then rang up Chief Inspector Butts in St. Ives to inform him of their gruesome discovery. He made arrangements to have the body attended to that night and for the scene-of-crime lads to come out first thing the next morning.

Half an hour later Powell and Jane Goode, having just narrowly escaped the clutches of an aggressively inquisitive Mrs. Polfrock, were sitting down at a table in the Head. A fire crackled in the grate, flickering cozily on the
dark oak beams. A sprinkling of other patrons (a mixture of locals and visitors by the looks of them) added to the general atmosphere of conviviality, making up for their lack of numbers with the boisterous nature of their conversations. Tony Rowlands was over in a flash to take their order. He hovered overly attentively around Ms. Goode, Powell thought.

“A glass of white wine would be nice,” she said. “Any old plonk will do.”

Rowlands smiled unctuously. “May I recommend the house chardonnay?”

Powell glanced over the drinks menu. “Fine. A half-liter to start with, please.”

“I'm sorry, Chief Superintendent,” Rowlands said smoothly, “we only serve wine by the glass. House rules, I'm afraid.”

The first rule prescribed the usurious exploitation of one's patrons, Powell presumed. “A glass for Ms. Goode, then, and I'll have a pint of St. Austell,” he said frostily.

Rowlands oozed over to the bar and soon returned with their drinks.

Powell raised his glass. “Cheers, Ms. Goode, we've had a good night's work.”

She eyed him shrewdly. “First off, it's Jane. Secondly, I'm not about to share the glory. I found the damn thing and that's the way I'll be reporting it. Cheers.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I'm a reporter and this is my, um, scoop.”

Powell raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“I'm a freelancer, actually.” She took a gulp of wine. “Well, to tell the truth, I'm a novelist. This is just a bit of moonlighting to keep body and soul together.”

“A novelist?” Powell was intrigued. “Perhaps I've read one of your books.”

She smiled ruefully. “I think that's highly unlikely. I've only written one.
Borders.
It came out last year.”

“What's it about?”

“You'll have to buy a copy to find out.”

Powell grinned. “I'll do that.” He took a sip of his beer, regarding his companion speculatively over his glass. He could not deny that Jane Goode interested him greatly. With her dark flowing hair and sea blue eyes, she was a striking woman, although not what you'd call pretty in the conventional sense of the word. She moved easily and naturally, suggesting a certain sensuous muscularity. It wasn't hard to imagine her hoisting a jib or galloping astride a horse. And a writer, besides. He suppressed a twinge of envy as he considered his own position in the scheme of things—a minor government functionary, when it came right down to it, a small cog in a big wheel going around and around in never-ending bureaucratic circles. He would no doubt leave the world much as he found it—not a book or a painting or poem to mark his passage. Suddenly he colored; he realized that he had been staring at her.

Her eyes sparkled. “A penny for your thoughts, Chief Superintendent.”

“Er, it's Erskine.”

“Erskine?”

Powell smiled thinly. “Erskine Childers Powell. My old man was keen on sailing and Home Rule.”

“I don't understand …”

“Erskine Childers was a sailor and an IRA man, as well as a writer,” he explained. “He wrote a story about a
pair of English sailors playing cat and mouse with the German navy just before the start of the First World War. It's generally regarded as the first spy novel.”

“I know it—
The Riddle of the Sands!”
She burst out laughing. “That's rather appropriate under the circumstances, don't you think? Actually, I've never read the book, but I did see the movie. Come to think of it, you do remind me a little of that Foreign Office bloke—the one played by Michael York—Carruthers, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes?” Powell was slightly disappointed; he had always identified more with the swashbuckling Davies.

“I think I'll just call you Powell.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

There followed a lengthy silence that only Powell found awkward.

Eventually his companion spoke quietly. “It's only just beginning to sink in. That was a human being out there on the beach, not just some sort of … curiosity. Do you—do you have any idea how she might have died?”

Powell shrugged. “Hard to say. A boating accident is the first thing that comes to mind. But in this case …”

“Yes?”

“Well, it's a bit bizarre, don't you think? Corpses don't normally glow in the dark.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“We'll be able to make a closer examination tomorrow. In the meantime, it remains a riddle—” he smiled “—more grist for your newspaper mill. Now, another glass of wine?”

“My round, I think.”

“They'll drum you out of the reporter's union if you keep that up.”

She smiled. “I think we're going to get along just fine, Powell.”

Powell's buoyant response was cut short by the arrival of Sergeant Black.

“Mr. Powell, Ms. Goode,” he said expectantly.

Powell sighed. “Sit down, Black. How did it go?”

“Butts sent over two of his men to lend a hand. We managed to get the thing bagged and put away for the night in the Polfrocks' shed. It's a bloody long slog with a wheelbarrow, I can tell you. The lads will be back out at the crack of dawn to have a good look around.” A pregnant pause.

“I imagine you'll want to turn in early then,” Powell said.

“Nonsense!” Ms. Goode protested. “You'll join us for a drink.”

Black grinned from ear to ear. “Don't mind if I do, ma'am.”

A few minutes later Sergeant Black was contentedly wiping the foam from his upper lip. “You know, sir, this business reminds me of a passage from
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner G

Powell rolled his eyes. “Really?”

“Yes, sir.” He cleared his throat.

“Bravo, Sergeant Black,” Jane Goode cried. “Let's see, how does the rest go …

Black looked pleased as punch.

“I'm finding this gathering of the Penrick Literary Society extremely stimulating, but we've got an early day tomorrow,” Powell said tersely.

Jane Goode seemed amused. “Speak for yourself.”