Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer (25 page)

“But I haven’t got any monogrammed luggage.”

“Ah.” Jude suppressed a giggle. “I knew there was a fault in my logic somewhere.”

“Cindy…” Carole muttered again despairingly.

“Putting that on one side,” said Jude, “I do have a result to report from my carefully engineered loo-break at Mopsa’s cottage.”

“What? You didn’t really want to go?”

“Not that much. But I thought…there we were actually in the place. Maybe it was a good opportunity for a little snoop.”

“And what did your little snoop reveal?” asked Carole, slightly miffed that she hadn’t thought of the idea. “Did you see Nathan Locke sitting in his hideaway, planning further murders?”

“No, not quite that. But I did see two steaks.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know I had to go through the kitchen to get to the loo…”

“Yes.”

“Well, on the work surface there was a meal being prepared. And there was a chopping board which had two slabs of steak on it.”

“Suggesting that Mopsa wasn’t just cooking for herself?”

“Suggesting exactly that, yes. Now, all right, maybe she’s got a local boyfriend…some rough-hewn Cornish lad who is even now enjoying his hearty steak prior to enjoying the delights of Mopsa’s wispy body…but if she hasn’t…well, it might suggest that Nathan is on the premises somewhere.”

“If he is, he must be pretty well hidden. Don’t forget that the police searched the place.”

“Yes, but if Mopsa was warned they were coming, there’d have been plenty of time to get Nathan out for the duration. There must be lots of places to hide along the coast round here.”

“Maybe…” Carole didn’t sound convinced.

“Oh, come on, at lunchtime you were getting at me for talking about a wild-goose chase. Now you’re the one who’s going all wet blanket. I think those two steaks are going to be very significant. They’re the closest we’ve got so far to confirmation that Nathan Locke is down here.”

“Hardly confirmation. There could be a lot of other explanations. Mopsa might just have an exceptionally healthy appetite.”

“She’s very thin.”

“But very tall. Must need a lot of fuel for all that length.”

Jude’s conviction was not to be shifted. “No, I’m sure she was cooking for two.”

“We shouldn’t really have come here then. Should be at Treboddick, watching out to see if a boyfriend has arrived.”

“Too late now. And, looking at what’s just coming out of the kitchen, I think by being here we made the right choice.”

Carole also looked up to see the chubby landlord’s wife bearing two plates, each swamped by a huge Cornish pasty. “This right, is it? Some people want them with veg, but you didn’t ask for that, did you?”

“No,” said Jude. “A proper Cornish pasty’s got lots of veg inside, hasn’t it?”

“You’re right, my lover.” The woman set the two plates down on the table. The smell that rose from them was wonderful. The pastry was solid—not the nasty flaky kind that features in so many mass-produced pasties—and there was a neat finger-pinched seam along the top of the plump oval. “And the pasties at the Tinner’s Lamp are certainly proper ones. Now do you want any sauce?”

“Again, a proper Cornish pasty shouldn’t need any sauce.”

“You’re right again, my lover. But we get so many emmets down here who want to smother them with ketchup and brown sauce you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Have you had a busy summer?” Carole yet again envied her neighbour’s ability to slip effortlessly into conversation with total strangers.

The landlord’s wife pulled a glum face. “Not that good. Weather’s been fine, but the tourists’ve stayed away. Nope, lot of people round here have felt the pinch. All the B&B’s and what-have-you been half-empty. So where are you two staying?”

“Treboddick.”

“Ah.” There was a wealth of nuance in the monosyllable. The landlord’s wife knew exactly where they meant, and exactly who ran the place. And she had some reservations about the owners. “Don’t think they’ve had a great summer either. Worse than most people round here, I reckon.”

“We’ve only just arrived, but it looks to be a beautiful spot,” Carole contributed.

“Oh yes, no question about that. But everywhere in Cornwall’s beautiful. You’ve got to provide more than beauty if you’re going to get the punters in.”

“‘En Suite Bathrooms’ and ‘Sky Television’?”

“All that certainly. But you got to do a bit more. Make your guests welcome, not treat them like you’re doing them a favour by letting them stay in your place.”

The implicit criticism struck a chord. Mopsa’s lack of interest in them and lack of preparation for their arrival was characteristic of the Lockes. Rowley welcoming guests to his precious Treboddick would no doubt be even more condescending.

“How long’re you staying down here?”

“Oh, probably just till the weekend.”

“Well, it’s a lovely area for walking. And if you want to go out for a day’s fishing, just let me know. My brother can organize all that for you.”

They thanked her, but thought it unlikely that they would want to go out fishing.

“He does just pleasure trips too. There’s some bits of the old mine workings and that you can only get a good view of from the sea.”

“Well, thank you. We’ll bear it in mind,” said Carole politely.

“Looks like there was a mine at Treboddick,” Jude suggested.

“Oh, certainly, that’s Loveday. There are mines all along the coast here. Hence the name of this pub. Tin mining was very big in the mid-nineteenth century. That and smuggling, of course. There’ve been attempts to revive it since—the tin mining I’m talking about now—but not very successful. If you want to see how it works, though, they’ve got this kind of working museum just down the coast at Geevor. That’s worth a look. Most of the places, though, it’s just ruins. Particularly of the pump house. A lot of the mine workings was under the sea, so they had to be constantly pumping the water out.”

“It looks like the remains of one of those at Treboddick.”

“You’re right. About all there is left of Wheal Loveday.”

Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Of course! Now they really had got something. They’d both known that the Cornish word for a mine was ‘wheal’, but neither of them had made the connection. They’d never seen it written down, but now they both felt sure that what they’d observed the young Lockes playing was ‘The Wheal Quest’ with an ‘a’; and that its inspiration definitely came from Treboddick.

W
hether because of the long drive or the Tinner’s Lamp’s excellent pasties and Chardonnay, both Carole and Jude slept exceptionally well that night. By her standards, Carole in fact overslept, waking at seven-thirty in a panic about getting Gulliver out before he soiled the cottage floor. Neither of the women were big breakfasters—except on those days when Jude suddenly felt like an All-Day Special—and they made do with the rather meagre Welcome Pack which Mopsa had left in their fridge.

It was warm enough for them to sit in the little back garden and look out over the sea as they finished their morning drinks—herbal tea for Jude, black instant coffee for Carole. Gulliver panted restlessly at their feet, the loop of his lead round the leg of a chair. His nose was giving him lots of impressions, the most dominant being that they were in excellent walking country. If the smells around the cottage were good, how much better might they be along the coastal path. “So we’re here,” said Carole. “What do we do now?” Jude looked out across the Atlantic, apparently not ready to commit herself.

“I mean, Gulliver’s definitely going to need a long walk.”

“Yes, and in these wonderful surroundings it would be madness for us not to go for a long walk.”

“On the other hand…” Carole lowered her voice histrionically, “…what are we going to do about…
the case?
”

“Well, anything we are going to do about
the case…
” Jude echoed the drama of Carole’s diction, “…is going to involve getting inside Cottage Number One. And we can either do that when Mopsa is there, which is going to set every alarm bell in the world ringing, or…we wait till she’s gone out and see if we can get in then.”

“So that means we have to watch her front door all day until she goes out.”

“It might not be all day.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, she might go out early.”

“Really, Jude, I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”

“No. Sorry. I am really. Promise.”

“Huh.”

“Of course, there is another way of discovering when Mopsa’s going out.”

“Which is?”

“We could ask her.”

“What!”

Jude was only away a few minutes. Carole was washing up their breakfast things when she returned, humming. “Mopsa’s going out to the shops at about eleven.”

“How do you know?”

“Like I said I was going to, I asked her.”

“But didn’t she think it was odd?”

“No, of course she didn’t. She has no suspicion of us. She just thinks we’re a pair of punters who are—thank God—paying some rental money at the end of what’s been a very bad season.”

“So what did you say?”

“I said: ‘Are you by any chance going to the shops because if you are would you mind getting a few things for us?’”

“What things?”

“Oh, I thought of some stuff. Muesli, yoghurt.”

I might have known it wouldn’t have been anything useful like bacon and eggs, thought Carole.

“And Mopsa said that was fine. And I gave her some cash, and she’s going to give me some change. It wasn’t very difficult.”

“And did she say where she was going shopping? Because that’ll give us an idea of how long she’s likely to be away.”

“Yes. Like the man with seven wives, she’s actually going to St Ives.”

“Must be half an hour each way.”

“At least.”

“Give her half an hour for shopping…we’ve got at least an hour and a half to investigate the cottage…assuming, that is, that we can get in.” Carole looked at her watch. “So what do we do in the meantime?”

“We do exactly what two mature ladies with a dog would do if they were staying in a rented cottage in Cornwall. We go for a walk along the cliffs. But before we do that…” Jude held out her mobile, “…you ring Stephen. Then you can relax properly into a day’s sleuthing.”

Carole did as she was told. Anxiety about what was happening in a London hospital was a constant background to all her other feelings. Her son sounded less tired and stressed than he had on their previous call. Gaby was getting very bored lying on her back all day. She just wanted the bloody baby to arrive, so that she could get on with her life. Stephen thought this bolshieness was a good sign.

Carole was deeply sceptical about Gaby’s idea that the baby’s arrival would allow her to get on with her life, but she didn’t say anything. Every woman had to come to terms in her own way with the inevitable disruptions that motherhood would bring.

Still, she felt cheered by the call, and did give Stephen Jude’s mobile number to use if there were any further developments.

§

The clifftop walk brought Gulliver to an eighth heaven, beyond all his previous doggy imaginings.

And they timed their return to perfection. Just as Treboddick came into view round a curve of the cliff path, they saw the ancient Datsun leave the parking space and set off inland. Soon it was out of sight over the brow of the hill. Mopsa had gone on her shopping errand.

“Oh dear,” said Carole. “I should have asked her to get something for me too.”

“What?”

“A
Times
. Somehow I never feel complete if I haven’t got a crossword to do.”

“Don’t worry. Maybe there’ll be other clues for you to solve right here. After all, you were the one who worked out that ‘Biddet Rock’ was an anagram of ‘Treboddick’.”

“That’s true,” said Carole. And she felt a warm glow.

§

When they got back to their cottage, Gulliver was locked in. He let out one feeble bark of protest, and then settled down comfortably to dream of all the exotic sights he had seen and smells he had smelled. Fethering Beach may have been seaside, but it wasn’t seaside on the scale that Cornwall was.

“How’re we going to get in?” whispered Carole out of the side of her mouth as they walked across to Cottage Number One. Although there was no one in sight, she felt as though an entire battery of surveillance cameras was focused on her every move.

“Well, first we’ll see whether Mopsa locked up or not.”

“Oh, come on. She must have done.”

“I don’t know. Everything down here seems pretty laid back. There’s nobody about, and Mopsa doesn’t seem to be the most diligent of guardians. It’s quite possible she’s left the cottage open.”

“I’d doubt it. But, anyway, Jude, I’m not sure that we should be looking at the cottage.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you said when Chloe was playing the role of Prince Fimbador, she talked about the Wheel Path…and we thought that was something to do with wheels that go round, but now we know that it was a ‘wheal’ as in Cornish tin mine. So shouldn’t we look at what’s left of Wheal Loveday first.”

“Good idea.”

Their search didn’t take long. In the bottom of the ruined pump house and round about there were a few old shafts, but all of them had been blocked up to the surface with stones and rubble. Grass had grown over some, so that they were little more than indentations in the hillside. The fact that there were no protective railings around them meant that they must be safely sealed. They offered no possible access to the tunnels below.

“That was worth trying, but I’ve a feeling what we’re looking for has to be in the cottage.”

Carole nodded, still feeling the scrutiny of a thousand unseen cameras as they moved towards the door. Jude’s fantasy that Mopsa might have left it unlocked turned out to be exactly that, a fantasy. But the girl’s burglar-deterrent system proved not to be very sophisticated. They didn’t have to lift many of the potted plants around the front door before they found what they were looking for.

“I wonder,” mused Jude as she lifted it up, “whether this is the Key of Clove’s Halo…?”

“Looks more like a Yale to me,” said Carole sniffily. She was feeling a prickling at the back of her neck at the illegality of what she was doing, and this intensified as they went inside the cottage.