Missing Susan (22 page)

CORNWALL

T
HE ONE FORTUNATE
aspect of the entire incident was that no one seemed to have noticed that Rowan had been attempting to push Susan at the time he fell. He told them that he had suffered a dizzy spell from the heights. Their concern for his health assured him that there were no suspicions to the contrary. Aside from bruised knees and a few minor scrapes, he found that he was quite uninjured and, fearful of losing another chance at Susan, he insisted that the tour continue uninterrupted.

On his instructions Bernard continued to drive down the length of Cornwall to a picturesque castle across the inlet from Falmouth. St. Mawes, a military fortification rather than a residence, was built by Henry VIII as part of his chain of coastal defenses. Its massive guns protected Carrick Roads, still used as a berthing for oceangoing vessels. The guide took a perverse pleasure in marching his restive charges through the village high street, past any number of inviting shops, without letting them stop for even a postcard, let alone a cup of tea or a quarter of an hour of browsing. With only a trace of a limp, he led them up the hill toward the castle, past an assortment of private homes with lovely views of the
inlet, and into the castle. Nancy Warren wanted to stop and examine the magnificent bushes of hydrangeas with blue flowers as big as cabbages, but Rowan was firm.

It was just past five o’clock when he herded them back to the coach, telling Bernard to forget the regular route to St. Ives. He knew a shortcut.

“We’ll take the King Harry Ferry,” he announced. “It’s just north of here.”

Bernard rolled his eyes, but, in the best British tradition, he concluded that it was not his to reason why; though if the do or die killed the bus, the company would go into fits, he was sure. Without a word of argument, he put the coach in gear and headed north on a winding, shady country road, labeled B3289 on his road atlas.

No one said very much along the way. It had been a tiring day of long walks and melodrama. The tourists were glad of a break. Rowan spent the time considering his contingency plan and wondering if the wretched Susan had nine lives—or only nine cats.

After a twenty-minute drive at a leisurely speed, they went down a long hill toward the river and joined the line of cars waiting for the ferry, which was on its way back to the dock.

“We’re the only bus in the ferry line!” Frances Coles remarked.

Bernard heaved a weary sigh and shook his head. One by one the small cars ahead of them were driven onto the flat deck of the small river ferry. When the huge coach lumbered up to the embarkation point, three ferry workers crowded about to see them safely aboard. With many hand signals and shakes of the head, they succeeded in getting the coach down the ramp with only one major scraping of the fender, to which Bernard reacted as if he had felt it personally.

The river was only about a quarter of a mile wide, approximately a five-minute journey on the ferry. The tourists amused themselves by studying the large ships anchored just
downstream and by looking ahead to the tiny hillside village on the other shore. When the ferry docked, Bernard managed to get the coach onto dry land without much difficulty.

“There!” said Rowan Rover heartily, to disguise his relief. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He had spoken prematurely. Fifty yards from the ferry dock, Bernard began to search for the road that would lead them out of the village. It was just as Rowan spoke that he discovered the route—and the fact that it involved a series of corkscrew turns up the side of the hill, at intervals approximating the length of the coach.

First Bernard stared, then he looked for another way out of the village and found none. Finally he took a deep breath and said to Rowan, “You’ll owe me a pint for this one, mate.”

“Done!” said Rowan, who was seeing his shortcut in a new light. “I’ve never been this way in a battleship before,” he explained.

“I’ll never do it again,” Bernard assured him.

With steering maneuvers resembling acrobatics, he negotiated the twisting climb and emerged on the straightaway at the top, cheered on by the passengers.

“There’s nothing else today, is there, Rowan?” asked Bernard. “First you try to throw yourself off a cliff, then you nearly wreck the coach on a bloody ferry, and finally we have to bend the coach in half to get it up a corkscrew. There won’t be land mines up ahead, will there? Or bridges woven out of fraying jungle vines for us to cross?”

“No,” said Rowan, reddening a bit at this recital. “We’ll reach St. Ives within the hour.”

For once, he happened to be right.

   Without further misadventure, Bernard navigated the narrow country lanes of Cornwall and drove into St. Ives, familiar to him from previous tours. Soon he was parking the
coach beside the Tregenna Castle Hotel, a stately old building, perched atop the tallest hill in St. Ives, where it offered a commanding view of the bay and the city below.

“Is this old?” asked Kate Conway, gazing up at the ivy-covered castle with a tower at each corner and a row of battlements like jack-o’-lantern teeth.

“It is eighteenth century,” Rowan told her. “I suppose that in southern California that is practically prehistoric. Here we don’t make so much of it.” He turned to the rest of the group, engaged in claiming their luggage from the below-carriage compartment. “I’m going to see you checked in and then I shall go home for a few hours. I shall be in the bar at half past seven, if anyone would like to join me for a drink. Dinner is at eight tonight. I have arranged a special treat for you.”
Like a bloody fool
, he finished silently.

“Not another murder play?” sighed Martha Tabram.

“God forbid,” said Rowan. “No. I have asked three of my friends to dine with us. They are police officers here in Cornwall, I’m sure you’ll find it intriguing to talk to them about crime.”
Especially
, he thought,
since there’s going to be one.

   Kate Conway and Maud Marsh were just settling into their room when there was a knock at the door. It was Elizabeth MacPherson, whose room was in the passageway across the hall. They had discovered that the castle was a rabbit warren of short corridors, long passageways, and culs-de-sac, all carpeted with the most garish floor coverings imaginable, guaranteed to clash with any decor.

Elizabeth came in and spent a long moment gazing at their avocado-green bedspreads and the curtains of turquoise and orange. “You’d think that anyone who could afford a castle would have the taste to furnish it correctly.”

“They probably can’t afford to,” said Kate. “Imagine
what it would cost to carpet this place! You wouldn’t want to pull it up every time you painted the walls.”

“How’s your room?” asked Maud.

“About the same,” said Elizabeth. “Except that mine has a door leading out to the roof, so I can walk the battlements tonight like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I came to see you because I wanted to talk to everyone before we see Rowan tonight at dinner. Do you know what we’re scheduled to do tomorrow?”

Kate Conway nodded without enthusiasm. “Smugglers’ caves.”

Maud Marsh looked solemn. “Sounds risky. And after today’s performance, I think Rowan is in more danger than anyone. What do we do if he falls into a fifty-foot pit?”

“Exactly,” said Elizabeth. “Besides, we’ve been in England for six days—and I’ve only shopped for an hour!”

“So you think we ought to ask him to give us a free afternoon?” asked Kate. She drew the curtain aside and peered down at the white cluster of buildings encircling the bay. “We could visit St. Ives, I suppose.”

“It looks like a perfect place to shop,” Elizabeth agreed. “But we have to present a united front. I’ll go and present our scheme to the others. Then we’ll tell Rowan in the bar before dinner.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “He’s not going to like this one bit! You know what a stickler he is about our schedule and how much he hates shopping. He’ll think we’re frivolous. Who’s going to tell him?”

“I will,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “What can he do? Kill me?”

   By half past seven the conspiracy was well-established. Elizabeth had talked to all the others and, while not everyone was keen on shopping, there was general agreement that they needed a day of peace and quiet. No one wanted to clamber
through damp uncharted smugglers’ caves with a man who almost fell off a sixty-foot rock. Elizabeth was the unanimous choice to break this news to Rowan Rover. She found him in the bar, clutching a double Scotch and chatting amiably with three men in business suits: the police who came to dinner. By the time she went to the bar and got herself a half of cider, the other members of the tour had come in and were being introduced to the officers and she was able to have a private word with the guide.

“Listen,” she said, blinking a little bit from nervousness, “about the plans tomorrow …”

Rowan beamed in anticipation. “It’s going to be marvelous, isn’t it? I know some caves that no one ever goes to! There’s no telling what we might come upon. You’re lucky to have someone who really knows Cornwall to show you about, aren’t you?”

“Er—well …” Elizabeth blushed to the top of her ears. “That’s what I wanted to discuss. We all got to talking about the plans for tomorrow and we decided that, while it’s really terribly generous of you to want to show us the local sights …” She took a fortifying breath. “What we really want is a free day.”

Rowan Rover gaped in astonishment. “In St. Ives?” he screeched.

“Yes. We’re rather toured out, you know, and we thought it might be fun to potter around the village and … you know
 … shop.”
To her acute discomfort, Rowan was staring at her in complete disbelief. “You want to shop?” he repeated. His expression suggested that he was casting about for some other, more suitable meaning for the word. “You want to pass up these historic, fascinating smugglers’ caves that only I can take you to, in order to go and buy ornamental shrimping nets in that great lowbrow jumble sale by the sea?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Elizabeth. “After all, it will give you a bit of time off here at home.”

“All of you, then?” he asked, steadying himself against a nearby table against the magnitude of this betrayal. “You all want to go shopping?”

“In the afternoon, then,” said Elizabeth, feeling that some sort of compromise was indicated. “Maud and Martha did mention that they’d like to see St. Michael’s Mount tomorrow morning. But no caves!”

Rowan, Samson in the hands of the Philistines, heaved a sigh of resignation. “All right, then. I suppose I can rearrange my plans.” Surreptitiously he patted the pocket of his jacket. The little vial he had brought from home was still there. Now he was forced to use it.

   The party made two tables of five and one of six, with a guest policeman seated at each one. Elizabeth was sitting with Inspector George Burgess, at a table with Alice, Frances, and Martha Tabram. After duly admiring the spacious Trelawny Room (omitting any references to its carpeting), Alice leaned forward and whispered, “Did you tell him, Elizabeth?”

Before she answered, Elizabeth looked to see where Rowan Rover was sitting. She located him at the far table, sitting between Miriam Angel and Susan Cohen, who seemed to be talking nonstop across the table to the policeman dining with them. Emma Smith, who sat on Susan’s left, was eating her soup with the resignation of one who does not expect to get a word in edgewise. Reassured that she could not be overheard, Elizabeth recounted her conversation with the guide about the next day’s schedule.

“Free at last!” sighed Frances. “But I don’t envy you having to tell him.”

“Somebody had to,” Elizabeth replied. “Did you want to spend the day slogging through a dark cave?”

After that the talk turned to crime. The foursome listened happily to tales of police work in Penzance. Midway through the main course, Elizabeth thought of something else to ask. “Are you familiar with the case of Constance Kent?”

Burgess thought it over. “Victorian era? The teenage girl who supposedly cut her little brother’s throat?”

“That’s the one,” said Elizabeth. “Rowan and I are arguing about whether or not she did it.”

“It’s been years since I read about the case,” the inspector warned her, “but I seem to remember that there was insanity in the family. The girl’s mother was shut up in her room for years before she died. The child who was killed was the son of the second Mrs. Kent, formerly the older children’s governess. I think it was put about at the time that Constance might have taken after her mother—mentally unstable, you know. And a year or so before the murder, she tried to run away. Dressed as a boy. She wouldn’t be the first neurotic teenager who resorted to murder.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. “That seems quite conclusive. I wonder what Rowan will say to that!”

Two tables away Rowan Rover’s mind was on a more immediate crime than the one at Road Hill House. He had pointed out the interesting arrangement of exposed beams in the high ceiling of the dining room, and while his tablemates were inspecting this architectural marvel, he had sprinkled some powder into Susan Cohen’s untouched glass of wine. The maneuver had been completely successful: no one had noticed his sleight of hand. After a few more minutes of conversation, Rowan, anxious to get it over with, said, “I should like to propose a toast!” He lifted his glass and smiled at his tablemates from behind a film of cold sweat. “Er—here’s to crime!” Obediently they reached for their glasses. Susan Cohen made a face. “I hate white wine,” she whined. “It tastes like horse piss. Here, Emma, your glass
is empty, and you haven’t touched your water. You take my wine, and I’ll toast with water. I don’t see why they can’t serve Pepsi over here—”

Before Rowan Rover could think of a way to salvage the situation, Detective Heamoor echoed, “Here’s to crime!” and finished his glass.

With mounting horror, Rowan saw Emma Smith take a generous swallow of Susan Cohen’s tainted wine. Immediately she made a face. “You’re right, Susan,” she giggled. “It does taste like … what you said.”

After that the conversation progressed smoothly on to other topics. Rowan supposed that he must have uttered a word here and there, but he had no idea what went on at his table, beyond a vague impression that Susan had given the police officer plot summaries of a great many murder mysteries—so perhaps no one remembered much of the conversation. Rowan’s own mind was reeling with the enormity of his error, and he was frantically engaged in trying to devise some excuse to persuade Emma Smith to take an emetic. (Ipecac as a traditional Cornish beverage? But where would he get any on ten minutes’ notice so late at night?) His one consolation was that he hadn’t been able to obtain a really good poison like arsenic. His homemade herbal concoction might, after all, prove too weak to cause serious injury. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, she will have a thundering case of indigestion, for which I shall blame the seafood.
Please let her survive
, he thought. Idly he wondered if the Deity paid any attention at all to the prayers of aspiring murderers.