To Perish in Penzance (17 page)

It was a long time ago, that winter storm, so long ago that nobody remembered exactly when. But it was a terrible time. The seas were so high and so dangerous that no fishing boat dared leave the protection of the harbor with its opening no bigger than a mousehole—from which the village derived its name. Within the harbor the boats were safe, but they could not go out to catch fish, and soon the people of Mousehole began to starve.

Then one day, two days before Christmas, Old Tom Bawcock had had enough. “Christmas, and no food!” he said to his cat. “It's not to be thought of. We're going out, and I'll come back with fish, or perish.”

They nearly did perish, those two, but perhaps the cat, Mowzer, was a powerful force for good luck, because the storm abated after a time and the boat came safely back, loaded to the gunwales with fish. And as they approached the harbor mouth, Old Tom and his cat were greeted by a beautiful sight. There was a candle in every window in the village, and all the men stood on the harbor walls, lanterns in hand, to light home Old Tom and his faithful cat.

There was a great feast in the village that night, and the centerpieces of all the tables were huge fish pies, baked with the heads sticking out of the pastry, gazing at the beautiful stars. It was the night before Christmas Eve, and every December 23 since, the village has baked hundreds of star-gazy pies and lighted the harbor with thousands of lights, in loving memory of Old Tom and of Mowzer, the Mousehole cat.

“What a lovely story,” I said when he had finished. “The classic fairy tale. The impossible task, the magic of some kind of goodwill that makes the task possible, the happy ending. I'm not sure about fish heads, though.”

“Eating them is optional,” said Alan with a chuckle. “There's a charming little book that retells the story with delightful illustrations. I'll find you one in a bookshop. Speaking of which, it's time we did some shopping. Mousehole, now, is as much an artists' colony as a fishing village, and there's some very fine work to be found amongst the touristy junk.”

We strolled happily up the narrow, twisting lanes. I was glad Alan hadn't tried to bring the car any farther. Mousehole is no place to drive. It rises steeply from the sea, so such roads as there are have sharp switchbacks and corners blind as a moonless night. I watched, at one point, as the bus from Penzance arrived, turned into a dead-end street, and then backed, tortuously, with much grinding of gears and ever so slowly so as to avoid heedless pedestrians, in order to turn around and begin the return trip.

I nudged Alan and pointed to the bus driver. “There's one guy who has a worse job than a policeman.”

“I think you're right about that.”

We saw potteries displaying beautiful work. “Made from Cornish clay, possibly,” Alan told me. “Some of the finest deposits of china clay in the world are up around St. Austell.”

“I know that,” I said smugly. “I read about it at the library.”

Innumerable stores sold paintings and watercolors by local artists. The quality was variable, as one would expect, but there were some beautiful pictures I would have loved to take home, had the prices not been so high.

“It's good stuff, Dorothy, and the artists know the value of their work.”

“Indeed,” I said, sighing as I tore my gaze from one stormy seascape I could just see over my mantel at home.

The antique store drew me in, too. I had always enjoyed antique shopping back home in the States, but there the stores were filled mostly with interesting junk. This one carried the genuine article, with prices to match. I pulled my elbows in so as not to break anything as I wandered, looking longingly at Georgian silver candlesticks, Victorian mahogany lap desks, vases and platters made by Wedgwood and Royal Doulton and Spode.

I lingered longest over the jewelry case. There were a good many Victorian pieces, a gold-filigree bar brooch set with pearls, an enameled pansy with a tiny diamond dewdrop on one petal, a pair of gold-and-jet earrings I coveted. The loveliest thing of all was a gold cross, about an inch and a half long, set with red stones that were polished but not faceted.

“Cabochon rubies,” said the dealer, who was lingering, hopeful of a sale. “A very old piece, that, sixteenth century, most likely. Beautiful workmanship. Came in only yesterday and won't stay long. Would you like me to get it out for you?”

“I doubt we could afford it.”

“One can always look,” said Alan, so it was removed from the case and laid reverently on a piece of blue velvet for our closer inspection.

I wouldn't have dared pick it up, but Alan hefted it and turned it over to inspect the back, which was solid gold. “It's very heavy,” he commented. “Not all that comfortable hung around one's neck, I wouldn't have thought.”

“It was probably a decoration for a book at one time, or a reliquary, something of the kind,” said the dealer. “German work, I suspect. One can see that the loop at the top was added later.”

Alan looked at the tag, which had only a code number, in the coyly discreet tradition. “A thousand pounds?” he asked casually.

“Three, actually. The rubies are very fine. It would be much more if we had a provenance, but alas, with these very old pieces …” He shook his head sadly. “I ought to send it up to Sotheby's or Christie's to be sold at auction, but to tell the truth, I've lost my heart to it, and I'd like it to be sold from this shop. One of the finest pieces it's ever been my privilege to handle.”

I had refrained from gasping at the price, but my body language clearly indicated my feelings. The dealer saw that we weren't going to buy and put the cross back in the case. “If you change your mind, you'd best do it soon. It won't stay long,” he repeated, and we escaped.

But if the antique store was too rich for our blood, when we hit the bookshop, I had found my Mecca. “This is the place, Alan. Go and have yourself a beer if you're tired, or hot, or whatever, but I want to browse here for a long time.”

“Go right ahead, my love. I'm in no hurry.”

There were cookbooks, all with pasty recipes, one entirely devoted to them. There were books about Cornwall's history and its present. There was a fine selection of used books, including some mysteries I'd never read and some old friends I didn't own. I felt like a kid in a candy store, turning from one shelf to another, adding to the growing stack of books piled up next to the cash register. I turned, holding up one especially intriguing find.

“Look, Alan, it's—oh, I'm so sorry! I thought you were my husband.”

I had to look up at his face. He was at least as tall as Alan, and we were wedged close together in the narrow aisle.

“Ah, yes. Mrs.—ah—Nesbitt, I believe?”

The tall, black-haired man whose feet I was stepping on was, I was pretty sure, the mayor of Penzance.

“Oh, goodness, I do apologize, I—oh,
dear
!”

In my flurry of confusion, I dropped the book I was holding, also on the mayor's feet. It was a paperback, fortunately. He retrieved it with one long, slender hand and held it out to me with a gallant little nod. “I see you're interested in our infamous past, Mrs. Nesbitt.”

I took back the book, a copy of one I'd read in the library, and tried to recover some of my aplomb. “Yes, I'm intrigued with the tales of smuggling and wrecking. By the way, I
am
Alan Nesbitt's wife—and how amazing that you remember—but I use my old name, Dorothy Martin. And I'm nothing like as good as you are at names; I've forgotten yours completely, except that you're the mayor. Is that what I should call you? Forgive an American's ignorance.”

“Pendeen will do quite nicely, Percival Pendeen. No need for the title, except on formal occasions. In real life I own a shop, you know, very much like a mayor in a small American town, or so I understand.”

“Yes, except for some reason small-town American mayors often tend to be undertakers. What sort of shop do you have, Mr. Pendeen?” I had edged my way out of the close quarters toward the cash register and now put my latest book on top of the pile, which threatened to topple. The mayor, following, looked at my selections with interest.

“My word, you do intend to read up on Cornish history, don't you? Quite a bloodthirsty bent in literature, Mrs. Martin!” There was something odd in his voice, I thought, some kind of satisfaction.

“Well, it's a fairly bloodthirsty history,” I retorted. “Luring ships onto the rocks in order to loot them, smuggling, piracy—”

“Ah, that last was largely a figment of W. S. Gilbert's imagination.”

“And the rest?”

“All too true, I fear.” Again the hint of—what—smugness?

“But all in the past, of course.” I shouldn't have said it, but his manner was beginning to irk me.

His eyes opened wide. He glanced again at my stack of books and patted my hand. “My dear lady, I see you also revel in crime novels, but you mustn't let your imagination run away with you. I do assure you, you won't find a more peaceable lot anywhere in the kingdom than the inhabitants of Cornwall.”

His hand was very white and smooth and somehow repellent. I slid mine out from under as casually as I could, just as Alan appeared with a couple of books he had found.

“Nesbitt, good to see you! Been talking to your lovely wife. Mind you keep a close eye on her, now! She's a lady out for blood, I can see that! Cheerio, then.”

“What on earth was that about?” asked Alan.

“I'm not sure. Are those all the books you want?” I turned to the cashier. “I think we're ready for the bitter truth. And I hope you have some sort of shopping bag. I forgot to bring a suitcase.”

The young man grinned, added up the prices, and presented us with the total, which wasn't really too bad. The books filled two plastic bags. Each of us carrying one of them, Alan and I stepped out into the sunlight.

“All right, what didn't you want to tell me in there?” asked Alan when we had turned up a steep street that led only to people's houses and was thus almost deserted.

“I don't really know. Maybe nothing at all, but the mayor really acted rather peculiarly. Is he always that way—jokey, putting on a little too much mayoral good cheer?”

“You don't want much, do you, woman? I haven't laid eyes on the man in over thirty years, and I didn't know him well then.”

“What does he do for a living? He said he had a shop.”

“And so he does, or did when I lived in Penzance. Deals in antiques, I believe, the sort you looked at today, only more so. Very fancy prices, indeed. Louis the Fourteenth tables, French mantel clocks, ornate Italian inlay—you know the sort of thing.”

“Imports,” I said meaningfully.

“A good many of them, yes, I'd think so. Why? Don't tell me you're seeing bogeymen again!”

“Maybe. Alan, he was awfully interested in
my
interest in crime in Cornwall, past and present. And he never did answer my question, when I asked him what he sold. And—well—he's an important man in Penzance, and exactly what a young man would call an ‘old cove.'”

O
UR
excursion to Mousehole lost its zest after that. Alan showed me where he would pick me up, at the last place before getting into the town where he could turn the car around, and trudged off with the heavier bag of books. I waited, sitting on a narrow stone wall, my own bag on the ground beside me. It wasn't a very comfortable seat, but my feet hurt.

My head didn't feel much better. Oh, it didn't hurt, though it was hot under my protective hat. It simply didn't seem to function. It might as well have been stuffed with clotted cream for all the good it was doing me.

The afternoon had been wonderful, just the tonic I needed, until Mr. Pendeen had come along. Then I had found myself caught up once more in a web of confusion and ridiculous suspicion. “Seeing bogeymen,” Alan had said, and he was right.

As long as the police had been actively pursuing the case, we'd been free to go off on tangents. Now that they weren't, it was time for us to start acting sensibly, pursuing clues to Lexa's death, not bogeymen.

Seeing Alan approaching in the car, I took a deep breath, as if to provide my brain with oxygen, and began to think about the rave club.

“We have a godson,” I announced to Alan as I sat down in the car.

He shot me a glance of surprise. “Yes, I have one or two, actually. We, together, don't actually—”

“A fictitious one.”

“May I ask why we need such an invention?”

“He's an excuse. To get into the rave club tonight.”

My husband has become accustomed to my flights of fancy. He simply grinned, looked carefully both ways, and pulled out into the heavy end-of-the-day-out traffic.

“He's a musician, you see. In—in London, I think. A drummer.”

“Heaven help us. How old is he?”

“How old do you have to be to play in a club?”

“It depends. Twenty or so should be safe for most situations.”

“Twenty, then. And he's thinking of moving to Penzance, to live with us.”

“We live in Penzance. I see.”

“Yes, well, we've just moved here,” I said, improvising wildly. “We thought it was a nice place to retire to. And—let's see. We visited with young what's-his-name's parents not too long ago, and they're unhappy about his friends in London. Am I doing okay so far?”

“Sounds reasonable to me. Peter.”

“Why?”

Alan shrugged, never taking his eyes off the road. “I've always liked the name. If you can invent a godson, I'm allowed to christen him.”

“Peter it is. We've invited young Peter, then, to come and stay with us for a while, and his parents are hoping he'll be able to find work here, in a healthier sort of environment than London.”

“And that is a debatable point if ever I heard one.”