Churchyard and Hawke (21 page)

Looking directly at Flora, she said, ‘I suppose it really depends on how much incentive there is for him to stay in Cornwall.’

It was such a pointed remark that Flora felt herself colour up and she replied, simply, ‘I hope he decides to stay here.’

It was enough to satisfy Talwyn. She felt she could now safely report to Amos that the Laneglos housekeeper would do everything in her power to keep Tom happy in Cornwall.

CHAPTER 28

‘Have you enjoyed your day? You and Talwyn seemed to get on well together.’

‘I like Talwyn very much and, yes, I have had a lovely day, Tom. Thank you.’

They were driving back to Laneglos in the pony and trap and Tom beamed at her, ‘I’m glad because I can’t remember when I’ve had a happier day.’

It was quite true. Amos and Talwyn had gone out of their way to make Flora feel welcome and Amos had made it quite clear that despite the disparity of their respective ranks within the Cornwall constabulary, behind the doors of the Hawke household they were two very good friends.

‘I wish I could show my appreciation by inviting you, Talwyn and Amos to dinner with me, Tom, but it is just not possible.’ Flora spoke with a real regret.

‘We all realize that and, as Talwyn said to you when you left, you must come to the house again soon. She really did enjoy your company, Flora. I think she left all her close friends behind in the Charlestown area where she was living when she had the school there and first met Amos.’

‘Yes, she was telling me about her first meeting with him . . .’ Remembering the conversation that had taken place in the Hawke’s garden, she added, ‘She thinks you have an assured future with the Cornwall constabulary. It seems Amos has told her that you will be given rapid promotion.’

‘It would be very satisfying to think so.’ Tom was pleased it such a prospect and was grateful to Talwyn for pointing it out to Flora.

‘When you are promoted will it mean that you will be moved away from this area?’ Flora broke into his thoughts.

‘It’s always possible, but now the force is almost up to strength Amos is talking of having a proper headquarters staff, with an inspector in charge. He has promised to recommend me for the post. I would also act as his second-in-command - which would basically mean doing very much what I am doing now, but with more responsibility and, of course, more money.’

‘Will you still live with Talwyn and Amos when you are promoted?’

‘No. It was originally intended there would be accommodation over the station for an inspector, but the building isn’t spacious enough to house a police station, offices and quarters for an inspector. I, or whoever becomes the inspector, might need to find somewhere else to live, not too far away - although there is a suggestion of an annexe being built on to the headquarters.’

Giving Flora a quick glance, Tom hoped to see something to indicate there was more to her questioning than mere curiosity but her expression gave nothing away.

After a few minutes of silence between them, he asked ‘Would you come out with me again, Flora?’

‘You mean, to the Hawke’s home? Talwyn made me promise I would visit them again, soon.’

‘I’m glad . . . but I wondered whether we could perhaps meet up and go for a walk somewhere . . . along the river bank, perhaps, or better still take a train ride! Yes, that would be fun, we could go to Plymouth over the new bridge and have a look around the city together.’

It had not been easy for Flora to arrange to take a whole day off from her duties at Laneglos. Despite her status as the most senior servant in the household, she was still a servant and as such was expected to be absent from the house for no more than a half-day each week. Nevertheless, she was delighted that Tom wanted to see her again and was equally eager for their blossoming relationship to move forward.

‘I may not be able to take another whole day off so soon, Tom, especially as Lady Hogg is unwell and still at the big house, so we may have to put off thinking about a train ride to Plymouth for a while . . . but we could certainly take a walk. On my afternoons off I sometimes used to go down to the River Fowey and walk along the bank. It is beautifully quiet there and you can occasionally see a kingfisher. They are beautiful little birds, have you ever seen one?’

Tom’s knowledge of river life had been gained from the commercially busy Thames, running through the heart of London and he confessed that the only water birds that had come to his attention were the noisy scavenging gulls that abounded on and around the London river’s heavily polluted waters.

Flora gave him a description of the brightly plumaged kingfisher, but she repeated on her earlier precautionary note, ‘You would enjoy a walk along the river bank, Tom but, as I said earlier, my being able to take an afternoon off at all will depend on how well Lady Hogg is. If she becomes any worse I probably won’t even be able to leave the house.’

‘What exactly is wrong with her?’

‘That’s the most puzzling problem of all.’ Flora replied. ‘Doctor Hollis says it’s something she’s eaten that is upsetting her and he has prescribed various medicines but nothing seems to be helping. He said much the same about Lord Hogg yet none of the medicines that were prescribed helped him either. To be perfectly honest, I think he has been practising medicine for too long. The medical profession has improved rapidly since the Crimean War but Doctor Hollis has not kept up with the various advances and is still treating his patients using methods he learned fifty years ago.’

‘That’s a pretty alarming state of affairs for his patients.’ Tom said, ‘Especially as there’s a new and very keen young doctor in Bodmin right now. Doctor Sullivan was trained in London and is the surgeon who carried out the post mortem on Enid. He is up-to-date with all that’s new in his profession. We get on quite well because he was once a surgeon at the hospital where my fractured wrist was treated and I am due to see him this week when he has promised to take the plaster cast off my arm and check that it has healed. I’ll speak to him about Lady Hogg. If he feels he might be able to help, you can ask Lady Hogg or her son, if they will allow him to examine her. What are her symptoms? ‘

‘They are very similar to those Lord Hogg showed shortly before he died. He complained of severe pain in his stomach and it was tender to the touch. He had a sore throat and towards the end he could hardly speak. He was very sick and once when I was in his room he had convulsions too. When I helped to hold him down I noticed his skin was a peculiar mottled colour, he was sweating heavily and didn’t seem to know what was going on around him.’

‘And you say Lady Hogg is showing the very same symptoms?’

‘Yes. Doctor Hollis thinks that something might have found its way into the water supply to the house and is upsetting their stomachs, but if that was the case we should all be suffering shouldn’t we?’

‘I would have thought so,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’ll have a word with Doctor Sullivan first thing in the morning and see what he thinks.’

For the remainder of the journey to Laneglos they spoke of more pleasant matters and, when they parted company, Tom kissed Flora for the first time and not only did she raise no objection, but responded in a manner that left him in no doubt that their relationship had moved on to an exciting new level.

Despite Tom’s happy state of mind as he drove back to the Hawke home, it did not prevent him from thinking of what Flora had told him about Lady Hogg’s illness and the similarity of its symptoms to those of Lord Hogg before his death.

When he reached the house Talwyn enthused about the Laneglos housekeeper and it was a while before she left the room to go to the kitchen and Tom had a few minutes alone with Amos to inform him of his conversation with Flora.

‘What are you suggesting, Tom?’ Amos asked, adding bluntly, ‘Do you think someone is trying to poison Lady Hogg - and possibly killed Lord Hogg too?’

Reluctant to commit himself, even though Amos had put his own suspicions into words, Tom replied, ‘I am no expert, Amos, but in my early days as a constable in a richer part of London than Hoxton, I went with an inspector to a house where there was a woman with the same symptoms as Lady Hogg is showing. The inspector had been called in by the woman’s doctor, who suspected she was being poisoned with arsenic by her husband. He was right, even though we were too late to save the life of the wife. I found a chemist who had sold arsenic to the husband "to kill rats in the cellar". There were no rats and it turned out that the husband was having an affair with their maid-of-all-work. He eventually confessed to what he had done and was hanged.’

‘So you do think someone is poisoning Lady Hogg and probably did the same to her late husband?’

Amos put the question to Tom, fully aware of the consequences to himself - and the Cornwall constabulary - if Tom’s suspicions were investigated and proved to be unfounded.

Aware of Amos’s dilemma, Tom said, ‘We know there is someone it Laneglos who is prepared to kill - and if he’s done it once and got away with it I doubt if he would hesitate to do it again . . . especially if he stood to gain enough by his actions.’

‘Or . . . in the case of Enid Merryn, lose a great deal by not killing.’ Amos mused.

Both men looked at each other without saying anything for long moments until Amos broke the silence by saying, ‘Are we both thinking of the same suspect, Tom? Someone who fits the bill for all that has happened at the house? Who has motive and opportunity - and is probably desperate enough to commit murder?’

Tom nodded, ‘I believe we are, Amos. The doctor who dealt with the case in London that I mentioned referred to arsenic as "inheritance powder" - but we would be walking a tightrope trying to prove it. One false move and we would both be out of a job and as Chief Constable Gilbert will be aware, he would go down with us.’

Amos nodded his agreement, ‘There’s no doubt about it. . . I think the Honourable Charles Delville might be our man but the most important thing is to see that Lady Hogg gets no worse. It’s too late in the day to do anything now. We will go and speak to Doctor Sullivan first thing in the morning.’

CHAPTER 29

In the darkened main bedroom of the Hawke home that night, Amos and Talwyn were discussing Tom’s theory and he told her who both he and Tom suspected of being responsible for two deaths, attempting the murder of a third, and who they believed of planning a robbery and the appearance in Cornwall of a small multi-talented criminal army.

‘It beggars belief.’ Talwyn said, incredulously, ‘Such a theory can’t possibly be right, surely?’

‘I can’t be absolutely certain, not until we gather some real evidence against him but we do have a strong circumstantial case. We know he is desperately short of money and deeply in debt and whoever drew up plans for the London villains to descend upon Cornwall with the Laneglos ball as their main target had an intimate knowledge of Cornish society. He could have obtained a ticket for the ball in order for Conrad Shannon to make excellent forgeries, knowing that if he used genuine tickets for the number of men involved it would not only cost a great deal of money, but purchasing such a quantity would immediately call attention to him. He probably also provided Jimmy Banks with a forged letter of recommendation enabling him to gain employment to Laneglos. When I questioned Flora about accepting it without making inquiries about its authenticity she said that Delville was present, with his mother, and it was he who persuaded them that the reference should be accepted. The Hoxton men who came with the Banks’s also knew which mansions to burgle while the owners were at the ball - and when Laneglos was burgled only items of the greatest value were taken - and they knew exactly where to find them. Jimmy Banks knew where each particular room was, of course but he lacked the knowledge to identify which items were of most value.’

Talwyn thought over what her husband had said before saying, ‘You have made a circumstantial case against Delville, but even if he did have something to do with the robberies, why should he want to murder poor Enid?’

‘There are a couple of possible reasons. We know Alfie and Jimmy Banks had been skulking around the Laneglos gardens, Enid could have seen them talking with Delville - and he couldn’t afford to have her pass that on to anyone. There is another possible motive too. Enid was four months pregnart when she was killed and it’s likely Delville was responsible. She might have threatened to make known what he had done and the robbery gave him an opportunity to put her out of the way. He would know that suspicion was bound to fall on the burglar - and he probably believed they would never be caught.’

‘But why should he murder Enid even if he had made her pregnant? From all I have heard, he has fathered children born to more than one Laneglos servant girl and none of them have ended up dead.’

‘That’s because Lord Hogg always took care of them - but it seems he had declared he was not going to pay for any more. Not only that, Delville was aware that if he didn’t change his ways he was likely to be banned from Laneglos and receive no more money to finance his irresponsible way of life. He couldn’t allow that to happen, especially after the elaborate plans he had made with Alfie Banks and his accomplices were foiled. He is deeply in debt and desperate for money. If Enid had said she was going to report her pregnancy to someone, or had seen him talking to the Banks’s then you have a couple of motives for murdering her.’

Still not entirely convinced, Talwyn asked, ‘But why kill Lord Hogg and - if what you believe to be true - now be trying to kill his own mother?’

Talwyn had great faith in Amos’s ability as a policeman but she was finding it hard to accept his theories about the Honourable Charles Delville.

Building on his theory, Amos said patiently, ‘Lord Hogg was a sick man and probably didn’t have too long to live anyway. Delville might even have convinced himself he was being kind to the old man . . . but Delville’s reasoning doesn’t matter. What is more certain is that he expected to gain financially by Lord Hogg’s death. If not directly he would have expected money to be left to his mother and she would have got him out of the deep financial trouble he is in. Instead, Delville was cut out of Lord Hogg’s will entirely and the money left to Lady Hogg was very cleverly tied up to prevent her from squandering it on her son. The only way Delville can get at her money and property now is if she dies!’