Death on the Lizard (35 page)

 
 
 
Bradford's visit to the Helston gaol was a brief and entirely satisfactory one. The gaol was ordinarily used to confine the drunken and disorderly, and the Helston constable, Mr. Clifford, confessed to Bradford, in an apologetic tone, that he was unable to provide proper accommodation for a lady.

“Oh, that's all right,” Bradford said carelessly reaching into his pocket and taking out a cigar. “Miss Chase is no lady.”

“Ah,” said Constable Clifford. “Ah, yes, I see.” He accepted the cigar with a knowing look. “You're wantin' to have her released, then.”

“Not at all, not at all,” Bradford assured him. “I should like to see her, alone. I shall stand surety against her escape.”

The constable was now more certain of Bradford's intention. “You'll be wantin' privacy.”

Bradford laughed shortly. “Not that sort of privacy. Only the sort required to write a letter. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes.”

Bradford's errand did, in fact, require only a few moments. The lady was so chastened by her experience in the gaol—“Rats!” she exclaimed in undisguised horror. “The place is simply crawling with rats!”—that she agreed to his demand without any argument. She sat down and wrote, at his direction, to her cousin in London, describing the box in which the letters were kept and instructing her to send the entire box and everything in it, posthaste, to Mr. Marsden, at the Poldhu Hotel, Mullion, Cornwall.

“Very good,” Bradford said with satisfaction, watching her address the envelope.

Miss Chase stood. “Well, then,” she said eagerly, attempting to smooth her disheveled hair. “I can go now?”

“No, my dear,” Bradford said, with a shake of his head. “Not until I receive the letters.” He smiled significantly. “Just in case, you know, that your cousin is not able to locate them from the description in your letter.”

Miss Chase fixed him with a silent, narrow-eyed gaze. Then, without a word, she ripped open the envelope and pulled out the letter-paper. She sat down, scratched out several words, and added a sentence at the bottom of the page before returning it to the envelope.

“Thank you,” Bradford said courteously. He pocketed the envelope and raised his voice. “Constable! Your prisoner is ready to return to her cell.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Chase, shrill with vexation, and stamped her foot. “Oh, you wretch!”

“Do unto others, my dear,” Bradford said. “I shall arrange for your release as soon as I have received them.
All
of them.” He watched with a smile as the constable escorted her away. When he returned, Bradford put the query with which Charles Sheridan had supplied him, although he had to confess that he still did not understand why it was worth the bother.

The constable frowned, scratched his head, and wrinkled his nose. “Corey? I know nothing about a Corey in Helston.”

“No Corey?” Bradford asked in surprise. “But I'm told, on good authority—” He took out another cigar. “Perhaps a little incentive—”

“Incentive or no,” the constable said, gazing covetously at the cigar. “I can't tell you how to find a Corey when I don't
know
a Corey, now, can I?”

Allowing in a regretful tone that this was so, Bradford handed over the cigar anyway. “Where else might I inquire?”

The constable, satisfied, tucked the cigar into his pocket. “Well, I'll tell you. Walk straight down Coinagehall Street to the Post Office, and ask Miss Clara Standish to tell you whether there are any Coreys in Helston. She's been puttin' up the post for three decades, you know. If there's a Corey living in Helston, she'll tell you, straight off.” He grinned. “Miss Standish don't smoke cigars, but she do like a bit of chocolate now and then. Moyle's Confectionery, on your right, just before the Post Office.”

Forewarned was forearmed, Bradford thought, so when he presented himself at the Post Office and inquired for Miss Clara Standish, he was supplied with ten-pence-worth of chocolate drops. Miss Standish proved to be a rotund, white-haired lady with wire spectacles perched on the end of her nose. She accepted the chocolates without hesitation, listened to Bradford's query, and shook her head.

“Never been a Corey in Helston,” she said definitively, opening the bag and taking out a chocolate drop. She frowned. “Mrs. Moyle didn't have any chocolate mints, then?”

“I'm sorry,” Bradford said penitently. “I didn't know you had a favorite.” He paused. “You've never heard of a Richard or Dick Corey, who works at the Marconi wireless station in Mullion and comes to visit his brother, who lives here in Helston?”

She put the offending chocolate back into the bag and closed it, her mouth set. “If there was a Corey in Helston, I should know him,” she said firmly, stowing the bag under the counter. “And since I don't, there isn't. Now, do you want a stamp for the letter you have in your hand, or is that all your business for the day?”

“I'll have a stamp, please,” Bradford said meekly, and gave a great deal of attention to applying it properly.

It was too bad, he thought, that he had not been able to carry out Charles Sheridan's errand. That small failure aside, however, he had certainly accomplished what he had come to do. When he dropped Miss Chase's letter to her cousin into the post box and drove off in the Panhard—which, parked, had become the town's most intriguing attraction—he felt he had every right to be pleased with the outcome of his errand.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

 
 
 
Alice had spent as little time as possible with the washing up and sweeping and dusting that morning, for she was bent on finishing
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, in order to start reading the book all over again. She had quite forgotten
Treasure Island
and
The Water Babies
and felt that there was no book in the world quite as marvelous as
Alice.
So she took a packet of biscuits and an apple and clambered into the willow tree beside the cottage, where she often went to read on a dreamy summer's day, comforted by the sound of the wind in the leaves, and the birds wheeling overhead, and the fragrance of the roses which climbed the cottage wall.

Alice was so deep in her reading that she failed to hear the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path. It wasn't until she heard someone knocking on the cottage door and calling out “Alice, are you at home?” that she looked up.

Or rather, looked down. “What do you want?” she asked, peering through the leaves. And then she saw that it was Lady Sheridan, and that Lady Loveday was with her, and regretted her peremptory tone. “Hullo,” she said, more nicely.

“Oh, there you are,” Lady Sheridan said, looking up. She smiled. “The tree seems a perfectly wonderful place to read a book, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind coming down and having some tea with us.”

“I suppose,” grumbled Alice, “that you'll expect me to make the tea.” But she tucked the book under her arm and began to climb down anyway.

“I rather thought,” Lady Loveday said, when Alice reached the ground, “that we might have tea at Penhallow. I understand that you are fond of Mrs. Tremaine's currant cakes.” She held out her hand. “My name is Lady Loveday. I am Harriet's mother. And you must be Alice.”

Alice, of course, did not need an introduction, for she had been keeping a close eye on Lady Loveday since Harriet died. But she was pleased at the unexpected possibility of currant cakes, and there was also the matter of the book. “Thank you for
Wonderland
,” Alice said, and bobbed as brief a curtsey as possible.

“Well, then,” Lady Sheridan said cheerfully, “Now that we've had our introductions perhaps we can all go and have tea.” With a smile, she put her arm on Alice's shoulder. “Lady Loveday told me just now that she would very much like to hear your story about Harriet.”

“Really?” Alice gave her a doubtful look. “It's very sad, you know.”

“I am sure it is,” Lady Loveday said. “But sometimes it does one good to hear a sad story, particularly if it answers questions which have been plaguing one for months and months.” She held out her hand. “Will you come, my dear?”

For a second or two, Alice hesitated, and then she took Lady Loveday's hand. “Yes,” she said. “I rather think I will.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

 
 
 
 
Charles Sheridan settled himself in the heather which edged the bluff overlooking Mullion Cove. His elbows on his knees and his field glasses to his eyes, he scanned the small harbor some forty feet below. Down and to his left was the lifeboat station, the pilchard cellar and net store nearby. The small harbor itself was embraced by two massive stone arms of the seawall. Several fishing boats, dinghies, and rowboats were pulled up on the shingle inside the wall, above the flood tide, and a white sloop was moored at the end of the north arm: Kirk-Smythe's sloop.

Crouched beside Charles, Constable Deane pointed to the breakwater. “Built in the last decade,” he said, “by Lord Robartes. The pilchard fleet had bad years, back-to-back— the whole fleet nearly wiped out by storms. The fishermen are glad of the breakwater.”

“I'm sure they must be,” Charles said. On this pleasant July evening, with the warm scent of heather rising around them, the calm sea a turquoise blue, and the sky clear above, it was difficult to imagine the ferocity of the winter gales which must lash Mullion Cove. The little harbor would be at the mercy of the sea for months on end, and boats left in the water, or even pulled onto the beach, would surely be broken by the waves. The breakwater would provide a fair measure of protection in the worst of the weather.

Charles took out his watch, glanced at it, and put it back. “He should be here shortly, Constable, if things go according to plan.” Of course, sometimes they didn't. The man they were waiting for might prefer to delay until after dark, which would seriously complicate their scheme. Or he might have got the wind up, and not appear at all.

The constable nodded, his attention fixed on the track which led from the village down to the seawall.

Charles looked to the west, out past Mullion Island. The sunset promised to be stunning. The red-orange clouds banked above the horizon were pierced with the golden shafts of the setting sun. And beyond the horizon, below the curve of the earth and so far to the west that it was still bathed in the light of midday, the wireless station at Glace Bay might at this very minute be receiving the Morse dots and dashes sent from the transmitter at Poldhu, now back in operation. He shivered as he thought of the staggering immensity of the distance and the threadlike fragility of the electromagnetic signals cast out into the void—and the remarkable, perhaps even miraculous fact that they could be received and converted into human language. “Marconi's miracle,” as it was called, might be just a small first step, but it could lead to other inventions which would change the world.

“Look there,” said the constable, and a light tap on his shoulder brought Charles back from his thoughts, “That's our man, isn't it?”

Charles trained his glasses on a small figure with a Gladstone bag in his hand, trudging down the track toward the harbor. “Indeed,” he said, and got to his feet. “Time to move into position. We need to be close by and ready when Kirk-Smythe gives the signal.” And with that, they scrambled down the heather-covered hillside and made their way onto the breakwater.

Their quarry did not look back. He walked rapidly out to the end of the sea wall, climbed down the stone steps, and stopped beside a moored boat. “Ahoy,” he called, somewhat tentatively. “Anybody here?”

Kirk-Smythe appeared above deck, beckoned, and went below again, and the man, glancing apprehensively around, climbed over the deck rail and boarded the sloop.

Charles and the constable moved out onto the sea wall and waited. In a few moments, Kirk-Smythe came up the galleyway carrying a bucket of water. He glanced in their direction, tossed the water into the harbor, and disappeared again.

“That's the signal,” Charles said, with some relief. “The fellow has it with him.”

So much, at least, had gone as they hoped. From the camera bag on his shoulder, Charles took out the Webley revolver the constable had lent him and tested the action, gently lowering the hammer against the frame. It wasn't likely there'd be a need for the gun, for the constable was armed with his stout wooden truncheon, and Charles hoped that it alone would be sufficient to dissuade their man from any rash action. But when the trap was sprung, the fellow would be desperate—and if armed, dangerous.

He looked around. There was nothing to be seen but a pair of fishing boats making for the leeward end of the island, and a sailing yacht running in toward the sea wall on a fair west wind, its mainsail out and jib luffing.

“Let's go,” he said crisply.

“Right behind you, sir,” said the constable.

At the end of the wall, they descended the stairs and stepped onto the sloop. Charles nodded to the constable, who rapped the deck rail smartly with his truncheon. “Police! Up top, smartly, now. Show yourselves!”