Churchyard and Hawke Page 15

  Thanking the gravedigger, Amos went back the way he had come but before he was out of sight he glanced back and saw the man still leaning on his long-handled shovel and peering over the edge of the newly-dug grave, watching him ride away. He formed an opinion that his informant had not fully believed his reason for going calling on Connie Dawes.

  The Dawes cottage was in a poor state of repair. Paint was peeling from the door and window frames, and thriving green weed was taking over the ragged thatch of the roof. Despite this, there was a flourishing vegetable garden and it was here Amos found Connie.

  The former Laneglos maid looked pale and ill and when she straightened up to see who was visiting the cottage a hand went to the small of her back and she grimaced painfully. It was quite obvious she was no longer pregnant and Amos thought the baby must be inside the house.

  At that moment an older woman came to the door of a small outbuilding attached to the cottage, the sleeves of her dress rolled up and strands of damp hair hanging down across her face. A few wisps of steam escaped from the doorway around her and she had a clean and almost colourless copper-stick in her hand.

  ‘Hello, can we help you?’ It was the older woman who spoke.

  ‘Thank you, but it’s actually Connie I’ve come to speak to. Let me introduce myself, I am Superintendent Hawke of the Cornwall constabulary.’

  At his words, Amos was astonished to see an expression of terror come to Connie’s face and she immediately looked to her mother.

  ‘What are you wanting with Connie - she’s done nothing wrong?’ There was aggression in the expression on the face of Mrs Dawes, but Amos thought he also recognized another emotion there. He believed she too was frightened by his unexpected arrival at the cottage.

  Their fear was something he would inquire into later. His immediate concern was with a murder.

  ‘I want to speak to her about poor Enid Merryn . . . you have heard about what happened to her?’

  Both women exchanged glances and this time it was Connie who replied. ‘I haven’t heard anything about her since I left Laneglos, we’re too far away to get any news from over there . . . What’s she been and done?’

  ‘Enid hasn’t done anything, it’s what been done to her I’ve come to see you about. She’s dead . . . Murdered.’

  Connie’s reaction to Amos’s blunt statement left him in no doubt that her shock was genuine. Staggering backwards until she was able to lean upon the cob wall of the cottage for support, her mouth opened and closed several times without uttering a sound before disjointed words came forth.

  ‘Murdered . . . ? Someone’s killed Enid . . . ? Why . . . ? Enid never did a bad turn to anyone. Who did it?’

  ‘That’s what I am trying to find out, Connie. I was hoping you might be able to tell me something that would help.’

  ‘Me?’ The fear had returned to her face again, ‘What could I possibly know about a murder at Laneglos, the house is miles away from here and I’ve been left for nigh on a couple of months?’

  Her manner puzzled Amos. She was obviously very shocked about the death of Enid but he did not think it was the murder of the Laneglos scullery-maid that was frightening her.

  ‘Shall we go inside and have a talk about it, Connie? Then you can sit down while I talk, you look as though you’ve been working too hard in the garden.’

  Again there was an exchange of glances between mother and daughter before Mrs Dawes spoke, ‘She hasn’t been very well just lately. You go on into the cottage and make the gentleman a cup of tea, Connie . . . I think we have enough leaves left from the last pot we had. I’ll be in just as soon as I’ve rinsed this washing and hung it out to dry. I’ve promised to have it back with Winnie Hodge by tonight.’

  Amos needed to stoop to pass in through the doorway of the low-ceilinged cottage. The door opened into a room that obviously served as living-room, kitchen and dining-room. It was sparsely furnished with old and clumsily repaired rustic furniture, but there was a scrubbed slate floor and the room was clean.

  A fire was burning in the grate and after attacking it with a poker and adding a couple of small logs which caught immediately, Connie pushed a blackened kettle from the hob farther into the flames where it immediately began making a low, singing sound.

  As she began assembling the tea things on the plank-wood table, Amos asked, ‘Where’s your baby, Connie, is it upstairs? It’s wonderfully quiet. That must be a great relief to you.’

  ‘You know about the baby?’

  ‘Of course, that’s the reason you left Laneglos, isn’t it? It’s one of the reasons I’ve come to see you. I believe Enid was asking you a lot of questions about babies while you were working together. Did you get the impression she believed she might be pregnant too?’

  After only a moment’s hesitation, Connie said, ‘It did just cross my mind, sir, especially with Enid being so simple it would have been easy for any man to take advantage of her.’

  ‘Especially if it was someone in authority.’ Amos said casualty ‘Someone she didn’t feel she could say "no" to.’

  ‘Enid felt that everyone was more important than she was’ Connie retorted, ‘It wouldn’t make any difference who told her what to do, she’d do it because she thought she had to.’

  ‘But you were never like that, Connie, from what I hear you were not in the habit of doing anything you didn’t really want to do . . . unless, of course, you were being told to do it by someone either really important, or who perhaps promised that by doing it you’d be able to live comfortably for the rest of your life and would never have to work again. Was that how it was for you Connie?’

  When she again failed to reply, Amos said, ‘I suppose the same man could have made both you and Enid pregnant . . . ?’

  ‘No!’

  Connie’s vehement denial momentarily startled Amos, but before he could pursue his questioning, Mrs Dawes came into the cottage in time to hear her daughter’s outcry.

  ‘What’s going on? What you doing upsetting Connie? I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone with her.’

  ‘I was merely asking a question about the father of her baby, Mrs Dawes. I believe it might help me with my enquiries into the murder of the Laneglos scullery maid . . . and I am still waiting for Connie’s answer.’

  ‘What baby? It was all a silly mistake, the sort that silly young girls are likely to make before they’re old enough to understand their own bodies. There never was any baby.’

  Amos raised an eye quizzically, ‘Now who am I to believe? Your daughter just told me the baby was upstairs . . . asleep?’

  ‘No I didn’t!’ Connie said, hurriedly, ‘It was you who spoke about it being upstairs.’

  ‘. . . And you who didn’t appear particularly surprised that I knew about the baby.’

  ‘I’ve just told you, there is no baby.’ this from Mrs Dawes, after glaring angrily at her daughter.

  ‘I think we could call a great many credible witnesses from Laneglos to prove Connie was pregnant, Mrs Dawes . . .’ Remembering the expression on the face of the North Hill gravedigger when he had asked where he could find Connie, Amos added, ‘and if it becomes necessary I might have a serious talk with the sexton at North Hill church.’

  From the startled expression on Mrs Dawes face, Amos knew his hunch about the whereabouts of Connie’s baby had been correct. ‘It would be better for everyone if you were to begin telling me the truth about everything.’ he said. ‘My coming here today has nothing to do with what you’ve done, Connie but the fate of your baby will be looked into and the proper procedure followed. Mind you, even if it goes to a criminal court, you know yourself that both judge and jury show great leniency to young girls who get into trouble in the way I believe you did and the coroner might not even send you to a criminal court . . . but I came here to enquire into the brutal murder of a young girl who was once a friend of yours, Connie and I need your help.’

  Amos believed Connie’s baby was dead and had been buried in the North Hill gr
aveyard. It was a common practice for unmarried girls to pay a sympathetic - or mercenary - sexton to bury a dead, unchristened baby in a quiet corner of consecrated ground during the hours of darkness - with no questions asked. If such an illegal act was discovered there would need to be a post mortem and inquest into the cause of the baby’s death, but both coroner and the doctor carrying out such post mortems were usually sympathetic towards the unfortunate and usually poverty-stricken mother. A verdict would be given that there was no evidence to show the baby was born alive and the mother would walk free.

  ‘I can’t help you. I didn’t even know for certain Enid was pregnant. If she was you ought to speak to that London boy who was working there as a footman when I left. He had more to do with Enid than any of the other men servants. Far too much, if you ask me.’

  ‘I believe anything that happened to Enid occurred before he arrived at Laneglos, Connie. Besides, he’s dead now too. He fell into a river and drowned after being involved in a robbery at the big house.’

  Connie was obviously startled by the news, but after a few moments, she said callously, ‘Oh well, he wasn’t much good to anyone. The only one who would have missed him is Enid . . . and now she’s dead.’

  ‘Things have certainly been happening at Laneglos since you left there, Connie. You know your late employer, Lord Hogg is also dead?’

  ‘Mum told me. She was at church on Sunday when they offered up a prayer for him. I was sorry to hear of it, he was a nice man.’

  ‘So I believe - but if you can’t tell me anything about Enid perhaps we ought to clear up the business of what happened to your baby, does the father know it’s dead?’

  The closed down expression that came to Connie’s face confirmed Amos’s suspicions about the father of her dead baby and he added, meaningly, ‘You see, Connie, anything you tell me about the father of your child might help you in the coroner’s court.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. There’s some things best kept quiet - and that’s what I intend doing.’

  ‘You maintain that attitude to a coroner, Connie, and you are likely to lose any sympathy he might have for you - and that would be disastrous for your future.’

  ‘I’ll worry about that when the time comes. You said your main concern is to catch whoever killed Enid. I know nothing at all about that, so you’re just wasting your time here with me’

  CHAPTER 26

  At the Hawke’s home that evening Harvey Halloran joined Amos, Talwyn and Tom for supper. He had called at the house with information for Amos, who had been absent from the Bodmin police station all day. When Talwyn saw him she told him he looked as though he needed fattening up and she insisted that he stay for the evening meal.

  Each of those at the supper table had contributions to make on the events of the day and of them all Harvey’s was possibly the most important. He had received a letter from a friend in London who was aware that Harvey had been making inquiries about Alfie Banks some weeks before.

  He wrote to say Alfie had not been seen in Hoxton for some time but although word was going around that he was on his way to America there were few who knew him who believed the rumours. It was felt that he was lying low until the anger of a number of prominent villains who felt Alfie had let them down badly by persuading them to take part in an ill-planned and badly bungled criminal excursion to the south western region of England had cooled.

  Those who had taken part in the abortive trip were serious out of pocket. As a result, Alfie’s standing in the Hoxton community was at an all time low. If he returned there in the very near future his life would be in serious danger.

  It meant Alfie was not going to be easy for Amos to find but, as he pointed out to the others about the table, unless they were able to find more evidence to use against him, they still had nothing to prove his guilt in either the Laneglos robbery or Enid Merryn’s murder. In fact, unless some of the men arrested on the night of the county ball for burglary, or attempted burglary, gave evidence against him they had no firm evidence he had ever been in Cornwall.

  When Talwyn suggested it might be possible to recover the horse stolen from Laneglos and have the purchaser identify Alfie as the seller, Amos revealed that he had already sent details of the animal to neighbouring police forces but was not optimistic about having success in finding it. The chances were that Alfie had sold the horse to gipsies who would either sell it on again quickly, or change its appearance in order to render it unrecognisable.

  Tom’s interview with the gamekeeper known to be having an affair with Peggy Woods had proved equally frustrating.

  ‘He is a thoroughly unpleasant man,’ he said, ‘Although he became worried when I told him we knew of his ongoing affair with Peggy and that he had seen her that night, he confirmed the story that she was with him in the hay barn for only a few minutes. He made a statement about what he’d done but there was no remorse. He seemed almost proud of the affair. It baffles me what any woman would see in him, yet he has a loyal and loving wife, two very nice children - and a mistress!’

  ‘There is no accounting for a woman’s taste in men.’ Talwyn commented, as she left the room to fetch something from the kitchen, ‘it is sometimes the apparently most mismatched couples who seem to have the best marriages, however badly either of them behaves.’

  ‘Did you find out anything of interest from any of the other gamekeepers?’ Amos asked Tom.

  ‘Nothing . . . although one of them said he heard a pony and what he believed to be a light cart trotting along the lane to the North of the estate, but he was too far away to get to the lane and find out who it was.’

  ‘That could have been Alfie and Jimmy.’ Amos said, ‘What time did he hear them?’

  ‘He couldn’t say for certain but thought it might have been between one and two o’clock.’

  ‘Then the chances are that it was them - but that brings me to something else we must look into. Jimmy was not working at Laneglos for very long and had little time off to get to know the roads and lanes of Cornwall while he was here. Someone must have supplied him and Alfie with a map and told them how best to leave Cornwall using a route that we wouldn’t be expecting them to take.’

  ‘Alfie couldn’t have been anticipating having to use that particular route.’ Tom pointed out. ‘He and the others were expecting to put their loot on board the Mermaid, return their hired horses and vans and sail away leaving us wondering how they had made good their escape. Alfie would have had a very short time to change his plans and was unlikely to know how best to get away with the loot. . . but where does Enid Merryn’s murder fit in with all this?’

  ‘Perhaps she was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.’ Talwyn had re-entered the room in time to hear Tom’s question and put forward the suggestion.

  ‘It’s possible.’ Amos agreed, ‘but I don’t think so . . . and I don’t believe we will find an answer until we learn who unbolted the door for the burglars. I am convinced it wasn’t any of the servants going out to meet a lover who inadvertently allowed the burglars to gain an entrance to the house. In my opinion the robbery at Laneglos was not included in the original plans of the Hoxton gang, but was decided upon at the last moment by someone who knew where to find Alfie and Jimmy - and who probably told them exactly what they should take from the house.’

  ‘What makes you believe that?’ Talwyn asked.

  ‘Well, from all we were able to learn about the original plan, it seemed that all the criminal activity was to take place on the night of the summer ball. If we hadn’t got wind of it in time the Cornwall constabulary would have been thrown into utter disarray. By the time we pulled ourselves together the Mermaid would have reached London with the villains and their ill-gotten gains. No professional burglars would have stayed behind to burgle a house like Laneglos. They would have known the police would be swarming over the county like a swarm of angry bees. No, the decision to rob Laneglos was a desperate and daring attempt to recover something from their abortive journey
to Cornwall and it was only made possible because we had been successful in thwarting what had been a cleverly planned and co-ordinated criminal attack against Cornish society.’

  ‘And because there was communication between the two Banks’s and someone in Laneglos!’ The observation came from Talwyn, who added, ‘but how could that be achieved without anyone noticing something out of the ordinary - or seeing strangers about the house or its grounds?’

  ‘That takes us right back to where we started.’ Tom said, in frustration, ‘One of the Laneglos servants must be involved, but we are no closer to knowing who it is.’

  ‘Unless Enid Merrryn saw something and was murdered as a result.’ Amos suggested, ‘I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought and I’m not convinced that the person involved is necessarily a Laneglos servant. A lot of the guest’s took servants with them when they went to the ball and some were left behind to help with clearing up and packing the belongings of their employers. We are told they had all left by the night of the burglary, but I doubt if anyone can be absolutely certain - after all, no one really knew when Enid was last seen alive. What if one of the visiting servants had been hiding in a maid’s room, perhaps with her connivance? Someone might even have been hiding in Enid’s room without her knowledge and she found them there? It would provide yet another motive for her murder, to stop her from telling us who it was - but Tom found no evidence of anyone having been there.’

  Entering the conversation once again, Talwyn said, ‘I thought you believed she had been murdered so she wouldn’t reveal the identity of the father of the child she was expecting?’

  ‘I still favour that as a motive,’ Amos conceded, ‘but until we have something positive to go on we can’t rule out anything.’

  Shifting his attention to Tom, he said, ‘I think you are going to have to return to Laneglos and have another chat with Flora Wicks, Tom . . . but I presume that will be no hardship?’