Death in Cornwall
Contents
Cover
Also by G.M. Malliet
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Cast of Characters
Chapter One: Scarecrow
Chapter Two: On Holiday
Chapter Three: The Artist’s Way
Chapter Four: Food for Thought
Chapter Five: Fishers of People
Chapter Six: Haunted
Chapter Seven: This Meeting Is Called to Order
Chapter Eight: Some Enchanted Evening
Chapter Nine: By the Sea
Chapter Ten: Lifesaver
Chapter Eleven: To the Manor
Chapter Twelve: Vile Body
Chapter Thirteen: Going Bodmin
Chapter Fourteen: To the Lighthouse
Chapter Fifteen: Romancing the Lord
Chapter Sixteen: Forbidden Love
Chapter Seventeen: Beach Baby
Chapter Eighteen: De Rien
Chapter Nineteen: Toxic
Chapter Twenty: Bake Off
Chapter Twenty-One: Like a Prayer
Chapter Twenty-Two: Fire
Chapter Twenty-Three: Chickens Come Home
Chapter Twenty-Four: All That Glitters
Chapter Twenty-Five: Something Fishy
Chapter Twenty-Six: Picture This
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Sweet Charity
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Anchor
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Dark and Stormy
Chapter Thirty: The Lady Vanishes
Chapter Thirty-One: Cliffhanger
Chapter Thirty-Two: Rescue Me
Chapter Thirty-Three: All’s Well
Chapter Thirty-Four: Come Fly with Me
Also by G.M. Malliet
The St. Just mysteries
DEATH OF A COZY WRITER
DEATH AND THE LIT CHICK
DEATH AT THE ALMA MATER
The Max Tudor series
WICKED AUTUMN
A FATAL WINTER
PAGAN SPRING
DEMON SUMMER
THE HAUNTED SEASON
DEVIL’S BREATH
IN PRIOR’S WOOD
Novels
WEYCOMBE
DEATH IN CORNWALL
G.M. Malliet
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain in 2021 and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © G.M. Malliet, 2021
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Gineva Malliet Steventon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5038-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0631-2 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0630-5 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
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This book is dedicated to John and Shirley.
And to all the frontline workers whose courage saved so many during the coronavirus pandemic. The world is forever in your debt.
Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters
– Saint-Just, 1793
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to my agent, Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, and my editor, Carl Smith of Canongate/Severn House, for their excellent advice, serene guidance, and remarkable professionalism.
My thanks also to the talented Piers Tilbury, Natasha Bell, and Katherine Laidler of Canongate/Severn House.
And above all, to Bob.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
- Detective Chief Inspector Arthur St. Just of the Cambridge Constabulary.
- Portia De’Ath, specialist in criminology at the University of Cambridge, and St. Just’s fiancée.
- Sybil Gosling, uncanny follower of the Wiccan way.
- The Reverend Judith Abernathy, curate at St. Cuthbert’s church in Maidsfell.
- Sepia Jones, art gallery owner.
- Morwenna Wells, famous restaurateur. She owns the Michelin-starred Maiden’s Arms.
- Callum Page, famous reality TV star. Is he a rival for Portia’s affections?
- Clive Banner, Esq., head of the Maidsfell Village Council, tasked with arbitrating a bitter dispute over alterations to the village waterfront.
- Will Ivey, local and vocal fisherman. He wants the village’s medieval harbour preserved.
- Cynthia Beck, estate agent and ardent supporter of SOS – Save Our Shore – a local preservation society opposed to the fishermen’s cause.
- Lord Titus Bodwally of Revellick House, life peer used to having his way.
- Jake Trotter, proprietor of the Anchor restaurant. Lord Bodwally is his not-so-silent partner.
- Ramona Raven, née Medguistyl Buglehole, writer of romance novels.
- Constable Whitelaw, special constable and keeper of the peace in Maidsfell.
- Detective Chief Inspector Tomas Mousse of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. He recruits St. Just to help him solve a crime of murder.
ONE
Scarecrow
Sunday
There were words for women like Sybil Gosling – words like Wiccan or Druid, or basically any spiritual alliance that fell under the pagan umbrella – but ‘fey’ described her best, particularly since she rejected all organized religion, even the outliers. She believed in harming no one and wishing everyone ‘well and happy’. Possibly as a result, she was a bit of an outcast. She was affable for the most part, and thought to be harmless, but she marched to the beat of her own (Shamanic ritual) drum.
Sybil lived alone on the Cornish moors in a small cottage at the edge of the known British world – not far, in fact, from Land’s End. She tended a vegetable garden and bartered for whatever else she needed; she knitted woollens which she sold in a shop in nearby Maidsfell to supplement her pensioner’s income. When her brother died, she was alone in the world but he left her the house to live in.
She told people she was affiliated with English Heritage, an organization from which she had in fact retired some years before. Actually, it had been quietly suggested she might enjoy an early retirement with more time to spend in her garden.
> At the time, the trust for the organization had been in a flurry of pandemic cutbacks anyway and so, quite unsupervised and unauthorized, Sybil had carried on her duties tending the historic Fourteen Maidens on the headland overlooking Maidsfell – duties which included shooing away teenaged (and other) lovers, keeping evergreen spindle trees and hardy shrubs trimmed and nourished so they could thrive despite cold winter winds and salt air, and collecting rubbish left behind by picnicking non-believers who did not know or care they were in a sacred and holy place.
Children laughed at ‘Sybil the Scarecrow’. The fear behind this taunting pained her, for she loved children. It was the parents who were so often difficult to love, but Sybil never stopped trying. People just needed to channel their energies better and teach their children to do the same.
Her main worry was vandalism, as had occurred when ruffians spray-painted the Fourteen Maidens all colours of the rainbow. She supposed she should be grateful they’d used a washable paint, but her heart had stopped when she’d walked up the cliff path that day and seen the desecration. It had been their idea of a joke, of course. People were ignorant and lacking the imagination to know there would be repercussions. Horrid repercussions.
Another concern, and really the one that kept Sybil awake at night, was the fragility of the cliff itself. With the next heavy rain there could be a cliff fall – huge chunks of mud and stone and grass might break off, the whole site collapse and take the ancient, precious standing stones with it. That sort of thing happened all the time along the Cornish coast, but few monuments like the Fourteen Maidens had been erected atop the precarious cliffs.
A cliff fall would be a calamity not just for the Maidens but for the entire village. The church and churchyard, built on a promontory above the standing stones, was in particular danger. She had tried to warn the village council but been unable to convince the pearls-and-pumps brigade to take up the cause. Her letter to the council, so painstakingly composed, had been read aloud at the meeting. It had been met with witless mirth but no action.
Still, she could not entirely blame them for their ignorance. No one living knew the truth of the Maidens and what they guarded but Sybil herself.
She had decided it was best for now to keep it that way.
One balmy day in August, as Sybil was weeding round the stone closest to the cliff’s edge, her hands froze in their task, hovering as if suspended by ropes above the sacred ground. Without knowing how she knew – Sybil never could divine where the Knowing came from – she knew there was trouble coming to the village of Maidsfell.
A very large, dark-haired man was on the way, a man at the wheel of an oddly small red conveyance. A woman sat at his left. Sybil knew he was a good man, a just man, but trouble had sent him and his lady on their journey.
Or perhaps they were bringing the trouble.
Fleeting, confused images of falling bodies, of blood and fire, passed through Sybil’s mind. She sat back on her haunches, trying to steady herself, only gradually able to slow her breathing.
She wouldn’t know until she met the pair and took their measure. There was no doubt they were headed to Maidsfell.
But whatever brought them or why, the secrets of the Maidens must be kept at all costs.
It was Sybil’s sacred trust.
TWO
On Holiday
It was the height of the summer season in Maidsfell, a village once little known, tucked away as it was on an obscure rocky coast. It had been home to miners, but when the tin mines went into a decline, many men had relocated with their families to the colonies.
The fishers, but fewer of them each year, remained.
All this was changing. Maidsfell’s picturesque stone cottages, scattered haphazardly along clifftop paths with dramatic views of the Atlantic, had inspired artists for decades, but only since the Plague Time had the village become a draw for the well-to-do. If one had to shelter in place, the thinking went, one may as well do it in paradise. Even once the crisis faded, the wealthy found they quite liked the idea of somewhere to escape from it all – ‘all’ generally being London.
For Arthur St. Just and Portia De’Ath, an August holiday offered a rare escape from the pressures of their jobs – she a Cambridge fellow in criminology at St. Michael’s College, he a detective chief inspector in the Cambridgeshire police. It was a chance for them finally to celebrate their engagement to be married, which had been delayed by one crime or crisis after another. On impulse, they’d decided against their tentative plans for Italy, lured instead by what an online advertisement described as a ‘deliciously private’ rental cottage overlooking Maidsfell Harbour in Cornwall.
Their wish was for peace and quiet – blissful nights, late mornings, and days filled with hiking, sunbathing, picnicking, fine dining, and sketching the local scenery (him) or taking notes for a future crime novel (her – Portia moonlighted as a well-known detective novelist). Weather forecasters had promised a few sunny days, interrupted by the usual summer storms that would turn up uninvited but just as suddenly disappear.
They had taken the train from Cambridge and rented a car at Truro station. The mid-size model St. Just had ordered online being mysteriously unavailable, they’d been given a tiny red Fiat that made the large policeman look like a circus clown at the wheel, knees jutting up to meet his elbows, nose mere inches from the windscreen. He successfully navigated them out of the crowded streets of Truro but took a wrong turning at a roundabout on the outskirts. In no time they were lost.
‘Looking on the bright side,’ said Portia, as he again aimed the car towards what he hoped was Maidsfell, ‘a mid-size car would probably never make it through these narrow— Sheep!’
He stopped just in time. A flock of sheep had appeared as if dropped from the sky, a rustic-looking shepherd egging them on. St. Just and Portia could have petted the bleating animals as they passed by.
St. Just waited for the shepherd’s approach before winding down his window for a word. One of the flock took this as an invitation to hop in and St. Just gently pushed its face back out, rolling up the window to a three-inch gap.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said St. Just. ‘How much further is it to Maidsfell?’
‘From here?’
‘Well, yes, I thought I might start from here.’
‘Easier to start from Truro.’
‘Probably so. But I need to get to Maidsfell from where I am now.’
The shepherd gave this poser some thought, scratching his wiry brown-and-grey beard, which fell nearly to mid-chest. ‘Depends. If you took Fourteen Maidens Road, it would take you an hour.’
St. Just and Portia exchanged glances. They had downloaded directions from the rental website to their holiday cottage, which directions indicated they should be very near Maidsfell by now.
‘An hour,’ repeated St. Just. ‘Is that the shortest route?’
‘Depends. If you’re in a tractor, you can add half an hour.’
Ah, thought St. Just. Now they were getting somewhere. He was quite certain he was not in a tractor. ‘And how do I get there?’
‘You can’t get there from here. You’ll need to start in Truro.’
St. Just gave the man his sternest look. Any sensible Cambridge criminal would have quaked at the sight, but this man of the sheep seemed imperturbable. ‘We already started in Truro.’
‘There you are, then. Just head straight to the end of this road and turn left for, oh, about twenty miles. Be right back. Looks like Maggie’s bound for trouble.’
St. Just realized these might be directions back to Truro or onward to Mars. He suspected his leg was being pulled, but also that they were edging nearer the truth, which he might be able to prize out of the man if and when he came back.
Meanwhile, a couple of sheep had seized on the interruption to their day as an opportunity to ramble off, and the shepherd began chasing after them as well as the troublesome Maggie, leaving the others to bleat and poke about the tyres of the little car.
> ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, keeping an eye on the sheep in case of an opening to squeeze the car through. ‘I should have taken the offer of a satnav to go with the rental.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Portia. ‘At least you stopped to ask for directions.’
He turned to look at her, taking in her beautiful wide smile and deep-blue eyes. She wore a white T-shirt over pink shorts that came to just above her knees. They were called pedal pushers in his mother’s day; God knew what they were called now. It was clearly Portia’s going-to-the-beach outfit, probably bought new for this adventure. He realized he’d mostly seen her around Cambridge dressed in the rather bohemian style she favoured and looking like the esteemed Cambridge don that she was.
‘You’re laughing at me,’ he said.
‘I’m laughing with you.’
‘We’ll never get there at this rate. And I’m famished – aren’t you?’
‘Yes. But I really think we’re close now. Can’t you smell the sea air?’
‘All I can smell is sheep.’
‘I know. Don’t they ever wash them?’
‘You are a city girl, aren’t you?’
‘You’re hardly a shepherd yourself, Arthur. How much do you really know about sheep?’
‘Very little; unlike you, though, I have watched many nature documentaries, probably while you were watching reruns of The Crown. Sheep are frequently mentioned in The Blue Planet.’
‘Is that so? It’s a jolly good thing we’re having this discussion before we get married.’
‘Remember, I am no stranger to these parts. I know they wash the sheep once a year before they’re shorn for their wool. Until then, it’s best to stay downwind. Also, I know that after the females are clipped, the offspring can’t recognize their own mothers, which quite naturally makes the lambs cry.’
‘Well, that’s rather sad,’ said Portia, looking round her as if for mismatched sheep. ‘So what happens? Do the mothers just randomly adopt the nearest lamb?’