The car crawled up the tree-lined drive towards the sprawling castle; an expanse of turrets silhouetted against a dark but beautifully clear Cornish sky, windows aglow with light as the night drew in around them. It was late. They had arrived off the last train from London, their eyes slow-dancing with tiredness. As their car crunched across the gravel, the trees receded behind them, and ahead a wide lawn of cut grass ran away from them towards the sea. As they followed the winding drive the castle cast shadows in the moonlight, its turrets stretching skywards. The moon hung low in the sky, illuminating its crystal rays on to the vast expanse of restless ocean below. They pulled up outside the entrance. A thick layer of ivy covered the stone walls looming overhead. The great oak door opened, and there was Tom welcoming them in, while moths hovered around him, attracted by the glow from the cast-iron lantern above his head. They opened their car doors, stiff and weary from the journey, to be arrested by the smell of pine trees and fresh sea air. They could hear the sounds of voices and laughter from their friends in the dining-room filtering out through open windows, into the still night air. David Bowie’s ‘Starman’ could be heard crackling from a transistor radio somewhere below, where busy catering staff were preparing meals for the guests upstairs.
Grant awoke from this happy dream of idyllic childhood holidays and was saddened to recall Tom’s last years following his stroke. After a largely sleepless night Grant felt disturbed by the dream, which was a constantly recurring one. The setting was always Cornwall and the year always 1972; the porter was always present; and usually there was a cameo role for Richard Hughes-Webb. What really bothered Grant was the increasing frequency of the dreams, which more often than not turned into nightmares.
The next morning the storm was still raging, so the couple decided to postpone their visit to Tom’s grave and instead to take a walk. They parked their car near Gurnard’s Head and, wrapped in waterproofs and floppy hats, spent the day hiking westwards on the breathtaking cliff top, taking the south-west coastal path towards Cape Cornwall. They walked alone for around two hours, although Brigit was aware of a man some three hundred yards behind them who stopped every time she looked round. She dismissed him from her thoughts and refrained from telling her husband.
‘So, who do you think it was?’ she asked loudly, battling the wind.
‘Ted Jessops was strange,’ Grant shouted back, his eyes fixed on the rising and crashing Atlantic waves below. ‘On the last holiday he had become a rather pathetic figure. Previously he had been an imposing presence, an engaging character who could enliven any company. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had a large face, a large stomach and a thick mop of grey-black hair with Elvis Presley sideburns. By the last holiday he had become a shell of the man he once was, and his hair – what was left of it – had turned ashen-white.
‘There were rumours that he had fathered an illegitimate child who had pursued him to Cornwall to claim paternity. Some four years before this business with Tom he and his wife had been holidaying on the north coast at Constantine Bay. Apparently his unacknowledged daughter named Joanna confronted him on the beach, causing him to panic. Ted was a strong swimmer, and he just turned round, ran into the sea and started swimming away as fast as he could. He hadn’t even acknowledged her existence, let alone responded to her pleas for recognition within his family. The poor girl apparently got into severe distress in the currents as she swam after Ted, and she had to be rescued by coastguards. By the time she was brought ashore, scarcely breathing, Ted had packed his wife and young daughter Caroline into his brown Rover and had started the drive back to the family home in Bromsgrove.’
‘So how did the story get out?’
‘One of the coastguards was Tom’s nephew Ivan. He recognized Ted as the strong swimmer who had exited the scene so swiftly while the girl struggled for her life. Although this incident had occurred four years before, it had stuck in Ivan’s mind as the most harrowing rescue in which he’d been involved. As Joanna was being dragged out to sea by the currents, he and the other coastguard genuinely feared a fatality. The waves were huge, and they really had to race to rescue the girl.’
‘Still, it was remarkable for him to have identified Ted after four years.’
‘It was, and it was an odd thing. It was partly a song that gave Ted away – as well as the presence of his brown Rover at the hotel.’
‘Go on.’
‘Apparently Ivan’s radio was blaring out the Beach Boys’ song “Do It Again” when Joanna got into difficulty in the sea. The song was still blasting out across the beach as Ted rushed his family to the Rover. Four years later, when Ivan went to the hotel to see his uncle about a private matter, he was whistling “Do It Again” when he bumped into Ted and spotted his car. Ted immediately recognized Ivan as the coastguard who had saved Joanna from drowning in 1968 while he so disgracefully fled the scene. Can you imagine the sense of guilt, shame and panic Ted must have experienced?’
‘Did they talk to one another?’
‘Apparently so. Ivan said, “I know you from somewhere.” Ted said, “No you don’t”, and barged straight past him as Tom remarked, “Mr Jessops can be a very rude man.” When Tom had his stroke Ivan was asked by the police if he knew whether Tom had any enemies; having been present at this exchange at the hotel just two days before, Ivan mentioned Ted Jessops. Don’t forget that Ted’s actions could have caused Ivan to lose his life.’
‘Did anyone know why Ivan had gone to talk to Tom while he was on duty? Wasn’t that odd? I mean, he could have seen Tom at his cottage, couldn’t he?’
‘Well, the story goes that Tom had been bailing Ivan out financially for years. When the boy was sixteen he got a local girl pregnant, and he lived with her and the child in a tiny bedsit near the coast at Newquay. He worked intermittently as a coastguard in the summertime across the north coast, but he was always short of a bob or two. His uncle, Tom, was his protector, as Ivan’s parents thought their son had brought shame on the family and had rather ostracized him.’
‘I don’t suppose anyone suspected …’
‘I know what you’re thinking, but Ivan wasn’t “him from the hotel”.’
‘Well, he was there two days earlier.’
‘Now then, Miss Marple, there was no one more upset than Ivan after Tom’s stroke. He visited him every day in his nursing home until he died, and he arranged the funeral.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Grant didn’t reply, thinking carefully about how much he wanted to reveal before deciding to ignore the query.
Brigit persisted. ‘Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? Both Ted Jessops and Ivan had children out of wedlock, even though they handled their paternity in totally different ways.’
‘I take your point, but it’s not for us to judge.’
‘I still don’t see why Ivan couldn’t have visited his uncle when he was off duty.’
‘The story goes that he caught Tom fifteen minutes before his night shift was due to start. Bill, the other porter, warned Tom that he had seen Ivan’s battered Escort in the car park. Tom didn’t seem too perturbed, but Ivan was heard to say, “You never return my phone calls, and you’re never at the pub when I call, Uncle T.” Apparently Tom replied along the lines of “You’ve bled me enough. Summer season’s ending soon, and I need to hang on to some dough.” In those days the hotel would close for the winter, not reopening till spring, and money would have been a major preoccupation. Meanwhile it seems that Ivan had become distracted by the sight of Ted Jessops heading for his car, the brown Rover, and recalled the day that he and the other coastguard had saved the seventeen-year-old girl.’
‘Unlucky for Ted that he hadn’t changed his car,’ Brigit smiled.
‘Unlucky for Ted – or lucky for the inquiry, one might say. When he was interviewed about the girl he was swimming away from he refused to acknowledge that he even knew her. Even though the sea rescue had occurred four years earlier, it didn’t take the police long to spot the connection, and Joanna gave a full statement.’
‘So what happened to Ted after that?’
‘He died.’
Brigit and Grant had stopped for lunch at a coastal pub. As they walked in ‘My Cherie Amour’ was playing on the jukebox. The place seemed frozen in time.
‘Stevie Wonder, 1968!’ he exclaimed. ‘The year of the swimming incident. So many of these pubs are in a time warp.’ Far from being disappointed, he was delighted to scan the surroundings, table skittles in one corner, a shove-ha’penny board in another, signed photographs of lesser-known celebrities behind a copper-topped bar. It had all the paraphernalia of a 1960s’ pub with a bonus – a stunning view of Cornwall’s dramatic coastline.
‘So how did he die, and when?’ Brigit was becoming increasingly interested in Ted.
Her query snapped Grant out of his reverie. ‘Later that year, in 1972. It seems that Big Deal Ted was not doing as well as he would have had everyone believe. His factory had burnt down, there was a problem with the insurance, and he was being treated for depression.’
‘And how does Maigret know all this?’
‘That summer I went out with his daughter Caroline, if you must know. Shortly after we left Cornwall I stayed with the family for a few days. Ted seemed withdrawn, saying little at mealtimes and retreating to his study as soon as he could. What I didn’t know was that he was being treated for manic depression, what’s now called bipolar disorder. He was rumoured to be having electroshock therapy during that last holiday, according to gossip in the hotel. He was a complex man. The approbation of his peer group was very important to him. He felt he had arrived at a type of top table by being able to afford the hotel each year. It gave him a sense of status that reflected, in his estimation, his business success. He particularly cherished acceptance by people from the professions – doctors, accountants and so on – and he used to say, “And me, a humble man from trade.” To lose status with his peer group would have been devastating, and no doubt that was a factor in his disgraceful treatment of Joanna. When I stayed with the Jessops, Caroline and I spent most of the time at the nearby country club, hanging around the bar and playing table tennis with her friends. The relationship fizzled out that autumn, but she wrote to me in November 1972 saying her father had died.’
‘What was the cause?’
‘He was quite overweight, had high blood pressure and was prone to sudden bouts of temper. These days, of course, he would have been treated with pills.’
‘It doesn’t seem as if he would have been mourned very much. What a sad end, even if he sounds rather disagreeable.’
‘Actually there were over two hundred people at his funeral. They came from far and wide. Some were dodgy-looking individuals whom Caroline referred to as “the hoods”, while a number of local friends and acquaintances turned up. Many of them had known Ted since childhood. I suppose at fifty-four he died before most of his contemporaries.’
‘So he wasn’t all bad.’
‘Definitely not. He could be the life and soul of a party. He was a great raconteur and when he was on a roll he could entertain people for hours.’
‘So what do you think went wrong?’ ‘He became tortured by the sins of his past. Clearly he was never able to acknowledge Joanna properly, and her pursuing him to Cornwall on his family’s annual jaunt must have shocked him to the core.’
‘So it should.’
‘Well, whatever, he was apparently never the same after August 1972, and it was only three months later that he had a massive heart attack and died. Of course his decline may have started earlier, but running into Ivan that day at the hotel must have scared the hell out of him. When Ivan saw him again he evidently gave Ted a stare that said “I know what you’ve done, you bastard.” Seeing Ivan that day might have tipped the balance of his health.’
‘How did the police react to the news of his death?’
‘No one really knew. There was a police constable called Stobart who attended the funeral. In fact, he had to take action as the coffin was lowered into the ground.’
‘Why?’
‘Joanna turned up, and while most people were paying their respects she came forward, tossed some earth on the grave and shouted, “Go to hell!” PC Stobart leapt forward and restrained her. He knew who she was, as he had taken a statement from her concerning her biological father a few months earlier.’
Brigit’s thoughts were elsewhere. She was brooding on the man she thought had been following them on the coastal path. Uneasily she recalled seeing a man sitting in his car, deliberately feigning distraction as they drove away.