THE MAJOR CRIME Investigation Team gathered in the incident room at Bodmin at nine Saturday morning.
DCI Arthur Penwarren turned away from the window overlooking the countryside he so loved and from which he took such comfort. Morgan was there, of course, and Terry Bates. Calum West had arrived with some of his Scene of Crimes people from the previous day’s investigation. Penwarren also recognized PC Adam Novak, who represented the St. Ives station, and welcomed him back. Dr. Jennifer Duncan, though, was in charge.
Penwarren nodded for her to begin.
“Okay, Mary Trevean: healthy and well built, as it were, but not overweight,” she began. “No apparent disease or infirmity. An attractive widow, early middle age. Homicidal asphyxiation. The evidence is clear. Calum’s people have identified the cushion used.”
“Calum?”
“From her sofa, boss. Possible trace of sputum, which we’ve sent off for analysis. Might be other traces on the other side of the murder weapon, too, if a cushion can be called that. But, as you know, the DNA tests take a while.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He turned back to the pathologist: “What else, Jennifer?”
“As I noted in the file, she had sex but I cannot determine if it was pre- or post-mortem. There are vaginal abrasions. It was rough.”
“Jesus,” Morgan mumbled.
“I have possible fibers from under her nail clippings, which remain to be analyzed. Probably from the cushion. But no skin. Little evidence of a struggle, though she may have, unless she was already unconscious from the alcohol.”
“The alcohol?”
“Yes. High blood alcohol count: enough in a woman of her size to render her inebriated, possibly semi-conscious. Stomach contents suggest she’d also had a pasta dinner, so wine is the alcohol source I’m going to say.”
Morgan watched Jennifer report. Duncan, who always looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion shoot at these meetings, was wearing an ankle-length natural linen skirt, low heeled saddle brown sandals, and a man-tailored white blouse, tails out and cinched with a thin brown belt that matched her shoes. There was a short necklace of bleached shells around her neck and her blond hair was pulled to one side in a saucy ponytail. She must have worked well into the evening in the mortuary but managed to look fresh this morning nonetheless. Morgan tried not to hate Duncan, her friend and colleague. She admired her greatly.
“Okay, so we have opportunity, yes?” Morgan said. “And the assailant was likely known to her. And we have means: suffocation by a sofa cushion. But why? What’s the motive? Mary Trevean seems to have lived an uncomplicated and quiet domestic life: she cared for her guests; they loved her and were repeat visitors. Well-respected locally, as well. Who could want her dead?”
The room was silent.
“I wonder if I might direct our attention next to Trevega House,” Penwarren suggested.
A few days earlier, Morgan would have exploded at the shift away from the murder. She would have admitted that the events at Trevega were bizarre: a dead cow, a fire, a ruined well, a hurt dog, a car crash. A series of misfortunes at best and no evidence to the contrary. But the apparent attack on the girl, Lee, changed everything for Morgan. She and Lee were sisters in grief; they both had suffered terrible, life-changing losses. But no one had ever attacked Morgan, and they—whoever they were—had nearly killed Lee. A protective fury was building within her, as if the girl were her own.
She took a breath. “You want to fill us in on Trevega House, Sir?
Penwarren paused. How much could he reveal?
“The people at Trevega House, the family called Rhys-Jones, are close to and deeply loyal to the Crown. I have known them since my Scotland Yard days. I respect them.”
He looked around the table. “If any of you can make an argument that these events, one after another, are circumstantial and unconnected, I am eager to hear your analysis. I am serious. Someone please disabuse me of the notion that something dangerous may be going on there.”
Morgan said nothing; she was deep into her fear for the girl. There was a pause and then Terry Bates said, “Really, this is a maths problem, isn’t it?”
Penwarren tilted his head. “Go on.”
“It’s a matter of statistical probability. How many strange and random events occurring in a single place during a fixed period of time have to happen before it begins to add up to something no longer random: a pattern?”
Penwarren smiled. “My point exactly.”
“And how long,” Bates continued, “before it leads to the attempted murder of young Lee, or even, perhaps, the very real murder of Mary Trevean only a few miles away? When does it all become statistically significant?”
Silence.
Terry saw her colleagues’ disbelief. “I think they are related, Trevean and Trevega,” Terry continued, almost in a whisper, “but I have no evidence to support that conclusion.”
“For what it’s worth, Terry, I have no evidence either,” Penwarren said. “They could be entirely unrelated. But it’s time we questioned that.”
Morgan Davies looked at her clasped hands for a moment, as if her knotted fingers could contain the information she held but knew she must share.
“I have something that may be relevant,” she said.
Penwarren looked at her; he’d never known her to be indirect.
“You sent me down to Zennor and the Tinners Arms for a night to chat up the locals. It was chilly and I sat at a table by the fire with a farmer called Eldridge Biggins, his wife Alice, and their friend Billie.”
Penwarren nodded.
“Last night I read the SOCO team’s report on the scene of the Trevean case. The neighboring farmer who showed Calum’s people around Mary Trevean’s properties was Biggins. In fact, after Trevean’s husband died, Eldridge Biggins bought up their pastures and livestock. I checked the property records early this morning. Biggins was a quiet sort; his wife did most of the talking, and he professed only admiration for the people at Trevega House.” She paused and took a breath. “But I suggest he may be a person of interest.”
Penwarren turned back to his window overlooking the valley and pushed his fingers, slender as piano ivories, through his long graying hair.
“It is a lead, certainly. Interview him, Morgan. Camborne station. Adam, can you bring him up from Boswednack?”
“Yes, sir. Of course. When?”
“This afternoon, if possible. Let’s move quickly. But make sure he understands this is just a routine interview of people known to the victim, one of several we’re doing. He is not a suspect. Anything else, then?”
Adam Novak spoke up. “About that brake line failure, sir? That was definitely intentional.”
“I read your report, Constable. Please follow up when you can.”