JUST AFTER ELEVEN, DCI Penwarren paused at the door of the Bodmin incident room. Morgan was at her desk, having just rung off with Lloyds. West was hunched before his computer screen reading reports. Terry Bates, looking fresh despite a long day on Saturday, was at the back of the room, pouring a coffee. He shook his head and thanked his lucky stars he had such talented and devoted people on his team. Time and time again they made him look good, not that looking good much mattered to him, but it kept Superintendent Crawley at bay. That in itself was a daily blessing.
“Hello people.”
Heads turned.
“Sir!” It was like a chorus.
“Might we have a chat? I should like to get up to date. In my office?”
Penwarren’s voice, as usual, was solicitous, as if apologizing for interrupting. The three leading MCIT members followed him down the hall and gathered at the DCI’s round birchwood laminate conference table. Sunlight poured in though the wide windows. As was his habit, Penwarren stood for a while, his back to them, gazing out to the verdant stone-walled meadows on the hills beyond and thanking the powers that be they hadn’t built the Hub in crowded and often dreary central Bodmin.
His team had learned to wait until Penwarren was ready.
“As you may imagine,” Penwarren began, “Superintendent Crawley is all over me, thanks to that vague Cornishman article. Maybe that’s because of his name…so like ‘crawling’…”
They laughed.
Penwarren turned and sat. “He’s been here this morning and has already gone.”
“Early riser, coming down here from Exeter…”
“Fearful riser, I suspect, Morgan. And under pressure, I would guess. Nonetheless, he is our superior, and I need to keep him posted. What do we have at this point?”
Morgan spoke first. “As I’m sure you know, we have some DNA. We also have some new prints. They’re not available yet.”
“Yes. I told him.”
“Terry and I have interviewed Mary Trevean’s closest friends: neighbors and pals at the pub, the Tinners, yet with little positive result. None of them can say why anyone might have wanted to harm the woman.”
“Did any of these interviews suggest anything that might be relevant, the slightest jealousy? A grudge? Romance?”
Terry answered first: “I talked to Alice Biggins and Billie Kerrow, the duck farmer. Morgan interviewed Eldridge Biggins at the Camborne station. Alice told me about how close friends her husband and Mary were. Alice felt the same and also had a close friendship with Mary’s late husband.”
Penwarren raised an eyebrow. “Sounds rather cozy to me.”
“I didn’t get the sense that it was anything but friendship. But she did hint that she thought Mrs. Trevean lately seemed excited, like she had someone new in her life. Reckon that might just have been envy; not much exciting in Alice’s life near as I could tell.”
“And ‘the duck man?’ Single, according to the case reports. Might he have had something going with Mrs. Trevean?”
Terry laughed. “Billie? I can’t imagine it. Desperately shy he is, but comfortable with his ducks—which are stunning, I might add. More than a hundred, I reckon. Snowy white. ‘Pekins,’ he told me. That’s the breed. They love him. He loves them back. Talks to them. Sits among them. It’s charming, really. Don’t know how he could ever butcher any of them in the end, but it’s his living, like any farmer I suppose.”
“Terry?”
“Oh, sorry! I honestly can’t see Billie being involved with Mary Trevean or any woman, much less committing a murder…Sir.”
“Did you take prints?”
“It would have frightened him off. Too timid. So no, I did not. Not yet, anyway. Just had a bit of a chin wag with him. A lovely man he is, actually.”
“Morgan?”
“Eldridge Biggins seemed edgy at Camborne, but then he’d never been in a police station before and I reckon he didn’t like the tight quarters. It figures: he’s out in pastures most of the day or in his big milking barn.”
Penwarren waited.
“He admitted that he was very close to Mary Trevean. Bosom friends, as it were. It’s just like Alice told Terry.”
“Been that way for some years, apparently,” Terry added. “Alice says Mary’s late husband Bert and she admired the bond. They’d always—the four of them—been close, doing things together. But after Bert died, Alice and Eldridge looked after Mary. That’s what Alice said, anyway.”
“Did you believe her, Terry?” Penwarren asked.
Terry took a breath and tilted her head to one side, as if trying to see something hidden. She considered and spoke.
“I have no reason not to, Sir. But if I’m honest, Alice troubled me. Mind you, she welcomed me in, was happy to chat, and was glad for the company, I think. Withdrawn at first, but later she seemed almost needy, like she didn’t want me to leave. Physically, she’s gaunt. She’s not old, barely fifty I reckon. But she looks worn. And there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“Their house itself: I only got a look at the kitchen, mind you, but it looked preserved in aspic from maybe some time in the nineteen fifties. Clean as could be, yes, but nothing ever modernized. It’s like they live in another decade, these Biggins’s.”
Penwarren had been watching Morgan. He could sense the storm coming.
“What’s your take on all this, Morgan?”
“We’ve got bloody nothing, is my take!” she said, her face coloring. ”We’ve interviewed Mary Trevean’s closest associates and have learned nothing. We’ll spread those interviews wider in the area, of course, at the Tinners Arms, for example, and other neighbors. But I think we are wasting our time. I don’t think Mary Trevean’s death has anything to do with these locals. I may be wrong, but I just don’t think so.”
Penwarren smiled and gave her a nod. “Detective Inspector, I am inclined to agree with you.”
Morgan blinked. The other two were speechless.
“May I direct your attention, once again, to Trevega House?”
“Good Lord, boss: how many times do we have to go around this subject?”
“Until the mystery at Trevega House is solved which, if I might remind you all, is one reason why we are here in the employ of the government and the Crown.”
“We don’t need the sermon…”
Penwarren did not take offense. Instead, he smiled: “Actually, I believe you do. Each of you. I have some information, privileged of course, which I believe may bear on this case. But you must swear it will not be shared with Exeter or entered into the database. We are a team. Am I clear?”
No one moved. This was personal to Penwarren; that was obvious.
“Right then, let us begin: Sir Michael Rhys-Jones who, as you know, owns Trevega, has a grown son called Jeremy. He apparently has his father’s gift for finance, but also a violent streak. He beat his wife almost senseless, apparently, in repeated rages, until the physical evidence was discovered by her friend, the wife of the farm manager at Trevega. Sir Michael arranged for a speedy divorce. Jeremy’s abused ex-wife is Nicola Rhys-Jones. Sir Michael’s son was banished and forbidden any contact with his former wife. He’s had a stipend from his father and has been working at a Credit Suisse trading bank in Milan. Sir Michael’s friends at MI5, through the Italian Polizia, have kept quiet watch on Jeremy. But sometime last month he disappeared. He is wanted for raping and attempting to strangle a female colleague at the bank.
“Bloody hell,” Morgan mumbled. She stared at her hands gripped in fists atop the table and could not look up.
“For reasons Sir Michael has shared with me, but which are very private, he believes Jeremy wants nothing more than to return to Trevega. He’s obsessed by it. Sir Michael suspects he is already here in the UK.”
“And you believe this Jeremy is responsible for these bizarre events at Trevega?” Morgan asked. “On what evidence?”
“None, Morgan. Not yet. But I don’t think we have begun to uncover the links in these events. And absent anyone else with a grudge against the Rhys-Jones’s—Michael, Nicola, and Andrew, not to mention the girl, Lee—I see no other suspects.”
“What’s this to do with Mary Trevean?” West asked. He’d been silent throughout, watching things play out.
“We don’t know, other than proximity. Despite the lack of persons of interest thus far, I believe her death is unlikely to be the work of a complete stranger. That leaves someone she knew, possibly a renter who had been with her awhile: possibly the renter who virtually sterilized the Chicken Coop cottage before fleeing. Possibly Jeremy Rhys-Jones. Or some other person she knew whom we have yet to discover.”
His team waited.
“I should like to suggest some old-fashioned footwork. For example, a canvass of people currently registered in accommodations—hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts—anywhere between St. Ives and St. Just. Anyone who seems suspicious. Failing that, we’ll try Penzance.”
“Where do we get the manpower?” Morgan asked. “We three can’t do this alone.”
“I have already contacted the Neighborhood Policing Area people in both towns. They are ready to help. When I say ‘they,’ in the case of St. Just, I mean just one Community Support Officer. The St. Just police branch has been closed. Budget cuts. I have made PC Novak in St. Ives the coordinator of this search. He has three CSOs. They’ll concentrate on St. Ives, a big task, given it’s a tourist town. After all, there are precious few accommodations between there and St. Just anyway…except Mary Trevean’s. I understand you people respect Novak?”
Morgan nodded. Terry grinned as if she’d just been given an award.
“Fine, then. Let’s get on with it. If we need more help, I’ll recruit Ralph Pendennis in Penzance, and ask him to arrange for uniformed constables to man phones or do house-to-house. But let’s stay in the immediate neighborhood first. If Jeremy Rhys-Jones needs to be near Trevega he can’t be far. Nor can he be invisible.”
Penwarren rose, stretched his long spine, and returned to his window.
Morgan remained after Bates and West had left the room.
“With respect, sir,” she began, “I confess I am worried that your connection with the Rhys-Jones family may be…affecting your analysis of this case—or these cases, if you will…”
Penwarren did not face her, but his voice was warm: “I hear you and appreciate your concern, Morgan. More than you might imagine. But you have often relied upon instinct, not just evidence. I am taking a page from your book. It’s something I feel in my bones.”
“My book, as you call it, was written by you. You’re just more careful of the rules than I am, more’s the pity. But you have my complete support…our complete support.”
“Thank you. You are a fine team. The finest.”
And still he stared out the window.