Chapter Six

After a hot shower and a change of clothes, I rang for room service and ordered a meal. Eventually a waiter arrived with a trolley and wheeled it into the room. He was an elderly man, seasoned with experience, and I approached him confidentially.

‘I’m looking for information on two counts,’ I began before he had the chance to leave the room. ‘Firstly, I’d like to know if there’s a regular fairground in Cornwall. Secondly, I’d like to know whether a man exits in these parts whose the fount of knowledge. Someone who knows everything about everyone.’

He shrugged his shoulders aimlessly. ‘I’d like to help you, sir,’ he replied with a Buster Keaton expression on his face, ‘but I have a very poor memory for names and faces.’

I reached for my wallet and produced two bank notes., holding the first one out to him. ‘Maybe this’ll help your memory.’

He shuffled forward and took the money nodding politely. ‘Come to think of it, sir, there’s a fairground in Cornwall which travels about at this time of year. At the moment it’s in Redruth... at the Fairfield. Next week it’ll be in Penzance for the Corpus Christi. But to be honest, I don’t think it’ll be of much interest to you. It consists mainly of dangerous rides for young people and fairground side shows.’ I held up the second bank note and he looked at it without showing any expression on his face. ‘There’s a man one might call a fount of wisdom who comes to this hotel frequently. A Mr. Trevelyan. He always sits in the bar downstairs usually at the left-hand side of the fireplace. Information is available on a cash-basis only. He’s the man you want.’

I took a short nap after dinner dwelling on the adventures of the day. There was something that was troubling me greatly but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It gnawed away at my brain for a full hours as I slept lightly and then I woke up sharply to reality. Of course, Warden had to be Patrick Laity! The answer was staring me in the face. The name was Thomas Arthur Philip Warden. If one reversed the initials they read P.A.T... Pat for Patrick! And while Laity referred to the church, so did Warden. I now knew it to be him. He had adopted the name to avoid any vigilantes in the village finding him. Warden and Patrick Laity were the same man! A person with a price on his head!

Some time later, I went down to the bar and got myself a drink before moving towards the fireplace. The man I was looking for sat on the left-hand side. Trevelyan was an inordinately expansive man with a remarkable likeness to the late film star Sidney Greenstreet who had appeared in films with Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart such as The Maltese Falcon. His fat body, draped in a good-quality grey suit, nestled comfortable on an armchair and he smoked a large Havana cigar. Although he was probably in his late fifties, his round boyish face belied his age, causing him to appear to be younger. As I approached him, he search my face inquisitively for he knew instinctively that I was going to ask him for information. Nonetheless, he puffed out a slim column of grey smoke and continued to adopt an air of aloofness. He failed to reply when I mentioned his name, staring vacantly towards the long hallway which ran alongside the room. I waited for the moment to pass but he seemed to refuse to look directly at me, so I stood in front of him deliberately blocking his view.

‘Do we know each other?’ he asked casually, as though my presence meant nothing to him at all.

‘I think you can help me,’ I told him, believing him to be a simple trader of information in this remote part of Britain. ‘I’m looking for a man by the name of Patrick Laity. Do you have nay idea where I might find him?’

He drew deeply on the cigar releasing the smoke slowly through clenched teeth. ‘Why come to me?’ he asked.

‘You were recommended to me.’

‘Really, sir!’ he laughed loudly which sounded like a long wheeze. ‘I’m afraid I’m expecting someone shortly. A guest, you understand. Naturally one can’t reserve seats in the hotel lounge but I’m sure you’re courteous enough not to interfere with my arrangements.’

‘You don’t have a Cornish accent,’ I ventured, ignoring his effort to get rid of me.

‘Is that important?’ he countered shifting the weight of his fat body. ‘What does it matter to either of us?’

‘The name Trevelyan’s very Cornish. Look... I’m prepared to pay you handsomely for information.’

‘Handsomely is a very wide adverb,’ he responded sagely. ‘What might be handsome to you might be trifling to others.’

‘I’ve come all the way from Los Angeles to find Patrick Laity only to discover a tombstone in Constantine cemetery where he was buried. Then I find out he’s alive and kicking years after his death. He tried to buy Botallack mine with the help of a business partner. A man was killed and Patrick disappeared. All this happened many years ago. I want to meet him and then fly back to the States.’

‘What do you do in Los Angeles?’

‘I’m a film scriptwriter. Patrick’s parents fostered me during World War Two. I was an evacuee.’

He drew long and hard on the cigar watching the smoke curl towards the ceiling. ‘Do you think you could get me a part in a film. Some people think I look like Sidney Greenstreet, the famous film actor. How about this?’ His face adopted a stern look and he pitched his voice in a slightly lower key. ‘No, sir,’ he began acting out his fantasy. ‘I don’t think we can do business along those lines.’ He smiled as though waiting for applause. ‘Those were Greenstreet’s actual words in the Maltese Falcon but I don’t s’pose you remember the film. It was a product of the film industry in the early part of World War Two. Hm... a film scriptwriter. I’m very impressed. Yes... I’d be delighted to start a career as a character actor in a film. I’d like that!’

‘May we talk in private, Mr. Tevelyan?’ I suggested.

His head remained in the same position while his eyes swivelled to take in the area around us. ‘I thought we were talking in private,’ he returned calmly.

‘I mean in the privacy of my room. I’m staying in this hotel. It might serve both our interests to talk there.’

He kept quite still for a short while before making an awkward movement to shift his body like an injured whale. Then the weight of his body, his balance, and the arm of the armchair offered sufficient stability to enable him to pull himself to his feet. ‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘I hope it’s all on the square. If you have any strange ideas I have powerful friends who you would find both vicious and violent.’

It was hard to know whether he was uttering a threat or acting out a part once accomplished by his film likeness in a B-movie. In my opinion, Trevelyan was terribly bored and loved to be fanciful at times. Whether he was good at providing information was another matter. That much would be revealed very shortly.

***

Trevelyan followed me to the elevator but neither of us spoke during the brief journey to my room. After the lift doors opened, he stepped out heavily behind me with a measured tread, moving his giant bulk fairly swiftly along the corridor. Once inside the room, I invited him to sit in the small armchair which he did with great difficulty, still puffing at his cigar, and I opened the cocktail cabinet to offer him some refreshment. He chose to drink his whisky neat and I passed him a glass and poured some liquid into it.

‘Say when!’

I distrust a man that says ‘when’,’ he uttered sharply. ‘If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.’ There was a short pause as I stopped pouring. ‘I thought you were a writer in the film business,’ he challenged.

‘That’s my vocation.’

‘You should recognised those words. Sidney Greenstreet as Kaspar Gutman in the Maltese Falcon.’ He shrugged his shoulders at the bland expression that I gave him. ‘Of course it was made in the early 1940s when you were a child but it’s in your field. You ought to have picked it up.’

I placed the whisky bottle on the small table and poured myself a drink before sitting on the bed to face him. He persisted in identifying himself with the old actor and I tried to recall some details about the man. He didn’t make his first film until he was sixty-one years old. Successful in a number of British and American theatre plays, he had been offered parts in films but had always turned them down. Then he read the script of The Maltese Falcon and he was sold. It was the start of a new career in which the public saw him as a cold, heartless, calculating villain. The real Greenstreet, in a personal sense, was expansive in size although he moved with apparent ease and speed. He often told amusing stories about his weight, such as the outdoor performance of As You Like It, when he was trampled by a runaway horse, ‘Didn’t hurt me!.’ he had related afterwards in a casual manner., ‘but the horse had to be destroyed!’ Warner Brothers made the mistake of relegating him entirely to villainous roles even though the actor dreaded such narrow typecasting. Consequently, all the roles he desired were denied him. He left Warner Brothers to freelance in Hollywood joining Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer to make a hit with ‘The Hucksters’ in 1947 and a further six films until he died in 1954. The obituary column in the Variety newspaper mentioned him simply as ‘a character actor’. They should have proclaimed him as ‘Hollywood’s most captivating villain’... a superb, if not brilliant actor... a man with tremendous talent. But such is the whim of fame!

‘Come, come!’ ventured my guest, breaking into my thoughts. ‘We’re both busy men. Exactly what do you want?’

‘Patrick Laity,’ I responded. ‘I want to know everything and anything you know about him.’

‘Wasn’t’ he that scoundrel in the nasty Constantine business many years ago? Chased all the women in the village into their beds and then pretended he was killed in a car accident when all the village ganged up to get him.’

‘So you know that he’s still alive.’ He did seem to be the fount of knowledge.

‘Of course he’s still alive. A rogue of the first water. Such men always escape... it’s their destiny. The miserable rat came to my office asking for money. He wanted funds to set up in business. At least that’s what he told me. You see, I used to own a money-lending business. Laity was always in trouble. Changed his name whenever it suited him, as is the whim of all men of straw. Laity, Warden, Sexton, and the like.’

‘All names connected with the church.’

‘It’s so obvious, it’s boring. He came to me as Sexton. A bad egg if ever I saw one, but some people with such mischief in their bones often have tremendous potential. History’s littered with the names of people who cared not to conform with the rules of civilisation because their talent exceeds opportunity at any particular time. Winston Churchill, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela... even Christ. One needs to harness their energies and ideas and use them accordingly. I wouldn’t lend Sexton, or Laity as you knew him, one single penny to carry out his plans. Not on your life. I wouldn’t trust him with my grandmother or my money.’

‘That’s pretty much an indictment,’ I told him flatly. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘Quite some time ago. I heard that he’d gone to the United States and joined the army. They sent him to Vietnam where the U.S, forces were carrying out an offensive in the Mekong Delta. Then the General Staff abandoned the Khe Sanh base because the forces south of the demilitarised zone had been increased to enable attacks to be made against the Viet Cong. Sexton was fighting somewhere north of Khe Sanh facing an unseen enemy across a plain which had been mined and booby-trapped. It was the beginning of the monsoon period and the rain torrented down. Sexton started grimly at the battlefield shrouded by a vast area of dense shrub and forest and, with his rifle in his hand, he stood up and walked forward slowly. The prevailing silence ended as the ceaseless prattle of machine-gun fire echoed in his ears, accompanied by the sound of exploding shells, the noise of which pounded away in his head. His sergeant yelled at him to stay down but he ignore the order., The sight of yesterday’s slaughter... of wounded soldiers, lost limbs, blooded corpses, mutilated bodies, and the misery of death all took its toll on his mind. He could accept no more He recognised the futility of war where men of all ages were cut down indiscriminately every day. It destroyed the sons of parents, the young of grandparents, the brothers of sisters, and the fathers of sons. It was all so pointless!’

‘Very eloquently put and more fictional than any of my screenplays,’ I retorted with an element of anger in my voice. I didn’t need to hear this rubbish which had no element of truth in it! He paused but I had little option but to allow him to continue play-acting for the moment.

‘Sexton decided not to resort to murder any more. He would never take another human life and failed to comprehend why someone whom he had never met... didn’t know... had never spoken to... would want to kill him either. Shots fired from the enemy lines missed him narrowly but the whole battlefield fell silent when they realised that he walked alone. Everyone froze as he entered the minefield... the end of his personal conflict... the termination of his strife. The sergeant ordered him to return but the words were drowned by the rain. Sexton had never wanted to go to war and fight. They had forced him to leave his home, his town, his family, his job, his sweetheart, his possessions, his ambitions, and his aspirations. In exchange, they handed him a uniform, and a rifle, and sent him to a strange land on the other side of the world telling him to kill the enemy in the name of democracy. At first, when the battle raged, he had trembled like a leaf, praying that the others wouldn’t notice his fear. In time, he aimed the rifle at blank faces across the barren plain and the shadows in the dense forest. By now, he was halfway across the minefield. Everyone waited to witness his demise but nothing happened. As he completed his journey, he dropped his rifle and began to sing a Christmas carol. Slant eyes stared at him without pity from the cover of the jungle and a Vietnam youth, hardly sixteen years of age, squinted through the gun-sight of an obsolete Russian rifle before pulling the trigger to score his first victim of the war. The sound of a single shot echoed across the waste land and Sexton fell dead... shot between the eyes. For one brief moment he had been an ambassador of peace, a catalyst seeking to save the lives of warriors on both sides. Within ten seconds, the guns were blazing again and more men lay dying in a conflict that never seemed to end.’

As he finished, I lowered my glass and applauded him with a slow handclap. ‘I presume you want to impress me with your histrionic ability,’ I scoffed. ‘You have a very good imagination. How about getting to the truth?’

He smiled amiably and puffed on his cigar before raising his glass to me in token. ‘One should never close any doors,’ he wheezed. ‘I’m younger than Greenstreet when he started his film career. There must be some hope for a man of my talent.’

‘I liked the part where they told him to leave his home, his town, his family and all that,’ I commented recalling part of his dialogue. ‘He never had any of them either here or in the United States. But, to your credit, you draw a picture like a tapestry. From what I’ve learned so far Patrick had never had any of those things... except sweethearts.’

‘You must forgive me,’ he apologised tamely, ‘but I never give information away for nothing. It always has values in terms of cash. Some people pay to hear it, others pay to silence it.’

At that point, the telephone rang and I answered it. Shrugging, I handed the receiver to Trevelyan. He shifted his body uneasily and grunted into the instrument but he never uttered a single word before handing it back to me to return to its cradle.

‘You’ve been a busy little bee, haven’t you?’ he said rhetorically. ‘‘Tamara Hosky, Agnes Varcoe, Botallack, Miles Murdoch, and now me. I have to admit, you impress me.’

‘How do you know all that?’ I demanded angrily, annoyed that someone had been keeping track of every step I had taken. ‘Who’s been telling you about my activities?’

‘My dear sir,’ he wheezed. ‘Let’s not quibble about trivialities! I trust you’ll reward me commensurately for the information I have to tell you about Laity. Perhaps I can right a wrong even at this stage. You obviously know that he’s sought after by the police for the murder of Tucker who fell down a mine shaft at Botallack. It was a most unfortunate accident and Laity was blamed for it.’

‘If it was an accident,’ I cut in, delighted to hear those words, ‘then why did Stuart Meacham testify against him?’

‘Meacham wasn’t anywhere near Botallack that evening. I know that to be a fact because while your precious Mr. Laity was at the mine Meacham was having an affair with my wife. I’m probably the only person who knows the truth in this matter. At the time Tucker fell down the shaft, Meacham was making love to my wife in this very hotel.’ He looked around the room as if to determine whether it was the same one. ‘When Meacham learned that the old man at the mine had seen the incident, he told him to keep his mouth shut. He said he was going to inherit the mind and he would evict him if he told the truth. It was a cheap way to secure silence.’

‘But why should he do that?’ I asked completely baffled.

‘Meacham was filled with hate. Laity ruined his marriage to Demelza Treviscoe. He used his charm to lure Demelza away and, being the Casanova that he was, he caused her to become pregnant. Meacham swore that he would get him in any way he could. But all this is sordid stuff and of little interest to you.’

‘Why did he come to your office to borrow money?’

‘For a writer, you don’t listen too carefully, do you?’ he chided, expressing a tone of disappointment. ‘I told you, he wanted money to start a business. Perhaps I failed to tell you the details. He didn’t ask to borrow it. When I found him, he was trying to open the safe... to steal it! By sheer chance, I had left my umbrella behind and went back to get it... and there he was. I was a fighting man so, after a heated discussion, we sat down and negotiated like civilised people.’

‘Negotiated... for what?’

‘Well his plans were those of a born loser. He would have gone bust in six months. But I had plans. I agreed to let him in to a partnership with me if he could provide certain information.’

I thought about his words for a few moments and nodded. ‘I see. With Patrick’s help you switched from money-lending to blackmail. There was no outlay... only income.’

‘Oh dear,’ he responded with mock repentance. ‘ I hope you’re not going to judge me for my past actions.. It was a very nice proposition for Laity. He enjoyed it immensely when, as they say in the films, I gave him a piece of the action. Apparently when faced with blackmail from an angry woman, the Duke of Wellington said ‘Publish and be damned!’ But people are too scared to have their sins broadcast to the nation.’ We did very well.’

‘How long did this arrangement last?’

‘Two years. But first we had to disguise him so that he could avoid being captured by the police. They had a very clear picture of him and they didn’t believe that he was dead.’

‘Cosmetic surgery!’ I blurted out before he could explain.

‘Very good!’ he commended, as though I had recovered my place in his esteem. ‘Cosmetic surgery. A newly-shaped nose, smaller ears. All that sort of thing. Unfortunately we couldn’t do much about his height except to order special shoes with ‘lifts’ in them to make him a few inches taller.’

‘What did Patrick have to do?’

‘He would enter the homes of reputable people while they were absent to examine their bureaux, desks and safes. You’d be surprised how many people in the public eye enjoy leading a double life. Men tell their wives they’re working late at the office, or attending a meeting, while they tom-fool around with a mistress. Laity, in his Casanova way, used to make a deal with the mistress, who allowed him to take photographs when she and her paramour were in flagrante delicto. Often he found two sets of books whereby a businessman was defrauding the Inland Revenue, or someone running an illicit business on the side. Such people were caught in a vice and had to pay up or else. They could hardly complain or inform the police for fear of the repercussions.’

‘And now you’ve become legitimate.’

‘Most certainly, sir. There’s a time for everything.’ He appeared to be dismayed that I would think of him to be anything but a legitimate businessman. ‘But Laity couldn’t adjust to any kind of job be it honest or criminal. He was too itinerant for that. One day, he came to the office to collect the money due to him. I paid him off, the partnership ended, and we parted friends. That’s all I can tell you about your esteemed colleague. However, for a fee, I’m willing to do some research... to find out more. You Don’t have to pay me until I deliver the information.’

‘Where do I get in touch with you?’

‘You’ll always find me downstairs in the bar where you found me this evening. Do we have a deal?’

‘We have a deal,’ I agreed quietly, having no alternative but to rely on the man.

He raised himself awkwardly from the armchair managing to get to his feet unaided. Then he stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray and left. I felt uneasy about the alliance. In my opinion, he was nothing more than a parasite. He represented the seamier side of life with all its evil ramifications and I, as a result of necessity, had become a willing collaborator fuelling the issue with finance. In a short while, I was touched by the amusing side of the situation and began to laugh. Trevelyan had modelled himself on Sidney Greenstreet. He had taken the trouble to learn tranches of dialogue by heart from The Maltese Falcon and other films. It was likely that he spent a great deal of time in front of the mirror identifying himself with the actor in terms of speech control, copying all his eccentric actions. But while Trevelyan would have been delighted to be involved in the remake of the films in which Greenstreet acted, there were no substitutes for Peter Lorre or Humphrey Bogart. Despite his casual attitude and bravado, Trevelyan exposed his greatest weakness. He could be bought with a promise of a role in a film in Hollywood. His vulnerability was of vanity in his representation of a film star who had died a long time ago.

***

I relaxed in the armchair in my room with a bottle of whisky, reading an old script that I had written some years earlier. It was a means of re-introducing creative work back into the system. Although I was never short of ideas, the process spared me the effort of identifying a new plot and having to develop it. Under austere revision, it could be redrafted and used effectively for another film. Almost an hour later, I threw my suitcase on to the bed and removed some clothes which I draped carelessly across the top of it. Taking my pyjamas and dressing-gown into the bathroom, I ran a hot bath and wallowed in it lazily, humming a popular song to myself. As a result of the economy measures instilled to me in the war years, I turned off the light. Consequently, it was pitch dark in the room with the curtains drawn as it was in the bathroom. I sank back in the water dwelling on the meeting with the fat man. The atmosphere must have dulled my senses because I failed to hear someone fiddling with the lock of the door to the room. Nor did I hear anyone enter. But I soon became aware of painful grunting as someone barged into the furniture in the darkness. The, before I had time to raise myself out of the water, the bathroom door opened and the light was switched on. The intruder, dressed in black, wearing a balaclava mask ove his head, hardly expected to find me in the bath in the dark and he reeled back slightly in shock as he saw me. My fury at having my privacy disturbed, turned to despair when I realised that he was holding a long-bladed knife in his hand. Reacting quickly, with neither of us gaining the benefit of surprise, I heaved myself out of the bath and hauled violently at the shower curtain, intending to use it to protect myself. However, my effort was far too strong for the hotel fixture because the metal bar supporting the curtain came adrift from its moorings in the wall to strike the intruder firmly on the temple. He was rendered unconscious immediately and I wrapped a towel around myself before contacting the police.

By the time they arrived, I had dried myself and dressed, having tied the intruder hand and foot with the cords of two lamp standards to prevent him from escaping. I hardly need to have taken the trouble for he lay immobile for the whole period. Later on I learned that his skull had been fractured and that he was still in a coma. When I examined the clothes I had draped over the suitcase, I could see that they were damaged beyond repair. The intruder had entered the room and stabbed at them with his long knife. In the darkness, the raised shape of the suitcase on the bed had given him the false impression that I was laying there asleep. I thanked my lucky stars for having switched off the light for it had saved my life. I wondered why he had entered the bathroom. Maybe he thought he had bloodstains on his hands and wanted to wash them off before making his escape. Until he recovered from the coma, no one would ever know.

After he had been taken to hospital, the police turned their attention to me. I was quite surprised at their attitude because they treated me as though I had been the criminal. They must have thought that I intended to murder the man. After a long session of incessant questioning, my head was throbbing. They almost had me believing that I had know the intruder, had invited him into my room, and then tried to kill him. I was appalled especially as the man was still wearing the balaclava mask when they arrived on the scene. According to the police, the Falmouth Hotel was never a target for burglars, so there had to be something sinister going on. The knife had fallen from the man’s hand when the shower rail struck him and the police believed that I had pressed the handle into his hands to get his fingerprints on it. On the question of motive, the police were biding their time to come to a conclusion. They continued to question me repeatedly as to why I had come to Cornwall, why I had come to the hotel, and what I was doing here. They became even more suspicious when my identification showed that I was .living in the United States. One policeman accused me of being one of the Mafia... a hit man fulfilling a contract. By the time the questioning was over, the police considered that I was the guilty person even though they had no evidence to prove otherwise. I was most relieved when they left taking no further action.

After they had gone, I poured myself a stiff drink and pondered the incident. It was most bizarre! I had come to Cornwall for a reunion with my foster brother and, when he was not found, I had made a few simple enquiries. Why should anyone feel so strongly about it that they would want to kill me? It didn’t make sense! Tamara Hoskyn wanted the information regarding Patrick to remain a secret. Agnes Varcoe... no... not in a million years! I could discount the old man at the mine. Miles Murdoch might have an axe to grind but he was only interested in payment for work done in the past. Then I remembered the telephone call that Trevelyan had received in my hotel room. Who was it at the other end of the line who had been tracking me at every step? More importantly... why were they doing so? It looked like I wuld have to safeguard myself from other assailants if I continued my search in Cornwall. But my mind still searched for a reason. Patrick was a ladies man, a seducer, a rogue and a charlatan. He had turned to crime on his own account before acting in concert with Trevelyan, and he was wanted by the police for murder. Who would want to protect such a man... unless there was something worth finding out.! Now there was another kettle of fish! Wht could it be worth finding out when it came to Patrick Laity?