Missing Susan Read online

  Rowan Rover gaped in astonishment. “In St. Ives?” he screeched.

  “Yes. We’re rather toured out, you know, and we thought it might be fun to potter around the village and… you know … shop.” To her acute discomfort, Rowan was staring at her in complete disbelief. “You want to shop?” he repeated. His expression suggested that he was casting about for some other, more suitable meaning for the word. “You want to pass up these historic, fascinating smugglers’ caves that only I can take you to, in order to go and buy ornamental shrimping nets in that great lowbrow jumble sale by the sea?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Elizabeth. “After all, it will give you a bit of time off here at home.”

  “All of you, then?” he asked, steadying himself against a nearby table against the magnitude of this betrayal. “You all want to go shopping?”

  “In the afternoon, then,” said Elizabeth, feeling that some sort of compromise was indicated. “Maud and Martha did mention that they’d like to see St. Michael’s Mount tomorrow morning. But no caves!”

  Rowan, Samson in the hands of the Philistines, heaved a sigh of resignation. “All right, then. I suppose I can rearrange my plans.” Surreptitiously he patted the pocket of his jacket. The little vial he had brought from home was still there. Now he was forced to use it.

  The party made two tables of five and one of six, with a guest policeman seated at each one. Elizabeth was sitting with Inspector George Burgess, at a table with Alice, Frances, and Martha Tabram. After duly admiring the spacious Trelawny Room (omitting any references to its carpeting), Alice leaned forward and whispered, “Did you tell him, Elizabeth?”

  Before she answered, Elizabeth looked to see where Rowan Rover was sitting. She located him at the far table, sitting between Miriam Angel and Susan Cohen, who seemed to be talking nonstop across the table to the policeman dining with them. Emma Smith, who sat on Susan’s left, was eating her soup with the resignation of one who does not expect to get a word in edgewise. Reassured that she could not be overheard, Elizabeth recounted her conversation with the guide about the next day’s schedule.

  “Free at last!” sighed Frances. “But I don’t envy you having to tell him.”

  “Somebody had to,” Elizabeth replied. “Did you want to spend the day slogging through a dark cave?”

  After that the talk turned to crime. The foursome listened happily to tales of police work in Penzance. Midway through the main course, Elizabeth thought of something else to ask. “Are you familiar with the case of Constance Kent?”

  Burgess thought it over. “Victorian era? The teenage girl who supposedly cut her little brother’s throat?”

  “That’s the one,” said Elizabeth. “Rowan and I are arguing about whether or not she did it.”

  “It’s been years since I read about the case,” the inspector warned her, “but I seem to remember that there was insanity in the family. The girl’s mother was shut up in her room for years before she died. The child who was killed was the son of the second Mrs. Kent, formerly the older children’s governess. I think it was put about at the time that Constance might have taken after her mother-mentally unstable, you know. And a year or so before the murder, she tried to run away. Dressed as a boy. She wouldn’t be the first neurotic teenager who resorted to murder.”

  “Thank you,” said Elizabeth. “That seems quite conclusive. I wonder what Rowan will say to that!”

  Two tables away Rowan Rover’s mind was on a more immediate crime than the one at Road Hill House. He had pointed out the interesting arrangement of exposed beams in the high ceiling of the dining room, and while his tablemates were inspecting this architectural marvel, he had sprinkled some powder into Susan Cohen’s untouched glass of wine. The maneuver had been completely successful: no one had noticed his sleight of hand. After a few more minutes of conversation, Rowan, anxious to get it over with, said, “I should like to propose a toast!” He lifted his glass and smiled at his tablemates from behind a film of cold sweat. “Er-here’s to crime!” Obediently they reached for their glasses. Susan Cohen made a face. “I hate white wine,” she whined. “It tastes like horse piss. Here, Emma, your glass is empty, and you haven’t touched your water. You take my wine, and I’ll toast with water. I don’t see why they can’t serve Pepsi over here-”

  Before Rowan Rover could think of a way to salvage the situation, Detective Heamoor echoed, “Here’s to crime!” and finished his glass.

  With mounting horror, Rowan saw Emma Smith take a generous swallow of Susan Cohen’s tainted wine. Immediately she made a face. “You’re right, Susan,” she giggled. “It does taste like… what you said.”

  After that the conversation progressed smoothly on to other topics. Rowan supposed that he must have uttered a word here and there, but he had no idea what went on at his table, beyond a vague impression that Susan had given the police officer plot summaries of a great many murder mysteries-so perhaps no one remembered much of the conversation. Rowan’s own mind was reeling with the enormity of his error, and he was frantically engaged in trying to devise some excuse to persuade Emma Smith to take an emetic. (Ipecac as a traditional Cornish beverage? But where would he get any on ten minutes’ notice so late at night?) His one consolation was that he hadn’t been able to obtain a really good poison like arsenic. His homemade herbal concoction might, after all, prove too weak to cause serious injury. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, she will have a thundering case of indigestion, for which I shall blame the seafood. Please let her survive, he thought. Idly he wondered if the Deity paid any attention at all to the prayers of aspiring murderers.

  After a sleepless night of worry and more contingency planning for Susan’s demise, Rowan crept down to breakfast, half expecting his detective friends to be present in their official capacity. Instead, he found Emma Smith alive and well and eating breakfast with her mother and Maud Marsh. In his relief at this unexpected miracle, he scooped up a bowlful of Mueslix and sat down at their table.

  “Good morning, ladies. How are you? How are you, Emma?” Never had the greeting been less perfunctory.

  “Oh, I’m all right, I suppose,” Emma replied, but her tone suggested that she might have complained if she’d tried.

  “Feeling a bit seedy?” asked Rowan. “Probably the rich food. Let me bring you a glass of milk.” Milk, he knew, could also act to lessen the effects of certain poisons. It was worth a try.

  Half an hour later the group was assembled in the parking lot, marveling at another perfect summer day granted to them in late September.

  “It’s St. Michael’s Mount this morning, isn’t it?” asked Nancy Warren.

  “Can’t we go to Land’s End?” asked Elizabeth MacPherson.

  “No,” snapped the guide. “That place is a complete tourist trap. I do have my standards. They may be low, but I have them. St. Michael’s Mount is much less commercial.”

  “All right,” said Elizabeth. “It’s just that I was reading some English folklore about the lost land of Lyonesse, now covered by the sea. It’s supposed to be off the shore at Land’s End, and they say that during storms you can still hear the church bells of the drowned village, tolling beneath the waves.”

  Rowan’s glare was flint. “Perhaps you’d like to go there on a buying spree this afternoon.”

  This salvo ended all further discussion, and the rebellious flock boarded the bus in chastened silence. Susan managed to maintain this silence until the coach was nearly out of the grounds of Tregenna Castle. “I thought Mont St. Michel was over near France,” she remarked. “Have you read Aaron Elkins’ book Old Bones? It’s set out there, and it’s about this-”

  Rowan lunged for the microphone and cut her off in mid-gallop. “Some of you may have confused Cornwall’s Mount St. Michael with its French counterpart Mont St. Michel.” Those of you to whom the word atlas denotes a brand of tire, he finished silently. “Actually the two differ somewhat in size and are located in entirely different places geographically. The French one i
s, conveniently enough, in the Channel, off the coast of France. The Cornish one was a port on the tin route to the Mediterranean in Roman times, but in 1070 a monastery was founded there by monks from Mont St. Michel.”

  “William the Conqueror’s doing, I suppose?” said Alice.

  “Probably. It’s a captivating place. An ancient granite castle seems to rise out of the rock itself at the summit of a mound surrounded by the sea. Actually, it will be interesting to see whether it is an island when we arrive. At high tide, the Mount is a few hundred yards from shore, but when the tide is out, you can walk out to it. There is a paved path leading from the shore to the stone steps at the harbor.”

  “Maybe we could swim!” said Kate Conway, with rather more enthusiasm than she showed for walking.

  Rowan Rover was stunned. “Swim? In the seas off Cornwall? You might as well go snorkeling in the sewage treatment plant. If it is low tide, you may walk the path to St. Michael’s Mount; otherwise, you will enrich a local boatman by fifty pence for a three-minute ride to the rock.”

  Elizabeth, remembering the legend of Lyonesse, said, “How long ago was the island cut off from the mainland?”

  “Well, the old Cornish name for the Mount means gray rock in the middle of the forest. There are still traces of old tree trunks in Mount’s Bay. Legend has it that the rock used to be five miles inland and in the middle of a dense forest. The forest was submerged by the sea around the time that Stonehenge was built-long before the arrival of the Romans. Or the French.”

  “Is it a fortress?” asked Charles Warren.

  “It was once. It has been the home of the St. Aubyn family for three centuries, though. Though I believe there was fear of a Nazi sea invasion during the war. It never occurred, however.” He turned to Elizabeth. “To my knowledge, there have been no lurid crimes associated with the Mount.”

  Elizabeth returned his smirk. “And can we trust you not to fall off it?”

  The high promontory of St. Michael’s Mount was visible for some distance before they actually reached it. When Bernard pulled the coach into the gravel parking lot adjoining the beach, they could see that the tide was high. Only a few feet of the paved path was visible at the shore, sinking into the blue water of the bay. As they trooped across the sand toward the embarkation point, they could see a flotilla of motorboats waiting to ferry passengers to the Mount. At midpoint in the bay an outcrop of barren rocks rose above the waterline, making a natural marker for monitoring the movement of the tide.

  The castle looked like the Gothic cathedrals they had already seen, except that it was perched atop a steep hill, covered with shrubbery and scrub trees. Surrounding the stone docks at the base of the hill was a cluster of old buildings resembling a fishing village. They climbed into motorboats and reassembled on the quay for further instructions from Rowan. “We have about two hours to spend here,” he told them. “I wouldn’t want to cut into your shopping time. You may wander about the port here or, if you are feeling energetic, you can climb the Mount and have a look inside the castle.”

  “Let’s go and see the castle!” said Maud. “Anyone want to come along? Miriam? Emma?”

  “I don’t think I’m feeling up to it,” said Emma Smith.

  Rowan glanced at her furtively. “There’s also a tea shop here in the village. Perhaps you’d like a glass of milk, Emma?”

  During their two-hour sojourn on the Mount the tide turned, halving the distance from island to mainland. Now the motorboats picked up their passengers from the Mount and let them off at the outcrop of barren rocks that had formerly been in mid-bay. Now the path from those rocks to the sandy beach was clear and dry above the exposed mud floor of the bay. When they were once again on dry land, Rowan Rover said, “Bernard will now take you back to St. Ives and you will have a free afternoon and dinner on your own. Unless anyone wants to have a look at the caves. Susan?”

  She shook her head. “There’s a new Reginald Hill novel that isn’t available in the States yet and I want to see if I can find it.”

  The guide looked as if he had swallowed a frog. “Very well, then. I shall see all of you tomorrow.”

  No one would give Rowan Rover the satisfaction of admitting that he was right, but shopping in St. Ives had not been the idyllic experience they had envisioned. Like most seaside tourist attractions, the village specialized in cheap, mass-produced merchandise intended as souvenirs for day-trippers. The group ended up buying very little. Even Susan had come away disappointed in her quest for Mr. Hill’s new novel.

  By ten o’clock the next morning, they were aboard the coach once more, on a day of tours inspired by the legend of King Arthur. The first stop was the ruins of Tintagel, legendary birthplace of Arthur. It was located on the north coast of Cornwall, past Bodmin and Camelford, a longish drive, but nothing compared to the walk required to reach the ruins of the castle. From the picturesque little village of Tintagel, where Bernard parked the coach, they had to follow a dirt track for several miles through a fold of green hills before they could catch a glimpse of the ruins.

  Fortunately for those whose bodies were set for the California climate, the day was perfect, convincing them that Cornwall’s nickname, the English Riviera, was well-deserved. The sun blazed in a brilliant blue sky without a wisp of cloud, and the weather rivaled the best day in July. They trotted along the dirt track in sunglasses and sleeveless shirts. “I don’t know why everyone complains about British weather,” said Kate Conway, inspecting the deepening tan on her arms.

  “Come to Scotland,” said Elizabeth MacPherson. “That brown on your arms would be rust.”

  The setting for the castle was romantic enough, isolated as it was on a windswept cliff high above a sapphire sea, but there was little left of the structure itself.

  As they stood on the path looking out at the towering peninsula of rock, Emma Smith said, “This reminds me of a saying we had when I was on the archaeological dig. ‘One stone is a stone…’ ”

  Elizabeth MacPherson, another veteran excavator, caught the reference, and chimed in, “Two stones a Roman wall…”

  Together they chanted, “Three stones a ca-the-dral.”

  “It isn’t as bad as that,” said Rowan. “You can see a few feet of wall still standing, and the foundations of buildings are evident here and there.”

  “It’s a very beautiful place,” said Maud Marsh. “And you say King Arthur was born here?”

  “I don’t know that I say that,” said Rowan, “but tradition maintains that belief. So far the archaeologists haven’t found a shred of proof. Those ruins date from a twelfth-century castle built by Reginald of Cornwall, a son of Henry the First. But if you look into the inlet you can see an opening in the rock known as Merlin’s Cave, so perhaps folklore knows best after all.”

  Emma Smith was consulting a newly purchased guidebook. “It says here that recent excavations have found remnants of a fifth-century Celtic monastery here. That would be Arthur’s time, wouldn’t it?”

  “Good heavens!” said Alice MacKenzie, pointing to the headland across the inlet from the ruins. “What is that monstrosity?” At the top of that windswept cliff stood a very solid-looking nineteenth-century stone building, incongruous with the rest of the landscape.

  “That,” sighed Rowan, “is the King Arthur Castle Hotel, placed above the Barras Nose by the Great Western Railway. Descendants, no doubt, of Mordred.”

  That afternoon on the way to the next Arthurian shrine, Elizabeth MacPherson said, “I discussed the Constance Kent case with Inspector Burgess the other night. He thinks she’s guilty, too. He says that there was insanity in her family.”

  “You are referring to Constance’s mother, I presume? Certainly Mr. Kent said that she was insane. She did stay shut up in her room a good bit of the time-and was perhaps an invalid. Of course, considering the fact that the poor woman had borne nine children and that her husband left her in seclusion and turned over the running of the house to a high-spirited young governess of twent
y-one, I think perhaps a bit of depression was in order, don’t you?”

  “I think the wrong person was murdered,” muttered Elizabeth. “I suppose Mr. Kent was having an affair with the governess?”

  Rowan grinned. “You would need a more trusting nature than I possess to doubt it. He married the spunky little governess when the first Mrs. Kent died of a mysterious bowel obstruction. Constance would have been ten or eleven at that time, I think.”

  “So the governess was the mother of the murdered child? Francis?”

  “Yes. Incidentally, the family called the child Savile, not Francis.”

  “Teenage jealousy,” said Elizabeth. “No doubt the child by Mr. Kent’s new wife received much more attention than the older children. Perhaps Constance decided to punish everyone by killing the little usurper.”

  “But was it the sort of crime a teenage girl would commit? Do you know the details of the murder and on what evidence she was suspected?”

  “No,” Elizabeth admitted. “The crime book I read covered the case in about two paragraphs.”

  “We’ll be staying in Bath for two nights,” Rowan reminded her. “The crime happened at Road Hill House, just a few miles south of the city, you know.”

  “Do libraries over here keep microfilm copies of old newspapers?”

  “I can’t vouch for Bath’s public library system, but you might try, if you really wish to pursue your little investigation.”

  “I do,” said Elizabeth. “We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow night.”

  It was nearly five o’clock before the coach arrived at their second Arthurian shrine: Glastonbury. Maud Marsh was looking eagerly out the window. “I have really been looking forward to coming here,” she announced. “I’ve read so much about the legends of King Arthur, and Glastonbury is one of the most mystical places in the world. The isle of Avalon! Do the boats run this late in the evening, Rowan?”