Caught Out in Cornwall (19 page)

‘Are you telling me that Sally broke off her relationship with Poole in order to bring up her sister’s child?’

‘Yes. As incredible as it seems, that’s what she did. But she had ulterior motives. Despite what she told people, Sally was desperate for a child of her own. She gave up her job, moved down here and waited for the baby to be born.’

Jack drained his glass and placed it on the floor
beside his chair. His deep blue eyes registered bewilderment. ‘This doesn’t pan out. What about the follow up care, the clinics and things that babies are supposed to attend? And there’s the financial question. How did she cope?’

‘Sally said she never claimed any benefits.’

‘So how does she live?’ Not solely upon what Poole contributed, he thought.

‘It’s quite simple: Michael Poole sends money via Alice Jones and Carol gives her the rest. Carol can claim family allowance because she registered the birth legally when she was at her mother’s, but she has to be careful where she keeps the book.’

‘What’s going to happen now? Carol will have to inform the authorities.’

Rose shrugged. ‘We didn’t go into that much detail. Anyway, to answer your other question, the follow-up care bit was easy. Carol usually took Beth, sometimes Sally did. There would be nothing unusual in one sister helping another out. Once they’re not babies fewer and fewer visits are necessary.’

‘All right, so far so good, but what about Tamsin and Lucy, surely … no, I’ve got it, they’d have been two and less than one year old respectively then, far too young to realise what was happening. What about friends and
neighbours? Surely someone spotted she was pregnant?’

‘She says not. She said she kept it hidden for quite a while. And besides, you’ve been there, there aren’t any neighbours. Towards the end Sally moved in and did all her shopping and took the children out. Carol went up to her mother’s to have the baby. Meanwhile, Sally found a flat. As soon as Beth was born she moved in with her and everyone assumed it was her child.’

‘It seems she went to a good deal of trouble for Carol. And why, then, is Poole paying towards Beth’s keep? Did Sally tell him it was his child?’

‘Yes. That’s why she couldn’t see him and didn’t want him to find her. He would have known she wasn’t pregnant.’ Rose smiled. ‘But haven’t you guessed, Jack? Sally wasn’t lying. Beth is his child.’

‘Jesus,’ he said. The single word was followed by several seconds of silence.

‘It was the usual story. Michael had come down from Looe to deliver a piece of furniture Alice was storing for Carol. John was away, as I said, and things developed from there. Michael was only here for one night, Carol swears it was just the once, but she was still breastfeeding Lucy and women are more vulnerable then. At the time
Michael was living with Sally and neither he nor Carol realised the possible consequences.’

‘Two more questions. Does Poole know that Beth isn’t Sally’s child? And does Sally know that Poole is the father?’

‘The answer to both is no. Obviously Sally would have refused to take responsibility if she had been aware she had been deceived by both her sister and her boyfriend. Don’t forget if Beth really was his child he’d have had to have paid for her keep either way.’

‘Um, I wonder.’

But Rose didn’t stay to hear what was on his mind. She could smell the fish and went to make sure it was not overcooked. ‘It’s ready,’ she called.

Jack sat at the table and poured more wine as Rose dished up. If Poole had discovered he had been deceived would he have harmed the child? Surely it was more likely he would have wanted revenge on one or both women. But then, killing Beth would have achieved just that. And if Sally had discovered Beth’s true parentage, would she have killed her, the child she had cared for for over four years? ‘Rose, you’re a woman, can you think of any other reason why Sally would have put herself out so greatly?’

‘Oh, I thought I’d said. You know now that
Sally had always longed for a child but she was born with an abnormality which made this impossible.’

‘And Carol knew this.’

‘She did.’

That explained a lot. No wonder she had not hesitated in asking. It also explained Sally’s willingness in the matter. But it didn’t explain Beth’s death.

Rose placed a plate in front of him. Jack picked up his knife and fork. Pungent steam rose from the mackerel which contained an apricot and walnut stuffing; his favourite. It was time to eat and forget work. He would think about all that he had been told in the morning.

Jack helped with the washing up; living alone Rose saw no point in having a dishwasher. They listened to some jazz then, to Rose’s surprise, Jack said he was leaving. This was so typical of the way things were with them, their moods were rarely attuned. She had felt in need of the comfort of his body in her bed but she would not admit it and would therefore have to do without it.

‘It was, as always, a lovely meal. Thank you, Rose.’ He picked up his jacket and gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead.

So much for passion, Rose thought. She was
disappointed but understood that his mind was on what she had told him. ‘Oh, bugger it,’ she said as she rinsed out their coffee cups. There was an inch or so of wine left in the bottle, she would drink it by the dying embers of the fire then go to bed and read.

The last log settled sending lively sparks up the chimney. The scent of applewood made her nostalgic. It reminded her of her teenage years, just before she went to college. Her parents had lost an orchard to disease but the wood had not been wasted. How young Arthur and Evelyn had been then, although to her they had not seemed so. And now her mother was dead and her father was living in Penzance. There was no way in which she could have envisaged any of it, her life or that of her parents, when she had been seventeen.

As she cleaned her teeth she realised she had had no contact with Sally since she had heard the news of Beth’s death. Should she phone or write or go in person? I’ll go, she decided, as she got undressed. When David had died only her true friends had forced themselves upon her, insisting that she ate and slept and didn’t drown her sorrows in wine, even though she’d hated what seemed like their interference at the time.
But many people had avoided her initially, out of embarrassment or a fear of making matters worse. It was daft when matters could not have been worse.

Rose took one last, ritualistic look at the bay then drew the curtains. It had been a long day and she was too tired to read. She lay listening to the wind in the chimney breast, the occasional, late screech of a gull and the ticking as the central heating pipes cooled down. Within minutes she had fallen asleep. 

Carol Harte was not expecting another visit from the police. There was nothing more she could tell them. When she opened the door her stomach turned over. The children were back at school; it was pointless to protect them from what they would have to face eventually, but for a second she thought something had happened to one of them. John would be home that evening. Never had she looked forward to seeing him so much.

Jack had interviewed Carol once but even after that brief acquaintanceship he was shocked at her appearance. Only now, after what Rose had divulged, did he understand the reason for it. At his side was a female detective. ‘May we come in?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry.’

They stepped in out of the rain which was sweeping across the countryside. Water dripped from the trees and the shiny leaves of the shrubs glistened wetly. The lowing of a single cow drifted over the fields.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ Carol asked when she had shown them into the lounge.

‘No thank you.’ Jack wondered how many times a police officer was asked that question during the course of his or her career.

Carol sat down but did not invite them to do so. ‘This is about Beth, I take it.’ She gazed at Jack, the pain evident in her face. ‘Well, obviously it is.’ She paused. ‘You know, don’t you?’

‘Know what, Mrs Harte?’

‘That Beth’s … that she was my daughter.’ What else could have brought them? Rose Trevelyan must have told them because surely neither Sally nor her mother would have spoken out after all this time. Thank goodness John was not back yet. Maybe the truth could still be hidden from him. ‘Did you kill her, Carol?’

‘No. I did not.’ She had no real alibi and it probably seemed suspicious that the children were staying with John’s mother when Beth had disappeared. They had already asked where she
was on that Tuesday but doing housework and shopping was not much of an answer. And who would recall seeing her on that afternoon which was now more than a week ago? She was stunned. How could they imagine she had harmed Beth? ‘I didn’t kill her but I blame myself. If I’d faced the music at the time and kept Beth she would have been with me and not with Sally.’ Her hands were clasped tightly around her knees.

Jack knew that platitudes were a waste of time. Her decision then could not alter what had happened now. ‘Will you tell your husband?’

Carol shook her head but it was not a denial. She had no idea if she had the nerve. But he might find out anyway and the truth would be better coming from her rather than another source.

There was not much else Jack could do or say but he decided to question her about her alibi again.

‘Wait,’ she interrupted him. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’ She got up and left the room and returned within minutes carrying a folder. ‘My bank bits and pieces. I’ve got the receipts from my shopping. I always keep them to check against my bank statements.’ She shuffled through the slips and handed two to Jack. On the afternoon in question Carol had made purchases
with her Switch card. She had bought petrol at two fifty-six at Safeway’s filling station and had then gone across the road to the store. There was a long list of goods, it would have taken her some time to fill her trolley, pay and pack it all up. That receipt was timed at three forty-one. It would have been impossible for her to have been on that beach. He asked to see her Switch card. The first numbers, the ones shown on the slip, matched the card. This was hardly a breakthrough but it was one less suspect on the list.

He thanked her for her time and left. The female detective who had remained silent, followed him. ‘What worries me, Mandy,’ he said to her as they got into the car, ‘is that there is still a chance this might have been random. Take that little girl in Hayle, the one who was dragged into a car. There have been no other instances of abuse, no cases even vaguely similar. That was random, I’m sure of it. If the person was a stranger to the area we’ll probably never find him.’

Jack started the engine. The rain showed no sign of abating. He flicked on the wiper switch and pressed the one for the demister, then they set off back to Camborne.

‘But you don’t think Beth’s murder was random, do you, sir?’

‘No, I don’t. The sleeping tablets make me think it was planned.’

‘But there doesn’t seem to be a motive. Who could possibly gain by her death?’

‘Ah, but there always is a motive, no matter how odd it might seem to us.’

They drove on in silence. The tyres hissed on the wet roads and sent spray sideways. On either side, the gently sloping hills with their scattered boulders were shrouded in rain.

‘Certainly no one gains financially,’ Jack continued once he’d overtaken a slowly moving tractor drawing a trailer full of manure. And then he recalled that Michael Poole had declared Sally Jones to be an unfit mother. How would he know when, supposedly, at the time, he had no contact with either Sally or Beth? That needed a little more looking into. He would, of course, ask.

Apart from the awful weather it was Rose’s conscience which dictated that she paid Sally Jones a visit. She watched the rain snaking down the kitchen windows, beyond which a small rivulet ran down the drive. This did not deter a male blackbird whose bright yellow beak was tugging at a worm in the lawn.

Rose finished her coffee, pulled on her raincoat
and went out to the car. When she reached Marazion she parked as near to the house as she was able but was still wet when she reached it. Her hair hung damply and the hems of her jeans were soaked.

She rang the bell. There was no sign of Norma and no lights shone through the downstairs windows. On such a dull day they would have been necessary if anyone was at home.

‘Who is it?’ a subdued voice enquired metallically through the entry phone system.

‘It’s Rose Trevelyan.’

The door buzzed. Rose pushed it and went inside. Her feet left wet marks on the spotless black and white tiles but as there was no mat there was little she could do about it.

Sally was waiting at the top of the stairs. She looked even thinner than when Rose had last seen her and she smelt faintly of sweat and quite strongly of alcohol. It was ten fifteen in the morning. But to Rose, both were understandable. She had been through the same when David died. ‘Are you up to visitors?’

Sally nodded and led the way into her flat. ‘Do you want some coffee, or a drink?’ She indicated the cider bottle on the floor beside her chair.

‘Coffee, please,’ she said, hoping that Sally would join her.

Sally stumbled to the kitchen, swearing as she knocked something over.

She’s alone, and she shouldn’t be, not yet, Rose decided as she took in her surroundings. But the two sisters would not want to be together and, presumably, Alice Jones had had to go back to look after her business. Norma, she was certain, would have been keeping an eye on her.

Sally returned with the coffee. Rose was about to take a sip when the smell told her that the milk was off. She placed the mug on the floor as there was nowhere else to put it.

Meanwhile, Sally had refilled her glass with cider. ‘So you think you saw who took Beth, do you?’

Rose was surprised by the aggression, both in her face and voice, but Jack had warned her not to let on about her mistake. ‘It’ll make the culprit more confident if he thinks we believe you, and therefore it’s more likely he or she will make a mistake,’ he had said.

Rose nodded. She could not voice the lie for she had been totally mistaken.

Unexpectedly, Sally laughed. ‘Well, it wasn’t much help to the police.’

‘I’m sorry, Sally. I know how very hard this must be for you.’

‘Do you? Do you really? Well you don’t know the half of it.’ She swallowed more cider and wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. ‘The bastard, how could he do that to me? And her. I might’ve guessed. It’s always been the same. Anything I’ve ever wanted, she’s taken away from me. And then to give me his child to care for, the child that should have been mine, how could she have been so cruel?’ She inhaled deeply. ‘Bitch,’ she shrieked, as if she meant Rose.

Rose held her breath. This meant that Sally had discovered who Beth’s father was. But had she only found out recently? If so, who had told her, and why? And if this was the case had she taken it into her head to punish both of Beth’s natural parents in one go? Why hadn’t she thought of that before? It seemed the obvious solution. And how much harder the news would have hit a woman who was unable to have children whilst her sister had produced a third one she did not want, and that child being the daughter of her own lover.

‘Who’s a bastard?’ Rose asked quietly. She needed to be one hundred per cent certain she’d got things right.

‘Michael. Who else would I mean? And that whore of a sister of mine. He said he wanted me
back, baby and all, but it was Beth he wanted, I can see that now.’

‘But he thought she was yours.’

Sally wasn’t listening. ‘An unfit mother, that’s what he called me. Who does he think he is? He’s hardly a paragon of virtue, is he, the shit. My whole life’s always been the same; I’ve always been the loser. Well, I’ll show them.’ She got up and lurched across the room and out into the hall. Rose heard her fumbling in a drawer and then there was silence.

Another minute passed. Rose got up and went to investigate. The silence had become sinister.

Sally was standing beside the sink, tears rolling down her face. There was a knife in her hand.

‘God, no. Wait,’ Rose shouted as she ran towards her.

‘Get away. I’ll kill you first if you try to stop me.’

Frightened that she might just do that, Rose stood still. ‘Sally, don’t,’ she whispered.

‘It was Carol who told me,’ Michael Poole replied to Jack’s question when he took the call on his mobile. ‘She rang me several times to say that Sally was drinking, the place was dirty and that Beth wasn’t being fed properly.’

‘Did you have any proof of this?’

‘None whatsoever. That’s why I asked social services to look into it, discreetly, if it was possible. They were satisfied that nothing was amiss, so it was left at that. I was surprised that Carol had rung me.’

Knowing what he did, Jack wondered if, at the time, Carol had had a change of heart and wanted Beth to be with her father or else she believed she might talk social services into letting Beth live with her. For Poole was indeed the father even if he believed the wrong woman to be his daughter’s mother. Maybe it went deeper than that, maybe Carol envisaged living with Poole and Beth. Whatever was going on it was clear that the sisters were dysfunctional. But then, who isn’t even if it’s in a small way, Jack asked himself.

Every alibi was now being treble checked. Alice Jones had been serving in her shop all day. A girl who occasionally came in to help had sworn that she had not worked for Alice that day because she spent Tuesdays and Thursdays at college. Poole’s whereabouts had been vouched for by several people.

Pressure from above was increasing and Jack did not know how it was possible to have so few leads. No leads, he amended. And if it hadn’t been
for Rose the true history of the family would not have come to light.

Where was she now? Out working? He glanced out of the window. No, it was far too wet for that.

He paced his office floor, desperate for new ideas. Men and women who had watched the lifeboat rescue the yacht and its crew were still being sought and questioned. Rose had misled them but another potential witness might be found.

‘Oh, damn it all,’ he said, loudly enough for the head of a passing officer to appear in the doorway. ‘It’s okay, just thinking aloud,’ he muttered. He had been going over and over it; the scene was fixed firmly in his mind; the rainswept beach, the small crowd gathered to watch what might have turned out to be a disaster, the mother with the child she wasn’t watching properly because the drama at sea was too compelling and an opportunist making off with Beth. This was initially backed by Rose’s statement, but that child had not been Beth.

And suddenly he had seen it clearly. Beth was never on that beach. Only one person could have murdered her and it could not have been more premeditated, and that person was Sally, the woman she had believed to be her mother, the woman she would have trusted when she had been
given a drink which contained barbiturates. Sally Jones had killed her, then, either cold-bloodedly or in a state of shock and confusion, had wandered down to the beach. And what an opportunity that sea rescue had given her. No one would have noticed whether or not she had a child with her; all eyes were seaward. When she saw a man walk off with a little girl who resembled Beth, she gave it a minute or two then made the most of it. Sally Jones probably couldn’t believe her luck when Rose came forward to confirm her story.

Within seconds two patrol cars were heading towards Marazion. Jack had left minutes before the phone call from Norma Penhalligon came in but its contents were relayed to him as they drove. ‘Get an ambulance there, too,’ he said.

When they reached the house Norma was waiting with the door open so not a second was wasted. ‘I don’t know who’s with her,’ she had said. ‘I was out when the visitor arrived but there’s an awful lot of shouting and screaming and Sally’s threatening to kill someone.’

Jack knew by the way in which the muscles in his neck tightened, that that someone would be Rose. Not again, he prayed, don’t let this be happening again.

Rose watched in horror as Sally drew the blade of the knife across her throat. Her wrists, she thought, I imagined she’d go for her wrists. She was sure she had heard it was impossible to cut your own throat, that the action could not be carried through. Sally had done a good job. There was blood everywhere although her arm had dropped to her side and the knife fell to the floor. Sally staggered; her eyes were wild. Rose, transfixed to the spot, was unable to catch her before she fell. Suddenly she was able to move again. She swiftly grabbed a towel and pressed it tightly to the wound, praying she was doing the right thing. Her phone was in her bag, the bag in the front room. Help was needed urgently but she was afraid that if she released the pressure Sally would bleed to death. Her eyelids were closed and faintly fluttering. Help would not arrive unless she summoned it.