Death in the Cove, page 21
Ryga flashed her a bewildered look.
'I know, it seemed crazy to me too,' she went on, interpreting his glance. 'I asked him what it was but he wouldn't say over the telephone, and when I asked him how he had known where to find me he said he knew I'd be at my aunt's house because of her death.'
'How did he know that?'
'I didn't get a chance to ask him. There was an obituary on her in some of the newspapers and in the culture magazines. Pru was an internationally acclaimed artist.'
'And you, her niece, a well-known photographer. The articles would have mentioned you.'
'Some of them certainly would have done but they wouldn't have said I would be at Pru's house. I suppose he could have guessed I was there. I know he didn't enquire at my London apartment because the porter says no one has been around asking after me or my whereabouts. And he hasn't told anyone I'm away.'
Ryga was puzzled.
She continued, 'He refused to come to the house and said he'd meet me at John Penn's Bath at eleven thirty, Tuesday night.'
'Didn't you think that strange?'
'Of course I did. I suggested we meet earlier in the day and somewhere more public but he was very insistent.'
'Your life could have been in danger,' Ryga said, then wished he hadn't when she gave him a withering look, but it contained no hostility.
'It wouldn't be the first time,' she said, but not unkindly. 'I took a risk. It's what you, I, and others sometimes have to do. When I approached John Penn's Bath on Tuesday night I heard voices, one of which I instantly recognized as being Sonia's. The other was a man's which I didn't recognize. I quickly stepped back but they were too engrossed in discussion to have heard my approach. I didn't know then that the man with Sonia was her husband. I'd never met him – still haven't,' she quickly added, 'and like everyone else, including Sonia, we all believed he'd been killed at Dunkirk. Initially it crossed my mind that he must be the man who had telephoned me, but I dismissed that because why would he be with Sonia? So I thought it must be Sonia's lover and that he was married, hence the clandestine meeting.'
The same thought Ryga had had.
'I surmised that because my rendezvous point had been taken over by someone else my man would call me the next day to rearrange, but Sonia was knocking on my door instead.' Eva fell silent as they walked past two women talking on their doorsteps. The sound of children playing came to them from inside one of the houses.
When they were out of earshot, Ryga said, 'Why did Sonia come to you?'
'Pru and Sonia were good friends. When Sonia was left alone to run the pub with a baby, Pru helped her all she could. She knew that Sam Shepherd was a bully and had knocked Sonia about before he went away to war. I had met Sonia several times when I'd stayed with Pru. We became friends. Plus, I was an outsider and Sonia didn't know who else to turn to, and don't say she should have gone straight to the police because she couldn't. Not only was her husband a deserter and a cheat but she also thought he was a murderer.'
'He might still be.'
'I know.'
There was a moment's silence before Ryga continued, 'Sam Shepherd was seen entering Conrad's shop early on Wednesday morning, so either he knew Conrad or Sonia told him where to take the jewellery.'
'I think it must be the former. He'd probably have known Conrad from before the war. But I can't think why Sam Shepherd would kill Conrad.'
'Unless Shepherd, Conrad and the pinstripe-suited man were all involved in a jewellery heist and Sam Shepherd got greedy.'
She frowned and pushed back her hair. 'Which means the dead man in Church Ope Cove is not the same man who telephoned me. But if he isn't then why hasn't he been in touch again?'
'Maybe he changed his mind. Perhaps the police presence has scared him off because he has something to hide or be afraid of.'
Eva unlocked her cottage door and stepped inside. Ryga, removing his hat, followed suit. It was dim and Eva switched on the lights. Several illuminated the paintings. The room was as before – comfortable, lived in, with what he thought was the essence of Prudence Paisley still inside it. He wondered what Eva's apartment was like. On the table to Ryga's right were two large cardboard folders and several sketches spread across them.
Eva shrugged off her leather jacket and threw it over the back of an armchair. 'Drink?' she asked, crossing to a cabinet by the wireless. 'Whisky? Sherry? I haven't got any beer.'
'Neither, thank you.'
'Don't mind if I do?' She poured herself a shot of whisky, swallowed it quickly and said, 'Take a look at these?'
He followed her to the table where the sketches were spread out. 'There's one missing,' she said.
He eyed her, baffled, not seeing where this was leading.
'I think it's important because I believe it's connected to our dead man in the cove. It was you who triggered the idea yesterday when you were looking at the paintings of the convicts. I'll explain. A month ago, I photographed Pru's sketches for a book I was pulling together for her of her work. But there was one sketch I photographed that she quickly snatched away and said "not that one". I asked her why and she said it wasn't good enough, but although I could see that wasn't the real reason I didn't press her. It was her book after all. I remembered it being a sketch of two convicts, one lying on the shore and a warder standing over him. I didn't think anything more about it until you and I began talking about the paintings and discussing how the prisoners had been involved in hard labour. We looked at their faces in those pictures on the wall and I thought of the dead man's face and then his hands – labourer's hands. The more I thought about it the more unsettled I became, so yesterday I went through all her sketches and couldn't find the one of the two convicts.'
'Maybe she destroyed it after you'd discussed it to prevent you or anyone else finding it again and it being photographed. She really was ashamed of it.'
'I'm certain that's not it, and I'll tell you why. I drove up to London today to look out the photographs I'd taken of the sketches. I found that one and the negative.' She reached into the envelope on the table and extracted a medium-sized black and white photograph. 'What do you see?' she asked, her voice now filled with excitement.
It was a photograph of a rough but evocative sketch of two convicts, one hunched on the shore under the sharp protuberance of the cliff on the coast between Church Ope Cove and the lighthouse where Ryga had walked on Saturday and the other lying face down on the shore. The sketch was dated 14 April
1920. The prisoners must have been very young men but the face of the hunched convict was lined and worn down by the weather and hard labour and with something else etched into it that Ryga knew was despair. He felt his stomach knot as it reminded him of the faces he'd seen around him in the prisoner-of-war camp for four long years, growing more despairing by the day until those last months when they all realized the end was in sight but even with that came a new fear – that they'd be killed before they could be liberated.
He pushed the memories aside and focused wholeheartedly on the photograph.
'Here, take this.' Eva handed over the magnifying glass. 'Look at the figures behind the rock to the left of the picture, on the shore.'
Although it wasn't totally clear, Ryga saw that in contrast to the hardened, world-weary prisoner peered the faces of two boys, their expressions excited, youthful, laughing. No, mocking. It made him feel nauseas. The convicts were the boys' entertainment, or so Prudence Paisley had interpreted it. Perhaps she was wrong, or he was wrong, because their entertainment couldn't have been the prostrate convict on the shore. He peered more closely then glanced up at Eva. There was a gleam of excitement in her blue eyes. 'Tell me?' she said eagerly.
'I could be wrong but there is a strong resemblance in one of those boys to the man—'
'In the cove, yes. The same shape of face and that broad brow. We could be mistaken but look at the prison officer standing over the prostrate convict.'
Ryga again peered through the magnifying glass, this time at the man whose expression was smug, superior and cruel. 'My God, it's Crawley, the night porter at The Pennsylvania Castle Hotel.'
'It is. So why would he want to steal that original sketch and kill Pru?'
'You believe your aunt's death was suspicious?' Ryga asked, surprised.
'You bet I do now.' Earnestly, she continued, 'Did she really get up in the night to go to the toilet or to fetch a drink because she couldn't sleep? Or did a noise wake her – an intruder? All the locals knew where she kept her key; most people around here keep theirs in the same place. Easy enough for someone to enter the cottage. I was told her death was due to a coronary. She'd been under the doctor and had an irregular heartbeat. Inspector Crispin was called in but the doctor deemed it to be from natural causes. That was the end of it. There wasn't a post-mortem. Yes, it's possible she could have suffered a heart attack brought on by shock at finding someone in the house. Or perhaps she was killed by some method that neither Crispin nor the doctor noticed or looked for. That sketch is missing. A mysterious caller told me he had something to tell me about my aunt, and now it appears that person is also dead. Look, Ryga, I have no idea why or what happened but there has to be a connection. Pru, as you can see from her paintings, was renowned for her real-life scenes in all their harsh reality. That scene,' Eva stabbed at the photograph, 'existed. It happened, she captured it and she didn't want it to appear in her collection. I'd like to know why.'
Ryga put on his hat. 'Then let's go and ask Crawley.'
Twenty-Three
'The date, April 14 1920. Mean anything to you?'
'Eh?' Crawley's eyes darted to Eva and then back to Ryga. They were alone in the hotel reception. Ryga could hear music coming from the radio in the lounge.
'No. Why should it?'
'I would have thought it would have been ingrained on your mind but then perhaps you thought the death of a prisoner insignificant.' Ryga didn't know for certain the prisoner was dead. He might have slipped and fallen from the cliff edge while working and had been badly injured – a thought that he had expressed to Eva as they had headed here. He'd also told her to let him lead the interview and to say nothing about the fact she had photographed the sketch or to mention the two boys who were in it. He'd play it by ear depending on Crawley's responses. They needed all the information they could get and this could possibly be leading them down a blind alley. Even bringing her along was highly irregular, but it did concern her and he found he valued her assessment of the man and the situation.
'I haven't a clue what you're talking about,' Crawley said.
Oh, but he had. Ryga could see it is his shifting, wary eyes, and he knew full well that Eva would have seen it. 'You know precisely what I am talking about,' Ryga said quietly and evenly, 'and I suggest you get your memory back very quickly, Mr Crawley, otherwise I'll have to take you to the station to––'
'No!' He sniffed and his eyes darted nervously around the reception hall. They still had the place to themselves. Lowering his voice, he said, 'It was years ago. Why do you want to know about it? It was just . . .'
'Another convict,' Eva said coldly. 'And no one of any consequence.'
'I didn't mean that. I meant . . .'
'Yes?' Ryga prompted calmly and quietly when Crawley dried up.
'I can't talk here and now.'
'Fine. Then let's go––'
'No. All right, I'll tell you.' Crawley held up his hands in capitulation.
Ryga could feel Eva's tension and excitement beside him.
Crawley eyes swivelled around the lounge as though looking for an escape, or perhaps he was making sure no one was within earshot. He removed a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, wiped his brow and replaced it, all actions designed, Ryga thought, to give him time to compose his thoughts or decide how much to tell them. Or perhaps even to think of a lie.
After a moment, he began in a slightly shaky voice, 'It was a very hot day, unusual for April. I was detailed to take a work party of two convicts to the shore, below part of the quarry that wasn't being used, to collect some rocks, stones, shells and driftwood for the governor's wife's new beach-themed garden. I left a pushcart on the track above the shore. There was a steep descent down to the small bay. I escorted the prisoners down there and shackled them while I, er, left to take a toilet break.' He darted a glance at Eva.
'But something went wrong,' Ryga prompted.
Crawley swallowed hard. 'When I came back I found one of them dead.'
And that's what Prudence Paisley had captured in her sketch. Ryga didn't look at Eva. He wondered if the same thoughts were running through her head as through his.
'I didn't know how I was going to explain it. But as it happened no one seemed at all interested anyway. I unshackled them and, with the other convict, climbed back up the path. I chained him to the cart and ran to get help. A police officer telephoned the hospital and returned to the cove with me. He confirmed the other convict was dead, then we waited until the ambulance turned up and they got the body on to a stretcher and the four of us carried it up the track to the cart. The ambulance took the body to the naval hospital mortuary and I took the other convict back to the prison.'
'Didn't he tell you what had happened?'
'He didn't say a word, not then or afterwards. He looked ill. The shock of seeing his fellow convict drop down dead before him with a heart seizure must have been too much.'
'Is that how he died?'
'Must have been – there wasn't a mark on him. There hadn't been a fight or anything like that.'
'Was there a post-mortem?'
Crawley shrugged. 'If there was no one told me about it.'
'And what did you tell the prison governor about why you weren't with them?'
Crawley shifted uneasily and straightened the register. 'I didn't mention it. The other convict wasn't going to say anything because he knew no one would listen to him anyway. He seemed to have lost his power of speech and everyone just thought––'
'That one dead convict didn't amount to much anyway,' Eva said with bitterness.
Ryga flashed her glance. She glared back at him, then her angry expression eased and she exhaled.
'Who were the convicts?' Ryga asked.
'I've forgotten their names.'
Eva snorted with disgust. 'I would have thought it would have stuck in your mind.'
'Well, it didn't. A lot has happened in the years since then, including a ruddy great war where lots of people have died,' he snapped. After a moment, though, he resumed more calmly. 'The other convict died twenty-four hours later.'
'How?' Ryga asked while his mind raced.
'He was found dead in his cell. They said the shock must have killed him.'
Convenient. 'How long did you leave them alone on the shore?'
'Five minutes, maybe ten at the most.'
That was clearly a lie. Ryga simply raised his eyebrows and peered hard at Crawley until his eyes dropped. Coolly, Ryga said, 'Did you know that Prudence Paisley was there?'
Crawley's head shot up and his troubled eyes darted between Ryga and Eva. His face was now a picture of misery.
Ryga said, 'I see that you did.' He wondered if Eva had drawn the same conclusion. Crawley had sneaked off to meet Prudence Paisley.
'Did you also know that she sketched the scene?' And it had taken some nerve for her to do that and some callousness, he thought, but was it any different from what her niece did? Eva had taken and still took pictures of bodies. Prudence probably reasoned she could do nothing for the dead prisoner, but she had seen the boys so why not go down and offer to assist Crawley so as to shield them from the horror of death? Why say nothing about this event over the years? The answer was because she was also shielding Crawley and perhaps her own reputation.
'But she couldn't have done,' the night porter uttered. His eyes widened while his lip trembled. It didn't appear as though he wasn't faking it. Maybe this was the first he knew of any sketch.
'Why not?' Eva asked.
He shifted uncomfortably and looked away. 'Because when I left her she was returning to Easton.'
Confirmation that they'd had an assignation. Eva was looking incredulous. Ryga could see that she found it difficult to believe that her aunt and this man had been lovers. 'You saw her go?' Ryga quickly asked before Eva could speak.
