“And hey presto! He’s dead,” said Tom. “But that’s guessing, Chief, and any road, if you’re right, Pettigrew’s words were taken as a threat because our man had already committed a felony.”
Alec sighed.
In the warm twilight, they drove down off the moor into the little town of Tavistock. A Saturday evening queue was moving into the picture palace, and the sound of voices floated through the open doors of pubs. With a longing glance at the nearest of these, Tom stopped the Austin outside the police station.
The sergeant on duty was expecting them. “We’ve found him for you, zir,” he reported in a slow, soft West Country voice. “Waren’t as easy as you might think, coming from the city. There’s a Westcott village, zame name as your man, up north t’ard the Lyd valley, near Coryton, and a Rushbrook Farm not far off. We did think as that might be the one.”
“I take it, it wasn’t,” said Alec patiently.
“Nay, zir, and we found four more. Rushbrook, zee, isn’t an uncommon name for a farm in these parts, as could be from a hillside stream rushing down, or could be a meadowland stream wi’ rushes growing.”
“And which is the one we want, Sergeant?”
“Oh, ’tis Jack Trevinnick’s place, over towards Zydenham Damerel, down by the Tamar. Good, fertile zoil, and the rushes to harvest for baskets and the like. You’ve mayhap heard of our pannier market, here in Tavistock?”
Alec admitted he had not, nor of the October Goose Fair, though he vaguely recalled that Tavistock was Sir Francis Drake’s birthplace. With weary courtesy he cut short the sergeant’s discourse on the town’s history as a mining centre since it became a stannary town in 1309.
“How do we get to Sydenham Damerel?” he enquired.
Tom wrote down the directions. Alec asked the local man to book them a couple of rooms for the night. Then he took the wheel, and they wound about the country lanes for six or seven miles, passing through several tiny hamlets. Sydenham Damerel was large enough to boast its own constable. Calling at his house for further directions to Rushbrook Farm, they learnt that ex-Constable Westcott had dropped in to introduce himself on arrival in Devon.
“And a good job too,” said Tom as they set out on the last leg of their journey, “or it might’ve taken ’em a week to ferret him out for us.”
It was all but dark when they pulled up in a cow-smelling farmyard, to be greeted by a volley of barks. On the doorstep of the whitewashed granite house, a plump woman appeared, silhouetted against the light within.
Hushing the two black and white dogs, she invited the policemen into a large, low-ceilinged kitchen, where hams and onions hung from the beams. An elaborately plaited corn-dolly, still green, was nailed up over the vast fireplace, and a kettle steamed on the hob.
“Fred’s down the byre with my Jack and our Jed,” said Mrs. Trevinnick, waving them to a wooden settle by the fire,and bustling about with teapot, kettle, and caddy. “They’ll be up pretty quick now ‘tis dark. Fred’ll be right glad to zee you. He do miss his p’lice friends, but I can tell you, it’s done him a world o’ good to retire and get away from the city.”
Alec made a noncommittal noise. Tom’s eyes were fixed on the big white-wood table, where an enormous cake had joined teapot, best cups and saucers, jug of milk, and basin of sugar. They had stoppedverybriefly for lunch on the way.
“Well, stands to reason, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Trevinnick chattered on. “’Tis not healthy living in a big town like that, all smoke and fog. And him on the beat all these years. Not that my Jack don’t walk plenty, but country walking’s not like pavements, is it? And even when they put Fred in that museum place, there was stairs up and stairs down and stairs all around. His knees hurt him zomething dreadful when he come, but they’re a-getting better, bit by bit.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Alec truthfully, well aware that the lot of a lifelong beat copper was not easy.
“And his eyes! You wouldn’t think of it, maybe, but I reckon ‘tis that ’lectric light doesn’t do them any good. ’Tis not natural.” She glanced up at the pair of brightly polished brass lanterns, casting a gentle glow from their hooks on the central beam. “Give me paraffin any day, zays I to Jack, when he asks do I want the gas put in.”
She supplied them with tea and apple cake, Tom’s huge wedge reflecting her view of the appetite appropriate to his size. The men came in shortly. Fred Westcott, a thickset, grizzled old fellow, was not noticeably pleased to see his fellow police officers.
“We’re hoping you can help us, Mr. Westcott,” said Alec as the men exchanged mucky boots for carpet slippers and washed their hands. “If you would just think back to the beginning of July …”
“We’ll go in the parlour, Betty,” Westcott interrupted grumpily, picking up a hand-lantern the men had brought in with them. “This way, sir, if you don’t mind.”
Alec and Tom followed him to a small, bleak, excessively tidy room with cross-stitch samplers on the walls. The furniture was early Victorian, faded but otherwise like new. The vicar was probably the only person ever entertained there.
Tom took out his notebook as he and Alec sat down. Westcott stood before them, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I weren’t asleep, sir,” he declared. “Jest resting me pins a minute. The knees ain’t what they was, see, and me eyes gets that tired.”
“No one is accusing you of anything, man. You’re not in the force any more. Sit down, for heaven’s sake—or your knees’ sake if you prefer—and tell mewhenyou weren’t asleep.”
“Thirteenth o’ July, when he come down the stairs. Leastways, that’s what I reckoned, then, or from Lower Mammals. By the Nesting Birds, I were, see, the wrong side for Minerlology.”
“Whocame?” Alec demanded.
But Westcott had to tell his story his own way. “Never thought nothing of it, I didn’t, not till it was in the papers how someone stole them jools. See, they knows in the village as I used to work in the museum, so when I went in with Betty Saturday to do her bit shopping, summun showed it me. And I started to wonder. I were on days for a couple of months before, see, so I knowed ’em all. What I arst myself was, what did a fossil man want with mammals, high or low, or botinny, come to that, at that time of night?”
“Good question. Which fossil man?”
