“You remember Treverra was the adored leader of the smugglers round these parts. We know he also had at least one ship trading legitimately with the West Indies and America. We can guess, now we know about the tunnel from his vault to the Dragon’s Hole, that he must have had the tunnel improved and the tomb dug out at the end of it to provide a safe runway to the harbour and Pentarno haven, for a very practical purpose. What could be more respected than a family tomb? And what could make better cover for the secret road to the sea and the ships? He completed it about six years before he died. Maybe he always had in mind that it might eventually provide a way of retreat, if Cornwall ever got too hot to hold him.
“Well, now, suppose that the authorities and the preventives were closing in on this local hero, and finally had something on him that he wasn’t going to be able to duck? I think there are signs that they would have welcomed an opportunity to bring him down. Most of the gentry dabbled in smuggling, but in a mild, personal way. Treverra went beyond that. Not for profit, probably, so much as for fun. He liked pulling their legs, and leading them by the nose. They wouldn’t forgive him that. He resigned from the bench, where by all accounts he was a pretty generous and fair-minded Justice. I think he knew his scope here was narrowing. And then, you see, any of the local people who heard of any threat to him would warn him. He was the idol of the coast. Yes, I think he knew time was getting short, and made his plans accordingly. Among other things, he wrote his epitaph. And hers, I’m almost sure, was written at the same time, by her, by him, or by both together, I can’t be sure. But I like to think of them sitting here, in this very room, with their heads together, capping each other’s lines, and laughing over the supreme joke of their shared and audacious career. Look at Morwenna’s face! That lovely, fragile creature was a lot more than a sleeping partner.
“So there’s Treverra, only fifty-two years old, in the very prime of his life and vigour and powers, and the authorities closing in for the kill. And what happens?
“Treverra ‘dies’, and is buried. In the tomb he had made for himself, with the swivel-stone in the corner giving access to the cave and the harbour.
“And at night he arises, this ‘dead’ man, after all the decorous funeral business is over and the mourners have gone away. Maybe he was provided with a good crowbar inside the coffin for the occasion, even more probably he was also visited and helped out by his older son after dark. He had two sons. The elder was just twenty at this time, the younger was a schoolboy of fourteen. I think the elder was certainly in all the plans, you’ll see why when we come to the case of Morwenna. Treverra, then, emerges from his tomb exceedingly alive and lusty, and retires gaily by his back way, from which, at low tide, he can reach either Maymouth harbour or Pentarno haven. What does it matter which he used? At either one or the other a boat is put in for him, to take him aboard ship—his own ship or another—and ship him away to the reserve fortune he’s been salting away in readiness in the year- long summer of the West Indies.
“A sunshine cruise to an island paradise, just as Dominic said, if I’d only listened to him. But not Tir-nan-Og! Not even the Bahamas, perhaps, but near enough. According to the records most of his trading had been done with Trinidad, Tobago and Barbados. Somewhere there, I judge, we might still pick up his traces.
“How many were in the know? It’s guesswork, now, but I’d say just the three of them, Jan, Morwenna and their elder son, and maybe the skipper of his ship. There may have been a family doctor in it, too, to cover the deaths, but if so, he kept his mouth tightly shut afterwards to protect himself, and who can blame him? They may have managed without him? It hardly matters now. I’m sure that’s what happened. It accounts for the empty coffin, that was later to be filled and over-filled. And it accounts for what followed.
“For, you see, Morwenna would never have agreed to such a plan if there hadn’t been provision in it for her to join him. Act two was to be the translation of Morwenna. She was to pine away—her own touch, that, I’d swear—and to be reunited with her lord in an earthly, not a heavenly, paradise. After six months the same programme is put in motion for her. She ‘dies’ of a broken heart, and is buried in the tomb prepared for her.”
He broke off there, startled, for someone had uttered an almost inaudible sound that yet had the sharpness of a cry. A quiver passed round the circle, and a rustle of breath, as if they had all been shaken out of a trail , Paddy, flushing hotly, drew back a little into shadow. “I’m sorry! I was only thinking—She was so little!”
“They took every possible care of her, Paddy. Or they thought they had. Yes, she was very slight and frail, she couldn’t deal with tombstones herself, they knew that. She had to lie patiently in her coffin until dark, when her son would come to release her, and see her safely down the passage and aboard. The light wooden coffin in which she was carried to the vault was pierced in a pattern of fine holes just above her face—did you notice that, George? The air in the stone coffin would easily be enough to keep her going until night. And she was well provided with funds for the journey, in money and jewellery. The wooden lid would be only very lightly fastened down, so that she could move it herself. And all she needed besides was the heart of a lioness, and that she knew she had. She was the one who misquoted Dryden, that I’d swear to. ‘None but the brave deserves the brave.’ To lie and wait several hours alone in the dark didn’t seem terrible to her, not by comparison with what it bought.
“But that night of her funeral, you remember, is recorded as the night of the great storm, when the fishing-boats were driven out to sea. And young Treverra, the new squire, was blown from the cliff path in the darkness, and drowned. A young man in mourning, wandering the cliffs alone—no one would ask what he was doing there.
“I’m afraid, I’m terribly afraid, he was on his way down the cliff path to the church and the vault, to see his mother resurrected and put safely aboard ship for Barbados.
“And no one else, you see, knew anything about her.
“No one else. She was dead, they’d just buried her. If the doctor knew, he’d assume everything was going according to plan, or at least that her son was taking care of her, until he heard of the boy being missing. And that may not have happened until well into the next morning. By then a doctor would know she’d be dead. He’d be afraid to speak. It couldn’t help her, and it could, you see, harm not only himself but Treverra, too. He’d be a wanted man again as soon as it was known he was alive. And nothing and nobody could give Morwenna back to him now.”
“But the ship,” ventured Dominic huskily. “There was a ship lying off for her. Wouldn’t they try to find out what had happened?”
“That’s what makes me think that this time it wasn’t their own ship. It would be risky to chance having it stopped in these waters, obviously. No, this time I think it was a matter of a simple commercial arrangement with some other skipper, in which case they wouldn’t know anything except that they were to put in a boat at such and such a spot and pick up a lady. If they ever did manage to put in a boat in such a sea, it’s certain she didn’t come to keep the appointment. They couldn’t know what that implied, to them it just meant their passenger hadn’t turned up. Maybe they waited as long as they could, maybe they were driven out. What could they do but sail without her?
“And all that money, and the valuables she was to have taken with her, just lay uselessly in her coffin with her for two centuries, until Zeb Trethuan found it and started methodically turning it into money again. Thus setting the stage for the next death.