“I’ll show you Number Three now. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Ooh yes. Is there by any chance a pub relatively nearby, where we could get something to eat?”
Carole’s instinctive reaction was: again? But we had a pub meal at lunchtime in Lyme Regis. And we haven’t even looked at the Welcome Pack in the fridge.
The pub Mopsa had recommended was the Tinner’s Lamp in the village of Penvant, about three miles distant. Since she reckoned they stopped serving food at eight-thirty, Carole and Jude had only the briefest of visits to their cottage before hurrying off for supper. They did just have time to register, with some relief, that the standards of housekeeping in the rental properties were higher than in the Lockes’ own cottage. (Probably there was a local woman who sorted them out, while Mopsa was responsible for her Number One.) Then Gulliver, tantalized by his brief taste of aromatic freedom, was once again consigned gloomily to the back of the car.
Very little was said on their way to the Tinner’s Lamp, and Jude was pretty certain she knew the reason for her neighbour’s frostiness. As soon as they had delivered their order at the bar, she was proved right. The pub was another stone-built building of considerable antiquity, but again skilfully and sympathetically modernized. There weren’t many customers, but those present seemed definitely to be locals – not rustic fishermen with Cornish accents, but retired solicitors of the last generation to enjoy nice index-linked pensions.
At the solid wooden bar Carole had asked for white wine and been a little surprised to be offered a choice of five, including a Chilean Chardonnay, for which they inevitably plumped. Why did she imagine that, being so far from the metropolis, the Tinner’s Lamp would not rise to the sophistication of a wine list? Pure Home Counties prejudice. Jude had then ordered a pasty – “Well, after all, we are in Cornwall” – and Carole, feeling suddenly very hungry, had surprised herself by doing the same. Then, when they were ensconced at a small table between the bar and the open fire, Carole voiced the resentment she had been bottling up.
“Why on earth did you have to call me Cindy?”
“It was something I came up with on the spur of the moment,” replied Jude in a tone of well-feigned apology. “I should have worked out names for us before, but I didn’t think. It just came to me.”
“Well, I wish something else had ‘just come to you’. Cindy! I mean: do I look like a Cindy?”
“We none of us have any control over the names our parents gave us.”
But Carole wasn’t mollified by that. “We might, however, hope to have some control over the names our neighbours give us.”
“I was thinking on my feet, and all I knew was that it was important to come up with a name that had the same initials as your real one.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, really, Carole. Haven’t you read any Golden Age whodunnits? The bounder who’s masquerading under a false identity is always given away by the fact that the name he’s chosen doesn’t match the initials on his monogrammed luggage.”
“But I haven’t got any monogrammed luggage.”
“Ah.” Jude suppressed a giggle. “I knew there was a fault in my logic somewhere.”
“Cindy…” Carole muttered again despairingly.
“Putting that on one side,” said Jude, “I do have a result to report from my carefully engineered loo-break at Mopsa’s cottage.”
“What? You didn’t really want to go?”
“Not that much. But I thought…there we were actually in the place. Maybe it was a good opportunity for a little snoop.”
“And what did your little snoop reveal?” asked Carole, slightly miffed that she hadn’t thought of the idea. “Did you see Nathan Locke sitting in his hideaway, planning further murders?”
“No, not quite that. But I did see two steaks.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know I had to go through the kitchen to get to the loo…”
“Yes.”
“Well, on the work surface there was a meal being prepared. And there was a chopping board which had two slabs of steak on it.”
“Suggesting that Mopsa wasn’t just cooking for herself?”
“Suggesting exactly that, yes. Now, all right, maybe she’s got a local boyfriend…some rough-hewn Cornish lad who is even now enjoying his hearty steak prior to enjoying the delights of Mopsa’s wispy body…but if she hasn’t…well, it might suggest that Nathan is on the premises somewhere.”
“If he is, he must be pretty well hidden. Don’t forget that the police searched the place.”
“Yes, but if Mopsa was warned they were coming, there’d have been plenty of time to get Nathan out for the duration. There must be lots of places to hide along the coast round here.”
“Maybe…” Carole didn’t sound convinced.
“Oh, come on, at lunchtime you were getting at me for talking about a wild-goose chase. Now you’re the one who’s going all wet blanket. I think those two steaks are going to be very significant. They’re the closest we’ve got so far to confirmation that Nathan Locke is down here.”
“Hardly confirmation. There could be a lot of other explanations. Mopsa might just have an exceptionally healthy appetite.”
“She’s very thin.”
“But very tall. Must need a lot of fuel for all that length.”
Jude’s conviction was not to be shifted. “No, I’m sure she was cooking for two.”
“We shouldn’t really have come here then. Should be at Treboddick, watching out to see if a boyfriend has arrived.”
“Too late now. And, looking at what’s just coming out of the kitchen, I think by being here we made the right choice.”
Carole also looked up to see the chubby landlord’s wife bearing two plates, each swamped by a huge Cornish pasty. “This right, is it? Some people want them with veg, but you didn’t ask for that, did you?”
“No,” said Jude. “A proper Cornish pasty’s got lots of veg inside, hasn’t it?”
“You’re right, my lover.” The woman set the two plates down on the table. The smell that rose from them was wonderful. The pastry was solid – not the nasty flaky kind that features in so many mass-produced pasties – and there was a neat finger-pinched seam along the top of the plump oval. “And the pasties at the Tinner’s Lamp are certainly proper ones. Now do you want any sauce?”
“Again, a proper Cornish pasty shouldn’t need any sauce.”
“You’re right again, my lover. But we get so many emmets down here who want to smother them with ketchup and brown sauce you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Have you had a busy summer?” Carole yet again envied her neighbour’s ability to slip effortlessly into conversation with total strangers.
The landlord’s wife pulled a glum face. “Not that good. Weather’s been fine, but the tourists’ve stayed away. Nope, lot of people round here have felt the pinch. All the B & B’s and what-have-you been half-empty. So where are you two staying?”
“Treboddick.”
“Ah.” There was a wealth of nuance in the monosyllable. The landlord’s wife knew exactly where they meant, and exactly who ran the place. And she had some reservations about the owners. “Don’t think they’ve had a great summer either. Worse than most people round here, I reckon.”
“We’ve only just arrived, but it looks to be a beautiful spot,” Carole contributed.
“Oh yes, no question about that. But everywhere in Cornwall’s beautiful. You’ve got to provide more than beauty if you’re going to get the punters in.”
“‘En Suite Bathrooms’ and ‘Sky Television’?”
“All that certainly. But you got to do a bit more. Make your guests welcome, not treat them like you’re doing them a favour by letting them stay in your place.”