CHAPTER TWO: MARK GETS SET
THE Crabbers' Delight at Porthallow is one of those peculiarly English pubs, bulging with horse brasses and copper pans and spurious souvenirs, which despite its Olde Worlde atmosphere still manages to attract a clientele of genuine locals. It stands just across the Hard from the Customs House, and behind it there is a green lawn sloping down to the bathing beach on the other side of the cove where customers sit and drink in the summer.
At lunchtime on the day after the discovery of the girl's body, the big general bar — which with a tiny "snug" comprised the whole of the inn's drinking quarters — was fuller than usual for a winter weekday. Fishermen in jerseys and peaked caps mingled with sober-suited bankers and shopkeepers from Fore Street and Harbour Road; several swarthy young men from the circus exchanged pleasantries with long-haired boys from the local tech; two bearded painters and their wives were being plied with gin by newspapermen from London.
In a beamed alcove bright with chintz and bottleglass, the fair-haired driver of the sports car who had arrived early that morning talked with the landlord and a weatherbeaten individual in a yachting cap who said that he was the Harbourmaster.
The visitor's hair was brushed forward in the modern manner. His suede Chelsea boots were only slightly scuffed. And his suit, minus lapels and with a bright thread playing hide-and-seek among the checks, was sharp in the cool style that stopped just short of vulgarity.
"Journalist, eh?" the Harbourmaster was saying in his soft West Country voice. "You'm best be gettin' along over to them other fellers around the bar, then. Writin' chaps from London, all of 'em ... though what they think they'll get out of our painters, I don't know! Proper sponges they are."
The landlord was a nutlike little man obscurely ill-at-ease in his grey pinstripe. He would have been happier, one felt, in his shirtsleeves or a baize apron. He paused now, resting his weight on one foot, his hands full of the empty glasses he was returning to the bar, and stared at the young man as though he was seeing him for the first time. "Did 'ee want to be introduced then, sir?" he asked. "Silly of me not to have thought of it afore. You come right on over by there, and I'll —"
"No, really, thanks," the fair-haired young man interrupted. He seemed almost anxious not to meet the newspapermen from London. "We're — er — different branches of the profession, you see. Oil and water, you know. I'm here to work out a holiday feature on the southwest... you know: how to spend your money at home instead of abroad. That sort of thing. And they're all here, one imagines, because of the murder. News reporters."
"Right you are, my dear," the Harbourmaster said. "Never visit the place from one year's end to another — but at the first breath of scandal, the whole village is crawling with foreigners."
"Foreigners?"
"The English, he means," the landlord said. "To a Cornishman, any visitor from across the River Tamar is : I'm a Devonport man myself."
The Harbourmaster sighed and sank his nose into his tankard. "It's a bad business, all the same," he said a few minutes later, coming up for air. "Bring you a few more pints just now. But it'll be bad for business in the long run, mark my words."
"Local girl, was she?" the visitor prompted.
"Not to say local, my dear. Come from somewhere up north; Somerset way, I believe. But they'd been wintering here for several years now, and we'd begun to get used to them in a way. Even had boats, some of 'm."
"What was it all about? Do they know who did it?"
An invisible shutter dropped over the landlord's face. He reached for the Harbourmaster's tankard and turned away.
"Come now, gentlemen," the visitor urged. "The same again? Landlord? You'll take another pint with us, won't you?" He swung back to face the Harbourmaster as the licensee nodded reluctantly and threaded his way towards the bar. "You were saying...?" he persisted softly.
The man in the yachting cap shifted from foot to foot. "It's nothing, really," he said defensively. "You know what local gossip is in a place like this. Sheila Duncan was a pretty girl and she liked a good time... But it seems she'd settled down and was goin' steady with young Ernie Bosustow up along the circus when up pops Mister Right with his motor car, and his experience, and his money — ay, and his wife, too, if it comes to that."
"A triangle? Do you mean the motive for the murder may have been jealousy? But which one of the heavenly twins... Who is your Mister Right, by the way? The inevitable Older Man, I suppose."
He broke off as the Harbourmaster coughed loudly and turned aside. The man's seamed cheeks had gone brick red. Following the direction of his gaze, the young man saw that a police officer in uniform had come in with a distinguished-looking civilian — a middle-aged man with white hair, a lean and rakish face, and an impeccable weekend suit.
Waylaid as he was returning with their drinks, the landlord stood awkwardly passing the time of day with the newcomers. "Gentleman," he managed to interpolate at last, "I don't think you'll have met our latest guest... Mr. Mark Slate, from London. This is Sir Gerald Wright, Mr. Slate; and, of course, Superintendent Curnow of our local Force."
"From London?" the baronet drawled as he shook hands. "I must say this is the time of the year when we least expect visitors from what the locals persist in calling Up-along." His voice was deep and mellifluous.
"It's just right for me," Mark Slate said. "I'm a writer."
"A writer! How interesting! But not, I hope, one of those hatchet men trying to hack a story of national interest from our small local tragedy?"
Slate shook his head. "You can rest easy," he said with a smile directed more at the policeman than the other. "I'm strictly travel. No news for me, even if I do seem to have happened on a murder."
The superintendent was a big man with bushy black eyebrows almost meeting above a blade of a nose. He laughed now, showing a gleam of gold teeth, as he stripped off his wet raincoat and sank into a chair. "Here's where no news is good news, then!" he said. "For a moment there I was afraid you'd be another of those chaps badgering me for a quote. You know — the police are confident of an early arrest. That sort of thing... Or perhaps a simple first-person description of the scene of the crime!"
"It is a crime, then?" Slate asked casually.
"Oh, yes," the policeman said. "It's a crime alright."
"Come on, Curnow," Sir Gerald Wright called from the bar. "I've ordered up one of Bertie's special rum punches for us. You'd better help me bring them over, for the glasses are devilish hot!"
By the time they had settled themselves down in the alcove with their steaming grog, the Harbourmaster had left and the landlord was busying himself with customers waiting to climb the old oak staircase to the dining room on the first floor.
"What kind of travel stuff are you working on down here, Slate?" Sir Gerald asked. "Surely it's an odd time of the year to be doing that?"
"Not really," the young man said with a smile. "First week of January, every paper in the country carries a special issue on holidays, mostly foreign, with bags of features on the best places to go and so on, and page after page of ads tied in from the package tours and travel agencies. That's all over now and the time's right for a follow-up piece — after all the shouting what are we really going to do this summer? And what are the chances of spending a good holiday at home?... I think they're okay, specially around here, so I've come down to get some local colour at first hand."