Malice in Cornwall Read Online Free Page B

“Please sit down, Miss, er… ?”
    “Thompson. But you can call me Jenny.”
    “Right then, Jenny, why don't you tell us all about it?”
    “It was a week ago last Monday after closing time— two weeks ago today that would be,” she began breathlessly. “I went for a walk along the Sands, down toward the Head. The tide was in, so there was just that narrow strip of beach to walk along. I was just coming around a small point of rock when I saw a faint light at the water's edge, sort of a greenish glow. I wondered what it was, so I went a little closer. Well, I nearly fainted on the spot! Itwas someone or some
thing
trying to crawl out of the water. It was all furry and wrinkled, with a strange halo all around and “—she shuddered—“it didn't have a head!”
    Detective-Sergeant Black cleared his throat politely.
    Powell ignored him. “Are you sure, Miss, er, Jenny?”
    She nodded earnestly. “I know she didn't! I swear to God, her neck just sort of ended and—”
    “You said
she”
Powell interjected.
    Jenny seemed slightly taken aback, as if it had just struck her for the first time. “I don't know why. exactly, but I'm sure it was a she.”
    “You said it was trying to crawl out of the water.” Powell said gravely. “Are you certain it was moving of its own accord?”
    She looked indignant. “I wasn't about to stick around to find out, was I?”
    “No, I suppose not. What did you do next?”
    “I ran back here as fast as I could to tell Tone. Didn't I, Tone?”
    “That's right,” Rowlands said. “The poor girl looked like death warmed over—”
    ‘Tony!” Jenny admonished.
    He smiled. “Sorry, love, figure of speech. Anyway, I grabbed a torch and my twelve bore and went back to look for it. I'm pretty sure I found the right spot, but I'm damned if I could find anything. At the time I thought that Jen was seeing things, but the next night it was spotted again by somebody else. Isn't that right, love?” He gave her a sharp slap on the bottom.
    A gesture of familiarity or admonishment? Powell wondered.
    Jenny looked none too pleased. “That's right, Tone.”
    Rowlands shrugged. “That's the goods. It's been seen on the Sands several times since, between here and the Head, always at night.”
    “What do you make of it?” Powell asked.
    Rowlands regarded Powell shrewdly before replying. “The damn thing gives me the creeps, if you want to know the truth, but I think it's pretty obvious, don't you?”
    “Go on.”
    “It's something drifting in and out with the tide. It turns up here and it turns up there.”
    “Yes, but what?”
    Rowlands shifted uneasily in his chair. “You tell me.”
    The surf crashed riotously against the rocks and Nick Tebble pulled smartly, expertly timing his strokes so that the tiny skiff rode the swells as smoothly as any Malibu surfer. Gulls clamored overhead, wheeling and plunging as if harrying a school of herring. He stayed his oars momentarily. “Bugger off, yer greedy bastards,” he shouted above the din.
    The birds took no notice so he began to row again, straining at the oars now and making for a small cove, perhaps fifty feet wide and twice as deep, that had suddenly opened up in the looming cliff face. A dozen more pulls and the skiff was deposited abruptly on a patch of shingled beach in front of a gray stone house that looked like it had grown organically from the surrounding rock. Above the door, carved in the granite lintel, were the words THE OLD FISH CELLAR and, underneath,
DULCIS
LUCRI ODOR.
A lane behind the house climbed steeply to the turf-covered heights above.
    He clambered out and dragged the boat a few feet farther up the beach. Trailing the bow rope behind him like an umbilical cord, he trudged toward the house. The shingle gave way to shelving rock slabs up to the base of a stone wall taller than a man, encrusted with barnacles and stained black with lichens above the tide line. The wall was surmounted by a narrow set of steps. He tied