Hawke's Tor (11 page)

T
HE RAILWAY STATION was situated at Bodmin Road, some distance from the town and Tom waited on a draughty platform until the Great Western broad gauge train, with its impressively tall smoke stack puffed fussily into the station. The only previous journey he had made by train had been when he came to Cornwall from London, a few years before and then he had travelled third class, in a carriage that was little more than an improvised cattle truck. Travelling second class today, at the expense of the Cornwall Constabulary was far more comfortable and almost enjoyable, for all that it lacked the luxurious ‘armchair' comfort afforded those who travelled first class.

It took a little more than three hours to reach Exeter, where Tom was obliged to change trains and wait for another belonging to the London and South Western Railway which would take him to Salisbury, another four hours' journey.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Tom walked into the busy Salisbury police station and presented his letter of introduction from the Chief Constable of Cornwall. The superintendent in charge of the police station was aware of the inquiry going on in respect of Kerensa's murder and the disappearance of baby Albert and he sent for one of his detective sergeants and instructed him to give Tom all the assistance he needed.

Detective Sergeant George Farmer had been a founding member of the Wiltshire Constabulary when it was first formed in 1839. A quiet, self-assured man, he greeted Tom formally when they were introduced, but once outside the superintendent's office he relaxed and said, ‘You must be tired out after travelling all that way by train. It was one of my men who made the enquiries at Laverstock about this woman and baby you wanted to know about so I was expecting a visit from someone about it. I've arranged for you to stay with me and my wife and family while you're here, but it's too late to begin our inquiries today. We'll go home for a meal and a glass of ale and visit Laverstock in the morning. On the way you can tell me something about the case, it sounds intriguing.'

 

Detective Sergeant Farmer lived in a police house with his homely wife, a daughter in her late-teens and a ten year-old son. They were obviously a close family and Tom, unused as he was to family life, was made to feel he was a welcome guest.

Although little was said about the case that had brought him to Salisbury, while they were eating the evening meal, Tom happened to mention that it was a meeting with Verity Pendleton that had subsequently provided information leading him to Laverstock. His words brought an immediate awed response from the daughter, Millie.

‘You've actually spoken to Miss Pendleton?'

‘Yes, we spent some time together when she was staying with my superintendent and his wife, in Cornwall.'

‘You'll be able to do no wrong now,' declared Millie's mother to Tom. ‘Miss Pendleton has been Millie's idol for years.'

‘The Wiltshire newspapers have always covered Verity Pendleton's exploits in great detail,' George Farmer explained.
‘Partly because she is a Wiltshire woman and the chief constable's stepdaughter, but also because she has lived a very adventurous life. Actually, I believe she is here in Salisbury at the moment, doing something at our hospital and staying with a friend of hers who was with her in the Crimea.'

‘Oh, Dad, why didn't you tell me? I would love to just
see
her!' A distraught Millie looked across the table at her father.

‘I'm sorry, love, I forgot.'

‘If she is still in Salisbury I would like to speak to her and thank her for her help and let her know how the investigation is going,' Tom said. ‘She spent some time in Cornwall and has taken a very keen interest in the murder of Kerensa Morgan and the disappearance of her baby.'

‘I'll send someone along to the hospital in the morning to find out if she is still here,' George Farmer replied to Tom, at the same time doing his best to avoid his daughter's accusing gaze.

 

Later that evening, when the two men were seated on a bench in the garden, enjoying a smoke in the soft warmth of the summer evening, the detective sergeant said, ‘I didn't
forget
to tell Millie Miss Pendleton was in Salisbury, it was deliberate. The newspapers used to be so full of what she was doing in the Crimea and then in India, that Millie got it into her head she, too, wanted to become a nurse. She would become very heated when I told her nursing wasn't the sort of work any decently brought up girl would do. During the Crimean War we had a military hospital here in Salisbury for returning soldiers. The so-called “nurses” who worked there spent more time in the public houses or police cells than in the hospital. I swear they were responsible for putting more men
into
hospital than ever came out healthy. I'd never let Millie become one of them.'

‘I'd keep your views to yourself if you ever meet up with Verity Pendleton. She is working very closely with Florence Nightingale to change the image of nursing – and my superintendent and our force's sergeant major were both in Scutari Hospital during the Crimean War and will vouch for what
she
did there. Miss Pendleton is helping her choose a very select band of girls who will be trained properly and known as Nightingale nurses. She was down in Cornwall for that very purpose, staying with my superintendent, Amos Hawke and his wife for part of the time.'

‘You sound as though you got to know her quite well … yet she was staying with your superintendent?'

‘Amos and I were both in the Royal Marines and also both in the Metropolitan Police,' Tom explained. ‘It was him who persuaded me to join him in Cornwall. He's the most senior superintendent in the force but we are still good friends and I work pretty closely with him in the Bodmin headquarters.'

‘It's never a bad thing to have friends in high places,' George Farmer commented, with a hint of cynicism in his voice.

‘True – but getting back to Verity Pendleton. Very few girls measure up to the high standards she is setting for those who are taken on as Nightingale nurses. Those who do can look forward to a very good and worthwhile career – and a respectable one. The nurses of the future are going to be very different to those you and me have seen in the past, George. It's something you should think seriously about. Millie seems to be a very bright girl. If she came under Verity Pendleton's wing you'd one day be very proud of her … and coming to the attention of the chief constable's stepdaughter wouldn't do your own career any harm, either!'

 

The following morning it took Tom and Detective Sergeant Farmer no more than twenty minutes to walk from the Farmers' police house to Laverstock village. A pretty village beside the River Bourne, it contained no more than eighty houses and they made their way to a thatched cottage in the heart of the village where the wife of the landlord of North Hill's Ring o' Bells public house was known to be living.

The door was opened to them by Florrie Kittow herself. She looked well and happy, but her expression changed to one of dismay when Tom introduced himself to her.

‘Wh … what do you want with me?' she asked, wide-eyed.

‘I would like to ask you one or two questions, Mrs Kittow,' Tom replied.

‘You've come all this way from Cornwall just to ask me questions? What about?'

Tom thought that if Florrie Kittow had nothing to hide, her natural reaction to having a Cornish policeman call on her would be to immediately assume that something had happened to her husband.

The cottage had very small diamond-paned windows and the inside was somewhat gloomy, but he could see another woman standing in the shadows behind Florrie and he said, ‘Can we go somewhere more private to have a talk?'

The second woman moved out of the shadows towards them, saying, ‘This is
my
home and I'm Florrie's elder sister. I'd like to hear anything you have to say to her.'

‘I appreciate your concern for her, but I am here to ask your sister some questions about a murder that has occurred in Cornwall. It is possible she may be able to help me.'

‘A murder?' This from Florrie. ‘Who's been murdered – and why should it have anything to do with me?'

‘Because the victim is someone you knew … Kerensa Morgan.'

‘Kerensa…? Oh my God! It's nothing to do with Alfie, is it? He's not involved?'

‘We are not absolutely certain
who
is involved at the moment, but why should you even think it could have anything to do with your husband?'

‘I
don't
… of course I don't – but why else would you come all this way to speak to me if you didn't believe one or other of us has something to do with her murder?'

Choosing not to give an answer to her question, Tom said, ‘Alfie told me you have a baby now. I'd like to see him – it
is
a boy?'

Tom thought he detected a brief flicker of alarm before she replied, ‘Yes, it's a boy, Harry, but he's asleep now and I'd rather not wake him.'

In a sudden and unexpected contradiction of Florrie's statement there came the staccato sound of a baby's waking cry from upstairs and she said hurriedly, ‘He's just waking up and will be hungry. The wet-nurse will be up there with him.'

‘I'll go upstairs and make sure she
is
there,' said her sister. ‘You know what she's like!'

Tom was convinced that talk of the wet-nurse had been an attempt to dissuade him from insisting upon seeing the baby, but he was not to be so easily deterred from his main purpose in travelling to Wiltshire.

When the sister could be heard hurrying up the stairs, Tom said, ‘Shall we go into the garden where we are less likely to be overheard, Mrs Kittow? I feel you would rather your sister didn't hear some of the things I have to say.'

There was no mistaking Florrie's fear now as she stepped uncertainly from the house to follow Tom. George Farmer said,
‘You go ahead, Tom. I'll stay here and make certain Mrs Kittow's sister doesn't come out and interrupt you.'

By the time Tom and Florrie reached the gate of the cottage garden she had gained sufficient control of herself to ask, ‘Why
have
you come all this way to speak to me? I know nothing about Kerensa's murder, it must have happened after I left North Hill – and I'm equally certain Alfie had nothing to do with it. He was aware that Kerensa was trouble and was as relieved as me when she got married and left the Ring o' Bells. She wouldn't have stayed working for us as long as she did if he hadn't felt sorry for her having no close family.'

‘I don't think that's the only reason, is it? From all I hear she was good for business and brought in the customers.'

‘She also brought in more than her share of problems, but you still haven't explained why you're here to see
me
.'

‘In all honesty it's not really
you
that's brought me all this way,' Tom said, ‘and I haven't told you any of the details of Kerensa's murder yet. You see, she'd gone up to Hawk's Tor with her baby when she was murdered and although her body was found, the baby is missing. We've had police, villagers and even miners out scouring the moor and the adjacent countryside, but there's been no sign of him. Now, there's a very strong rumour going around North Hill that you weren't pregnant when you left North Hill, or, if you were, you certainly weren't close to giving birth, yet here you are only a couple of weeks away from home with a baby and looking fitter than any newly delivered mother I've ever met up with. Not only that, I find you're employing a wet-nurse because you're unable to feed it yourself.'

Florrie had been looking at him with increasing agitation while he was speaking and now she said, ‘Are you saying you believe Harry is Kerensa's missing baby?'

‘I'm not saying that yet, certainly not until I've seen him, but I
am
saying you are not baby Harry's natural mother.'

Florrie opened her mouth to speak, but Tom held up a hand to silence her, ‘Before you say something that could give me a reason to arrest you, I want you to hear what I have to say. When I see the baby you have here I hope to be able to confirm whether or not it's baby Albert immediately. If it's not, then as far as I'm concerned that's the end of the matter, but I ought to tell you that I've learned about the activities of the gypsy Jed Smith and his skill in finding homes, albeit good homes, for unwanted babies. I would have spoken to him and saved myself a long journey and the Cornwall Constabulary unnecessary expense, had he been around, but he too disappeared on the night of Kerensa Morgan's murder. Now, I've said that if I'm satisfied the baby you have is
not
baby Albert I'll go away and you'll hear nothing more about it but, if I'm
not
satisfied I'll be taking you back to Cornwall with me and that could mean a lot of people, including your family here, in Wiltshire, becoming sceptical about baby Harry being yours.'

Twice Tom thought that Florrie was about to break her silence and interrupt him and on the third occasion, with an expression of anguish on her face she could contain herself no longer.

‘Alfie and me will give Harry a happier life than he'd have otherwise had and I love him so much already….'

Tears sprang to her eyes as she choked on her words and Tom said gently, ‘I don't doubt any of that, Florrie. If he's not the Morgan baby I'll go away content in the knowledge that he'll enjoy the sort of family life every baby should have. But I
must
know the truth. Did Jed Smith get the baby for you?'

Still finding it difficult to speak, Florrie Kittow could only nod miserably.

‘When was this?'

Giving him a date that was a full week before the murder, she added, ‘Jed gave Harry to Alfie and me outside the station at Liskeard, then I boarded the train with him and left Cornwall. I stayed at Templecombe, in Somerset, at a place Alfie and I knew of, before coming on here. I took on Lily, the wet-nurse, as soon as I arrived in Laverstock because I'd tried Harry with cow and goat's milk, but he wasn't doing very well.'