Manna from Hades Read online

  She’d better see whether anything had been left inside it, on purpose or by accident. Laying the case flat on the table top, she pressed back the shiny brass catches, opened it, and gasped. On a bed of black velvet, a tangled heap of jewelry glittered and gleamed, gold, ruby-red, emerald-green, sapphire, amethyst, and the hard sparkle of diamond.

  With tentative fingers, Eleanor picked out a bracelet and held it up to the light. Purple stones glowed with an inner fire.

  Paste, of course, or the modern equivalent, but paste of excellent quality. Even if they were artificial gems, they must be quite valuable. How very generous people were, she thought, a little misty-eyed.

  And doing good by stealth, too, not wanting to be thanked, slipping the case into her car when she was not watching, as if it were manna from Heaven.

  What the kind donor unfortunately didn’t realise was that valuable gifts had to be documented. Jocelyn was going to have forty fits when she discovered that Eleanor had no paperwork, no signatures, to vouch for the provenance of the jewelry.

  Nor had she the slightest idea of the identity of the giver.

  TWO

  The number of the safe’s combination was the date she had met Peter in India, between the wars. Even Megan agreed it was as secure a number as any, and it had the immense advantage that Eleanor would never forget it.

  The anodised metal door swung open. She scooped the jewelry from the attaché-case with both hands and dumped it in the safe.

  Making sure the door closed with a solid click, she re-hung Nick’s painting of Clovelly, a Christmas present. No connoisseur of art, she liked the little donkey traipsing down the steep cobbles, the bright splashes of geraniums in window-boxes. It cheered up her small sitting room.

  Teazle was already asleep in her bed in the corner, exhausted after all that fruitless rabbiting. Nose and paws twitched.

  “Good luck with the dream rabbits,” Eleanor wished her, wondering in a vague way whether talking to a sleeping dog was even more eccentric than talking to a wideawake one. Teazle raised her head and blinked. “I’ll leave the front door open for you, in case you want to come down and see what’s going on.”

  As she started down the stairs, empty attaché-case in hand, a voice rose from below.

  “You there, Mrs Trewynn? This stuff need bringing in?”

  “Yes, please, dear.”

  “Okay. Come on, kids.” Donna, teenage daughter of the landlord of the Trelawney Arms, her face plastered with anti-acne makeup and fluorescent eyeshadow, was accompanied by two small, solemn Chins with straight black hair and almond eyes.

  Eleanor stood the attaché-case against the wall at the foot of the stairs and went after them out into the dusk.

  “I better put the parking lights on for you, Mrs Trewynn,” Donna suggested, diving headfirst into the Morris. “Okay, Ivy, Lionel, you can take this box. It’s not too heavy. Okay?”

  “Okay, Donna.” The children awkwardly bore off between them the box of ever-popular stuffed animals knitted by the Misses Willis.

  Donna plunged back into the car. “Mostly clothes, this lot, innit, Mrs Trewynn. Get anything good today?”

  Eleanor doubtfully eyed her plump rear end, clad in scarlet tights that appeared to be made entirely of elastic, beneath a nearly non-existent skirt. “Mrs Prendergast gave me three boxes,” she said.

  “That’s the lady goes to a fancy London dressmaker, innit? I’d look a right charlie in her stuff. Looks a treat on Mrs Stearns, though. Dad says we got the dressiest vicar’s wife in Cornwall.”

  Eleanor stored up the compliment to relay to Jocelyn, then decided her friend might be less amused and flattered than dismayed that everyone knew she bought her clothes at LonStar. Eleanor herself only wished she was the right size and shape to profit from Mrs Prendergast’s aversion to wearing a dress more than once, or a suit for more than a season.

  From his gallery next door, Nick came to join her, silent on sandalled feet, accompanied by the usual faint miasma of turpentine. He reached out towards the scarlet tights. Eleanor slapped his hand before thumb and forefinger met.

  He grinned down at her, a teasing gleam in eyes as blue as the seas he painted for tourists and suchlike philistines. Tall and lean, he wore his thick, light brown hair long, neatly tied back. Somehow, instead of making him look like a scruffy artist or a hippy, it gave him the air of a dashing Georgian aristocrat. In the dusk, the paint smears on pullover and jeans were invisible.

  “Need anything heavy carried in, Eleanor?” he enquired.

  Donna emerged from the car, flurried, a box clasped to her bosom. “Ooh, Mr Gresham, you didn’t half make me jump.” She fluttered improbably long, improbably dark eyelashes.

  “The exercise will do you good,” he said tolerantly, and she giggled. As she went off with the box, he added sotto voce to Eleanor, “And she’d have jumped a lot higher if you hadn’t—”

  “Nonsense, Nick, you wouldn’t actually have pinched her. There are some books in the boot, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  He tried the boot. “Locked. D’you have the keys on you?”

  To her pleased surprise, she found them in her pocket. He unlocked and opened the boot, leaving the keys in the lock. The Chin children reappeared. From the floor, Eleanor retrieved a set of placemats for Ivy to carry and a whistling kettle for Lionel.

  “All the latest best-sellers,” said Nick, examining the top layer of books by the light from the passage. “Old Cartwright?”

  “Yes, and there’s another box underneath, of mysteries and thrillers. They sell fast.”

  “Many of them to me.”

  “And then you give them back—”

  “Sometimes a bit paint-smudged, I’m afraid.”

  “And someone else buys them. It’s good of Major Cartwright to pass them on to us quickly, before everyone has already read them.”

  “Poor old chap.” With a theatrical groan, he hefted the box and followed Ivy and Lionel. A moment later a yelp of pain floated back to Eleanor’s ears. “Sh-ouch!”

  She hurried down the passage to find him rubbing his shin while Donna fussed over him and the children politely hid giggles behind their hands.

  “What the hell is that monstrosity?” Nick demanded, glaring malevolently at the object in question, which crouched between the stockroom doorway and the long table.

  Eleanor bit her lip. “A coffee table, I believe.” Four sleek brass dolphins, standing on their tails, supported on notched dorsal fins a circle of thick glass. Their heads and rounded, beaklike noses, grinning mockingly, protruded several inches at each corner.

  “I always thought porpoises were charming, inoffensive beasts,” said Nick, pulling up his trouser leg to examine the beginnings of a bruise. At least the rounded surface had not broken the skin. “Someone must have been delighted to get rid of the hideous thing. I’m surprised you haven’t fallen over it, Eleanor.”

  “I never walk into things,” she said smugly. “Shall I get a cold compress?”

  “No, it’s all right, I’ll survive. Here, Donna, give us a hand to shift the damn thing out of the way before it breaks my other leg.”

  It was heavier than it looked, but they managed to move it over by a rack of clothes. Without further incident, the car was soon emptied. A stack of boxes, bags, and oddments rose in the corner of the stockroom. Thanking the children, Eleanor gave each of them a LonStar sticker and they ran off. Donna showed a disposition to linger in the passage.

  “D’you see Doctor Who last night, Mr Gresham?”

  “No telly, remember? And if I had I’d be watching the Philharmonia, not the Daleks.”

  “You coming up the Arms for a pint tonight, then?”

  “Not tonight, Donna. Eleanor, shall I park the Incorruptible for you?”

  “Yes, please, Nick.” She hunted in her pockets for the keys while Donna departed with a pout and what would have been a flounce had she been wearing a skirt of respectable length.

  Nick watched her go, sh
aking his head. “She’s driving me to do my drinking at the Wreckers. I’ll buy you a sherry there tonight, Eleanor, and then take you to dinner at Chin’s. I’m feeling rich.”

  “Oh, Nick, have you sold one of your artistic pictures?”

  “No, just the commonplace but oversize daub of Cambeak, you know the one. An American couple. She said the heather was the exact shade of the couch in their family room.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “It’ll pay the rent,” he said philosophically, moving towards the door. “I left your keys in the car, I think. I’ll come by at . . . What’s the time?”

  Eleanor glanced at her watch. “It’s stopped.”

  “I’ll come by as soon as I’m ready. You don’t mind walking up to the Wreckers, do you?”

  “Not at all. I expect Donna will fancy herself in love with someone else by next month, you know.”

  “I hope so. The bitter’s a penny less at the Arms. See you shortly.”

  Smiling, she watched him insert himself into the Morris and drive down the hill. She rented a shed for the car from the owner of the small parking lot by the stream, the only level land in old Port Mabyn. Neither the Wreckers Inn, halfway up the opposite hill, nor the Trelawney Arms boasted a parking area.

  Eleanor hurried upstairs to the flat, then up again to her tiny dormer-windowed bedroom, to change into a skirt. She was giving the dog her dinner when Nick reappeared in a spotless white shirt and brown corduroys. Teazle spared him a brief but ecstatic greeting before diving at her bowl.

  “Let’s take her to the Wreckers,” he said. “We can drop her off back here before we go to Chin’s.”

  “She’s had a long walk today. She’ll be perfectly happy at home.” Eleanor put on her jacket and bade the dog farewell, receiving in response a reproachful glance.

  “Oh, let her come!” Nick took the lead from its hook. Teazle abandoned what little was left in her bowl and dashed to the door. “By the way, here’s the keys.” He handed them over.

  That reminded her to lock the front door of the flat behind her, and she even remembered to remove them from the lock and drop them in her jacket pocket.

  By the time she returned home, after a pleasant evening, she had to admit to feeling a little tired. She fetched Teazle down from the flat, where she had left her en route from the Wreckers to Chin’s, and let her out of the back door, at the end of the passage.

  A steep, narrow asphalt path ran along the back of the shops. Beyond it the rough hillside sank to the south towards the harbour and the inlet, and rose to the west to become the sheltering headland, Crookmoyle Point. From down here Eleanor couldn’t see the lighthouse, but by the light shining down from her sitting room window above, she watched the terrier’s small white form investigating rocks and bushes. She thought about Nick. What a pity the dear boy had such bad luck selling his serious work.

  All the tourists—his chief customers—wanted was pretty pictures to remind them of their holidays. Surely among her vast acquaintance she must number an art dealer or collector to whom she could recommend him.

  She’d set her mind to it tomorrow. Tonight all she wanted was a hot water bottle and bed.

  “Teazle!”

  Short legs at full stretch, the dog raced past her into the passage, then skidded to a halt at the door to the stockroom. She sniffed suspiciously and gave a hopeful bark.

  “No. If we really have mice again you can find them tomorrow, but I suspect it’s sheer wishful thinking. Come.”

  They went upstairs.

  In the morning, when Teazle came in after a brief airing, she had to be dragged away from the stockroom door and carried upstairs. Perhaps there actually were mice, after all. Jocelyn would not be pleased.

  Eleanor breakfasted at the table that separated the small sitting room from the tiny kitchen, cleared up, and then wrote letters at her desk.

  Though she had retired from LonStar’s overseas staff, she still felt responsible for the projects she had helped initiate. Over the years, she had persuaded scores of villagers, elders, district governors, even ministers, wary of European interference, to allow Lon-Star to bring aid. Forgetful she might be but she never forgot any of them. In schools, clinics, and farming, fishing, and craft cooperatives all over the world, an encouraging word from her might lend new strength to people battling ignorance and hunger. One did not give up just because a riot in Indonesia had slashed a hole in one’s life and heart. Peter would have expected her to carry on.

  She had run out of stamps and was thinking of popping out to the post office when there was a knock on the flat door.

  Jocelyn’s pepper-and-salt head appeared around the door. “Eleanor? Oh there you are.” The vicar’s wife stepped into the sitting room. Her rather angular figure was admirably disguised by a beautifully cut tweed suit, worn with a pale turquoise silk blouse.

  “Morning, Joce. Coffee?”

  “No time, thanks. It’s nearly ten. I’m just going to open the shop.”

  “Oh, is it your day today? Good. I’ll come down in a minute and help you sort the new stuff.” Though she was hopeless at pricing, she could bend and lift, unlike some of the stouter, less limber volunteers.

  “Anything from Mrs Prendergast? Bless the woman! I’m hoping for a new dress for lunch with the bishop on Saturday. Lois can price anything I want to buy when she comes in this afternoon. Hello, Teazle. Are you coming down with me?”

  “She’d better not go into the stockroom until I get there. She seems to have decided there are mice in there and you know what chaos she creates when she’s hunting.”

  “Not again!” said Jocelyn crossly. “I’ll have to speak to Mary Todd again about clearing up the crumbs from her elevenses biscuits.”

  “Must you, Joce? It’s so kind of her to give LonStar so much time. I expect Teazle’s imagining things.”

  “We’ll see. It’d do Mary good to go without biscuits a couple of times a week. There’s no excuse for leaving crumbs about the place.” She glanced at her watch, which invariably had the correct time. “I must run.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Eleanor finished her letter and went downstairs. Teazle demanded to be let out, so Eleanor opened the back door and left it open. Going into the stockroom, she heard Jocelyn moving about in the shop, but the connecting door was still locked.

  Eleanor had no key—she only helped in the shop itself in the direst emergencies, since the day she had so upset the cash register that the repairman had to be called. She knocked and called, “Joce?” then headed for the stack of “new” goods.

  Muffled footsteps, the click of the lock, the creak of the hinges, were followed by Jocelyn’s annoyed voice saying, “I thought Nicholas oiled all . . . Ouch! Who moved that dratted table?”

  As they inspected the vicious red mark on Jocelyn’s shin, Eleanor guiltily told her about Nick’s encounter with the table. “At least there’s no ladder in your stocking,” she consoled. “I’ll get a cold compress.”

  “Fetch Nicholas, will you? I’ll find a place for that thing in the shop if it kills me, before it kills someone else. And if no one has bought it within a week, I’ll buy it myself and donate it to Ye Olde Cornysh Piskie Curio Shoppe. Brian and Mavis will love it. They can put china piskies and wishing wells on it.”

  Nose twitching, Teazle was investigating the table inch by inch, so Eleanor left her. When she returned with Nick, Jocelyn was polishing away dog-nose smears with Brasso and a duster. She had cleared a spot in a back corner of the shop, where no customer was likely to trip over the dolphins. Between the three of them they carried the table through. Nick and Jocelyn compared bruises, then he returned to his gallery.

  “You never know when a millionaire art collector will walk in,” he said optimistically.

  By some obscure connection of ideas, that reminded Eleanor of the jewelry in the safe upstairs. She was about to tell Jocelyn about it, when the bell over the shop door tinkled and a customer came in. The jewelry could w
ait. She went back into the stockroom.

  In the far corner, Teazle was sniffing at some men’s shirts spilling out of a carrier bag on its side on top of a box. Her tail was between her legs and she showed none of the frantic excitement mice invariably aroused. Glancing round at Eleanor, she whined.

  When Eleanor went over to her, she gave a perfunctory wag of the tail and backed off. Puzzled, Eleanor bent down to right the bag and stuff the clothes back in. Behind the box a pair of boots lay on their sides, one atop the other. The leather, once black but now of no determinate colour, was cracked and the back of the heels, turned towards her, were worn down to the uppers.

  “That’s odd,” she said to Teazle. “I don’t remember anyone giving those and I never would have accepted them. No one would buy such disreputable boots.”

  She set the carrier bag to one side and shifted the box. As it moved, she saw bony, sockless ankles and the frayed, faded hems of a pair of filthy blue jeans. The boots were occupied.

  Had some tramp crawled in among the goods? She really must remember to lock doors! In a way, she was glad that he had found shelter from the chilly spring night, but Jocelyn would be furious. Perhaps she could send him on his way before Jocelyn found out.

  He must be drunk, or very sound asleep, not to have been wakened by the fuss over the table. She nudged at his thin ankle with a fastidious toe but failed to rouse him.

  As she moved boxes and bags away from the prone form, a sick certainty that something was very wrong grew in her. She uncovered the rest of the jeans, a hand in a woollen glove unravelling at the wrist, a khaki anorak ripped under the arm. The man lay motionless.

  And then the head, face to the wall: long, lank darkish hair; the angle of a jaw sprouting youthful fuzz; the angle of the neck—