Simon had begun to turn back towards the gravelled walk, his hands deep in his pockets, the air of the Hebridean song still soft and sweet in his mouth. He halted suddenly, stiffening; for a moment he hung perfectly still, then he turned a face sharp and pale beneath its gold with contained excitement.
“Dom said
“He said the Treverra epitaphs made the after-life sound like a sunshine cruise to the Bahamas. Why? What nerve did that prick?”
“The nerve it should have pricked then, if I’d been even half awake. And I was there?” he protested furiously. “I heard this? And I didn’t connect?”
“You laughed. Like the rest of us,” said George, patient but mystified.
“I would! The fate of many another pregant utterance in its time. Why do I never listen properly to anyone but myself? My God, but I see now how it all began, all the first part of the story. You only have to put one bit in place, and all the other pieces begin to slide in and settle alongside. George, come to the Place to-night, will you? We’re dining with the old lady, because Paddy has to go back to school to-morrow. Bring Bunty and Dominic, and come to coffee afterwards. You, too, Dan, please. I’d like you to be there.”
“With pleasure,” said the Vicar equably, “if you want me.”
“I do. I want you all, everyone who was involved in this investigation from the beginning. Because I can see my way now,” said Simon, suddenly shivering in the chilling air of early evening and the tension of his own incandescent excitement. “I believe I can clear up the strange, sad case of Jan and Morwenna, the mystery that set off all these other mysteries. And I will, to-night.”
They gathered round the long table in Miss Rachel’s library, ten of them. The curtains were drawn, and the tide, already well past its height, lashed and cried with subsiding force off the point, in the soft, luminous dark. Miss Rachel sat at the head of the table, dispensing coffee royally and happily, with Paddy at her left because she would not let him out of her reach now that he was regained in good condition and angelic humour, and had forgiven her freely under the pretence of being freely forgiven. On her right, Simon, curiously quiet and strained and bright. Tamsin moved about the foot of the table handing coffee-cups, helped by Dominic. George and Bunty on one side of the table, Tim and Phil and the Vicar on the other. It was a long time since the old lady had assembled such a satisfactory court, she didn’t even seem to mind that it was turning out to be Simon’s court rather than hers. The more he disclaimed it, the more honestly he abdicated, the more surely this evening belonged to him.
“I wasn’t the one who put my finger on the spot,” he was saying with passionate gravity. “That was Dominic. I had to have my nose rubbed in the truth before I could even realise it was there.”
“Me?” said Dominic, staggered. “I didn’t do anything, how on earth did I get in on the credits?”
“You took one look at the Treverra epitaphs, and put your finger on the one significant thing about them.‘They make heaven sound like a sunshine cruise to the Bahamas,’ you said.”
“Did I? It must have been just a joke, then.
“You did, though you may not have realised it or taken it seriously. All that pretty verse about year-long summer, and golden sands, and sapphire seas—you saw intuitively what it really meant, and that it was very much this side the grave. Whether you ever examined what you knew or not, you offered it to me, and I didn’t have the wit to look at it properly, and learn from it.”
They saw now, dimly, where he was leading them. They sat still, all eyes upon Simon. His thin, long hands were linked on the table before him. The cigarette he had lighted and forgotten smoked slowly away to a cylinder of ash in the ashtray beside him. The tension that held them all silent and motionless proceeded from him, but only he seemed unaware of it.
“If ever there was a crazy bit of research, this was it. There we were, with Treverra’s own tomb—well, not empty, but empty of the man who should have been in it, and his wife’s coffin unhappily not empty, but most tragically occupied, by the poor lady who had died there, and, as we found out afterwards, by a pretty large sum in old money and jewels. This crazy, sad puzzle, and those two epitaphs for clues, and nothing else.
“You remember Treverra was the adored leader of the smugglers round these parts. We know he also had at least one ship trading legitimately with the West Indies and America. We can guess, now we know about the tunnel from his vault to the Dragon’s Hole, that he must have had the tunnel improved and the tomb dug out at the end of it to provide a safe runway to the harbour and Pentarno haven, for a very practical purpose. What could be more respected than a family tomb? And what could make better cover for the secret road to the sea and the ships? He completed it about six years before he died. Maybe he always had in mind that it might eventually provide a way of retreat, if Cornwall ever got too hot to hold him.
“Well, now, suppose that the authorities and the preventives were closing in on this local hero, and finally had something on him that he wasn’t going to be able to duck? I think there are signs that they would have welcomed an opportunity to bring him down. Most of the gentry dabbled in smuggling, but in a mild, personal way. Treverra went beyond that. Not for profit, probably, so much as for fun. He liked pulling their legs, and leading them by the nose. They wouldn’t forgive him that. He resigned from the bench, where by all accounts he was a pretty generous and fair-minded Justice. I think he knew his scope here was narrowing. And then, you see, any of the local people who heard of any threat to him would warn him. He was the idol of the coast. Yes, I think he knew time was getting short, and made his plans accordingly. Among other things, he wrote his epitaph. And hers, I’m almost sure, was written at the same time, by her, by him, or by both together, I can’t be sure. But I like to think of them sitting here, in this very room, with their heads together, capping each other’s lines, and laughing over the supreme joke of their shared and audacious career. Look at Morwenna’s face! That lovely, fragile creature was a lot more than a sleeping partner.
“So there’s Treverra, only fifty-two years old, in the very prime of his life and vigour and powers, and the authorities closing in for the kill. And what happens?
“Treverra ‘dies’, and is buried. In the tomb he had made for himself, with the swivel-stone in the corner giving access to the cave and the harbour.
“And at night he arises, this ‘dead’ man, after all the decorous funeral business is over and the mourners have gone away. Maybe he was provided with a good crowbar inside the coffin for the occasion, even more probably he was also visited and helped out by his older son after dark. He had two sons. The elder was just twenty at this time, the younger was a schoolboy of fourteen. I think the elder was certainly in all the plans, you’ll see why when we come to the case of Morwenna. Treverra, then, emerges from his tomb exceedingly alive and lusty, and retires gaily by his back way, from which, at low tide, he can reach either Maymouth harbour or Pentarno haven. What does it matter which he used? At either one or the other a boat is put in for him, to take him aboard ship—his own ship or another—and ship him away to the reserve fortune he’s been salting away in readiness in the year- long summer of the West Indies.
