away.”
“Yes. Like the man with seven wives, she’s actually going to St Ives.”
“Must be half an hour each way.”
“At least.”
“Give her half an hour for shopping…we’ve got at least an hour and a half to investigate the cottage… assuming, that is, that we can get in.” Carole looked at her watch. “So what do we do in the meantime?”
“We do exactly what two mature ladies with a dog would do if they were staying in a rented cottage in Cornwall. We go for a walk along the cliffs. But before we do that…” Jude held out her mobile, “…you ring Stephen. Then you can relax properly into a day’s sleuthing.”
Carole did as she was told. Anxiety about what was happening in a London hospital was a constant background to all her other feelings. Her son sounded less tired and stressed than he had on their previous call. Gaby was getting very bored lying on her back all day. She just wanted the bloody baby to arrive, so that she could get on with her life. Stephen thought this bolshieness was a good sign.
Carole was deeply sceptical about Gaby’s idea that the baby’s arrival would allow her to get on with her life, but she didn’t say anything. Every woman had to come to terms in her own way with the inevitable disruptions that motherhood would bring.
Still, she felt cheered by the call, and did give Stephen Jude’s mobile number to use if there were any further developments.
¦
The clifftop walk brought Gulliver to an eighth heaven, beyond all his previous doggy imaginings.
And they timed their return to perfection. Just as Treboddick came into view round a curve of the cliff path, they saw the ancient Datsun leave the parking space and set off inland. Soon it was out of sight over the brow of the hill. Mopsa had gone on her shopping errand.
“Oh dear,” said Carole. “I should have asked her to get something for me too.”
“What?”
“A
“Don’t worry. Maybe there’ll be other clues for you to solve right here. After all, you were the one who worked out that ‘Biddet Rock’ was an anagram of ‘Treboddick’.”
“That’s true,” said Carole. And she felt a warm glow.
¦
When they got back to their cottage, Gulliver was locked in. He let out one feeble bark of protest, and then settled down comfortably to dream of all the exotic sights he had seen and smells he had smelled. Fethering Beach may have been seaside, but it wasn’t seaside on the scale that Cornwall was.
“How’re we going to get in?” whispered Carole out of the side of her mouth as they walked across to Cottage Number One. Although there was no one in sight, she felt as though an entire battery of surveillance cameras was focused on her every move.
“Well, first we’ll see whether Mopsa locked up or not.”
“Oh, come on. She must have done.”
“I don’t know. Everything down here seems pretty laid back. There’s nobody about, and Mopsa doesn’t seem to be the most diligent of guardians. It’s quite possible she’s left the cottage open.”
“I’d doubt it. But, anyway, Jude, I’m not sure that we should be looking at the cottage.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you said when Chloe was playing the role of Prince Fimbador, she talked about the Wheel Path…and we thought that was something to do with wheels that go round, but now we know that it was a ‘wheal’ as in Cornish tin mine. So shouldn’t we look at what’s left of Wheal Loveday first.”
“Good idea.”
Their search didn’t take long. In the bottom of the ruined pump house and round about there were a few old shafts, but all of them had been blocked up to the surface with stones and rubble. Grass had grown over some, so that they were little more than indentations in the hillside. The fact that there were no protective railings around them meant that they must be safely sealed. They offered no possible access to the tunnels below.
“That was worth trying, but I’ve a feeling what we’re looking for has to be in the cottage.”
Carole nodded, still feeling the scrutiny of a thousand unseen cameras as they moved towards the door. Jude’s fantasy that Mopsa might have left it unlocked turned out to be exactly that, a fantasy. But the girl’s burglar-deterrent system proved not to be very sophisticated. They didn’t have to lift many of the potted plants around the front door before they found what they were looking for.
“I wonder,” mused Jude as she lifted it up, “whether this is the Key of Clove’s Halo…?”
“Looks more like a Yale to me,” said Carole sniffily. She was feeling a prickling at the back of her neck at the illegality of what she was doing, and this intensified as they went inside the cottage.
“Quick tour, looking for obvious hiding places,” said Jude. “You do downstairs, I’ll do up.”
But they both looked crestfallen when they met again at the foot of the stairs. Every available door and cupboard had been opened. Not only had they not found anyone, they hadn’t even found a space big enough for anyone to hide in.
Carole looked nervously at her watch. “Nearly forty minutes gone, from the time Mopsa drove off. What do we do now?”
“Well, if there is a secret entrance…the Face-Peril Gate…we haven’t found it. Come on, you’re more logical than I am. Tell me what I should be thinking.”
Carole was touched by the compliment – though she thought it no more than an accurate assessment of her character – and concentrated hard to come up with something that would justify it. “Presumably what we’re looking for is a hiding place that has something to do with the mine workings. The Wheal Path…that’s where Prince Fimbador was going to hide…”
“Right.”
“So logically we should be concentrating on the side of the cottage that is nearest to the ruins of the mine buildings.”
“I like it. This is good.”
“Maybe there’s some secret entrance in the new extension…though I think that’s unlikely…It looks like it was built in the last twenty years, and I’m not sure how many modern builders are up for making secret passages.”
“Something in the older part would also make more sense, because it might have some connection with smuggling. Most of the secret passages and hidey-holes around here would have been built for hiding contraband goods.”
“Good point. So if it’s not in the extension…” Carole moved through as she spoke, “…the place which is closest to the mine workings is the kitchen…” Jude followed her in, “…and this one must be the closest wall?”
They both looked at it. There was a door to a larder, but Carole had already checked that. Otherwise, it was just a stone wall that could have done with another coat of whitewash, about a third of whose width was taken up by a deeply recessed fireplace. The floor was stone-flagged, and the individual slabs looked too heavy to hide any cunning trapdoors.
“There’s something here, there’s something here…I can feel it.”
“Oh, Jude, you’re not about to tell me the place has an
“No, I know you too well to bother saying that. Mind you, it does have an aura.”
“Huh.” Carole sat defeatedly on a kitchen chair and fiddled with a pencil and piece of paper that lay on the table. “If only…if only…” A thought came to her. “Just a minute…”
“What?”
“Well, look, I got the ‘Biddet Rock’ anagram because the words looked funny. That’s how you usually spot anagrams in crosswords. The words don’t look quite right – or their juxtaposition doesn’t, so you start playing with them. Yes, I think whoever invented ‘The Wheal Game’ likes anagrams. ‘Biddet Rock’ sounds and looks funny…Good God, so does ‘Face-Peril Gate’!”
Carole scribbled out the letters in a circle, the first two opposite and the others next, going round clockwise in turn. It was the way her father had done anagrams for his crosswords and one of the very few things that he had passed on to his daughter. She looked at the ring of letters and narrowed her eyes, hoping that the solution would leap out at her.
