“The opposite, in fact. We’ve had men combing the countryside and the moor since early morning and found nothing. The animal that attacked the solicitor appears to have moved on. Or it may well have died. A dog, most likely—and most likely a sick one. Mr. Roscoe, rest his soul, found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’ll warrant.”
My heart thumped as I recalled how easily it could have been me.
“You’re certain it was a dog, then?”
He shrugged. “Though a few things still don’t add up, there’s really nothing else it could have been, considering the wound. That’s according to the surgeonandthe coroner, who rode over from Bodmin this morning. Those gentlemen are far more qualified than I to make such a determination.”
I hesitated, then asked, “I don’t suppose we have anywolvesin Cornwall?”
Frowning, he replied, “None inEngland, nowadays, I should think. Though if we did, I imagine a wolf is what we’d be looking for.”
Jack was always complaining about the bosses at the mine—said they were unfair, and they pushed the men too hard. That may well have been, but I knew my question had probably sounded childish to Mr. Hilliard, and he’d answered plainly and politely. He’d been respectful with his questions the day before, too.
He raised his eyes, looking out over the heath. “I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble, Miss Penrose. But you keep alert when you’re out walking, just in case, and get home before dark, you hear?”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
He touched his hat brim, clucked to his horse, and moved on.
I wanted to feel relieved. I could see that Mr. Hilliard did. But I couldn’t let go of the wolf. I found myself hoping the master of Roche Rock would return to the tearoom the next day so I could at leastsee he was unharmed. If some accidentdidbefall him on his estate, I wasn’t sure anyone would be the wiser—though he must have had others working for him besides the solicitor from Bodmin.
And if I did see Mr. Tregarrick again, I might get a better sense of him.
As if I’d recognize a man for a killer.
As if a few soggy tea leaves are more to be trusted than the constable and two medical men.
Sighing, I walked on to our cottage, where I exchanged my basket for a bucket. A few paces from our door was a pump that we shared with the other miners’ cottages. The inn just beyond had a well of its own.
As I got to the pump, Mrs. Budge—our nearest neighbor down, who had a son at Wheal Enys—was just leaving it. We exchanged a pleasant greeting, though her face was etched with the same worry I’d seen on the faces of The Magpie’s customers. I still shrank from the idea of my neighbors knowing I’d been the one to find Mr. Roscoe, and I hoped she wouldn’t stop to gossip. I let out a breath as she moved away, full bucket sloshing.
When I got back with my own bucket, I washed up from the morning’s baking. As I was putting away the dishes, I caught a golden glint through the window. A crooked seam had opened in the belly of cloud, and a beautiful light streamed across the downs that sloped away from the cottage. Out beyond our garden was Tregarrick land. The wall here was no more than a low line of rubble, but enough to mark the boundary.
I grabbed a bowl and went out to the garden to feel sun on my face while I picked more of the rosy apples, which I thought to cook up with onions and a mutton chop meant for last night’s supper in a dish Mum had called squab pie (though there was nary a squab inside it). It was Jack’s favorite, and I was keen to stay on his good side as long as possible.
Because eventually he was going to find out from someone—Mr. Hilliard, most likely—that I was still working at The Magpie. I felt guiltyabout my dishonesty, but I wasn’t going to give up my job for Jack or anyone. Finding Mr. Roscoe like that—and realizing how easily it could have been me—had left me with a feeling that life was too uncertain to spend our days alone and unhappy.
But I didn’t end up having to face Jack that night, because he came home so late I left out his supper and went to bed. Not that I actually slept. Jack was often late coming home in the evenings, but from The Wolf’s Head, he had to walk the same road I did. So in spite of what Mr. Hilliard had told me, I lay awake worrying until I heard Jack come in, stumbling and muttering oaths. Shortly after that, everything went quiet, and I knew he’d fallen straight into bed.
No, I wouldn’t be giving up The Magpie, because The Magpie was all I had left.
Jack rose late the next morning, bleary eyed and cross. He gobbled down the cold supper I’d left out for him and took his lunch from my hand without more than a mumbled goodbye.
I finished my baking, packed my basket, and started for work, rain drumming steadily against my bonnet. As I walked along the hedgerow, I couldn’t help eyeing the tangle of thorny growth, looking for a hole someone might peep through.HadMr. Tregarrick noticed me on the road? It gave me a strange feeling, knowing he might have been aware of me long before I’d been aware of him.
Mrs. Moyle was her cheerful self this morning, and I let myself get caught up in her stream of chatter. She had her days of low spirits like anyone else, but they were few and far between, and never lasted long. With her company, I was able to forget, for a while, the dark clouds that gathered heavy over my cottage.
The tearoom was much quieter today, and I thought it wouldn’t be long before the village had forgotten about poor Mr. Roscoe—thoughIwas likely to remember him for the rest of my days. I couldn’t helpwondering whether Mr. Tregarrick was truly touched by his death, or whether it had merely been an inconvenience.
Throughout the day, every time the front door opened, I looked up, wondering whether Mr. Tregarrick would again appear. It didn’t seem very likely he would, and he didn’t. Thinking again over the previous day’s visit, it struck me that he hadn’t asked me a single question about Mr. Roscoe once he knew I was the one who’d found him. At closing, I mentioned this to Mrs. Moyle.
“Did it occur to you,” she said, “that he might have been curious aboutyou? And might have been truly concerned about you?”
I frowned. “No.”
She chuckled and went back to the washing, and my cheeks flamed. Mrs. Moyle liked to remind me from time to time that I was “very pretty.” I thought I looked well enough when my dress was clean and my hair wasn’t a weedy tangle, but neither I nor anyone else had ever used the word “pretty” in connection withme. Mum’s curls had been dark, her skin smooth and flawless even as the creases in her face had deepened. My red hair and freckles—as well as Jack’s—had come from Nanna, Mum’s Irish mother.
As soon as the kitchen was put back in order, I started home, Mrs. Moyle urging me to be careful a little longer in case the lawmen had gotten it wrong. Another change in the weather had come, great, woolly white clouds moving in the breeze like ships across a sky-blue sea. As I drew near the place where Mr. Roscoe had fallen, I found my footsteps slowing, and then I was drifting off the road toward it, a weight like one of the dark granite blocks pressing on my chest.
