He pondered this a moment. “Well, two hours would have given Mr. Roscoe time to meet with his client. After that he may have set out for Carbis—maybe to the inn there—which would have put him on your route, Miss Penrose.” He looked at Gibbs. “We’d better go and have a word with Tregarrick.”
The man’s eyes opened wide. “Roche Rock? Tonight, Mr. Hilliard?”
The mining boss raised one brow. “We aren’t talking about poachers, Gibbs. His solicitor’s been killed less than half a mile from his door. Tregarrick might have been the last person to see the fellow alive. Moreover, if some rabid animal is on the loose, he could be at risk himself.”
Gibbs swallowed. “Yes, sir. Only I don’t think they welcome visitors there.”
Mr. Hilliard heaved a sigh. “For the love of God, man. Stay here with the women and the fire, then, and I’ll see to it myself.”
If this taunt was intended to stiffen his man’s backbone, it failed entirely. Gibbs looked hugely relieved, and Mrs. Moyle offered him a cup of tea.
Mr. Hilliard picked up the leather case and turned to me. “After I see Tregarrick, I’m going to fetch your brother to walk home with you. Where might I find him?”
I knew Jack must still be at the tavern, else he’d probably already have been to The Magpie looking for me and his supper. I didn’t like saying this to one of his bosses but couldn’t see a way around it. “I reckon he’s at The Wolf’s Head, Mr. Hilliard.”
His grunt suggested he wasn’t surprised to hear it. “All right. If I don’t find him, I’ll stop back by and take you home myself. No going off on your own, hear? It’s not safe.”
“No, sir.”
I wished Gibbs had worked up his courage to go along with the constable. I was quite badly shaken, and desperate to speak more with Mrs. Moyle about Mr. Roscoe and his tea leaves. To make matters worse, Gibbs became a chatterpie after two cups of tea. You’d never know he’d just been out fumbling around on the heath in the dark looking for a dead man’s personal effects.
Mrs. Moyle’s worried gaze landed on me several times, and she did her best to hold his attention so I wouldn’t have to pretend to be interested in his conversation. After about half an hour of this, Jack appeared. He had not met with Mr. Hilliard but had come on his own, sullen about his supper, after finding our cottage empty.
Mrs. Moyle brought Jack tea and bread with jam while I told him what had happened. He and Gibbs knew each other from work—Gibbs was a clerk at the mine office—which may have kept Jack from being as sharp as he would have liked.
Jack had not always been ill-tempered. It was just that he wasn’t cut out for mine work, and he’d never had a choice. Da had mined tin on Goss Moor when he was a boy, like his own father, and then gone to work in the clay pits when they came along. Jack, too, was only a boy when Da first took him to Wheal Enys.
Growing up, my twin brother had been gentle and happy. He’d loved making up pretend games involving the fairies, and Robin Hood, and especially King Arthur, who’d lived in a castle in nearby Tintagel and hunted on Goss Moor. But after the mine, Jack grew less gentle and less happy every day.
When lung disease took Da one harsh winter, and Mum so wore herself out caring for him that winter fever tookher, only Jack was left to provide for the two of us. That was when he took to drinking. Seeing what it was doing to him, I meant to go to the mines, too. Girls could get work turning clay in the drying buildings or hammering ore in the copper mines. Jack wouldn’t hear of it, though. Said it wouldn’t mean he’d have to work any less, and I had enough of a job in keeping house for us. He hadn’t wanted me to go to The Magpie, either, but when I told him I’d let go of the idea if he stopped spending every night at The Wolf’s Head, he quit arguing about it.
“You’ll have to give it up now, Mina,” said Jack as we set out for home by the meager light of his tin lantern.
His words were softer now that the tea and toast had sobered him and taken the edge off his hunger. Still, they frightened me more than the shadows the sputtering candle had set dancing.
“The Magpie?” I said, unable to steady the tremor in my voice.
“Hilliard’s a windbag, but he had the right of it. You can’t be out on the road with some rabid animal loose.”
“No, Jack,” I pleaded. “Mrs. Moyle needs me.”
“She’ll find someone else easily enough.”
“No,” I repeated with more force. “I’ll make sure to be home well before dark from now on.”
Thick, dark-red brows lifted over eyes the same pale shade of green as my own. “The light of day didn’t come betweenthisfella and a bad end, did it?”
We were just passing the spot where the body had lain, though the constable’s men had removed it by now. Iwasscared of whatever had killed Mr. Roscoe, but not as scared as I was of leaving my job. I didn’t know what would become of me if I had to go back to the way things were before. The silence of our empty cottage—the remembrances of what we’d lost there—might crush the life out of me.
“What if I wait there for you every night?” I said. “Mrs. Moyle won’t mind. I can read her books until you get there. Then you can walk me home.”
Jack scowled. “Both of us have better things to do than—”
“Better things?” I snapped, glaring at him. “Like drinking at The Wolf’s Head?”
“Now, I workhard, Mina, I shouldn’t have to tell you that. And I didn’t choose it, any more than you chose to take on the things our mother used to do. I’m the eldest, and she would want you—”
“Eldest?” I let out a bark of laughter. Jack had emerged first from our mother’s womb, and he never let me forget it.
