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151 pages

English

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The lost art of brass rubbing, crooked antiques dealers, and smuggling all figure in this tale of an unidentified man found naked and ritually murdered on the altar in a Cornish church. Inspector Cam, on vacation with his family, is asked to help out the local police in this superbly plotted and literary mystery novel. Joan Cockin has created a perfect microcosm of the Cornish village in Villainy at Vespers (1949) and delights in populating the town of Trevelley with all manner of eccentric locals and oddball tourists. Apart from gregarious and engaging Betsey Rowan and her entertaining gang of students, there is a cast of lively and eccentric characters. These include: spinsterish Miss Cornthwaite who is nearly done in by the ruthless villains in an astonishing sequence along a cliff side; Red Cowdrey, a cantankerous old man with a reputation for smuggling and other unscrupulous business; John Briarley, a visiting historian and antiquarian, obsessed with getting the best possible rub

Informations

Publié par	Galileo Publishers
Date de parution	10 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912916979
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

BY THE AUTHOR OF Curiosity Killed the Cat
Deadly Earnest

First printed, September 1949
This new edition printed 2022
Galileo Publishers
16 Woodlands Road
Great Shelford, Cambridge CB22 5LW UK
www.galileopublishing.co.uk
Distributed in the USA by:
SCB Distributors
15608 S. New Century Drive
Gardena, CA 90248-2129, USA
and in Australia by:
Peribo Pty Limited
58 Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-Gai
NSW 2080, Australia
ISBN 978-1-912916-90-0
epub: 978-1-912916-97-9
Kindle: 978-1-912916-96-2
© 2022 The Estate of Edith Joan Macintosh
All rights reserved
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Printed in the EU

Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
EPILOGUE

CHAPTER I
Human sacrifice—primitive physical sacrifice—has long been out of favour in England. A considerable stir was, therefore, created when the body of a man—naked and with his throat cut—was discovered upon the altar of St. Poltruan’s Church in the village of Trevelley. Murder—and from the beginning it was assumed that not even the most theatrically-minded suicide would make his way without clothes into church, lie upon the altar and cut his throat with a pruning-knife—murder, then, is at least a diversion from the grim perplexities of the daily news. Over its cooling breakfast the British Public studied with pleasurable horror the details—the awesome setting of a deserted church in Sunday twilight, the little child (well, a gawky sixteen but anyway a mental child) who found the horrid sight, the historic wickedness of Trevelley itself, the mystery of the corpse’s identity. Anything which happens in Cornwall is news and this promised to be a good family murder—instructive for the children, since the British press on this first day was already plying its readers with learned reports on the historical and social significance of sacrilege and sacrifice, and yet entertaining for less seriously-minded adults. Not that the average Briton was unmoved. The combination of brutal violence with sacrilege made the crime excitingly repellent. Non-church goers were particularly aroused. On suburban trains they said to each other that if this was what the Church of England was coming to it was just as well that they had given up regular attendance. Nevertheless, they read and re-read the Monday morning accounts of the outrage, for there was a macabre quality about the scene and details of the crime and the British Press—Fat Boy fashion—set manfully about making its readers’ blood run cold.
Amidst this happy communion of interests one voice could be heard in lament—heard at least by the four other late breakfasters scattered widely around the dining-room of the ‘Three Fishers Inn’, Trevelley’s ancient and solitary hotel. These four thought it best not to jeopardise their splendid isolation by paying any attention to the mourner, so John Briarley groaned alone. Only the waitress responded to the cry and she, remembering his sausage ordered twenty minutes ago, rushed to the kitchen with compunctionate zeal. John Briarley, however, thought only of the headlines before him: CORPSE ON CHURCH ALTAR, and in smaller, but still vociferous type, amazing discovery in fishing village , and in smaller type again, but with a sibilant quality all its own: Sacrilegious ‘Sacrifice’ in Seaside Haunt. Re-reading this climactic series John Briarley muttered an oath and a paunchy man in a yellow turtle-necked sweater four tables away looked at him reprovingly. He himself had been waiting for breakfast half an hour and failed to see why a delay of only ten minutes should provoke such a fuss.
A more sympathetic and knowledgeable observer might have credited the young man with sounder reasons for complaint. The smallest, quietest, least advertised seaside village in England—a place known only to fishermen and antiquarians—a village barely detectable on the three-inch Ordnance Survey—a holiday resort where hermits felt at home—in short, the village where John Briarley had come three days ago to spend his last fortnight of demob. leave had suddenly become notorious. A swift glance at the news story had told him the worst. In the summer doldrums of news the Trevelley affair had taken on exaggerated importance. ‘Wide interest’ the paper said. ‘Our special correspondent sent down in order to keep Daily Clamour readers fully informed!; ‘Scotland Yard being consulted by local police’; ‘Primate expected to make statement this afternoon’. Trevelley had hit the headlines. Privacy and peace were disappearing in a cloud of journalists.
Briarley was starting with furious intent to re-read the whole report when there was interposed between himself and the newspaper a large hot plate bearing a small cool sausage.
“Sorry, Mister Bri’ley,” said the little waitress. “I’ope you ain’t too ’ungry.” Her sad Cockney voice recognised that nowadays all customers in the ‘Three Fishers’ were hungry. There was merely a variation in degree. It was only when customers were youngish males, agreeably free and easy, that she took time to care. They reminded her of the young men who had made life so pleasant when she, an evacuee from Bethnal Green, had first gone into service at the ‘Fishers’. Those last four war years had been her fête-champêtre. Now, at the age of twenty-five, she knew her best years were past, but Trevelley still had for her a romantic flavour which Bethnal Green could never rival, so she stayed on—the last evacuee. John Briarley and similar young ex-servicemen reminded her of the gay past. He had benefited during the last two days by comparatively rapid service. He smiled at her now with absent-minded thanks.
“No, no; I’m in no hurry. In fact I hardly feel like eating at all. This awful news really puts one off?”
The waitress looked at him curiously. All that she had seen in the paper was the exhilarating report that a murder of national interest was to enliven Trevelley and life. What could the lad be talking about!
“It’s such a damned nuisance, you know,” he tried to explain. But Lucy was far more interested in her own views on the event.
“It sure is putting Trevelley on the map,” she observed, with that old-fashioned American slang which dated her as a wartime débutante. She leaned upon the table, her eyes glowing with excitement. “Manager says’e’s got eight bookin’s from London already—newspaper fellers an’ p’licemen and I don’t know what all. Gawd knows where we’ll put’em. The billiard table slept six in the old days—p’r’aps we’ll ’ave to fix that up again. Then there be three sofas in the lounge an’ a couple of easy chairs. Wot larks, eh? There won’t be many rooms goin’ beggin’ ’ere for some time, I reckon.” Her eyes sparkled with expectation. “Soon’s I’ve finished breakfasts I’m off to Church, I am. First time since confirmation, I guess! This’ll make a lot of churchgoers, eh?” She nudged John slyly and giggled with unsuppressed delight until a loud snort from the window table interrupted her pleasure. The turtle-necked visitor was regarding them with remarkable fury. Not only had Briarley been served out of turn before him, but it appeared that the guilty pair were using the entirely unsuitable hour of nine-thirty a.m. for convivial conversation.
“All right, all right!” said Lucy with quite unjustified hauteur. “I can’t serve everyone at once, can I?” She hastened into the kitchen however. John felt himself blushing under the indignant glare of the window table. Here was a crime against society, if you want one—to be fed out of order in the queue! There was no reasonable excuse so he turned to his sausage and began to eat with a furtive air. From the tremendous sound of rustling newspaper behind him he was aware that the window table intended him to choke with shame over every mouthful. As a matter of fact he did choke, but that was probably because one of the lesser known portions of the pig had found its way into his sausage.
A large hand descended powerfully upon his back and with six blows cleared his windpipe.
“You almost killed me,” said John resentfully, picking up his fork. “What with one thing and another I’ve a good mind to go back to bed. This is going to be a rotten day.”
The man who sat down opposite him chuckled without perturbation.
“Nothing like the peace of the English countryside, eh, Jack? O for a rural bower where the hand of man has not set its evil stain! O for the uncorrupted peasant going his tranquil way through the bosky woodland....”
Inspector Cam of Little Biggling had the round, bland cheerfulness of a well-nourished two-year-old, but there was a watchful sparkle in his deep-set blue eyes which marked him as experienced in the ways of sin. He combined a very searching and lively imagination with a curious admiration for the inferior poets. His attempts to speak in a poetic vein, therefore, were always painful to sensitive friends. John Briarley, after four days in the same hotel, was sufficiently acquainted with him to express his feelings freely. He regarded him without pleasure.
“Is that supposed to be poetry? This kind of affair doubtless brings out your softer side. I suppose all your foul friends from Scotland Yard will be coming down to spend the holiday with you! Not a beach will be free from flat feet paddling in the brine.” His eyes narrowed suddenly