“You didn’t appear surprised, not to mention horrified, to hear it was murder,” Max said.
They locked eyes. She weighed potential answers and settled on, “I’d seen the body. You forget.”
“That obvious, was it? Initial knowledge given out was that he’d fallen.”
“I think it was meant to look that way.” She heard Teller typing away at his PC, and she said rather too sharply, “I hadn’t indicated that the interview was beginning.”
Max chuckled. “You’re with a journalist, my dear. Everything is meat, with due respect. Forewarned, et cetera.”
“I see.” She sat and knew she did so primly, perched on the edge of a ladder-back chair that would have had to work hard to be more uncomfortable. She kept her shoulder bag on her knees, her hands folded over the top of it. She knew she looked like a school-marm or a hopeful interviewee. That couldn’t be helped and she didn’t try to help it. She said, “I’m not entirely happy about this.”
“No one ever is, save B-list celebrities.” Max left them then, calling out, “Janna, have we heard about the inquest time, yet?”
Janna made some reply from the other room as Steve Teller asked Daidre his first question. He wanted the facts first and then her impressions second, he told her. The latter, she decided, was the last thing she’d give anyone, least of all a journalist. But like a policeman, he was doubtless trained to sniff out falsehoods and note diversions. So she would have a care with how she said what she said. She didn’t like leaving things to chance.
The entire Watchman experience ate up two hours and was evenly divided between the conversation with Teller and her investigation on the Internet. When she had what she needed in print for her later perusal, she concluded her research with the words Adventures Unlimited. She paused before she clicked the search engine into action. It was a case of wondering how far she really wanted to go. Was it better to know or not to know and if she knew could she keep the knowledge from her face? She wasn’t sure.
The list of references to the neophyte business wasn’t long. The Mail on Sunday had featured it in a lengthy piece, she saw, as had several small journals in Cornwall. The Watchman was among them.
And why not? she asked herself. Adventures Unlimited was a Casvelyn story. The Watchman was the Casvelyn newspaper. The Promontory King George Hotel had been saved from destruction?well, come along, Daidre, it’s a listed building, so it was hardly going under the wrecking ball, was it?so there was that as well…
She read the story and looked at the photos. It was all standard stuff: the architectural interest, the plan, the family. And there they were in pictures, Santo among them. There was background on them all, with no one emphasised in particular because it was, of course, a family affair. Last of all she looked at the byline. She saw that Max had done the story himself. This was not unusual because the newspaper was tiny and, consequently, work was shared. But it was potentially damning all the same.
She asked herself what this was to her: Max, Santo Kerne, the sea cliffs, and Adventures Unlimited. She thought of Donne and then dismissed the thought of Donne. Unlike the poet, there were too many times when she didn’t feel part of mankind at all.
She left the newspaper office. She was thinking about Max Priestley and about what she’d read when she heard her name called. She turned round to see Thomas Lynley coming along Princes Street, a large piece of cardboard under his arm and a small bag dangling from his fingers.
Once again she thought how different he looked without the growth of beard, newly dressed, and at least partially refreshed. She said, “You’re not looking too chastened by the trouncing you took at the dartboard last night. May I assume your ego’s intact, Thomas?”
“Marginally,” he said. “I was up all night practicing in the bar at the inn. Where, by the way, I learned that you regularly thrash all comers. Practically blindfolded, the way they tell it.”