“Yes. I’m not of the sort of family that packs its children off to boarding school. I went to school in town, with all the riffraff.”
She was caught. It was the moment at which Lynley would have ordinarily sprung the trap, but he knew he could have missed a school somewhere. She could have attended an institution now closed. He found that he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. He let matters go. They made the rest of the journey to Pengelly Cove in a companionable fashion. He spoke of how a privileged life had led to police work; she spoke of a passion for animals and how that passion had taken her from rescuing hedgehogs, seabirds, songbirds, and ducks to veterinary school and ultimately to the zoo. The only creature from the animal world that she didn’t like, she confessed, was the Canada goose. “They’re taking over the planet,” she declared. “Well, at least they seem to be taking over England.” Her favourite animal she declared to be the otter: freshwater or sea. She wasn’t particular when it came to otters.
In the village of Pengelly Cove, it was a matter of a few minutes in the post office?a single counter in the village’s all-purpose shop?to discover that more than one Kerne lived in the vicinity. They were all the progeny of one Eddie Kerne and his wife, Ann. Kerne maintained a curiosity that he called Eco-House some five miles out of town. Ann worked at the Curlew Inn although the job appeared to be a sinecure at this point since she was aging badly after a stroke some years ago.
“There’s Kernes crawling all over the landscape,” the postmistress told them. She was the lone labourer in the shop, a grey-haired woman of uncertain but clearly advanced years whom they’d come upon in the midst of sewing a tiny button onto a child-size white shirt. She poked her finger with the needle as she worked. She said bloody hell, damn and pardon and then wiped a spot of blood onto her navy cardigan before going on with, “You go outside and shout the name Kerne, ten people on the street’ll look up and say, ‘What?’” She examined the strength of her repair and bit off the thread.
“I’d no idea,” Lynley said. While Daidre looked at a dismal arrangement of fruit just inside the shop door, he was making a purchase of postcards that he would never use, along with stamps, a local newspaper, and a roll of breath mints, which he would. “The original Kernes had quite a brood, then?”
The postmistress rang up his selections. “Seven in all, Ann and Eddie produced. And all of them still round save the oldest. That would be Benesek. He’s been gone for donkey’s years. Are you friends of the Kernes?” The woman looked from Lynley to Daidre. She sounded doubtful.
Lynley said that he wasn’t a friend. He produced his police identification. The postmistress’s expression altered. Cops and Caution could not have been written more plainly on her face.
“Ben Kerne’s son has been killed,” Lynley told her.
“Has he?” she said, a hand moving to her heart. Unconsciously, she cupped her left breast. “Oh Lord. Now that’s a very sad bit of news. What happened to him?”
“Did you know Santo Kerne?”
“Wouldn’t be anyone round here who doesn’t know Santo. They stayed with Eddie and Ann on occasion when he and his sister?that would be Kerra?were little ’uns. Ann’d bring ’em in for sweets or ices. Not Eddie, though. Never Eddie. He doesn’t come to the village if he can help it. Hasn’t for years.”
“Why?”
“Some’d say too proud. Some’d say too shamed. But not his Ann. Besides, she had to work, hadn’t she, so Eddie could have his dream of living green.”
“Shamed about what?” Lynley asked.