The interior of the house wasn’t a great improvement over the exterior. It appeared to be a work long in progress, if the age of the exposed timbers was anything to go by. Walls along the central passage into the place had long ago been taken down to their framing, but there was no scent of freshly replaced wood here. Instead there was a fur of dust upon the timbers, suggesting that a job had been begun years in the past without ever reaching completion.
A workshop was Kerne’s destination, and to get to it he led Lynley through a kitchen and a laundry room that featured a washing machine with an old-fashioned wringer and thick cords crisscrossing the ceiling where clothing was hung to dry in inclement weather. This room emanated the heavy scent of mildew, a sensory ambience only moderately improved upon when they got to the workshop beyond it. They reached this spot by means of a doorless opening in the far wall of the laundry room, separated from the rest of the house by a thick sheet of plastic that Kerne shoved to one side. This same sort of plastic covered what went for windows in the workshop, a room that had been fashioned more recently than the rest of the house: It was made of unadorned concrete blocks. It was frigid within, like an old-time larder without the marble shelves.
Lynley thought of the term man-cave when he stepped into the workshop. A workbench, haphazardly hung cupboards, one tall stool, and myriad tools were crammed within, and the overall impression was one of sawdust, oil leakage, paint spills, and general filth. It comprised a somewhat dubious spot for a bloke to escape the wife and children, with his excuse the crucial tinkering on this or that project.
There appeared to be plenty of them on Eddie Kerne’s workbench: part of a hoover, two broken lamps, a hair dryer missing its flex, five teacups wanting handles, a small footstool belching its stuffing. Kerne seemed to be at work on the teacups, for an uncapped tube of glue was adding to the other scents in the room, most of which were associated with the damp. Tuberculosis seemed the likely outcome of an extended stay in such a place, and Kerne had a heavy cough that made Lynley think of poor Keats writing anguished letters to his beloved Fanny.
“Can’t tell you nothing,” was Kerne’s opening remark. He made it over his shoulder as he picked up one of the teacups and squinted at it, comparing a dismembered handle to the spot at which one had been shattered from the cup. “Know why you’re here, don’t I, but I can’t tell you nothing.”
“You’ve been informed about your grandson’s death.”
“Phoned, didn’t he.” Kerne hawked but mercifully did not spit. “Gave me the word. That’s it.”
“Your son? Ben Kerne? He phoned?”
“The same. Good for that, he was.” The emphasis on that indicated what else Kerne deemed his son good for, which was nothing.
“I understand Ben hasn’t lived in Pengelly Cove for a number of years,” Lynley said.
“Wouldn’t have him round.” Kerne grabbed up the tube of glue and applied a good-size dollop to both ends of the handle he’d chosen for the teacup. He had a steady hand, which was good for such employment. He had an unfortunate eye, which was bad. The handle clearly belonged to a different cup, as the colour wasn’t right and the shape was even less so. Nonetheless, Kerne held it in place, waiting for some acceptable form of agglutination to occur. “Sent him off to his uncle in Truro and there he stayed. Had to, didn’t he, once she followed him there.”
“She?”
Kerne shot him a look, one eyebrow raised. It was the sort of look that said You don’t know yet? “The wife,” he said shortly.
“Ben’s wife. The present Mrs. Kerne?”
“That’d be her. He went off to escape, and she was hot on his tail. Just like he was hot on hers and into hers, if you’ll pardon the expression. She’s a piece of work and I want no part of her and no part of him whilst he stays with the scrubber. Source of everything went wrong with him from day one till now, that Dellen Nankervis. And you c’n note that down in your whatever if you want. And note who said it. I’m not shamed of my feelings, as every one of them’s proved right over the years.” He sounded angry, but the anger seemed to be hiding what had been broken within him.