Hawke's Tor Read Free Page B

her.
    â€˜Because I’ve seen him coming past here looking for her more than once,’ Jemima said, scornfully, ‘ and heard them arguing about it when he found her and they were on their way home together. Him demanding to know where she’d been when she should have been at home preparing a meal for him when he finished work, and Kerensa telling him she was fed up with being tied to the house all day and had gone out for a walk and forgotten what time it was.’
    â€˜When was the last time you heard such an argument?’
    â€˜Some time last week, Thursday, I think. It was getting dark then too. But if she’s gone missing she’ll come back in her own time, baby or no baby, but she’ll do it once too often, you mark my words. She has that man of hers under her thumb now because she’s young and pretty, but she’ll get old like the rest of us and find she has nothing else to keep him.’

    â€˜You didn’t see her husband going up that way looking for her?’
    â€˜No one else came past the cottage before dark, although I have no idea what might have happened after that, I had my curtains drawn and the bolt on the door.’
    Tom had been taking notes in his pocket-book while she was talking, now, at a signal from Amos, he closed the book and slipped it into an inside pocket of his frock coat, as Amos said, ‘Thank you very much, Jemima. The next time I’m around this way I’ll call in to say “Hello” and admire this lovely garden of yours once more.’
    Secretly pleased with his praise for her garden, Jemima said, ‘I don’t doubt you have better things to do than waste time on an old lady, but if you need to know anything about Trelyn, or the folk who live here then you’re very welcome to call in and ask me about them. I’ve lived hereabouts for close to ninety years and I know more than anyone else you’re likely to talk to about what goes on, or has gone on here.’
    Leaving the old woman lowering herself gingerly to her knees, Amos said to Tom, ‘In view of what Miss Rowe said, you’d better go up on the moor and have a look around, Tom. I’ll join you when I’ve spoken to Morgan … but be careful, I’ve heard a lot about the marshland up there. If Kerensa Morgan wandered into it in the dark she and her baby may never be found.’
    Â 
    Once over the narrow, single arch bridge spanning the river the two policemen parted company and Amos found Horace Morgan about half a mile along the side of the wooded slope of the moor. He had formed the estate workers into a spaced-out line, and they were making their way through the woods as though beating for a shooting party. It was easy to locate them
because of the noise they were making, calling out either ‘Kerensa’, or ‘Mrs Morgan’ as they went.
    Horace Morgan was a big, heavily-built man and Amos was surprised to find he was in his forties, or perhaps even early fifties. Knowing him to be the father of a young baby Amos had imagined he would be a younger man.
    Restlessly distraught at the disappearance of his wife and baby, the estate steward seemed convinced his wife would be found somewhere in the woods, even when he was informed that Jemima Rowe claimed to have seen her taking the path to the moor.
    â€˜Jemima Rowe is getting old,’ he said, ‘These days she is seeing less and imagining more. She probably thought that was where Kerensa was going with the baby because just recently she’s sometimes met me when I was on my way home from checking on work at Trewortha, a farm way out on the moor. But I told Kerensa I wouldn’t be out there yesterday because I was supervising replanting at the far edge of this strip of woodland. If she had decided to meet me she’d have expected me to come back through the woods. That’s why I’m concentrating my search here, although I sent someone out to Trewortha