Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

“Gashry spent several weeks at Castle Horneck, Borlase’s residence on the outskirts of Penzance. He questioned every member of the household and undertook extensive enquiries in the neighbourhood. He made himself a thorough nuisance. But I imagine he knew this was a task he had to take seriously. His career might have been badly compromised by failure.

“Complete success was nevertheless beyond him. He was suspicious of the servants, but could prove nothing against any of them. A pair of strangers had been seen in the area on the day of the murder who matched the description of two men seen in the nearby village of Ludgvan the day before that. This was significant, because Walter Borlase’s younger brother, William, was Rector of Ludgvan. There could easily have been confusion between the two. William Borlase was an antiquarian in his own right. Shillingstone had originally intended to stay with him, but building work at the rectory meant he was put up at Castle Horneck instead. Someone, Gashry reasoned, had been looking for Shillingstone-and the ring. The burglary had been carefully planned.

“Gashry tried to establish who knew where the ring was being kept. It appeared that the only person other than Borlase and Shillingstone who might have known-and he denied it-was Borlase’s steward, Jacob Tozer. Yes, the Tozers enter the story at this point. They enter, never to leave.

“Was there a connection between Tozer and the two strangers? If so, what was their joint motive for stealing the ring? It had to be a powerful one, given their willingness to murder Shillingstone in the process. Yet the example of the widow on St. Mary’s showed that the ring was too notorious to be easily sold for profit. Why did they want it, then?

“At some point, Gashry hit on a possible answer. Perhaps the theft of the ring was camouflage. Perhaps the murder of Shillingstone was the real object of the exercise. But, again, why? What had Shillingstone done? He had returned from the Scillies with several crates of geological specimens, which were still in an outhouse at Castle Horneck. He had been awaiting the next sailing of the tin-ship for London to transport them to the capital. Borlase had paid the specimens no heed before or after Shillingstone’s death, so his assertion that only the ring had been stolen was questionable, given his uncertainty over how many crates there had originally been, not to mention what they actually contained. Those remaining were opened and found to hold unremarkable mineral samples. Undaunted, Gashry formed the hypothesis that Shillingstone had been murdered after interrupting the theft from the outhouse of one or more of the crates in which something else altogether was being transported. The theft of the ring had then been staged to distract attention from the true purpose of the crime.

“Jacob Tozer became Gashry’s prime suspect. He knew when the Borlases would be out, he could be presumed to have discovered where the ring was being kept, and he also had a key to the outhouse where Shillingstone had stored his crates. But Borlase had complete confidence in his steward and Gashry could unearth nothing in the way of solid evidence against him, despite a snap search of the cottage adjoining Castle Horneck where Tozer lived with his wife and children. Tozer certainly didn’t crack under the pressure. Gashry described him as ‘infuriatingly imperturbable.’

“However tireless his investigations may have been, Gashry was no closer to recovering the ring. He decided to travel to the Scillies in order to find out more about the aged widow and Shillingstone’s antiquarian researches.

“His first objective, after what seems to have been a nightmarish crossing, was soon accomplished. The Reverend Symons informed him that the woman’s name was Mary Mumford. She was a native of St. Mary’s and had lived all her life in a cottage close to the bay where Admiral Shovell’s body had been washed up.

“Gashry’s achievements in respect of his second objective are, sadly, a mystery. According to Shelkin, several pages were missing from the report when he came across it and he was never able to find them. The report resumes with Gashry back in Penzance, the search for the ring abandoned and preparations for his masterstroke under way. Based on descriptions of the ring provided by Symons and Borlase, he proposed to have a replica made and presented to Lady Hyndford as the real thing. She’d only been a child at the time of her father’s death and had no reason to challenge its authenticity. A line would be drawn under an affair Gashry described as ‘toilsome and intractable.’

“So you see, the ring stolen from Heartsease almost certainly is the genuine article, kept hidden by Jacob Tozer after his theft of it from Castle Horneck and passed on as an heirloom in his family, to be squabbled over by later generations.

“As for who stole it from Heartsease, only one name springs to mind. After I’d told Kerry all this, she asked me to arrange for her to meet Herbert Shelkin. In his retirement, he runs a dubious kind of genealogical research agency, in Lincoln. I accompanied her when she went up there to speak to him. What soon became obvious under Kerry’s gentle grilling was what I should have guessed at the outset. He had the missing pages from the Gashry report all along. He didn’t want anyone to know what they contained. He was keeping one secret back for his very own.

“Eerily, in view of what was to happen later, he warned Kerry not to enquire into the matter further. He said it was dangerous ground-his exact words: dangerous ground. He declined to explain. Indeed, he declined to say very much at all, at least of substance. The man’s happy enough to blather irrelevantly for hours at a stretch. What’s beyond dispute is that he knows the true history of Tozer’s ring, as very few others do. As soon as Hayley told me about the burglary, I thought of Shelkin. Why he should have stolen it I don’t know. But there’ll have been a reason. And he’ll have thought it a good one.”

I suppose you’ll go to Lincoln now and see what you can learn from Herbert Shelkin,” said Ann Gashry eyeing Harding over the rim of her teacup. “If you’re set on finding out what’s behind all this, it’s the obvious thing to do.”

“Yes,” said Harding thoughtfully. “It is.”

“But I must warn you that extracting information from that man-information you want, at any rate, as opposed to whatever double-talk he’s in the mood to serve up-is no easy matter.”

“Think it’d be a waste of time to try?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Kerry and I agreed after our meeting with him that it was clear he had the missing pages. She swore she’d find a way to get a look at them and maybe she succeeded. Our trip to Lincoln was actually the last time I saw her. It’s possible she had another crack at Shelkin before going to the Scillies. Probable, I’d have to say, given how determined she always was to accomplish whatever she set her sights on. I knew her from childhood as a very strong-willed person.”

“Was she born here in Dulwich?”

“Yes. Her father worked for British Telecom. He and his wife were a very sedate couple. Kerry was anything but, of course. It was always a pleasure to see her when she whirled back, from wherever her glamorous career had taken her, to visit them.”

“And to visit you, no doubt.”

“Well, the connection with Nathan meant we kept in touch, I’m glad to say. Of course…” Ann set her cup in its saucer and drew herself up, as if in preparation for some important announcement. “Nothing good came of Kerry’s interest in Shelkin’s secrets, Mr. Harding. It destroyed her and, indirectly, her parents. It turned Nathan into… what he became. And it caused Hayley a lot of suffering. Admiral Shovell’s ring is, in the final analysis, just an unremarkable piece of Georgian jewellery Bearing that in mind, my advice to you is to go home and forget all this.” She smiled. “But you won’t, of course.”