Free Malice in Cornwall by Graham Thomas Page B

dead-end jobs, as she put it, pulled up stakes, and come to Cornwall. She'd been a teacher and he an office clerk. (Once bitten, twice shy, Powell wisely resisted the temptation to mention, by way of small talk, that Marion taught anthropology at King's College, thus avoiding a diatribe on the contrasting academic environment that prevailed at the Chunder Road Comprehensive.) They had originally planned to settle on the southwest coast near Gunwalloe, where Jim had heard that you could make aliving growing flowers and vegetables for the markets in London and Bristol. They had been unable to find a suitable property there, but then Jim heard about Penrick from an old schoolmate. It was love at first sight, and they had arranged to lease the cottage. The owner turned out to be Tony Rowlands, Powell was interested to learn. They had an acre of garden in the back and leased some clifftop meadows from a local farmer.
    It had all seemed very romantic at the time, but a sense of reality rapidly set in. First off, the north coast of Cornwall was
not
like the southwest coast. Exposed as they were foursquare to the Atlantic, they soon learned that growing ornamental flowers was, at best, a marginal and backbreaking proposition. Daffodils were hit-and-miss due to the prevalence of late-winter storms; moreover, the bulbs had to be dug up every three years and sterilized in hot water to kill the flies and the worms and then replanted. Anemones were susceptible to powdery mildew and were difficult to pick in warm weather before they became
blown
, or full open, and unmarketable. Violets, on the other hand, were their bread and butter. Cheap and easy to grow, each year's stock consisted of runners from the previous year's plants. Small growers like themselves could manage about four thousand plants on a quarter of an acre. They flowered from the end of September right through April and yielded weekly pickings of twelve dozen bunches for every thousand plants, twenty violets and two leaves making up a bunch. The Porters also grew potatoes and a few hundredweight of broccoli and cauliflower each year for local sale.
    Listening to all this, Powell got the impression that the couple was just barely able to eke out a living, and thatthe strain was beginning to take its toll—on Linda Porter, at least. And he began to wonder about Mr. Porter, who, reading between the lines, seemed to be the primary architect of the Porters' self-sufficiency lifestyle. After hearing her litany of woe, he started to feel slightly guilty about keeping her from her chores, so he maneuvered the conversation around to the reason for his visit.
    He told her about the discovery of the body and its likely link to the Riddle, although he got the impression she'd already heard about it through the local rumor mill. When pressed for any information she might have, she became evasive, which surprised him given the penchant she had already displayed for saying what was on her mind.
    “I never saw it and I didn't go out of my way to look for it, not like some around here with nothing better to do.”
    “A woman has died, Mrs. Porter. Can you think of anything, anything at all, something you might have seen or heard that may not have seemed important at the time, but which now, with the benefit of hindsight, might possibly shed some light on the matter?”
    “I'll bet you have that speech memorized,” she marveled.
    He smiled patiently. “The fact remains, the body of a woman has washed up on the Sands, a body that has been, not to put too fine a point on it, messed about with. Aren't you the least bit curious? I know I am, and when I get curious I tend to ask a lot of questions.”
    “That's where you and I differ, then.” She suddenly looked bored. “Let's get this straight, I don't know who she is or where she came from, and quite frankly Icouldn't care less. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some potatoes to get in.”
    Thus dismissed, Powell rose to his feet. There