The Smuggler's Daughter Read online

  I stopped for a moment at the top of the slope up to the road, taking a couple of deep breaths and thinking of the exercise the counsellor had told me to do when I felt panicky. What can you see? Sandra would ask. I looked at my feet in my flip-flops, taking in my unpainted toenails. I would buy some nail varnish, I thought. Or better yet, go for a pedicure. What could I smell? I breathed in. I could smell the sea and – I licked my lips – taste the salt. That was nice, actually. It was lovely being near the water. Calming.

  Feeling more in control, I went on my way. I should call Sandra, I thought. Maybe she could give me some counselling over the phone and help me untangle my thoughts a bit. But for now, I was going to walk into Kirrinporth and see if I could find a library. Perhaps there would be some information on Emily Moon that would distract me from Ewan Logan.

  Enjoying the sun on my face and the warmth on my shoulders, I strolled into the town.

  Chapter 18

  Emily

  1799

  Nervous about what I might find upstairs, I climbed the steps slowly and pushed open my mother’s bedroom door. She was lying on the bed, facing away from me. Her hair was dishevelled and her dress was torn across one shoulder. A small money bag lay on the bed beside her.

  I went round to the other side of the bed and sat next to her and gasped as she looked up at me. Her nose was swollen and blood was smeared across her face. Her eye was puffy and a purple bruise was beginning to bloom around the swelling eyelid. Her bare shoulder showed more bruises and where her dress was rucked up under her, I could see more marks on her legs.

  ‘Emily,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I shook my head, wishing I could speak to her, comfort her. But my voice wouldn’t come. Instead I gently pulled her skirt down, covering the marks that Morgan’s thick fingers had made.

  ‘Stay,’ I managed to say.

  I ran downstairs to where Arthur was just walking away back into town. I wanted so badly to call him back, but I knew Mam wouldn’t thank me for involving him, so instead I went to the well and drew some fresh water. Then I took it in a bowl, and some clean rags, and went upstairs to my mother. She had managed to sit up and was leaning against the wall. The bag of money, I noticed, had gone. She must have tucked it away somewhere. The thought of us surviving on money my mother had earned in this way made me want to cry. But I could not cry. I had to help her.

  Carefully I sat down next to her, dipped a rag into the water and gently dabbed it against her split lip and swollen nose, wiping away the blood. She let me do it, compliant as a child, just wincing occasionally. It took a while to get rid of all the dried-on smears but eventually she looked more like herself, though the bruise around her eye was still vivid and her nose and lips were still swollen.

  Mam hadn’t spoken the whole time I was tending to her wounds, but now she gave me a sad half-smile.

  ‘Thank you, my girl.’

  I nodded. What else would I have done? I picked up her comb from the table by the window, and gestured for Mam to sit forward. Again, obedient as a little girl, she did as I wanted and I combed through her hair, brushing out all the tangles and tugs. Then I gently twisted it up and fastened it with a pin.

  Finally, I went to her wardrobe and found another dress and clean undergarments. Slowly she got up from the bed and, only flinching a bit, she took off the skirt and blouse she was wearing and pulled on the dress. I averted my eyes from the blue bruises on her inner thighs.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mam said again. She looked at herself in the reflection in the window – it was getting dark now and we could see ourselves in the candlelight from a lantern I’d lit. ‘Oh what a mess I am.’

  I shook my head. She was still beautiful. I took a deep breath. ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  She smiled at me in the reflection as we stood side by side, and took my hand. ‘This was Morgan’s doing,’ she said. ‘Not yours.’

  ‘My fault.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly.

  But I was right. If I’d done things differently, or explained everything better – not even better, explained things at all, earlier, or spoken more clearly – then perhaps she’d have understood how dangerous he was. I had to tell her the truth.

  ‘Morgan …’ I began.

  Mam took a breath. ‘I have to do what he wants, Emily,’ she said. ‘He’s made that very clear.’

  ‘He is dangerous,’ I croaked.

  Mam snorted. ‘I know that.’

  ‘He killed Da.’

  Mam turned away from the window and stared at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Da.’

  ‘Do not lie to me, Emily Moon,’ Mam said furiously. ‘As if things aren’t bad enough with this.’ She gestured wildly to her face. ‘Do not lie.’

  I tried to tell her that it was the truth but her face was red with anger. I felt awful for her. She’d lost her husband, she was doing what she had to do to put food in our bellies and – I knew – to protect me and here I was telling her awful things. Truthful things, but they were awful just the same. I couldn’t speak. Mam stared at me as I opened and closed my mouth, desperately trying to get my voice to work.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said, venom in her voice. ‘Talk to me.’

  Helplessly, I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t tell her what I’d seen on that awful night. And then I had an idea.

  I squeezed her hand and tried not to mind that she flinched away from my touch. Then I darted out of her bedroom and into my own. I picked up my sheaf of papers and leafed through them until I found the ones I’d drawn that night. The sketches of Morgan’s face, the distinctive white flash in his hair glowing in the moonlight, and my father’s lifeless expression as his blood pumped on to the cobbles.

  I tried not to look at the pictures too closely, but I gathered them up and took them back into Mam’s room.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pushing them at her.

  She turned away but I pushed harder. ‘Look.’

  Reluctantly she took the pages and leafed through them. Her expression went from angry to sad and then to furious again. Her cheeks were red as she turned on me. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Da …’ I began.

  ‘You are ill in your head, Emily,’ she said. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. ‘You are ill in your head and you have made up these awful stories to torment me. Why would you draw such awful horrible things?’

  I shook my head wildly, trying to show her that I hadn’t made this up but she gripped my arm and pulled me.

  ‘Stop it,’ she screeched. Her hair, which I’d so neatly tied up, was coming loose and she looked like a madwoman as she screamed in my face, her expression twisted with hate.

  ‘I am doing what I can,’ she cried. ‘I have no money and no husband and the only way I can survive is to do what Morgan wants me to do.’

  ‘No,’ I sobbed. ‘No.’

  ‘And then you come along with your tales of your father’s death and your evil imagination. Making things worse. So much worse.’

  She was still holding the pictures, the one of Da on top, gripping them in her fist so tightly that her knuckles were white. She looked down at them in disbelief. ‘How could you draw this, Emily? How could you draw such an awful thing?’

  I opened my mouth but no sound came out, just a cry of frustration and despair.

  Mam hit me round the head with the papers. It didn’t hurt but the gesture broke my heart.

  ‘How could you?’ she said. She looked round and saw the bowl I’d used to bathe her wounds. In one stride she was there, picking up the bowl and throwing the dirty water on to the floor. Then she crumpled up the pages and forced them into the bowl.

  I tried to pull her arm, to get her to stop, but she was determined and strong and there was nothing I could do as she picked up the lantern, took out the candle inside and dropped it into the bowl.

  The papers caught straightaway, the flame licking the edges. I watched, devastated, as the only tiny proof I had of Morgan’s wrongd
oing was eaten up by the orange fire. The smoke filled my throat and made me cough. Mam’s eyes were watering but she didn’t move, holding the bowl out in her two hands like an offering at church.

  ‘Stop,’ I begged. ‘Stop.’

  ‘You stop.’ Mam’s voice was rough with the smoke. ‘Stop and listen to me. We have no choice, Emily. No choice at all. Morgan has shown us that. But if I do as he asks, then we will have money in our pockets and food in our bellies. And if I don’t, then he will take what he wants and give us nothing.’

  She looked at me over the top of the burning bowl. The fire shone on her face and gave her a demonic appearance that made me shudder. ‘Do you understand?’ she said.

  I didn’t speak or move.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  Suddenly, all my fight was gone, I nodded. Mam looked at me for a long moment, and then – still holding the bowl, which was just smouldering now, my pictures reduced to cinders – she turned and walked out of the bedroom.

  I slumped down on to the bed. My tears were falling quickly now. What could I do? It seemed my efforts to protect my mother had all gone wrong. I had no proof of Morgan’s bad deeds and no way to show anyone that he was a killer and a criminal.

  Unless.

  I sat up again and wiped away my tears.

  Arthur had agreed to come with me and watch from the cliffs that very evening. We knew that Morgan was going to do something – that man I’d spied on down the opening had said as much. And Petroc had been so adamant when he told us to keep away that it was clear something was going on. Perhaps I could take my sketchbook with me while we watched, do some more drawings and show them to … who? The magistrate? The parish constable? I thought of Mr Trewin and winced. Perhaps not. But at least it would be proof of some wrongdoing at least.

  Mind made up, I got off the bed. We would watch Morgan this evening and find out once and for all what he was doing.

  Chapter 19

  Phoebe

  2019

  I quite enjoyed my walk into Kirrinporth. It was definitely much nicer in the sunshine. I strolled along, concentrating on my surroundings and feeling the warmth on my face, and trying not to worry about Liv. I knew that despite her determination to look on the bright side, she was still worrying about money. I couldn’t help with the cash – I was hard up enough given that I wasn’t earning my usual wage – but I thought I might sit her down later and see if we could come up with some ideas to encourage more customers to come to the pub.

  We’d not heard anything about where the former landlord had gone either and though I’d boxed up the family’s belongings it still felt very much like we were living in their house and they could return any second. I’d get her to chase that Des, the regional manager, I thought. See if we could return some of the stuff to the family at least. Maybe if she felt more settled, she could concentrate on getting more customers. And not have to rely on Ewan Logan, a little voice inside my head said. I ignored it. At least I tried to.

  Kirrinporth library was easy to find – just along from Simon’s church. It was a small stone building that smelled like my old primary school. It had a children’s section where two mothers perched on tiny chairs and tried to interest their toddlers in picture books, and a larger fiction section. I asked the librarian for the local history section and she pointed me right to the back, where some rickety stairs led up to a small mezzanine level.

  It was quiet up there, with no other library-goers venturing up the creaky steps. I put my bag down on a chair and set about finding every book about smugglers that I could. I thought if I could find out more about the criminals who were arrested when Emily Moon went missing, I could perhaps work out if she was involved in some way. I loved the idea of her being the brains behind the smuggling gang. Or perhaps she was the person who’d blown the whistle on them. I was intrigued, that was for sure.

  There were no shortage of books. I piled them all up on the table and leafed through them, looking for mentions of Kirrinporth, and I wasn’t disappointed. It turned out, this sleepy little Cornish town was a hotbed of organised crime in the nineteenth century.

  Gripped, I read about how the local lord of the manor, a man called Denzel Kirrin employed former soldiers to oversee the day-to-day business of smuggling, and didn’t get his hands dirty himself. Instead he got rich on the proceeds of the crime, bringing in whisky, rum and tobacco and selling it on, like an old-world mob boss. He even had the local magistrates in his pocket, bribing them to turn a blind eye to his dodgy dealings. ‘Probably all played golf together,’ I muttered, thinking of how things worked these days.

  I read for more than an hour, jotting down notes and marking pages with strips of paper torn from my notebook.

  A group of very loud babies and toddlers arrived for rhyme time and I decided it was time for me to go. I picked three books with the most information about smuggling in Kirrinporth and wrote down the titles. I’d come back again. Tomorrow even. I was really enjoying finding out about the history of this odd little town.

  Feeling happier than I’d felt since we’d arrived really, I set off towards the bakery where I’d had coffee yesterday to get some cakes for Liv. And there, coming out of the little alleyway that led to the covered courtyard as I was going in, was Jed.

  ‘Phoebe,’ he said, sounding thrillingly pleased to see me. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good,’ I said, trying to ignore the flips in my stomach that his presence gave me. ‘Great. I was just going to buy some cakes for Liv and maybe grab a drink.’

  ‘That sounds like an excellent idea,’ he said. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got nowhere I need to be for now. Fancy a coffee?’

  I thought about saying no, and heading back to The Moon Girl to check Liv was okay. But instead, I just pulled out my phone, saw there were no messages and grinned. ‘Yes please.’

  Jed led the way into the courtyard and I followed. Getting to know him better would hopefully put my mind at rest about Ewan Logan. After all, didn’t they say judge a man by the company he keeps? And while I had that little niggle about Mr Logan, the only feelings I had for Jed were much more interesting. He really was very handsome.

  We chose a table inside and Jed went to the counter to order while I went for a wee. I looked at my face in the mirror as I washed my hands. I wasn’t wearing any make-up and my hair was a bit windswept from my walk. I rubbed my face to remove the library dust, combed my mop through with my fingers and much to my delight found some tinted lip balm in the bottom of my bag, so I slicked some on and hoped it would make me look fractionally more presentable, though I doubted it.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ Jed said as I sat down.

  I grinned. ‘Researching Emily Moon at the library.’

  He looked interested. ‘How come?’

  I thought about how to explain my interest. ‘There was a girl, near where I live in London,’ I said, deliberately not giving too much away. I didn’t want him googling. ‘She went missing and it was big news locally. I got quite into it. Turns out I like true crime stuff.’

  Jed gave me a look I couldn’t read, and I wondered if he’d think I was a weirdo. The type who has theories about Jack the Ripper and writes to serial killers in jail. But then he returned my smile. ‘Me too,’ he admitted. ‘I love unsolved mysteries. There are loads of podcasts I listen to.’

  ‘Which ones do you like?’

  We swapped recommendations for a few minutes. But I was more interested in Jed.

  ‘Not working today?’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘I have odd days off.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Delivery driver.’ He flashed me a bright smile. ‘I’m one of those who leaves your parcels in wheelie bins and chucks them over garden walls.’

  ‘A national treasure,’ I said and he laughed. I liked making him laugh.

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s fine. I like driving round the area. I like meeting people.’
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br />   ‘Much nicer driving round here than through city traffic I imagine,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘So what did you discover about poor doomed Emily?’ he asked, clearly having had enough of talking about himself. I was slightly disappointed with the subject change because I wanted to know more about Jed, but I went with it.

  ‘Not much yet,’ I admitted. ‘But apparently there are rumours that she was involved with a smuggling gang, so I’m looking into that.’

  ‘Involved as in she was one of the smugglers?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not sure yet. Possibly.’

  ‘Were there female smugglers?’

  ‘No idea,’ I said cheerfully. ‘The other rumour is that she grassed them up.’

  ‘Brave girl.’

  ‘Or a criminal mastermind.’

  ‘Or a bit of both.’

  We grinned at each other.

  ‘There’s a bigger library in Falmouth,’ Jed said. ‘It’s got a big local history section, which might be helpful. And there is a chap who lives down towards Penzance who’s an expert on local pubs. He’s written some books that might be helpful. I can’t remember his name but I think my dad’s got a couple so I could ask him, and you could reserve them from the library if you like?’

  I did like. ‘Is your dad local?’

  ‘Cornwall, but not this bit,’ Jed said vaguely. ‘I’ll see him in a few days though so I’ll ask him. If you give me your number, I’ll message when I’ve found out more.

  ‘That would be great.’

  Jed unlocked his phone and handed it to me. His fingers touched mine and sent a jolt through me. It had been so long since a man had this effect on me, I wasn’t completely sure how to handle it. I covered my discomfort by focusing on his phone. His home-screen picture was a view over Kirrinporth harbour, which told me disappointingly little about what sort of man he was, though I was pleased it wasn’t a photo of a woman or even kids. Stop it, Phoebe, I thought to myself as I typed my number in and pressed the green button to call my phone. ‘Now I’ve got your number too.’