“What did they steal?”
“A rare coin collection. Apparently, they got a couple thousand quid for it.”
“Have you spoken to the occupant of the house on Tresawle Road in Falmouth?”
“He hasn’t returned my call.”
“I’m not surprised.” Gabriel took a pull at the beer, then shook his head slowly. “Didn’t they teach you anything at detective
school, Timothy?”
62
Tresawle Road
“His name is Miles Lennox.”
“Sounds like a serial killer to me.”
“It’s a perfectly fine name.”
“For an axe murderer,” said Gabriel.
“Hatchet, Mr. Allon. The Chopper uses a hatchet.” Peel turned into Hillhead Road and streaked across darkened farmland toward Falmouth. “And I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he didn’t call us after his coins were stolen.”
“There is,” said Gabriel. “He didn’t call you because he didn’t want you to discover his collection of bloody hatchets.”
“It makes a certain amount of sense, I have to admit. He also happens to fit our profile. Right age, right height and weight, right marital status and occupation.”
“Rare coin collector?”
“Lorry driver. He works for a beverage distributor.”
“Which gives him a perfect excuse to drive around Cornwall and Devon looking for young women to kill.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“We will be in about five minutes.”
“More like three,” said Peel as they reached the fringes of Falmouth. He worked his way eastward across town and rolled to a stop outside a terraced house in Tresawle Road. It was two floors in height, with a gray pebble dash exterior. A light burned behind the lace curtains of the sitting room window.
Peel switched off the engine. “I should probably call the boys from the Met. It’s their case, after all.”
“Probably,” agreed Gabriel. “But it will do wonders for your career if you make the collar yourself.”
“I need backup.”
“Not for a routine burglary inquiry. Besides, you have backup.”
“You?” Peel shook his head. “Not a chance, Mr. Allon.”
Gabriel offered him the Beretta. “At least take this.”
“Put that thing away.”
Gabriel returned the weapon to the small of his back. “Slap the cuffs on him while you’re introducing yourself. And whatever you do, don’t turn your back on him.”
Peel climbed out of the car and headed up the garden walk. The door opened to reveal the very face of death. Peel displayed his identification and after a moment’s hesitation was granted permission to enter the premises. Gabriel heard nothing to indicate there was a struggle within.
Finally, his phone rang. “You’d better be on your way, Mr. Allon. Things are about to get pretty busy around here.”
Gabriel slipped out of the car and set off along the darkened street. He heard the first sirens as he rounded the corner into Old Hill. Chiara called him a moment later.
“Mind telling me where you are?” she asked.
“Falmouth.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Change of plan. And tell that daughter of ours not to worry,” said Gabriel. “I took care of that little problem.”
Author’s Note
A Death in Cornwall is a work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
There is indeed a civil parish called Gunwalloe on the western coast of the Lizard Peninsula, but it bears little resemblance to the place that appears in A Death in Cornwall or three previous Gabriel Allon novels. Sadly, there is no Cornish Bakery, no Corner Market, and no public house known as the Lamb and Flag. The rest of the remarkable region is, for the most part, accurately rendered. Deepest apologies to the Devon and Cornwall Police for the deplorable conduct of Detective Sergeant Timothy Peel, but I required a literary mechanism for inserting a prominent Venice-based art restorer into a British murder investigation.
The restorer in question could not possibly have left a Bentley in a car park in Garrick Street, because no such car park exists. There is indeed an art gallery on the northeast corner of Mason’s Yard, but it is owned by Patrick Matthiesen, one of the world’s most successful and respected Old Master art dealers. I am happy to report that the theft and recovery of Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh, one of the Courtauld Gallery’s most cherished possessions, took place only in the universe inhabited by Gabriel Allon and his associates. The iconic painting was stolen in a daring smash-and-grab robbery in the opening pages of The Rembrandt Affair. The perpetrators were never identified, but I suspect that one of them was none other than René Monjean.
The surrealist Picasso portrait depicted in A Death in Cornwall is fictitious, as is its provenance. Therefore, the painting could not have been sold at Christie’s in London for fifty-two million pounds. The venerable auction house was the target of a lawsuit filed in 2018 over the sale of Alfred Sisley’s First Day of Spring in Moret. Art dealer Alain Dreyfus paid $338,500 for the painting in 2008, only to discover that it had once belonged to the French Jewish collector Alfred Lindon. Before fleeing Paris in August 1940, Lindon placed his entire collection in a vault at the Chase Manhattan Bank on the rue Cambon. The paintings eventually fell into the hands of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, a frequent visitor to Paris during the Occupation. The rapacious Nazi gave eighteen of Lindon’s paintings, including the Sisley landscape, to a corrupt art dealer in exchange for a single work by Titian.
