Page 15 of The Path to the Last House Before the Sea

Alyssa felt her chest begin to tighten. Belinda was staring at her. ‘S-sorry,’ Alyssa stuttered. ‘Did you say something?’

‘I asked how Magda’s doing,’ said Belinda, taking off her glasses and letting them dangle on the gilt chain around her neck. ‘She works so hard, running the ice-cream parlour and her little catering business. And did I hear that she’s made Rosie’s wedding cake herself?’

‘She has. I think she just needs to add the finishing touches to it.’

‘Marvellous. Any news of Rosie’s dress, and how is Stan doing?’ Belinda continued, hardly pausing for breath. ‘I know you’re doing some shifts in the shop now, which is helpful, I’m sure. And I see that Jack is back in the village. He’s having a tough time, what with the divorce and him not seeing his son, though he’s a stepson, I understand. Do you know how long Jack’s staying?’

‘No,’ said Alyssa, wilting under a Belinda barrage. ‘Actually,’ she said quickly, before Belinda could start talking again, ‘I was looking for any books you might have on the history of Heaven’s Cove.’

‘Interested in the past, are you?’

‘I’m particularly interested in the seventeen hundreds. I’m trying to find out more about the smuggling ring that existed in the village back then.’

‘How exciting! Have you tried the village cultural centre?’

‘Yes, I nipped in there a couple of days ago, but the information they hold on local smuggling is limited and I could do with more.’

‘I see. Well, I know we have some books that might interest you over there.’ Belinda waved her arm at a teetering pile in the corner. ‘As I say, though, they’re all donated and, between you and me, some of the donations leave a lot to be desired. Honestly, the books that some people read!’

Belinda leaned in closer, her floral perfume mingling with the briny scent. ‘Ernie, who lived near the lifeboat station, passed away two months ago and his family donated all of his books. I went through them and, though I’d never speak ill of the dead, Ernie had a rather…’ She paused. ‘… eclectic taste in fiction, shall we say. Some of the novels weren’t fit to be in a family library. Erotica, I think you’d call it. Even the covers were… well…’ She wrinkled her nose before smiling brightly. ‘However, he was a man of varied tastes, and he had a wealth of local history books too, which I’ve added to that pile. There’s also a potted local history, written by Gerald who lives past the bakery.’ She leaned closer. ‘But if I’m being honest, he rambles on a bit. He could have done with an editor.’

‘Thanks. I’ll have a look,’ said Alyssa, stifling a grin at Belinda’s blindness to her own tendency to ramble on.

Mercifully, Belinda wandered off and Alyssa began sorting through Ernie’s collection.

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, making notes.

Most of the books were ancient hardbacks that focused on Devon’s rich history and gave an overview of Heaven’s Cove. The village was a fascinating place. Once a community of great importance, with a castle overlooking the stretch of water between England and France, it had then fallen into poverty, with fishing and farming the main occupations keeping the locals from starving. It had continued that way for centuries, with its inhabitants eking out a living as best they could, before the village found favour with tourists who couldn’t get enough of its quaint cottages and beautiful scenery.The castle had also become a visitor attraction and was overrun by tourists in the summer, although it was now little more than a ruin.

At the bottom of the pile, Alyssa found a narrow volume entitled Heaven’s Cove: Past and Present. Published in the 1950s, its ‘present’ was now long past but there was a chapter about smuggling in the village.

The village had been a clandestine smuggling hot-spot in the mid eighteenth century, Alyssa read. A local gang had brought in goods from the Continent, operating under a code of such secrecy that many residents were unaware of what was happening right under their noses.

There were even said to be smugglers’ tunnels that ran beneath some of the old buildings.

Alyssa shifted to ease her aching back and imagined a network of tunnels beneath her feet, as the germ of an idea took root in her brain. What if some of the tunnels had survived? Visiting one could be the highlight of the new tour.

Fired with enthusiasm, she carried on reading, hardly noticing the sounds of boats chugging into harbour and seagulls screeching outside.

The information about local smugglers was fascinating, and surely worth a tourist tour of its own. She could imagine telling the tales of people long gone. Men like local Jobe Cartwright, only twenty-eight years old in 1753, who was hanged for smuggling rum, tea and fine lace from the Continent.

‘Harsh,’ said Alyssa out loud, reading that Jobe had been caught and the gang broken up when the king’s customs men raided the village on the fifteenth of October that year. She peered again at the date. Fifteenth of October 1753. Wasn’t that the same day that Charity and Josiah had vanished?

She quickly scanned the rest of the chapter and her suspicion was soon confirmed.

Adding to the high drama of that night, Charity Hawkins of Driftwood House and Josiah Gathergill of Weavers Lane went missing and were never seen again.

There was no evidence that Josiah, an impoverished labourer, was a member of the smuggling gang. Instead, it’s surmised that he murdered Charity that night after she came across him burgling her home – a valuable family heirloom, a jewelled brooch, went missing at the same time. He then disposed of Charity’s body, probably by throwing it from a cliff into the sea, and fled the area, never to return. A memorial (known locally as the Mourning Stone) was erected to Charity on the village green.

The disappearance of the couple led to a myth that survives to this day. It recounts that a sea dragon, living in a cave on Heaven’s Cove beach, dragged both Charity and Josiah to their deaths.

Alyssa jotted ‘Charity lived at Driftwood House’ into her notebook before re-reading what was written about the young woman’s mysterious disappearance.

She put down the book and frowned. There was a huge amount of supposition involved around the couple’s disappearance. And a complete dearth of the evidence that Jackhad insisted was so important. Perhaps what had actually happened was that Josiah and Charity had been killed by customs men? And those men would surely have covered their tracks after realising they’d killed a local woman in error?

Whatever had happened to them, thought Alyssa, getting to her feet – murder, happy-ever-after or death by sea dragon – the young couple deserved to be more than just a footnote in history, or an enduring mystery that painted one of them in a dreadful light.

‘All done?’ Belinda’s voice sounded in her ear. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’

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