Cornish Pastiche A Murder Mystery

By A A Gates

How could a vacation go so wrong? Chief Inspector Jim Hatchard and his wife Betty arrive in the UK from South Australia to enjoy a long-planned holiday in Cornwall, the county of Betty's ancestors. Early in their time in England they make an innocent enquiry for directions to their hotel near St Agnes. That enquiry leads them into experiences of Cornwall they could never have anticipated in their worst nightmares. A murder mystery wraps itself around them, changing their plans.
In unusual circumstances Jim becomes involved deeply in the urgent task of discovering the identity of a murderer who is bent on more killing, First one suspect, then another, and another, come into the picture, but the mystery appears to have no clues for cracking the case. Then an unusual clue, which carries with it a mistake by the murderer, provides the first real opportunity to make an arrest. By this time Jim and Betty find themselves drawn into the dark world of an extreme religious group, and the darker side of sex. The denouemont involves the reader in a thrilling closing in on the murderer in which the topography of Cornwall's remotest areas is the enemy.
Meet DCI Jim Hatchard who maps and follows his own path. He is a crime detection officer who is one of a kind and happy to be so. He is an educated policeman with a deep interest in the psychology of criminals.. He is dogmatic, yet sensitive to the effects of loss of freedom for those who are consigned to imprisonment. He has his own inner demons that have the potential to destroy him as the murder enquiry closes around him. Meet also DI Arthur Brosnan, a hard-working, methodical detective, and DS 'Foxy' Fox, who has an eye for the girls, both of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
While a broad ray of light runs through the novel, it nevertheless enters the dangerous worlds of fanaticism, a perverted sense of justice and the destructive outcomes of lawlessness.
Be drawn in as the story accelerates to a gripping conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A A Gates
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370199273

A A Gates

A A Gates, born in England, is widely travelled and is familiar with Cornwall as a result of a number of visits to the county, his first being as a young seaman on a ship loading china clay at the port of Fowey. He has been a merchant seaman, served in two armies, led cultural tours in Europe, Vietnam and Australia, and lectured on travel, European (including English) history, Church history, team building, decision making, conflict management and railway subjects. Writing is one of his passions. He has had articles published in Australia and in the United Kingdom, and knows nothing more relaxing and creative than putting words on paper, though he admits to being a lover of Association Football and the gentle art of fly-fishing. The study of theology is another of his deep interests.He is concerned by the darker tendencies sometimes evident in people and has compassion for the susceptible. His desire is to see a more compassionate and more ethical world.He lives in South Australia with his wife Ruth whom he loves dearly. His first wife, Ann, mother of his two sons and a daughter, died in 2001. He is in love with two countries, Australia and England. Unfortunately, he says, they are many thousands of miles apart. He and his wife travel by train at every opportunity and have enjoyed some of the great train journeys of the world.

Book preview

CORNISH PASTICHE

A Murder Mystery

A A Gates

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © A A Gates 2017

All Rights Reserved.

DEDICATION

To Ruth,

my darling wife and editor, who has given much time to detecting many faults in the text and has made many valuable suggestions.

She is simply wonderful.

Table of Contents

1. Simple Enquiry

2. Perranzabuloe Enquiry

3. Early Days

4. The Sea, a Poet and an Artist

5. The Struggles of an Artist

6. A Wholly Devon Man

7. Spider’s Web

8. Two Saints and Two Novelists

9. The Work of Sisyphus

10. A Cornwall Eccentric

11. Cars and Conversations

12. Some Unusual Policing

13. A Puzzle and A Meeting at Trenorden’s Field

14. Psychiatry Illuminates

15. The Third Saint

16. A Cornish Tale

Chapter One

Simple Enquiry

Two apparently unrelated events determined how a certain police investigation was carried out.

One was a phone call to Detective Inspector Arthur Brosnan of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary to tell him a body had been found on his patch. The other was worlds apart from crime: Jim and Betty Hatchard, on holiday from South Australia, asked for directions for the direct route from Perranzabuloe to a village near St Agnes in Cornwall.

Betty and Jim could never have dreamt that so bizarre a twist – and bizarre it was – would change their long-planned holiday beyond recognition. How could a simple act of asking for directions change everything?

They’d looked forward to this time for Betty, a teacher librarian, to do some leisurely digging for information on her Cornish ancestors. Jim, a detective-chief inspector in the South Australian Police, had come along to help her where he could, but also to spend time on one of his own passions, railways. He knew there had been a fascinating network of main, branch and china clay lines in Cornwall and he intended to delve as deeply into their history as he could. He wanted to immerse himself in the adventure of Cornwall’s variety of lines.

To their great delight they’d discovered that their hotel, Kernow Place, was a Georgian mansion, ivy-clad on one side and standing in spacious grounds. It was located on the outskirts of a village in the St Agnes area deep into the county and promised all the relaxation they were seeking.

A shallow stream which carried the status of a river meandered through the grounds. One side of the stream was the parish of St Agnes, the other the parish of Perranzabuloe. From the hotel a worn pathway that had caught Betty’s eye on their first day at the hotel crossed a wide lawn, then the stream over a log bridge and continued to a higher wooded area decked with bluebells. There it joined another path running at right-angles to it.

‘Let’s follow it and find out where it goes!’ Her eyes lit up at the prospect.

‘The woman still allows the girl in you to flourish, Betty, and I love you for it as I love everything else about you.’

They’d followed it and come to the second path that continued through the wood, a border of bluebells, closely clustered, lining both sides in a carpet of cyan. They turned to their right and followed it.

‘Look, Jim! What’s that?’ She looked to her right, eyes slightly lowered.

‘What?’

‘There. That old stone building.’

‘I don’t know. It looks like local stone. It looks as though it might have once been a mill. Look. There’s a watercourse running past it down to the main stream. A mill leat?’

Yes it was a mill, they discovered later, that had once been operated by a local miller. Two to three hundred years old, it had operated into the 20th century.

Betty had been captivated by the walk, the bubbling sound of the stream, the gentle notes of birds almost floating to her in the wood, and the heady scent of bluebells. I’m home. She had no idea where the thought had come from, but there was no denying she felt it in a very deep place.

The village pub, The Clay and Tin, was a slate-roofed, rendered building abutting the road. It seems that a footpath had never been considered necessary. Its location at the cross-roads indicated that from the beginning it had been the heart of the small community. Jim and Betty discovered very quickly and with amusement that many of the locals all pronounced it The Claydin. They didn’t waste breath unnecessarily in these parts.

It was to The Clay and Tin that they made their way for lunch. Sitting in the corner of a low-beamed room, Jim was enjoying the rich taste of a dark brown ale. Betty was sipping a shandy. They were both taking in the atmosphere of the old Cornish pub.

The oak beams supporting the ceiling, the horse brasses above the bar, a solid stone fireplace where, on a colder day coal would be burning, gave the pub a very English feel or should it be Cornish?, Jim asked himself. A mantelpiece where a miscellany of iron items from now-closed tin mines had been placed and walls with pictures of the mines contributed to the pub’s local Cornish flavour. Jim was delighted to see that there were one or two pictures of now-closed railways, including a halt which had once served the village. He noticed too an old photograph of girls in uniform outside a primary school and wondered if any of Betty’s relatives could be among them.

‘It’s certainly full,’ Betty said, in the soft voice Jim had loved listening to for so many years.

Jim looked at her, still a pretty woman now in middle age, eyes sparkling, taking in everything around her. Her dark blue summer print dress with daffodil blooms randomly placed seemed to preserve a youth now passed. Her Chanel perfume, delicate and unmistakeable, transported him, as it inevitably did, into her world of pure femininity. ‘I’d forgotten how popular English pubs can be. But it’s lunchtime, so there would be a crowd, wouldn’t there?’

‘Jim, can you smell that roast lamb?’

‘Yes, and mint and freshly-pulled ale. The savour of the lamb is making me feel very hungry.’

Betty smiled inwardly at her husband’s precise English. Most people might have said the smell of the lamb. But not Jim. I wonder what the people who work with him think of the way he talks? He’s a walking course in English grammar and vocabulary. But I wouldn’t want to be with anyone but this wonderful man.

Conversations round the bar were loud and friendly, full of the conviviality of a country pub. The voices were thick with Cornish accents, scarcely intelligible to Jim and Betty. Though Cornish in her bones, Betty was no more at home with the accents than Jim was.

They were able to pick up odd pieces of conversation, even though a glass-windowed partition shielded them from the bar. The man currently engaging the barman in pub-chat was talking about some meetings in a large tent, apparently not far away. As they got used to the accents they found they could follow most of it.

‘It’s in Trenorden’s Field.’

‘I knows that, Jack. I’m not on another planet. I’ve been reading about it in The Tinman. Something like that always gets in the Tin. The group running the show calls themselves The Living Apostles. I haven’t a clue what that means, but the paper says they’re expecting big crowds.’

‘They’s getting them. Cars, caravans. They’s taking over the place. Probably from England!’

‘Well, live and let live, Jack. They’ll probably bring a bit of cash into the pub, and that’s good for me.’

‘Not on your life, my handsome. They’s some sort of singing and dancing and mumboing and jumboing religious mob that don’t drink. Won’t do you no good at all.’

‘Probably won’t do me any harm either, Jack. They might not drink, but they have to eat, even if it’s lemonade they have with their meals.’

Jim listened with amusement to the Cornish forms and the assumption that England existed only over the River Tamar beyond Cornwall.

They finished their drinks and went to the bar to order lunch and ask the barman for directions to the Perranzabuloe church where Betty wanted to search headstones for family names.

‘Why do you want to go to Perranzabuloe then?’

‘My wife’s Cornish – both sides,’ Jim explained. ‘On one side she’s a Trevithick – and yes, the great man was one of her ancestors. On the other she’s a Fitzwilliam. The Fitzwilliams were Normans. They came to Cornwall after the Conquest, so I suppose 900 years or more’s residence makes them as Cornish as anybody.’

‘They’ve both been important local families around here in the past,’ the barman, a genial, solidly-built man answered. ‘But not so much today. You should find one or six of them in the Perranzabuloe churchyard, I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, you were wanting to know about the road. The direct way there is a bit of a problem just now, because there’s a kind of convention going on there in Trenorden’s Field, about half-way to Perranzabuloe [he pronounced it ‘Perranzaboolow’]. They’ve got a big tent there for their meetings. There’s hundreds of people camped there. They’ve got small tents everywhere, and there’s some caravans. I think it’s one of them Pentecostal meetings – I think that’s what you call them. You know, the meetings when they all get together and make weird sounds instead of talking.’

Jim shuddered inside. Betty smiled, enjoying the irritation she knew Jim was feeling.

‘Problem is, there’s plenty of cars on that road, and it’s pretty narrow anyhow. So I’d take the longer way round on this road if I was you.’ Jim gritted his teeth with the irritation that only mangled English could bring him.

The barman pointed to the road on a map from under the bar. ‘That’ll get you to Perranzabuloe a bit quicker than the direct road. Give the big tent a miss.’

They hoed into their keenly anticipated lamb, talked of things Cornish, then left after thanking the barman.

The suggested, less direct route to Perranzabuloe, was fairly easy with very little traffic on the road.

Betty was intrigued enough by the weird sounds convention to wonder if they should have taken the direct road just to ‘sticky beak’. Jim, pragmatic as always, thought the barman’s suggested route better.

They chatted about the rolling country with hedge-lined fields and roadsides decorated with the wild flowers of late spring. Betty was enjoying the profusion of colour as she re-familiarised herself with the natural palette of England that had never left her, even through many years in the browner country of Australia.

She was not a countrywoman by birth. Though of Cornish blood she had been born and brought up in south-east London. Her familiar landmarks were the Elephant and Castle, the Old Kent Road, Greenwich, Charlton and the countryside of nearby Kent. Even so, the flowers and trees of Cornwall were the flora of Kent and of most other parts of England.

Wherever a copse of trees provided the excuse, bluebells grew. The trees themselves bore the fresh green of leaves not yet two months old. The sky was the soft blue seen on the best of English spring days with small traces of wispy cloud randomly and sparingly breaking the cyan spread. It was, thought Betty, the perfect English spring she had dreamt about so often, and here it was on their first day in Cornwall. It seemed an omen of good things to come.

They had some trouble finding Perranzabuloe. It appeared on the map, but it was not so certain that it existed on the ground. When they arrived at the point where the map indicated Perranzabuloe ought to be, they saw only a large white building on the right in a dip in the road, but no sign indicating the existence of a village. They certainly could not see a church. They continued for a mile or so before turning back. It was then that they saw on their right what they could not see when coming from the other direction: a small gate in among the trees and beyond it a stone church.

Jim pulled the car off the road onto a grass verge.

‘Well, here we are, Betty. The first link with your family is just through that gate. Perranus in Sabul – Perran in the sands..’

‘I can’t believe it. We are really here. Let’s get out and get started!’ As she said it she wondered lovingly, Is there was another policeman in the English-speaking world who keeps up his Latin?

He walked ahead of her. She watched his broad-shouldered, upright figure and thought what an unusual policeman he was. An up-and-coming young officer in the Met. after he’d had a few years at sea. He was seen to have a bright future. She wondered what his life would have been like if he had not met her. He’d probably have stayed at sea.

They’d met in a strange way – or at least she supposed it was a strange way. On leave from a ship he’d been on the terraces at The Valley, the home ground of Charlton Athletic football club, the team she supported. He’d gone there as an Arsenal supporter for the Gunners’ First Division fixture at The Valley. With today’s all-seater football grounds they’d never have met. Thank God for the terraces. Without them I’d never have met this man. She’d spilled her coffee and the handsome man standing next to her went to get her another cup. And it all went on from there.

When they decided to marry, he left the sea. She remembered well the day he’d decided to take a shore job.

‘I can’t be a husband if I’m away all the time.’

‘I’ll just have to get used to it. The sea’s your passion. You need it as much as you need air to breathe.’

‘Yes, I love the sea, and I love shipboard life, but you are wrong about one thing – You are my passion, and where I have two loves I must choose the one that is the more important. That means the choice is made. I shall find a shore job and we can really be married.’

She knew what that involved. He’d loved the sea with great intensity. Yet he’d given it up for her. How could she ever forget that? She’d talked with him about what passionate times his leaves would be, but he wouldn’t hear of being an absent husband.

Having no intention of working in an office all day he’d applied for training with the Met. He’d done brilliantly at Hendon and it seemed there was no limit to his police career. ‘A prepossessing young man’, his first Confidential Report had said, and they only got better after that.

He’d seen an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph one day for qualified policemen to take up employment with the South Australian Police. They’d talked about it long into many nights and it was almost a toss of a coin in the end.

‘It would be a huge step, Betty. Australia is a very long way from this country that I believe we both love dearly. We’d be leaving the theatres, the galleries and all the facilities of London that are so important to both of us. Yet it does sound interesting. The South Australian Police are smaller than the Met. of course, a good deal smaller, but that doesn’t rule it out. They need people, and I’d be helping to meet the need.’

‘Yes, I think you would. And I know lots of what’s important to us is here. It’s home. We love it, and we’d be silly to ignore that. But maybe going out there would be some kind of adventure for us.’

And so the conversations continued until the point came when they decided that risk as it was, they would find out a bit more about it. Jim sent away for more information with the result that they’d made the move to Adelaide, Jim to the South Australian Police, Betty to employment as a teacher librarian.

It had put a temporary stop on his upward move. Had he stayed in the Met., she thought, he’d certainly be a Superintendent now. But it was a small matter to Jim, whose police ambitions were always lower than his brilliance in the job. If promotion came, fine. He’d just get on with the job he so obviously enjoyed.

Her mind came back with a start to the present and the excitement of looking for ancestors in the churchyard at Perranzabuloe.

It was a successful afternoon. They spent a good three hours in the overgrown churchyard which fanned out from a building of confused Gothic style. Jim noticed that some of the arches were shallower than others, and from the outside the church appeared to have two naves. Parallel pitched roof lines gave that impression. He couldn’t recall ever having seen a church quite like it, and as an aficionado of architecture he’d seen a lot of churches.

They discovered headstones of four Trevithicks and one Fitzwilliam. Betty was as happy as Jim could remember ever seeing her. Yet there was one sobering moment for her. She stumbled unexpectedly in the long grass upon a grave whose concrete cover had fallen in to quite some depth. A shiver ran deeply through her body.

‘Jim, I felt death staring up at me through that broken concrete!’ He held her for a while until she was once again composed.

She was more than satisfied with her discoveries and notes.

‘I wish the rector lived here, Jim. We might have been able to look at some of the church records. But never mind, it’s been a great afternoon and I’ve got some important names and dates to work on.’

At around five o’clock she almost skipped through the lych gate when they left to return to Kernow Place.

‘It’s been as though I was in the family home, Jim. I felt I was joining with their spirits.’

Jim held her, lovingly, remaining, in his calm way, non-committal on the matter of spirits.

They chose to return via the direct route. Betty’s curiosity proved to be persuasive with Jim.

Not being on the route they’d followed on the journey to Perranzabuloe, there was nothing they could identify and Jim had very little idea whether he was on the right road. At Betty’s urging they decided to ask for help, an innocent enough thing to do.

It would have extraordinary consequences.

Pulling up, Jim called to a man of, perhaps, 30, walking on the other side of the road at an easy, relaxed pace. He seemed to Jim to have the appearance of being local. He walked over to the car, gave them a friendly look and asked how he could help. Betty, who had given up trying to use the local map, took it back out of her bag and handed it to Jim.

‘You look like a local. I think you might be able to help us. We’re just a bit uncertain of our way.’

‘Where might you be trying to get to?’

‘Kernow Place. Not too far, I think, from here.’

‘Yes, for the village go right at the next turn then straight on. Kernow Place, you said. Go straight through the village and turn left at the pub. At the bottom of a dip you turn left again, and that’s the hotel drive. You’ll have a bit of trouble maybe when you pass Trenorden’s Field. They’re having a tent meeting there and there are hundreds of people about and more than enough cars.’

They thanked him and drove on.

It didn’t take long to reach Trenorden’s Field and they saw straight away why the locals were talking about the crowds.

Jim drove the car slowly onto the edge of the narrow footpath and stopped while they looked briefly at the set-up. The marquée was large – as large as the grandest circus big-top either of them had seen. Tents and caravans filled the remainder of the wide meadow. There were young people milling around in skimpy tee-shirts bearing the words Jesus Saves, sandals and shorts or dungarees [Jim refused to dignify them with the word jeans. To him they would always be dungarees worn for labouring, and offensive when worn for any other purpose]. There were some variations in the dress and they noticed one or two older people in the throng, but informality and youth were the norm as they moved towards the marquée for the evening meeting. Already, with the engine still running, they could hear guitars playing in the tent, no doubt with the aid of a powerful amplifying system.

‘What is it that attracts people away from all the comforts to come here during their precious holidays to live for a week in tents and use portable toilets and shower wagons and eat goodness knows what, Betty?

‘I think they probably find the meetings worth all that. Anyway, are you telling me that when you were young you didn’t live rough, sometimes?’

‘Yes, I did, but I didn’t have to endure preachers with limited biblical understanding and a great deal of dogmatism rather than talent.’

‘You, Jim? You are criticising others for dogmatism? Anyway, you haven’t heard the preachers in the tent so how do you know they don’t have much talent. How do you know they don’t have much understanding of the Bible?’

He knew she was right. The most dogmatic man he knew was himself. It was his oft-repeated resolution to be less opinionated, but so far resolution had failed to effect so radical a change.

Yet Betty knew that if she were to be honest with herself she’d have to admit that she agreed with almost all he said. Which is worse – my hypocrisy or Jim’s dogmatism? I hate the endless singing of meaningless songs and I have no desire to listen to grown men and women making unintelligible sounds – glossolalia, Jim calls it.

‘And as for speaking in tongues, Jim said, as if he had read her mind, ‘glossolalia is far older than Christianity and isn’t specifically Christian. In fact, it preceded Christianity by a comfortable margin. It can have a psychological, cathartic function, and could be an important release for a disturbed person. Perhaps deep-down that’s what these people at the tent find in the practice – release.’

That’s Jim. He loves to lecture!

The convention site was well behind them before he reminded himself that he needed to keep a careful eye on his tendency to feel superior. Wasn’t it a Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men? Arrogance, he knew, was never far away, and he could be guilty of it before he knew that it had even begun to take its hold on him.

The following day was one of easy exploration of the village. They walked the lanes hand in hand and talked of the tin-mining past. They took the path among the bluebells towards the old mill and discovered on the far side of it a stone post which had obviously been part of a gate for the miller and his workers.

Jim found a lengthy piece of timber and hacked away at the blackberry briars with enough success to make a pathway they could use into the mill if they were careful to pick their way. They did so, and having discovered that the briars were chiefly around the entrance, they had only minor scratches and were able to pick out the general layout. Beyond the briars there was a grassy patch, so they could relax their vigilance. Sufficient of the four walls remained for the small size of the mill to be unmistakable.

There was no roof, of course. Time had dealt with that, but Betty, more fey by far than Jim, felt the presence of those who had laboured within the walls. It was always so with her. Whenever she was in a place which had seen human activity but was now abandoned, she felt that the human spark – the vitality of human spirits – could never entirely leave a place. It was, she knew, a feeling that would be considered by many clergy to be out of kilter with her Christian faith, but she was not so sure. If we believe in the survival of the person then why shouldn’t I feel a human presence here? Real people worked and lived here. Jim won’t agree with it of course, but I’m quite able to form my own opinions.

After lunch in the hotel, Betty, an amateur water colourist, smuggled a chair out from the hotel and made herself comfortable a few yards from the mill, and set out materials to paint what remained of the old workplace. This was as they’d intended their holiday to be, painting, family research, railway research for Jim. She’d chosen a vantage point where her painting could tell a story. The mill, in ruin, would be in the foreground telling its older manual labour story of the village, while Kernow Place would stand behind it, telling its Georgian tale of comfortable gentry living. True, she moved the position of Kernow Place a little for the purposes of a good picture, but that was a great point of watercolour. You were not stuck with the inflexibility of a photograph. Anyway, didn’t Constable do a bit of juggling with Willy Lott’s cottage? If he could manipulate a scene, why shouldn’t I?

She was pleased with the composition she saw in her mind, and set to the task of putting a light sketch to paper, indicating the main outlines of her picture. It was a good hour later that she unscrewed the top of her plastic water container, and put the paints to work. She was soon consumed by the water colourist’s art.

Jim had eagerly seized the opportunity of delving into Kernow Place’s fine library. Its many volumes rested on shelves of beautifully-grained English oak. In the centre of the room was a large rectangular table in American oak, a timber which complemented the shelves very well.

His interest for the moment was in discovering the story of a railway alignment which ran close by the village. It had clearly been disused for many a long year. Was it of Great Western Railway lineage or that of its rival in the south-west, the London and South Western? What purpose did it serve, and why was it closed? To his delight he found a slim volume on the line, and spent a couple of hours reading and taking notes. He discovered there that a fine-looking old railway viaduct was still in existence close to the village. The chance to see it was irresistible. As soon as possible he’d drive out to the alignment, see the viaduct and follow-up on his reading. The smell of books, one of the sweetest smells he knew, infiltrated his nostrils. The main window was half open and the chattering of finches completed his contentment. And the lightest bluebell scent.

Betty continued her work. She was satisfied that she had captured the near-cyan colour of the sky and had left just enough white paper to suggest wispy clouds. Kernow Place had sufficient colour for her to consider it completed, and some of the trees in the scene had their foundational pale green in place. The next task was to paint the foreground mill, but she needed to wait for some adjacent colour to dry before starting it. The bluebells would be the last part of the composition to be painted. If only I could get their heady scent into the picture!

She sat back and drank in the scene, unable quite to believe that she was here, in this idyllic place on such a day. The sun was warming her back and birdsong was filling the air with a symphony of life, as only, she thought, happens on an English spring day. She left her chair and sat on the grass to let it all wash over her.

After a couple of hours of research, feeling pleased with his findings, Jim decided to take a break and see what Betty was up to. Leaving the hotel he turned to the right and headed along the pathway and over the stream. He walked past the leat and on to the upper side of the mill and saw her lying with her eyes closed and such a look of contentment as he had rarely seen before. His heart filled with warmth.

She was a beautiful woman by anyone’s standards. Slim, she had looked after herself over the years. Having children had not caused her to abandon the discipline of caring for her body. Her dark-brown hair, slightly streaked with just visible evidence of grey, was cut fairly short and swept back away from her forehead. Her eyes, not visible at this moment, had captured his attention from the first. Hazel in colour, they were windows into her considerable intelligence. Her pale Celtic skin gave her a gentle appearance, yet perhaps paradoxically also a visage of sharp-witted enquiry.

She was wearing a pale blue summer