St. Petroc’s, the parish church in the center of Coombe Mallet, had been built around the same time as St. Æthelric’s, Long Barston’s fifteenth-century jewel, but was smaller and plainer. The exterior was limestone with a Norman tower and shingled slate roof. With the cold wind whipping my hair, I ducked inside.
Morning prayers were over. The sanctuary was empty, so I took one of the free informational flyers and slipped into a square-ended pew near one of the ancient radiators chugging out warmth along the perimeter. I’d started to read the flyer when Donna Nixon arrived, red-faced and out of breath.
“I’ve been in a flap all morning.” Donna wiggled out of her puffy jacket. “At least we have some heat. It’s usually like the grave in here.” She was in distress, but she hadn’t neglected her makeup. Sparkly green eyeshadow matched her sparkly green top. “I don’t know what to do about Clive. The police came to the house, read him his rights, and took him away.”
“What did they tell you?”
“They know he went to see my brother the night before he was murdered. They have him on camera.”
“You said you were together the night before the murder.”
“I know.” She groaned. “Had to say that, didn’t I? Clive’ll kill me when he hears I contacted you.” Her eyes opened in horror. “I don’t mean he’d actually kill me. He’d never harm anyone. Might shout a bit, wave his arms about.”
“I heard about the CCTV footage, Donna. Why did Clive drive all the way from Exeter to Coombe Mallet on Saturday night?”
“I told him Gordon wouldn’t let him in, but would he listen to me?” She pulled a tissue out of her cleavage and wiped her eyes. “He was desperate.”
“Why? What was he hoping to do?”
“Talk my brother into loaning us money, of course. Beg him if necessary. We’d asked Gordon, but he’d refused point-blank. He said it had to stop—the foolish get-rich-quick schemes. It’s not that Clive’s dim, exactly, but he’s always looking for that pot of gold.”
And now he’s found it. I watched her for signs she’d known about the inheritance, seeing none.
Donna wiped her eyes, smearing the green eyeshadow. “He’s fallen for every scam in the book—gambling on the horses, Bitcoin, work-from-home gigs that required cash up front, investment scams, pyramid selling—he called it ‘multilevel marketing.’ If he’d put as much energy into a regular job as he has into those worthless swindles, we’d be sitting pretty by now.”
“Your brother loaned you money in the past?”
“Twice. Once when Clive signed a contract to open a mobile chippy—only to find out he’d committed to a large cash outlay up front with no way to buy the equipment he needed. The second time, Gordon paid off a debt Clive incurred when the value of Bitcoin tumbled. I don’t blame my brother for refusing to fund his latest scheme. This time it was some new technology, replacing gasoline with a synthetic made from sweet potato peelings or something. He said it was a sure thing. He borrowed fifteen thousand pounds from a loan shark. He has to pay it back, or—” She made a throat-slashing motion with her hand.
“So he drove all the way to Coombe Mallet and didn’t get there until after midnight? Did he suppose your brother would be awake at that time of night?”
“Thinking ahead has never been Clive’s gift. I pleaded with him not to go, but he was up and out of the house before I could talk sense into him. He just had to have another go.”
“What happened? Did he see your brother?”
“Never got the chance. When he arrived, the house was dark, and it finally dawned on the fool that Gordon’d be even less likely to agree to the loan in the middle of the night. So he decided to wait until morning. Stayed there all night—in his car. Near froze to death.”
“Wait a minute—are you saying he saw your brother in the morning?” She was making things even worse for Clive.
“No. He was about to open the car door when someone else showed up.”
I felt the skin on the back of my neck tingle. “Who was it?”
“Who knows? All he saw was the back of someone climbing the stairs. Naturally, he ducked out of sight, and when he dared look again, no one was there.”
“You’re saying this person was admitted to the house?”
“Probably.”
“Man or woman?”
“He’s not sure.”
“When was this exactly?”
“He doesn’t know. Never wears a watch. But it must have been midmorning, because the sun was glinting off the hood of his car. Maybe around ten?”
Apparently froze to death was a relative term. “When did he leave?”
“Soon after that.”
“Did he see anyone else?”
“No.”
“Has he told the police?”
“No, and he won’t.”
“Why not, Donna? This information could exonerate Clive and lead the police to your brother’s killer.”
She looked up at me through her lashes. “Because this time, Clive’s in real trouble. He’d have to explain why he went there. He owes money, lots of it, and the people who loaned him the cash won’t be best pleased if he tells the police who they are. They aren’t nice people, Kate. I know Clive. When he’s threatened, he’ll deny everything and clam up.”
“But if he doesn’t tell them, he may be charged with murder.” A chubby-cheeked cherub smiled sympathetically down from the altarpiece. Donna was going to need more than sympathy. “If Clive won’t tell the police, you have to.”
“I don’t know.” Donna bit the side of her lip. “Doesn’t seem right.”
“You’ve already told me. Let me tell Tom. He’ll know what to do.”
Donna took a deep breath. “Clive’s going to kill me.”
By the time I got to the library for my meeting with Maggie Hughes, Donna Nixon was already being interviewed by the police. Tom had texted me. Once she’d agreed to talk, they couldn’t shut her up. What Okoje would do with her information, I had no idea. Some of Clive’s schemes over the past few years hadn’t sounded precisely legal, but it was clear, at least to me, that his actions in this case had less to do with criminal intent and more to do with his entirely unwarranted belief that riches were waiting for him around the next corner. I still had questions—most importantly about Littlejohn’s mysterious visitor the morning he was killed. Had he or she been captured on the CCTV footage from the corner shop? Only the police could answer that question, so I put the matter aside and turned my thoughts to the bloodstained dress.
The Coombe Mallet Public Library occupied a wing of the Village Hall on Church Street. I arrived exactly at one and found Maggie Hughes waiting for me. She was a pleasant-looking woman, middle-aged, dressed in a dark woolen dress. Her blunt-cut silver hair fell just below her ears, and she wore a pair of oversized horn-rimmed glasses.
“Welcome, Kate.” Her smile was as warm as the glint in her eyes. “I think you’ll be interested in what I’ve found. It’s not a lot, I’m afraid, but it might point you in the right direction.”
I followed her through the stacks to a small, glass-walled room. On a boat-shaped conference table sat a computer, a monitor, and a pile of papers.
“Come, sit here. I’ve printed everything off for you, but I thought you’d like to see what I found on the monitor first.”
We sat side by side in front of the screen. Maggie clicked a few keys. An image of an old newspaper appeared. “This is the only account of the Nancy Thorne mystery I could find—and I looked through no fewer than thirty newspapers printed in Devon at that time.” She zoomed in so I could read. A small article had appeared in the South Devon Post on the second of October 1885:
An event of the strangest and most puzzling nature has come to us from Dartmoor. At one a.m. on the night of 7th September 1885, Nancy Thorne, a thirty-year-old lacemaker from the village of Widdecombe Throop, returned to the cottage she shared with her sister, a seamstress, in a state of incoherence. Her hair was disheveled. Her frock was torn and soaked with what appeared to be blood.
I stopped reading. The account had been copied, almost word for word, and dropped into the radio documentary from 1942. “Maggie, you’re a genius. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know—except that it actually happened, or at least people believed it happened.”
“Don’t give up yet.” Maggie tapped a few more keys. “I was intrigued, so I decided to dig deeper. The UK census has been taken every ten years since 1801. After 1841, personal information was included—names, occupations, stuff like that. Unfortunately, the census of 1921 is the last one available online. The hundred-year rule. Privacy, you know, for those still alive.”
“What did you find?” I was almost salivating.
“This.” Maggie pulled up a file on her computer—a spreadsheet she’d created with census dates on the left and columns headed Name of House, Name and Surname, Relation to Head of Family, Condition, Age, Rank, and Profession or Occupation.
“Nancy Thorne first appears on the 1861 census for the parish of Widdecombe Throop.” She directed my attention to the first line. “If you read across, you’ll see she was living at number four Brook Lane. She was six years old, the daughter of Henry and Sarah Thorne. Her father is listed as a laborer. She’s listed as ‘Scholar at Home.’”
“And Sally?”
“Second line—just there. Sally was eight. Listed as ‘Apprentice Dressmaker.’”
“Sewing dresses at eight—my goodness.”
“Yes. Now look at the next line. That’s the 1871 census. There’s been a major change in the family. Henry is gone, and Sarah is described as a ‘Laundress, widow of the parish.’ Sally is eighteen now, and her occupation is listed as ‘Dressmaker.’ Nancy is absent, which tells me she wasn’t living at home on the second of April when the census was taken. She would have been sixteen. Maybe she was a boarder at one of the lace schools in the area.”
I’d already gone on to the next line. “In 1881 Sally and Nancy are living together at number four Brook Lane. Their mother, Sarah, is gone, and—” I stopped, surprised. “Sally is married.” I read, “‘Sally Tucker, age twenty-eight, dressmaker. Nancy Thorne, twenty-six, lacemaker.’ Her relationship to the head of household is listed as ‘Sister.’” I looked up. “Where was Sally’s husband?”
Maggie shrugged. “It doesn’t say Sally was a widow, so separated? In the army? I think England was fighting the First Boer War at that time. Or he could have been in the workhouse—or even jail.” She looked back at the screen and scrolled down. “The next census in Devon was taken on Sunday, the fifth of April, 1891, five and a half years after the incident with the bloodstained dress. Take a look.”
Another surprise. “Yes, I see. Sally and Nancy are still in residence, but now there’s a child. ‘William Tucker, age five.’ And Sally is described as a widow.” This was interesting. Sally had given birth to a child. Had the bloodstained dress been hers, then?
“Census records can tell us a lot,” Maggie said, “but there’s so much more we’d like to know. They’re a snapshot in time, but a lot happened during those ten intervening years. People grew old. They died. Children were born. Life circumstances altered, and all without explanation.” She removed her glasses and polished them with a small square of cloth. “The missing information can often be found in church records, but as Hugo told you, the parish records for Widdecombe Throop have been lost.”
“Is there any way to find out when Sally’s husband died? It’s probably irrelevant, but I’m curious.”
“I can check the military records. If he was a soldier, I should be able to find him. Burial records are trickier. Depends on where he died. Some are available, others not.”
“Do you know if the graves from the churchyard in Widdecombe Throop were relocated?”
“I don’t, but I would think the living residents would have insisted on it. I’ll see what I can find.”
Several lines on the spreadsheet remained, but they didn’t contain any useful information. In the 1901 census, Nancy was no longer listed as living at number four Brook Lane with her sister and nephew. According to the radio documentary, she’d died in 1901 at the age of forty-six—evidently before the census was taken. By the time of the 1911 census, the village of Widdecombe Throop no longer existed.
“Is there any way to tell where Sally and her son, William, moved when the village was flooded?”
“I thought you might ask, so I did a preliminary search for Sally and William Tucker in the 1911 census. Unfortunately, there were thousands of people by that name—more than four hundred Sallys and over seven hundred Williams—and that was Devon alone. They could have moved anywhere. I didn’t have time to go further. But I will. And I’ll try to find information about Sally’s husband and the graves.”
“There is one other thing. The death of an old man living on or near the Burnthouse Lane estate in Exeter in the early 1990s. I’ve been told he died in a fire, but I don’t know his name or age except that he was elderly.”
“A tall order, Kate, but I love research. I’ll see what I can find. In the meantime, I’ve printed everything out for you.” She handed me a folder.
“Maggie, I can’t thank you enough.” I gave her my business card. “If you learn anything else, call me—especially if you can trace William Tucker. He might be the one who preserved the bloodstained dress.”
“Will do, Kate.”
For the first time since arriving, I felt optimistic. We might be able to trace the dress after all, and if it went through the Tucker family, originally of Widdecombe Throop, they might be able to tell us whether the dress belonged to Nancy Thorne or her sister, Sally. They might even know what really happened that night.
I pulled on my jacket. “There’s one other area I’m interested in—the history of the Romani Travellers in Devon. Yvie Innes at the Crown said a Romanichal family camped near the River Dart in her grandparents’ day. Was there much interaction between them and the villagers?”
Maggie took what might have seemed a strange request in stride. “It might take me a day or two. Check back tomorrow. Or Friday. I’ll be here both days.”
I thanked Maggie again, picked up the printouts, and headed for the Museum of Devon Life.