My first three phone calls to Gideon Littlejohn’s housekeeper went unanswered. On my fourth attempt, I left a cheery message for Beryl Grey, telling her I would keep calling until I reached her. I wanted her to know I wasn’t giving up.
It seemed to do the trick, because that evening, just as Tom and I were sitting down for dinner at the Crown, she returned my call.
“I didn’t see your messages,” she said, although I felt pretty sure she was lying. “I seldom use my mobile except to check on my husband. So many scams out there.”
“Of course. I understand.” I wanted to stay on her good side. “Are you free to meet tomorrow? Some questions have arisen. You might be able to answer them.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“You worked for Mr. Littlejohn for—how long was it?”
“Almost a year.”
“Well, then, you may know more than you think. I’d be happy to come to your house, by the way. So you wouldn’t have to leave your husband.”
“No.” The sharpness in her voice took me by surprise. I was trying to do her a favor. “Not the house. My husband is …” She hesitated, as if searching for the right word. “Well, he’s easily distressed, and he’s a big man. Strong. I don’t mean he would harm either of us,” she added quickly, “no, not at all. But he becomes agitated when he doesn’t understand what’s going on. I will meet you if you insist, but in a public place. Somewhere like Queenies.”
“Queenies would be perfect.” It sounded like her husband was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Leaving him all day to work at the Old Merchant’s House must have been a worry. “Are you sure you feel comfortable leaving your husband alone?”
“He’ll be fine. He always is in his own house. He knows I’ll be back.”
We made a date to meet at the tea shop at ten o’clock the following morning.
I returned to our table near the hearth. A log fire was crackling. “It’s all set. I’m meeting Beryl Grey tomorrow morning at Queenie’s.”
“Excellent.” Tom craned his neck to see the daily menu written on the chalkboard. “Tonight’s special is hunter’s chicken with chips and homemade coleslaw.”
“I need something lighter—a salad, maybe. All this honeymoon food is going to my waist.”
“Your waist is perfect, but I know what you mean. I think I’ve gained a stone. What will it be, then?”
We ordered—the chicken and chips for Tom, a bowl of butternut squash soup and a salad for me. The waiter brought a jug of cold water, and we ordered a bottle of Chardonnay to share.
A perfect evening. And yet Ivor’s news about the auction in Tedburn St. Mary had me feeling gloomy. Back to square one. Aloud, I said, “We were counting on that solicitor—Rutley.”
“I know.” Tom took a long drink of the cold Dartmoor water.
“If the household Littlejohn purchased at auction didn’t include the trunk with the dress and the collection of Romani items,” I said, “it means he lied. People lie to conceal the truth. And that means, whatever the truth is, he didn’t want us—or anyone—to know about it.”
“Could the solicitor be mistaken? Maybe the family threw in the trunk as an afterthought.”
“No such luck. Ivor said the niece who inherited the elderly man’s estate is a fashion designer in London. She was in the middle of designing a new collection, so she let her uncle’s attorney, Anton Rutley, handle everything. She never even went down for the sale. Hired a removals firm to clear out her uncle’s flat. They made a detailed inventory, and the trunk was definitely not on the list.”
“It’s odd,” Tom said, pouring us each a glass of wine.
As I took my first sip of Chardonnay, I thought about our meeting with Gideon Littlejohn at the Old Merchant’s House. “Remember how insistent Littlejohn was that the trunk not leave his possession?”
“A bit overprotective?”
“Dr. Hawksworthy said the same thing. The trunk was important to him in some way. If he was protecting it, I want to know why. I want to examine that trunk for myself. The crime scene team can’t be still processing the house.”
“I’ll check with Okoje tomorrow.” Tom swirled the wine in his glass and took a sip. “Let’s think logically. Whoever initially preserved the dress must have known the Thorne sisters. Could Gideon Littlejohn have been related to the Thornes?”
“His sister, Donna, didn’t mention it. She insisted she knew nothing about a bloodstained dress.”
“Ask her again. People have been known to lie.”
“As we’ve just discovered. I want to know why Littlejohn lied to us. There must be a reason.”
Our dinners arrived, and we spent the next thirty minutes enjoying the food and talking about the tasks we needed to complete when we got home. We’d be moving into a lovely Georgian house outside Long Barston. Leasing it, actually. The house was owned by Tom’s uncle Nigel, and even though Nigel had made it sound like we were doing him a favor—keeping the house in good nick until he decided whether or not he would sell—we both knew he was delighted to help his favorite nephew. We’d done most of the essential work before the wedding, completing a few simple repairs and combining the furniture already in the house with a few pieces I’d had shipped from Jackson Falls, Ohio. Tom’s furniture would remain in the farmhouse he and his first wife, Sarah, had renovated in the village of Saxby St. Clare. Tom’s mother would probably live there the rest of her life, causing as much trouble as possible, I had no doubt. But there was much more work ahead for us in Long Barston. Making the house ours. I was looking forward to it.
After dinner, over coffee, Tom said, “We need to regroup. Let’s look at your questions again.”
I pulled out my notebook. The only question we’d answered definitively was the one about Freya Little. She was dead. If Max Newlin had done as he’d promised, we might still hear from Mercy Abbott, but everything else was proving stubbornly illusive. But had we asked the right questions?
“Tom.” I turned to him. “I didn’t write it down, but the first question I had was why didn’t Nancy’s sister go to church that night?”
“Maybe she wasn’t religious.”
“Ah,” I raised a finger. “But we know now she was pregnant. The census records indicate her son was five years old on the fifth of April 1891. That means he was born sometime between July of 1885 and early April of 1886. So if his actual birth date was in late 1885 or early 1886, Sally would have been four or five months pregnant when the incident with her sister occurred. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Or simply didn’t want to be seen in public.”
“It’s a possibility. Next question.”
“Was Nancy ever examined by a doctor? The blood could have been hers.”
“You mean a miscarriage?” Tom asked.
“Yes, but it doesn’t make sense. All the blood was on the front of the dress—the skirt and the bodice.”
“Like the bloodstains on Beryl Grey’s white apron when she found Littlejohn’s body. She said she cradled his head on her lap while she checked for a pulse.”
“If that’s what Nancy Thorne did, what happened to the body?” That image flashed into my head again. A woman, sobbing. So much blood. I had absolutely nothing concrete to go on. No facts that would hold weight with Okoje—or Tom, for that matter. But I knew with something very close to certainty that something dreadful had happened on that night in September of 1885. “There was a body, Tom. I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe the person she tried to help didn’t die.” Tom’s forehead creased in thought. “Although there was a lot of blood. Someone injured that badly couldn’t just vanish. At least not without help.”
“Next question. Was the blood on the dress human?” Once again, I had no evidence, but even so, I felt certain the blood would prove to be human. That image—the woman on her knees, sobbing—wasn’t a reaction to the death of an animal, even a much-loved household pet.
“With luck, the DNA test will tell us,” Tom said. “Always assuming the museum is willing to surrender a small sample of fabric. I’ll ask Hawksworthy tomorrow.”
“And I’ll ask him why he hired Nash & Holmes.”
Tom folded his napkin and placed it on the table. “Any more questions?”
“Loads. Like the connection between the dress and the Romani items found with it in the trunk.”
“At least we know there is one,” Tom said. “The Merivale family is the link.”
“We need to know where the trunk actually came from, Tom. That means we need to speak with someone who knew Gideon Littlejohn personally, someone he might have confided in.”
“Too bad his ex-wife is dead.”
“But there’s still Mercy Abbott and the other member of that Victorian club—Daniel somebody? I pulled out my phone. “Which reminds me—I haven’t heard back from Max Newlin at the Agatha Christie festival. I’ll text him now and ask if he’s heard from Mercy.”
I did, and the answer came almost immediately.
Great minds. Just about to text you. Mercy Abbott lives on Dartmoor. She’s one of the managers at Beechlands, a country house hotel near Chagford. Days off Wednesday and Thursday. She’s willing to meet up. I’m sure she’ll get in touch.
I texted back. Great. I’ll wait for her call.
“I hate to admit it,” Tom said as I slid my phone back in my handbag, “but this feels like one of those cases that die for lack of information. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. Nobody knows anything.”
“We still have a few leads, Tom.” I wanted to encourage him. “All we need is one little fact to point us in the right direction.” I held up my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “One tiny clue that will unlock the puzzle.”
“My money’s on Beryl Grey.”