Southwest England, 1920
Alice Miller came home from the churchyard after her husband’s services and walked directly into what he always called his study, the small room where he kept his memories and his books.
The box was on a shelf in the captain’s chest along the far wall—quickly found and quickly carried away. She held it before her as if it contained something virulent, something that she might breathe in or touch if she were not very careful.
It wasn’t enough to set it at the bottom of the garden. She walked through the small orchard to a copse of trees beyond it, close by the lane that went to Manor Farm. She had no shovel, not even a spoon to dig a hole. The ground was wet enough in this marshy country to serve her purpose. Scuffing in the thick layer of leaves, she made a shallow pit and put the box in it.
She had asked Harry to get rid of it as he lay dying, but he’d shaken his head and said it would stay in the chest as long as he drew breath. She would have taken it away as soon as she heard his death rattle, but there was the doctor, one of his nurses, and a neighbor come to comfort her. She hadn’t been alone since.
Dusting off her hands, as if to rid herself of contamination, she turned her back on the box and strode away, her eyes on the distant roofline of her cottage.
It was more than a week later that the children from the tenant farm discovered the box, the covering of leaves blown away and one corner standing higher than the other three.
Running to it, digging it out of the rotting leaves and muddy earth, they studied it for a moment, trying to decide what might be inside.
Toby tried the hasp. “It doesn’t open,” he said.
Lionel, leaning over his shoulder, said, “I’ll find a rock and bash it.”
“No.” Tim, the eldest, shook his head. “We don’t know what’s inside. It could break.”
“Pa has something in his workbox that will spring it,” Lionel offered.
“Let’s take it home,” Toby agreed. They brushed off the worst of the debris clinging to the box and set out for the farm.
But no amount of prying would force the hasp, and at length, bored with their find, they dropped it in the sitting room and went out to finish feeding the chickens.
Mrs. Tasker discovered it as she brought in more wood for the fire. Her first thought was to toss it in with the kindling, dirty as it was, and then she decided against it, because the brass hinges and hasp wouldn’t burn properly. On her way back to the kitchen she dropped it in the dustbin.
There it lay until her husband hauled the dustbins off to the tip.
An ex-soldier, scavenging for anything he might sell, discovered it on Saturday evening, and carried it away with him, trying to open it as he walked. But the hasp wouldn’t give and a good shake indicated it was empty. He gave up. Cleaned and then given a shine with scavenged brown shoe polish, the box was more presentable. He took it to the pub and offered it to the barkeep in return for a pint.
Grumbling, the barkeep accepted the barter, and set the box on a shelf behind the bar. There it lingered for more than a week, until he noticed it one evening and shook it to see if it rattled, as in coins. It didn’t, and he set it on the bar, intending to hand it back to the ex-soldier when next he showed his face, demanding payment for the ale he’d drunk, telling him that he didn’t care to be played for a fool.
Captain Jarvis saw it there, took it over to his table along with his whiskey and sandwich, and studied it for a time before trying the hasp. When it didn’t open, he sat back, gave the matter some thought while he finished eating, and then went back to the bar.
“Where did you get this?” he asked the man, who was busy serving a young couple.
“It’s yours for the price of the ale it cost me,” the barkeep replied sourly.
Without hesitation, Jarvis reached into his pocket and handed over several coins. He had taken the box and walked out the door before the barkeep realized that he could probably have asked a pound or more for the damned thing, and he swore under his breath.
Captain Jarvis went to the hotel down the street and put in a call to Scotland Yard, asking for Inspector Rutledge.
When Rutledge finally came to the telephone, the captain said, “Jarvis here. Did the Yard ever find that box missing from the Dundee Rifles Officers’ Mess?”
“No. It appears to have vanished. Why, what have you heard?”
“I think I have it. Sandalwood. There’s even still a scent about it. And the hasp, of course. Shall I bring it to London with me?”
“I’ll come to you. Where are you?”
Jarvis looked out the door of the telephone closet. A dozen or so people were coming into the hotel, laughing together as they walked toward the dining room. “I’m just outside Sedgemoor. A village called Worthington. I hadn’t planned on staying the night here, but I’ll wait for you at the hotel.”
He walked back to Reception, still holding the box in one hand. Several people glanced his way as he passed, but he thought it might be because he was a stranger.
A room was to be had, and he went out to fetch his valise before going up.
It was the next morning when Rutledge arrived, driving down the High until he spotted the Monmouth Hotel. The Poldern Hills were a low purple smudge in the hazy sunlight, and a ring around the sun promised rain.
He was given Jarvis’s room number and took the stairs two at a time on his way to number 26. If this box did belong to the Dundee Officers’ Mess, it would be the first fresh clue in nearly two decades in connection with a theft that had ended in two murders.
Rutledge tapped at the door, his mind still on the box. When Jarvis didn’t answer, he glanced into the bath down the passage, then retraced his steps and went into the hotel dining room. But Jarvis wasn’t there, either. Returning to Reception, he asked if the captain had left.
He had not, and Rutledge took the room’s second key from the clerk at the desk, and went back to number 26. The door was not locked after all, and when he stepped inside, he could see that the shades were still down and the lamp had burned itself out. Putting up the shades, he saw that Jarvis was still in his bed. But the sheet covering him was black with blood.
The captain had been stabbed in his sleep, for there was no sign of a struggle. And although Rutledge searched the room thoroughly, he could not find the box.
His first duty was to send for a doctor and alert the local constable. He did neither. Hamish, the voice in his head, a legacy of war and shell shock, disapproved, grumbling about taking matters into his own hands.
Shutting the door behind him and locking it, he went back down the stairs. Jarvis had somehow found the box in the vicinity of Worthington, for he’d called from this hotel. The question, then, was where had he been before he put through that telephone call?
He wasn’t ready to question the hotel staff and alert them to the murder.
Instead, he went outside and found Jarvis’s motorcar, and searched it for the box. Nothing. Looking up and down the High Street, he calculated his choices. It was just after one o’clock when Jarvis had telephoned London. If he were passing through and in a hurry to be on his way, why would he have stopped? For a sandwich, perhaps? The pub nearest the hotel was the Water Wheel. Rutledge went there, but drew a blank. Walking on, he saw another pub, a little larger than the first: the Duke of Monmouth, named for the Protestant bastard of Charles II who had instigated a short-lived rebellion against the accession to the throne of the King’s brother, the Catholic James II. His likeness adorned the sign, a young and still innocent face.
Rutledge stepped inside to find the barkeep sweeping the floor.
“We’re closed,” the man said, barely turning to look at Rutledge.
“Yes, of course,” Rutledge answered pleasantly. “I seem to have misplaced a friend. He was to meet me here today. But he wasn’t at the hotel, and I wondered if I had the days wrong.” He went on to describe Jarvis.
“You must’ve,” he was told. “He was here yesterday. Came in for a drink and a sandwich.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rutledge said. “He was bringing me a book. He didn’t leave it, by any chance?”
The man shook his head.
“It could have been in a box.”
“The only box was one he had off me. Bought it for the price owed me.”
“Did he indeed? Why am I not surprised? He collects boxes. It was yours, you said?”
“Not mine. An ex-soldier down on his luck sold it to me for a drink. A week or more ago, I should think.”
“What did it look like?”
“A box,” the barkeep said, irritated by the questions. “Wood, with brass hinges and hasp. It was heavy enough to have something inside, but when I rattled it, I didn’t hear anything move. If I’d known he collected such things, I’d have raised my price.”
“Where is that ex-soldier now?”
“I haven’t seen him since, and I’m not likely to. For all I know, he pinched the bloody box from somewhere.”
“Middling height, brown hair, walked with a limp. Here, I thought you come in about your friend.”
“So I did. Perhaps he went looking for your soldier.”
“Why would he do that? I didn’t tell him how I’d come by the box.”
Rutledge thanked him and left.
Outside, a misting rain was beginning to fall, wetting down the dust of the road.
As he walked back to the hotel, he considered the ex-soldier. Unlikely to want the box back, if he’d sold it for a drink, and unlikely to have the money to redeem it anyway. Unless he’d discovered its worth. But how had he come by it in the first place? It was ordinary enough not to be a tempting item to steal. The church poor box would be a better choice.
Hamish said, “And no one has reported it lost.”
True enough. The box had sat unnoticed for a week at the pub. Then Jarvis had spotted it and bought it, carrying it to the hotel with him to put in his call to London. Afterward he must have requested a room. With the box still in his hand? Or had he left it in the motorcar?
Not the motorcar. It could have been taken from there without killing Jarvis.
Rutledge went to the hotel and asked the clerk in Reception if he had been on duty yesterday when Jarvis had asked for a room.
“I was,” the man said, warily, as if preparing himself for a question he felt uncomfortable answering.
“Did he have anything with him when he came to the desk to speak to you?”
“His hat.” The clerk squinted in thought. “A box or packet or something.”
“Was there anyone else here when he asked for a room?”
The clerk laughed. “Half the county, or so it seemed. There was a private luncheon for Squire’s birthday.”
“When the party was over, did anyone ask you about the man registering just then?”
“Mr. Albert Harrison thought the new guest was someone he’d met in France during the war. But the name he was after was Dunne, Lieutenant Dunne. Not Jarvis. He seemed disappointed.”
“Did Mr. Harrison return later in the evening?”
“I was off duty after five o’clock. I couldn’t say.”
Rutledge asked him how to find Harrison, and went back out into the rain to start his motorcar. Harrison lived in a house just west of town, and Rutledge found it with ease from the clerk’s description of the low stone wall in front. He stopped, went to the door, and asked for Harrison.
The maid who had answered his knock asked him to wait, then escorted him to a small sitting room down a passage, where a thin man with red hair rose from his chair and frowned.
“Do I know you?”
Rutledge waited until the door had closed behind the maid. “My name isn’t Dunne,” he replied. “I used that to gain entry. Rutledge, Scotland Yard. I’ve come about Captain Jarvis.”
“I don’t know anyone called Jarvis.”
“You asked about him at the hotel yesterday after the birthday luncheon. You thought he might have been someone named Dunne.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Someone returned later in the evening, stabbed Jarvis to death, and took only one thing from his room. An old box with brass hinges and hasp.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should I want an old box? As you can see, I’m comfortably set here. I can buy whatever strikes my fancy.”
“I’m not sure it has anything to do with money. And he wasn’t intending to sell, he was holding the box for me.”
“You say I asked someone about this Jarvis. Who was it?”
“The clerk at the hotel.”
Harrison stood up and went to the door. “We’ll see about this. Take me to this clerk.”
They drove the distance in silence. Rutledge had the feeling that Harrison was very angry, and he was prepared for anything. Except for one thing—when they reached the hotel, they were informed that the clerk had taken the rest of the day off.
“He felt ill, he said, and asked if I could take over,” the young woman behind the desk informed them.
Harrison said something under his breath. Rutledge ignored him. “Where can I find this man?”
“I’m not allowed to give out personal information about the—”
“Rutledge, Scotland Yard.” He took out his identity card and showed it to her.
“What’s Mr. Phelps done, then?” she asked, a worried frown on her face.
“His direction,” Rutledge snapped.
“I’m coming with you,” Harrison said when the clerk had finally complied.
He found the cottage without difficulty. It was down Pudding Lane, the second house from the corner. Rutledge knocked sharply, but no one came. He tried the latch, and the door swung inward. He called the man’s name once more, then walked into the front room of the cottage. There were signs of hasty departure in the bedroom, clothes strewn everywhere and the wardrobe standing open.
He turned to Harrison. “I’m not sure what this means. But I’d advise you not to leave the village. I’ll want to speak to you later.”
Harrison said, “My good name has been impugned. I’m going with you.”
There was no time to argue. Around back, Rutledge saw that a bicycle had been ridden through a muddy patch, the imprint of the tires already filling with rainwater.
“There’s a chance we’ll catch him. Let’s go!”
They ran around to Rutledge’s motorcar, and drove back to the High Street. The question was, which direction had the man taken?
Harrison said, “He won’t have gone toward London. To the hills, then.”
Rutledge agreed, and turned west out of Worthington. He soon found the rough, uneven track that Harrison pointed out.
“There’s a hamlet tucked under the ridge,” he said. “Several people from our village once lived there. It’s desolate now.” They soon came upon the scattering of cottages, most of them in various stages of decay. Harrison added, “These people lived by the moor. Whatever came to hand, including cutting withies and rushes for thatching. The men died together at Gallipoli, and their families came into Worthington in search of other work. Sad case, really. They were watermen, set in their ways, unwilling to change, any of them.”
“Wait here, in case he tries to leave,” Rutledge said, and began going from door to door down the muddy street.
It was in the last cottage that he found the clerk, Phelps. A bicycle was propped against the far side, almost out of sight, and the door stood ajar.
Someone had got there before Rutledge. The clerk was lying on the rotting floor in a pool of blood, a knife in his chest. And the box was nowhere to be found.
He splashed through the puddles, hurrying back to the motorcar. Harrison called, “Did you find him?”
“I did. He’s dead.”
“Good God,” Harrison said. “What’s so damned important about this box?”
“It belonged to the Dundee Rifles Officers’ Mess. Someone broke in one night in 1903 and took it, leaving behind two dead—a sergeant major and a corporal. Everyone was questioned, but the inquiry got nowhere. Captain Jarvis knew about the box because his father had been an officer in the Rifles. That’s why he believed he recognized it when he saw it in a pub here in Worthington.”
“It was here in Worthington? How did the pub come to have it?”
Rutledge told him about the ex-soldier. “On the whole, I believe the barkeep. He was glad to be rid of it when Jarvis offered to buy it, and then regretted that he hadn’t asked more for the thing.”
“Where’s the ex-soldier now?”
“I wish I knew.”
Harrison said, “There might be a way of finding that out. The rector of St. Mary’s sometimes feeds men looking for work. It isn’t as bad now as it was just after the war. He might remember your man. How long had the box been at the pub?”
“A matter of a week or ten days, according to what I was told.”
He turned the motorcar and drove back to Worthington. The church of St. Mary’s was at the far end of the village, and the rectory stood beside it, an early-Victorian building with scalloped trim on the eaves and the dormers.
Mr. Swift was an elderly man with snow-white hair and bright-green eyes. He recognized Harrison at once, and welcomed both men, leading them back to his study, where a small fire struggled against the dampness of the day.
Rutledge explained the reason for calling, and the rector listened intently, frowning over the deaths of Phelps and Jarvis.
“But what’s there about this box that someone is still killing people over it?” he asked, dismay in his voice.
“If we knew that, we’d be a long way toward finding our man,” Rutledge said. “In the officers’ mess where a regiment is quartered, in this case in Scotland, there are the battle honours, the regimental silver—sometimes quite an impressive display of it—and the regiment’s flags from various engagements, among other important objects. One of these was the box, and the police were told that it was the Honour of the Regiment.”
“Hardly reason to kill for possession of it,” Harrison put in. “Besides, it’s a Scottish matter, I should think. Why is the Yard involved?”
“Because the Scottish police traced the thief to England before losing him.”
“I remember the story now,” the rector said slowly. “Just after the Boer War—I had been living in Carlisle then. The Dundee Rifles were appalled that the box was lost to them. Later, one of their officers wrote a book about the regiment during the fighting on the Somme. It was nearly wiped out, and he blamed it on the loss of the box.”
“Legend has it that the regiment will thrive as long as the box survives. If it’s lost, the regiment will be lost as well. John Graham of Claverhouse, First Viscount Dundee, was one of the first martyrs of the Jacobite Wars,” Rutledge went on. “He was killed at Killiecrankie in Scotland in 1689, fighting to keep James the Second on the throne after he’d been replaced by William of Orange and James’s daughter Mary. As he lay dying, one of his officers cut a lock of his hair and placed it in a wooden box. It was said that he caught the man’s arm, told him to build an army and carry the box before it into battle. As long as he did, the army would be victorious. And the regiment has been very superstitious about that box ever since it was formed.”
“ ‘Bonnie Dundee,’ ” Harrison said. “Yes, of course. I learned the song as a boy.”
“But why wish the Rifles ill?” Mr. Swift asked. “If it was a thief, why take the box and leave the silver? It doesn’t make sense.”
“The speculation at the time was that the thief was interrupted by the sergeant major before he collected the silver. Another theory was that he held a grudge against the Rifles.”
“Good God,” Harrison said. “But that must mean the thief is here in Worthington.”
“Precisely. We must find that ex-soldier, and learn how he came to have the box.”
“He couldn’t have known its value,” Harrison replied. “Not if he sold it for the price of an ale.”
But in spite of all his efforts, Mr. Swift couldn’t recall which of the many soldiers coming to his door was the one they sought. “They’re all so alike, thin and hungry. They eat and move on.”
“A dead end,” Harrison said as they walked out of the rectory.
“Not quite,” Rutledge said. “I can’t imagine that the hotel clerk knew the value of the box. Someone else saw Jarvis with it, and questioned Phelps. He’d have gone to him as soon as he’d lied to me about you—I expect, in the hope of being paid handsomely for keeping his head and sending me off on the wrong track. And he was killed for his trouble. Who are the oldest residents of the village? I’ve often found they’re a well of information.”
“The rector—”
“He hasn’t lived here for twenty years or more.”
“Mrs. Hobson, then. She lives on the other side of the post office.”
The rain was letting up as they drove there. Mrs. Hobson, surprised to find the likes of Mr. Harrison on her doorstep, was flustered. She asked them to step into her front room, and sat on the edge of her chair after they had refused her offer of tea.
Rutledge noted that she looked to be in her eighties, but her back was as straight as a rod, and she was dressed carefully, her white hair done up in a smooth bun on top of her head.
“We’ve come,” he began, “to make use of your memory. I’m told by Mr. Harrison that your mind is very clear about the past.”
“Oh, well now, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, nervously smoothing her apron over her thin knees. “I do have my off days.”
“You’ve lived here in Worthington all your life, I understand. Do you remember anyone who went off to be a soldier in a Scottish regiment?”
“Oh, dear,” she said, drawn unexpectedly into the past. “That does seem like such a long time ago. We were so young, Willie and I. He swore he’d die if he couldn’t marry me, but I’d already given my heart to Mr. Mills and there was nothing I could say. He went off and tried to sign up with the Buffs, but they turned him down. Coming back through London, he met some soldiers of the Dundee Foot, as it was called then. And he went off to India with them. The next thing I heard he was a sergeant. Then something happened out there, and he was disgraced. Drummed out of the regiment. When he came home he claimed he’d been invalided out. But his wife told me later that it was wrongfully done. That he was innocent.”
“He was a broken man. I think he loved the army more than anything. More than me, because he forgot me soon enough and married another girl,” she added with a wry smile. “He died not long after that, leaving a widow and a son. Harry took it hard, went wild after the funeral, always in trouble somewhere. Then he left Worthington for a bit, and when he came home, he was a different man. Calm and settled, ready to marry his sweetheart. As if all the wildness was over.”
“When did he come back to Worthington?” Rutledge asked.
“It was just after the Boer War, as I remember.”
The Dundee Rifles, as they’d become, had fought bravely in the Boer War as well as along the Northwest Frontier in India, adding to their reputation.
Rutledge glanced at Harrison. “Where can I find this Harry?”
She shook her head. “He’s in the churchyard, sad to say. He died two weeks ago.”
“Children?” Harrison asked.
“A boy and a girl. Sally is married and lives in Glastonbury. The boy’s been in Borstal, sad to say. Sowing his wild oats, like his pa before him, only his pa never had any trouble with the police.”
But he might well have murdered two men in Dundee, Scotland, Rutledge said to himself. “Where’s the boy now?”
“Teddy didn’t come home for his father’s funeral. He said he was in Manchester, and never got word until he went back to London. But I think he wanted to stay away from people who knew him. Embarrassed, like.”
Or was wanted by the police in Manchester. Aloud, Rutledge said, “Give me his name, if you will.”
She looked distinctly uneasy. “I didn’t intend, talking to you, to get the boy into trouble.”
“We can’t be sure he is,” Rutledge told her. “Until we speak to him.”
“Teddy Miller. His mother, Alice, lives by that copse of trees just at the end of the High Street.” She hesitated. “You won’t tell Alice, will you, that I betrayed her boy? She looks in on me from time to time. I’ve grown fond of her company.”
Rutledge thanked her for her help, and as they returned to the motorcar, he said to Harrison, “It appears your name is cleared.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Harrison replied, stooping to turn the crank. “I miss the war sometimes, and the feeling that I’m alive because I’m about to die.”
“If he’s killed two men, like his father before him, he’ll put up a fight.”
Harrison didn’t answer. He got in the motorcar and settled himself next to Rutledge.
They found the house without any trouble, and went together to the door. It was opened by a middle-aged woman, one side of her face dark with bruising. “Yes?” she said, wariness in her eyes as she held the door half-closed so that they couldn’t see beyond her into the passage.
“Mrs. Miller?” Rutledge said pleasantly. “I’ve come to speak to you about your late husband. Mr. Harrison, here, tells me that he died only recently.”
“Yes, two weeks and three days ago,” she answered, her eyes clouding with grief. “It was a hard blow.”
“How did he die?”
“Of a cancer,” she said. “In his lungs. What is it you wanted with him? I’ve paid all his debts I knew of. There’s not much money left.”
“Could we come in? It will only take a moment.”
“I’m—I’m in the middle of preparing dinner,” she said, her voice rising. “Could you come again another day?”
“I’m afraid not. I have to return to London shortly.” He put a hand on the door, and she cried out.
“Stay here,” he said to Harrison, and set out at a run around the side of the house toward the rear. He was just in time to see a young man of perhaps twenty dashing out the kitchen door, heading for the orchard and the copse of trees beyond. Rutledge went after him, and they were halfway through the copse before he brought the fleeing suspect down. Getting to his feet, he hauled Teddy Miller up again, and said, “I’m arresting you for the murder of one Captain Jarvis and a hotel clerk named Phelps.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Teddy Miller said, still breathing hard. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you slapped your mother for getting rid of your father’s old box. Where is it now?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Teddy sneered, trying to shake off Rutledge’s grip on his shoulder. “Maybe I burned it.”
“Not likely,” Rutledge said. “Or you wouldn’t have killed two men to retrieve it.” He marched Miller around the house to where his mother stood in the doorway, her face streaked with tears.
“I didn’t tell them anything, Teddy,” she called to her son, her voice edged with fear. “Truly I didn’t.”
“He won’t be around to harm you, Mrs. Miller,” Rutledge said, pushing Miller toward the motorcar. “He’s in police custody now.”
Harrison joined him, holding the door as Rutledge, his mind on Hamish, pushed Teddy Miller into the rear seat.
“Will she be all right?” Harrison asked, looking over his shoulder at the stricken woman. “I’m not sure how much she understood about this business. But she did say to me, ‘It’s brought nothing but evil, that box.’ ”
“She could be arrested. Time will tell. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think her husband ever told her where the box came from. And she was too frightened to betray her son.”
They drove directly to the constable’s office, and it was a good hour before Constable Hull quite grasped what had been happening while he was quietly making his morning rounds. He went to see the bodies, and then insisted on interviewing Mrs. Miller.
She recognized the two knives used in the killings—they had come from her own kitchen—and began to cry.
They set about searching the house, but there was no sign of the box. When Hull had left to question Teddy Miller again, Rutledge went out to scour the orchard and small wood. It had begun to rain in earnest, and he was forced to return for an umbrella. He found Mrs. Miller in the kitchen, and when she looked up at his face, he knew he had been searching in the right place.
Half an hour later, he’d found the box, this time buried a little deeper. For that Mrs. Miller could indeed have been charged. He couldn’t decide whether she had tried to shield her son or whether she was determined to be rid of the box that had cost her family so dearly.
“I tried to open it once,” she said as he brought it in and used a cloth to wipe away the water and the earth that clung to it. “But the hasp doesn’t work.”
“No. It’s a puzzle box,” he said, and fumbled for the hidden key. Suddenly the front moved, and then swung out. Mrs. Miller came to stare over his shoulder at the contents. Inside was a faded, brittle square of silk, and on it lay a lock of hair curled into a half-moon.
Hamish said something, but he was drowned out by Mrs. Miller.
“That’s all?” she was exclaiming, shock in her voice. “He killed for someone’s hair?”
He wasn’t sure whether she was speaking of her husband or her son. “It’s a talisman,” he explained. “A lucky charm to those who served in the regiment this belonged to.”
“I hated the box,” she retorted. “I saw my husband’s face whenever he looked at it. And I shivered.”
“Why do you believe it’s malevolent?” Rutledge asked, restoring the hair and the silk to the box and closing it.
“Harry told me once that it held his father’s heart. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. If I’d had my wits about me, I’d have told Teddy that it was buried with his father. But I was too frightened, when he thought it was gone forever. He wanted to pass it down to his son. Well, he won’t never have one now, will he? And the box will go back where it came from. All nice and tidy, that, only I’m left with no husband and no son on account of it. Will they give me a reward for its return, do you think? It’s only fair, considering.”