Page 5 of Tea & Alchemy

He nodded and leaned forward in his chair. The door of the coal stove stood open, and firelight glinted in his keen, dark eyes. “So you saw no one else in the area where you discovered the body?”

Pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders, I shook my head. “Just a stag on the heath.”

His lips curved down. “Indeed? You’re certain that’s what it was?”

“Fairly so. I saw antlers.”

Mr. Hilliard blinked a couple of times, thinking, then jotted something else down in his diary. “And you say you don’t know this gentleman?”

“I don’t, sir. But as I mentioned, he was here in the tearoom this afternoon.”

“How did he seem to you, then?”

I exchanged a look with Mrs. Moyle, who stood behind the constable. She nodded her encouragement.

“He seemed all right to me. But I didn’t speak with him other than to get his order. He just read his newspaper and drank his tea.”

“Didn’t mention his name?”

“Not to me, sir.”

“Mmm.” More scribbling.

When Mr. Hilliard first arrived at The Magpie, he’d been sour-faced—grumpy, no doubt, about missing his supper. He’d asked me where to find the body, and he’d left straightaway, warning me to stay put so that he could question me. Half an hour later he returned, sour mood turned sober.

“You don’t believe anyone’skilledthe poor man, do you, Mr. Hilliard?” asked Mrs. Moyle.

“Something certainlyhaskilled him, ma’am, but I think an animal of some kind is more likely. The wound is ragged, like it was made by teeth rather than a weapon.” I shuddered, and Mrs. Moyle’s cheeks lost their rosy color. “We’ll have a better idea once he’s been examined by Mr. Perry.”

Mr. Perry was Roche’s surgeon. He’d seen to Da when he was dying with the miner’s lung sickness. Then Mum when she started coughing, too, though from a different cause.

The front door swung open, and a younger man came in. Like Mr. Hilliard, he was dressed for office work, and he carried a leather case.

“What’ve you got there, Gibbs?” asked Mr. Hilliard.

The man held up the case. “I found it on the heath, sir.”

The constable stood. “Let’s have a look, then.”

Gibbs set the bag on one of the tearoom’s white tables. Mr. Hilliard joined him and opened the bag’s clasp. Reaching inside, he drew out a handful of papers, then held them close to the lamp resting on the table.

His eyes moved over one paper, and then another. “Tregarrick,” he said at last.

I sat up and Mrs. Moyle gasped. “The master of Roche Rock?” she said.

Still squinting at the papers, Mr. Hilliard said, “Looks like the fellow was his solicitor. One Henry Roscoe. You said you found this on the heath, Gibbs?”

Gibbs nodded. “Just the other side of the wall, sir.”

Mr. Hilliard looked at me. “You said you didn’t go straight home after work, Miss Penrose, but sat awhile with Mrs. Moyle?”

I nodded. “For a couple of hours.”

“Doing what, may I ask?”

I was about to answer “reading” when I recalled the tea leaves, and my conversation with Mrs. Moyle. My heart sped up as I glanced at her. Should I tell him? He was bound to think it strange, or worse.Some would call it the devil’s work,my employer had said. But what if it could help him figure out what had happened to poor Mr. Roscoe?

Mrs. Moyle spoke up first. “We’re a widow and a young woman whose only relation works in the clay pits. Which means we’relonely, Mr. Hilliard, and we keep each other company sometimes.”