Page 25 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)

E mmeline herself escorted Constance to the front door.

There was a small table in the hall with writing materials and a pen, presumably for the use of callers who missed the doctor and did not wish to confide in his wife or his maid.

Constance had noticed this both times she had called.

Now, however, three letters lay in a neat heap at the side.

It struck her that they had been too often distracted by the personalities in this case to concentrate on the practicalities.

She halted and turned to her hostess. “Tell me again how your letter was delivered. When and where did you first see it?”

“It was there, where these letters are now, when I first came downstairs that morning.”

“And were you up early?”

“About eight of the clock, I suppose. Charles had already gone off on a call to one of the distant farms.”

“And how did it get on to the table? Did someone leave it there?”

“It had been pushed under the door. Nora—our maid—picked it up and put it there.”

“Do you know what time that was?”

“Well before seven. The letter was on the floor when she came downstairs, so she picked it up and put it on the table. Charles saw it there when he went out about half past seven.”

“And none of you saw or heard anyone approach the house who might have delivered it during the night or very early that morning?”

Emmeline shook her head.

“What time did you all go to bed the night before?”

Emmeline rubbed one finger across her forehead as though trying to dredge up the details from her memory.

“Charles and I went up around ten, I think. Sophie was still in the parlor, reading something. We had to tell Edgar to put out his candle in his room. Sophie nodded off in the parlor, reading, but she was in bed by midnight, she says.”

“And the letter was not here by then?”

“She would have seen it and put it on the table, but she didn’t. It was Nora who picked it up.”

So, at some time between midnight and seven in the morning, someone had pushed the note under the front door.

Constance nodded her thanks and wished Emmeline good morning.

Continuing on her way, she at last found the village constable at home. He opened the door in his shirt sleeves, and his jaw dropped.

“Constable Heron?” she asked brightly. “I wonder if I might have your help.”

His long, rather lugubrious face colored beneath his whiskers, and he mumbled something incomprehensible. Only the fact that he stood back told her she was being invited in.

He directed her into the small room on the left that was furnished with a desk at its center, and two chairs, one on either side of it. Mumbling an excuse, he bolted while she sat in the visitor’s chair and reappeared a few moments later buttoning his coat.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” he asked more coherently.

“To be honest, I am not quite sure. My name is Constance Silver, as you probably know. I suspect you also why Mr. Grey and I are in Sutton May.”

“Matter of unpleasant letters. Not against the law, to my knowledge, but not neighborly either.”

“Exactly,” Constance said, pleased that there would be no territorial disputes between them. “Dr. Chadwick asked us to find out who has been sending them, with a view to—er…discouraging the practice.”

Heron nodded. “And have you? If they ain’t broken the law, I can’t really help. Though I could have a word, in an unofficial capacity.”

“That might well be useful—once we know who did it. At the moment we are rather struggling, not having the local knowledge that you do.”

Heron nodded again, in a sage kind of a way.

“I was wondering if you had much trouble with the local children?” Constance said.

His eyes widened. “The children ?”

“Oh, I don’t mean serious trouble,” Constance assured him. “More in the way of mischief or rowdiness, playing jokes on people who might not appreciate it, rushing around dangerous places like the blacksmith’s shop.”

Heron scratched his head. “Some of them’s a bit wild.

The Dickie boys’ll cheek you soon as look at you, and draw the others into their games too, given half a chance.

” He ruminated on that for a bit. “Hid one of Mr. Gimlet’s hens once, but they brought it back next day.

Might have pinched an egg or two, but no one could prove it. ”

“Did Mr. Gimlet make a fuss?”

“No. He had a word with Hen Dickie and it never happened again. They’re not bad kids.

In fact, they’re all better behaved since Mr. Ogden took over the school.

There was a lot more mischief before that—like they’d been cooped up too long.

Children need to run about, don’t they? And Miss Fernie was quite the dragon, kept their heads down with no breaks, even on sunny days and snowy ones.

The children used to explode out of those school gates like stampeding cattle, run from one end of the village to the next until I grabbed a couple of them and people yanked their own indoors. Haven’t seen that in a year or two.”

“So, Mr. Ogden has been good for the children’s behavior? Do the parents think so?”

“In general, yes, I’d say so. Plus, they go without a fuss instead of slipping away somewhere else, and even the Dickies see the sense in learning, since their oldest lad’s doing very well in his schooling, by all accounts.”

“I have heard rumors,” Constance said delicately, “that the Dickies are not strictly honest.”

Heron shrugged. “They get the blame of it. I never caught them at anything. Mostly keep themselves to themselves—though Hen can be a handful after a night in the Goose.”

“Then the rumor that Mrs. Dickie stole a shawl from the Keatons’ shop is untrue?”

Heron shifted in his chair. “Never proved one way or the other.”

“Did you charge her with the theft?”

“I never had anything to do with it, just heard the gossip like anyone else. The Keatons banned her from the shop, but they never pressed charges.”

“So no one searched her or her house? No one ever saw her with the shawl?”

“She might have sold it in Guildford when she went to the market there. But…” He scowled. “It’s my belief it was never taken in the first place. Otherwise, Keaton would have pressed charges against her.”

“You don’t like Mr. Keaton?”

“Don’t know him—he doesn’t come from round here.”

“But he has lived here for, what, twenty years?”

“Seventeen. The shop was Corner’s then.”

Constance let that one be. “So you think the Keatons lied about the theft?”

Heron looked shocked. “Oh no! I reckon she made a mistake, had already put the shawl away and forgot. She probably discovered after she’d barred Nell, and didn’t want to admit it. So Keaton gets to play the generous-hearted shopkeeper, though no one stole anything in the first place.”

“Would he not rather be known as the sharp shopkeeper who cannot be stolen from?”

“Yes, which is what makes me think nothing was stolen in the first place.”

Which could well be why someone chose to defend Mrs. Dickie with an anonymous note to the Keatons about bearing false witness.

“Are the Keatons generally well liked in the village?”

“Good source of gossip and can get you anything you want to buy at a fair enough price.”

“Then no one bears a grudge against them?”

“Excepting Jimmy Nolan, who wanted to marry Faye Corner before Keaton muscled in.”

Constance raised an eyebrow. “Did he indeed?”

“Never married anyone else, neither.”

“Then Mr. Keaton and Mr. Nolan do not get on?”

“Doubt they like each other much, but I’ve never had to separate them on a Saturday night, nor May Day on the green. Mind you, I don’t fancy Jimmy’s chances in a fight now with just one hand.”

Constance stared at him. “One hand?” she repeated, utterly confused.

The constable’s face relaxed into a grin. “I’m talking about Jimmy Nolan. He’s the younger brother of Matt Nolan , who’s run the smithy alone since Jimmy’s accident.”

“Ah, I see!”

“Don’t know who’ll be blacksmith after Matt,” Heron said, stroking his mustache in a thoughtful kind of way, “’cause he never married, neither, and got no family.

Neither brother’s been lucky in love, come to think of it—poor old Matt had his heart set on Mavis Cartwright when he were young.

I know you wouldn’t think it now, but she were a pretty little thing thirty years ago… ”

Constance sat up straighter. “Nolan the current blacksmith wanted to marry Mavis?” It was a connection, though she couldn’t quite see how it helped.

“Oh, yes. They were engaged and all before…” Heron trailed off, blinking rapidly, as though remembering he was talking to a stranger.

“Before Alice was born,” Constance supplied, her thoughts racing. Could Alice be Nolan’s child and not the late Mr. Mortimer’s? And how did that make any difference to the matter of the letters?

Could Jimmy, the Nolan she’d never met, be responsible for the Keatons’ letter? Or Matt, the current blacksmith, bearing a grudge against both Keatons on his brother’s behalf?

After all these years? Unlikely, but some event she didn’t know of could have brought it all back.

Miss Mortimer’s father had—probably—ruined Mavis, his old love, which gave him a motive for that letter.

Though Constance couldn’t imagine what he had against Emmeline Chadwick…

Or why he would pretend to have received a letter himself if he had not.

Except to throw Dr. Chadwick off his scent.

This was getting ridiculous. With an effort, she turned back to the matter of theft, and the one thief she knew of, who was looming altogether too large in her mind: Miss Fernie.

“Have you ever arrested anyone for theft in Sutton May?” she asked the constable.

“Couple of strangers on market days.”

“Do you get many complaints of theft?”

Heron shrugged. “Things go missing from time to time—not often, by any means, just occasionally, over the years—but it was always felt the things were just…lost.”

Like the silk shawl in the Keatons’ shop .

“People don’t steal from their neighbors in small communities like Sutton May,” Heron said.