“Well, their inquiries are nothing to do with us.”
“Then why,” Alice asked, when she had swallowed her mouthful of boiled egg on bread, “are they interested in your lost box?”
Her mother brightened. “Perhaps they found it.”
“I heard her asking Mrs. Raeburn about the vicar’s lost prayer book, too.”
“I didn’t even know he’d lost one.”
“Oh yes,” Alice said. “Lovely book. Mrs. Raeburn gave it to him, so it meant a lot. So did your box to you, though I never understood why. You always stick up for the Mortimers.”
“For Miss Jessica. She’s no more to blame than you are.”
Alice gave up and devoted herself to tea while she gazed restlessly around the room. A large pile of newspapers lay in the dark corner next to the fireplace.
“Why do you always have so many newspapers?” she asked irritably.
“Mrs. Keaton lets me take the old ones that are unsold. I use them to light the fire.” Mavis wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. “And they’re useful when it’s really cold. Keeps the frost off the windows.”
“Does it?” Alice asked. She had a much smaller but similar pile of newspapers in her tiny attic bedchamber, but she used them quite differently.
Chapter Seventeen
With a nodto the respectability of the house, Solomon and Constance separated for the night, though with a considerably warmer and longer farewell than of late.
Solomon did not even mind—much. A cold wash helped. The rest of him was happier than at any time since their first night together. They were about to finish another case, and David’s problem seemed likely to be solved just as soon as Abel Drayman was found.
And most of all, Constance would be his wife. They would make their own home.
He lay awake for a while, going over the Sutton May case in his head, but his mind kept straying to the personal until he drifted off.
In the morning, they went down to breakfast separately. The sight of Constance, her eyes dancing with humor and excitement, only made him more determined.
The church service was at ten o’clock. They left the inn just after half past nine and strolled along the road past the school and Miss Fernie’s house. Sure enough, she hurried past them in a dark blue wool dress and coat with a matching hat. Not quite lady of the manor, but much more stylish than the usual village schoolteacher. She carried an old prayer book and kept her eyes straight ahead as if she did not see or recognize either of them. When Solomon touched his hat, her nostrils flared, but that was her only reaction.
Constance and Solomon strolled on a few more yards, then turned back to view the procession of most of the village toward the church. They crossed the road and, a few minutes later, entered Miss Fernie’s garden.
It was a sizeable cottage compared to Mavis Cartwright’s or the one attached to the schoolhouse. Even walking down the path, Solomon could see good-quality curtains and a well-proportioned front parlor with its fire banked and a guard on the hearth.
Constance looked behind her and to either side, then peered blatantly in the parlor window. “Pretty.”
“Can you see anything there that shouldn’t be?” he asked, moving toward the window on the other side of the front door.
“Not obviously, no. But then, this is where she would receive visitors.”
“Dining room,” he said, peering. “Decent table and four chairs and a sideboard. Good carpet. Let’s go around to the back.”
Behind the dining room was a kitchen, old-fashioned but functional.
“This looks like a storeroom,” Constance said eagerly at the other back window. “All the stolen things could be in here.”
“Or it could be her parents’ old furniture and things she cannot bear to throw out.”
She grimaced. “Spoilsport. We might need to break in.”
“Last resort,” Solomon said, though it would not be the first time they had broken into someone’s property in the pursuit of a case. It just seemed more reprehensible when the victim was a little old lady living alone.
On the other hand, this particular little old lady might have pushed Constance down the manor house stairs.
