“No use pretending I don’t know who you are,” he said once he’d settled in. “Everyone in the village does, of course, and I’ve loved Phoebe Frank’s movies since I can remember. Me and me mum both. We remember when she was here, you know, with the race car driver, your da.” Tam smiled. “All of us were starstruck at first, but Phoebe put everyone at ease right off. Encouraged me to try for a part in the community theater up in Grantham, and I’ve tread the boards in a production every season since. I’d never told anyone but Miss Frank I was a secret thespian, and she treated it serious. I met my husband in a production ofEpsom Downs, so I owe not a little of my happiness to her. I’m sorry for your great loss.”
Gravity gave up its grip on Cosima’s heart, and it tumbled into her throat, triggering tears so sudden that she found herself letting out a laugh. “God, I’m sorry.” She shook her head as she wiped at her face. “Thank you, is what I want to say. Thank you for telling me about your experience with my mother. I don’t get to hear many truly personal stories about her.”
Tam waved his hand. “No, duck, I’m sorry for springing it on you like that. Too much for over cake.”
“No. It’s not. I’m glad to know. I think her stay here really meant something to her.” Cosima thought again of the audacious love and confidence of her mother’s letter and the clues she’d left for Cosima to find it.
The mother Cosima knew had been a woman who made magic, but not someone who believed in it.
She touched the whiskey glass. She wasn’t sure when it happened that her mother could only find respite in a bottle. Evennow, only Cosima and Duncan and her mother’s doctors knew it had killed her.
Grief, and addiction, and obsessive work. All of it a monster.
Maybe that’s why Cosima didn’t want to please the board and the stocks by feeding it. Maybe she thought it would starve and never eat anyone else again.
Maybe a person could make something so big it eventually ate them.
She didn’t know. But it did feel right that Phoebe had put this place on her list so Cosima might learn somethingdifferentabout her mother. That once upon a time, Phoebe had been a girl who met a reckless boy in an English lane with an easy smile.
Cosima slid the bourbon in Tam’s direction. “On me? I don’t know why I ordered it. Duncan would be shocked.” Cosima didn’t need to explain who Duncan was. Tam would know. “Edie might say it was because I want to feel close to her. To my mother.”
Tam picked up the whiskey and toasted Cosima. “To Miss Frank. And her companion, Duncan, god protect him.” He took a drink and put the glass down. “Now, you’ve mentioned Edie twice.”
“We’re both staying at Gregory Place.” Cosima heard her tone go tart.
“You’re both looking for Agatha’s treasure is what you’re doing.”
Bert had been aware of their agenda, too. “Is there a Facebook group? How does everyone know?”
“Morag’s been crouched over that guest book like a dragon for years. Every time likely candidates stay up at her inn, we all hold our breath hoping she’ll release it from her grasp, but this is the first time she’s let go. Don’t know if it’s because she’sdecided to be afraid of dying or if she believes you’re the two to get to the bottom of this business once and for all. Seems like you got pretty far today. A map! What a thing.”
“How did you know we—”
“Greer.” Tam’s eyes twinkled.
Of course. Greer would have been nearby when they had found the map. She would have witnessed them stealing it from the church. Though, if Greer knew what they were looking for, was it stealing? Cosima reached over to her jacket on the velvet-cushioned bench and pressed the pocket where the map reassuringly crinkled.
Greer must also have witnessed the argument between her and Edie.
Pulling her jacket closer, she retrieved the map. “This is it.” She held it up for Tam to see, then laid it on the table between them. “You can look if you want to.”
Tam raised his eyebrows, but then he put the bourbon down and rubbed his hands together before picking up the map. He tipped it at her. “You sure? This is your treasure to find, but I’m as curious as a ginger cat to take a look. To think it’s been in the church all this time.”
When Cosima nodded, he carefully opened the map and leaned back. Cosima took a few breaths. With the benefit of food and her clothes mostly dry, she felt the guilt that was always stalking her, hunched in a dark corner of her brain.
Tam furrowed his hedgelike brows at her. “The curry not sitting well, duck?”
“Dinner was excellent. That noise was my feelings escaping from my body.”
Tam set the map down and leaned forward. “Now, perhaps an aging gay publican wasn’t what you had in mind to receiveyour troubles, but standing behind that bar for most of my life surely gives me some part of a therapist’s credential.”
Cosima felt her shoulders start to soften in Tam’s empathetic gaze. “Edie,” she said.
“I’ve had the honor. Rare to meet a person who can talk so much and actually be interesting. Or someone who puts their worst and best right out there like it might help all of us learn to do better.”
“That’s a good summation.” Though it wasn’t a summary that captured Edie’s husky voice, or the dozens of discrete patterns of her freckles, or her moody green eyes and dark, satiny hair.
“What about her?” Tam took a sip of his whiskey.
