An Inquiry Into Love and Death

by Simone St. James

  “And killing all the sailors.”

  “It was war, and we were doing exactly the same thing to them. Since it ended, things have gone back to normal, or as near as possible. But since the war, we’ve seen an upsurge of smuggling in this area. It’s only the goods that have changed.”

  “And what are the goods?”

  He shrugged. “Tobacco isn’t profitable anymore, and neither is tea, but there are other things. Alcohol is still shipped, as are jewels and precious metals. Certain drugs I have no intention of telling you about—those go for a high price.”

  “That sounds lovely,” I said. “It also sounds like the dominion of Customs and Excise, not Scotland Yard.”

  “Be patient, my girl. I’m not finished. The war was hard for Customs and Excise; they were as understaffed as everyone else, and they were under the thumb of the War Office, which was too busy to administer it properly. They came out of the war and found that while they’d been looking the other way, a new network of smugglers seemed to have set up shop along the coast—a group that seemed not only coordinated, but also well organized.

  “They weren’t able to nab anyone, and last year the smugglers committed the idiotic act of killing a customs agent. Now they have murder on their hands, and Scotland Yard was called in. A number of us are working up and down the coast, trying to flush this group from the bushes.”

  I shook my head. “How stupid I am. You told me you were here to investigate my uncle’s murder despite what the coroner said, and I believed it. You must have been laughing up your sleeve.”

  He regarded me steadily. “If you truly thought that, I’d still be out in the back garden. Besides, I do think that Toby’s murder has something to do with this. And I do disagree with the coroner. None of that was a lie.”

  “You make it sound so reasonable. But . . . someone in Rothewell, smuggling jewels and drugs? It’s outlandish. I just don’t see it.”

  “Neither did I. Neither did anyone until your admirer, Edward Bruton, wrote us that he’d heard those German sailors. We traced the boat Cornwall to an owner near Plymouth, who’d sold it to an Englishman named Jasper Kipps, who claimed to be a lawyer processing the transaction on behalf of a client. But when we checked, no such lawyer exists.”

  “Perhaps they were just immigrant laborers. We’re not at war with Germany anymore.”

  “Jillian. Edward saw those men, and two days later your uncle was dead.”

  I blinked. Tears welled up in my throat and behind my eyes, and I beat them back. How senseless that Toby—kind, shy, eccentric Toby—had been killed over someone’s greedy, grasping scheme. I stared fiercely at the map until I was under control again. “What are you getting at? You think someone is landing illegal cargo in Blood Moon Bay, is that it?”

  “That’s exactly what I think—though the buying and selling goes both ways. Until now, we haven’t been able to narrow down exactly where on the coast they’ve been weighing anchor. If they’re smart, and they are, they have several chosen spots. When I heard that no one goes into the woods for fear of the local ghost, I figured we’d found one of those spots.”

  “Toby’s notes said that he’d been ghost hunting in the woods at night. Setting up his equipment and doing tests.” It was starting to make sense. “He wandered into Blood Moon Bay in the middle of the night and saw something he shouldn’t have. But he doesn’t describe it in his journal. He only says that it all makes sense.”

  “In a way,” Drew said, “your uncle’s death provided an opportunity for us to investigate. It’s perfectly normal for the police to come after a man has died on the cliffs, to be seen around town, to ask questions. I was to gather information and take it back to London without tipping off anyone who might be in league with the smugglers themselves.”

  “And Easterbrook?”

  “Teddy was supposed to wander about town, seeing what he could see, meeting people if he could. It was his idea, but since you recognized him so easily, it seems he made rather a hash of it.”

  “He’s blond,” I pointed out, “and there are almost no young men in Rothewell. He rather stood out.”

  “As I believe I’ve mentioned, he’s an ass. But it wasn’t completely a waste. He learned a few useful things in his travels.”

  “Such as?”

  “Now, that I can’t tell you.”

  I pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. Drew put his hands in his pockets again and regarded me.

  “You’ve found more information,” I said, “and you’re not allowed to tell me, which once again leaves me in the dark.”

  He sighed. “Look—let’s just say we have information that we shouldn’t have. But our information tells us the Germans are about to purchase something they’re rather excited about.”

  “Purchase?” The buying and selling goes both ways, he’d said. “What is it?” I looked at his silent face. “What in the world would anyone in Rothewell have to sell?”

  “We don’t know for certain, but we have our suspicions.”

  “What suspicions?” I blew out a breath in frustration. “Drew, this isn’t fair!”

  “Jillian, I can’t tell you. I simply can’t.”

  “When is this transaction supposed to take place?”

  “Very soon. That’s all we know. Jillian, I want you to be careful. Our evidence says that Thorne is the leader, or one of them. I don’t want you going near him again.”

  Given that I had nearly been burned to death in the vicarage, I wasn’t going to argue. “If Aubrey is the leader,” I said, “then William must be his accomplice.” And I told him, as briefly as I could, about what I had seen and heard outside of William’s house the night before.

  When I finished, Drew’s face was grim. “When exactly were you going to tell me about the second time you almost got killed? How long was I gone, anyway? Twenty-four hours?”

  I bit my lip. “Don’t be ridiculous. William had no intention of killing me. He just had a brain fever during the war, and it’s made him a little strange.”

  “He what? I had no idea. Teddy and I will talk to him. I’d like to know where he was this afternoon.”

  Aubrey and William had grown up together. Perhaps they were at odds at the moment, but they had been very close. It was quite likely William knew where Aubrey kept the key to the old vicarage. But my instinct told me it hadn’t been William who had set the fire. He was confused, and perhaps off balance, but I thought he rather liked me. I couldn’t see him setting a fire and locking me in with it to die.

  I looked at the map on the table and for the first time I understood what Drew was risking for me. He had let me in on a countrywide investigation involving teams of customs and law enforcement experts; he had told me about their findings and their investigative techniques. Perhaps he could have told me sooner, and perhaps there were still things he had to hold back. But if his superiors found out how much he had just told to a civilian woman, he could well be disciplined by the Yard, or even dismissed. He was trusting me.

  I touched the photograph in my pocket, where I had put it after snatching it away from him. I was being secretive, and I couldn’t even say exactly why. Perhaps I could tell him about Elizabeth Price. Perhaps he could even help me. Perhaps . . .

  There was a knock at the front door, and we froze.

  Our eyes met in a swift glance. The knock came again, and a distinctive voice, perfect for singing in the Oxford choir, rang out. “Miss Leigh?”

  Drew took up the map and folded it, shrugging at me. “He knows I’m here. You may as well answer it.”

  I nodded and stood.

  “Jillian,” said Drew, stopping me as I walked toward the hall. “I don’t need to tell you not to repeat anything I’ve just told you. Do I?”

  “No,” I said. “I understand.”

  Inspector Teddy Easterbrook removed his hat when
I opened the door, showing his distinctive hair again. “Miss Leigh,” he said in his lovely alto tones. “I’m so sorry we have to disturb you. I believe my partner, Inspector Merriken, is here?”

  “Yes, he is. Come in.”

  “Are you quite all right?” he asked me as he followed me down the hall. I could feel his eyes on me, and the effect was distinctly less pleasant than when I had felt the same from Drew. “That was quite a scene earlier.”

  “She’s fine, Teddy.” This was Drew’s voice as we entered the kitchen. He was shrugging his jacket back on.

  I watched Easterbrook’s sharp blue eyes take this in, and observe Drew’s loosened tie. “My, aren’t we cozy,” he said in a dry voice. “How goes the interrogation, Inspector?”

  “Don’t start,” said Drew.

  Teddy held up his hands. “What did I say?” He looked at me. “You mustn’t mind Inspector Merriken, Miss Leigh. He has a way with ladies, or so I’m told. I find it a bit of a relief that he has at least one flaw.”

  Drew straightened his tie. “I have plenty of flaws,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Do you?” Easterbrook turned and addressed me again. “Did you know, Miss Leigh, that the fellows at the Yard gave Inspector Merriken a nickname? We call him the Paragon. He thinks it would kill him to have a pint with the rest of us every once in a while. If it weren’t for all the female phone calls he gets, we’d have to toss him in the Thames.”

  “All right, let’s go. We have work to do.”

  “Back to the trenches, eh?” Teddy smiled at me. “Off we go. Not literally, of course. I did my time in the mud, and much thanks I got for it, too.”

  The openness had vanished from Drew’s demeanor. He looked needled and frustrated—perhaps even a little embarrassed. He nodded formally at me as he put on his hat and said, “Have a nice afternoon, Miss Leigh.”

  I crossed my arms and watched them go, Drew’s tall, dark frame leading Teddy’s smaller, elegant one. The Yard came first, I realized. It always would. And I stood alone again in the kitchen.

  I glanced out the window, at the sun high in the afternoon sky. I had nearly died today, the longest day of my life. I should rest and recover. I should pack Toby’s things. I should let the two inspectors do their job finding Toby’s killer and whoever had tried to kill me.

  But my mind spun. I could no longer pretend I was just an Oxford student here on a lark. That I could walk away and none of this would matter.

  I would wait until dusk, and then I had an investigation of my own to begin.

  Twenty-six

  I had never taken the slope down to Rothewell on foot. I stayed off the shoulder of the road, placing one step at a time over the uneven ground. No one passed by as I traveled. By the time I got to the bottom my legs were shaking, I wished heartily that I could have worn a man’s shoes instead of my low heels, and I could not contemplate the climb back. But I had no choice, as the motorcar would have been far too conspicuous for what I planned to do.

  I circled away from High Street, keeping to the trees and the high grasses, avoiding the few houses whose windows were beginning to light in the first gray of dusk. It was time for supper, and people were retreating to their homes. Despite the chill breeze coming from the water, sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I caught sight of the church’s roof and headed toward it in as steady a line as I could, keeping off the roads. The ground was hard, and I moved quickly.

  I stopped in a copse of trees from which I could see the new vicarage and its greenhouse at the rear. I crouched down so I couldn’t be seen and waited, watching.

  The sun had just dropped below the horizon, and the day’s light was fading. Through the glass of the greenhouse I saw a tall figure moving to and fro. Aubrey Thorne was tidying up.

  Mrs. Thorne—Enid—came ’round from the front of the house. She wore a large sweater over a blouse and a straight skirt that flapped around her long legs. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she leaned into the doorway of the greenhouse and said something. After a moment Aubrey came out and shut the door behind him. I watched the two of them walk away, leaning close to each other, a perfectly matched couple who were deeply in love, and I wondered whether I owed my near death to one of them.

  More important, I watched the greenhouse door. Aubrey hadn’t stopped to lock it.

  I let out a breath. I’d put a brave face on it, but if he’d locked the door, my plan would have been stymied. I’d banked on Drew’s comment earlier that the greenhouse was left open. They didn’t teach girls to pick locks at Somerville.

  Once the Thornes had disappeared, I left my copse of trees and hurried toward the door, hoping I wouldn’t be seen. Someone else did this earlier today, a voice whispered in my head. Someone may have taken this exact path, looking for the key to the old vicarage. Still, I was filled with queer excitement. I moved faster.

  I tiptoed into the empty greenhouse and looked around in the fading light. Drew had said the key was left hanging on the wall. But he hadn’t said key; he’d said key ring. A key ring meant more than one key.

  It was hanging behind the door, next to a stack of unused pots that was nearly as tall as I was. I pulled it down and looked at it. There were four keys on it, lying in my scratched, bruised palms. One of them would be the key I was looking for.

  This wasn’t London. Rothewell was a quiet place, a trusting place. There was no crime here, and no reason to lock the doors. But one would think the vicar would take better care of his keys after today’s fire—if, in fact, someone had broken into the old vicarage and he hadn’t set the fire himself.

  The half-burned shell of the old vicarage didn’t interest me, however. I never wanted to see it again. I closed my fingers tightly around the key ring and headed for the church.

  • • •

  The largest key fit the church’s main door, where the congregation would be let in. I felt exposed as I pushed it open, certain someone would see, but I had no time to circle the building, looking for other doors and trying the keys. I slipped through the main door and pushed it closed behind me.

  Another key opened the door to the vestry. I couldn’t risk a light, but it didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. The parish register was kept just where Aubrey had said it was, in the church, in a very old oak cabinet with impressive scrolled doors. I pulled the large, leather-bound book from its place and set it on the desk, trying to catch the fading light from the mullioned window.

  I flipped quickly through the pages. Here was Rothewell’s history, captured line by line—births, deaths, marriages. Despite my hurry, the book called to the historian in me, and I tried not to peruse the more interesting entries. I resisted temptation and found the more recent pages, written in a slanted script that changed to a smaller, more crabbed writing when Aubrey Thorne took over the living.

  I was looking for a certain name, and it wasn’t long before I found it. It was in the older, slanted handwriting.

  Wed on this day, the fifth of March, 1903, John Price, butcher, aged twenty-nine, and Elizabeth Winstone, servant, aged eighteen.

  Elizabeth.

  My breath came short. Courage, I must have courage.

  I held the page between my fingers. If I turned it forward, I had an idea of what I would see. But what if I turned it back? Would I see her name at all? If so, was I ready for what I would find?

  Perhaps there was nothing. Perhaps the knot in my stomach was only foolishness. Perhaps what I was thinking—what I was wildly, madly thinking—was only my imagination. If it was, I would be unbearably relieved. And if it wasn’t—I had to know.

  I turned it back. I scanned first one page, and then another. And finally, there it was, her name in an entry from the previous year:

  Born on this day, the seventh of June, 1902, to Elizabeth Winstone, servant, aged seventeen, a girl child, unnamed.

  I ran my
finger over the words. She’d had a child out of wedlock, and the local butcher had married her. Perhaps the child had been his, perhaps not. If the baby had died, it would have been noted. So the baby had lived—but she had not been named, most likely because as a bastard child born to a servant, she’d been given away.

  I read the line over and over, my eyes watering in the growing dark. Her photograph burned in my pocket. Part of me had known from the second I had first seen the picture. I felt sick and light-headed. It was the kind of sudden knowledge that comes upon us, unasked-for and unwelcome, no matter how hard we fight it or explain it away. The kind of knowledge that tears down our carefully constructed lives inexorably, brick by brick, as we desperately grasp each disappearing brick with our fingernails.

  I looked exactly like Elizabeth Winstone, a servant girl who had given away a baby girl. And June seventh, 1902, was my birthday.

  I made a sound deep in my throat. Memories came to me, as fast and as unstoppable as rain. The fact that I looked nothing like my own mother. Toby’s visiting Rothewell as a young man. Edward saying I looked like Toby; Aubrey taking me for Toby’s daughter. Mrs. Trowbridge telling me I looked like Elizabeth. The way Toby had sat with me hour upon hour, too shy to speak. That day on the beach, our pleasure in each other’s company. The telegram from the solicitor. Mr. York’s delusion that I was Elizabeth Winstone in the flesh.

  And the note placed in the drawer of the desk in the library, so clearly in Toby’s handwriting. Beware, daughter of Rothewell.

  It fit. I could make it fit.

  It could not possibly fit.

  And yet, if it didn’t fit—if some small, hidden part of me had not suspected for longer than I wanted to admit—what had driven me here? Alone, on foot, risking capture in a place I had no business being, by someone who may already have tried to murder me?