‘It’s past twelve and I’m starving. Also cross-eyed.’
Jack looked across at her. ‘It suits you.’ It was his turn to tease. ‘But I’ve had enough, too.’
‘And we haven’t found a thing.’ She gave a small groan.
‘I did find some interesting myths. The book is too general, but there was one based in Sussex. Did you know that the Devil’s Dyke was formed by the devil himself? He was digging a trench to allow the sea to flood the churches of the Sussex Weald. Apparently, his digging disturbed an old woman who lit a candle – or, alternative story – his digging angered a rooster causing it to crow, either of which made the devil believe that morning had arrived and he’d better disappear.’
Flora went to say something but Jack was quicker, still quoting from his book. ‘If you run backwards seven times around the Dyke whilst holding your breath, the Devil will appear.’
‘You must try it someday. I did know about the Dyke, but it’s not the right legend.’
‘Pity. How about a sandwich?’
‘I’d rather have a bowl of soup. I’ve got quite cold in here.’
‘Fine, we’ll find a café. Before we do, though, I’ll mention our search to one of the assistants. She might come up with something we missed.’
‘We went through the shelves with a fine-tooth comb.’
‘I know, but…’
Flora shrugged. If he wanted to waste his time. It was lunch that was calling to her right now.
Nineteen
They found a café just off the promenade and chose window seats overlooking the wide, empty beach. The sea was now a thin line on the horizon and a football match was in progress on the wet sand.
‘Those children must be playing truant,’ Flora said, looking down at the youngsters’ boisterous game.
‘Who wouldn’t with a whole beach to yourself? It’s onion soup, by the way. Is that OK?’
‘Onion soup is fine.’ She gazed through the window, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. ‘What are we going to do, Jack?’ she asked at last, turning towards him. ‘We’re making no headway. I’m as far as ever from proving that something criminal happened at the All’s Well. Something human, without a ghost in sight. Whoever murdered Kevin Anderson and killed Cyril is still out there.’
‘The legend was always going to be a long shot. Even if we’d discovered what it actually said, it might not have helped.’
‘So what on earth will?’
‘Talking?’ A frown appeared on Flora’s face, but he continued, ‘Talking to everyone and encouraging them to talk to us. When people are relaxed, they can let their guard down, let slip something they shouldn’t or something they weren’t even aware of. My heroes are pretty adept at worming out information that way.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Don’t dismiss it. It’s Cyril’s funeral tomorrow and the next day you’re going to Polly Dakers’ party. Plenty of people, plenty of opportunities to talk – or let them talk.’
‘Plenty of time, too, to look for a typewriter with a wonky “s”!’
Jack shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s worth the risk.’ He turned to the waitress who had arrived at their table with steaming bowls of soup and two large white rolls. ‘That smells good.’
Flora dipped a spoon into her bowl. ‘It tastes good as well. I really should find the time to do more cooking. Aunt Violet was a great one for soup making, but then she had green fingers. She grew the most amazing vegetables. I try to keep the garden tidy, but I’m not nearly as successful.’
‘Did you live with Miss Steele a long time?’
‘Most of my life. Well, from the age of six, and I don’t honestly remember much before then. Sometimes I think I can sense my mother close by – maybe a scent triggers the feeling or a particular sound recalls something that’s buried in my brain – but really, my early life is a blur. Both my parents were killed in a car crash. Good friends of theirs looked after me for a while, but they were moving abroad – the father had a new job somewhere in Africa – and they couldn’t take me with them. I was about to be sent to an orphanage when Violet came flying to the rescue. Out of nowhere, like a guardian angel.’
Jack was intrigued, his soup spoon suspended. ‘Where had she been?’
‘Italy. She’d been living there for years teaching English, ever since she left school. She was my father’s sister and when their mother died, he offered her a home, but Violet, being Violet, preferred to be independent and trotted off to Italy instead.’
‘How did the bookshop happen?’
‘It was a legacy. That also came out of the blue. Not that I knew much about it, I was too young. I do remember at the time I was living with Violet in a flat near where I’d lived with my parents when they were alive.’
‘In London?’
‘Yes. My aunt hated the city, but my life had been turned upside down and she wanted me to know at least something familiar. She managed to get a job teaching in a local college. Then a solicitor’s letter arrived saying her godfather, whom she’d never really known, had died recently and left her his house. It was quite a windfall! Violet didn’t have any attachment to the house and was happy to sell. She bought the All’s Well with the proceeds, and the cottage I live in. She’d never run a business before and it was tough for a woman on her own. But she did it.’
‘The thirties wouldn’t have been the best time to open a bookshop for anyone, whatever their sex.’
‘Things haven’t moved on that much today,’ Flora said, continuing her strand of thought. ‘At least, not for women. They proved their worth during the war – as land girls, in munition factories, driving ambulances in the Blitz, flying planes to airfields under enemy fire – but all that seems to have been forgotten. Slowly and surely they’ve been shunted back to the kitchen and the nursery.’
‘Not all women,’ Jack remarked quietly, smiling across at her. ‘You’ve escaped both. And so did your aunt. Violet never married?’
‘She was like a lot of her generation. Her fiancé was killed in the First War and, after it ended, there was a dearth of marriageable men, but I don’t think my aunt ever recovered from losing him. That sounds overly dramatic, doesn’t it? Of course, she got over the immediate grief and went on with her life, but she never wanted to marry. As far as I’m aware, she never looked at another man.’
‘Even the one who sent her bouquets? That’s true love for you.’ Jack supposed there was such a thing, though from his experience it was rare.
‘Or simply self-protection. Once you’ve lost something precious, you become wary. You might even,’ she hazarded, ‘choose to become a recluse.’
He took time to break the bread roll into ever smaller pieces, while he gathered his thoughts and tried to make sense of his feelings. ‘You’re a little too perceptive, Miss Steele,’ he said at last.
‘You don’t have to tell me about it,’ she said gently, ‘but I’d like to hear.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘However little, it must be important to you.’
‘It is, or it was. I had a fiancée, too, and like your aunt, lost out. In my case, ignominiously.’
‘There was another man.’ It was a statement of fact, as though Flora already knew his history.
‘Not just another man, but my best friend.’ He crumbled a few more pieces of roll.
‘How wretched for you.’
‘The worst. I was working in New York at the time. I was a journalist then, on one of the posh papers.’
‘Your fiancée was American?’
‘Canadian, but eager to travel the world. Particularly eager to travel across Europe and soak up the culture, et cetera. We were going to be married in England. My parents separated when I was very young, but for the wedding of their only child, they agreed to bury their grudges and pull together. Or try to. I had a good job, a beautiful wife-to-be, and I’d just had my first success as an author – a short story published in a literary magazine no less,
and another that had won a well-publicised competition. Life looked pretty rosy.’
‘It can do, just before something ghastly happens,’ she said sagely.
He wondered what unpleasant reality had hit Flora. She was pretty, highly intelligent and annoyingly good company, yet at twenty-five she was still single and looked set to stay that way.
Flora looked across at him. ‘What happened exactly?’ she asked bluntly.
‘One of the chaps on the paper’s features staff came from Liverpool. He had a dour sense of humour and we hit it off straight away. Over the months, we became very good friends, or so I thought. When I told the paper I was going back to England to get married, he was asked to take over one of the columns I wrote, so he shadowed me for a few months. It meant quite a lot of socialising – New York was a long party in those days – and inevitably he got to know Helen very well. Too well, as it turned out. The day before we were due to leave for England, she and I had lunch somewhere.’ He raked his memory for the name, but found it had faded. ‘An Italian place,’ he said, ‘one we often went to. Anyway, we were just leaving the restaurant and I’d paid the bill, but I didn’t have enough change for a decent tip. Helen rooted round in her handbag for some small notes and out spilled two first class train tickets. I picked them up for her and saw they were tickets to East Hampton.’
‘Where is that?’
‘The Hamptons are where affluent New Yorkers go in the summer – long stretches of beach and a string of seaside communities. Very exclusive and very expensive. When I looked at the tickets, the date sprang out at me.’ Even now, he could remember the sickening jolt deep in his stomach, an augury of what was to come.
‘I asked Helen who they were for,’ Jack went on, trying to keep his voice even. ‘That’s when she told me. She was staying in New York, she said, and taking a holiday in the Hamptons. She hadn’t known how to break it to me and she was very, very sorry. She couldn’t come to England, couldn’t in fact marry me. She had fallen for someone else.’
Flora pursed her lips. ‘That’s some speech! And you had no idea until then that she had changed her mind?’
‘I must have had, I suppose, deep down. For a start, I didn’t have to ask who the someone else was. I guess I’d sensed it for weeks and hadn’t wanted to accept the truth. If you ignore the signs, the problem will go away – that kind of thing. Except that it didn’t. Helen had planned her getaway meticulously, I have to hand it to her. Cashed in her ticket for the crossing to Southampton and booked a new honeymoon in the Hamptons.’
‘She sounds a bitch,’ Flora declared, and Jack knew she felt every word.
‘These things happen. People change, feelings change. She could have talked to me, though, and I think I’d have understood.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t. But why shut yourself away? It’s Helen who should have gone into purdah.’ Flora sounded angry and he wondered if something similar had happened to her.
‘I needed time on my own. Time to come to terms with what had happened. When I took the ship back to England, I expected I’d be clearing up the mess – the church, the presents, the whole damn thing – but my parents were fighting again, this time about the costs they’d been landed with, and I couldn’t stand any more noise. So I left them to it and came to Sussex. I remembered it from childhood. On weekends, we used to drive down from London and stay in a bed and breakfast on the coast. West Wittering has one of the best beaches, and my father had a friend with a boat at Bosham. He used to take us for a sail occasionally. Those weekends and one or two holidays in Cornwall are the only times I recall living in a happy family.’
‘I can see why you settled here.’
‘I thought it would bring solace, a balm to my heart. And it has.’
‘You could have enjoyed the quiet of the countryside without cutting yourself off from people.’
‘That’s true. At first, though, I wanted to be completely alone and later it became a habit. Villages are nosy places and people would be asking why I’d come to Sussex, what my history was, then they’d enjoy passing judgement on me. I was in a brittle state and couldn’t bear to speak to anyone. It was so much easier to have newspapers through the letter box, a bottle of milk on the doorstep, a box of groceries left on the pathway.’
‘You weren’t even tempted to visit the bookshop?’
‘A little, but then I hit on the idea of using Charlie. He’d run a few errands for me and I’d found him surprisingly reliable for his age. Also fairly taciturn. He didn’t want to talk, all he wanted was to earn money. Charlie was another way I could avoid engaging with people.’
‘Or avoid trusting them. No betrayal ever again. I get it.’ She reached out for his hand and he felt her fingers, slender and warm. ‘You’re not a recluse, Jack. Not a natural recluse,’ she amended. ‘The way you speak to people, the fact you’re such good company.’
‘Another compliment,’ he said lightly, allowing her hand to slip away. ‘You’ll have to watch those.’
‘I’m keeping count, don’t worry, but I do think it’s time you emerged permanently from your burrow.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We should be getting back to Abbeymead. The buses aren’t that reliable and I need to call in at the bookshop before I go home.’
He reached for his wallet. ‘Fine, but can we whip back to the library? Five minutes only, I promise. Just to check that the assistant hasn’t come up with anything.’
He could sense her reluctance, but he had a hunch it might be worth the extra few minutes.
‘Hello there.’ The library assistant greeted them with a friendly smile as they walked up to her desk. ‘I’m glad you came back. I’ve got something for you. I ventured down to the basement once my colleague returned from lunch. We store all kinds of books there, often those that are too fragile to be on the shelves, and I think this might interest you. It’s another book on myths and legends, but one that’s focused entirely on Sussex. It’s possible you’ll find what you’re looking for there.’
She brought out a slim volume with a soiled and broken cover. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to wear gloves – the book is old and very delicate.’
‘Anything,’ he agreed. ‘And thank you for taking the trouble to look.’
The girl smiled warmly up at him.
He felt a nudge from Flora. ‘See what happens when you stop being a hermit,’ she whispered.
He ignored her and, squeezing his hands into the pair of gloves the girl handed him, several sizes too small, he carried the book over to the table they had used previously.
‘It looks as if it might fall to pieces at any moment,’ Flora said, plumping herself down on one of the chairs.
Every edge of the leather binding was frayed, as though a family of mice had feasted on it. The pages were little better, badly yellowed and thin to the point of transparency. Jack felt himself holding his breath as he turned them, one by one. A few chapters in, his finger came to a halt, pointing at the name they’d been searching for.
‘We have a Templeton at last,’ he said.
Flora drew her chair closer, leaning over his shoulder and trying to read the small print. ‘I can’t make out the words. Read it aloud.’
He glanced around, making sure there was no one to be disturbed, and began to read in a low voice.
During Henry VIII’s ravages of England’s religious institutions, a monk belonging to the Bosham monastery secreted an important manuscript. In addition to his duties at the monastery, the monk was priest to the local landowners, a Catholic family called the Templetons, though naturally this was not publicly acknowledged. When the Bosham monastery was attacked, the monk fled to the Templetons for shelter. At a time of religious persecution, their family home had been modified and the monk escaped capture by hiding in a priest hole. Lord Templeton died defending his house and his wife was arrested for supposed treason. She was kept prisoner in the Tower of London, but before she was captured, Lady Ianthe Templeton entrusted to her priest a casket of h
er jewellery. The monk managed to escape to France – he took a boat from Shoreham – but before he did so, he buried the casket on the estate, noting exactly where he had hidden the jewellery. It may be that he hoped to return one day and restore the casket to its rightful owner. It is said that the manuscript the priest wrote was placed for safekeeping in one of the numerous volumes in the Priory library. If one believes the legend, there it has stayed for the last four hundred years and no one has discovered the casket, if indeed there ever was one.
‘So that’s what we’re looking for,’ Flora said, her voice ringing with excitement. ‘A document written by a priest. That’s why Kevin trespassed in the Priory library. It must be why he broke into my shop, too, though I can’t yet see the connection. There is treasure, though, Jack. Whatever jewellery the monk buried must be worth a fortune now and certainly worth killing for.’
‘But where is this supposed manuscript? Kevin never found it and neither has anyone else, by the look of it.’
‘Which means that the treasure is still out there.’
‘Not necessarily. Don’t forget, it’s a legend we’ve been reading. The manuscript might never have existed. Kevin searched the library and found nothing. Others might have done so before him.’
Walking back to the bus stop, he could feel her dejection and tried to think of something to cheer her, but apart from the malfunctioning typewriter, they were bereft of any further clues.
‘There are too many false notes to the story,’ Flora said, once they’d clambered aboard the bus to Abbeymead. Her low spirits had vanished and she was back in determined mode, it seemed. ‘I know you think the legend is fantasy, but there has to be some basis to it or it wouldn’t still be talked about. Historically, the circumstances in which the manuscript was supposed to be written are spot-on. That suggests that the parchment did once exist. Yet it’s never been found, even though in four hundred years the library must have been cleaned over and over again and the books brought down for dusting. To me, that means the document is still hidden. Still waiting to be discovered. Then there’s the bookshop to consider.’
The Bookshop Murder: An absolutely gripping cozy mystery (A Flora Steele Mystery Book 1) Page 15