Madeline pulled out some clothing from the stack she was going through. “Oh, aren’t these sweet?” She laid out a little girl’s dress and bonnet, smoothing the lace that trimmed them. “Did one of your ladies make these?”
Mrs. Cummins nodded, looking up from the pile in front of her. “Mrs. Camden. Doesn’t she do a lovely job? Look at that smocking. I’ll never have her way with it.”
“It’s precious. Did the same lady make this?” Madeline held up a jacket meant for a boy of perhaps three or four.
Mrs. Cummins reached out to touch it, her lower lip trembling. “Oh . . .” She drew back her hand and pressed it over her mouth. “Oh, Tibby.” Sudden tears streamed down her cheeks, and she fumbled blindly for her pocket handkerchief.
Madeline immediately went to her. “I’m so sorry. What is it?”
“Oh, nothing.” Mrs. Cummins blotted her face, struggling unsuccessfully to compose herself. “It’s just . . . Tibby had one just like that. We had a photograph made of him in it. I still have it on my dresser.”
She made a pitiful attempt at a smile, and Madeline put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure he was darling in it.”
“Oh, he was,” the older woman sobbed into her handkerchief. “He was.”
Carrie sniffled, her eyes filling with tears. “Daddy has one of me and Billy when I was seven and he was two. He has on a little jacket and a tiny bow tie, and I’m holding him in my lap on our porch swing.”
Mrs. Cummins nodded. “Tibby is in a swing, too. Let me go get it.”
She hurried away, still dabbing at her eyes, and Madeline sat down next to Carrie.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset either of you.”
Taking out her own handkerchief, Carrie blew her nose. “No, it’s good. We need to remember the good things, too.” Her mouth turned up at one side. “Billy always hated that picture. You wouldn’t have thought it of him now, but he had the chubbiest baby legs ever.”
Madeline squeezed her hand. “I’m sure he was a doll.”
“I treated him like one until he was about three and wouldn’t put up with it anymore.” She laughed softly. “He was awfully cute.”
“Maybe we should all relax for a little while. We’ve gotten a lot of this sorted out, and I bet by now we could all do with a nice cup of tea.”
Carrie nodded, brightening. “That’s a grand idea. And then she can tell us about when Tal was a little boy. I wouldn’t be surprised if she came down with more than just one picture.”
They hurried into the kitchen, determined to have the kettle on before Mrs. Cummins returned. They found cups, spoons and sugar, the teapot and the kettle itself but no tea.
Madeline frowned. “It looks as if we had the last of it at breakfast. With everything that’s gone on, it’s no wonder.”
“Would it be all right if we borrowed some tea from the charity collection?” Carrie asked.
“I don’t think it would hurt. This afternoon or tomorrow sometime, I’ll go into the village and buy some more. We’ll send a whole crate of tea to London. How would that be?”
“I think it would be fine.” Carrie grinned and seemed for a moment like her old self. “It’s for the needy, and if the three of us aren’t needy right now, I don’t know who is.”
She grabbed the box from the pile of foodstuffs and opened it. “Tea always smells so good, but I wish it was coffee.”
She picked up a spoon and dipped it down into the box, and then her forehead wrinkled.
“What is it?” Madeline asked.
“I don’t know.” Carrie pushed the spoon down into the tea again, and her frown deepened. “There’s something in there.”
Madeline took the box and spoon from her and tried it herself. “There’s definitely something not right.”
She fished around for a moment more, but clearly the spoon was hitting something about two-thirds of the way down to the bottom of the box. She got a bowl out of the cupboard and emptied the tea into it. A tightly wrapped paper packet fell on top. It had the same dimensions of the bottom of the tea box and was about two inches high.
The two girls looked at each other, wide-eyed.
“That’s . . . that’s the stuff, isn’t it?” Carrie stammered. “Oh, heavens, that’s—”
“Shhh.” Madeline glanced toward the door that led from the kitchen to the dining room and then slipped the packet into her skirt pocket. “Quick, put the tea back into the box and put it over with the other things. I’ll tidy up in here.”
“But Mrs. Cummins—”
“She doesn’t know.” Madeline thrust the empty box into Carrie’s hands. As soon as the tea was safely back in place, she swiftly rinsed the bowl they had used. “Mr. Cummins told Drew he never wanted her or Tal to know anything about this.”
“But she knows now.” Carrie’s voice was low and urgent. “And all this will come out in time.”
“I know, but she doesn’t have to hear about it right this minute.” Madeline wiped the bowl and returned it to the cupboard with a thump. “She’s got enough to bear as it is, don’t you think? Without knowing her husband was using her to carry out his filthy business.”
“But how does it get in here in the first place?”
“I don’t know, but at least we’ve found another link in the chain. We’ll have to tell the boys as soon as they get back, but until then, not a word, all right? I’m sure Drew will let the police know right away. They can see to it after that.”
“But you can’t just leave that in your pocket.”
“I’ll have to. At least for a while.” Madeline heard Mrs. Cummins in the dining room and grabbed Carrie’s arm. “Quick.”
When the kitchen door swung open, Madeline and Carrie were sitting at the table, once more sorting through the canned goods.
“Look who’s come calling.” Mrs. Cummins came in with a thick photo album and three or four framed pictures and the vicar. “Do come in now and sit with us. Can I get you some tea?”
“Tea? Er, no, not just now, thank you, Mrs. Cummins. I won’t stay long.” Hat in hand, Mr. Broadhurst nodded to Madeline and Carrie. “I hadn’t much time to speak to either of you at the service, I’m sorry to say. But I wanted to see how you’re getting along. I know these are dark days, but they won’t last forever.”
“We were just going through the things for your little collection,” Mrs. Cummins said. “That is why you’ve come, isn’t it?”
“No, no,” he said, patting her hand. “Not today. Of all days, not today. Sometime later. When you’re feeling up to it. Or, if you’d like, I can just clear it all away. Some of the other ladies would be happy to help me pack it all up to be shipped.”
“Oh.” She blinked, and her lips trembled into a smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put everything on someone else’s shoulders. It’s just been, well, rather a trial lately. I don’t mean to complain.” Her face crumpled, and she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, trying to cover her sobs.
“No, no, no,” the vicar soothed, patting her hand again. “It’s not like that in the least. No one would expect it of you. Not after what you’ve been through. You mustn’t think that.”
He looked pleadingly at Madeline, and she put her arm around Mrs. Cummins’s shoulders. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“No, it’s all right.” Mrs. Cummins drew a shuddering breath. “It’s all right. Why don’t we just get away from all this.” She stood and gathered up the photographs she had brought down from her bedroom. “We’ll go into the morning room, and I’ll bore you with all my stories about when Tibby was a little boy.” She took Carrie’s arm. “You can tell us all about Will too, and neither of us will mind if we shed a few tears.”
Carrie nodded, looking as if those tears might come right then, and the two of them left the pantry.
“I’m terribly sorry. It’s usually my job to comfort people, not drive them to tears.” The vicar gestured to the jumble of items spread out before them. “Perhaps I’d be
st take this all away so she needn’t worry over it anymore.”
“I think she’ll want something to do over the next few days,” Madeline said. “Don’t you think so?”
“No need to worry her over it.” He put on his hat and glanced at the various piles they had sorted out, and then he stacked a large box of canned goods on top of the one where she’d put the tea and lifted it into his arms. “I’ll take this to start and come back later for more. Do give Mrs. Cummins my apologies. I will let myself out.”
Sixteen
Drew shaded his eyes and looked down toward the docks at Armitage Landing. “Claridge Rindle is far too small for Laurent’s yacht to have sailed up to where we had our picnic. But perhaps, whatever that white residue was, it washed downstream and out to the beach. If someone from the Onde Blanc stepped in it and then onto the deck, that might account for the marks left there.”
“That doesn’t mean someone from the yacht had anything to do with whatever left that residue in the stream,” Nick pointed out.
Drew scowled at him. “Don’t you think I know that? But I have to do something. I have to make sense of all this for all their sakes. For Alice and Will and Tal. Something he saw, something he found. I don’t know what, but something convinced him his father killed Alice. I have to know what it is.”
“Right.”
They were silent for a moment, and then Drew pulled up short, catching Nick by the arm.
“Hullo.”
Nick looked around. “What?”
“There seems to have been some embellishment since last we were here.”
Armitage Landing boasted three well-weathered docks. One of them, however, was not so weathered looking as before.
Nick blinked. “Whitewash?”
“Whitewash,” Drew repeated, dragging two fingers over one of the posts and bringing them back faintly white. “A nice chalky residue.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“I don’t know what it means, but it would definitely leave that kind of residue in the stream and on the deck of Laurent’s yacht. I hadn’t thought of it before.”
“Drew—”
“It’s worth finding out about.” Drew walked toward the old man leaning back in an old slat-backed chair, watching them with a wary eye, the same one he’d seen about several times in the past week. “Good afternoon.”
The man took a measured puff of his pipe and then nodded. “Afternoon.”
“We were just admiring your dock.”
“Aye.” He patted the post he was leaning against. “Had the boy paint her up nice just yesterday, fresh as when she were new.”
“Very nice,” Drew said.
The man nodded serenely. “Aye. French paint it were, too. Whitewash. A bit fussy for a good English dock, mind you, but I weren’t never one to say no to a handsome offer.”
Drew tried his best to look as if he knew what the man was talking about. “Oh, no, indeed. Who would? And was it a good deal of money?”
The man frowned and tapped his pipe against the empty paint can at his feet. “Money? What money?”
“The money you were offered?”
“No, no. Weren’t no money.”
“Then what was your offer?”
“Paint, ye ninny. I told ye already, it were French paint. I told the boy it were a might fine for our like, but he said we may as well have it because of old Jabez.”
“And who’s Jabez?” Nick asked.
“Jabez? Everyone knows old Jabez, eh? Him and me, we fished these waters near sixty year, man and boy, till he took up with that Bill Rinnie after I got me palsy. I can’t say nothin’ about Rinnie, good nor bad, but Jabez’s boys, well they never was much, but they was good lads all the same. So if young Tom give Jem this here posh French paint to do up the dock, well, I warn’t to say no to that. Nor would you.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Drew said. “Would we, Nick, old man?”
Drew bent down and picked up the can, and then he caught his breath. Nick gave him a quizzical look, but Drew had to keep his racing thoughts off his face.
“French, is it? What do you think, Nick? A baffler of a label, wouldn’t you say? Ever see anything like it?”
Nick’s eyes widened as he looked at it, but he kept his expression mild. “I . . . I may have. Can’t quite place it at the moment.”
Drew returned the can to its place at the old man’s feet. “Do you know the whereabouts of Rinnie and his crew just now?”
The man chewed the stem of his pipe, his stoic expression unchanging. “Aye.”
Drew and Nick both looked at him expectantly as he gnawed the pipestem and said nothing.
“Can you tell us?” Drew asked.
The man nodded. “Aye.”
“Well, will you?” Nick urged.
The old man looked as if he might make them extract the information like a rotten molar, but then he chuckled to himself and nodded toward the water. “Out there. Left this mornin’ early, like when old Jabez and me use ter go t’earn our bread.”
“Don’t they usually go out early?” Drew asked.
The old man gave a wheezy laugh. “That lot spend more time up to the pub than out doing a proper. Especially the last few month. They might put out of a mornin’, late mind you, seven or eight o’clock, and come back afore ten. Other times, they mightn’t go out till noon or after.”
Drew nodded. “And they make a good catch, do they?”
The man blew out his breath, making his rubbery lips flap. “Paltry, were you ter ask a true fisherman. Not like they use ter when they had Jabez’s tub and they all three worked the day long.”
“We heard Rinnie came into some inheritance money,” Nick said, “and that’s how he managed the boat.”
“Might well be, but Irene Gallagher never had a shillin’ I ever heard of.”
Drew again considered Claridge Rindle and those little curved marks on the decking of Laurent’s yacht.
“This French whitewash, do you know where it came from?”
The old man shrugged. “France, I expect.”
“I mean, what did Tom have it for?”
“Dunno. My boy, Jem, said Tom were for dumpin’ it like he allus did.”
Nick glanced at Drew. “Dumping it?”
The man puffed thoughtfully and then tapped his pipe against the battered can once more. “I allus thought they was empties he was carrying, but when Jem told me he seen Tom and Bert dumpin’ out proper good paint, I said we’d have a better use of it and told him to bring it on home did he see ’em again.”
“Tom had a lot of these paint cans, did he?” Drew asked, forcing a touch of nonchalance into his voice.
“Now and again.”
“What did he do with them out in the boat?”
The old man shook his head. “No, not out in the boat. What sort of ninny would carry paint out in a boat? On up the shore. But I never saw him paint nothin’. Maybe a buoy oncet. Still, seems a shame to let good paint go a-wastin’ out to the sea.”
Drew thought once again of those faint marks on Laurent’s deck and the traces of white along the waterline of the Rindle. Whitewash or blanc de chaux in French. White of lime.
Drew gave the old man a commiserating nod. “Might I have a word with your Jem? I won’t take up a moment of his time.”
“Aye, he’ll tell ye t’same as me when he gets back.”
Nick huffed impatiently. “Gets back? He’s not here?”
“Gone up to Manchester to see the football, young sir. I wouldn’t have no truck with such things, but he and his mates have gone and no stoppin’ ’em. Back termorrer night.”
“That’s all right,” Drew said. “You’ve been more than helpful, sir.”
He pressed some coins into the old man’s hand, but the fellow pushed them back again.
“Here now! What d’ye take me for? Beggin’ ain’t me way. Ain’t never been. No, sir.”
“Certainly not,” Drew assured him, “and no offense meant.
I just thought you might want some fresh tobacco to fill your pipe. Just between gentlemen.”
Drew offered the coins again.
“Well, put that way.” The old man tucked the money into his waistcoat pocket and tugged the brim of his flat cap. “Thankee kindly, and I’ll smoke it to your good health, sir, and to ye both.”
Drew tipped his own hat, nudged Nick into doing the same, and then hurried him away.
“What perfect imbeciles we’ve all been.” Drew pulled out his pocket watch and thrust the scrap of label under Nick’s nose. “It’s not a D at all. It’s the top half of a B. Blanc de chaux. White of lime. French for whitewash. It all fits.”
Nick glanced back at the freshly painted dock. “Just because it’s French, that doesn’t mean Laurent—”
“Then what made those marks on the deck on his yacht? Crevices still with some traces of whitewash in them. Like the traces of it along the waterline up near the house. Someone must have spilled a bit on his aft deck.”
“But why haul the stuff all the way over from the Continent only to dump it? Unless . . .” Nick grinned abruptly. “Unless you’re bringing in something else.”
“Got it in one. They’ve been getting the stuff in via the paint cans. And Tom Kimlin no doubt thought it better just to give Jem the whitewash than make him wonder why he’d rather dump it.”
Nick shook his head. “But Laurent doesn’t bring in anything. The police have checked a hundred times. We’ve checked, too.”
“Precisely. He drops it off before he comes into port, and Rinnie and his boys pick it up out of the Solent, sealed up in cans of blanc de chaux, neat as you please and no fuss.”
“So that’s why that scrap is so waterlogged.”
“That’s why.” Drew stopped in front of the phone box next to the pub. “I think old Birdsong ought to be in on this, don’t you?”
Nick nodded. “I daresay he’d like to be standing on the dock, waiting for Rinnie and his lot with open arms.”
“Be a good lad and ring him up. Tell him what we’ve come up with, and tell him he ought to get down here before the guests arrive. I think he’s likely to be in a sociable mood and want to come down directly.”
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