by Connie Berry
“I wanted you to know Christine’s all right. She’s still not talking, but she’s fine.”
“She’s not fine.” I spat the word out. “My daughter is sitting in a jail cell, thanks to you.”
“Kate, listen. The custody sergeant on duty, Tamara, is a friend. She’s looking after Christine, making sure she’s safe and well cared for.”
“She wouldn’t be there at all if you’d listened to her. She didn’t meet Alex in the Folly. She didn’t see anyone. She knows nothing about what happened. What about that don’t you understand?”
He started to answer, but I cut him off. “Never mind. I don’t want to hear it.”
“I don’t understand you, Kate.” His voice was so low I almost couldn’t hear. “I’d do anything in my power to protect you, to protect Christine—you know that. But this is beyond my control. If I hadn’t taken Christine into custody, someone else would have.”
I couldn’t speak. I heard myself sob.
Then, before I had time to think about what I was saying, the bitter words that had caught in my throat spilled out. “Scotland was the golden hinge in my life, Tom, the dividing line between past and present. When I met you, all the sadness and loss I’d experienced just melted away. I had a future again.” I could hardly speak, but I kept going. “I loved you. I gave you my heart. I trusted you, and you hurt me.” I sobbed again.
It took him a moment to respond. “I would never hurt you intentionally. You have to know that.”
“Why? How can I know that?”
“So what now? Where do we go from here?”
“We don’t go anywhere. As soon as Christine is released, we’re leaving.”
“You can’t do that,” he said. “You can’t just walk away.”
But I could. And I would.
I heard him take a breath. “We can hold Christine for twenty-four hours. Assuming there’s no additional evidence against her, she’ll be released tomorrow evening.” He stopped abruptly, then cleared his throat. “I’m not giving up on us, Kate. Not without a fight.”
He hung up.
I lay in the dark and let the tears flow. I’d blamed Christine for giving her heart too quickly. Had I done the same, or—a niggling guilt crept in on the heels of my fury—was I being irrational? Did I want a man who would throw integrity to the wind because what he had to do was distasteful to me?
It didn’t matter. We’d turned a corner. Now we could never go back.
Suddenly all I wanted to do was talk to my mother.
Eleven thirty in Long Barston would be six thirty PM in Ohio. Mom would be at the house, eating dinner, probably watching something on TV.
Blinking back tears, I punched in my home number.
The phone picked up after two rings, but the voice that answered wasn’t my mother’s.
“Kate? How did you know?” The voice belonged to Charlotte, my best friend and one of the part-time workers at the antiques shop.
“Know what?”
Silence. Then a tiny sound, like someone swallowing. “I was just about to call you. Your mom’s had some kind of attack. She’d phoned me around three to take over at the shop because her headache had gotten worse. I stopped by after work to make sure she was okay. I found her on the floor in your kitchen. The EMTs called it a possible stroke. I’m so sorry, Kate. They’ve taken her to Jackson Falls Memorial. I’m getting a few things together for her right now. How soon can you fly home?”
How soon? The magnitude of the choice I faced hit me like a sucker punch. Christine was in police custody, a suspect in a vicious attack. My mother was in a hospital in Jackson Falls, paralyzed—or worse.
“When will they know more?”
“Tomorrow. They’ve scheduled tests. Let me know when your plane arrives. I’ll pick you up at the airport. And I’ll call you the minute I hear something—I promise. Try not to worry.” She broke off. “Except I know you will, only try not to.”
I mumbled my thanks, and we hung up.
How could I be in two places at once?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sunday, December 20th
The bells of St. Æthelric’s were ringing and ringing. Wouldn’t stop.
Panic rose as I tried to descend those zigzaggy wooden stairs, my feet slipping out from under me. Trying again.
My heart pounded. Somehow I had to warn—
The dream evaporated as I realized the ringing was my cell phone. Christine? I reached out to answer, but the duvet had twisted itself around my legs.
I turned on the swing-arm lamp and squinted at the call-back number. It was Charlotte. The hairs lifted on the back of my neck.
Fingers trembling, I pushed redial. “Charlotte, what’s happened?”
“Nothing yet. I wanted to give you an update.”
“It’s the middle of the night in Ohio.”
“Only one AM. No problem. You know I’m a night owl. Anyway, I just got off the phone with the nurses’ station. You can call your mother’s doctor Monday after ten in the morning, Ohio time. He’ll have the test results by then. Here’s the number.”
I scrambled out of bed and found the notebook and pen I keep in my handbag. When I’d taken down the doctor’s information, I asked, “Any change?”
“The nurses say she’s starting to wake up. That’s good news. Still too soon to know if she sustained any impairment. She’s scheduled for an MRI and Doppler scan in the morning. Maybe an echocardiogram, depending on what they find. When she’s fully awake, they’ll test her memory and cognition. Doug is making sure she gets the best care.”
“Tell him thank you.” Charlotte’s husband, Doug, a pediatrician, knew every doctor in northern Ohio. I felt relieved to know he was watching over my mother’s care.
“Have you gotten your flight yet?”
“It’s complicated.” I spent the next several minutes explaining everything to Charlotte.
“Oh, Kate. You must be beside yourself with worry.”
I started to cry. “I have to fly home to be with mom, but how can I leave Christine?”
“Listen, Kate. Your mother is being well looked after. Wait until we get the results of the tests. Talk to the doctor. Then you can make up your mind.”
“What about the shop?”
“I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.”
We were about to hang up when she added, “This is none of my business, but I’m going to say it anyway. Have you thought about how much Tom must be suffering?”
I hadn’t. I couldn’t.
All I could think about was the fact that I was far from home with no one to help me. Oh, Lady Barbara and Vivian would sympathize, but what could they actually do to help?
Then I remembered Ivor Tweedy.
* * *
The bells of St. Æthelric’s, the real ones this time, announced the end of the Sunday service. Parishioners, bundled in coats and scarves, streamed by as I hurried through the church parking area toward Ivor’s antiques shop. If the shop was closed, I’d phone him.
The shop was open. Entering, I heard the bell jangle and smelled the dusty, musty chemical bouquet of the past. This was familiar. This felt like home.
Ivor bounced on the balls of his feet, then pulled a pained expression.
“You’ve got to stop that bouncing thing. You’ll do further damage to your hips.”
“Habit of a lifetime. Hips are already shot. If I were an antique, you’d call it patina.”
When I didn’t laugh, he cocked his head. “Don’t tell me there’s been another theft.”
My eyes filled. “Ivor, I need your help.”
We sat in a pair of folding campaign chairs that Ivor claimed had been carried into the Battle of Waterloo. I talked and cried. He listened, made tea, and handed me tissues.
“Your friend is right,” he said gravely. “Our first priority is to clear Christine. But how are we going to do that?”
I loved that we. It reminded me of my mother. It reminded me I wasn’t alon
e.
“My mother says to knock on the door in front of you. The only door I can see is that eccentric collector who texts. Someone doesn’t want me to see the book on the Hoard. That tells me there’s something in it we need to know. The collector has a copy—at least we think he has—but how are we going to get him to talk to us?”
“I spent several hours last night thinking about that. We offer him an incentive. Come, take a look. Ah.” Ivor pulled a face as he pushed himself out of the chair.
He opened the drawer behind the sales counter and removed several objects.
“What do you think?” He handed me a carved lavender jadeite snuff bottle, roughly rectangular in shape, about two and a half inches high. The pink tourmaline stopper fit tightly. Probably original.
My mouth went dry. My fingertips tingled.
“I bought this from an estate sale in Guildford. Chinese, of course. Eighteenth century.”
“How much is it worth?” I turned the bottle over in my hand, assessing the value. Jadeite is the most precious form of jade, and lavender is a prized color.
“I paid six thousand for it at auction. I’d say it’s worth at least eight.”
“I’m impressed, but it may not be old enough for our collector.”
“We’ll see. How about this?” He handed me a small, carved ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child of a type known in iconology as Virgo Lactans. The Virgin sat on a backless throne, offering her left breast to the Child. He rested one hand on her breast while holding an apple in the other.
“The carving is exquisite,” I said, feeling my heart thump. “Look how the artist has captured the soft undulations of Mary’s mantle and skirt. Tell me about it.”
“English. Unknown artist. Last quarter of the thirteenth century. There’s one very like it in the Victoria and Albert.”
“That may do the trick.”
“Just wait.” His eyes sparkled as he unfolded a square of snowy-white cloth to reveal a flat turquoise glass profile of a face, made in the distinctive style of the Egyptian Amarna period. My cheeks started to burn. My mouth felt dry. My fingers tingled. I took in the high cheekbones, the almond-shaped eyes, the long neck, the fleshy lips. The forehead was cut at an angle to allow for the now-missing pschent, the high double crown symbolizing Upper and Lower Egypt.
“Akhenaten, the heretic king.” My voice was barely a whisper.
Ivor handed me the small glass head, resting on a square of black velvet cloth. “Well done, Kate. Eighteenth dynasty, mid fourteenth century BC. The inlay was obviously part of a larger composition, probably set into a piece of jewelry or furniture. Only the head survives—amazing, really, because after Akhenaten’s death, the priests did their best to erase all memory of the pharaoh who dared abolish all Egypt’s many gods, with a single exception.”
“The sun god, Aten. Where did you find it?”
“In Jordan, while I was still traveling. This was one of my first purchases. I gave every penny I had at the time for it.”
“And you want to sell?”
“If it means finding a killer and clearing your daughter. Now, don’t cry. I’ve been a selfish person my whole life. Now I have an opportunity to do something really fine. I won’t regret it, you know.” He winked. “I have a plan.”
I wiped my eyes and hugged him. With my fingertips still tingling, I handed him the small glass inlay. “If this doesn’t get his attention, nothing will.”
“Let’s find out. We’ll offer him all three objects and see which bait he takes.” Ivor spent a minute or so keying a message into his mobile with both thumbs. “There,” he said, pushing a final key.
We waited, holding our breath, as if the slightest movement of air might interrupt our tenuous electronic connection with the collector.
“He may not be checking his texts,” Ivor said finally. “It took him two days to answer before.”
I tried and failed to hide my disappointment.
“If I don’t hear back by tonight, I’ll text him again.”
“That missing book is the only lead I have to the identity of the thief—and maybe the killer. I have to do something to clear my daughter.” I pulled on my jacket and slung my handbag over my shoulder. “Call me if you hear from him. And, Ivor, you can’t know how much this means to me.”
“And to me, dear girl.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The walk to the Three Magpies took me past the Finchley Arms. The sidewalk signboard said TODAY’S SPECIAL: NOTHING. YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL.
“Hi, Jayne,” I said, sinking into a chair near the fireplace. “Have you seen the sign outside the Arms?”
“Better than the one they put out last week,” she said, sliding clean glasses into the slots above the bar. “We’re offering family-style dinners on Sundays now. I put that on our signboard. So the Arms put on their sign, ‘Leave the kiddies at home. We’re a pub, not Disneyland.’”
“At least they have a sense of humor.”
“They have that, but what bothers me is the bitterness. No matter what we do, they mock. I know plenty of villages with more than one pub. They do bar food—that’s fine. We offer something more. Competition doesn’t have to become combat.”
“Have you thought about discussing it with them?”
Jayne rolled her eyes. “Briony won’t even say hello on the street. If she sees me at Tesco, she turns her cart around and goes in the opposite direction.” She handed me the menu card. Her eyebrows drew together. “You look knackered. How is the young woman who was attacked?”
“Alive. That’s all we know.”
If the village hadn’t heard that Christine was helping the police with their inquiries, I wasn’t going to tell them. I had to hold myself together, because the only way to prove my daughter innocent was to prove someone else guilty.
I was more convinced than ever that the attacks and the theft were connected. The psychotherapist Carl Jung called it synchronicity, the theory that seemingly unrelated but simultaneously occurring events are connected. My mother had a simpler explanation: “When you see things together, things that shouldn’t be together, there’s always a reason.”
That had proven true in Scotland. And now?
Even if the vicar wasn’t guilty, only a slight twisting of the theory pointed to a connection between the attacks and the theft. Lady Susannah’s ring had been snatched out from under our very noses. And if my theory about Tabitha’s list was correct, eleven other precious objects were missing as well. Along with two copies of the Swiggett book. Someone was going to great lengths to make sure the original inventory couldn’t be compared to the present one.
The only anomaly in recent events was the murder of Carlos Esteva. Why had he been killed? The only reason I could think of was because he’d witnessed someone attacking Tabitha. Maybe he was the outlier that would put the whole picture in focus.
“Jayne,” I said, when she brought the crab salad I’d ordered, “have either you or Gavin thought any more about that man from Venezuela?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you thought of anything you didn’t mention earlier?”
“I never saw him at all, if you remember. Gav just caught a glimpse of him near the garden at the Hall.”
I spread my napkin on my lap. “The other day you mentioned seeing Tabitha with the vicar. She was tearful.”
“Poor thing. Now that we know she was pregnant, I understand what she must have been going through.”
“Did you overhear her conversation with the vicar?”
Jayne’s eyes widened. “Kate, I don’t listen to the conversations of my patrons.”
“Of course not.” I shook my head. “But sometimes you hear snatches, right? It could be important.”
She tipped her head to one side. “I heard one thing, now you mention it, but it didn’t make sense.” She bit her lip. “Tabitha was crying. The vicar put his arm around her and said, ‘Don’t worry. No one will ever know.’”
My c
ell phone rang. It was Ivor.
He was almost breathless with excitement. “Our collector texted back. He wants to see everything we’ve got. Tomorrow, eleven AM. His house in Bury. I have the address.”
I slid my phone into my handbag.
Knock on the door in front of you.
* * *
“Kate—back for another climb to the top of the tower?” Vicar Foxe’s handsome face radiated good humor.
I laughed.
Not sincerely enough, because his face grew serious. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my daughter, Christine.”
He leaned forward at his desk and listened intently as I told him about her arrest and her refusal to explain where she was when Alex Devereux was attacked.
“And here’s me, making stupid jokes. My sense of humor gets me in trouble.”
“That’s only the first reason I’ve come. There’s more.” I glanced at the closed door that led into the office of his administrative assistant, an older woman with a motherly smile. I could hear the tap, tap, tap of her keyboard. “I’ve been doing some research, following leads that might explain why these attacks are happening at Finchley Hall.”
“Have you found anything?” He picked up a pen and began clicking it open and shut.
“Maybe.” I tried to look at him, but my gaze shifted to the wall behind him with its framed certificates and colored print of Jerusalem’s western wall.
I forced myself to look him in the eye. “What I found involves you.”
He stared down at the pen, then up at me and exhaled. “Ah, I see. Would you excuse me for a moment?” He picked up the phone receiver and punched in two numbers. After a second or two, he said, “Hattie, would you join me in my office? I’m with Kate Hamilton.”
“I’m sorry,” I said pointlessly. “I wanted to give you an opportunity to explain before I told anyone else.”
“Kind of you.” He smiled. “I knew it would come out eventually.”
The door opened and Hattie Nuthall appeared, carrying a stack of file folders.
“She found the news articles from Chelmsford,” the vicar said. “She wonders if I’m the one attacking young women at Finchley Hall.”