by Nancy Warren
He turned to a filing cabinet against the wall. The drawer opened fluidly, and it took him no time at all to find the file he wanted. I got the feeling he’d consulted it fairly recently.
He placed the folder on his desk, turned on a desk lamp and flipped past what looked to be written statements and reports to a collection of photocopies. They weren’t as sharp as the original photographs would have been but definitely better than nothing.
He said, “These photographs had been taken for insurance purposes, so the details were quite good.”
I looked carefully at the pictures of the watch, front, back and open.
“I’m almost certain this is the watch Elizabeth Palmer bought for her husband.” I pointed to the vine design on the front as well as the hallmarks on the back.
“I thought I recognized it from the painting of Grayson Timmins hanging in the Beasleys’ dining room, but seeing the photo of the hallmarks on the back makes me nearly certain.”
“What kind of fool puts the very evidence that confirms him a murderer into a white elephant sale?”
“Mrs. Beasley was in charge of the white elephant. She told me she’d rooted around in her own house to add some items to the sale and that her husband wasn’t too pleased.”
He looked up at his boxes of stamps. “It’s exactly the kind of thing my wife would do. She’d see a box of old stamps and think they had no value. She’s always trying to get me to pare down my collection.”
He turned off the light. “Well, I now have an even stronger sense that Robert Beasley killed his father. He’d always kept it hidden, and his wife found it and put it in the white elephant sale.”
I nodded. “And Robert Beasley saw Elizabeth Palmer at the fair with that watch that would prove him to be the murderer. He had no option but to kill her, or so he thought. Having got away with murder once, perhaps he thought he could do it again?”
“It’s a fine theory, Lucy. What we’re missing is proof.”
Chapter 23
I knew that both Harry Bloom and all the other police officers who had worked on the murder case all those years must have gone over and over Robert Beasley’s alibi.
“Timelines,” I said. “Everything seems to revolve around time. Grayson Timmins was obsessively punctual, while Robert Beasley takes tardiness to a whole new level. He’s a mass of contradictions. He says his childhood was happy, but no one else thinks so. He seems slow and dreamy, but his hobby’s running.”
“He had a second sport.”
Something about the way Harry Bloom threw out that piece of information made my stomach jump.
“He was on the school archery team.”
I felt frustrated and wished, not for the first time, that I’d spent more time becoming a better witch. Someone who could see through lies and find the truth.
I stood up and thanked Harry Bloom for his help. I knew I sounded disappointed, and so did he when he said, “I’m worried that the wrong man is going to be convicted of this murder.”
I nodded. “And the right man is going to get away with it yet again.”
He banged his fist into the palm of his hand. “Unless we can draw a connection between Robert Beasley’s stepfather and Elizabeth Palmer.”
He’d been a cop for more than three decades, while I had only been an amateur sleuth for less than half a year. “How do we do that?”
The retired police detective with decades of experience under his belt slumped back in his chair. “I have no idea.”
I walked back to his desk and gazed into that open file. As I did, my fingers began to tingle ever so slightly. Normally that happened when my anger got out of control, but I’d become so much better at keeping my emotions in check that I was rarely embarrassed by electric sparks shooting out of the ends of my fingers. I glanced down in horror, but my hands looked perfectly normal. Some people had a nose for trouble. I wondered if I had fingertips of intuition.
In case that was it, I asked if I could look over the folder one more time. I looked at each of the photographs again. What was I missing? Was there a clue here somewhere?
I flipped over the pages. There was a photograph of quite an old land deed. I said, “What’s this?”
Harry Bloom looked over my shoulder. “One of the leads I followed that didn’t go anywhere. The murdered man’s ancestors owned a great deal of the land in and surrounding the village. Of course, what hadn’t already been sold off came to the wife and, when she died, to her son.”
I was staring at one area of the map. My fingers were really tingling now. “This area wasn’t developed thirty years ago. But that’s where Nora and her husband live, in a subdivision that can’t be more than ten or twenty years old.”
And then my brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “This shaded area, was all this land owned by Beasley’s father?”
“Yes. Anything built on it was leasehold.”
“But this plot here, unless I’m reading this map wrong, is where Elizabeth lived.” I felt very confused. “But I’ve been there. It’s a Victorian manor house.”
“That’s right. But the land beneath it belonged to Grayson Timmins at the time of his death and was passed on to his son.”
This was very confusing to an American. “You mean, you can buy a house in England and not own the land?”
“Yes. People often own houses but not the land they’re built on. They pay yearly land rent, and there’s a set of covenants attached to the lease. They may need the permission of the leaseholder to do things like dig up hedges, extend the house or add buildings to the land.”
I looked at the map. At one time, most of the village must’ve paid rent to Grayson Timmins.
“We know that Jason Palmer was in financial trouble. Maybe he and his wife stopped paying the rent?” But who shot someone in the heart with an arrow because they hadn’t paid their rent on time? It didn’t make sense.
He was staring down at the old map as intently as I was. “No. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s the first time we’ve found a connection.” He tapped his fingertips on the edge of that paper. “Well done, Lucy. It would be well worth finding out what the relationship was between tenant and landlord.”
Suddenly, the former detective looked much more energetic. “I’ve been looking for another hobby. I’ll see what I can find out.”
I was very pleased to have Harry Bloom on my team. While I trusted Ian Chisholm completely, our relationship was just too complicated. Harry Bloom was much older, happily married, and had a lot of time on his hands. Also, unlike my vampires, he was awake during the same hours I was. A real plus in a sleuthing sidekick.
I was just about to leave Harry Bloom’s house when my mobile rang. It was Mrs. Beasley. I hoped against hope that someone at the white elephant sale had fallen in love with the poodle lamp and she was begging for its return. I am nothing if not an optimist.
However, the minute I answered my phone and she spoke, I could tell she was calling about something much more serious than the world’s ugliest lamp. When she said, “Lucy? Is that you?” Her voice trembled, and she sounded on the verge of tears.
“Yes, it’s me. Is everything all right?” My fingers had started to tingle again, but I thought that was just empathy. Or fear. She had the kind of tone that people in horror movies have right before the monster rips their head off. We’d vanquished the soul-sucking demon who tried to take over my knitting shop some months ago, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another one in the area. Though how would she know to call me?
“I found a watch.” She huffed in and out a few times as though she were hyperventilating. “Could you come over and have a look at it?” There was so much unsaid in those few words. Now I understood the source of her fear. It wasn’t a soul-sucking demon she was worried about. It was her husband and the possibility that he might have killed his stepfather.
I suspected that given the choice between a horrific monster and discovering the man she loved was a different kind of monster, she might’ve
opted for the soul-sucking demon.
I didn’t say any of that, of course. “Is your husband at home?”
Now she whispered, as though he might be in the other room. “No. But I expect him within the hour. Please. Could you come to the house?”
Not only was I helpless against the appeal in her voice, but if she had that watch, then we had Robert Beasley. “I’ll be right there.”
Briefly I explained to Harry Bloom what was going on. Before I’d even finished speaking, he was pulling on his jacket. I felt the echo of his detective days, when a phone call might mean any number of disasters had befallen his town, and it was his job to solve mysteries, punish the guilty, and preserve the innocent. Rather unnecessarily given his actions, he said, “I’m coming with you.”
Within two minutes, we were outside, and he locked the door of his cottage. I looked doubtfully at Gran’s old Ford. “Do you want me to drive?” I asked, hoping very much he’d say no.
To my relief, he shook his head. “We’ll walk across the fields. It’s quicker, and Beasley won’t be alerted if he comes home early by one of our cars sitting outside his house.”
Not only did that make sense, but I was relieved not to have to drive. He strode to the end of his driveway, very quickly for a retired gentleman. We crossed the narrow road, climbed over a stile, and began walking across a farmer’s field. I loved climbing over stiles. It was one of the English customs that I found most endearing. There were ancient rights-of-way all over the country, and private landowners just had to put up with people crossing their land. However, it also meant that the traveler had to contend with livestock. I wasn’t a particularly nervous woman, but I didn’t grow up with sheep and cows and Old McDonald’s farm.
There were four or five cows in the field, and the way they glared at us, I did not think they knew about the ancient right-of-way thing. I scurried up until I was walking beside Harry Bloom. “Are those cows friendly?”
He looked down at me in some kindness. “They take some getting used to, I admit. But most of the time, if you don’t bother them, they don’t bother you.”
One cow seemed to be glaring at me particularly fiercely. I noticed that she had a calf standing beside her. “What do you mean most of the time?”
The mother cow took a couple of steps toward us, and I thought that if she just sat on me it would all be over. She must have weighed a thousand pounds. “The mothers do sometimes become a bit aggressive. It’s the protective instinct.”
Mama took another step toward me and glared. “She lowered her head. Is that bad?”
“If they charge us, the best thing to do is run like hell.”
I should have insisted that we drive. I picked up the pace. There was another fence, and another stile, coming up. That cow seemed to be the leader of her small herd, and as she made her way toward us, so did the rest of them. I was feeling distinctly nervous now, and I suddenly realized that my London-born former cop was just as nervous as I was. We were walking so fast, the pair of us were breathing heavily. I had one eye on the advancing cows and another on the ground, where any number of cow-pats bulged like an obstacle course.
“I’m sure they’re just curious,” he panted. Gentleman that he was, he stood back and let me clamber over the stile first. I fell into the next field, and he landed right beside me. We stopped to take a breath and assess what new challenges lay ahead of us. Fortunately, this field appeared to be empty. “It’s just over there,” he said in an encouraging tone.
“Right,” I said. They were only cows. What harm could they do? And then I heard a sound like a clump of wet mud being thrown against the side of a barn. I looked down and discovered that I had stepped right in the middle of a fresh cow pie. I tugged my foot free, but a lot of cow excrement came along with it.
“Come along. No time to waste.”
He was right, so I didn’t stop to scrape what I could off my shoe but rushed along trying to keep up.
Fortunately, this field led to the end of the lane, and down the lane was the Beasleys’ home. Mrs. Beasley must’ve been watching for me, for I’d barely started up the path to the door when it flew open. “Lucy. I’m so glad you’re here.” She looked quite panicked. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, and her lips trembled. Then she saw Harry Bloom and took a step back into the house. “Oh.”
I introduced Harry Bloom and explained that I had been with him when the call came. I said he knew quite a bit about antique watches. I didn’t explain that he was a retired police officer because I didn’t want her any more freaked out than she already was.
She looked doubtful, but what could she do? “Come in.”
Out of respect for her beautiful home, I toed off my filthy shoes and left them outside, though I felt quite vulnerable coming into the home where a possible killer lived in nothing but stocking feet.
I could feel Harry Bloom’s impatience. I had quite a bit of impatience myself, but I also could see that bringing an extra person had really thrown Mrs. Beasley. I said, as soothingly as I could, “Mr. Bloom is an expert on watches. You can trust him.” She looked into my eyes, and while I tried not to use my magic to manipulate her, I said a little calming spell. Frankly, I needed it for myself as well as for her.
Her shoulders dropped down from around her ears, and her lips stopped trembling. “I’m sure I’m being foolish. I just—it looks so much like the one in that painting.”
I knew that Harry Bloom wanted to question her, so I shot him a warning glance. I was pretty sure I could come up with most of the questions he wanted to ask her. “Where did you find it?”
She heaved a sigh. “Do you remember when I told you that I’d taken some of his old bits and bobs and put them in the white elephant sale?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, he’d been quite cross with me and, naturally, once he said he didn’t want those things sold, I gave him back the box to bring home. Just today I thought if these things were important to him, we should display them in some way. I thought I might get a little cabinet, and so I took the box out to have a look at what was inside it, and that’s when I saw the watch.”
“Was the watch inside that box when Mr. Beasley reclaimed it from the white elephant sale?”
She shook her head. There was a line of worry between her brows. “No. It was just some old lead soldiers and ancient wooden toys and, I don’t know, rubbish, I’d have called it. I’m sure there was no watch.”
“But there was one today?”
The worry frown deepened. “I suppose I’d better show you.”
We followed her into the dining room, and there was the silver pocket watch sitting on the dining room table. She had the dining room lights all on, so it was clear that she had come in here in order to compare the watch with the one in the painting.
I drew closer, feeling the gloom of despair once more in that room. “May I?”
“I suppose so.”
I picked it up. I knew the second I did that it was the same watch Elizabeth had shown me on the day she was killed. Still, I did my due diligence. I opened it. I looked at the hallmark symbols. And then I passed the watch to Harry Bloom. “This is the same watch Elizabeth showed me only minutes before she was killed.”
Chapter 24
Mrs. Beasley tottered as though she might faint and plopped herself down into one of the dining chairs. She didn’t say anything, but I felt her pain and confusion and sorrow just as keenly as though she had screamed and wailed and cried out. I wanted to comfort her, but how could I? We’d just proven that her husband was a murderer. All I could really give her was confirmation that she’d done the right thing. “You did the only thing you could.”
“There must be some mistake,” she said in a small voice.
I thought the mistake was that Robert Beasley had hidden that watch in the same spot he’d kept it for so many years.
I felt sad for this woman, and her pain was like a physical presence in the room, but Harry Bloom was clearly d
elighted. He had the sense not to jump up and down and throw his fist in the air, but as easily as I could feel her pain, I could feel his triumph. However, he was an old pro, and all he said was, “We need to call the police.”
Mrs. Beasley put her head in her hands, but she didn’t argue. I pulled out my mobile, but before I could call anyone, a voice said, “What’s going on in here?”
As Robert Beasley came into the dining room, his wife made a sound like a parched mouse trying to squeak. I supposed we’d been so busy studying that watch that none of us had heard him come in. Or else he’d come in with great stealth. No doubt he’d seen my shoes outside and knew perfectly well that I was here.
He glanced at me, and then he glanced at Harry Bloom, and his face hardened. “What are you doing here?”
And then his gaze fell on the watch in Harry Bloom’s hand. Bloom turned, and the two men faced each other. We women might as well have been in a different country for all the attention they paid us. This was a very old standoff, and I felt the aggression from both of them.
Harry Bloom said, “I’ve been looking for this watch for a very long time.”
Robert Beasley’s color went beetroot and then paled to deathly white. “That’s not what it looks like.”
The urbane, petunia-planting, tea-making retired gentleman I had spent the day with was gone. Harry Bloom drew himself up taller, and his eyes were steely as Ian Chisholm’s when he was about to arrest a murderer. “No? Tell me what it looks like.”
Robert Beasley turned to his wife, who was staring at him through wide, scared eyes. He took a step toward her. “Darling. Surely you don’t think I’d kill the only father I ever knew?”
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Then where did the watch come from?”
“I found it.” His gaze dropped, and he said those words the way a teenager might when they’ve been caught out in wrongdoing.