by Nancy Warren
“You found it?” Harry Bloom’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Your father never let it out of his sight or his hand. I can only assume that you found it when you bludgeoned him to death.”
We all shuddered at the way he described the murder, so brutally. Robert Beasley reached for his wife’s hand, but she pulled hers away before he could touch her and clutched her fingers in her lap.
He looked so sad. “No. I found it in the grate. There.” He indicated the fireplace in the dining room, underneath the picture of his dead stepfather. “Months later, after he was dead. We barely used the dining room for obvious reasons. But Mother decided to have a dinner. I cleaned out the grate, and there it was.”
Harry Bloom did not look convinced. “That’s a heartwarming story. Why did you never bother to tell anyone?”
Robert Beasley backed up until he was leaning against the heavy mantle above the fireplace. “Because by that time, we’d already had the insurance money. That watch was worth quite a lot of money. If I admitted I’d found the watch, I would’ve had to give the insurance money back but, worst of all, I would’ve faced questions exactly like the ones you’re throwing at me now.” He looked like a man at the end of his rope. “I did not kill my stepfather. But that watch was very sentimental. I’d have liked to wear it as a memento, but I couldn’t. So I kept it in my box of old treasures from childhood. Sometimes, when my wife was out and no one was expected, I used to wear it. For comfort.”
Bloom wasn’t buying it. “And then your wife found it and the box of what you call your boyhood treasures and put all the things up for sale in the white elephant booth at the village fête.”
We all knew that was true, and Robert Beasley nodded. He didn’t seem so sure of himself now. He stared down at the floor and, with the toe of his shoe, worried the edge of the British India carpet.
Harry Bloom said, “And Elizabeth Palmer bought that watch.”
He didn’t raise his head. He nodded again.
“Elizabeth showed that watch to Lucy here. She was very excited. It was going to be a gift for her husband to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. That’s the silver anniversary,” he said in a patronizing tone, as though Robert Beasley might not know this fact.
“And then within minutes of showing Lucy that watch, she was shot through the heart with an arrow. I believe you’re quite a good archer, Mr. Beasley, aren’t you?”
He raised his head now. “Me and half the county. Besides, why would I kill Elizabeth over a watch? She was a nice woman. I could’ve gone to her and explained the situation. She’d have let me buy it back from her. She was that sort.”
“And yet, that watch wasn’t with Elizabeth’s body. Perhaps you can explain how it comes to be back with you?”
There was a dreadful moment of silence. Harry Bloom continued, “Because you saw Elizabeth with that watch, she was clearly showing everyone her new purchase. Someone was bound to recognize it eventually, so you slipped back here and got your bow and arrow and walked down the lane to the village hall. No one would see you. Everyone was at the fête. You crept up to the second floor, where you had a clear view of the village green, and you waited. All she had to do was come into view, and you had a clear shot.”
“No.”
“Once you shot her, there was bound to be chaos and panic, and you could stash your bow, ready to pick up later, run over to the fair, drop to your knees beside the body pretending to be one of the concerned friends and pick up that watch.”
“I tell you I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t.” He looked at his wife again, but her hands were covering her face. “All right. I did see Elizabeth with that watch. I planned to talk to her quietly and see if I could buy it back. Before I had a chance to do that, she was killed.” His eyes dropped back down to the carpet. “I admit I’m not proud of what happened next. It was in a paper bag. When she was hit by the arrow, the bag was knocked out of her hand. I didn’t even think. There was nothing I could do for Elizabeth. She wasn’t going to need that watch anymore. Poor woman was never going to celebrate her wedding anniversary. The watch was mine anyway. My wife put it into the white elephant sale by mistake. I was only reclaiming my own property.”
“Except that watch is the piece of evidence that ties you to the murder of your stepfather. And now to the murder of Elizabeth Palmer.”
“No! I told you. I found that watch in the grate. It must have fallen in his struggle with the burglar.”
“Robert. You’ve had thirty years to come up with a story. Is that really the best you can do?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Well, I don’t believe you. And I doubt very much whether a judge and jury will believe you, either.”
Mrs. Beasley began to sob noiselessly into her hands. I thought back to that map I’d seen. “You own the land that Jason and Elizabeth’s house sits on, isn’t that correct?”
Everyone looked to me now. I suppose it was a bit of a drastic change of subject, but somehow I was certain it was relevant. My fingers had been tingling when I saw that map.
“Yes. They were nice people.”
“Did you try to get rid of them as tenants? Were they behind on their rent?”
“You don’t understand. They own the house. I only own the land it sits on, by ancient right. I couldn’t get rid of them as tenants if I wanted to. And I wouldn’t want to. They were nice people.”
He hadn’t answered my second question. “We know that Jason was in bad financial trouble. Had he stopped paying the rent?”
He shrugged. “I hadn’t raised that rent in years. It didn’t matter. After my father died, I sold land to anyone who wanted it. I’m not some feudal lord. Quite a number of our neighbors wanted to buy their land. Most of them were easy decisions, but it was a bit difficult to sell the fields to a developer who wanted to put in that subdivision. If it hadn’t been a local man, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Father would’ve turned in his grave. But”—here his eyes rose to contemplate the portrait of Grayson Timmins staring fiercely back—“he was a man who looked to the past. He wanted to keep things the way they’d always been. He’d never sell any of the land, and he refused to give permission to any landowner to expand their properties or add more outbuildings.
“He liked our village to remain peaceful and as it had always been, as though we were stuck in the nineteenth century. I expect he’d have disapproved of the train if he could’ve stopped it, but once it was here, he liked to make sure it ran on time.” He shook his head. “But you can’t stop progress. Besides, taxes were rising, and there were the death duties when he died. It made much more sense to sell the fields for subdivision, which would bring more people into the area and, as I said, I was only too happy to sell land to the locals who’d owned houses and farms for centuries.”
Because I didn’t know what else to say, I went with, “You must’ve made a lot of money.”
“I hope I was reasonable. I tried to be. But yes, we’ve been able to live comfortably off the investments for years.”
Harry Bloom took over. “That’s all very interesting, Mr. Beasley. Perhaps you’d like to repeat all this down at the station.”
He looked like a little boy who’d been caught out in mischief. “The station? Are you arresting me?”
“I’m not in the business of arresting people anymore.” I thought he was quite disappointed that he had to say those words. “But I believe the detectives would be very interested in hearing how you came to have this watch in your possession.”
Robert Beasley looked wildly toward the window, and I wondered if he might try to make a break for it, and then his shoulders slumped. “Fine.”
Harry Bloom said, “Mrs. Beasley? May I use your telephone?”
She still couldn’t speak. She nodded.
I wanted to leave. I really wanted to leave. I didn’t particularly want the police to find me here; it would cause too many awkward questions. Especially if it was Ian Chisholm who showed up, as I s
uspected it would be, as he was the one investigating the cold case. But how could I leave poor Mrs. Beasley? She’d done the right thing, the brave thing, by calling me, and perhaps now she regretted it. She hadn’t realized that I would come with the former police detective and that he would so quickly turn her husband over to the police.
And so I waited with her. It wasn’t Ian who came after all, but DI Thomas. He didn’t seem bothered that I was there. He was more interested in Harry Bloom and Robert Beasley. After the former detective had gone through his theory, Robert Beasley was taken away.
“Oh, what have I done?” Florence cried, burying her head in her hands once more.
“The right thing,” I assured her. Though there’d been something very sincere in her husband’s story. But good liars could always sound sincere.
Chapter 25
The next day in the shop, Violet was in a really good mood. In running a retail store, I’d discovered that a salesperson in a good mood sells a lot more than one who’s grumpy and out of sorts. Violet sold nearly twice as much as she normally did, and that put me in a good mood as well.
One thing was puzzling me, though. The possibility that Robert Beasley was telling the truth. Okay, I admitted that it wasn’t terribly likely, but what if he had found that watch in the grate? What if Jason Palmer got away with murder because of me and my interfering?
I was so bothered that I drove back to Harry Bloom’s house and asked him to make me a copy of that map. He shook his head at me. “Lucy, you solved the case.”
“But don’t you think it’s possible that Robert Beasley is telling the truth?”
He narrowed his eyes at me and shook his head. “No. Frankly I don’t.”
I’d found him watering his freshly planted petunias, and when he’d finished, he said, “Come on, then.”
I followed him up to his office. Though he had a photocopier in the corner, after looking at his file for a moment, he picked the whole thing up and handed it to me. “Just make sure to return this when you’re done. Not that I think I’ll need it anymore. I just like to keep some of these for posterity.”
“Do you really not think there is even the tiniest possibility that Robert Beasley might have been telling the truth?”
“Of course, there’s always the tiniest possibility. Our job isn’t to judge them. Lucy, our job is to gather sufficient evidence so that a judge and jury can debate the facts, with the help of highly priced solicitors and barristers of course, and try to determine that justice is done.”
“But two days ago, we were convinced Jason Palmer had killed his wife.”
“And perhaps he did. And perhaps Robert Beasley killed his stepfather.”
“Two murders by two separate killers?” I asked.
“Or Robert Beasley killed them both. As I said before, we’ve done our job.”
He seemed to forget that my job was to run a knitting shop. This other gig I’d picked up was clearly a side hustle, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was so good at it. Or that he wasn’t letting thirty years of frustration influence his opinion.
However, I didn’t feel like hanging around and arguing with him in case he decided to take that precious folder back again. I thanked him and returned to my shop. I took the folder upstairs. Since I had to go to Joanna’s farmhouse that night for the Friday knit-in and Scarlett was helping out in the shop that afternoon, I slipped upstairs for a couple of hours of peace and quiet.
I was very fond of my cousin Violet, but I would be really glad when she was gone and I had the place to myself again. Well, alone apart from the vampires who seemed to come and go as though this was their clubhouse.
I opened the folder and began going through each piece of paper once more. I knew that Harry Bloom was right and there was a very efficient justice system, but I also knew that justice was blind. I had two perfectly good eyes, and I was determined to use them so that the wrong person wasn’t convicted of a murder they hadn’t committed. Double points to me if the right person was convicted.
Chapter 26
I was poring over the map as though secrets might be revealed to me if I stared at it long enough. But it was a like a geometry puzzle. And I was never any good at geometry. I don’t know how long I’d have studied that map feeling as though I was missing something if Nyx hadn’t jumped up and meowed in my face. That pulled me out of my reverie and made me look at the clock. Dinnertime.
I got up and stretched out my aching back, opened a can of her favorite tuna and put it in the dish and then freshened her water. While she sat daintily munching, I decided to be a good cousin and make dinner for Violet and me. I wasn’t the world’s greatest cook, but I thought I could manage something simple. I opened the freezer and stared inside.
There were the frozen salmon fillets I had picked up the other day when I felt like I needed to eat more healthy. Of course, they needed to be thawed, and I didn’t have much time.
I closed the freezer and opened the fridge. That was pretty dismal, unless we wanted eggs and yogurt and broccoli for dinner. Maybe walking up to the store would be good for me. It would get me some air, plus I could buy some fresh food or even better, that wonderful invention, the ready meal.
As I was getting ready to go, my buzzer rang, and to my surprise, it was Rafe. I let him in and, to my joy, he carried an insulated food bag—the sort that takeout drivers use, only this one was much nicer, designed, I supposed, for high-end picnics.
“This is a surprise.”
As was the mouthwatering fragrance emanating from the food bag.
“William doesn’t think you eat properly.”
I took instant offense, telling him that at that very moment I had salmon fillets in the freezer and broccoli in the fridge. I didn’t argue very hard, though, as the last thing I wanted was for him to take that delicious-smelling food away again.
He gave a half-smile thing, which I always interpreted as his attempt not to laugh in my face. “William really wanted the excuse to cook. He knows your cousin’s here with you, so there’s plenty for two.”
It was kind of Rafe’s housekeeper to think of us and kind of Rafe to bring the food with him. “Do you want to stay and join us?”
“Thanks. I’ve already eaten.”
He carried food into the kitchen and put the bag on the counter. I immediately unzipped it to see what was inside. When I opened the lid, the delicious smells were even more delicious. “This smells amazing.”
He leaned over the bag, and his sensitive nose quivered. “It’s a coq au vin. And I’m going to have to talk to William about using the good burgundy in a chicken stew.”
I couldn’t believe this guy. “You have to be messing with me. You can’t seriously tell what kind of wine he used?”
He looked rather offended at that. “Of course I can. I have an excellent sense of smell. Also an excellent palate.” He closed his eyes and said, “The herbs are tarragon, rosemary, parsley and thyme from the kitchen garden. I think William grew the garlic. The mushrooms and onions and celery have obviously come from the market. And that chicken is organic.”
“Seriously, now you’re just messing with me.”
He looked down at me, and his eyes glinted. “Am I?”
I didn’t think we were talking about food anymore, and my stomach fluttered. Rafe got to me in a deep and elemental way. One day I was going to figure out what on earth I was supposed to do about this strong attraction. But not today.
Rafe hefted the weighty Le Creuset casserole dish out of the bag and slipped it into the oven, which I put on a low heat. Apart from the chicken was a dish of roast potatoes, a fresh loaf of bread, a salad and a half bottle of wine. Inside was a note.
Dear Lucy,
Please don’t be offended. My talents are so wasted on Rafe. Enjoy the simple meal.
Cheers, William
P.S. Tell Rafe the rule of good cooks is that you should never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink.
While I was fussing in the kitchen, Raf
e wandered over to the map, which I’d spread out on the dining table. “I heard that you found the missing pocket watch. Well done, Lucy.”
“I’d love to take credit for it, but it was Mrs. Beasley who found it. It freaked her out, and she called me.”
“I imagine it would be disturbing, discovering one’s loved one was most likely a murderer.”
Before I could tell him about my suspicions that Robert Beasley might be telling the truth, Vi came upstairs and sniffed the air. “What smells so good?”
“Rafe and William are treating us to dinner.”
“Fabulous. Can we eat soon? Sylvia suggested that I come and help with her lesson tonight instead of you.”
I thought about the very reason she was staying with me. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
She put her head to one side, looking decidedly pleased with herself. “Lucy. The murders have been solved. That’s why Sylvia thinks I should go tonight. Nobody’s going to accuse me of being a witch anymore. And when they see me helping them out with their knitting, we’ll be friends again.”
I thought Sylvia was onto something. Besides, if I didn’t have to go to the knitting class tonight, I could spend the evening studying Harry Bloom’s file. Maybe Robert Beasley had killed his stepfather and then murdered Elizabeth to get that watch back, and maybe he’d killed Grayson Timmins and Jason Palmer had killed Elizabeth.
I just had a feeling that something was wrong. Or maybe I wanted to avoid attending a knitting class pretending I knew what I was doing. “That’s very smart of Sylvia. Promise you won’t cast any spells on anybody, even though I know you’re going to want to.”
She laughed. “That’s exactly what Sylvia said. I promise.”
When she left, Rafe helped me with the dishes, which I thought was very nice of him considering he hadn’t eaten anything, though he had drunk a glass of that nice wine.
My mind drifted back to the night before. “I’m not convinced. Yes, I know the evidence is compelling, but he told me that he discovered the watch in the fire grate a few months after the murder. He didn’t come forward because, obviously, he knew Harry Bloom and the police were after him, but also he’d already received the insurance money. Okay, it doesn’t make him look like a hero, but not giving back insurance money and murder are a long way apart from each other.”