Collectors, Cats & Murder Page 10

  When the phone rang, I fumbled in my purse to locate it, hoping it was one of my sisters, but I had a feeling that wasn’t who I’d find on the other end of the line. I was right. It was Gemma, and I knew she wouldn’t be calling if she had good news. “Ye-es,” I answered hesitantly.

  “Sorry to call you this late. Please tell me you’ve had a lovely evening, and I haven’t interrupted your dinner.”

  “It was heavenly, and we’re stuffed. And no, we’ve finished our meal, so you’re not interrupting anything but our walk.” I looked at Dave and mouthed “Gemma” as she continued.

  “Well, I’m glad for that. Listen, speaking with Priscilla and Fiona spurred me to return to the scene at the cottage, and I’m there now. I’ve discovered some discrepancies that don’t sit well with me. I wouldn't dare ask you to come over now, but could you meet me here in the morning? I have a feeling the SOCO may have been a bit perfunctory in his observations.”

  Telling her to hold on, I covered the phone and spoke to Dave. “She wants me to go back to the cottage to take a look around in the morning. Do you want to go with me?”

  I could tell he was hesitant. This was all new to him. “Teddy is gone, Dave, so we’ll just be taking another look at the scene, maybe the books, the memorabilia, you know.”

  When he said okay, I spoke to Gemma. “I’ll come if I can bring Dave and if it’s not too early. We’ve promised ourselves a sit-down breakfast for Sunday morning.”

  With that settled, I hung up, turned to Dave, and asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “My thoughts are a jumble. Naturally, I wonder why Gemma wants to revisit the scene. What’s she found out since this morning that makes her want a second look? I heard Constable James say you’re ‘brilliant’, so I guess I know why she wants you there. Still, I have to wonder why the police can’t do their job on their own, without you.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t have any good answers to your questions. She said it was something she heard when she interviewed Fiona and Priscilla, but she didn’t say what. As for wanting me there? I’m not sure I can explain that.”

  When Dave frowned and shook his head, I elaborated. “Gemma can be kind of inconsistent on that front. She didn’t want me involved the first time I discovered a dead body, but when I started asking questions she hadn’t thought of, she listened—not willingly, mind you, but she did. The same thing happened when her mom found a dead body on the riverbank. Gemma called me in to take care of her mom, and it went from there.”

  He still didn’t look convinced, so I gave it one more shot. “Let’s just say my relationship with Gemma keeps evolving, and it’s not easy to explain. Sooo . . . how do you feel about me going back to scan the scene?”

  He pulled me closer to his side. “It sounds innocent enough, but I can’t help being worried. Is this how it starts? You meet with Gemma, and you’re pretty safe. But then you somehow wind up in the middle of things? And before you know it, you’re in danger?”

  Then he chuckled. “Maybe if I’m your sidekick instead of Wendy or Belle—maybe if I don’t let you out of my sight—things will turn out differently. What do you think?”

  We laughed together, and I threatened to get him a deerstalker cap and a magnifying glass. Maybe it will put his mind at ease to see that my so-called detective work is mostly a matter of observing and brainstorming. He’ll be on his way to Edinburgh Monday, so if my involvement progresses beyond that, he can remain blissfully unaware.

  Chapter Ten

  After a leisurely breakfast, we took our time walking to Teddy’s cottage. Dickens rolled over for belly rubs whenever walkers stopped to admire him, so it was fortunate we were running ahead of schedule. When he spied Watson lying in the sun on the stone walkway, he ran over to greet him. “How are you? Did someone feed you? Where’d you sleep?”

  Watson carried on licking a paw. “My, you’re an inquisitive bloke, aren’t you? I slept inside, which wasn’t my first choice, but that lady with the blonde ponytail locked me in last night. She was back first thing to let me out and feed me, so it was okay—if a bit lonely.” He nudged Dickens with his nose. “Teddy’s not coming back, is he?”

  Dickens laid down beside Watson and licked him between the eyes before trying to explain about Teddy. As we’d done Saturday morning, Dave and I opened the garden gate and went to the back patio. We found Gemma sitting at the wrought iron table, flipping pages in a small spiral notebook.

  She scowled as she looked up. “Either I’m losing my touch or Constable James’s scrawl is getting worse. Probably a bit of both.”

  As she handed me the notebook, I laughed. “I can’t speak because my handwriting is abysmal. It was always bad—unsatisfactory marks in grade school—but it’s only gotten worse with the advent of computers and email. My mother was so unhappy with me. Anyway, is there something particular you want me to look for?”

  “No . . . yes. I don’t know. I’m second-guessing myself. Maybe if you and I do a walkthrough, we can compare and contrast what we see. And, Dave, I’m hoping you can look over the bookshelves and collectibles with your literary eye to see if anything looks amiss to you. My conversation with Fiona yesterday got me thinking.”

  She handed us each a pair of plastic gloves as we entered the kitchen. I was struck a second time by how clean and uncluttered it was. The only thing that had changed was two teacups were now in the dish drain, because, I assumed, Constable James had fixed tea for Albert. “Have you spoken with Beatrix? Did she clean up after dinner? I ask because I find it hard to believe Teddy did such a thorough job.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” said Dave. “We guys can wash dishes and put leftovers away.”

  “I know that, but I suspect Teddy was tired after his day at the festival and wouldn’t have had the energy to do all this.”

  “Leta, that’s part of what I need to tell you. I’ve spoken with Beatrix. She helped wrap the food and put it in the fridge, and she put dishes in the sink to soak, but that was it. It was Fiona who cleaned this room spic and span.”

  Phew. She already knows Fiona was here Friday night, so I don’t have to find a way to tell her Watson gave Dickens that bit of information. “Oh! What was she doing here?”

  “I’ll tell you eventually, but I’d rather we do the walkthrough first, so your observations aren’t clouded by the details of Fiona’s visit.” With that, we moved to the hall and the bedroom.

  In the bedroom, I again noted the lamp and the absence of his spectacles. “Did the SOCOs find Teddy's glasses?”

  Gemma shook her head. “No.” We all knew that was odd. If they weren’t in the bedroom, they should at least have been in the house.

  “Okay, ladies, has anyone looked beneath the bed?” Dave looked pleased with his question.

  Gemma smiled. “See, Dave, two brains, or in this case, three, are better than one. Would you like to do the honors?”

  “Sure.” He knelt and then laid flat to scoot farther under the bed. He came out with a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Bloody hell, I was right to be bothered. I called the SOCO in charge to followup on a few items, and he admitted they hadn’t checked for them. He hemmed and hawed about being called away to a fatal car accident near Stow and this being a straightforward scene. Let’s just say I’m not best pleased with him. The glasses were something obvious he should have checked for.

  “We may still conclude this is a natural death, but allowing hasty assumptions to lead us astray is unacceptable.” She stared at the bed where the covers were in disarray, probably wondering what else might have been missed.

  I could tell she was irked and couldn’t blame her. All the more reason for us to do a thorough job. “Did they take the book away? The one in the bed?”

  “Yes. He was reading Dracula. Found that out by speaking to Fiona.”

  So that’s where the mention of Dracula came from. I’ll have to remember to tell that to Dickens. “Did she help him to bed too? I mean, how’d she
know about the book?”

  “Yes, but let’s move to the library, and after we’re done in there, we can sit and I’ll share the rest of what I heard from her.”

  Dave and I followed her down the hall. I went straight to the desk. “These papers are calling me. Are you okay if I look through them and try to sort them into some meaningful stacks? Oh! I see you moved the binder to the edge of the desk.”

  “Go for it, Leta. Maybe you’ll find something more than book orders, bills, and random scribbled notes. I didn’t have time to go through it all as well as I’d have liked to.”

  It was an interesting hodgepodge, and as I moved papers and books aside, I began to discern a pattern. One group of papers in the upper middle of the desk had to do with the bookshop, another to the left had a medical focus—doctors’ bills and articles on hip replacement and such. Off to the right were receipts from the local garden center and pages torn from a garden catalog. Mixed in among the somewhat organized piles, I noted two odd items and set them aside. They were yellowed sheets of paper with typing—one by T.S. Eliot and the other by Mark Twain. Odd. Guess they’re reproductions or something, since they’re not in a notebook.

  The topmost piece of paper in the bookshop stack was a list titled “Ask B”. That had to be Beatrix. The bulleted list made me smile—Book club, window display, used book section, Facebook, Cotswolds authors, Flea markets, Trixie. I was willing to bet he wanted to see if he could carry the handmade notecards and bookmarks made by Beatrix’s niece. Since Trixie had come to Astonbury and begun working in the Book Nook, she’d made a name for herself. I’d have to ask Beatrix whether they got around to discussing his questions.

  In the desk drawers, I found bank statements rubber-banded together, flyers for estate sales, a colorful map of the Cotswolds, and a list of Charing Cross bookshops. I flashed on the state of my desk drawers. They weren’t any less chaotic, but I knew where everything was. One, of course, held only a soft towel. That was Christie’s drawer where she curled up whenever she pleased.

  I saved the binder for last. My mouth dropped open as I turned page after page of letters written by famous authors . . . many from the 18 and 1900s. These must be worth a fortune.

  Dave, meanwhile, sat in one of the chairs looking through the binder he’d found in the display case. “What a fascinating collection—probably not much of value, but interesting.” He held it up to show me a black and white illustration of Pooh and Piglet. It looked as though it had been torn from a book or a magazine. “I guess this is why the brass plate is titled ‘Bless the Children.’ It’s mostly illustrations and clippings, even a torn paper book cover—all from children’s authors from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

  “Every item is slipped into an archival protective cover to keep it from being damaged by moisture and fingerprints. Collectors like Teddy put the pages in special collector-grade three-ring binders like this one.”

  I held up the notebook I’d looked through. “I think this one may be the most valuable because it contains letters.”

  I went back to studying the desk and its surroundings. Something on the bookshelves to the right caught my eye. As I’d noted the day before, the shelves on the lower half of the bookcase weren’t dedicated to particular authors. Instead, they looked to be the books Teddy read. One book was positioned with its front cover facing out instead of its spine. It was Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks. Odd, I can’t imagine Teddy being a Nicholas Sparks fan.

  From my seat behind the desk, I scanned the other books on the shelf. They were mainly thrillers and mysteries by authors like Lee Childs, Quintin Jardine, Robert B. Parker, and Ian Rankin. I stood to take a closer look.

  When I went to pull Safe Haven from the shelf, I realized two things—one, it was taller and slightly wider than the other books, and two, it wouldn’t budge. I pushed and prodded and only by accident moved it—grabbing the right edge and opening it to the left as I would any book. It was a clever reproduction of an actual book cover, heavy cloth-covered cardboard encased in a shiny paper cover.

  Behind it was a small safe. Some detective you are, I thought. On the inside of the cover was a handwritten inscription—

  You found me! Now you must find my key.

  “Oh my gosh! Come look at this!” Dave and Gemma looked over my shoulder.

  Dave reached over and flipped the cover open and closed. “How clever. ‘Must find the key?’ This is like a game—like something from an Agatha Christie book. All we need now is Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells.”

  The expression on Gemma’s face was inscrutable, something between a grin and a grimace. “Right. Clever. Just what we need. Why couldn’t it be something straightforward?”

  I felt around the edges of the safe and then outside the book cover. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if the key were tucked in here somewhere, or would that be too simple?”

  By now, Gemma was clearly grimacing. “Simple, I’d like simple. I don’t have time for puzzles. Let’s leave this for now, and maybe you two can come back to it.”

  I could tell Dave was trying to stifle a laugh. Like me, he was probably dying to brainstorm ideas on where the key could be hidden, but he shifted topics. “Okay, then. How ‘bout you tell us what you learned from Fiona?”

  That proposal seemed more to Gemma’s liking. She sat in the desk chair, and Dave and I turned the wingback chairs towards her. “Turns out Fiona has known Teddy since before his wife died. They first met when she worked for the NHS—the National Health Service to you Yanks—as home help for his wife. He and his wife took such a liking to the girl, Teddy hired her as a fulltime caretaker and had her move into the spare room. When his wife died some years back, he took Fiona on part-time at Bluebird Books and let her move into the tiny flat above the shop—for a pittance, in my opinion.

  “Of course, she couldn’t make ends meet with only part-time work, so she also worked a few shifts at a local pub.”

  “And she also pitches in over here?” I asked. “When does she find time to sleep?”

  Gemma continued. “She’s given up the work at the pub since Teddy’s mobility has decreased, and now she comes over here most evenings after the bookshop closes to help him with whatever needs doing. I get the impression they had almost a father-daughter or grandfather-granddaughter relationship.”

  I thought about the pill case in the bedroom. “Does she help him with his medications?”

  “Yes, and several nights a week, stays here until she knows he’s in and out of the shower safely, and then helps him to bed. He liked for her to read to him in here, and she was reading Dracula to him Friday evening before tucking him in bed with the book.”

  Guess her home health care experience has come in handy. “Sounds like a wonderful arrangement for them both. He was lucky to have her. And, just think, there’s no way she could have afforded to live in the heart of Chipping Camden without his generosity.”

  Dave looked thoughtful. “Gemma, what was it in the conversation that prompted you to come back here?”

  “The door—the door was unlocked, but Fiona told me she put the cat out and locked the door behind her as she left. She has a key, and that’s her routine.”

  “And when I tried the door, it was unlocked. So who unlocked it?”

  It was as though a lightbulb went off in my head. “Someone was here after Fiona left! Someone else must have a key too.”

  Gemma nodded in agreement. “Exactly. That’s what I thought—someone has to have a key, as there’s no evidence of a break-in. And they came in after Fiona and failed to lock the door when they left.”

  Now, Dave looked confused instead of thoughtful. “I get that all this sounds like a mystery novel, but if Teddy died in his sleep, does any of it matter? Do the police need to spend time trying to work out every little detail of the evening or the puzzle of the safe? Or worry about whether notebooks are misplaced or missing?”

  Gemma chuckled. “Tuppence, do you want to explain to your partner-in-tr
aining why it matters? Sorry, Dave, but Wendy and Belle—the other two members of the Little Old Ladies’ Detective Agency—wouldn’t have to ask those questions.”

  I nodded. “Until the coroner does his job, the police won’t know for sure whether Teddy died of natural causes. And it’s a best practice to piece together evidence as soon as possible after what could be a crime—before clues go stale or disappear. Even if it’s not a murder, it may be a crime scene—if anything was taken.”

  When Gemma laughed, her blonde ponytail shook. “Spoken like a true amateur sleuth. Wendy and Belle would be proud of you. And they’ll be disappointed you didn’t call them in.”

  Dave let the jibes bounce off of him and joked he was insulted. “Okay, you two, I’ve had enough of being compared to the LOLs and found wanting. Next time you ask for my help, I may be otherwise engaged . . . with a pint . . . in a pub.”

  As we returned the chairs to their positions facing the fireplace, a leg on my chair snagged on the rug. When I tilted the chair forward to try to unhook it, Dave told me to hold on. He pointed to the chair leg where it had pulled back the rug and knelt to retrieve a piece of paper. “Look at this. It’s a page torn from one of those black and white composition notebooks like the kids carry to school.”

  Gemma held out her hands like she was directing traffic. “Hold still. Let me grab an evidence bag.”

  He came to her side with the page and watched as she carefully inserted it into the bag. Holding the page, Gemma looked puzzled. “Yeah, but what’s special about it? It’s a handwritten list—not old or anything.”

  Detective Dave, as I was beginning to think of him, took the bag from Gemma when she held it out. “Hmm, I think it’s a list of where he planned to donate parts of his collection. See how the list is separated into universities and individuals? Oh! And look here, Gilbert’s name is scribbled at the bottom, as is mine. Looks as though he wanted to give Gilbert items related to Arthur Conan Doyle, and he’s written J.M. Barrie next to my name.”