Chapter 4 A Nephews Sudden Return
The morning after Florence Albright had left her knitting behind in my shop, I woke to the sound of rain against the window, a steady, insistent tapping that made the thought of an empty shop feel heavier than it should.
I dressed in my warmest cardigan, a thick mustard-yellow wool that I had finished the previous winter, and made myself a cup of tea in the small back room before admitting that I did not want to sit alone with my thoughts.
The image of Florence's trembling hands had stayed with me through the night, and the button I had described to the knitting circle, that small circle of horn or bone with its interlocking pattern, seemed to hover at the edge of every silence.
The Daily Loaf was only a short walk from The Yarn & Needle, past the post office and the greengrocer's, and I pulled my coat tight against the drizzle as I went.
The bakery's windows were already steamed over, the warm glow from inside spilling onto the wet pavement in a way that had always struck me as the most welcoming sight in Meadowbrook.
I pushed open the door and the smell of fresh bread and cinnamon wrapped around me, familiar and steadying.
Gareth Davies was behind the counter, his round face pink from the heat of the ovens and his apron dusted with a fresh layer of flour. He looked up as I entered, and the smile he gave me was genuine but smaller than usual, missing the bright exclamation that normally accompanied my arrival.
"Penny, love, you're soaked through," he said, already reaching for a cloth. "Come in, come in. I've just taken the scones out, and there's a pot of tea that's still hot."
I thanked him and took my usual seat at the small table near the window, wiping the rain from my face with the cloth he handed me.
The bakery was quieter than I had ever seen it on a weekday morning.
Two other customers sat at opposite ends of the room, an elderly woman I recognized from the church flower committee and a man in a waxed jacket who kept his eyes fixed on his newspaper.
The usual hum of conversation was absent, replaced by a low, cautious murmur that seemed to have settled over the village like the grey sky outside.
Gareth brought over a pot of tea and a warm scone with butter and jam, setting them down with more care than his usual bustling movements allowed. He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat, which was unusual in itself. Gareth rarely sat during opening hours.
"You've heard, then," he said, keeping his voice low. It was not a question.
"Heard what?" I asked, breaking the scone in half and watching the steam rise from the warm center.
Gareth leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and I noticed the way his fingers tapped against the wood, a quick, restless rhythm. "Silas Blackwood's nephew. Julian. Turned up at the bookshop first thing this morning, bold as you please, asking for the keys from Constable Finch."
I set the scone down. "Julian Blackwood? I thought he hadn't set foot in Meadowbrook for years."
"Ten years, at least," Gareth said, nodding with the satisfaction of someone delivering a piece of news he had been waiting to share.
"Fell out with his uncle over something, nobody quite knows what, and off he went. And now here he is, not three days after the old man's death, looking like he's slept in his clothes and asking about the will."
I absorbed this information slowly, turning it over in my mind the way I might turn over a skein of unfamiliar wool, testing its weight and texture.
A nephew arriving so soon after a death was not unusual in itself.
But the timing, so close on the heels of Florence's strange behavior at the knitting circle, felt like a door opening onto a room I had not known was there.
"What does Constable Finch make of it?" I asked.
"Alistair's got no reason to stop him," Gareth said.
"The death's been ruled an accident, hasn't it? Julian's the next of kin, far as anyone knows. He's got every right to sort through his uncle's things."
He paused, and his expression shifted, the gossipy brightness dimming into something more thoughtful.
"Still, it's a funny thing, isn't it? A man keeps to himself for thirty years, and the moment he's gone, everyone comes out of the woodwork."
I took a sip of tea and let the warmth settle in my chest. "You said he looked like he'd slept in his clothes."
"Rumpled shirt, hair all over the place, dark circles under his eyes," Gareth said, warming to the description. "But he had that look about him, you know the one. Determined. Like he'd come to get something sorted and wasn't going to let anyone slow him down."
Before I could respond, the bell above the bakery door chimed, and the man in the waxed jacket looked up from his newspaper for the first time.
The elderly woman from the flower committee paused with her teacup halfway to her lips.
Gareth straightened in his chair, his eyes flicking toward the door, and I turned to follow his gaze.
The man who had entered stood just inside the doorway, shaking rain from the collar of a dark coat that had seen better days.
He was in his thirties, with a lean face and a shadow of stubble along his jaw, and his hair, a dark brown threaded with premature grey, was damp and uncombed.
His shirt was creased, as Gareth had described, and his shoulders were set in a way that suggested he was bracing himself against something.
His eyes moved across the room, quick and assessing, and when they landed on me, he offered a smile that did not quite reach the corners of his mouth.
"That's him," Gareth whispered, and then he was on his feet, his professional cheerfulness snapping back into place. "Morning! What can I get for you?"
Julian Blackwood approached the counter with a gait that was too deliberate to be casual, each step placed as though he were walking across uncertain ground.
The other customers had returned to their own business, but I could feel their attention lingering, the quality of the silence in the room shifting from subdued to watchful.
"Just a coffee," Julian said. His voice was sharper than I had expected, with an edge that suggested the words had been chosen quickly and without warmth. "Black, no sugar."
Gareth nodded and turned to the machine, and Julian stood at the counter with his hands in his coat pockets, his gaze drifting across the shelves of bread and pastries without settling on anything.
After a moment, his eyes found mine again, and this time he held the look for a beat longer than was comfortable.
"You're the woman who found my uncle," he said. It was not a question.
I set my teacup down and met his gaze. "I am. My name is Penny Croft. I own the yarn shop on the high street."
He nodded slowly, as though filing the information away. "Gareth mentioned you when I spoke to him earlier. Said you were the one who noticed things at the bookshop that didn't add up."
I glanced at Gareth, who had the grace to look slightly abashed as he set a cup of coffee on the counter. Julian picked it up and, rather than leaving, walked over to my table and gestured at the empty chair.
"Do you mind?"
I indicated the chair, and he sat, cradling the coffee cup between both hands.
Up close, the signs of wear were more pronounced.
The dark circles under his eyes were deep enough to suggest more than one sleepless night, and his fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
But it was the tension in his shoulders that held my attention, the way he sat forward as though ready to stand at any moment.
"I've been going through my uncle's affairs," he said, staring into the black surface of his coffee. "There's a lot to sort out. The bookshop, the apartment upstairs, all his records. I want to get it done quickly."
"That must be difficult," I said, keeping my voice even. "So soon after his passing."
Julian's mouth tightened, a small, almost imperceptible movement. "We weren't close. I doubt he would have wanted me here at all, if he'd had a choice in the matter."
I let the statement hang in the air between us for a moment. The rain had picked up outside, streaking the bakery windows and blurring the shapes of the buildings across the street. "You'd been estranged for some time, I understand."
"Ten years," he said, and the number came out flat, as though he had repeated it often enough that it had lost whatever weight it once carried. "It was a complicated situation."
"Family often is," I offered.
He looked at me then, and for a moment the guarded expression slipped, revealing something rawer underneath, a flash of resentment that was gone almost before I could register it.
"My uncle was a difficult man. He had very particular ideas about how things should be done, and he didn't forgive easily. Or at all, really."
I thought of the open book on the display stand, the stepladder still behind the counter where Silas Blackwood had always kept it, the button lying beside his outstretched hand.
A meticulous man, Eleanor had called him.
A man who did not forgive easily. The two descriptions fit together in a way that made me uneasy.
"I only met your uncle a handful of times," I said, choosing my words with care. "But he seemed very precise in his habits."
Julian let out a short breath that might have been a laugh under different circumstances.
"Precise. That's one word for it. He kept records of everything. Every book he ever bought or sold, every customer who ever walked through the door. Thirty years of ledgers, all filed by date and cross-referenced. He probably kept a record of every time I disappointed him."
The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable now, and I saw Gareth, who had retreated behind the counter, glance over with an expression of barely concealed fascination. I made a mental note to ask him later what else Julian had said when they spoke earlier.
"It sounds as though there was a great deal of history between you," I said.
Julian took a long drink of his coffee and set the cup down with a small, decisive click.