Chapter 14 The Bakers Tidbit
The morning of the fourteenth day arrived with the kind of ordinary brightness that made the events of the past two weeks feel, for a few moments at least, like something I had read in a book rather than lived.
I stood at the window of my upstairs room and watched the light spread across the rooftops of Lavender Lane, and I made a decision before I had finished my tea.
I had spent the previous night bent over Silas Blackwood's ledger until the words began to blur, and I had woken with the conviction that I needed to step away from it, to let my mind work on the problem from a different angle.
The ledger was not going anywhere. Florence Albright, I suspected, was not going anywhere either, not yet, not while she believed she had covered her tracks.
But I needed to think, and I had learned long ago that I thought best in the company of other people, in the ordinary hum of village life that had drawn me to Meadowbrook in the first place.
I dressed in my thick mustard-yellow cardigan and went downstairs to open the shop.
The morning passed in its usual rhythm: Mrs. Pembroke came in for a skein of blue wool, and then young Sarah from the post office wanted advice on a dropped stitch in the scarf she was knitting for her brother.
I helped them both, and I found that the simple act of talking about yarn and patterns and the proper tension for a ribbed edge settled something in me that had been wound too tight.
At half past twelve I turned the sign on the door to CLOSED and walked the short distance to The Daily Loaf.
The bakery occupied the corner where Lavender Lane met Church Street, and its windows were steamed over from the heat of the ovens, the glass opaque and pearly in the mid-morning light.
I pushed open the door and stepped into a wall of warmth that smelled of yeast and sugar and something faintly spiced, cinnamon perhaps, or nutmeg.
The shop was busy, as it always was at this hour, and the sound of conversation filled the small space like water filling a basin.
Three women I recognized from the knitting circle were gathered at a table near the window, their shopping bags propped against the legs of their chairs, and old Mr. Henderson was reading a newspaper at the counter with a cup of coffee at his elbow.
Gareth Davies was behind the counter, his round face pink from the heat of the ovens and his apron dusted with flour in a pattern that looked like a map of some small, floury continent.
He saw me the moment I walked in and his face split into a grin.
"Penny Croft, as I live and breathe! And here I was thinking you'd forgotten where we were."
"I could smell the scones from my shop," I said, and I meant it. The scent had reached me halfway down the lane. "I'll have one, please, and a cup of tea."
"You'll have two scones, and you'll not argue with me about it." He was already reaching for the tongs. "You've been looking peaky these past few days, if you don't mind my saying so. Eleanor mentioned you'd not been sleeping."
I was not surprised that Eleanor had spoken to him; the three of us had been friends for too long for secrets to survive more than a day or two. "Eleanor worries too much," I said, and I found a seat at the end of the counter where I could watch the room without being in the middle of it.
Gareth brought the tea and scones himself, setting the plate down with a little flourish.
"There now. That's the cure for whatever ails you. Butter's fresh this morning, and the jam's from Mrs. Thistle's blackcurrants last summer."
He leaned against the counter and wiped his hands on his apron, and I could see that he was settling in for a proper conversation.
Gareth had never been capable of a brief exchange in his life. "How's the shop, then? Busy?"
"Steady," I said. "Everyone's knitting for the craft fair. I've sold more wool in the past week than I usually do in a month."
"The craft fair!" He clapped his hands together, and a small cloud of flour rose from his palms.
"Now there's a thing to look forward to. I'm doing the gingerbread again this year, the proper kind, with the crystallized ginger on top. Remember last year, when Arthur Penhaligon ate four pieces and had to go and lie down in the vestry?"
I did remember, and I smiled at the memory. "He said it was worth the indigestion."
"Arthur Penhaligon," Gareth said, shaking his head fondly, "has never met a baked good he didn't trust with his entire digestive system. A braver man than I, that one."
He glanced around the bakery, checking that no one needed him, and then turned back to me with the particular expression he wore when he had a piece of news he was bursting to share.
"Speaking of people who've been having a rough time of it, though. Have you heard about Florence Albright?"
I kept my hands steady on my teacup. "I haven't heard anything in particular."
"Well." Gareth lowered his voice, though the noise of the bakery would have covered his words from anyone more than a few feet away.
"You know her antique shop, of course. Lovely things in there, if you've got the money for them, which most people in Meadowbrook haven't and never will. But I was talking to Marjorie from the post office, you know Marjorie,
and she said Florence has been in three times this month asking about parcel rates for shipping things to auction houses in London. Three times, Penny. And Marjorie said she looked terrible, all pinched around the mouth, the way people look when they're not eating properly."
I broke off a piece of scone and buttered it carefully. "The antique trade can be seasonal, I imagine."
"It's more than seasonal." Gareth leaned closer, and his voice dropped another notch.
"I heard from Tom Henderson, that's old Mr. Henderson's son, he works at the bank in Chipping Norton, that Florence was in there not two weeks ago asking about a loan. A loan, Penny. Florence Albright, who's been running that shop for as long as I can remember,
and who's always acted as though she owned half the village and was just letting the rest of us live here out of kindness."
He straightened up and shook his head, and for a moment his cheerful face looked genuinely troubled.
"Poor Florence. Always a bit too proud to admit when things are tight. Heard she was even asking about a loan from old Mr. Henderson, of all people. And that's not like her at all."
Old Mr. Henderson, I knew, was sitting not ten feet away, and I glanced at him without meaning to. He was still absorbed in his newspaper, his coffee cup halfway to his lips, and if he had heard his name he gave no sign of it.
"When you say a loan from Mr. Henderson," I said, keeping my voice casual, "do you mean the bank, or Mr. Henderson himself?"
"Mr. Henderson himself." Gareth's eyebrows went up.
"Tom said his father mentioned it. Florence came to see him at home, in the evening, which she's never done before. Asked if he might be willing to invest in the shop, or lend her something to tide her over until business picked up. Mr. Henderson said no, of course, he's not a fool with his money,
but the fact that she asked at all…"
He spread his floury hands. "That's desperation, that is. Florence Albright doesn't ask anyone for anything. You know that as well as I do."
I did know it. The Florence Albright I had encountered in the past two weeks was a woman who guarded her dignity as though it were the last valuable thing she owned, and the thought of her going to an elderly neighbour and asking for money, in person, at his home,
told me more about her circumstances than any bank record could have done.
The missing first edition, the one Silas Blackwood had recorded in his ledger with such care, would have been worth a great deal to the right buyer.
Enough, perhaps, to save a failing business.
Enough to kill for, if the person who wanted it was desperate enough and proud enough to believe she had no other choice.
"When did this happen?" I asked. "The visit to Mr. Henderson?"
Gareth frowned, thinking. "Tom said it was a few weeks back. Before Silas died, anyway, because he remembered his father mentioning it at Sunday lunch, and that was the week before."
He picked up a cloth and began wiping the counter, a habitual motion that seemed to help him think.
"Funny, isn't it, how things come out afterwards. You go along thinking everyone's getting on fine, and then something happens and you start to notice all the cracks you missed before."
I finished my scone and brushed the crumbs from my fingers.
The pieces were fitting together now with a clarity that made my pulse quicken, though I kept my face as calm as I could manage.
Florence Albright had been in financial trouble before Silas Blackwood died.
She had been looking for money, and she had been refused.
And Silas Blackwood had possessed a book that was valuable enough to solve her problems, a book that had gone missing on the very day he died, a book that someone had killed him to obtain.
"Has she sold anything recently?" I asked. "From the shop, I mean. Anything significant?"
Gareth paused in his wiping and looked at me with a flicker of curiosity. "You're very interested in Florence all of a sudden."
"I'm interested in the craft fair," I said, and the lie came easily enough because it was built on a truth. "If she's having trouble, she might not want to participate this year. She usually does the wreath-making demonstration, and I'd need to find someone else."
"Ah." The curiosity faded, replaced by his usual good-natured willingness to be helpful.
"Well, I did hear she'd been trying to shift some of the smaller pieces. Marjorie said she sent a box of silver napkin rings to an auction house in Oxford, and there was talk of some jewelry as well, though nothing too valuable.
The kind of thing you sell when you need cash quickly and you don't want anyone to notice."
He shook his head again. "It's a shame, really. She's always been so particular about her stock. You know how she is, everything in its place, everything just so. To see her having to let things go piece by piece…"
I thought of the button I had found near Silas Blackwood's body, the one carved from horn or bone with its pattern of interlocking circles, and the second button I had discovered beneath the loose floorboard, the one made of mother-of-pearl with a floral engraving.
Both of them were gone now, stolen from my locked cabinet, and I was certain that Florence had taken them.
She had been in my shop, she had smiled at me and asked about yarn, and all the while she had been calculating how to retrieve the evidence that could connect her to a murder.
A woman who would do that was a woman who had already crossed a line she could not uncross.
"Thank you, Gareth," I said, and I meant it more than he could know. "You've been very helpful."
"I've been gossiping, you mean." He grinned at me, and the troubled expression vanished from his face as though it had never been there.
"But that's what I'm here for, isn't it? Bread and gossip, the two staples of village life. Speaking of which."
He reached under the counter and produced a small paper bag.
"Lemon tart. For later. You look as though you could use it."
I took the bag and felt the warmth of the pastry through the paper. "You're a good friend, Gareth."
"I know I am." He beamed at me. "Now go on, before I make you eat a third scone and you have to be rolled home like a barrel."
I left the bakery with the paper bag in my hand and the taste of blackcurrant jam still on my tongue, and I walked back toward The Yarn & Needle with a mind that was moving faster than my feet.
The morning had given me what I had hoped for: not a new piece of evidence, exactly, but a context in which the evidence I already possessed made a terrible kind of sense.
Florence Albright was in financial ruin.
She had been desperate enough to ask a neighbour for a private loan, and she had been refused.
And within weeks of that refusal, Silas Blackwood, her old rival, had died, and a book worth a small fortune had vanished from his shop.
The ledger, the buttons, the hidden key, the trampled hedge beneath the upstairs window, all of it pointed in one direction, and now I understood why.
I did not yet have proof that would satisfy a court, but I had something that was almost as valuable: I had a story that explained every fact I knew, and I had a suspect whose motive was no longer a matter of speculation.
Florence Albright had killed Silas Blackwood because she believed his death was the only way to save herself.
I unlocked the door of my shop and stepped inside, and the familiar smell of wool and tea rose up to meet me.
I set the paper bag on the counter and stood for a moment with my hand resting on its crumpled top, and I thought about what came next.
Gareth's gossip had given me the missing piece, but it was not enough on its own.
I needed to force Florence's hand, to create a situation in which she would reveal herself, and I needed to do it carefully, because a woman who had killed once and stolen evidence twice was a woman who would not hesitate to protect herself a third time.
I looked at the telephone on the counter, and I thought of Eleanor, and I knew that before I did anything else I needed to tell her what I had learned.
But I also knew, with a certainty that had been growing in me since the night the buttons were taken, that the next move would have to be mine alone.
Florence Albright had been watching me. It was time to give her something to see.