Chapter 16 The Tapestry of Deception
The morning of the thirteenth day since Silas Blackwood’s death arrived with a stillness that felt almost deliberate, as though the village itself were holding its breath.
I had slept more soundly than I had in a fortnight, and when I opened the shutters of The Yarn there were wooden toggles from an old duffel coat someone had brought in for mending; there were three jet buttons from a Victorian mourning dress that Eleanor had given me years ago.
And there, at the edge of the display, set slightly apart from the others as though I had not quite decided where it belonged, was the replica I had finished at a quarter past four the day before.
I had placed it where the light from the back room window would strike it, and the shell caught the illumination and gave it back in a pale shimmer. From the doorway of the shop, a customer would see it only if she were looking for it. I was counting on Florence Albright to be looking.
The kettle clicked off, and I made a pot of Earl Grey and set it on the small table beside the workbench with two cups.
Eleanor would arrive soon. She had not said she would come, but she had come every morning since the investigation began, and I did not expect today to be any different.
I poured myself a cup and stood at the workbench, surveying the arrangement of buttons one last time, and I felt the quiet resolve that had been building in me since the previous afternoon settle into something almost like patience.
Eleanor arrived at a quarter past nine, the little bell above the shop door announcing her entrance with its familiar bright chime.
She wore a tweed skirt the colour of heather and a cardigan of soft grey wool, and she carried a small cloth bag that I knew would contain whatever book she was reading and perhaps a scone from the bakery.
Her gaze swept the shop with the quick, assessing quality it always had, and when it reached me at the workbench, something in her expression sharpened.
"You have been busy," she said, and she set her bag on the counter and crossed to where I stood.
Her eyes moved across the buttons on the felt, and I saw them pause, for the briefest instant, on the replica at the edge of the display.
She did not comment on it. She looked up at me instead, and her smile was the knowing one I had come to recognise over the past two weeks, the one that said she understood more than she was prepared to say aloud.
"I thought it was time for a new display," I said. "The old one had been up since spring."
Eleanor nodded and took the cup of tea I poured for her. "A sensible refresh. People notice when things stay the same for too long." She settled herself on the stool beside the workbench and took a sip of her tea. "Though I suspect you have more on your mind than button displays."
I did not answer immediately. I had been weighing how much to tell her, and I had decided, somewhere in the quiet hours of the morning, that I would tell her enough to satisfy her curiosity but not enough to invite her interference.
Eleanor was the most intelligent person I knew, and her help had been invaluable in deciphering Silas Blackwood's ledger, but this part of the plan required a delicacy that her directness might disrupt.
"I heard something interesting yesterday," I said, and I kept my voice light, as though the information were merely a piece of village gossip. "There may have been someone near the bookshop on the day Silas died. A witness, of sorts."
Eleanor's teacup paused halfway to her lips. "A witness? After all this time?"
"It seems so. Someone who was passing through and didn't come forward at first. Constable Finch is looking into it."
I watched her absorb this. Her expression did not change, but her fingers tightened slightly on the handle of her cup. "That would be a remarkable development," she said. "After eleven days of investigation, a new witness appearing now."
"The village has a way of keeping its secrets until it's ready to give them up," I said.
Eleanor set her cup down and folded her hands in her lap.
"That reminds me of something," she said, and her voice took on the measured quality it always had when she was about to deliver a piece of historical context.
"There was a weaver in this village, oh, a hundred years ago now, a woman named Margaret Trefusis. She made tapestries that were famous throughout the county, and she had a particular technique for hiding a single wrong thread in every piece she wove. She called it her signature,
but it was more than that. She said that a perfect tapestry was a lie, because the world itself was imperfect, and only an honest craftswoman would leave the flaw visible."
I found myself listening more closely than I had intended. "And people accepted that? A deliberate flaw?"
"They sought her work out for it," Eleanor said. "They said her tapestries told the truth in a way that flawless ones could not." She looked at me, and her gaze was steady. "I thought of her when I saw your button display. All those perfect little discs, and one that doesn't quite match the others."
I felt a small jolt of surprise, but I kept my face still. "It's a replica," I said. "I made it yesterday. For a customer who lost one from a set."
"Of course," Eleanor said, and she smiled again, but her eyes did not leave mine. "You have always been clever with your hands."
The bell above the door chimed, and we both turned.
Florence Albright stood in the doorway of The Yarn & Needle, and the morning light fell across her in a way that made her look almost theatrical, as though she had stepped onto a stage.
She wore a deep burgundy velvet coat that I recognised, and her silver hair was pinned up with the same careful precision she always brought to her appearance.
The heavy amber bead necklace she wore caught the light and held it, and her garnet-set gold earrings swung slightly as she turned her head to survey the shop.
But her hands, clasped in front of her, were not quite steady. I saw the tremor in her fingers, the faint, persistent quiver that she could not quite suppress, and I felt my own breathing slow in response. She was here. The trap had worked.
"Penny," Florence said, and her voice was as smooth and cultivated as it had always been, but there was a tightness beneath it that I had not heard before. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
"Not at all," I said. "Eleanor and I were just having our morning tea. Would you like a cup?"
Florence hesitated, and I saw her gaze move across the shop, cataloguing the shelves of yarn, the knitting patterns on the counter, the half-finished jumper on the dress form in the corner.
It was the look of someone who was not accustomed to being in a craft shop and did not quite know where to rest her eyes.
And then her gaze reached the workbench, and it stopped.
I watched her see the button. The replica lay at the edge of the felt, its six-petaled design catching the light, and Florence's eyes fixed on it with an intensity that she could not hide.
Her lips parted slightly, and the tremor in her hands grew more pronounced.
She did not speak for a long moment, and when she did, her voice was carefully controlled.
"What an interesting collection," she said. "I didn't know you dealt in vintage buttons."
"I don't, usually," I said. "These are just a few pieces I've been sorting through. Some of them are quite old."
Florence took a step closer to the workbench, and I saw her fingers curl into her palms, the nails pressing into the flesh. "That one," she said, and she gestured toward the replica with a nod that was meant to look casual. "The mother-of-pearl. It's very fine work."
"It is," I said. "Though it's not an original. I made it myself."
Her head came up at that, and her eyes met mine. For a moment, neither of us spoke. I could feel Eleanor's attention on us both, a quiet, watchful presence at the edge of the scene, and I knew that she was cataloguing every word, every gesture, every pause.
"I heard something rather curious this morning," Florence said, and she turned away from the workbench with an effort that was visible in the set of her shoulders.
"There's a rumour going around the village about a rare tapestry. Something quite old, possibly for sale. I thought you might know something about it, given your connections."
The fabrication was so transparent that I almost felt sorry for her.
Florence Albright, who had built her reputation on the careful curation of beautiful things, reduced to inventing a tapestry that did not exist in order to stand in my shop and gauge what I knew.
I let the silence stretch for a moment before I answered.
"I haven't heard anything about a tapestry," I said. "But I did hear something else that might interest you. There's been a new development in the investigation into Silas Blackwood's death. A witness has come forward, someone who was near the bookshop on the day he died."
Florence's face did not change, but the colour left it.
It was a subtle thing, a gradual retreat of warmth from her cheeks, and I watched it happen as though I were watching water drain from a basin.
Her hands, still clasped in front of her, went very still, and the tremor that had been visible a moment before disappeared entirely, as though she had willed it into submission.
"A witness," she repeated. "How extraordinary. After all this time."
"That's what Eleanor said."
Eleanor inclined her head but did not speak. She was watching Florence with the same quiet attention she had brought to the button display, and I could see her fitting pieces together behind her steady grey eyes.
"I wonder what they saw," Florence said, and her voice was still smooth, still cultivated, but there was a brittleness at the edges of it now, a tension that made each word sound as though it had been carefully selected and placed.
"The village is so quiet at that hour. It's hard to imagine anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary."
"That's the thing about witnesses," I said. "They often notice more than we expect them to."
Florence's gaze drifted back to the workbench, to the replica button, and I saw something move behind her eyes.
It was not fear, exactly, or not only fear.
It was recognition, the cold shock of seeing something she had not expected to find, and I felt a surge of triumph that was immediately followed by a prickle of apprehension.
She knew what the button meant. She knew that I knew.
"I should be going," Florence said, and she took a step back toward the door. "I only wanted to ask about the tapestry. If you hear anything, do let me know."
"Of course," I said. "Though I imagine you'll be hearing from Constable Finch before long. About the witness. He's been very thorough."
She stopped at the door, one hand on the frame, and she turned back to look at me. Her face was composed, her expression perfectly neutral, but her eyes were bright with something that might have been anger or might have been desperation. "I'm sure he has," she said. "Good morning, Penny. Eleanor."
The bell chimed as she left, and the shop fell silent. I stood at the workbench with my hands resting on the felt, and I let out a breath I had not realised I had been holding. My fingers found the replica button and turned it over, and the shell was warm from the light that had been falling on it.
"Well," Eleanor said quietly. "That was instructive."
I looked at her, and I saw that she had already drawn her own conclusions.
She did not need me to explain what she had just witnessed, and she did not ask.
She simply reached for her teacup, took a long sip, and set it down again with the careful precision of someone who was giving herself time to think.
"Margaret Trefusis," she said at last, "would have approved of your technique."
I did not answer. I was still watching the door, still feeling the aftershock of Florence's recognition, and I was thinking about what would come next.
The trap had worked, but a trap was only the beginning.
The confrontation was still ahead of me, and Florence Albright was a woman with nothing left to lose.
I picked up the replica button and slipped it into the pocket of my cardigan, beside the original.
The two small discs settled against each other with a faint click, and I felt the weight of them, slight as it was, as I turned back to the workbench and began to put the other buttons away.
The morning had shifted, and the quiet of the shop was no longer the comfortable quiet of routine.
It was the quiet of something waiting to break.