Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Was that intentional?” I ask as we head back toward the village center. “Were we supposed to assume that Dinda’s baby was human?”
“Could it be a clue?” Amity says. “Maybe Dinda fooled Tracy too, and that’s why she demanded the money back? Because the ‘baby’ was a dog?”
Wyatt puts the kibosh on that idea, convinced that if Dinda had worked for Tracy for a year, Tracy would know Dinda didn’t have a human baby. “Also, Dinda doesn’t seem smart enough, either as an actor or as herself, to pull off a murder, even one written for her.”
“I’m so confused,” I say.
“Yeah, we’re not really getting anywhere,” Wyatt says.
“Let’s switch gears,” Amity says. “Maybe we need a little break from this case. It’s only Monday, and we’ve got until Thursday evening to figure it out. Let’s go talk to Germaine about Cath’s mother.”
“Let’s not,” I say. I’ve liked being distracted by the fake murder; turning back to my mother’s secrets is unsettling.
“Germaine is not going to let this go,” Wyatt says.
“I think the two of you are not going to let this go,” I say.
“We’re not, are we, Wyatt?” Amity says.
“Not a chance. And would you look at that, we’re already on Crane Street.”
I know when I’m defeated.
“Let’s get this over with, then,” I say.
My spirits lift when I’m standing in front of The Book and Hook, which looks like the kind of place I would visit even if I hadn’t been summoned there.
The shop sign, which runs the width of the store above the window, is a painting of a young girl with long blond braids, canvas overalls, and tall rubber boots.
Her tongue pokes out as she strains against an arched fishing rod to reel in her catch, which is not a fish but a book.
I take a picture of the sign, adding to my collection of photographs that I wish I could share with my grandmother.
She loved fishing almost as much as she loved reading.
The shop has a sweet, musty scent, a mix of books and old upholstered furniture.
It’s a comforting smell, reminiscent of home.
The walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves.
More freestanding shelves fill the two connected rooms. There are also stacks of books on tables, chairs, and the floor.
We find Germaine behind the counter, perched on a stool between a laptop and an old cash register, reading. She doesn’t look up from her book until Wyatt clears his throat.
“My favorite trio!” Germaine takes off her reading glasses and rummages around the books and papers on the counter until she finds another pair of glasses and puts them on. “Much better. Now it’s the three of you in focus.”
“Have you considered progressives?” I ask. “One pair of glasses for both reading and distance?”
“Have I what? Oh, of course. Your mother mentioned that you’re an ophthalmologist.”
“Optician.”
“Precisely. Progressives are not for me. I have no desire to sacrifice quality for efficiency.”
I sense that there’s no point in arguing.
Beyond the counter, the back part of the shop is even more cluttered than the front, because along with the plentiful books is fishing gear, old and new.
There are reels and nets, baskets, flies, fly cases, clippers, and vests.
On the ceiling are fly rods, lying flat across the rafters the way my grandmother used to keep hers in the garage.
The name of the shop, The Book and Hook, clicks.
“You’re a fisherman,” I say.
“A loyal daughter. My father was an avid angler. He opened the shop as The Hook and Book, selling fishing supplies and one book.”
“Ah, yes,” Wyatt says. “The good book.”
“What? Heavens no,” Germaine says. “It was The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton. Don’t you know it?”
We shake our heads.
“It’s a classic, published in 1653. Not much plot—a fisherman, a hunter, and a falconer talk about their preferred sports, and the fisherman prevails.
The book is filled with practical advice about fishing.
We love it because Walton writes about fishing the River Dove, a trout stream that cuts through the Peak District.
Dad sold so many copies that he eventually added more books about fishing.
But when I took over, I started shifting the emphasis from hook to book.
Changed the name too.” She picks up a reel, pushes her finger through the middle, and twirls it around.
“But I’d have done better keeping it as it was.
There’s a better profit margin on fishing supplies than on books. ”
“Business isn’t good?” Wyatt asks.
“Locals favor our very good library, and we don’t get many tourists in Willowthrop. The area has too many other villages with more to recommend them.”
“I think Willowthrop is lovely,” Amity says.
“I do too. And as Americans, you probably find it quintessentially English. But we don’t have a claim to fame.
Not like Bakewell, with its famous tart and the magnificent Chatsworth House, home to the Devonshire family for seventeen generations, or Castleton with its caverns and blue john stone, or charming little Edensor, which was moved lock, stock, and barrel in the 1830s because the Sixth Duke of Devonshire said it blocked his view.
Can you imagine? Of such things revolutionaries are made.
Though at the new location, the village was rebuilt around a broad green planted with laburnum trees.
They have the most exquisite scent, a mix of sweet pea and lilac. ”
“Ooh, we should go there,” Amity says.
“And then there’s Ashford in the Water,” Germaine continues, “with its medieval bridge, which is not only the most photographed bridge in England but is also, according to the National Tourist Board, the best place in the country to play Poohsticks.”
“From Winnie the Pooh?” I say.
“Of course.”
My mother and I played that game, dropping branches from the bridge over Ellicott Creek and running to the other side to see whose stick crossed under first. We scrambled through the bushes along the road, racing to get the best sticks, and back to the bridge to play again.
This must have been before my mother left for the first time, because the memory carries none of the anxiety that colored my time with her afterward, when I was always worried that she would lose interest or suddenly announce she had to leave.
Germaine is still talking, rattling off the area’s other, more notable villages. “And Tideswell is surrounded by limestone mountains, and Eyam, of course, is the plague village.”
“That doesn’t sound like a draw,” Wyatt says.
“Oh, it is. Fascinating history. During the bubonic plague, anyone who could afford it fled London to avoid the disease. But in 1665, the plague found its way to Eyam when an old cloth infested with rat fleas was sent to the local tailor. In no time at all, two-thirds of the village had died. But two clergymen had the unusual foresight to create a quarantine zone around the outskirts of the village that no one was allowed to cross. Outsiders left food and supplies at the edge, which the residents of Eyam paid for by putting coins in troughs of vinegar, which they believed helped kill off the disease. Clever, wouldn’t you say?
Their methods prevented the plague from spreading to Sheffield and the surrounding area.
People like to see where it all happened or perhaps just satisfy their ghoulish curiosity. Either way, it’s good for business.”
“You thought a fake murder mystery would put Willowthrop on the map?” Amity says.
“That was the idea, and to raise money to save our community pool. You Americans have long loved English-village mysteries, but there was such a boom during the pandemic. Here too. Thinking about murder, I suppose, is less stressful than worrying that you might drop dead because someone coughed on you. Do you know what the big national obsession was during our cholera outbreak in 1854? It was a true-crime case involving a love triangle and a man stabbed to death and stashed beneath a kitchen floor. More than ten thousand Londoners dead from cholera and all anyone wanted to talk about was the Bermondsey Horror. Anyhow, we knew the interest would be there, and when we started planning our murder-mystery week, we had great ambitions. There was talk of a big sponsor—BritBox or British Airways—a larger advertising budget and a big-name author—” Here she hesitates, like she realizes she’s said too much.
“It was not to be, however, so we corralled some local businesses, rolled up our sleeves, formed a committee, and together with Roland Wingford came up with what I think is a thumping good mystery.”
Germaine comes out from behind the counter and sits on the couch by the window.
She pats the cushion beside her. “But I didn’t ask you here to talk about Willowthrop, Cath.
When I told you earlier that I believed your mother was searching for someone, it was more than a hunch.
When we first corresponded, when she initially inquired about our mystery adventure, she wanted to know if the town published a phone book. Did she know someone from the area?”
“Beats me,” I say. “Maybe she met someone online and wanted to track him down?” That’s a nicer way of saying that she sexted with someone for a while, convinced herself they were soulmates, and made plans to cross the ocean to find him.
“She could have been searching for a lost love,” Amity says.
They all look so hopeful, I’m sorry to disappoint them.
“Trust me, I knew a lot about my mother’s lovers. I can’t imagine her having a meaningful connection with someone here and not sharing all the details.
“And she’d never been to this area before?” Germaine says.
“Not that I know of.”
I give Germaine a quick account of my mother’s history, which is not very worldly.
She was born in Indiana and raised in a place called McCordsville, where the big excitement was watching the CSX freight train barrel through.
After high school, she went to a community college part-time for a while, and when she’d saved enough money, she left home.
Her first stop was Buffalo, which ended up being considerably longer than a layover.
After leaving me with my paternal grandmother when I was nine, she lived in Vermont, California, New Mexico, New York, and Florida.
“We often went long stretches without being in touch, so I guess she could have come to England, but she probably would have told me,” I say. “She wasn’t good at keeping secrets.”
Germaine looks puzzled.
“Your mother seemed so thrilled to have discovered our mystery week,” she says.
“She’d been searching for a fake murder to solve?” Wyatt asks.
“I don’t think the mystery mattered to her at all,” Germaine says. “She said it was ‘a hoot’ that she thought you would enjoy.”
Did my mother know me at all?
Germaine continues. “She had so many questions. Here, look.” She hands me a printout of an email.
She’s right, it’s almost all questions. Was the town very small; were there new buildings or only old ones; who lived there, mostly old people or were there young families too?
What was the surrounding countryside like? Was it clean or polluted?
Amity, who’s reading over my shoulder, says, “It sounds like she was doing research, almost like she wanted to move here.”
“That’s not like my mother,” I say. “She’d never do research. She’d just get it in her mind to go somewhere and off she’d go.”
“Could she have met someone from here who invited her to visit?” Wyatt asks.
“But why wouldn’t she have said as much to Germaine?” Amity says.
I’m uncomfortable with the way they’re all looking at me, like I should have the answers. I thought I was used to my mother’s mercurial ways, but having them exposed like this makes me embarrassed that I know so little about her. What had I missed?