Chapter Forty-Four
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
We’re too disappointed to talk much during the taxi ride back to the village.
“I thought we had it,” Amity says.
“I did too. But maybe that was too simple a solution,” Wyatt says.
I don’t tell them that I’m relieved that Dev was not Tracy’s dark-haired mystery lover. It shouldn’t matter, as it’s all fiction, but it does.
Back in the village, we buy some sausage rolls and walk down to the river, where we sit on a bench to eat.
Two pairs of ducks swim in circles near the bridge, steering clear of two haughty swans closer to shore.
At the next bench over, a hunchbacked woman scatters seeds on the ground for the pigeons.
She clucks at the birds like she knows them, mumbling what sound like pet names.
“Here you go, Ollie. Come now, Violet.” I hope they’re not her only companions.
The food seems to revive Amity.
“Pippa was impressive, all that anger, don’t you think?” she says. “She was wronged, but did she crawl in a hole with shame? She did not.”
“Go on,” I say, unsure where Amity is going with this.
“That’s all.” Amity sighs. “I thought she was formidable.”
“If it’s formidable to force your sorry-ass cheating husband to stay with you,” Wyatt says. “Who wants someone who doesn’t want them?”
“Stanley did not seem happy about how things turned out,” I say.
“Exactly!” Amity says. “And serves him right too. Why should he be happy?”
Has Amity forgotten the whole thing was an act? She stands up and wipes the crumbs from her lap. “That was a perfect lunch. Are we ready to proceed? What’s next?”
Wyatt thinks we might get “more bang for our buck” if we use some of our limited time left in Willowthrop to focus on my mother.
But how? Should we return to Bert Lott and ask to see his messages with her?
Maybe they reveal something about her knowledge of this place.
I’m thinking of calling my mother’s friend Aurora to see what she might know when Wyatt slaps himself on the thigh and says, “Of course! Edwina!”
“The nosy neighbor?” Amity says.
“She might be an actor,” I say.
Wyatt is convinced that Edwina received us in her real home, which he reminds us was decorated with lots of old photographs, a mix of family portraits and scenes of Willowthrop.
“Edwina Flasher may be pretending to be a nosy neighbor, but I bet she’s lived in Willowthrop for a long time, maybe even her whole life, and will know something useful.”
Edwina comes to the door right away.
“More questions? How lovely.”
I get the feeling she hasn’t been visited recently by any of our competition. “Make yourselves at home. I’ll just put on the kettle.”
While she’s clanging around the kitchen, we look at the photographs on the walls, which show Willowthrop through the years. There’s even a black-and-white picture of the viaduct.
“Are you closing in on the culprit?” Edwina sets down a tray on the coffee table and drops herself into her easy chair. She waves a hand for us to help ourselves to tea and Jaffa Cakes.
“Actually, no. We’re not here about that at all,” I say. “Can we go off the record?
“Are you a journalist?”
“Definitely not. We’d like to talk simply as visiting Americans conversing with a long-time resident of Willowthrop.”
“Isn’t that what we are?”
This is going to be trickier than I thought.
“We don’t want you to make up any answers,” Amity says.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with the murder mystery?” Edwina says. “I’d hate to give you an unfair advantage. Germaine would never forgive me. She worked so hard, you know.”
“Totally unrelated,” Wyatt says.
“I suppose that should be all right.”
“Do you know of anyone by the name of Skye Little?” I ask.
“Is that a woman’s name?”
“Yes, an American woman.” I show her a picture of my mother on my phone. “This woman.”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
“Have there been many Americans passing through here?” Amity asks. “Tour groups?”
“I’m afraid not. Willowthrop is a tad off the beaten path. Tourists usually go to Bakewell, what with its famous tart—frangipani and raspberry jam, so scrummy—and the Pride and Prejudice connection with Chatsworth House.”
“Which Austen never visited, you know,” Amity says. Good on her for trying to rein in the runaway myth.
“Of course not,” Edwina says. “She never came to Derbyshire at all. A whole lot of nonsense.”
“Finally, a voice of reason,” Amity says. “Thank you.”
“I’m afraid I’m not much help,” Edwina says. “Terribly sorry.”
“Please, don’t apologize,” I say. I’m embarrassed we’ve even troubled her.
“It’s not your fault. We’re on a ridiculous quest.” I get up and walk over to the photograph of the viaduct.
“I took a walk and ended up here, below the viaduct, and it was all exactly as my mother had described in a story when I was little, and it makes no sense, but I was convinced my mother had been here.” I’m babbling, but I can’t stop.
“It’s so stupid, but I felt something under those arches, like the whole place was special, that I was there for a magical reason. ”
“That would be highly unlikely,” Edwina says.
“The place isn’t special at all; it’s rather cursed.
There was a terrible fire there a long time ago.
George Crowley lived there with his wife and child.
He was a blacksmith, though not particularly good with horses.
Rumor is that he passed out drunk, smoking a cigarette, which started the fire.
He got out, of course, as did his poor wife, Ann, but then she went back in because she couldn’t find the little girl, Susan.
They say that Ann Crowley was frantic, running around the property, calling for her only child.
She was convinced the girl was still inside the house and ran back to find her, but a beam fell on her head, and, well, may she rest in peace. ”
“How awful. Did the little girl die too?” Amity asks.
“No. She hadn’t even been inside. She’d been up late reading in the loo in the empty tub, cheeky thing, and when everyone started yelling fire, she tried to leave the room, but the door was jammed. She jumped out the window and ran off along the river all the way up to the viaduct.”
“Why did she go there?” I ask.
“Instinct, maybe? To run from danger? Poor thing. Comes back to discover she’s lost her lovely mum in a fire started by her dad.
And that her mum died going back into the fire to look for her.
How do you live with that? She was such a slip of a thing too, only nine years old, and small for her age. Poor little Sukie.”
“Sukie? Who’s Sukie?” Amity says.
“That’s what they called her. It was her nickname.”
“How do you spell Sukie?” My hands have gone cold and clammy.
“S-U-K-I-E,” Edwina says.
I know that name. I can see the letters written in bubble font at the top of the inside cover of my Melling School book, each letter carefully shaded in with a different colored pencil.
I remember being shocked that someone had been so naughty, drawing inside a book, especially a good hardcover book about kind and spunky sisters at boarding school. But it can’t be the same Sukie, can it?
“What happened to Sukie and her father?” I say.
Edwina takes a sip of tea, sets down her cup, her actions painfully slow.
“George Crowley was never too well-liked and after the fire, I’m sure he didn’t want to show his face. Falling asleep smoking like that, drunk. The shame. Moved away for years. Came back eventually, but I haven’t a clue where he is now.”
I try to remember what else was written in the book, a last name or an address. Or maybe I’m remembering it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Sukie at all. Maybe it was Suzy or Sally. My mind might be playing tricks on me, making connections that aren’t there. I ask if I can use the bathroom.
I sit on the pink, fluffy cover on the toilet and take out my phone.
It’s almost 1:00 p.m., about eight in the morning at home.
Kim should be at my house, probably done meditating.
I message her that I have an urgent favor.
I ask her to go into my bedroom and look on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.
The Melling School book is on the right side.
I tell her I need to know what it says inside the covers.
When I step back into the living room, my phone dings. Kim has sent a photograph. It’s the inside cover of the book. There are the bubble letters, just as I remembered, spelling SUKIE. At the bottom of the page are drawings of daisies and unicorns, foxes and rabbits. I turn my phone around.
“This is in an English book my mother gave me. I always thought she bought it secondhand.”
Another ding. A photograph of the back inside cover. A drawing of a horse with a long mane. And at the bottom, three letters that I don’t remember at all, also in colored pencil. SMC.
“What’s SMC?” Amity asks.
“I don’t know.”
“They could be initials,” she says. “Edwina, did Sukie Crowley have a middle name?”
“I think she was Susan Marie? Yes, that’s it, Susan Marie Crowley.”
Wyatt and Amity trade a look.
“Where is Sukie Crowley now?” Wyatt asks. “Did anyone stay in touch with her after she moved away?”
“My friend Polly did for a while,” Edwina says. “She used to look after Sukie. But that was many, many years ago.”
“Could I talk to Polly?” I say. “Maybe she knows something that might help.”
Edwina sighs. “I’m afraid Polly’s not with us anymore.”
“I’m so sorry.” It must be hard to outlive your friends one by one.
“You’re not going to find answers here anyway,” Edwina says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Didn’t I already say? After the fire, Sukie Crowley was sent to live with relatives in America.”
“In America?” Amity asks. “Where?”
“In the Midwest, I think. Yes, that’s it. Indiana.”
“Oh. My. God.” Wyatt stands up.
“I don’t know if she’s dead or alive, but Polly told me years ago that the relatives who took her in over there in Indiana adopted her and gave her their own last name. She wasn’t a Crowley anymore.”
“What was her new last name?” Amity asks. “Maybe we could google her.”
“I’m so sorry, but I don’t remember.” Edwina says.
Is that it, then? The source of my mother’s stories was a girl named Sukie that she met in Indiana?
Sukie gave her the Melling School book and told her stories about Willowthrop and the Peak District, a place she’d been torn away from after losing her mother?
She must have wanted to keep the place alive by talking about it, sharing all the beautiful details—the bluebells, the swans in the river, the church with the crooked spire, the marshy moors, the grandeur of Stanage Edge.
And my mother told the stories to me. But why did she hide all of this?
“Sanders!” Edwina shouts. “That’s the name. Sukie became Sukie Sanders.”
“That can’t be,” I say. “That’s not possible.”
“No, I’m sure that was it,” Edwina says, tapping her temple.
“Are you okay?” Wyatt asks me. “You’ve gone pale.”
“What is it?” Amity says.
“My mother’s maiden name was Sanders,” I say.
“Her family adopted Sukie Crowley?” Amity says.
“No,” I say. “I would have known about such a thing. My mother was an only child.”
“Did you have aunts or uncles? Cousins?” Amity says.
I shake my head, feeling like the answer is hovering around me, but I can’t grasp it.
“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about Sukie?”
Wyatt crosses the room and crouches beside me. “Because, Watson,” he says gently. “Your mother wasn’t looking for Sukie Crowley. She was Sukie Crowley.”