Chapter 10 The Buttons Silent Witness #2
And yet something in the room tugged at my attention, a wrong note in an otherwise orderly composition.
It was the window. The curtain on the left side had been drawn back a few inches further than the curtain on the right, creating an asymmetry that Silas would never have tolerated.
I crossed to the window and looked out. The view overlooked the narrow alley that ran along the side of the bookshop, and directly below, half-hidden by an overgrown hedge, was a small wooden door set into the wall of the building.
A delivery entrance, perhaps, or a private way in that Silas had used for his more discreet transactions.
The hedge beneath the window was trampled in one spot, its branches bent and broken as though someone had pushed through it recently.
I stood at the window for a long moment, fitting the pieces together in my mind.
Florence Albright had a key to the bookshop.
She knew the layout of the building, knew where Silas kept his most valuable stock, knew that the first edition was due to be collected on the first of October.
She had been in financial trouble, her antique shop failing, her debts mounting.
And she had been inside the bookshop on the day Silas died, close enough to the staircase to lose a button, close enough to the body to leave no other trace that the police had found.
The hidden door in the alley, the trampled hedge, the loose floorboard, the button in the dust: each detail was small on its own, but together they formed a picture I could no longer pretend not to see.
I drew the curtain back into its proper position and left the apartment as I had found it, closing the door softly behind me.
The stairs groaned again as I descended, and the shop below was as still as it had been when I arrived.
I crossed to the front door, let myself out into the grey afternoon, and locked the door behind me with the brass key.
The lane was still empty, the village still quiet, and I walked back to The Yarn & Needle with my hand pressed against the pocket of my cardigan, feeling the small hard shape of the button beneath my fingers.
Back in the shop, I unlocked the drawer where I kept the ledger and the first button, the one I had found in Florence's hidden compartment.
I placed the new button beside it on the counter and looked at them together.
They were identical, down to the smallest detail of the engraving, and they gleamed softly in the grey light like two eyes that had seen the same terrible thing.
I wrapped them both in a clean handkerchief and tucked them into the drawer beside the ledger, then closed the drawer and turned the key.
The evidence was mounting, but evidence was not the same as proof.
I knew that Constable Finch would need more than a pair of buttons and a coded ledger to bring a charge of murder against a respected village businesswoman.
And I knew that Florence Albright, for all her cultivated composure, was not a woman who would confess to anything without a fight.
What I needed now was information, the kind of information that did not appear in ledgers or police reports, the kind that lived in the ordinary conversations of the village.
I needed to know whether anyone else had noticed Florence's financial troubles, whether she had been seen near the bookshop on the day of Silas's death, whether her recent behaviour had struck anyone as unusual. And for that, I needed Gareth Davies.
Gareth had been delivering baked goods to Meadowbrook for as long as I had lived here, and his rounds took him into more kitchens and sitting rooms than anyone else in the village.
He heard things. He remembered things. And he had a gift for drawing out confidences that more formal questioners would never receive.
If there was gossip to be gathered about Florence Albright's recent activities, Gareth would have heard it.
If there was a piece of the puzzle I was still missing, Gareth might hold it without even knowing what he held.
I looked at the clock above the counter.
It was nearly three in the afternoon, and Gareth would be finishing his deliveries soon.
If I walked to The Daily Loaf now, I might catch him before he closed the ovens for the day.
I pulled on my coat, checked that the drawer was locked, and stepped out into the lane.
The rain had begun to fall at last, a fine mist that clung to my hair and dampened the shoulders of my coat, and the village seemed to huddle beneath it like a cat settling into a familiar chair.
But I walked quickly, my thoughts already ahead of me, turning over the questions I would ask and the answers I hoped to find.
The afternoon had darkened by the time I reached the bakery, and the warm light spilling from its windows was a welcome sight.
Through the glass I could see Gareth moving behind the counter, his apron dusted with flour, his round face pink from the heat of the ovens.
He looked up as I pushed open the door, and his expression shifted from cheerful greeting to something more guarded when he saw my face.
"Penny," he said, setting down the tray he had been holding. "You look as though you've seen a ghost."
"Not a ghost," I said, and I closed the door behind me against the rain. "But I think I may have found something that brings us a good deal closer to one."