Chapter Eleven
Clio
Clio met DC Izzy Adefope at the evidence-storage facility. Diana Cornish’s clothing and belongings had been bagged up and
were laid out on a table.
Clio liked Izzy immediately. They were of a similar age, and Izzy was doing the job Clio would have gone for if she hadn’t
landed her role in the Art and Antiques Squad. The Murder Squad wasn’t for the fainthearted, and Izzy had an implacability
about her that Clio admired and recognized as a necessary requisite for any woman who wanted to succeed in criminal investigations.
Gloves on, she looked through Diana’s belongings. The dress was badly made, unlined, and made from cheap fabric, the sort
of minimum-quality stuff you’d invest in for a fancy-dress party or for Halloween. The headscarf was also cheap: an unhemmed
strip of muslin that could easily be purchased by the meter.
“This does look like a costume,” Clio said.
“We’re looking online to see if we can find it, but we’re also considering whether it was specially made to match the clothes
in the portrait of St. Katherine you sent us.”
The professor’s underwear was of a completely different quality: black lace and silk. Sexy. Expensive.
“How do you afford this stuff on a professor’s salary?” Clio asked.
Izzy shrugged. “She had no husband, no kids. Her salary was her own.”
“Even so. Are these real?” Clio held up a bag containing two pearl earrings.
“We think so. And the necklace.”
“That’s a big diamond.”
“She definitely had money to spend on herself.”
“Unless someone bought these things for her.”
“We’ve found no sign that she was in a relationship. Her parents are deceased so maybe she inherited money. We spoke to her
colleagues this morning, and according to them she was wedded to her work. They seem to be the closest thing she had to a
family. We’re working on getting into her phone still.”
Clio picked up the sewing kit that had drawn her here. It was the cheapest of things, the kind of kit hotels give out for
free, a needle threader and needle attached to a soft piece of cardboard. A few loops of yarn in black, blue, and white. The
needle was threaded with a short length of black cotton.
“She used this,” Clio said.
“Somebody did.”
Clio couldn’t shake a gut feeling that there were connections to be made between Eleanor Bruton’s sewing of her letter into
the curtain, and the embroidery, and this, but she kept the idea to herself for now because she wanted to impress Izzy. It
was good for women in the police force to make connections with one another; she wasn’t going to start saying anything Izzy
might think was outlandish or stupid.
Diana’s handbag was black, also expensive.
It was by Chanel. Clio inspected it, looking for places where it might have needed a small repair, but it was in good shape, and it would have been hard to sew, if not impossible, with such a flimsy needle.
Besides, nobody repaired handbags in an emergency.
You repaired sweaters or shirts. You sewed on buttons that had fallen off.
Because there were no bloodstains on the dress, it was likely that whatever Diana had been wearing when she was killed had been removed and replaced with this costume.
Perhaps the repair had been to some item of clothing they were yet to find or might never find.
Unless.
Izzy’s phone rang. “Excuse me, I need to take this,” she said.
Clio reached for the evidence bag containing Diana’s black underwear. The panties were skimpy, with no visible repairs. The
bra was lightly padded, the cups covered in lace.
Izzy’s conversation got heated, quickly. “Sorry,” she mouthed to Clio, and stepped out of the room.
Clio removed the bra from the evidence bag. It looked normal, but when she ran her fingers along the seams and around the
underwire, they caught on something beneath one of the cups, and the cup itself felt different from the other one. It was
slightly more padded.
Clio peered at it closely. At the base of the cup, there was a very small, very neat row of hand-stitching. She had nothing
to unpick it with and couldn’t remove her gloves without contaminating the evidence. She tugged at it gently, and the flimsy
thread snapped, allowing her to ease her fingertips inside, and remove a very fragile piece of embroidery.
She caught her breath.
Anya
I told Sid everything and he did the same.
It was overwhelming. So many things didn’t make sense to us, but we could barely process them while Mum’s body was fighting so hard and while Viv was fussing around us. For the first time, I found her overbearing.
“Do you think Viv only feels good when she’s caring for people?” I whispered that night. We were in the small sitting room
in the cottage. I’d told Viv she could go home, but she said she preferred to stay, that she wouldn’t be able to relax while
Mum was so sick. She was in the kitchen, preparing us a meal we hadn’t asked for, didn’t want, and knew would taste like ashes
in our mouths.
“I don’t know,” Sid said. “I think it’s odd.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Everything feels disturbing.”
“Not Viv, though,” I whispered. “She’s annoying but surely not disturbing.”
He couldn’t reply because Viv appeared in the doorway, startling us both.
“Dinner won’t be long,” she said. She was wearing Mum’s apron. I tried to look at her with fresh eyes, but all I saw was a
woman who’d been invaluable to us. I glanced back at Sid. He was watching her very carefully, which unsettled me, but I thought,
What harm could she possibly do?
The next morning it was good news at the hospital. Mum was visibly improved, sitting up in bed. We had a long hug. “We got
you back,” I said.
“I feel human again.”
I hadn’t been there more than half an hour when I got a message from Magnus.
Good news that your mother is better. Flights are booked for you and Sid to return to Edinburgh later today. Work starts at the castle tomorrow. Rose will be in good hands.
I showed it to Sid, who swore. “How does he know?”
“I don’t want to go back.”
“I don’t, either, but I don’t see that we have a choice.”
The airport was crowded when we arrived in the early evening. We got food and found seats overlooking the runways. Fatigue
hit like a sledgehammer. I laid my head on Sid’s shoulder and let the rising planes mesmerize me.
“I’ve been thinking about the cottage,” Sid said. “When they renovated it, it would have been the easiest thing in the world
to install surveillance, hidden cameras, or microphones at the very least.”
He was convinced they were monitoring our phone activity, too. I saved our seats while he went to buy cheap burner phones
for us both. I didn’t know if it was an overreaction or not. It was growing darker outside; the window glass reflected the
airport interior brightly enough that I could watch Sid walking away. A woman caught my eye. She was sitting a few rows behind
me, to the side, a laptop open on her knee. She was watching Sid, too. It was more than a glance. She swiveled her neck to
see where he was going. I wondered if she thought he was hot. He was a low-key guy; he didn’t get a lot of open attention
from women, so I wasn’t used to it. I felt a little jealousy rise, but when she turned her head back, I looked away so she
didn’t catch me staring, and when I checked back, she’d gone.
I told Sid when he returned.
“What did she look like?” he asked.
I tried to remember. “Long hair in a pony, tucked beneath a baseball cap. A lot of makeup. Scarf up around her neck. Sweatshirt.
She looked like a fitness influencer.”
He said she could be one of the women who he’d seen in St. Andrews. I tried to spot her again, but she’d disappeared. At the
gate and in Edinburgh, he scanned the people around us, asking me, “Is that her?” but we didn’t see her again.
It felt as if we’d let go of reality, as if paranoia was our new normal.
When we got to the cottage, I was about to put my key in the lock when Sid put his hand on my arm. “Remember: act naturally.”
I nodded, but once we were inside, it was so hard. If there’s one thing creepier than feeling watched, it’s when you don’t
know where you’re being watched from. My skin crawled. I wanted to leave. Somehow, though, we got through the time until bed,
and it was a relief to be in the dark holding hands beneath the covers.
Sleep came slowly, and once again, it was tangled with nightmares.
Sarabeth
Sarabeth Schilders threw a treat for her puppy, a Scottish terrier named Hypatia, and watched approvingly as the little dog
ate it. Hypatia’s tail wagged madly, and this made Sarabeth feel happy. It was late in the evening, and they were the only
occupants of her dusty, book-filled house on Hope Street in St. Andrews.
“Good girl,” she said. “Who’s a good girl? Are you ready for walkies?”
Every night they took a turn around the block so Hypatia could do her business. Sarabeth took down Hypatia’s leash and harness
from a peg in the hall, and began the difficult job of attaching both to the dog’s wriggly body. The job was only half finished
when her phone rang. She ignored it. But it rang again, and again, until she picked up. Her heart skipped a beat when she
saw who the caller was.
“Sarabeth Schilders,” she said.
“It’s Charlotte Craven.”
Diana’s boss. The puppy started yapping. With the side of her foot Sarabeth slid the dog across the tiled floor into the utility
room and shut the door on her. The yapping became inaudible as she went to her study and sat down at her desk. Charlotte only
called Diana, usually. There was a hierarchy in the Fellowship, and this was a break of protocol. It was a bad sign.
She cried when Charlotte told her that Diana had died, and how. Sarabeth wasn’t close to many people, but Diana had been an exception. She’d also been an extraordinarily effective member of the Fellowship.
“This is a terrible blow,” she said, once she’d found her voice. Then, “And so brazen. Those fucking women.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “There will be retribution. In the meantime, I need you to handle things up there for me. I’ll call
Giulia and Karen and tell them about Diana, but I need you to tell Anya. The details about how her body was found are being
suppressed for now, while police investigate, so we’ll let Anya believe it was a mugging that went wrong.”
Sarabeth pushed her glasses up her nose. “I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Thank you. And for stepping up.”
“I’ll do her proud.”
Sarabeth sat for a long time in the dark after ending the call. She forgot about the dog. Tears ran down her cheeks and she
tasted them on her lips.
If she was in charge up here, if she was to take on the mantle of Diana’s power, then she would clean house. And if the Order
of St. Katherine was willing to be this brutal, then Sarabeth would be, too. A clean house meant a strong, efficient house.
She mulled over this until her tears had dried, then she remembered Hypatia and the outing she needed. They walked the dark
streets until the dog whimpered to go home. Sarabeth picked her up and kissed her. By the time she let them both back into
the house, she knew exactly where her housecleaning would start.
Anya Brown was an asset that needed protecting at all costs.
Sarabeth was convinced that the combination of her visual memory and her academic brilliance was uniquely suited to the work they needed her to do.
She was honored to take on the role of looking after her.
She’d backed Diana one hundred percent when Diana had suggested hiring Anya, even when Magnus had pushed back.
He hadn’t wanted to complicate his situation. He made Sarabeth sick to her stomach.
If the problem wasn’t the Order of St. Katherine, it was always men.
To protect Anya and the ambitions of the Fellowship, she could remove that particular obstacle. Their best operatives were
already following Sid. As soon as he got back to St. Andrews, she would tell them to find a way to deal with him permanently.
Clio
The door of the evidence room swung open, startling Clio. DC Izzy Adefope came in, frowning.
“We have to leave,” she said. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“What? Why?”
“That was my boss calling. He told me not to do anything more on this case. Like, stop. Now.” She made a cutting motion across
her neck. “I’m being transferred onto something else. My whole team is.”
“Transferred onto what?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Who’s taking over this case?”
“He is.”
“Did he say why?”
Izzy shook her head. “I should go.”
Clio hesitated; she couldn’t leave the embroidery. She said, “I can finish up here if you need to leave.” She moved slightly
to her left, to obscure the embroidery from Izzy’s view, but Izzy caught it.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Clio decided to be bold; it was what Lillian would have done. “You never saw it.”
Izzy chewed her lip as she looked at the embroidery. Her expression was stony. Clio’s heart sank. Crap. It was just her luck to be in the room with a Goody Two-shoes. She decided to double down on Lillian’s brand of tough, anyway.
“All I want is a photograph. It’ll still be here when your boss comes looking.”
“I hate him!” Izzy blurted out. “All he wants is to get in my pants. Since he found out he’s not going to be able to, he’s
decided it’s fun to demean me in front of the team whenever he gets the chance.”
Clio swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What’s his name?”
“Tony Axford.”
It was always good to know.
“Do what you want,” Izzy said. “Just make sure you leave it as we found it.”
“Thank you. If I can ever do you a favor in return.”
“I’ll keep in touch. Good to meet you, Clio.”
“Be safe,” Clio said.
She laid out the embroidery and photographed it carefully, including close-ups, then refolded it and tucked it back into the
bra. She had no means to sew it back up, but she tucked the lining back into the underwire as best she could using her fingernail,
though with gloves on, it wasn’t easy. She returned it to the evidence bag.
On the street, she wondered if she should call in. Her boss, Tim, might have heard by now that she was off the case.
Her phone rang with an unknown number.
“Clio Spicer,” she said.
“Oh hello, Detective, this is Mark Ward, Lady Arden’s butler from Sherston Hall. I have that name for you. The woman who came
to us asking about the embroidery was called Zofia Danek.” Even over the phone he was smooth. She wondered what it cost to
employ a man like him.
“And you said she worked for the University of St. Andrews?”
“That’s what she told me.”
Clio thanked him.
She could call in or she could eke out a few more minutes to work on this. She slipped into a café across the street, where she found a quiet booth in the back. She ordered food and a coffee, and hit the phone to make some discreet inquiries as to the whereabouts of Zofia Danek.