The Tale of Hill Top Farm (10 page)

Grace reached for the cat. “I’m afraid it’s out the door with you, poor old thing,” she said sympathetically. “I know you miss your dear mistress, as we all do. But Anvil Cottage belongs to somebody else now—and he’s not the sort of fellow who is likely to want a cat.” To Miss Potter, she added, “Mathilda Crook is taking Tabitha. She said she needs a good mouser at Belle Green. Tabitha was a sterling mouser in her day, although she’s getting a bit slow in her old age.”

“I am not!”
Tabitha exclaimed indignantly.
“There’s nothing at all slow about me.”

Miss Potter was looking at the letter. “I wonder,” she said in a low voice, “whether Miss Tolliver’s correspondent has been notified of her death. I lost a . . . a friend recently. I know how important it is that people learn about it as soon as possible.”

“You’re right, of course,” Grace said, hearing the sadness in Miss Potter’s voice and wondering what it meant. She put Tabitha on the chair and reached for the letter, which was written in a slanting feminine hand on beige linen letter-paper. “I suppose I had better contact the writer. I’m sure that Miss Tolliver’s nephew won’t think to do it.” She scanned the first page quickly, noting the address at the top. “It’s from a Sarah Barwick, in Cumberland Lane, Manchester. I’ll drop her a note.” She put the letter back on the table.

“But what does it say?”
Tabitha insisted, stretching out her paw.

Grace glanced down at the table, seeing the box and the crumbs. “My goodness, Tabitha,” she said, “what a dreadful mess the mice have made since you’ve left the cottage.” She swept the cake crumbs off the table and into the empty box. “I’ll carry this home and put it in the dustbin.” To Miss Potter, she added, “We have such a problem with mice in this village. Without a cat in the house, they simply take over.”

“Read the letter!”
Standing on her hind legs, Tabitha put both forepaws on the table and switched her tail from side to side in an imperative gesture.
“It might contain a clue to Miss Tolliver’s death!”

Miss Potter fixed her blue eyes on Grace. “Perhaps you will think this silly,” she said in a half-apologetic tone, “but you might consider keeping the package safe, rather than disposing of it. One does not wish to leap to conclusions, of course, but I believe someone mentioned poison whilst we were at tea, just a little while ago. I’m quite sure there’s nothing to it, but as long as someone in the village is thinking of poison, the possibility does remain, if only in the mind.”

“There!”
Crumpet exclaimed into Rascal’s ear
. “You see? I told you so! Poison!”

“But the mice said—”
Rascal began
.

“Oh, what do mice know?”
Crumpet growled impatiently
. “Stupid creatures! Almost as stupid as snails. Half of them could have died and never been missed.”

Grace chuckled, albeit a little uneasily. “Why, Miss Potter,” she said in the lightest tone she could manage, “I do believe you’ve been reading your Sherlock. And you do know a thing or two about villages, don’t you? The way people gossip—” She gave her head a disapproving shake. “Rose Sutton is likely to have poor Miss Tolliver murdered twice over—in her imagination, of course. But you’re right. I’ll take the box and keep it safe, in case it’s ever wanted.”

“The letter!”
Tabitha cried, and reached up to catch at Miss Potter’s sleeve with her extended claws.
“There’s nothing wrong with the cakes, but do read the letter. Aloud, please!”

Miss Potter smiled down at the cat, her blue eyes twinkling. “Such an expressive creature. My own little animals often seem to have an understanding that is almost human. One quite imagines that Tabitha is trying to tell us something important.” Her eyes went back to the letter. “I wonder if Miss Tolliver was reading this when she suffered her attack. Do you happen to know if this Sarah Barwick was a friend?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” Grace replied regretfully. “Miss Tolliver and I were rather close, certainly, but she was never one to share confidences.” She paused, thinking about how kind and understanding Miss Tolliver had been when her husband the vicar had died, and how much she had come to depend upon her unquestioning friendship.

Miss Potter nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose it is easy to have acquaintances in a village. Indeed, one must find it hard not to be acquainted with everybody. But I daresay it is exceedingly difficult to find a friend one can trust with one’s interior secrets.”

Exactly!
Grace thought, looking at Miss Potter with respect. She had received that kind of friendship from Miss Tolliver, and had freely shared her hopes and fears. But it had not worked the other way round, and Grace had to admit that the older woman’s interior life had remained a mystery to the end.

“I think Miss Tolliver never found that kind of friend,” Grace replied. “She was born in this cottage, and lived here her entire life. She never left the village, you see, and never married. She was devoted to her elderly father, who was rather a difficult person. She took care of him until he died, ten years or so ago, without question or complaint.” She paused and added, “I understand that he did not want her to marry.”

“Parents can be unreasonably demanding,” murmured Miss Potter, averting her glance.

“They can indeed,” Grace replied. Frowning, she glanced around at the furniture, the windows, the walls. “It’s curious,” she said, “but I have the feeling that something’s not quite right in this room. That something is missing.”

“Missing?”
Tabitha repeated. She raised her head and followed Mrs. Lythecoe’s glance from one wall to another.
“Yes, I had thought about that earlier. Something is definitely—”

“I rather think,” Miss Potter said quietly, “that the Constable miniature is gone.”

“The . . . Constable?” Grace asked, nonplussed.

Miss Potter pointed to a spot on the wall, above a mahogany writing table on which stood several photographs. “It was there, in a gilt frame, the last time I was in this room.”

“Of course,” Grace exclaimed, going across the room to the table. “Why, how very perceptive you are, Miss Potter! It was a framed miniature landscape of the English countryside, no more than a few inches wide and high. You can even see where it hung, since the print wallpaper around it has faded.” Frowning, she turned back to Miss Potter. “But—a Constable? Surely you’re not referring to John Constable, the great English landscape master?”

“Oh, but I am,” Miss Potter said, her face growing animated and almost pretty. “I recognized the painting the moment I first saw it, when I visited her several years ago. Both my brother Bertram and I are admirers of Constable’s work, you see. Bertram likes to paint large landscapes, although rather gloomier than Constable’s.” She paused and added diffidently, “I daresay this little landscape needed cleaning. But of course it was quite a valuable piece, especially since Constable painted so few miniatures—only nine or ten, as I recall. Perhaps Miss Tolliver did not like to entrust it to anyone for cleaning.”

Even more surprised and perplexed by this deepening mystery, Grace looked back at the wall. “A Constable,” she mused. “I certainly had no idea, and I’m sure that no one else in the village suspected that the painting had any particular value.” She paused, now very much disturbed. “But what on earth could have happened to it? It must have been there when we celebrated Miss Tolliver’s birthday on the day before she died, or I should have noticed its absence, especially owing to the way the wallpaper has faded around it.”

“Has anyone been in the cottage since Miss Tolliver died? Other than those who removed her body, I mean.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Grace answered, “and as I told Mr. Roberts, I have the only key.” She stared at Miss Potter. “Mr. Roberts was certainly anxious to get in, wasn’t he? But I hardly think that he would have—”

“Listen!”
Crumpet exclaimed, jumping out from behind the sofa
. “I saw that Roberts fellow last night, trying to break into this very cottage! It was dark, of course, but I’m sure it was him. I don’t believe he got in whilst the ginger cat and I were watching, but he might have come back after we left.”

“Crumpet!” Grace exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” She went to the sofa and looked over the back. “And Rascal! My goodness! Are there any more of you? Get out of here, right this minute! You know better than to come into a house uninvited!”

“But we were invited,”
Crumpet protested
. “Tabitha Twitchit asked us in.”

“Out with you,” Grace repeated. And with a squirming cat under each arm and Rascal creeping guiltily at her heels, she marched to the front door and thrust all three outside.

Returning to the sitting room, she continued with her thought. “I hardly think, though, that Mr. Roberts could have gotten into this cottage during the daylight hours—and especially after making all that fuss about the key.”

“But perhaps Mr. Roberts had already entered the cottage and taken the painting,” Miss Potter remarked. “He may have raised the commotion over the key to mislead us, feeling that—when the painting was discovered to be missing—he would not be suspected.”

Grace smiled. “Why, my dear Miss Potter, you astonish me. You are a skeptic at heart!”

“I’m afraid so,” Miss Potter said ruefully. “I come from a long line of Dissenters—obstinate, hard-headed, matter-of-fact Lancashire folk, and skeptics to the very bone. For better or worse, I have inherited their spirit.”

“My husband, the former vicar, always used to say that he cherished the skeptics in his parish,” Grace said, “because they were the only ones from whom he was likely to hear the truth—especially when it wasn’t a truth he wanted to hear.” She paused. “Speaking of the vicar, I’m reminded that something else has gone missing in the village. The Parish Register.”

“The Register?” Miss Potter looked surprised. “That’s an odd thing for someone to take. I’m sure it’s quite valuable, of course, but only for the information it contains.”

“Indeed,” Grace said. She folded the letter and put it into the pocket of her brown skirt. “Shall we go?” she asked briskly, thinking of the supper waiting for her on the back of the kitchen range.

Miss Potter hesitated. “Don’t you think that someone should be notified? About the missing Constable, I mean.”

“Yes, of course,” Grace said. “Well, perhaps our village policeman.” John Braithwaite kept the peace and dealt deftly with troublesome daytrippers, but she did not have a great deal of confidence in his ability to trace the whereabouts of a stolen painting.

Miss Potter cleared her throat. “I was thinking of Miss Tolliver’s solicitor, rather than the police,” she replied hesitantly. “You said this morning, if I remember correctly, that there is a will.”

“Why, of course,” Grace exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that? Mr. Heelis, in Hawkshead, was Miss Tolliver’s solicitor. I’ll send a message to him straightaway, and leave the entire matter to him.” Satisfied that they were making the very best of a bad thing, she picked up the empty cake box from the table. “We should be going now, don’t you think?”

“I do,” Miss Potter said, and cast one last look at the spot on the wall where the Constable had hung. “I’m afraid there isn’t much more to be learnt here.”

8

Charlie Hotchkiss Has News

October in the Lake District brings variable weather, with early snows almost as likely as late summer sunshine, and there is always a great rush to get the last vegetables in from the garden before winter begins in earnest in November. But there had not yet been a frost this autumn, and although the air was crisp, the rising sun and clear sky offered the promise of a warm day.

Beatrix got up and took her rabbits and hedgehog into the garden at the first light of dawn. The sky was serene and cloudless, the fells across Esthwaite Water were turning from smoky gray to lilac, and the hill behind Belle Green was brushed with a dewy sheen. The robins practiced their sunrise chorale in the sycamore tree, the rooks cawed lustily, and the farmyard roosters crowed in a raucous chorus. It was a lovely morning, Beatrix thought, turning to glance toward the woods, where the beeches and larches paraded in their gold-and-bronze autumn finery. A splendid morning to go down to the lake and draw.

Beatrix settled Josey, Mopsy, Tom, and Mrs. Tiggy in the new pen that Edward Horsley had built for them behind the chicken coop, gave them each a bowl of their favorite food, and went in to breakfast. She was in such good spirits that she even managed to ignore George Crook’s brusque greeting as she sat down to a bowl of hot oat porridge, with milk and a sprinkling of sugar. Charlie Hotchkiss was more cheerful than usual, too, for he had picked up a bit of intrigue at the pub the night before.

“What dust tha think, George?” he asked, sitting down at the table across from Beatrix. “Seems like Miss Tolliver might’ve been poisoned. Foxglove, ’tis said.”

Beatrix stared at him. The question of poison had not been far from her mind since Rose Sutton had mentioned it during Dimity Woodcock’s tea party. Poisonings weren’t terribly unusual, of course, and one read about such dreadful accidents in the newspaper every now and then. Foxglove, she knew, contained something called digitalis, which acted on the heart in ways that weren’t very well understood. Beatrix somehow didn’t think it was likely that Miss Tolliver would have been careless with foxglove, which was well known to be dangerous. But when the inhabitants of a village began gossiping, what counted was what people
thought
to be true, rather than the truth itself.

“Poisoned!” Startled, George Crook looked up from his eggs and rasher of bacon. “Why, I nivver in t’ world would’ve thought it!”

Mathilda came to the table with a basket of warm bread in one hand, a pot of tea in the other, and a look of disapproval across her narrow face. “Tha ought not t’ say something like that, Charlie Hotchkiss, unless tha knows it for a pure fact. There’s enough talk about poor Miss Tolliver as ’tis, without addin’ to it. Bread, Miss Potter? There’s honey in that jar.”

“Thank you,” Beatrix said. Mathilda Crook might have her failings—her caution to Charlie was definitely hypocritical, given her penchant for passing along any little tidbit that came her way—but her breads were without fault and her honey was deliciously reminiscent of elder flowers in the spring.

“But it’s true!” Charlie said, defending himself. “Constable Braithwaite told me. Seems Miss Tolliver took foxglove for her heart.” He picked up his spoon and attacked his bowl of steaming porridge. “He said not to tell nobody, though,” he added importantly, with a warning glance at Beatrix. “T’ matter is still under” (he dropped his voice) “investy-gation.”

“Miss Potter and me was at Tower Bank House yesterday, to tea,” Mathilda said importantly, with a nod to Beatrix. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat down at the table. “There was talk of poison then. Rose Sutton mentioned it, as I recollect.”

“I nivver,” George said again, leaning back. He blew out an incredulous breath. “Well, if tha heard it at Tower Bank House, there must be something in it, Tildy. Cap’n Woodcock bein’ Justice of t’ Peace, and all, I mean. There’s not a thing in this village goes on what he doan’t know.”

“T’ cap’n weren’t there,” Mathilda said. “It was Rose who brought it up.”

“But bein’ t’ wife of t’ veterinary,” Charlie said judiciously, “Rose Sutton ’ud be one to know all ’bout poisons, I reckon.”

“And Desmond Sutton is a friend of Constable Braithwaite, which is likely where t’ news come from. Out of t’ horse’s mouth, so to say.” George, now satisfied that he had traced the information to its source and found it to be true, went back to his eggs.

“ ’Tis a bad business,” Mathilda said, shaking her head sadly. “But if Miss Tolliver died from poison, it had to’ve been a mistake. Mappen she weren’t wearing her spectacles when she mixed it up.”

Charlie leaned forward. “Constable says it could’ve been
foul play,
” he reported in a very low voice, with the confidential air of a man who has had access to official secrets and has been warned against passing them on.

Beatrix gave him a surprised glance. George
well-I-NIVVER
ed for the third time, Charlie added that the nephew from Kendal had been very ugly to Mrs. Lythecoe about the key to Anvil Cottage, and Mathilda said she hoped that Constable Braithwaite and Captain Woodcock would talk to the magistrate in Hawkshead about their suspicions, “ ’cause it was appalling to have such unfortunate goin’s on in t’ village, with new folk comin’ in and all.”

And with a meaningful glance at Beatrix, she began to talk about the School Roof Fund, to which Lady Longford had with amazing generosity contributed a gold Young Victoria sovereign, and which Dimity Woodcock had handed over to Miss Crabbe the day before, so that the roof could be mended before the next rain.

“ ’Cause if it isn’t,” she concluded, dolloping honey on her bread, “Miss Crabbe is likely to have a breakdown over it. At least, that’s what Bertha Stubbs says.”

And having cited the ultimate authority on events at Sawrey School, she settled down to her breakfast.