An Incomplete Revenge

ever seen and that Jacob was an accomplished musician.”

“Well, I never.” The vicar shrugged.

“Reverend Staples, please do not be vague. I believe you know perfectly well why I am here. There is nothing I can do now regarding your crime—for what you have done constitutes looting and is thus a criminal act—but I can at least be an advocate for the dead and tell you that I know what you did.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“Yes, you do. Jacob Martin—and you knew that the family’s real name was van Maarten—told you he had taken the violin to London, to his friend Mr. Andersen, in Denmark Street. After the tragedy, indeed, after you received the telegram with news that Willem, Pim, was presumed dead, you went to London to claim the violin, saying nothing to Mr. Andersen of what had happened, only that Jacob had asked you to collect his property. Weren’t you afraid he might ask what you intended to do with the instrument? Or that he might know a relative with a claim to it?”

“I—it wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, I think it was, Reverend Staples. And, as I said, what you did amounted to looting, which is beneath your calling.”

“But it would have languished there; it would have not been played. It was a beautiful thing, a work of art.”

“And it didn’t belong to you. It was meant to be passed on, father to son.”

“But the son was dead.”

“As far as you knew, he was missing.”

“But he—” The man stopped speaking and looked at Maisie, his eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to say?”

“Before I try to say anything, I have one question for you.”

“And that is?”

“Why didn’t you stop it? A man of the cloth could have put a stop to what went on in Heronsdene.”

“But I—”

Maisie inclined her head, watching the white pallor of fear rise up on the vicar’s face. “Your expression has told me all I need to know.”

“You don’t know what it was like. The chaos, the fear, the terror.”

“But aren’t you supposed to walk up to that chaos and challenge it, Reverend Staples? Isn’t that what you are called to do, rather than be part of it?”

The man leaned forward, his shoulders slumped. Then he looked up and sighed deeply. “The violin was stolen from me anyway, so what does it all matter now? It’s in the past.”

“You retired several years ago, didn’t you?” She did not allow him to reply, but continued. “I suspect because you could not stand another hop-picking season and the fires that came with it. You probably thought you were being haunted, didn’t you? Haunted by the ghost of a young man who had lost his entire family in one night. Haunted by the young man who might one day come for the violin that was rightly his.”

There was silence. Then the Reverend Staples spoke again. “You are right, Miss Dobbs. I am haunted, and I will bear that cross for the rest of my life.”

Maisie stood up. “You may wonder why I came today, to tell you what I have discovered when there is nothing I can do about it. I came because I wanted you to know that someone else knows what you have been part of, and that you had taken property from the dead before you even buried their remains. You should have been the moral anchor of the village, not of the hue and cry.”

Maisie bid the vicar good day without further ado and left Hawkhurst to return to Heronsdene, where she intended to pack her bags and make her way to her father’s house before going on to London the next day. It was unlikely that she would be able to see Sandermere this afternoon, given the police presence she had witnessed as she left the village this morning. She was looking forward to getting home now, to the city with its self-important bustle. If she were to remain faithful to her practice of ensuring that all ends of a case were tied before leaving, she would have to admit that there was more to do, but James Compton had not required her to bring all the guilty to account. He had asked her only to find out what was amiss in the village, and she knew more than enough to make her report. Yet such considerations did not sit easy with her, and she hoped, even now, that she might find a way to usher her work to a more fulfilling close.

FRED YEOMAN GREETED her as she opened the door from the street into the residents’ sitting room.

“Good afternoon, Miss Dobbs. On your way this evening?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“We’ll be sorry to see you go. Not very busy for the next couple of days—mind you, when I saw the police driving through the village, I thought we might see some more outsiders, though we don’t welcome newspaper reporters and the like in Heronsdene.”

“Quite right. Are the police still up at the Sandermere estate?”

“According to one of the regulars who works in the gardens, they’ve been up in Sandermere’s rooms talking to him, and there’s been some sacks taken out of the stables.”

“I see. I wonder what’s in them.”

“I reckon it’s that missing silver. Probably them London boys hid it under his nose, thinking they’d come back for it later.”

“You still think it could be the London boys? Even though they’ve been absolved of the crime?”

“Well, they can unabsolve them, can’t they?”