I turned it over to check the marks—George I, made in London. “See the initials?” I pointed out the letters PL over the maker’s mark. “This piece was made by Paul de Lamerie, a Huguenot refugee from the Netherlands—the most renowned London silversmith of the eighteenth century. If you’re sure you want to sell, you should get a very good price. I hope you don’t mind—I asked Tom to check out that new auction house on the Sudbury Road.”
“Done and dusted.” Vivian crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “The owner is Nigel Oakley. He owned an estate agency in the Cotswolds for thirty years—solid reputation, well thought of locally. Sold up two years ago—made a small fortune, apparently—and invested in an antiques auction business run by his son and a business partner. They bought the old tithe barn near Mills Lane. Spent a year renovating the place. We’ve already seen it.”
Pretty much what I’d learned as well, and it did sound encouraging. Still, I’d have Tom check them out. Where Lady Barbara was concerned, I was taking no chances.
“Shall we make a start with the chairs, the Chinese plate, and the coffee pot?” Lady Barbara asked.
“I’d rather hold off on the lacquer plate if it’s all right. Let’s start with the chairs and the silver. That way we can get a feel for how the auction house operates without risking your most valuable asset.”
“You don’t trust them?” Lady Barbara asked.
“I don’t know them. Until we’ve had a chance to meet, talk about terms, examine their contract, I’m not willing to take a chance.”
“That can be settled easily enough,” Vivian said. “Barb’s invited them for cocktails on Wednesday. You’re to come as well. Bring that handsome detective inspector.”
“In the meantime, have Ivor look at the plate.” Lady Barbara laid her small, wrinkled hand on mine. “If you’re satisfied, Kate, dear, I’d like to sell everything at once.”
A knock on the door announced the entrance of Francie Jewell, carrying a huge bouquet of white tulips in a glass vase. “More flowers, m’lady.”
Vivian winked at me. “Our Barb’s got herself another secret admirer.”
“Oh, hush. It’s hardly a secret.” Lady Barbara’s pale cheeks turned faintly pink. “They’re from Nigel Oakley. We met at St. Æthelric’s when he first arrived. He invited us to the grand opening of the auction house.”
“Quite a do. He’s been sending her flowers ever since,” Vivian said. “Peonies last week. Lilies the week before that. Always white.”
I pictured the white, cup-shaped petal on the floor of Ivor’s stockroom.
Was Nigel Oakley a shrewd businessman buttering up a potential client, or a thief and a murderer?
Chapter Eleven
Wednesday, May 8
Wednesday turned out to be the first damp, gray day we’d had since I had arrived in Suffolk. It wasn’t raining exactly, more like misting—a “wee Scottish mist,” as my husband used to say. I woke to sounds of scuttling in the thatch above my head and pictured tiny creatures taking shelter in the reeds.
I’d spent all day Tuesday at The Cabinet of Curiosities, making sure nothing else had been stolen in the break-in. The storeroom was still off-limits, but I’d made a thorough check of the shelves and cabinets in the display area. Ivor was far too whimsical to maintain an organized shop plan, but as far as I could tell, everything was in its place. I’d phoned Ivor to tell him the good news. Then I’d phoned Tom at police headquarters to find out if our trip to Hapthorn Lodge was still on. It was. The forensics team had completed their search of the house and grounds.
Tom had arranged to pick me up after breakfast. Since the temperature was in the fifties, bone-chilling and damp, I decided on jeans with a white microfleece pullover under a black wool blazer.
Tom arrived at ten AM in his silver Volvo. Vivian was elbow deep in rhubarb. I called goodbye, grabbed my tote bag and raincoat, and dashed to the car.
“Morning.” I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. “I’m still getting used to the idea that I’m part of the investigation.”
“We need an expert. Might as well be you. Oh—by the way, the solicitor said no valuation was done after Wallace Villiers’s death. They suggested it, but Mrs. Villiers declined.”
“So it’s up to me. I hope I live up to DCI Eacles’s expectations.”
“Don’t worry.” He shot me a smile. “No one ever does.”
We drove down Finchley Hall’s tree-lined drive. Tom pulled through the huge wrought-iron gates and turned right toward the center of the village.
“Did anyone on Weavers Street remember seeing Evelyn Villiers the day she died?”
“Not a soul. Weavers Street is residential. Not many were home that day except a few old-age pensioners—and they weren’t stationed at their windows. If Mrs. Villiers drove herself, she would have parked at the end of the street near the stone wall on Dash End Lane.”
“What have you learned?”
“Forensics identified three sets of shoe prints in Ivor’s stockroom,” he said. “Two have been identified as belonging to Evelyn Villiers and Henry Liu. The third belonged to a man wearing leather-soled shoes with some kind of logo that is being analyzed. Size ten and a half.”
If my mental conversion was accurate, that was a man’s size eleven in the United States. “Any news on Lucy Villiers?”
“Nothing yet—and we haven’t found anyone named Grenfel in the database.”
I let that sit for the moment. There had to be some trace of the missing daughter—a driver’s license, a job application, a utility bill. “The Villiers’s old housekeeper, Ertha Green, will be back in town Friday. I’ll ask if she and Lucy kept in touch. Did the crime scene team find anything useful at Hapthorn Lodge?”
“Fingerprints—most belonging to Evelyn Villiers and the part-time housekeeper, a Mrs. Wright. She came in from the village to do light housekeeping and, in her words, ‘a little plain cooking.’”
“How about the door-to-door interviews?”
“Several neighbors reported seeing
