“Tell me about Colin Wardle.”
“Lovely looking boy, he was. His mother was that proud of him, always dressing him up and showing him off like he was the Prince of Wales. Colin got himself into trouble when he was a teenager—shoplifting, joyriding, coming home all hours. He could be sweet as anything one day and a right baiter the next. Bullied his mother. I think she was afraid of him, although she never said. He must have been nineteen or twenty when he got a job as a driver for an appliance outlet. Next thing we knew, they had a satellite dish.”
“When did he meet Wallace Villiers?”
“Must have been shortly after that.” She chewed thoughtfully on one of her orange-painted nails. “He started wearing smarter clothes, got his own transport. He wasn’t popular around here, I can tell you.”
“Why was that?”
“Put on airs, didn’t he? Like he was something special, when we all knew better. Liked to give the impression he knew something we didn’t.”
Ertha Green had said he was sly.
I thanked Sheila Parker and stepped out into the deluge. Rain had beaten down the lovely flowers and sluiced topsoil over the concrete walk.
In the car, I tried Lucy Villiers’s cell phone again. This time it went straight to voicemail.
I was about to leave a message, when a call from Tom beeped in.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Dunmow Parva. Sheila Parker just told me—”
He cut across my words. “Tell me later, Kate. Can you get to Bury? Eacles heard about your visit to Hapthorn Lodge. He’s on the warpath.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I found DCI Dennis Eacles waiting for me in Tom’s office. He looked about as glad to see me as a bride discovering a blemish on her wedding day.
“I hear you used another of your nine lives last night, Mrs. Hamilton.” He stared at me with his piggy eyes. “If you’d care to give me your version.” His annoyance showed on his face—literally. He’d nicked himself twice while shaving and had missed a bristly patch on his neck altogether.
I told him what I’d read in Cockrill’s book about the cottage along the River Stour. “Evelyn Villiers had a thing about rivers and the legend of the green maiden. I wanted to know if the photograph over her bed would reveal anything—and it did. The name on the back of the photograph, River’s Edge Cottage, is the same name as a house plaque once owned by Colin Wardle’s mother in Dunmow Parva.”
Tom raised an eyebrow. I gave him a look that said I’ll explain later.
“And what does all that have to do with Evelyn Villiers’s death?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, pretty sure he wouldn’t be interested in my mother’s theories about puzzles and elephants with amber eyes.
“What if you’d been seriously injured?” Eacles waived a newspaper in my face, and I realized my close encounter at Hapthorn Lodge had made the front page. “The press are on our backs as it is. Imagine what they’d do if we’d put a civilian in harm’s way.” He threw the paper on Tom’s desk and glared at him. “We have drugs pouring into Suffolk, a constable in critical care. It’s been fifteen days since Mrs. Villiers was murdered—fifteen days—and there’s been no arrest. Not even a viable suspect.”
“We’re following every lead—you know that.” Tom appeared unruffled, but his left eye was twitching.
“Yes—including airy-fairy notions like maidens with green skin.” Eacles looked like a warthog with acid reflux. “We’re the Suffolk Constabulary, not the Society of Folklorists. Next thing you know we’ll be consulting mystics and conspiracy theorists.”
I wanted to tell him about Professor Markham and the archives of the church in Dunmow Parva, but this definitely wasn’t the time. Tom would have to deal with Eacles in his own way.
“We’ve been conducting interviews in Little Gosling,” Tom said. “A number of residents reported seeing a stranger in the area. We think it’s the intruder. When we find him, we’ll bring him in. In the meantime, I’ve posted a guard at Hapthorn Lodge.”
“When the cow’s out of the bloody barn?” Eacles ran a finger around his collar as if it were choking him.
Tom stood. “If you have a better idea, sir, please share it.”
“A better idea, you say? I do, as a matter of fact. Bring this case to a conclusion before both of us are transferred to Traffic Division.” He turned to me. “We hired you to take an inventory, Mrs. Hamilton, not conduct clandestine operations. Is the report complete?”
“It’ll be on your desk by Thursday.”
Eacles was halfway out the door. “Here’s another idea for you, Mallory. Do it all again—witness statements, doorstep interviews, dustbin searches—the lot. And don’t come back without evidence we can actually use.”
If the day had been sunny, we’d have walked in the Abbey gardens. As it was, rain bucketing down, the gutters overflowing, Tom and I took shelter in the pub. The Dog & Partridge was crowded with patrons, folding their dripping umbrellas and stashing their rain gear on the coatracks near the entrance.
While Tom put in our orders, I texted Lucy: Call me.
“I’m sorry, Tom. Eacles is taking potshots at you, and I’m handing him bullets.”
We found a seat near the fire. I sat, warming my hands and feet. We’d barely gotten settled when the food came. While the Dog & Partridge didn’t exactly offer gourmet cuisine, the food was tasty, the prices reasonable, and the service fast. I’d ordered a bowl of tomato basil soup. Tom had ordered a ham and cheese panini.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Tom sliced off a corner of his panini. “Mind you—haring off to Hapthorn in the middle of the night wasn’t the wisest move.”
“I’ll be more careful from now on.” I rubbed my hands together to thaw them out.
He ruffled my hair. “I know you will. Now, tell me about Sheila Parker.”
“The sign on her house—‘River’s Edge Cottage’—actually belonged to the Wardles. Somewhere around the time
