“A woman who knows her notepads. I like it!” Zara tapped on her tablet till before bagging up the items. As she handed them over, she asked, “This pen? Would it have anything to do with... you know… the murder? I heard someone was stabbed with a pen in the bookshop, and people around here say wild things, but a lot of people have been saying it.”
“It’s true.” Ellie’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you know of anywhere else in the village I might find pens to buy?”
“Try the post office, or maybe that little tourist shop in the museum?”
Ellie nodded, not mentioning she’d already checked those places. She thanked Zara for the pad and pen and set off towards the door.
“You know, I did see something strange that day,” Zara said, as though she were remembering an incident in that moment. “I was outside putting the shop’s rubbish in the bins when someone sprinted down the back alley like a mouse running from a cat. They almost knocked me over, but I jumped out of the way. But that did not stop them from falling into the bins. I did not see who it was before they ran away, but they did leave behind a strange scent.”
“Like cherries?” Ellie asked, her pulse quickening.
Zara’s eyes widened. “Yes! My goodness, how did you know?”
“Because I picked up on it at the scene of the crime,” Ellie replied, her mind racing with this new piece of information. “Did you see anything else?”
“They tripped over, and then there were more footsteps. That young PC with the face of a boy ran down from the opening, and the person dressed all in black limped away.”
“That would have been right before I saw PC Finn Walsh.” Ellie nodded, a small piece of the timeline sliding into place. “Zara, would you mind showing me where this happened?”
“Of course, Ellie. It’s just through here.”
Ellie followed Zara through the stockroom to a door that opened directly onto the dark alley with only one entrance running behind this side of South Street. The walls of surrounding buildings loomed over them. The air hung thick and humid, carrying the faint scent of rotting rubbish and damp stone.
As they stood there, Ellie heard voices drifting down the alley, their words tunnelling down the narrow space as clear as day.
“This is just a snatch and grab gone wrong,” one man said, his tone dismissive, but his sureness suggested police. “The Sergeant is never going to figure this out.”
“If she even cares to,” someone else replied. “Did you hear this bookshop belongs to her ex-daughter-in-law?”
“Talk about awkward.”
Ellie’s stomach twisted at their words. She didn’t know where they ranked at the station, but she did know that DS Cookson could stoop as low as she wanted to, and had. Ellie didn’t want to believe Cookson wouldn’t take the case seriously given their broken familial connection, but her gut told her not to rule it out.
“You said the person fleeing fell?”
Zara pointed to a cluster of bins a little further down the alley. Ellie approached, scanning the ground. Bits of rubbish were scattered here and there, and one bin lay on its side.
“That’s the one they knocked into,” Zara explained. “It was half in the way, but Amber always leaves them like that behind her shop. Too lazy to drag it all the way in.” She gestured to a spot near the wall. “That’s where they hid.”
“And you’ve already told the police this?”
“Yes, but they have not bothered to come out and check,” Zara said, shaking her head.
Ellie crouched down, sweeping the area. “Did you notice anything else about them?”
Zara thought for a moment. “Just that they were about this big,” she said, indicating to her shoulder. “I would guess around five-five. And the cherry smell, of course.”
Ellie didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but she rarely did on set either. Just something that stuck out. She knew that was one of her special skills. She’d heard enough times over the years how thorough she could be, but it was simple for Ellie. The trick was to breathe, observe, and process everything you’re seeing. That cardboard coffee cup would never have made it onto the set of Game of Thrones if she’d been involved in production.
Observing the rubbish, what Ellie could see was that everything was coated in a slick, sticky coating.
“That’s the cleaning oil Amber uses to polish the antiques she sells in her shop,” Zara explained, nodding a few doors down. “Is it important?”
“I don’t think so, but if this is Amber’s rubbish,” Ellie said, moving aside a rag covered in a concentration of the brown cleaning oil, “and Amber’s rubbish comes out of her shop all sticky, then why is that so shiny?”
Careful not to touch the oily rubbish, Ellie weaved her hand through before pinching the small shiny silver disc between her fingers. She held it up to the light. A shiny coin, untouched by the oil, but very much touched by time. Still, for a Roman coin, she could still make out the engravings clearly.
She’d handled replicas of what the coins would have looked like new on the set of Rome’s Revenge, a streaming movie she’d worked on that had been well-written and grossly under funded. Despite Ellie’s best efforts to maintain historical accuracy, the director had insisted on charging ahead with his ‘vision’. Ellie had at least managed to convince the wardrobe department to install invisible zips in the anachronistic Grecian prom dresses they’d chosen for the peasant women of Ancient Rome.
Ellie held up the coin, its silver surface glinting in the dim light of the alley. Zara leaned in, her eyes widening with curiosity.
“Unless I missed an announcement, that’s not one of our coins,” Zara whispered, moving closer. “Is it worth something?”
“Maybe,” Ellie replied, turning the coin over in her fingers. “But right now, it has value outside of monetary. If the person who murdered Thomas dropped this when they fell over, why were they carrying a Roman coin with them?”
“Holy moly!” Zara exclaimed, her fingers flying across her phone screen. “Coins that look like that auction for hundreds of pounds online. I cannot resist an auction. My father was a racehorse commentator, and I think there is something about the fast talking.”
Another head popped out from behind a nearby shop, and Sylvia appeared, her perfectly coiffed hair barely rustling as she stepped into the alley.
“Ah, Ellie! I thought I heard your voice. Are you talking about money? What in the devil have you got there?” Her eyes zeroed in on the coin as she approached. “Oh, splendid. A Roman coin! A penny of King Offa, if I’m not mistaken.” She leaned in and plucked the coin from Ellie’s palm, holding it up close to her eye like a jeweller examining a diamond. “I briefly studied the Roman period during my university days before I travelled to Peru to give courting that Count a go, but he was dreadfully boring and had no neck to speak of.” Weighing the coin in her palm, she said, “When it comes to Rome, I do know that Meadowfield is a prime location for finding something like this, though I found the subject rather tedious. Medieval is my sweet spot. These things would have been circulating in the late 700s. Where did you dig it up?”
“I didn’t,” Ellie said. “It was on the floor just here.”
Zara leaned in close to Sylvia, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We think the murderer dropped it while fleeing the bookshop.”
“Is that so?” Sylvia’s eyes lit up with undisguised excitement. “Oh, I say...”
Zara turned to Ellie, her expression suddenly protective. “You should give the coin back to Ellie. She found it, after all.”
