Ellie noticed Sylvia hesitate, a hungry look in her eyes. It was clear she wanted to be the one to proclaim she’d found a killer clue.
“The coin should technically be given to the police as evidence,” Sylvia said, her tone measured.
Zara scoffed. “We have all touched it now. What kind of evidence will it be?”
“Important evidence,” Ellie interjected. “We need to find out who was carrying this around and why. It’s not just been dug up. It’s well cleaned, well preserved.”
Sylvia’s face brightened. “I know some members of the historical society. I could ask if you’ll allow me to take a picture?”
“Of course,” Ellie agreed, sensing some historical tension between Zara and Sylvia behind their friendly smiles.
Sylvia placed the coin back in Ellie’s palm before pulling out her phone from her tight jodhpurs, and Ellie caught sight of the time displayed on the screen.
“I need to go,” she said, remembering her plans before she let pens and coins distract her. “I’m meeting my gran at Blackwood House.”
“I say, are you on the case like two regular old amateur sleuths?” Sylvia asked, her voice brimming with enthusiasm. “Rather fanciful way to carry on, but jolly good fun, I suppose.”
“It’s not quite like that,” she explained, hearing the defence. “I just have some questions, and the Blackwood family might have the answers.”
“You know, Edmund’s eldest son, James Blackwood, sells his handmade cards in my shop,” Zara said. “He’s a nice man. Spiritual, but those artistic types usually are.”
Sylvia snorted at the suggestion, her fingers fumbling with her phone as she tried to take a picture of the coin. The flash went off, resulting in a blurry image.
“James Blackwood is pretentious! He can’t hold a candle to his father’s talents. That’s why he dabbles in every medium of art except fiction writing. He’s a hack, and he knows it.” Sylvia looked up and down the empty alley and said, “Between us, I hired him to paint the first draft of the mural in my shop, and after weeks of listening to him explain why his work was ‘avant-garde’ when it was simply dreadful, I had to hire a professional artist to fix the work, which pushed my opening back weeks, and speaking of the shop, I think I just heard my door open.” She backed off down the alley. “Oh, and Ellie, do pass on my well wishes to Anne Collins, the housekeeper. She does my cottage twice a week, and she’s taken this whole business with Edmund rather badly. She might know about the coin too—she volunteers at the museum around the corner.”
With that, Sylvia rushed off, leaving Ellie and Zara alone in the alley once more.
Zara turned to Ellie, her expression serious. “Word of advice? Sylvia is a nice lady, but she can’t help getting in other people’s business. She’s the sort of woman who thinks she can run everyone’s lives better than them. And she might be right, but who said it was her place?”
Shaking her head, Zara headed back into her shop, leaving Ellie to roll the coin in her palm. She’d get it back to the police, but she’d give herself the day to figure out if it had any significance after turning up unannounced at Blackwood House. And she was already five minutes late.
Chapter 11Blackwood House
Ellie pocketed the coin and hurried down the narrow alley, doubling back down South Street. She passed the pond and the street next to The Drowsy Duck, making her way up to the big house on the right. As she approached, the wall seemed to grow taller, looming over her.
She found her grandmother waiting outside the gates of Blackwood House, gazing up at the imposing structure. Maggie didn’t comment on Ellie’s lateness, but asked where she’d been.
“I was looking for the pen,” Ellie explained, slightly out of breath. “No luck, but I did find this.” She pulled out the coin to show her grandmother. “Found it in the alley behind Zara’s gift shop.”
“Roman,” Maggie remarked. “Was never my specialty in my teaching days, but that’s not the sort of thing you’d find in the alley of a Wiltshire village every day.”
“I’m going to ask the housekeeper about it. Sylvia said Anne volunteers at the museum. That’s if we get past the gates.”
“Oh, we will,” Maggie said confidently, pressing the intercom buzzer. “And she volunteers at the museum alongside Charles Blackwood, Edmund’s grandson.”
Ellie wondered if her gran was going to elaborate on the mention of the Open University reading list book left at the scene of the crime, but she didn’t. True to her word when ordering their dinner the night before at the Golden Sun, Maggie hadn’t divulged any more information, and Ellie had stopped wondering if her gran was hiding something from her. It was more a question of when would Ellie find out?
A voice crackled through the speaker, sounding like a disgruntled teenage girl. “What? Who’s there?”
“Maggie Cookson,” her grandmother replied firmly. “I’m here to talk about Edmund Blackwood’s Last Draft. I thought the family might like to talk to someone who has actually read it.”
There was a pause, and then the black gate clicked open.
“You told me so,” Ellie said, shaking her head in disbelief.
They walked across the small courtyard over cracked paving stones where weeds thrived in the crevices, their green tendrils reaching up defiantly against the neglect. She lifted her gaze to take in Blackwood House looming above them. It was a traditional stone-built two-story cottage with red brick accents surrounding white-painted wooden frames that looked to be original with their single-pane glass. Ivy clung to the old weathered stone, spreading thick and undisturbed from the many trees casting the cottage in shadow.
Up close, the house wasn’t as scary as she remembered. Or maybe she was just older. But then she saw what had always made her shudder through the branches of a nearby tree. There was a small tower unlike anything else, built in a gothic style not unusual for the period, but unusual given the rest of the house and the surrounding village. A stained glass window of pure red looked out over the village green, a silent observer of Meadowfield’s comings and goings through the branches. Ellie remembered how that window had always drawn her attention as a child. Hidden during the warm months, it would reveal itself behind bare branches in winter. She’d catch glimpses of shapes moving behind the red veil, her young imagination running wild with possibilities of what lay beyond.
“Guess what year it was built?” Maggie asked.
Guess… was another of Maggie’s favourite games. She wouldn’t take ‘I don’t know’ for an answer, which suited Ellie just fine; the game had always scratched something in her brain.
“1818?” Ellie stated.
“Why?”
“Because it’s got a nice ring to it.”
“Is that all?” Maggie shook her head. “That won’t do. Don’t you remember my old advice? If you don’t know the answer—”
“You must guess, and if you must guess, at least make it an educated one,” Ellie finished off, winking at her gran out of the corner of her eye. “It’s advice I’ve been parroting for years to directors and producers and costumer people, and everyone in between.” Clearing her throat, Ellie pointed up to the tower. “That’s gothic, so we can assume its pre-sixteenth century, which would be old even for Meadowfield. The Great Fire of 1770 saw to that, so most of our homes were built after that year. The rest of the cottage has clean lines, balanced symmetry, and good proportions. Georgian, which means the tower is early nineteenth-century gothic revival, built to look older than it is, which leads me to 1818.”
“Interesting.” Maggie reached out and pressed the doorbell. The sound tinkled inside with a considerable echo until she lifted her finger. “B+.”
“B?” Ellie choked back a laugh. “Am I that far away?”
“1820.”
