Ellie nodded, feeling a twinge of disappointment. “Thank you for the chat, Anne. It’s been... enlightening.”
“What’s this for, anyway?” Anne paused at the en-suite door, her eyes crinkling in a smile above her mask. “Writing a book yourself?”
“Oh, no...” Ellie stammered, caught off guard. “I’m just... I’ve got nothing better to do right now than be curious, I suppose.”
“Be careful because curiosity killed the cat, you know,” she said, digging in her basket before pulling out a canister. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, love. Nice catching up.”
“One last question. What kind of pen was it that Edmund picked back up? A black refillable fountain pen?”
“Well, yes. It was.”
“Do you know where that pen is now?”
Anne considered the answer for a moment as she shook up the can. “I suppose it’s in his study up in the tower at Blackwood House.”
Leaving Anne to attack the bathroom with her chemicals, Ellie descended the stairs, wondering if there was a way to sneak into that big creepy tower to see if the pen was still there. Something told her it wouldn’t be. Maybe the pen she’d been hunting hadn’t been new, it just hadn’t had an ink refill in a few years because its owner had been dead. So, who took it and why did they use it as the murder weapon? The second question was easier to answer. If the second person who’d turned up to find the manuscript had been surprised to find Thomas and used what they had to hand. But why had they had Edmund’s pen on them, and how had they cracked the riddle if Thomas had kept it secret for himself?
As she entered the kitchen, her mother shot up from the counter, clutching the sheet to her chest. Carolyn’s eyes were wide as she stared ahead at Ellie with a dead stare, her hair dishevelled, looking for all the world like she’d just risen from the grave.
“No notes?” Carolyn asked, breathless with anticipation. “How did I do?”
“I... thought you were asleep.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment!” Carolyn exclaimed. “I was in character when you and Anne came in. Please tell me Anne did the duvet properly? Corners and all?” Ellie nodded as her mother thrust a script at her. “I need your help, darling.”
Ellie glanced at the pages, frowning. “Corpses don’t have lines, Mum.”
“But doctors do,” she insisted, resuming her place on the counter. “I need to get used to lying here while people wander around me spouting medical jargon.” She flapped her finger at Ellie, urging her to get on with reading her lines. “And put some feeling into it, dear. If you’re wooden, I’m wooden. Though, I think I can use that…”
Ellie sighed, feeling a familiar reluctance settle over her. She hadn’t missed this. Clearing her throat, she scanned the stage directions of the doctor walking into the room until she found the first line.
“My daughter—”
“Feeling!”
“My daughter!” Ellie cried, doing her best impression of her mother. “Taken from us in her prime by… hypertrophic obstructive cardio… cardiomyopathy? I… I can’t read this.” She squinted, putting the script closer. “With apical ballooning syndrome?” She couldn’t help but laugh, lifting the next page to see where this was going. “My beautiful daughter was so young... so full of life... so much to live for… Mother, are you sure this is the right script?”
Carolyn remained as still as a corpse, then from the corner of her mouth muttered, “I haven’t been sent the pages yet. Penny copied down the script from last week’s episode.”
Ellie put the script down, exasperated. “Mother, I love you and I want you to succeed, but I don’t have time for this.”
“You’ve never cared about me, dear,” Carolyn lamented in her best ‘victim in a crime reconstruction’ empathetic voice—one of her only regularly paying gigs. “I need to get this part right. If I’m going to play a corpse, I want to be the best corpse Meadowfield has ever seen.”
Ellie couldn’t believe her ears. “Mum, there is a corpse in Meadowfield.”
“Who?”
“Thomas Blackwood. He was stabbed yesterday at the bookshop?”
“Oh, is that still going on?” Carolyn asked dismissively before resuming her ‘corpsing.’ “Now, resume from the next page. I want you to get to the bit where he talks about my budding ballet career and picks up my hand to see if I stay floppy.”
But as Carolyn closed her eyelids, Ellie fluttered hers before ditching the script on the corner of the counter by her mother’s toes. She’d even gone as far as to write the name of the character on a toe tag hanging from a string, who was supposed to be twenty-nine. Anyone else, Ellie might have wondered how a person could continue on so detached from what was going on around her, but not her mother. This was Carolyn Swan’s world, and everyone else was living in it.
Leaving her mother’s world to be cleaned by Anne Collins, Ellie ventured outside. The sun had moved higher above the green as the late morning bled into the early afternoon.
Ellie stood at the edge of the village green, her mind racing with possibilities. A part of her itched to march straight back to Blackwood House and confront James about Anne’s revelations. But she hesitated, unsure if she’d even be allowed back inside.
She suddenly remembered the coin she’d found earlier and mentally kicked herself for forgetting to ask Anne about it. The conversation had taken so many twists and turns, she’d completely steamrolled over that crucial detail.
Deciding to follow up on another lead, Ellie walked around the corner to the small museum nestled between The Drowsy Duck and the hairdressers. To her dismay, the place was locked up with no listed opening hours. She glanced across the pond towards the bookshop, still cordoned off as a crime scene.
Ellie resigned herself to heading back to Maggie’s. But as she turned, a familiar face caught her eye. It was Charles, the studious young man she’d seen at Blackwood House earlier. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and Ellie started towards him, eager to ask a few questions.
Before she could get close, however, Charles turned abruptly and scurried down South Street. Ellie watched him vanish around the bend and decided there was something decidedly odd about that boy. Then again, everything about this situation was strange—his strange uncle, the creepy house, the aloof sister, and it was all wrapped up in a missing riddle Ellie was no closer to finding.
Chapter 13Riddle Me This…
Ellie fidgeted with her fork, pushing the remains of her shepherd’s pie around her plate. Most days back in Meadowfield felt strange in some way, but this had been the strangest, and she wasn’t sure she could eat even if she wanted to.
“Gran,” Ellie began, her voice barely above a whisper, “I think it’s time we talked about what really happened with Edmund’s manuscript.”
Maggie’s eyes flickered up to meet Ellie’s, a mixture of resignation and resolve settling across her features. She set her teacup down with a soft clink and leaned back in her chair, the wicker creaking beneath her.
“I suppose you’re right, dear,” Maggie sighed, her fingers absently tracing the pattern on the tablecloth. “It’s a complicated story, one I’m not entirely proud of. But you deserve to know the truth, especially now.”
Ellie leaned forward, her heart racing with anticipation. As Maggie took a deep breath, preparing to unravel the mystery that had entangled their lives, Ellie knew that whatever came next would change everything.
“Gran, please,” Ellie said, her voice tight with frustration. “I know you’re protecting Charles, but we need to talk about this. He was the first burglar, wasn’t he? The one that led to you breaking your hip?”
