“Charles,” Ellie started, her voice steady despite her racing heart, “what did you want to do with your grandfather’s manuscript? I heard something strange about a… a ‘trio of glass prisons’?”
Charles’s face fell. “T-that’s what she called it,” he said, glaring at Emma, who lingered at the bottom of the stairs behind Anne. “They’re not prisons, they’re just museum grade display cases. That’s all.”
“What was your plan for the manuscript?” Ellie pressed.
“I wanted to preserve it,” he admitted, his voice soft but earnest. “As it was, as Edmund left it. Unread, in three glass boxes, separate, in the local museum.”
Ellie’s brow furrowed. “But why?”
“It would draw people in,” Charles explained, his voice gaining strength. “It belongs to the village. Edmund scattered the riddles around the village, giving the book to three people in three parts for a reason. He didn’t want it to be read as a whole. He wanted to leave behind a final mystery, and as a historian, I would respect and preserve that.”
“As a historian, surely you’d want to read it and record it?” Emma grumbled.
“Better than selling it to the highest bidder though, sister of mine?” Charles replied with a bite Ellie hadn’t heard before. “Our grandfather despised private collectors of his work. He once left a notepad in a café and watched it go at auction for £12,000, and when he contacted the man asking if he could see the pad to copy the notes, he said he couldn’t do that and wouldn’t communicate further. He wanted to keep them for himself… he hated that…”
“Can’t you see that’s what you’d want to?” Emma let the end of ‘to’ drag out. “You want to keep them to yourself in your silly glass prisons.”
“They’re not—”
“James!” Maggie called, clapping her hands together. “Invisible ink… your glow-in-the-dark paint… you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Hang on a second,” Ellie said, lifting a hand in protest. “I haven’t finished with Charles.”
Ellie turned her attention to Emma, a sudden thought striking her. “Emma, did you hurt your shoulder at your birthday party?”
“Aye, it was,” Anne confirmed before Emma could respond. “Fell down these stairs.”
Ellie’s gaze shifted to Charles, her mind racing with a terrible thought as her brain fused together separate details from different conversations. As their eyes met, she saw fear flash across his face. It was clear he understood what she was thinking, and his expression screamed, ‘How does she know?’
Unable to bear the scrutiny, Charles broke away, pushing past Emma as he left the room.
“Watch it, loser!” Emma snapped at her brother. She then rounded on Ellie, her eyes blazing with anger and contempt. “And you’re a loser too. What are you doing here? Don’t you have a job? A life? A boyfriend? A home? Or are you just some sad forty-year-old loser who has nothing better to do?”
“Alright, Emma,” James called out, his tone exasperated. “There is such a thing as subtlety.”
Maggie tutted at the artist’s sculpture, the only other person in the room seeming to pick up on the irony, but Ellie remained unfazed by the insults hurled her way.
“Shut up, weirdo,” Emma spat at James.
“You’re so… obtuse!” he exclaimed before marching off.
“Obtuse? Are you calling me fat?” Emma called after him. She spun back to Ellie. “Stop looking at me, loser!”
Ellie felt a surge of anger rise within her, and even though it wasn’t in her nature, the last few days had been unusual enough that a little venting might have done her the world of good. But she remembered how Willow had dealt with Emma, refusing to rise to her bait.
“What about you?” Ellie retorted, forcing the wobble in her voice to iron out. “The girl who never tried. The girl who inherited her father’s work ethic, thinking that leeching off your grandfather is the way to go. The girl who knows about antiques, but probably only because she’s been surrounded by them her whole spoiled life. Oh, but she’s only going to use that knowledge to get her far enough in the right circles after exploiting a sweet girl who gave her a chance.”
“Amber punched me!” Emma snarled.
“I heard you were going to bite her,” Anne muttered under her breath.
Emma’s pale face darkened a deep shade of red, the veins in her neck protruding as she screamed at Ellie, “Take a picture, it lasts longer! I told you to stop staring.”
Ellie took a deep breath, steeling herself against Emma’s vitriol. She’d faced worse, and this twenty-two-year-old child wasn’t going to break her.
“Do you know what I learned working in a coffee shop for six months?” Ellie asked, steady and calm. “There are a lot of angry people out there in the world. And what I started to notice was I don’t think a lot of them even know why they’re angry. No matter what, they’re going to take that anger out on the first person who gives them even the slightest reason. Sometimes the wrong drink, sometimes something as simple as a look.”
Emma gritted her jaw, the sharp corners jutting out like they might burst through.
“Someone threw a drink in my face fifteen minutes into my second shift,” Ellie continued, laughing at the memory. “It’s not funny. I was grateful it was a lemonade. Cold, but sticky. And right then and there, having not been at work long enough to get anything wrong yet, I decided I’d never take it personally when I crossed people like you because how could I?”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“The foghorns,” Maggie remarked.
Ellie looked directly into Emma’s eyes, her gaze unwavering. “The point is, I’m learning more and more lately that life is all about perspective, and right now, your perspective is that I’m your problem, but from where I’m standing, you’re the one showing us you have a problem.”
“An anger problem,” Maggie added, joining Ellie by her side.
Emma’s bravado evaporated as she looked around, as though expecting someone to come to her defence. When no one did, she jumped to her feet.
“You’re freaks,” she cried. “You’re all freaks!”
As Emma turned to storm off, the strip across her nose came loose again, falling away to reveal her injury. Ellie’s eyes narrowed as she took in the small split on Emma’s nose. It was far from the bloody mess she had expected, and there was no sign of the bruising that accompanied a broken nose. Not in the makeup department at the studio was to be believed. She wanted to reach out, to rip the rest of the dressing and expose Emma’s exaggeration that had led to Amber’s arrest.
“Let’s get you a fresh dressing,” Anne said, offering the stairs to Emma. “I can’t stand seeing that thing flapping. It needs fresh tape is all, and I don’t begrudge doing it this once, mind, but pay attention so you don’t get used to it because I’m nobody’s nurse.” Before she followed Emma up, she turned to James and added, “And I certainly don’t wipe away anyone’s drool.”
As Emma and Anne disappeared up the stairs, Ellie heard the thud of boots outside, and soon DS Angela Cookson strode through the open doorway, PC Finn Walsh trailing behind her. The warm grey of twilight framed their silhouettes as they entered.
