Sylvia’s discomfort grew. “Because I read one. Just the one. She dropped into the conversation that she’d written sixteen books in that funny way she does, where she tells you her life story without you really asking.”
“Sixteen books and she is still a housekeeper?” Zara asked, shaking her head at the thought. “I would simply retire to an island. You would never see me again.”
“Sixteen unpublished books, but I was curious. Imagine if I found the next Hemingway clearing my kitchen!” She laughed at the idea as though all her Christmases had come at once. “And besides, I could have helped the woman. I have endless contacts in publishing whom I would have contacted if the book had been up to scratch, but it didn’t meet the measure. I was surprised it was proficiently written given her... chosen patterns of speech, but I do understand there are different forms of communication. It was the story that let it down.”
“Then they were perfect for each other,” Ellie said, excitement building in her voice. “Anne can string a written sentence together and Edmund’s ideas were still interesting enough to keep people coming back... so together, they had what the other lacked.”
“But Edmund wouldn’t...” Sylvia insisted, shaking her head. “He just wouldn’t.”
Zara frowned at her phone as she scrolled. “How would you know?”
“I did know him,” Sylvia replied.
“Then you know how he saw his life at the end,” Ellie said, finally grasping the spark that had ignited this entire mystery. “I heard about the beginning of the book. I read some of the middle, and I skimmed the ending.”
“Oh, I am jealous!” Sylvia moaned. “Is it his greatest work, like they say?”
“Depends which angle you look at it from,” Ellie said, having a point to get to. “What I gathered from the little I read was that Edmund Blackwood was a man who hated how his life culminated right at the end. He felt as though he’d ruined his sons trying to give them what he never had, and they’d ruined his grandchildren. And people were referring to his output as ‘the dark period,’ which must have hurt. If someone came along... someone who could talk and talk and talk, who just happens to be an aspiring writer... eventually that person is going to start looking over your shoulder and offering suggestions.”
As she finished speaking, Ellie noticed movement in the doorway. She looked up to see her grandmother, Maggie, standing there, a knowing smile on her face.
“I think you’ve just cracked the case, Ellie,” Maggie said, her voice filled with pride. “Well done. Let’s see if you’re right—the lights are on at Blackwood House.”
“Everyone, I am sorry,” Zara announced, lowering her phone. “I have just seen online. Emma Blackwood passed away an hour ago. Her injuries were too great.”
The image of Emma being struck by the falling sculpture flashed vividly in Ellie’s mind. She felt a wave of sadness wash over her, despite their brief and tense interactions.
Sylvia broke the silence. “I utterly despised the girl, but oh dear.”
“Oh dear,” Ellie echoed, and then something struck her. “The ink. DS Cookson said they found it on her face. Her hands…” Maggie looked confused, prompting Ellie to elaborate. “The bandage on her nose... Anne took Emma to change the dressing when it kept falling off. Anne led her away. Touched her hands, touched her face...”
Ellie’s mind raced, piecing together the puzzle. “Maggie had the ink on her. Why?” She paused, thinking aloud. “Was she writing something? No... the vacuum... James told her to get back to cleaning the rug. Maybe she spilled something and used a rug cleaner?”
Sylvia, impatient with the revelations, announced, “So, what are we waiting for? We go to Blackwood House and perform a citizen’s arrest at once!”
But Ellie shook her head. “That’s the wrong course of action. If I’m right, Anne is slippery, she’s... she’s wallpaper,” she explained. “Always there in the background, giving herself away constantly, but still so underestimated. I think it must have been Anne who followed us to the school to set the fire alarm. She was in the pub, and she knew the password. We need to corner her and leave her with no way of slipping away.”
Maggie looked at Ellie expectantly. “What do you think we should do, Ellie?”
Ellie took a moment to consider Anne’s patterns. “She attacked Thomas for getting here before she did. And she attacked Emma, who might have known too much. And…” A grin spread slowly from ear to ear. “She thinks I have the third manuscript. She was there.”
“But why does she want that book this much?” Sylvia asked, tossing her hands out. “I enjoyed Edmund’s good books as much as the next villager, but to kill for them?”
“We’ll figure out why later,” Ellie said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her. “But right now, I need you to do something, Sylvia. Anne thinks I have the missing pages, so I need you to start a rumour. A wild rumour that Ellie Swan has the final piece of the final manuscript and...”
Sylvia’s eyes lit up with excitement. “She’s lost her mind!” she gasped. “And she’s in Meadowfield Books and she’s going to burn it to the ground with the last piece of Edmund’s book. Oh, Ellie! A trap! How delicious.”
Ellie watched as her grandmother shook her head disapprovingly at Sylvia. “That’s barbaric,” Maggie stated. “What’s the matter with you, woman?”
But Ellie could see the potential in Sylvia’s outlandish idea. “That’s so wild, for Anne, it might just capture her ever-shifting attention. If I heard that rumour, and all I wanted to do was get my hands on the treasure, I’d turn up. I’ve already slain the dragon, after all, and she thinks she’s slain it to. She’s getting bolder. She murdered Emma right in front of the police; she’s not going to stop when the prize might be here for the taking.”
“Okay, enough talk,” Zara said, joining Maggie by the door, “what do we do?”
“So,” Maggie said, pushing open the door fully, “we stop her.”
Chapter 28The Housekeeper Always Dusts Twice
Ellie’s heart pounded in her chest as she crouched in the dark wardrobe, her senses heightened by the tension of the moment. The familiar scent of cherries wafted through the air, its origins now crystal clear in her mind. It was as if a cherry-tinged fog had lifted, revealing the obvious.
It wasn’t cherries.
Not cherries found in nature, at least.
Yet the artificial ‘cherry’ fragrance had been a constant presence. She’d first noticed it in this very wardrobe after Thomas’s murder, in her mother’s kitchen and hallway, at Blackwood House, and even Sylvia had recognised it. Now, as she listened to the rustling sounds of someone searching the bookshop’s back room on the other side of the door, she was more than ready to reveal herself and what she’d figured out.
Ellie’s heart skipped a beat as she heard the toilet flush. That was her second cue. Quietly, she reached for her phone, careful not to let the light from the screen spill out and give away her position. She’d been crouched in the wardrobe for twenty minutes, her legs now stiff and tingling.
Two text messages awaited her. The first, a thumbs-up from Zara sent mere seconds ago, confirmed that their trap was set. The second message, however, caught her by surprise. It was from Jade, her former co-worker at Happy Bean.
JADE
Hey! So… I quit too O.o I don’t think I would have if you hadn’t been the one brave enough to walk first. Sheila is considering it too. Think you’ve started a domino effect. Derek is FUMING, so well done :D Hope things are going well wherever you vanished off to!
Ellie blinked, rereading the message. Jade thought she was brave? The memory of that final day at Happy Bean already felt like a lifetime ago, yet had it even been a week? She hadn’t felt brave then, just desperate and hopeless, unsure of where she would end up. She’d had no way of knowing she was about to cross the bridge back home with Auntie Penny before the day was over.
A small smile tugged at her lips. Good for you, Jade, she thought, making a mental note to reply later. Right now, she had more pressing matters to attend to.
Ellie’s heart raced as a scuffle erupted outside. That was her second cue. She moved to put her phone away, but it slipped from her grasp. As she bent to retrieve it, her head collided with the back of the wardrobe. Disoriented, she stumbled backwards, tumbling out of the wardrobe and landing flat on her back.
