“Matter of unpleasant letters. Not against the law, to my knowledge, but not neighborly either.”
“Exactly,” Constance said, pleased that there would be no territorial disputes between them. “Dr. Chadwick asked us to find out who has been sending them, with a view to—er…discouraging the practice.”
Heron nodded. “And have you? If they ain’t broken the law, I can’t really help. Though I could have a word, in an unofficial capacity.”
“That might well be useful—once we know who did it. At the moment we are rather struggling, not having the local knowledge that you do.”
Heron nodded again, in a sage kind of a way.
“I was wondering if you had much trouble with the local children?” Constance said.
His eyes widened. “Thechildren?”
“Oh, I don’t mean serious trouble,” Constance assured him. “More in the way of mischief or rowdiness, playing jokes on people who might not appreciate it, rushing around dangerous places like the blacksmith’s shop.”
Heron scratched his head. “Some of them’s a bit wild. The Dickie boys’ll cheek you soon as look at you, and draw the others into their games too, given half a chance.” He ruminated on that for a bit. “Hid one of Mr. Gimlet’s hens once, but they brought it back next day. Might have pinched an egg or two, but no one could prove it.”
“Did Mr. Gimlet make a fuss?”
“No. He had a word with Hen Dickie and it never happened again. They’re not bad kids. In fact, they’re all better behaved since Mr. Ogden took over the school. There was a lot moremischief before that—like they’d been cooped up too long. Children need to run about, don’t they? And Miss Fernie was quite the dragon, kept their heads down with no breaks, even on sunny days and snowy ones. The children used toexplodeout of those school gates like stampeding cattle, run from one end of the village to the next until I grabbed a couple of them and people yanked their own indoors. Haven’t seen that in a year or two.”
“So, Mr. Ogden has been good for the children’s behavior? Do the parents think so?”
“In general, yes, I’d say so. Plus, theygowithout a fuss instead of slipping away somewhere else, and even the Dickies see the sense in learning, since their oldest lad’s doing very well in his schooling, by all accounts.”
“I have heard rumors,” Constance said delicately, “that the Dickies are not strictly honest.”
Heron shrugged. “They get the blame of it. I never caught them at anything. Mostly keep themselves to themselves—though Hen can be a handful after a night in the Goose.”
“Then the rumor that Mrs. Dickie stole a shawl from the Keatons’ shop is untrue?”
Heron shifted in his chair. “Never proved one way or the other.”
“Did you charge her with the theft?”
“I never had anything to do with it, just heard the gossip like anyone else. The Keatons banned her from the shop, but they never pressed charges.”
“So no one searched her or her house? No one ever saw her with the shawl?”
“She might have sold it in Guildford when she went to the market there. But…” He scowled. “It’s my belief it was never taken in the first place. Otherwise, Keaton would have pressed charges against her.”
“You don’t like Mr. Keaton?”
“Don’t know him—he doesn’t come from round here.”
“But he has lived here for, what, twenty years?”
“Seventeen. The shop was Corner’s then.”
Constance let that one be. “So you think the Keatons lied about the theft?”
Heron looked shocked. “Oh no! I reckon she made a mistake, had already put the shawl away and forgot. She probably discovered after she’d barred Nell, and didn’t want to admit it. So Keaton gets to play the generous-hearted shopkeeper, though no one stole anything in the first place.”
“Would he not rather be known as the sharp shopkeeper who cannot be stolen from?”
“Yes, which is what makes me think nothing was stolen in the first place.”
Which could well be why someone chose to defend Mrs. Dickie with an anonymous note to the Keatons about bearing false witness.
