“Are the Keatons generally well liked in the village?”
“Good source of gossip and can get you anything you want to buy at a fair enough price.”
“Then no one bears a grudge against them?”
“Excepting Jimmy Nolan, who wanted to marry Faye Corner before Keaton muscled in.”
Constance raised an eyebrow. “Did he indeed?”
“Never married anyone else, neither.”
“Then Mr. Keaton and Mr. Nolan do not get on?”
“Doubt they like each other much, but I’ve never had to separate them on a Saturday night, nor May Day on the green. Mind you, I don’t fancy Jimmy’s chances in a fight now with just one hand.”
Constance stared at him. “One hand?” she repeated, utterly confused.
The constable’s face relaxed into a grin. “I’m talking aboutJimmyNolan. He’s the younger brother ofMatt Nolan, who’s run the smithy alone since Jimmy’s accident.”
“Ah, I see!”
“Don’t know who’ll be blacksmith after Matt,” Heron said, stroking his mustache in a thoughtful kind of way, “’causehenever married, neither, and got no family. Neither brother’s been lucky in love, come to think of it—poor old Matt had his heart set on Mavis Cartwright when he were young. I know you wouldn’t think it now, but she were a pretty little thing thirty years ago…”
Constance sat up straighter. “Nolan the current blacksmith wanted to marry Mavis?” It was a connection, though she couldn’t quite see how it helped.
“Oh, yes. They were engaged and all before…” Heron trailed off, blinking rapidly, as though remembering he was talking to a stranger.
“Before Alice was born,” Constance supplied, her thoughts racing. Could Alice be Nolan’s child and not the late Mr. Mortimer’s? And how did that make any difference to the matter of the letters?
Could Jimmy, the Nolan she’d never met, be responsible for the Keatons’ letter? Or Matt, the current blacksmith, bearing a grudge against both Keatons on his brother’s behalf?
After all these years? Unlikely, but some event she didn’t know ofcouldhave brought it all back. Miss Mortimer’s father had—probably—ruined Mavis, his old love, which gave him a motive for that letter. Though Constance couldn’t imagine what he had against Emmeline Chadwick… Or why he would pretend to have received a letter himself if he had not. Except to throw Dr. Chadwick off his scent.
This was getting ridiculous. With an effort, she turned back to the matter of theft, and the one thief she knew of, who was looming altogether too large in her mind: Miss Fernie.
“Have you ever arrestedanyonefor theft in Sutton May?” she asked the constable.
“Couple of strangers on market days.”
“Do you get many complaints of theft?”
Heron shrugged. “Things go missing from time to time—not often, by any means, just occasionally, over the years—but it was always felt the things were just…lost.”
Like the silk shawl in the Keatons’ shop.
“People don’t steal from their neighbors in small communities like Sutton May,” Heron said.
Because everyone knew everyone else’s business and it was too easy to be caught? Or was that too cynical a way of regarding a law-abiding village?
“What sort of things have been lost?” Constance asked. “Apart from the shawl and the Gimlets’ hen.”And the school funds embezzled by Miss Fernie.
“Oh, just little things. A small wooden box of Mavis Cartwright’s. ABook of Common Prayerfrom the vicarage. Miss Mortimer lost a bracelet years ago—that was probably the most valuable, but she reckons she probably left it up in London. That was alongtime ago, mind you, just before the old squire died. Must have been thirty years ago and more. I wasn’t even a constable then, just a child, but I recall it being talked about.”
Not exactly a plague of thefts over thirty years, and she could not really see how they might be related to the anonymous letters, except in so far as Miss Fernie was a known thief.
“Has anything ever gone missing from the school?” she asked on impulse.
“Not that I ever heard.” He frowned. “Why?”
