Page 51 of The Vanished Sister

They’d already spoken to Squire Greeley, who’d reassured them vigorously that despite his occasional nocturnal forays, on the night in question he had not hosted anyone and had been asleep in bed by half past ten.

Given that, they now had the first independent corroboration that there might indeed have been a late-night trespasser to the village, if not one that made off with this letter that only Mrs. Hawthorn claimed to have seen.

With the specific date and time—seven days after Mrs. Whitehill’s departure, quarter to two in the morning—they returned to Mrs. Whitehill’s villa and inquired after what Mrs. Hawthorn had been doing then.

“That night I had a headache and took a dram of laudanum to help me sleep.” She groaned. “I woke up the next day terribly late and more than a little nauseated—the reason I hardly ever take it. I didn’t hear anything overnight.”

“Well, at least this means you most likely discovered the theft after the passage of only a few hours,” Treadles consoled her. “And you did everything as swiftly as possible after that.”

“And while it’s intriguing to think that her trip to Devon might have been a result of that excursion to Ludlow,” said Miss Holmes, at last asking a question of her own, “Mrs. Hawthorn, we would like you to tell us what other unusual events had taken place in the recent past.”

Mrs. Hawthorn took out a notebook, opened it to the middle, and flipped back a few pages. “I have it here that Mrs. Whitehill fell sick in May of this year. We were going to visit Paignton, before the summer crowds descended, but we had to cancel that trip because she had a racking cough that persisted. She was rather saddened by the thought that perhaps her good health was at an end. But she did eventually recover. To celebrate that she ordered a good many items from Harrod’s catalogue—when before that she hadn’t invested in her wardrobe for a while.

“Oh, there was also the trip to Staffordshire in the second week of July. Her old friend Mrs. Osmond was dying and Mrs. Whitehill went to see her. And she was gloomy when she came back from that—didn’t speak for several days.”

Treadles had looked over Mrs. Whitehill’s correspondence. There were at least half a dozen letters from a Mrs. Osmond in the past few years, but none had contained an appeal to Mrs. Whitehill to visit in person.

“Was Mrs. Whitehill informed of Mrs. Osmond’s condition by cable?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

But this cable had not been kept alongside other communication from Mrs. Osmond, nor could the housekeeper remember having come across it elsewhere in the house.

They next visited Mrs. Whitehill’s solicitor in Shrewsbury, fifteen miles north, and confirmed that her estate was as tidy and flush as her own records indicated. Mr. Grantham, her lawyer, produced her will. Besides some miscellaneous gifts, Mrs. Whitehill left most of her properties to her son, with one small cottage and its contents deeded to Mrs. Hawthorn, along with a generous trust set up in the latter’s name, in gratitude to the housekeeper’s decades of faithful service.

The will was five years old, attested the solicitor, and Mrs. Whitehill had not given any indication since that she wished to amend it.

At Treadles’s question on whether there was anything else that Mrs. Whitehill wanted handed out after her passing, the lawyer raised a brow but produced a lockbox that contained a signed and sealed letter to be delivered to Mr. Broadfield after the reading of the will. However, he did not permit Treadles to read the letter without a warrant.

What was it that Mrs. Whitehill wanted her son to know? And was it the same thing that she’d set down in the apparently pilfered note?

Mrs. Osmond’s house was a county away in Staffordshire. By the time Mrs. Watson, Miss Charlotte, and Inspector Treadles detrained and found lodging for the night, it was already late. Mrs. Watson, who hadn’t slept well for days, fell into an exhausted slumber.

In her dream, Justina called on her for chores and took her to task for talking to Tommy Winton, that handsome ne’er-do-well. Adolescent Joanna, who wanted neither lectures nor responsibilities, ducked from room to room, shouting I hate those vases, and did not look back a single time at her sister.

Mrs. Watson woke up sore-eyed and still tired, a now-familiar pulse of regret and viscous dread in her veins. The uneasy dullness still permeated her as they knocked on the door of the Osmond residence, where Mrs. Whitehill had called earlier in the summer—and from where she’d returned in a noticeably grave mood.

A petite, wan woman, Mrs. Osmond’s daughter, received them in a parlor that had its windows and mirrors covered in black crepe. Mrs. Watson still sat apart from the others in her party, to signal that she was merely there as chaperone; but this time, she didn’t put herself so far away that she couldn’t see anyone’s face.

After a bit of small talk, Inspector Treadles got to the point.

“Yes, Mrs. Whitehill did call two days before my mother passed away,” answered Miss Osmond in a small voice. “But I do not know why my mother asked her to come. I also didn’t see her that day as I was unwell and stayed in my room.”

“Did you see your mother after the visit? How did she appear to you?” asked the policeman.

“I looked in on her that evening when I felt stronger. She was already extremely ill and appeared very much at Death’s door. Still, I thought—I thought she looked agitated.”

The crepe-draped parlor, despite the lamps that had been lit, felt close and airless. Miss Osmond, swaddled in mourning, was birdlike in the quick, sharp movements of her head as she looked from Treadles to Miss Holmes, and then to her own folded hands in her lap.

“Agitated in what way?”

“I can’t really describe it. As if—as if she’d made a significant decision, didn’t know whether the decision was correct, but could do nothing anymore.”

“A significant decision shortly before the end of her life?”

Again, Miss Osmond glanced around at her callers. “I can’t be sure, only that it felt so.”

“Were you the one she asked to cable Mrs. Whitehill?”