Page 58 of The Vanished Sister

Mrs. Brownstone glanced at her sister and answered rather reluctantly, “Yes, there was a guest by the name of Miss Fairfax, but your photograph does her no justice at all. Wouldn’t you say she was very handsome, Tilly?”

Tilly agreed emphatically. “Very handsome. And very youthful-looking, too. The woman in the photograph looks more like her aunt than herself. Wait—you said something happened to her?”

“She is no more, but we aren’t sure yet how or why she died as she did, the reason Scotland Yard is involved.”

The sisters exclaimed their shock and dismay. It was to be expected, but Mrs. Watson thought the innkeepers truly saddened by this turn of events.

“Could you tell us when she registered as a guest?” asked Inspector Treadles.

“It was a Friday,” said Tilly immediately.

Her sister, after flipping back the register, concurred.

The last day of the congress had fallen on a Friday. The day Mrs. Whitehill told her friend Mrs. Morgan she’d be headed home. Instead she’d come here, to Mr. Gregory’s hotel. And had spoken to him the next morning, just before he left with his sister for Cromer.

“And she left on that Saturday?”

“She did,” confirmed Tilly Brownstone. “She vacated her room, took her luncheon in our dining room, and complimented us on our roast.”

“Did you see her speak to anyone during her stay?”

Both innkeepers shook their heads. A great many guests left on those two days and they were in a hurry to make sure that rooms were ready and stores replenished for the next week.

“Did you have guests who arrived on the same day as the former Miss Fairfax?” asked Miss Holmes.

The sisters looked over their books. “Yes, three parties. A mother-and-daughter pair who stayed three nights. An elderly gent who stayed two nights and did some lovely watercolors on the bridge outside. And a husband and wife who arrived and left on the same days as Miss Fairfax—Mrs. Whitehill, that is.”

Mrs. Watson’s breaths came in quicker. “Were the husband and wife by some chance a remarkably well-looking pair?”

“They were courteous and considerate guests,” replied Mrs. Brownstone. “But I’m not sure I’d have described them as handsome.”

On the surface, this would appear to negate certain possibilities, but if anything Mrs. Watson’s heart careened about in her rib cage like a spring-launched ball in a table bagatelle machine. She’d first acquired her skills with cosmetics not on the stages of London but by putting on annual nativity plays for her grandfather’s congregation. Alongside Justina, who had been far more skillful than she. Could Justina make herself and Everett appear unrecognizable?

“What were those two in the area for?”

“I believe they were traveling for leisure,” said Tilly Brownstone, who, of the two sisters, seemed to remember their guests better. “They were headed for Church Stretton next, if memory serves.”

And Church Stretton was very close to Boxton-on-Mure, where Mrs. Whitehill lived.

Miss Charlotte, Inspector Treadles, and Mrs. Watson arrived in Church Stretton before breakfast the next morning. A tourist guidebook in hand, they knocked on the village’s inns one by one.

As luck would have it, they found their quarries at the second inn, sitting down to plates of bacon and eggs. The wife was tall and gangly, the husband short and round, both plain as toast even before the addition of almost comically thick-lensed spectacles.

But as Mrs. Brownstone had stated, they were very agreeable people. They invited the newcomers to sit down at their table and confirmed that they were indeed taking their time wending across the area, for they worked for—the wife tapped discreetly at the tourist handbook Inspector Treadles had placed on the table.

“The fitness of the establishments listed in our publications must be verified periodically, as well as costs, routes, travel times, among a slew of other things,” whispered the husband.

“And we are bound by professional honor never to reveal ourselves to anyone,” added the wife in a similar low voice. “Of course, exceptions must be made for Scotland Yard.”

They were heartsick to learn of what had happened to Mrs. Whitehill.

“But that is simply cruel,” said the wife. “And she was so very lovely. We left the Old Inn at the Bridge at about the same time and while we were all waiting for our luggage to be loaded, she invited us to tea should we ever pass through Boxton-on-Mure. Although she did mention that she might be shortly headed for the coast and hoped that Boxton wasn’t among our immediate next destinations.”

“Where on the coast?” asked Inspector Treadles urgently. “And for what purpose? Did she say?”

“She didn’t and we didn’t press,” said the husband rather apologetically, “as we also can’t reveal too much of ourselves to fellow travelers we meet on the road.”

“What a shame,” murmured his wife. “What a shame.”