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“She didn’t?” Miriam asked. “Your father is a vet?”
“Yes. He’s real upset ’cause he knows her—Rosie, I mean. And, how’d Miss May know Rosie were sick in the night, unless she was sick the day before? You don’t get up in the night, out of your bed, to go look just in case! Miss May must’ve gone to check on her before it got dark, like she usually did. Rosie’s a good horse!”
“Well, Dr. Mullane is looking after her now.”
“I know that. He’s going to keep her. But Miss May is still dead!”
“She is,” Miriam agreed. “And I’m very sorry.”
The boy sniffed hard. “?’S’all right,” he said. “You left the flowers. And I’ll put some another day. Wild ones.”
“But no one would mind if you took a few from her garden as well,” Miriam answered him.
“You think?”
“Yes,” Miriam said decisively. “I’m quite sure.” She turned back to Daniel. “We should go, or we’ll be late.”
The three of them walked together toward the church entrance and joined the people going inside.
“So, it wasn’t the middle of the night,” Daniel said quietly, when they had found seats near the back of the congregation. “It was round about dusk. Did it happen in the stable or not? Did she go for a ride to meet someone?”
“You mean intending to? Why? Her house was private enough, she could have met half a dozen people there, and no one would ever have known.”
“No,” he said slowly. “In fact, half a dozen people cou
ld have walked out from St. Anne and visited her, or come by small boat and landed in the cove without even going through St. Anne!”
Miriam turned to stare at him, her eyes wide. “So, you’re saying that anyone could come to May’s house unseen, because her cove is only visible from her house. I wonder if it’s the only one on the island quite so private, with access to deep water? We should take a look after this, and see if there’s another house so isolated, and if anyone is making an effort to buy that.”
“If there is, there would have been no need to kill May…but we can ask,” he said.
“There will be no estate agents open today. It’s Sunday…”
“That’s why we’re in church. Everybody who’s anyone will be here. Small communities are like that. You said so yourself.” He smiled at her. “They’ll know everything.”
She opened her hymnbook and appeared to pay attention as the service began.
* * *
—
AFTERWARD, THEY INTRODUCED themselves as two friends of May Trelawny who had come to pay their respects to her, and had run into each other on the ferry. They made polite conversation, admired the island, the town, the weather, and asked, quite incidentally, if there were any other houses in isolated coves, and with such lovely views of the sea. There were plenty of houses with views, but no, none in so solitary a place.
As they walked away, Miriam concluded, “That’s the reason.”
Daniel linked his arm in hers, and they walked back to May’s house and its garden facing the sea. He felt exactly the same.
* * *
—
IN THE AFTERNOON, they ate lunch and then cleared away any trace of having been in May’s house. Daniel left with a sharp pang of regret. He turned at the gate and looked back at the house sitting in the clear sunlight. Its garden was bright with unkempt flowers blazing with color. Its climbing roses festooning a few gently crumbling walls with softness, yellows and pinks echoing the colors of the stone, deepening it. Beyond, the sea was a fathomless blue, all the way to the horizon.
Miriam stopped beside him. He glanced at her. She was wise enough to say nothing. Words were not big enough to encompass what could be said. And to pick out one thing was to exclude all the others.
They turned back to the road to St. Anne and the ferry and walked in companionable silence, hearing only the calling of birds and the sea murmuring against the shore.
Daniel wondered if Dr. Mullane, whom they had not seen at church, would come. If he didn’t, was there anything they could do to force him? He really should have obtained a statement, anything on paper that he could show the court. But he did have the photographs in his pocket. That was proof of something. And the postmistress had dated them.
