The Rhodes Case

by Diana Xarissa

  “What’s wrong?” Janet asked, concerned by his words and the expression on his face.

  “Come and have a cuppa,” Joan suggested as she walked into the room. “Whatever the problem is, tea will help.”

  Robert hesitated and then nodded. “Although coffee might be better if you have it,” he said as he followed the women into the kitchen. “I’ve been up since five, and I didn’t get any breakfast.”

  “It’s nearly time for lunch,” Joan exclaimed, glancing at the clock. “Let me make you something, breakfast or a sandwich or something.”

  Robert sighed. “I really don’t have time for this, but if you could throw together a sandwich, I can eat it while we talk.”

  Joan busied herself at the counter while Janet poured the man a cup of coffee. He took a sip and then a longer drink and then smiled.

  “That feels better already,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Janet asked.

  “There was a break-in last night at a house near here,” Robert replied. “The homeowners were asleep in their bed and didn’t realise that anything was wrong until this morning, very early this morning.”

  “How nearby?” was Joan’s first question.

  When Robert gave them the address, Janet shivered. The house in question was only a short distance away.

  “Did the burglars get much?” Janet asked.

  “The only thing taken was a very valuable seventeenth-century painting,” Robert told her. “It had been in the family for years. I’ve already forgotten the artist’s name, but it was insured for a six-figure sum.”

  “Goodness, the owners must be very upset,” Janet exclaimed.

  “They are, obviously. For the moment, we’re simply warning everyone in the area to be extra cautious about locking doors and windows at night. It’s just possible that, in this instance, the homeowners left a window ajar in their sitting room. They’re having some work done on the kitchen, and apparently someone opened a window to try to clear the smell of fresh paint out of the house. No one remembers closing the window, although it was closed this morning.”

  “But not locked,” Janet suggested.

  “No, not locked, but then neither were any of the other ground-floor windows,” Robert sighed. “Doveby Dale is generally a very safe place. I’m sure a great many residents leave their windows unlocked, especially when the weather is fine.”

  Janet glanced over at Joan. While she thought their ground-floor windows were probably locked, it was entirely possible that one or two were not. It wasn’t just her or Joan to worry about, either. Guests had been known to open windows, especially in their rooms, and also to leave them wide open in spite of rain or cold.

  “We’ll inspect all of our windows,” Janet said, “and we’ll ask our guests to be careful about leaving any unlocked if they do open them. I suppose first-floor windows shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “It’s best not to have any windows unlocked,” Robert replied. “Ladders aren’t terribly difficult to come by, after all.”

  Janet nodded. “It sounds as if the thief knew exactly what he or she wanted, though,” she suggested.

  “That’s one possibility,” Robert said. “The family weren’t exactly secretive about the painting, but they made a point of downplaying its value whenever anyone asked about it, and they never lent it to galleries or museums or any of the things that can sometimes catch the eye of a clever thief.”

  “I can’t imagine having something that valuable hanging on the wall,” Janet said.

  “As I said, it had been in the family for a very long time. Aside from insuring it, I don’t think they gave it much thought.”

  “Do you think the thief broke in specifically to take that painting, then?” Janet asked.

  “It looks that way at the moment,” Robert replied. “There were a few other items scattered around the room that a casual thief probably would have pocketed rather than leave. At the moment, I’m trying to keep an open mind, though.”

  He ate his sandwich and drank three cups of coffee while Janet and Joan chatted together about the burglary.

  “I wonder if the insurance will pay out since the homeowners may have left the window open,” Janet said as Robert washed down his last bite of sandwich.

  “That’s between them and the insurance company,” Robert said. “Ideally, we’ll find the painting and be able to restore it to its rightful owners.”

  “I hope you succeed,” Janet told him.

  “I understand you have guests at the moment, but not anyone that I’ve met,” Robert added.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Janet agreed. “A man called Edward Bennett and his friend, Reuben Rhodes.”

  “Tell me about them,” Robert suggested.

  “I don’t think I can tell you very much,” Janet frowned. “We’ve really barely spoken to either of them. They arrived yesterday and then headed out to the pub. When they came back, we all watched some telly together, but we didn’t really talk.”

  “You didn’t learn anything about them when they made their booking?” Robert asked.

  Janet glanced at Joan. “Mr. Bennett made the booking,” Joan said. “I didn’t get anything more than his name at that time.”

  Robert frowned. “For your own safety, you should get a good deal more information from guests than that.”

  Joan nodded. “I generally do. These were unusual circumstances.”

  Robert grinned. “Yes, I totally understand in this instance. Where are the men today?”

  “They were talking about visiting stately homes when they left,” Janet told him. “They didn’t mention which ones they were planning to visit, but from what I heard, Mr. Rhodes was more interested in visiting local pubs than stately homes.”

  Robert made a few notes in his notebook and then put it back in his pocket. “You know how to reach me if you have any concerns about anything,” he said as he got to his feet.

  Joan looked at Janet, and Janet could see the question in her sister’s eyes. She shook her head at Joan. Whatever her suspicions about Edward’s guest, she wasn’t ready to talk about the man with Robert. If Reuben truly was Everett Fox, Edward had to have brought him to Doveby House for a reason. There was no point in dragging Robert into things, at least not yet.

  Janet walked the man to the front door and let him out. He left his car in their car park and headed across the road to alert their neighbours in the semi-detached properties there to the break-in. As Robert knocked on Michael Donaldson’s door, Janet pushed the door shut and locked it carefully.

  “Let’s start in here and check every window,” Joan suggested.

  It didn’t take the sisters long to go through the entire house. They found two windows in the conservatory that weren’t locked, although neither of them could recall ever opening them.

  “Maybe they’ve been that way since we purchased the house,” Janet shrugged. “What matters is that they’re locked now.”

  “That just leaves the guest rooms,” Joan said a short while later as they stood on the first-floor landing.

  “We’re going to have to ask our guests to lock their windows when they go out, aren’t we?” Janet sighed.

  “They should be doing so anyway,” Joan told her. “If we ask them to make sure they lock them before they go out, maybe they’ll at least remember to shut them and we won’t have another soaked floor during a rainstorm again.”

  Janet made a face. Luckily their insurance had covered the damage caused by the thoughtless guest, but neither sister had enjoyed the amount of time and effort that had been needed for getting repair estimates and then dealing with the company that did the actual work. For several months after the incident, Janet had checked the windows in each guest room as she’d cleaned every morning, but she’d fallen out of the habit lately. Now she headed into Reuben’s room to make sure that his windows were locked.

  “Edward’s windows were shut and locked,” Joan told her as she joined Janet in Reuben’s room.

>   “That one was shut and locked, but this one was only shut, not locked,” Janet sighed as she moved to turn the lock into place. It wouldn’t turn. She frowned and tried again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s not locking properly,” Janet explained. She took a step back and then shrugged. “Maybe it isn’t shut tightly.” Pushing down on the window didn’t seem to make any difference, and after she’d done so the lock still didn’t turn.

  “Try opening it and then shutting it again,” Joan suggested.

  Janet pushed the window up halfway and then began to slide it back into place. “Here’s the problem,” she said, stopping suddenly. A small scrap of fabric was stuck in the corner of the window. She pulled it out and then slid the window shut. The lock turned easily.

  “What is it?” Joan asked as Janet held up the cloth.

  “It looks like a bit of torn material,” Janet said. “Actually, it looks very much like a piece of the shirt that Reuben was wearing when he arrived yesterday.”

  “How would he have caught it in the window?”

  “I can’t imagine him doing so unless he climbed out of it,” Janet said, “but that’s simply not possible, right?”

  Joan moved over to look out the window “It’s a long way down,” she said after a moment. “He would have needed a ladder.”

  Janet nodded and then looked out the window. Was it just her imagination, or could she see faint depressions in the ground below? Had Reuben used a ladder to climb out of his bedroom window the previous evening?

  “Everett Fox is wanted for breaking and entering. Isn’t that what the news story said?” Janet asked.

  “That and murder,” Joan said solemnly.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m going to go and see if those are ladder marks,” Janet said, heading for the stairs.

  “What are you going to do with the scrap of fabric?” Joan asked.

  “Put it somewhere safe for now,” Janet replied. “Why don’t you put it in the safe, actually? It probably isn’t evidence of anything, but just in case.”

  “Maybe we should have left it where it was,” Joan suggested.

  “Then we wouldn’t have been able to lock the window.”

  “Unless we’re simply locking the burglar up inside the house.”

  Janet sighed. “I need to talk to Edward.”

  “I’m sure I can get Reuben into the kitchen again tonight. No doubt he’ll be hungry when they get home from their day.”

  “You do that, but be careful. The man might be a murderer.”

  “He seemed harmless enough last night,” Joan told her. “Just hungry.”

  Janet handed Joan the piece of material and then headed out the front door. She was pushing her way through the shrubs, trying to find what she thought she’d seen from the guest-room window, when someone said her name.

  “Janet? Did you lose something?”

  “Stuart, hello,” she replied quickly, feeling oddly guilty for poking around the garden. While she and Joan owned Doveby House and the extensive gardens that surrounded it, they had nothing to do with the upkeep of the grounds. Stuart Long was a retired gardener. He lived in one of the semi-detached properties across the road with his wife, Mary. The sisters paid him a small stipend, supplemented by a generous supply of tea and biscuits, in exchange for his looking after the gardens for them.

  “Is everything okay?” Stuart asked as Janet stepped out from behind a bush.

  “Everything is fine,” Janet assured him. “I was just worried about something I saw from one of the guest rooms. It almost looked as if someone had been on a ladder under the guest-room window.”

  Stuart shrugged. “That was probably me, if you mean that window.” He pointed to the window where Janet had found the piece of cloth. “I was cutting back the ivy.”

  Janet looked at the house and then nodded. She’d never paid much attention to the ivy that covered some sections of the house, but now that it had been pointed out to her, she realised that it had recently been cut back. “Is there a problem with it?”

  “It was just getting a bit wild. I love the way it looks, but you don’t want it creeping into cracks. It can cause damage if it isn’t carefully maintained.”

  “So you were on a ladder over here recently?”

  “Yesterday, actually.” The man flushed and looked at the ground. “I left the ladder in place overnight,” he told Janet. “I know I shouldn’t have. I was upset when Robert told me about the break-in nearby. You’d have been furious with me if someone had used that window to break into Doveby House.”

  “We have a guest in that room at the moment. I believe he’s the one who would have been furious with you.”

  Stuart nodded. “Anyway, after Robert told me what happened last night, I came right over and took the ladder away. It’s safely locked up in the carriage house now, and I’ll be more careful with it in the future.”

  “I hate to think that someone is breaking into houses in the area. At least in this weather no one wants their windows open anyway.”

  “Mary always has windows open, whatever the weather. She loves fresh air, especially at night.”

  “She might want to reconsider that at the moment.”

  “She’s rather upset about what’s happened, actually. She’s going to stay with her middle son for a few days. I’ll be locking all the windows as soon as she’s gone.”

  Janet bit her tongue. Mary seemed to use every excuse she could to get away from Stuart and their home in Doveby Dale. In all the time that they’d owned Doveby House, Janet didn’t think she’d spoken to the woman more than half a dozen times. Stuart she saw at least once or twice a week. It seemed an odd way to live as a married couple, but Janet wasn’t going to mention that to Stuart.

  “And now I must get back to the gardens,” Stuart told her. “Everyone thinks that gardens can be ignored in the winter months, but there’s always work to be done, every day of the year.”

  “Are you sure we’re paying you enough?” Janet asked.

  Stuart laughed. “I love what I do. I’d do it for free if you stopped paying me, but if Mary asks, I never said that.”

  “I won’t mention it to Joan, either, as she writes your cheques.”

  Stuart laughed again and then turned and disappeared behind the house. Janet brushed a few stray leaves off her trousers and walked back to the front door. If Stuart had left a ladder under Reuben’s window last night, it was entirely possible that Reuben could have climbed out and done a spot of burglary. That only made sense if he truly was Everett Fox, of course. Janet wondered if Edward knew about the burglary. All she could do now was wait until he and Reuben returned. Once they were back, she was determined to let him know what had happened, anyway.

  “It was Stuart,” Janet told Joan when she found her in the kitchen making lunch. “But he left the ladder in place overnight, which means Reuben could have snuck out that way if he’d wanted to go and burgle someone.”

  “Or he could have simply walked out the front door,” Joan pointed out. “I wouldn’t have heard him going out that way, would you?”

  Janet shrugged. “I’m not sure how well sound carries upstairs. We could test it if you want. I’ll go in my room and shut the door and you try walking up and down the corridor.”

  “Even if you can hear me, you may not have heard Reuben, if you were asleep when he was moving around. Maybe you should have mentioned your suspicions about the man to Robert.”

  “I’m going to ask Edward about Reuben tonight. I’ll talk to Robert after I’ve done that.”

  The pair had lunch and then Janet spent her afternoon dealing with a few jobs in her bedroom that she’d been neglecting. Joan knocked on her door shortly before five.

  “Do you mind if Michael joins us for dinner?” she asked, blushing.

  Janet chuckled at her sister’s embarrassment. Joan had never shown any interest in the opposite sex before the sisters had purchased Doveby House. She and Janet had bo
th been surprised when Michael Donaldson, who lived across the road, began courting Joan not long after their arrival in Doveby Dale. After some awkward moments, the pair seemed to have settled into a comfortable relationship, and Janet found it funny that Joan still seemed self-conscious about wanting to spend time with the man.

  “You know Michael is always more than welcome,” Janet replied.

  Joan nodded. “I wanted a chance to talk to him about the break-in. He actually has one or two quite valuable paintings in his home. I’d hate for anything to happen to them.”

  “As valuable as the one that was stolen?”

  “The two together may well be. His wife was friendly with a man who knew a famous artist, or some such thing. The friend gave Michael’s wife small paintings for her birthday each year for a few years. They weren’t worth much in those days, but I believe the artist in question has suddenly become very collectable.”

  “Don’t mention anything about them in front of our guests,” Janet cautioned.

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  Michael arrived a short while later and the trio enjoyed some of Joan’s wonderful cooking while they discussed the latest crime in Doveby Dale.

  “There does seem to be a lot of minor crime in the area lately,” Michael sighed. “I don’t remember things like this happening a few years ago.”

  “The world is getting smaller, which means villages like ours have to deal with the same issues that were once only problems for big cities,” Janet suggested.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Michael sighed. “Robert said these things can sometimes seem to come in waves, as well. Perhaps things will quiet down again soon.”

  Janet let Michael and Joan have the television lounge to themselves, choosing to curl up with her book in the sitting room instead.

  “Let me know when our guests return. I’ll make a snack for Reuben so you can talk to Edward,” Joan told her before she followed Michael towards the back of the house.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when the front door swung open. Reuben staggered in and then stopped and stared at Janet.