“He called her Roz,” Lillie murmured.
Hugh swallowed. “Yes, and well he should. They’ve known one another for years. Quite familiar, I should think.” Hugh looked from Lillie to Berdie. “What?”
Berdie’s glance to him was meant to convey far more than any words.
“No pudding, then?” Hugh put his fork down and hailed the waiter. “Bill please.”
****
The Northumberland winter marked itself with high force winds and heavy rain all through the night. By morning, the landscape dripped, rousing only enough warmth to totter above freezing.
The heavy clouds didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm that Berdie could see. After she tried to urge Lillie, to no avail, to wear more sturdy shoes for the border weather, the foursome was in the car and traveling the splashy lane ten minutes after the doctor’s arrival.
“Now tell us again, Dr. Meredith, how your friend knows of the Livingstons,” Berdie compelled.
“Please call me Loren,” he corrected, “all way round.”
Hugh, who drove, and Berdie, nodded, but Lillie smiled at the gentleman next to her.
“Well then, you must call me Lillie.”
“Settled then,” Hugh pronounced. “Now what’s the information your friend has?”
“Roz didn’t know the Livingstons, but she knew of a Livingston Farm. Her father was district coroner and required to make a call there. Indeed, it was the first time Roz attended her father on a job. Mr. Livingston didn’t have a suspicious death, but swine flu was rearing its ugly head, and Roz’s father autopsied as a precaution. When flu was confirmed, he went to the farm to inform the family. The Livingstons had two pigs that were put down on the spot.”
“Difficult for a child,” Hugh commented.
“Indeed. That’s why she remembered the event. To help ease his daughter, the coroner stopped in Alnmouth after, to get her a sweetie and fizzy pop.”
“So, that’s why we’re off to Alnmouth,” Berdie stated.
The doctor shook his head. “She couldn’t remember where the farm was, but she knew it was somewhere near that village.”
“What do we do when we get there?” Lillie asked.
“Ah, well,” Hugh responded, “that’s where my wife’s nose for the scent comes to play.”
Berdie couldn’t help but smile.
“Alnmouth, ho!” Hugh charged.
The drive to the seaside village was a pleasant one. Once in town, Hugh parked the car on the ancient cobbled main street. The stone shops and cottages ran to the winter beach where a deserted golf course looked forward to spring.
Berdie wasted no time in getting her plan into action. While she and Hugh went to the post office, Lillie and Loren were dispatched to the town hall.
“How many residents here do you suppose?” Hugh asked, stepping into the postage stamp-size space that was a newsstand and postal headquarters.
“Round three hundred,” the keen-eared young woman behind the tiny counter answered. Her youthful countenance lacked charm. “Tourists then?”
“Of sorts,” Berdie answered. “We’re seeking the location of the Livingston Farm. We understand it’s in the area.”
The woman paused. “No, no Livingston Farm round here.”
“Could have been here many years past, actually,” Hugh prompted.
Berdie showed the aged photo to the young woman. “Anyone familiar?”
She elevated it closer to her face. “Older than dirt,” she observed and handed it back.
“Yes, the photo is not recent.” Berdie tried to be kind.
“Nor the people by now.” The girl popped her gum. “That’s my gran’s expertise. Delivered mail here most her life.” She shifted a stack of magazines. “She may know something.”
“Wonderful.” Berdie was hopeful.
“I tried to ring her not five minutes ago though. No answer. Never home; always playing about since becoming a pensioner.”
“There are so few delights in aging.” Berdie couldn’t help herself.
Hugh took his wife by the arm. “Thank you.” He nodded to the clerk. “You’ve been helpful, and our best to your grandmother.”
Outside the shop, Berdie pulled her arm from Hugh’s grasp. “I could have gotten more information, you know.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not fond of brawls.”
Berdie recognized Lillie and Loren walking toward her. The doctor took Lillie’s elbow as they crossed the street. “Maybe they’ll have something.”
“Town hall is a vacated church, locked tight as a drum,” Loren related upon arrival. “Lillie rang the posted ‘emergency’ number on her mobile.”
“Not even a voice mail or answering machine,” she remarked.
“Thumbed through the directory at a phone box. No Livingstons.” Loren shook his head.
Berdie took in the salty sea air and felt a cool disappointment creep into her mind.
“Perhaps we should take our ease and play a few rounds of golf.” Hugh attempted levity.
Lillie shivered against the cold.
“What say a hot cuppa, my treat,” Loren countered. He eased Lillie closer to his side.
Directly across the street, a door flung open and two people departed. The din of voices sprang from the opened portal.
“Grand idea,” Berdie agreed. “I should say.” She read the hanging plaque above the door and pointed. “There at the Shoreline Inn.”
“It looks to be the local,” Hugh observed, but Berdie was already halfway across. She had much more than tea on her mind. My dear Lord, she prayed as she crossed the road, I can’t believe this photo would fall to us at an opportune time only to be of no purpose. She stepped lively, expectantly into the Shoreline Inn.
9
The public house smelled of pipe smoke, last night’s pub grub and spirits, and decades of hearth fires. After the foursome was seated at a small corner table, Berdie accompanied Loren to the counter.
“Four teas, please,” he ordered.
“Any border cake on offer?” Berdie asked.
The giant man behind the counter ran his huge fingers across his rough-shaved face. “No deary...a few crumpets,” he mumbled.
“Include them with the teas, please,” Loren instructed and then looked at Berdie. “I’m sorry. It seems I’ve put us on a wild goose chase.”
“Don’t apologize yet, Doctor. Pubs can be store-holds of everyone’s business.” Berdie winked. She laid the photo out on the counter and spoke to the man pouring the teas. “Excuse me. Does anyone in this snap look familiar?”
The middle-aged man stopped pouring and looked closely at the photo. He squinted. “Who wants to know?” he asked.
“It’s a legal matter,” Loren responded.
The publican turned an ogle to the two. “You don’t look like the bill.”
“Oh, I assure you, we’re not police. I’m a vicar’s wife,” Berdie stated.
The man squinted again and took in the doctor. “Right.”
“Fergus, gimme’ another one,” a ragged voice yelled, and a small glass slid down the counter like a sled on a slope.
“Ah Maude,” the large man shouted. “How many times have I asked ya not to do that?”
A small woman, not more than twenty inches taller than the counter, shook her silver-haired head so that her spectacles nearly took flight. “How else can I get you to serve me then?”
Berdie wondered how such a bawdy voice came from one so petite.
“Your taste for lemon shandies has severely cut into my stock,” the man loudly informed then growled to Berdie, “It bites into my offerings for the kiddies. Better for that one to get back in her postal buggy, idling all hours in here.”
“Postal buggy?” Berdie twinkled. “Her granddaughter works the shop right across the way?”
“You’ve met the charming girl then.”
The fierce oldster down the counter waddled to Berdie’s side and gawked at the photo. She turned it right way round. “Look
here, it’s the Livingston girls.” This time her head shook with remembering. “Now that takes one back.”
“You know them?” Loren asked.
“Knew them? Not really. Livingston Farm was on my delivery. Nice folk. Kept to themselves.”
“Where is the farm?” Berdie asked.
“Oh, no farm, not no more. Sold that off when the father passed.” The woman pushed the photo aside. “And where’s my shandy, Fergus?”
“Are any of the sisters still ‘round?” Loren questioned.
The woman stretched her stubby finger to the youngest in the photo. “That one. That would be Bossy...Bessie? Betty. Yes, Betty. Married an Oglesby from Henley Road.” The woman squinted. “Right, they were the farm with the converted barn, no drive mind you, eight kilometers east of the A-1. Isolated. But that was several years back.”
Fergus placed the lemon shandy on the counter.
“Let me get that for you,” the doctor insisted.
“Ta.” The small woman grinned.
He handed the publican a twenty-pound note and nodded toward the shandy lover. “Keep her supplied.”
“And make our teas takeaway, please.” Berdie shot a glance at Dr. Meredith.
He smiled then addressed the innkeeper. “We’re motoring on.”
****
A task Berdie thought would take thirty minutes stretched into two hours.
“Do you get the sense we’re going in circles?” Lillie asked.
“This is the area,” Berdie reaffirmed.
“She said it was isolated.” Lillie stared out the window of the car at the rows of identical newly built homes. “Far from isolated.” She stated the obvious.
“To be fair, love, it was several years back.” Hugh addressed Berdie.
“Farmland with a converted barn.” She was not giving up yet. “But maybe they had to sell some of the land, perhaps to developers. So many do these days.” She looked ahead. “Hugh, please pull the car over.” Berdie spotted an old gentleman slogging through the winter mud, his wellies covered with the muck. “Did he come from the building on the far end of that muddy field?” Just as Hugh stopped, the figure entered a vehicle on the edge of the road and drove off.
“Aha,” Berdie all but yelled. “Isn’t that a barn conversion?” She pointed to the distant building beyond a row of new homes.
“That’s almost an acre back from the road,” Loren observed.
“And all of it mud.” Lillie wore a distinct frown. “No apparent pavement or path to the place.” Hugh didn’t sound especially enthusiastic.
“Oh, come you lot.” Berdie was charged with energy. “The other side of that mud holds a wealth of possibility, a key perhaps to solving Miriam’s case.”
“Or a possible dead end,” Hugh warned. He pulled his liturgical collar from out of his jacket interior pocket.
“What are you doing?” Berdie quizzed.
“My badge of office may put them at their ease.”
“Good thought,” Loren approved. “We being inquisitive strangers and all.”
Berdie mulled momentarily. “Put them at their ease, yes.”
“They won’t care about attire; they’ll just observe the sludge we flog about their hall.” Lillie sounded edgy.
“You really dislike that mud.” The corners of Loren’s mouth turned upward.
“Hugh?” Berdie opened the car door.
“Off we trudge then,” Hugh said.
“In for a penny in for a pound,” the doctor agreed and eyed the lovely dissenter.
“Oh, very well then.” Lillie’s determined eyes said she was hardly going to let them venture on without her.
Hugh and Berdie were, what seemed, knee-deep in Northumberland mud and several yards ahead of Lillie and Loren. Lillie had a difficult time negotiating the hike, but Loren Meredith was a strong help and Berdie could hear ripples of occasional laughter. Just a few short meters from the door, a horrible yelp accompanied by a great splat sounded from the rear guard. Berdie spun to see the dear Lillie face-first in the mud, the doctor trying to position himself to make a valiant rescue.
“I say.” Hugh beheld the sight.
Berdie’s first instinct was to run to her friend’s aid, although she was undeniably sure she would laugh without control. And that just wouldn’t do. Indeed, she was biting her lip to keep from it now.
Loren got Lillie to her feet. She put Berdie in mind of a raccoon. Lillie blinked, and the white orbs were one of the few spots on her not black with mire. Loren held her steady with one hand and used the thumb of his other hand to remove the mud smears from her lips and cheeks.
“My dear woman,” his said in a gentle voice, “if you wanted a mud bath, you could have said, and I’d have taken you to Leamington Spa.”
Lillie, eyes misty with humiliation, chuckled. “Thank you, Doctor, but I’ve always preferred rose-fragranced salts and bubble baths.”
“Can we assist?” Hugh called.
“A towel would be splendid,” the doctor responded.
“Lillie?” Berdie called.
The choirmaster scraped her hands across her winter coat, down her sleeves, and the length of her slender legs, throwing the mud to the ground. “I just wanted to make a lasting impression on the hostess,” Lillie called.
Now Dr. Meredith laughed and rearranged the woman’s dark curls away from her face.
Hugh was at the door and knocked firmly. A woman in a blue pinny and print headscarf answered, wiping her hands on a tea towel. But she looked right past Hugh to the pitiful Lillie.
“Oh, my lovely.” She empathized and handed the towel to Hugh. “Get it to her now,” she coaxed.
Berdie trudged to the door and apologized to the gracious woman. She tried briefly to explain it was a personal matter that had brought them to her door. But the farm wife’s concern for Lillie hardly allowed her to be attentive to Berdie. She insisted that Lillie avail herself of the shower room and had the kettle to the boil almost instantly. After depositing Lillie in the bathroom, she served hot tea all round at the large wooden table in the kitchen.
“Whenever I have an unexpected vicar at my door, I reason ‘T’isn't good news.” The woman’s weathered face was kind.
“Yes, possibly so,” Hugh murmured.
“Possibly so?” She tipped her head.
“First we must ask if you have a sister living in Aidan Kirkwood—a Miriam Livingston.” Berdie placed the yellowed picture next to Mrs. Oglesby’s chaffed hand.
The woman took a deep breath. “Miri.” She stared out the tiny window above the kitchen sink that revealed voluminous gray clouds and patches of wild winter grasses. “Dear, dear Miri. I s’pose she’s gone on then?”
Everyone was silent. Berdie nodded in the affirmative. She wanted to take the woman’s hand but decided it could be intrusive.
“So you found us.” Betty Livingston Oglesby had a quiet relief. A mist started forming across her aged eyes. She used the corner of her pinny to dab at the moisture. “How?”
“We found this picture among her goods,” Berdie explained. “We came upon information that led us here to your farm.”
Hugh checked his pockets. “I’m sorry, I can’t find a tissue.”
“It’s all right, Vicar, sir.” Betty Oglesby used her pinny to dab both eyes. She sniffed then straightened her back. “She ‘twern’t a blood sister, but she were a sister sure enough. Sad it were.”
“We really don’t know a great deal about Miriam,” Hugh explained.
“No, you wouldn’t then.” The woman bit her thin lip. “Not even my Robert knew the truth of it.” She put her hands in her lap. “Well, she’s gone now, God rest her soul. I s’pose it’s time the truth be known.” Betty looked squarely at her guests. “My parents took her in near the end of World War II. They were a part of the war resettlement scheme. Very hush-hush. We told folks round here she were a cousin come to stay. Poor dear hardly knew English.”
“She was French,” Berdie spoke up.
Betty nodded her head. “She worked hard to learn English, got it near perfect. Still, she didn’t go out.”
“You called her Mary?” Berdie asked.
“Miri. Never knew her surname, just Miri. Many nights she woke from dreams, frightened, shaky like.” The woman sighed. “As an adult, I realized she were probably part of the war resistance over there.” The woman swallowed hard. “The longer she were here, the more we cared for her and she for us.” A smile crept across her small mouth. “She had a way with lavender, and basil, and lemon balm.”
“Lavender was her trade,” Hugh commented.
“She grew that lavender where others dared not, and it were lovely.”
“When did she leave your family?” Dr. Meredith asked.
The woman put her eyes back to the window. “She was just gettin’ stronger, both outside and insidelike, when this man come, dark. Never seen one quite like him, kitted out for a circus seemed. Came right near the house in a horse cart, spoke to Miri, and left as fast as he come. It were like a darkness fell.” She returned her eyes to her guests. “And that night she told us she had to go and wouldn’t ever see us again. Miri said this because she loved us. And at dawn, her bed were empty. We never laid eyes on her after.”
The woman abruptly stood and ran a finger across her nose. “Excuse me whilst I sort out the wet one.” Betty left the kitchen and disappeared into another room.
“I say, far more than I expected.” Hugh sounded mystified.
“It all falls into place now.” Berdie was demystified.
“How did you know she was French?” Loren asked.
“I had an idea in the clear out, packing away her goods. Most of her library was in the French language and yet, by all accounts, she seldom if ever spoke French. And there was her love of lavender, in itself not notable. A casual look at her gardens that few truly viewed behind the fence wasn’t notable either. But a closer look revealed English lavender in the front garden, French lavender in the back. Which was it that won the prize at the flower show?”
“Her French lavender,” Hugh said.
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