by Laura Briggs
"You've been here a year?" A touch of disbelief in that voice, although the italic was perfectly permissible in this case.
"Almost."
A thoughtful pause between us. "Well," said Alistair Davies, with a certain startled softness that made her seem likeable again, even ordinary, compared to her usual breezy persona. "I must say. I didn't expect anything like this when I stopped here."
"I don't expect you to help me," I said, hastily. "I don't expect you to read my manuscript. I'm finished with the mentorship program and the fellowship and all those things. All I want is to not be remembered as a lunatic after ... frankly ... embarrassing myself to the extreme in front of you."
Alistair laughed. Its suddenness took me by surprise. "I've seen far more embarrassment after champagne in the dressing rooms of the Globe, celebrating standing applause for the Bard's greatest tragedies," she said. "Greater disasters from inebriated brawls in taxicabs between Kensington and the Circle. This was neither humiliation nor tragedy, dearest girl. Possibly a faux pas of the lightest demeanor at most. It's simply life."
"That's nice of you to say," I answered. I blushed.
She folded the letter again and handed it back to me, along with a generous tip fished from her leather handbag. "Consider it forgotten," she said. "And — if I may say so — I wish I had been here a year ago when you arrived. I think you might have been a most interesting lunch companion — and you would have seen me at a far more interesting period in my own life, since I had just returned from a jaunt through Cairo."
"I would've liked that," I said. I pocketed my letter and put my hand on the doorknob. "Enjoy your dinner," I said.
"Your novel," she said, pausing my actions just before the door closed between us, leaning to one side on her sofa to catch my eye. "Whatever happened to it?" she asked, curiously. I thought, in a truly silly connection of the mind, of the Cheshire Cat reappearing out of curiosity to ask Alice about the pig baby that had trotted into the woods.
"It's a work in progress." I smiled at her, then closed the door between us, so the author could enjoy her salad in peace.
***
"It's a disgrace, that's what it is," declared Mrs. Graves. "A disgrace upon your character, Lucas. How dare you keep him locked up this long?"
She slapped her dish rag in anger against the side of her sink. I feared for the crockery in its sudsy water as much as I feared for the emotions of Pringle the constable standing uncomfortably in the vicarage kitchen, helmet in hand.
"But Myra, you don't understand," he began, patiently. Her next slap made a vicious thwack! as it splashed water over the basin's edge, rattling the teacup on the counter and causing the officer to fumble his helmet grip with startled hands.
Her angry dish washing was suspended as she turned to face the meek-but-patient constable. "Myra is what my friends call me," she continued, loftily. "I think Mrs. Graves will do nicely between us, PC Pringle."
"The evidence says —"
"Evidence? Rubbish! You know Sidney — he isn't a criminal! A bit careless with the shrubbery ... but he's done nothing to deserve locking up like this. How long do you intend to keep him in jail while the real thief runs about free as he pleases?"
Pringle looked wounded. "We've not filed charges, o' course, but it's likely —"
"Likely?" repeated Mrs. Graves. "What if this thief had popped into the vicarage instead? You know perfectly well the doors are unlocked all hours while the vicar comes and goes, bless him — would you have taken me and the vicar to jail instead?"
"You and I both know that you and the vicar aren't criminals," he answered.
"The vicar would be disappointed in you if he were here. Think what he'll say when he comes back from holiday," she said, giving the constable a look that would have made anybody else slink away in shame. I think maybe PC Pringle wanted to, but was sticking to his ground with his last threads of courage, a tougher move than I expected from him.
"You have to face facts," he said, stubbornly. "Sidney may not have a record, but he's got no real home and no real job 'round these parts. Any policeman would look at him as a natural suspect for robbery."
"I hope you can sleep at night," snapped Mrs. Graves. "Knowing what you've done to another decent human being."
PC Pringle sighed. "I only thought I'd stop by and tell you how things are, and that we're doing what's best by the law," he said. "It's nothing personal. Sidney's faring well enough, given the circumstances, and if the evidence should prove to be false, he'll be set free." He put on his helmet again. "You can tell the vicar we're sorry, but that's how the matter lies."
"Oh, go on with you," said Mrs. Graves, crossly, waving him away. The constable looked a bit more crestfallen but still determined as he opened the kitchen door.
"Good day to you all," he said to her and me, before closing it behind him. The vicar's housekeeper only offered him a curt nod of farewell. As the door closed, the iron expression on her face dissolved slightly.
"Imagine the nerve of the sergeant, keeping poor Sidney for three days," she said. "Poor lad is probably sick from worry. And he hasn't had a decent meal in that time, I'll wager," she added, drying her hands on a dish towel.
The little tremor in her voice betrayed her worry on this aspect of Sidney's plight and others unnamed — though I suspected nothing served by the constabulary of Port Hewer could be much worse than Mrs. Graves's cooking. "He's okay," I soothed, putting an arm around her shoulders. "He told me to tell you that he's fine, and that he's sorry all this happened. I guess it could be disappointing for the vicar to have his groundskeeper arrested, even falsely."
"Oh, the vicar won't be angry, bless him," answered Mrs. Graves, who was daubing her eyes with the towel. "Only that the likes of the police are obstinate on such matters. They know perfectly well Sidney won't run away if they let him go. He'd never do anything so foolish. Too much respect for the vicar and for the village."
Tears were definitely glittering in the housekeeper's eyes. "And to think I was so cross with him over the lilacs," she continued. "The last thing I said to him was a scolding word for them. Now, it might be the last word I have with him before they send him off." Her lower lip trembled.
I put my arms around the housekeeper in a hug; she sank against me, hugging me back more fiercely than I expected.
"It won't come to that," I reassured her, gently. "They'll set him free once they realize this is all a mistake. They have evidence that doesn't point to him at all." I was thinking of the tools used for the crime. "You'll see. PC Pringle is just defending his arrest because they don't have anyone else they can accuse, and there's a lot of pressure on them to solve this case."
"I hope so." Mrs. Graves tried to stiffen her resolve. "Poor, poor lad. I wish they would let me send him a bit of home to cheer him. Even a jar of my good gooseberry preserves, or some proper scones."
Her scones had the consistency of curling stones and a peculiar flatness despite their rising agent. Sidney was already suffering enough behind bars. "I'm sure the constable's right, and that the meals they serve are good," I answered. "Sidney wouldn't want you to go to any trouble."
"It's no trouble, bless him." The housekeeper sniffed loudly.
I emerged from the vicarage's front door with a jar of oddly-green preserves that Mrs. Graves assured me was her gooseberry jam, and my promise that I would ask PC Pringle to serve it with Sidney's breakfasts. From one of the neighboring cottages, one of the local gossips who always had a gimlet eye for Sidney was watching me leave as she tidied her front garden.
I knew what she was thinking. The vicar's ne'er-do-well groundskeeper was getting his just desserts — and not by the gift of Mrs. Graves's homemade jam. If I had a good arm, I could lob it in the direction of the woman's well-pruned hyacinth. It made a pretty picture, the thought of splattering her prize plants with Mrs. Graves toxic-looking preserves. It would be a better use for it than handing it off to PC Pringle.
Kip merely nosed his food,
and Sidney's other strays made half-hearted attempts to eat the meals I served them. The entire pack followed me as I crossed the lane from Sidney's shed to the other side, and followed the lane until it became more of a wooded, rambling country drive that almost ended at Dean's cottage.
He was in a dark and depressed mood, which I expected. His only visitors the past three days had been Callum and Nancy, his nurses. He was alone, with Callum at the market, and an untouched lunch lying on a tray in the kitchen when I opened its door. It was Dean's — I could tell by the cup with the straw in its lid.
His chair was parked before the picture window, facing away from the garden view that Sidney and I had been weeding last week, as he listened to a Moller symphony on his hi fi. The look on his face was foul when he noticed me standing there.
"I don't need company," he said.
This was untrue. Sidney had said that it was worse for Dean to be alone for long stretches of time; that it fed the bitterness if he stayed trapped in his mind for more than a few hours a day.
"I didn't come to check on you," I said, although I was lying a little bit. "I thought you'd like to know that someone working with the police has some theories that will clear Sidney's name. I spoke to Sidney, too. I thought you'd like to know that as well."
Dean's motionless body and deadpan expression gave me no indication that he was interested, if I took at face value the only one of these which mattered. A flicker in Dean's gaze, however, proved my words touched something inside, undoubtedly the anxiety he felt in not knowing when or how Sidney would be set free.
His chair moved slowly within reach of the hi fi's power switch. His working finger, with effort, maneuvered itself to touch it, lightly — enough to turn it off. "You don't have to stand the whole time you're in my living room," he said.
"I can sit." I sat down on the nearest chair to prove it.
"I suppose you've come to inspect my mental condition as well. For Sidney's sake."
"He didn't ask. I came to see you on my own." Truthfully enough. Sidney hadn't asked me to do it, not in actual words, although I suppose he hoped that I would.
"I don't need anyone peeking in to see that I haven't leaped from the attic window," Dean replied, sarcastically. "I haven't tried to poke my head in the oven out of shock over poor Sidney's plight."
His dark gaze fixed itself on the offending garden outside, where the sunshine represented a cheer that Dean's cottage was devoid of for the time being. I watched an insect flit from one foxglove stalk to another.
"Even so, I thought you'd like some company," I said. "I know that Callum probably already told you everything in the official statement. The details about the arrest, that is. The rest, nobody else is supposed to know. Lucky for me, I work at the hotel, so I've heard more than the general public. All the out-of-town authorities are staying there. And one of them — a detective — is the one who's been nice enough to let me talk to Sidney once or twice."
Dean said nothing in reply. But he listened to me as I explained what I knew about the ongoing investigation, beginning with Sidney's frame and ending with Anson's latest theories.
"Rubbish," he said at the end of my explanation of Pringle's theories regarding Sidney's possible flight — uttering this reply in a sharper tone than even Mrs. Graves's. "All of it, from beginning to end. The loons in the local police service clearly have nothing on Scotland Yard's imbeciles. It's nonsense for anyone to suspect Sidney of theft. He might be capable of mild deception, recklessness, stupidity, and any number of cardinal sins in one's book, but he's simply not capable of staging a diamond heist."
The list of 'cardinal sins' from Sidney's past, I imagined, had included deception. Dean knew the stories behind all the village rumors, at least in part, given his time at Oxford. Did he know how many hearts Sidney broke? Or anything besides the truth behind the story that Sidney was dismissed for scandal?
I wasn't sure I wanted to ask him, yet I wanted to know the truth. "Was Sidney truly different at university?" I asked. "Is it true that he was ... romantically wild?"
"Who told you that?" Dean's tone still had a sharp edge.
"Rumors in the village," I said. "They told me that Sidney was a heartbreaker ... or, at least, broke someone's heart, and it was responsible for the university making him leave."
"Oxford didn't make Sidney do anything." A snort of derision in Dean's voice. "He chose to go. As for his reasons — ask him. I can't tell you what you want to know."
"He won't, either," I said. "I think maybe he's ashamed of it." It would be shameful to someone to admit to their mistakes, if they were a different kind of person now.
"You think he's keeping it secret from you on purpose?" said Dean. "And you assume, naturally, that I know enough of its details to tell you if it's all true. If so, this must be very disappointing for you."
I nodded. "Naturally," I said.
"Do you trust him?" Dean's voice softened, ever so slightly. "Is that why you're afraid those rumors might be true?"
I nodded again. "I know it's strange, but I do. Even when they say the worst about him, and there's things that would prove it ... I still don't completely doubt him. It's as if I can't — some part of me trusts him automatically, believes him when he's telling the truth, and knows when he's lying."
I rose and stood near the windows, looking out at the untidy garden, at the lone weed stalk I had forgotten to pull. "That makes utterly no sense, and I'm aware of it. But I can't stop it. Do you think I'm crazy?" This was catamount to saying I loved Sidney, in many respects. But I didn't think Dean would disbelieve me if I said that, either.
"What I told you before was true," said Dean. "He is worth it. Believe me, Maisie. You can believe anything else you like, but that statement was given in complete honesty, and by one who could quite selfishly prefer that you believed otherwise, and would benefit by it — if it meant you ceased to share so much of his time."
I glanced at him, over my shoulder. "That was nice of you to say," I replied, softly. "Thanks."
"Niceness doesn't factor in the equation," said Dean. "I was always honest to a fault, as Sidney put it. And a cunning liar at times also — so maybe you shouldn't believe me."
The gleam in his eye was almost as bad as Sidney's own. Nevertheless, everything else about him remained grave and serious. I believed him.
I tucked my hands in my cardigan's pockets, removing my mobile phone from one. "Detective Anson thinks we're all being tricked by the thief," I said. "He thinks maybe the things that were stolen from cases around the jewels were for show, to cover up the thief's identity somehow. So I was thinking ... what if the thief was an art thief? A forger?" Wild suggestion, perhaps. But anything that might clear Sidney's name was worth considering.
Dean touched the lever of his chair with his partly-mobile hand, rolling away from the hi fi's quiet speakers. "Forging what?" he asked. "Priceless princess-cut diamonds?" He sounded slightly amused, the first time I observed anything besides a scowl today.
"Canvases," I said. "There were paintings at the exhibit. I wondered if maybe they were fakes, and the auction house knew. Maybe all the items of real value had already been stolen — and the robbery was staged to cover it up."
"A rather wild theory," said Dean, dryly.
"I'm trying to think outside the box. Anything is a better scenario than the one where Sidney is found guilty and goes to prison," I said. "I was thinking, wouldn't the new owners probably have their items appraised and insured? What better way to send the fake items back to the Von Patterson mansion or some high-security storage vault than to cancel the auction?"
"Possibly, though I still say it's very unlikely. Forgery is common in the art world, but a portrait by artist Lawton Anderson is hardly a Vermeer. It wouldn't be worth the trouble of a decent forger to copy his work."
"You studied art and art history. I thought you might be able to spot an obvious forgery."
I pulled up the photos I had taken one of the times I wandered t
hrough the exhibit, which included the canvas of the actress and a valuable Cowling painting from her personal bedroom.
"It hardly qualifies me to determine a canvas's authenticity," he answered. Nevertheless, he looked at the photos on my phone. I zoomed in on the finer details of the signatures at the bottom, even the bristle's eddies on the actress's blue gown.
"I'm sorry, but I really couldn't possibly say if they are fake," he said. "I've seen Cowling's works several times, and his painting is what one generally expects from him in style and substance. Again, the Anderson canvas is hardly worth an act of theft."
With a sigh, I closed the application. "It was worth a try," I said.
"This Anson perceives that Sidney isn't a master thief, I gather," said Dean.
"He doesn't think he's guilty," I said. "He thinks Sidney was framed. But unless he can prove it, then the police will charge Sidney with the crime. There's no one else on their list of suspects."
"This has gone on far too long." Dean scowled. "He's been a fool, letting himself sit there waiting to be charged without trying to help himself. It's ridiculous. Why can't he be sensible about this?"
"Can't you call the solicitor for him?" I said. If Dean's lawyer showed up at the jail, surely Sidney would let him pressure the police on his behalf for a release.
"I can't." Dean's tone was grim. "We have a pact not to interfere in each others' personal matters — it's his decision, not mine, to ring the number. He has his reasons for hoping this will resolve itself, I suppose." His scowl darkened. "Knowing him, he'll wait until the last possible moment. Bloody fool. I wish he would let someone interfere, if merely to get him out of that blasted cell."
The hand which still possessed some movement now flexed itself fully as possible, with trembling force; the spirit inside Dean's body was fighting against his paralysis, striving for the impossible strength to get out of this motorized wheelchair and save Sidney from his predicament firsthand. The frustration and helplessness in his eyes burned deeply enough to resemble physical pain. Possibly Dean's medication was ineffective today ... but I thought it wasn't the explanation in this case.
