“Where on earth have you been? Alfred! Oh! Oh! Is it really you?” And she promptly burst into tears.
I was feeling pretty emotional myself as I watched them embrace.
“You daft bat,” said Alfred affectionately. “Told you it would be alright, didn’t I? Just got one more thing to take care of tonight and we’re dandy.”
“Good God, Katherine!” Mum gawked. “You’re completely covered in black paint.”
“It’s soot, actually,” I said. “A long story but I’ve been up a chimney.”
“Oh. Well, whilst you’ve been doing that,” said Mum dismissively, “I’ve been fighting for my freedom. Then, suddenly, there is a phone call and a policewoman who I’ve never seen before says she’ll give me a ride home.”
“We were right about Joan, Mum.”
“I knew it! Let’s go inside and you can tell me everything over a gin and tonic.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Katherine—are you awake?” Mum knocked on my bedroom door. “Shawn’s downstairs and he wants to see you.”
It was Tuesday morning. I hadn’t realized just how traumatic the events of the last few days had been nor how deeply I had needed to sleep.
“Now?”
Mum opened the door a crack and smiled. “He said it was very important. Perhaps he’s going to ask you out on a date?”
“Very funny,” I mumbled. “Give me five minutes.”
“I think you’ll need more than that if you want to make yourself presentable. At least you got rid of all that soot.”
I climbed straight into my jeans and a sweater and just pulled my hair back into a ponytail.
When I entered the kitchen, Shawn was chatting to Mum holding a mug of coffee in his hand.
“Good news.” He beamed. “Ginny confirmed that Joan was her abductor.”
“That is good news,” I said.
“Apparently, Joan paid Ginny an early morning visit to tell her that she’d read her article and that she had more information to sell.”
“That wasn’t what I expected,” I said. “I would have thought she was afraid of her own secrets getting out.”
“Joan needed the money,” said Shawn. “As it is she’s been claiming all kinds of benefits that she’s not entitled to. Gran told me that after her brother—that would be my great-uncle—died…”
“I must write that down for my family tree,” said Mum.
“Well—put it this way, Joan was penniless. She never could hold down a job so the council gave her a house.”
“Sponging off the government,” said Mum. “That’s why this country’s going to the dogs.”
“Joan promised Ginny even bigger stories—”
“Joan was always manipulative,” Mum declared. “Look at the way she tried to frame me!”
“Everything was going well until Ginny mentioned Alzheimer’s,” said Shawn. “To quote Ginny’s words—Joan went psychotic.”
“But Ginny’s decades younger than Joan,” Mum said. “How on earth did Joan overpower her—enough to bundle her in the back of her car and dump her off on Dartmoor?”
“Joan had a shotgun,” I said. “According to Bryan, she was a crack shot.”
“A crackpot if you ask me,” Mum muttered.
“And those deep scratch marks we saw in the boot of Ginny’s car,” said Shawn. “They were from her tricycle.”
“What’s going to happen to the series for the Daily Post?” I asked. “Is Ginny still going to write her exclusives?”
“I have no idea,” said Shawn. “She was pretty shaken up. But that’s not the only reason I am here.”
Mum winked at me across the room and mouthed the words, “A date!” I ignored her.
“The most extraordinary thing happened last night,” said Shawn. “Someone broke into Luxton’s warehouse and returned all the artwork.”
“What?” I was horrified.
“They really need to get a new alarm system installed,” Mum declared.
“So it looks as if the dowager countess will be able to sell the Hollar drawings at the auction, after all.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Mum. “Isn’t that wonderful, Katherine?”
“Amazing,” I said bleakly.
“Well—I’d better get on,” said Shawn. “I have a number of reports to write up what with Bryan, Pandora, Ginny and two break-ins—I always laugh when someone tells me that nothing ever happens in Little Dipperton.”
I saw Shawn to the front door. “And you’re certain that the Hollar drawings were among the items returned?”
“Yes. It was confirmed.”
“Will you continue to look into it?”
“Since they’ve been put back and—to be honest—I’ve got my hands full with all these other cases and Newton Abbot aren’t bothered—probably not.”
“So they aren’t going to look at the CCTV footage?” I just had to ask.
Shawn regarded me with suspicion. “Apparently not.” He hesitated for a moment. “Kat—I feel I have done you a disservice and I apologize.”
“Whatever for?”
“I thought you were protecting your mother or Alfred over all this business and I was wrong. I’d like to make it up to you. Perhaps we can have a drink one evening.”
“Lovely!” I said with forced heartiness. At any other time, I would have been happy at the invitation but not now—and especially not after the auction that would probably be attended by a bevy of officers from the Art & Antiques Unit. I could see them swarming in with David at the helm.
I returned to the kitchen to find Alfred had slipped in through the back door.
He was tucking into a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and jam and looked as if he hadn’t slept all night—which I suspected, he hadn’t.
“I don’t know how you can eat at a time like this,” I said with dismay. “The police have just been here.”
“He knows,” said Mum.
Alfred just laughed. “Oh ye of little faith.”
Mum hovered over him as if he were a god. “More tea, Alfred?”
“What’s going on?” I said suspiciously. “You do realize what just happened, don’t you?”
“You’ll see,” said Mum, shooting a knowing look at Alfred.
I dragged out a chair and sat down. “I’m too tired to argue.”
“There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” said Alfred suddenly. “I was looking at those drawings and I noticed something. They’re topographical drawings, right? They were done to record as accurately as possible the properties and grounds…”
“I didn’t know you were so knowledgeable, Alfred,” I said.
“Alfred knows a lot about the art world,” Mum chimed in.
“I’ve been doing a bit of research and you said that Warren Lodge burned down in the English Civil War, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then Jane’s Cottage was built on the foundation?”
“I suppose so.”
“Ah—but you see, it wasn’t built on the exact foundation,” said Alfred. “I reckon it was moved about twenty-five yards farther south.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“Ah! That’s a secret,” said Alfred.
“What else did you notice?”
“The warren well isn’t there anymore. But it is in the drawing.”
Joan had said her ancestor had put the silver in the warren well and it had disappeared. Harry had said that the warrener always had a well because they needed water for the rabbits for skinning carcasses and cleaning the skins. Was it distinctly possible that the well was still there—but under the floor of Jane’s Cottage?
“Of course!” I rushed over to plant a kiss on a very startled Alfred’s forehead. He turned pink with pleasure.
“Thank you, thank you!” I raced out of the kitchen shouting, “I have to go.”
Of course Bryan had been snooping around Jane’s Cottage. He probably had his suspicions all along but he could
hardly start digging up the floor.
I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up—let alone my own but in the end I thought it best to share my theory with Rupert and I was glad I did.
Enlisting Eric’s help and armed with spades, pickaxes and a wheelbarrow, the three of us spent hours at Jane’s Cottage pulling up the old floors but we found absolutely nothing. It was so disheartening.
Around four-thirty, just when it was beginning to get dark, I stepped outside to take a break. I was so disappointed and felt more than a little foolish. I’d been so sure about finding the warren well under the floor of Jane’s Cottage—and so had Rupert.
Joan was right. The well had vanished.
I heard a rustle in the undergrowth—probably a rabbit—and turned to see the old brick privy in the trees.
On a whim, I just had an idea. Retrieving a flashlight from the cottage I headed back to the privy and looked for a way inside. Ivy and vines had crept into the crevices and in the summer months, it would have been almost impossible to see the building at all.
The wooden door was half off its hinges, most of the roof tiles had gone and it really was little more than a shell. The frame was rotten and the door just flopped forward. I heaved it aside and stepped into the darkness.
Along the back wall was the privy itself.
It was made of wooden slats but instead of one hole to sit over, there were two. After all these years, I couldn’t imagine there would be anything gross down there but even so, I braced myself to take a peek below.
Both holes were filled to the brim with leaves and detritus and dried up—yuck. I hunted around for a long stick and started poking and prodding at the surface. The hole on the left was disgusting and once I’d picked off the surface, it released the most terrible stench. With tiles missing from the roof and all this rain the contents didn’t bear thinking about.
But the other hole was different. It contained nothing but rubble and stones.
Call it a hunch, but I just kept picking away with my stick until I saw red brick. I scraped along and found more. And then more—until I knew I’d uncovered the cylindrical rim of the warren well.
I charged back to Jane’s Cottage just as Rupert and Eric were loading the tools back into Eric’s Land Rover.
“I’m sorry,” said Rupert. “We’ve made a mess of your floors. I’ll personally replace them for you—what?” He took one look at my face and broke into a wide grin. “You’ve found it, haven’t you?”
The space in the privy was small for the three of us but Eric and Rupert managed to dismantle the wooden loo to give us more room. I held the flashlight and the two of them dug with spades in a fever of excitement.
After just twenty minutes, Rupert gave a cry of surprise. “Look! It’s here. By God, I don’t believe it!”
Eric and I crowded in to look. There, about six feet down, tucked into a recess that had been cut out of the well wall was a large, but very dirty, earthenware pot.
“Kat—will you do the honors?” beamed Rupert.
With the two men holding onto each leg, I leaned down and prized the pot loose.
It was filled to the brim with silver coins.
Chapter Thirty-five
News of the discovery of the famous Honeychurch mint filled the front pages of both the Dipperton Deal and the Daily Post that Saturday morning.
Bryan’s widow generously allowed the newspapers access to the receipt book that was in Bryan’s possession showing that it wasn’t just the wealthy who had supported the Royalist cause—but “people of all persuasions” who had contributed what little they had and expected repayment.
The tools discovered in the double-hide were given lavish descriptions as to their purpose and confirmed that the Honeychurch clan had played an important and dangerous role in supporting the king all those centuries ago.
But, as an antique dealer, what was utterly thrilling was that among the silver pennies, shillings, half-crowns and crowns minted at the Hall, were six extremely rare solid silver Declaration Pounds dated 1643.
Set up initially as the new mint for the doomed King Charles I’s victory over Cromwell, each coin bore the words, LET GOD ARISE AND LET HIS ENEMIES BE SCATTERED, symbolizing the king’s belief in the absolute monarch to rule by divine right. Charles was beheaded for high treason against the people just six years after the coin was created.
Last year just one Declaration Pound had fetched a staggering fifty-six thousand pounds at Duke’s of Dorchester auction house. Edith parted with three and put the rest in the Museum Room.
The plasterwork in the King’s Parlor could now be restored, after all.
As to the discovery of Pandora Haslam-Grimley’s body, it was deemed an unfortunate accident—the result of a game of Smee that went wrong. Bryan’s death, however, was told in lurid detail in the Daily Post but since he had not literally grown up on the Honeychurch Hall estate and Joan had left the area as a young woman, his death warranted just a short paragraph in the Dipperton Deal.
Joan may not have suffered from Alzheimer’s but she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was currently awaiting arraignment.
Surprisingly, there was nothing written by Ginny Riley.
As for David, he turned up with his team of experts just before the Hollar drawings came up for sale and dramatically called a halt to the proceedings only to discover that the drawings on offer were crude fakes.
To say that David was left with the proverbial egg all over his face was putting it mildly.
“I told you to trust Alfred,” whispered Mum. “Although he’s not very happy. He could have done flawless copies but he thought David needed taking down a peg or two.”
That evening, we all celebrated a victory in the library with champagne, including Shawn and the twins. Roxy was noticeably absent.
“She’ll be disciplined, of course,” said Shawn. “A police officer must be impartial at all times. I think she’s learned her lesson.”
Harry bounded in, bursting with excitement. “Guess what?” he exclaimed. “Max, Jed, Emerson, Ronan and Callum have asked me to go with them to Paignton Zoo tomorrow. Can I, Father?”
It would seem that Harry’s show-and-tell with the Honeychurch mint and stories of buried treasure had made him the most popular boy in the class.
“Of course,” said Rupert. “And perhaps they’d like to come back here for some of Mrs. Cropper’s homemade cake afterward.”
“Wicked!” Harry beamed.
I saw Lavinia blanch, but she didn’t say a word.
The next morning I got a call from Ginny. “I just wanted to let you know that the Daily Post won’t be running the Honeychurch series, after all.”
It had been the one thing I still dreaded. “I know everyone will be happy, but what changed?”
“Trudy Wynne asked me not to report David’s snafu and the cost of all the manpower that went into the operation,” said Ginny. “In exchange, she agreed to the series being dropped.” Ginny took a deep breath. “Actually, she offered me a job at the Daily Post and I accepted.”
“Congratulations,” I said but deep down I knew it would really change her.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I did a lot of thinking out on Dartmoor when I honestly thought I wasn’t going to make it. I did Roxy a great wrong by abusing her confidentiality and you’ve always been a good friend to me. I’m sorry.”
Later, as Mum, Alfred and I sat at the kitchen table reliving the last few days, I said, “So where are the original Hollar drawings?”
“Where do you think?” Alfred chuckled. “Back in the King’s Parlor where they belong.”
“Her ladyship is so happy,” said Mum.
“And we are, too. Mum, will you join me in a toast?”
We raised our glasses and cried, “To Alfred for saving the day.”
He grinned and said, “I told you to trust me.”
ALSO BY HANNAH DENNISON
Murder at Honeychurch Hall
Deadly Des
ires at Honeychurch Hall
The Vicky Hill Series
Accused!
Thieves!
Exposé!
Scoop!
A Vicky Hill Exclusive!
About the Author
HANNAH DENNISON began her writing career in 1977 as a trainee reporter for a small West Country newspaper in Devon, England. She is also the author of the Vicky Hill mysteries. Hannah lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two crazy Vizslas. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Honeychurch Family Tree
Also by Hannah Dennison
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Killer Ball at Honeychurch Hall Page 24
