by Fiona Grace
Lacey sat back with astonishment. There it was, in black-and-white. The chemical test had revealed a specific type of composition of paper that was incompatible with the time frame the letter was supposedly written in.
But there was more. She leaned forward, and continued reading.
Moreover, the high presence of lignin within the composition suggests the paper was not made during a factory procedure but was in fact handmade. The presence of lime also suggests a keen hobbyist using original ancient paper-making procedures rather than any kind of mass production company.
As such, we cannot trace the creator of the forged letter, though we can all rest assured it was the act of a lone wolf rather than some type of forgery cartel.
Lacey didn’t know what to make of this further information. She pictured a jolly old man merrily pursuing his paper-making hobby using the old ancient Chinese methods, entirely oblivious that his paper would go on to be instrumental in a murder. Or, maybe instead of a jolly old man, it was a Bond villain type, creating his own paper to ensure he couldn’t be traced, then profiting from the forgeries he created. Lacey’s mind went into overdrive as she began to imagine different scenarios.
She put the fax down and turned back to the screen. The website her father had found was for a UK chemical company. At the top of the page, they claimed: Your number one source for alkyl ketene dimer and alkenyl succinic anhydride, and the United Kingdom’s only produce of lime!
Lacey gasped. Lime? These were the only people who made lime? But that meant… if she found who they’d sold the lime to, could it lead her right to the forger? And if she found the forger, would that bring her one step closer to finding the killer?
Excitement jumped in her chest.
Her dad had done some keen work, finding a solid lead for her to pursue. And the only reason he’d stopped short of finding the actual solution was because he’d come to the police station… for her.
Lacey suddenly wanted to call her father, to put things right. But before fixing her broken family, she had to solve the investigation and clear her name. So with a sense of resolve, Lacey buckled down, more determined than ever to finish what her father had started.
She quickly found the telephone number on the chemical company’s website and called. As she listened to the dial tone, she realized she’d have to come up with some kind of cover story. The company wouldn’t break customer confidentiality for no reason.
A man answered. “Hello? Can I help you?”
Lacey quickly thought on her feet. “This is Detective Lewis of the Wilfordshire police,” she said, channeling her best Beth impression. “I’m currently looking into a case that I believe you may be able to help me with.”
“Oh?” he replied with an air of curiosity.
“I’m wondering if you could provide me with a list of customers who purchased lime from you.”
“How far back are we looking?” the man said.
“Well, the time frame is from the 1980s onward.”
On the other end of the line, there was silence. Then the man spoke, his tone now reticent. “That’s quite a big window. We’re talking about thousands of people.”
“The lime was used specifically to make paper,” Lacey explained. “Handmade paper rather than machine made.” She double checked the report. “AKD was also detected. Does that help narrow it down?”
“Actually… yes,” he said. “We switched from using AKD to ASA way back in the eighties. The blend was cheaper to make. If that paper had AKD and lime present, and was made by an individual rather than a company, that probably narrows it down significantly.”
He sounded enthused now, and through the earpiece, Lacey could hear the sound of keyboard keys being eagerly typed. She felt hopeful that this may well be the lead she needed to crack the case wide open.
“Detective Lewis?” he said, sounding excited as he resumed the call. “I’ve got three individuals for you who bought those chemicals for paper-making processes in 1980.”
“Hit me,” Lacey said, grabbing a pen.
“The first is Garth McLow. He got his shipments sent to the Outer Hebrides.”
“Scotland?” Lacey asked, her pen hovering above the page where she’d just written the name.
“That’s right.”
Lacey put an X next to the name. She felt sure the forger was a local, like Ronan and his father. It didn’t make sense to her for the letter to have traveled thousands of miles to reach its destination.
“Who’s next?”
“A French woman called Marcine Pierre, who was starting recycled paper. It folded in the eighties.”
“Okay…” Lacey said, unconvinced as she jotted the name down.
“And the final one,” the man on the phone said, “was Brett Meegan. A calligrapher from a small town just outside of Exeter.”
“Exeter!” Lacey cried, as the lightbulb went off over Lacey’s head. A calligrapher? From a nearby town? That was too much of a coincidence! In Lacey’s experience, coincidences didn’t really exist. This was it. This was the clue she’d been looking for.
But her stomach began to churn. She’d just promised Beth she wouldn’t leave… But what else could she do? She had to pursue this.
“Do you happen to have a full address for him?” she said into the phone, feeling a mixture of excitement and apprehension fizz through her.
“I do,” the man said, relaying it as Lacey jotted it into her notebook. “I hope it helps with your investigation.”
“Oh, it will,” Lacey said, gazing at the address like she’d just been given the location of the holy grail. “It most certainly will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Lacey peered through her car’s windshield at the quaint-looking countryside cottage; the address of Brett Meegan, her suspected forger.
She’d wasted no time pursuing the lead. With the rest of her life in such a mess anyway, why not throw herself into something else? It wasn’t like she had Tom to cuddle up to on the couch, or Frank to chat with over dinner. And she certainly didn’t need Gina yammering on about wedding arches. This was definitely the best place for her, here, investigating a murder she’d promised the cops she’d stop investigating barely a few hours earlier…
“What do you think, Chester?” she asked. “Is this our forger? Our killer?”
From the passenger seat beside her, Chester barked.
“Good point,” Lacey said, killing the ignition. “There’s only one way to find out.”
She exited the vehicle, and Chester hopped out onto the sidewalk beside her. It was very quiet out here in the countryside thirty minutes from Wilfordshire. Just the sound of nocturnal wildlife shuffling through the hedgerows, and the swishing sound of the wind going through the branches. Lacey shuddered, feeling anxious and very alone.
Chester nudged his nose into her palm, and Lacey relaxed a little knowing she had her trusty companion for support. And so, with Chester at her side, she went up the garden path and knocked on the wooden door.
A moment later, the door was opened, and an older man stood before her. He had a shock white fluffy hair and a matching beard, giving him a sort of Father Christmas appearance. He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a beige button-down shirt, and peered down through his silver-framed spectacles at Lacey.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his bushy white eyebrows drawing together into a frown.
“Are you Brett Meegan?” Lacey asked.
“I am. Who are you?”
Who she was, was irrelevant at this moment in time. All Lacey needed to know was if she’d found the person who’d forged the letter. There was no point beating about the bush, as far as Lacey was concerned. Her life was in shambles, and the investigation was a big reason why—all because this man might have forged a letter. So she may as well just come out and say it.
“About fifteen years ago, did you forge a letter from Queen Victoria?” she asked boldly.
The man’s eyebrows flew up to the rim of h
is spectacles. He looked so astonished that he didn’t even need to speak for Lacey to get her answer. She could read it all over his face.
“I—” he stammered.
“You did,” Lacey pressed. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Brett began nervously wringing his hands in front of him, and peered out the door past Lacey. “Who are you? Are you a cop?”
Lacey shook her head. “Lucky for you, no. I’m the auctioneer who got duped into selling your fake letter.” She put her hands on her hips. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do, Mr. Meegan.”
The forger blinked at her with watery-gray eyes, as if unable to let the shocking information that his ruse was up sink in. Then he leaned out the door, looking left and right once more, before finally pulling it wide open.
“You’d better come in,” he said.
Bingo! Lacey thought.
As she stepped inside after him, she slid her cell phone from her pocket and quickly typed a message to Beth Lewis. She had a sneaking suspicion the detective would be interested in the man she’d tracked down.
She followed Brett into his living room. It was modestly decorated; a couple of couches, a glass coffee table, a TV, and an electric fireplace. A cuckoo clock ticked on the wall, providing a soft background noise.
“Take a seat,” Brett said.
Lacey did. Chester sat protectively at her legs, straight-backed and alert.
“So,” Brett continued, as he took the seat opposite her, his knees creaking as he did. “You seem to think you’ve found one of my letters?”
“I’m most certain I have,” Lacey replied. “I tracked you down by the chemical composition of the paper. Is paper-making a hobby of yours?”
“Yes. And calligraphy is my profession.”
Lacey nodded. “And creating forgeries…? What’s that for? Fun?”
“Practice,” the man replied.
Lacey narrowed her eyes, not buying it for a second. “You’ve heard the news, I assume. That your fake letter has been implicated in the murder of a man?”
Brett’s face paled. “What?” he cried.
There was something very genuine about his reaction. Could it be that he actually had no idea what had happened, or that his forgery had played a role in the murder of a man?
“I sold your fake letter at auction,” she explained. “Thinking it was real. The man who’d hired me to sell it for him was murdered the very same night, presumably for the two million pounds he’d just earned from the sale.”
Brett Meegan shook his head. He looked astonished. Shocked. And genuinely saddened. He began wringing his hands nervously in his lap.
“It’s been in the news for days,” Lacey added, still not understanding how something of this magnitude could have passed him by.
“I don’t follow the news,” he muttered, sounding shell-shocked. “I had no idea.”
Lacey frowned. If the forger had nothing to do with any of this, beyond writing the letter itself, then maybe he wasn’t the holy grail after all. But it didn’t make sense to her. Why go to all that effort to create the letter in the first place if not to one day profit from it?
“Why did you do it?” Lacey asked. “Why did you forge the letter in the first place?”
“I already told you,” he said, standing from his seat and going over to the shelves, whereby he retrieved a leather-bound book and held it out to Lacey. “It was writing practice.”
Frowning with curiosity, Lacey flicked open the front cover of the book and saw a beautifully written poem. The next page showed a different handwriting sample like that found in old Bibles.
“I replicated the handwriting of famous people from history to practice,” Brett continued. “I’d copy letters until they were indistinguishable. There are dozens of them. Hundreds.”
Lacey flicked to the next page. There was a section of text from a Shakespeare play, written in the same distinctive style as Shakespeare himself. The work was impressive; Brett’s abilities were far-reaching. He must’ve been a very sought after calligrapher.
But still, Lacey couldn’t help but feel skeptical. If it was all just writing practice, then how had his letter ended up in the public realm? How had Ronan—or more specifically, his father—gotten ahold of it? And how had the world-revered appraisers at Westminster Auction House deemed it to be genuine?
“Do you really expect me to believe you never sold a letter?” Lacey pressed. “That with your amazing ability to forge letters that were so good they could fool an actual appraiser, you never once decided to try and make a bit of extra cash by selling one?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “ I never sold one! Never even tried! They’re all here. In my portfolio.” He leaned forward and tapped the leather book in her lap. “Every single one.”
“Except, evidently not every single one,” Lacey countered. “Because your Queen Victoria one came to be in the public realm.”
Brett shook his head. “I don’t know how that happened!”
“How am I supposed to believe you?” Lacey challenged. “Somehow, one of your letters ended up in the possession of Ronan Pike. He had it appraised and it was deemed genuine, and he had every reason to believe it to be true, because he’s an ancestor of Charles Dickens’ assistant.”
Suddenly, Brett’s mouth dropped open. His face paled. “Oh. Oh my…”
Lacey regarded him curiously. Clearly, something she’d just said had struck a chord. “What is it?”
“I think… I know what happened,” Brett murmured.
“Go on,” Lacey pressed.
He gestured for the leather calligraphy book and Lacey handed it to him. He flicked through the pages of samples, then stopped at a blank page. “That… that… that bloody bastard!”
Lacey’s eyebrows rose.
Brett’s head darted up, a frown now on his face. “He stole it from me. Scott Pike.”
“He died recently,” Lacey explained. “Ronan found the letter amongst his possessions.”
Brett shook his head. “It makes sense now. We knew one another in the past, Scott and I. Chalk and cheese, really. He was a bit of a bad boy rebel type, and I was the nerdy sidekick. He was supportive though, when I said I wanted to pursue calligraphy as a career. So supportive, in fact, he gifted me this…”
He stood from the couch and went over to the bookshelf again. This time he got down a large, glossy hardback book and handed the heavy thing to Lacey.
Lacey glanced at the title on the cover: The Complete Correspondences of Her Majesty Queen Victoria: A Visual Anthology.
She gasped. “Wait. What?”
“Look inside.”
Lacey opened the book. There, on the inner cover, was a message.
Brett, my old mate. Thought this might come in handy! All the best. Scott.
Her eyes darted up and fixed on the man’s eyes as he began to speak.
“Scott was the one who suggested I use famous people’s handwriting to practice and hone my skills. That’s one of the first books I used to practice her writing. Now I’m left wondering if he was tricking me all along.”
Lacey thought back to her conversation with Callum Pike, about his father being a trickster. “Do you think he was trying to dupe you? To get you to forge a letter that he could then steal and profit from?”
“We were friends,” Brett said in a small, sad voice. “At least I thought we were. I was there for Callum’s and Ronan’s baptisms. We fell out of contact over the years but I never once suspected it was because he’d stolen from me. I suppose you never really know a person.”
He sounded so sad, and Lacey’s heart ached for him. His friend had scammed him all those years ago. There was one saving grace, though.
“Scott never went through with his plan,” she said, softly. “Ronan found the letter among his things after he passed away. I think Scott got cold feet. That must count for something?”
“A small mercy,” Brett said, sadly.
“I’m so sorry,” Lacey added. �
�For barging in here with such bad news. This must be a real shock to you.”
“It is,” Brett said, nodding. “If I had any idea I’d get caught up in something like this, I would never have even started.”
Just then, there came a knock at the door. Brett stood.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled, as he left the room.
Lacey felt awful for having come here with this terrible, shocking news. But the moment she heard the voice coming down the hallway, she felt even worse.
“Brett Meegan, this is the police. You’re under arrest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Lacey leapt up from the couch, suddenly remembering the heads-up text she’d sent to Beth Lewis as she’d entered Brett’s residence. She’d been so certain the forger would have something to do with the killing but now she was sure she’d made a mistake, and that there was a whole lot more to the story than she’d ever anticipated.
Lacey deliberated her options. If she exposed her presence to the cops, they’d certainly arrest her for leaving town. They’d made it very clear there was no leeway, and that by breaking their rules a second time she’d land herself in jail. But she couldn’t just let Scott take the fall for her mistake. She was the one responsible for asking the cops here in the first place. She couldn’t just sit by and save her own skin over someone else. She had to make it right.
She jumped up from the couch and hurried out into the corridor, Chester on her heels.
“What—what are you arresting me for?” she heard Brett stammer as she hurried down the hallway toward the voices.
