A Deadly Piece Of The Past

The music began again when she turned the key. A thin, melancholy waltz trembled into the shop. One note faltered, then rang sharp.

Edith frowned.

She carried the box to her worktable, past a walnut barometer, a row of silver-backed brushes and the great oak clock that had belonged to her father. Rain tapped harder on the glass roof over the rear passage. She switched on the green lamp and drew the blind across the workroom door, shutting out the view of the shop.

A small screwdriver lay in its velvet-lined tray. Edith selected it, then ran her thumb beneath the box’s lower edge. The base was veneered in the same rosewood as the sides, but the grain did not quite meet at the back corner.

“False,” she said.

She fetched a wooden probe and worked it into the narrow seam. Nothing moved. The box was stubborn, or the compartment was not meant to be found by anyone without patience. Edith tried the corner near the left rear foot, then the brass plate beneath the mechanism. A faint click answered her.

The false base dropped half an inch.

Edith did not breathe for a moment.

Inside the shallow cavity lay a yellowed photograph folded around a small iron key. The key had been wrapped in blue thread, now faded almost grey. Its bow bore three scratched initials.

E.M.Q.

Edith lifted both objects with tweezers. The photograph showed the village green in summer, though the image had faded at the edges. A group of young people stood before the lych-gate of St Matthew’s Church. One girl had turned away from the camera. Beside her stood a dark-haired young man in a cricket jumper.

On the reverse, in brown ink, someone had written a date.

17 August 1968.

Edith knew the date. Everyone in Ashcombe knew it, though people spoke of it in lowered voices and never agreed about what had happened.

Eleanor May Quince had disappeared that evening.

She had been nineteen, the only daughter of the Quince family, and had vanished after leaving the harvest dance at the village hall. Her bicycle had been found beside the old mill road. No body had ever been recovered. The police had searched the river, the churchyard and the abandoned glasshouse at Ashcombe Hall. Lionel Quince, Eleanor’s younger brother, had spent half his life insisting that she had not run away.

Edith looked again at the initials on the key.

E.M.Q.

A floorboard creaked in the shop.

She lowered the photograph.

“Peter?” she called.

No answer came. A clock chimed eleven, its sound too bright for the damp afternoon.

Edith slipped the key into her palm and moved towards the workroom door. Through the narrow gap beneath the blind she saw no one, only the familiar clutter of cabinets and chairs. The front door remained locked. A wet umbrella leaned against the counter, though she did not remember hearing the bell above the door.

She opened the door fully.

“Is someone there?”

The shop gave back the soft tick of its clocks. A draught stirred the lace curtain beside the front window. On the counter, Peter Marsh’s receipt lay where she had left it.

Edith crossed to the umbrella. It was black, old-fashioned and dripping onto the flagstones. A silver ferrule bore a small engraved crown.

She did not touch it.

The bell above the front door rang.

Constable Daniel Reed stepped inside, rain shining on his dark coat. He was younger than Edith’s son would have been, had she ever had one, but he possessed the careful expression of a man who had learned that bad news was best delivered plainly.

“Mrs Vale,” he said.

“Constable.” She glanced at the umbrella. “I hope you haven’t come about that.”

His eyes followed hers, and his face tightened.

“No. I’ve come about Lionel Quince.”

Edith’s hand closed around the iron key.

“What has happened to him?”

Reed removed his cap. Water darkened his hair. “He was found dead in the records room at Ashcombe Hall this morning.”

For a moment, only the rain spoke.

“Dead how?”

“We’re treating it as suspicious. Dr Patel hasn’t completed the examination, but there was an injury to the back of his head. The room had been searched. Papers scattered, drawers pulled out.”

“Was anything taken?”

“That’s what we’re trying to establish.”

Edith looked down at the photograph. The young man in the cricket jumper had Lionel’s eyes, though the Lionel she knew had been a silver-haired historian with a stoop and a habit of correcting people’s dates.

“Why come here?” she asked.

Reed’s gaze moved to the music box on the worktable. “Mr Quince spoke to you yesterday, didn’t he?”

“About an appraisal. He brought me a ledger from Ashcombe Hall.”

“He told Sergeant Bell he intended to visit you today.”

“He did not say so to me.”

“Did he leave anything?”

The question settled between them with uncomfortable weight.

Edith considered lying. She had spent a lifetime protecting objects from careless hands, and she knew how quickly an old clue could become evidence, gossip or bait. But the photograph and key had not been in her possession when Lionel was alive. If they were connected to him, the connection might already have cost him his life.

She placed the photograph on the worktable but kept the key concealed between her fingers.

“I’ve found something,” she said. “Inside the music box.”

Reed stepped nearer. “What sort of something?”

“A compartment. A photograph. A key marked with Eleanor Quince’s initials.”

His expression changed.

“You’re certain?”

“I can read, Constable.”

“May I see the key?”

Edith hesitated. The umbrella stood beside the door. Whoever had left it might still be watching the shop through the rain-streaked window. She had no proof, only instinct, but instinct had saved her from more than one fraudulent Georgian commode.

Before she could answer, the lights went out.

The clocks stopped together.

Reed reached for his torch. Edith heard the scrape of his shoes, then a sharp crash from the rear of the shop.

“Stay here,” he said.

“I’m eighty, not ornamental.”

She took the heavy brass candlestick from the counter and followed him through the dark. The torch beam swept across cabinets, paintings and hanging coats. At the back door, the bolt remained in place. A pane in the side window had been pushed open, letting in a blade of cold rain.

The workroom door stood ajar.

Edith hurried to the table.

The photograph was still there.

The music box was not.

Reed swung the torch towards the shelves. “Where was it?”

“On that table.”

“Could someone have taken it when the lights went out?”

“Someone did.”

The rain blew through the open window, spotting the photograph. Edith snatched it up. On its reverse, beneath the date, a second line had emerged where damp had darkened the paper.

L.Q.

Not Lionel Quince’s full initials. His signature, perhaps. Or a warning.

Reed examined the window latch. “No footprints outside. The ground’s too wet. Whoever came in knew the shop.”

“Or had been here before.”

He looked at her. “Who donated the box?”

“Peter Marsh. Though I doubt that is his real concern.”

“And the key?”

Edith opened her hand.

The iron key lay against her palm, cold and black, its initials unmistakable.

E.M.Q.

Reed reached for it. Edith allowed him to take it, but her eyes remained on the empty square of dust where the music box had rested.

Someone had entered her locked workroom while a constable stood in her shop.

Someone had known exactly what to remove.

And whoever it was now knew that Edith Vale had seen what the box contained.

End of chapter one. 16 more chapters in the full book.