Page 112 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
There’s silence at the other end of the line, and I wonder if Susan has hung up on me.
‘Who are you again?’ she asks.
‘My name is Kate and I’m looking for anyone who might have known them. I know either they lived at the house or someone in their family did.’
‘I have no clue what you’re talking about,’ Susan says. ‘Like I said, if you have a query about the house then please contact our estate agent. The house will be going up for auction very soon, and you are welcome to bid for it then.’
Damn!I glance up at the wall and see one of the Winston James prints. ‘What about Freddie?’ I say quickly, before she can hang up. ‘Do you know anything about him?’
‘What did you say?’ Susan asks sharply.
‘Freddie,’ I repeat. ‘I think he might have been called Wilfred too?’
There’s another long pause, but this time I don’t think Susan has hung up. Instead, she says eventually, ‘I think we need to talk.’
Thirty-four
‘Stop fidgeting,’ Jack says, as we wait in the café for Susan the next day. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘Sorry, I can’t help it. I am nervous. I wonder what this Susan wants to talk to us about?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you?’
Susan had agreed to meet us the next day in St Felix. She said she would drive up from Penzance to meet us, but she didn’t say anything else that gave us any hope or expectation at all.
‘It must be something to do with Freddie,’ I continue, tapping my finger on the table. ‘She wasn’t at all interested in anything I had to say until then.’
‘You won’t have to wait much longer,’ Jack says, looking across at the entrance to the café. ‘I think this might be her.’
A middle-aged woman with dark hair tied back in a loose pony tail is staring anxiously around the café’s interior.
‘Susan?’ I say, standing up.
She nods and makes her way over to our table.
‘I’m Kate,’ I say, holding out my hand to her. ‘And this is Jack. Thank you for agreeing to meet with us.’
Susan shakes both our hands, then pulls out a chair and sits down.
‘Would you like a drink?’ I ask. ‘Tea, maybe, or coffee perhaps?’
‘No, thank you,’ she says. ‘I can’t stay too long.’
‘Right, okay then,’ I say, suddenly feeling incredibly nervous again. I don’t know why but I felt a huge weight was upon me – the weight of not only our expectations but of Arty and Maggie’s too – to solve this mystery.
‘So, Susan,’ Jack says, taking over when I don’t speak. ‘The names Kate mentioned to you on the phone yesterday. Do you know any of them?’
Susan nods. ‘I know all of them,’ she admits to my surprise. ‘Well, I say know. I knew some of them.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Clara and Arty were my grandparents, and Maggie is my mother.’
I stare at Susan while Jack continues.LittleMaggie from the paintings is still alive? I don’t know why but I’d assumed all of them would have passed away by now.
‘I see …’ Jack says, sounding like a detective in a police drama about to solve the crime.
‘Why are you asking about them?’ Susan asks. ‘Is this to do with the house?’
‘Some information has come to us,’ Jack says enigmatically. ‘We can’t say how or from whom, but we think it involves your family and possibly the relationship they had with a painter called Freddie, or rather Wilfred Jones, to give him his correct name.’
Susan looks at Jack suspiciously. ‘I’m going to be honest with the pair of you,’ she says, turning to me as well now, ‘in the hope you will be with me in return. The only reason I’m here today is that my mother is ill … very ill actually. She has dementia.’
