Page 26 of The Tart's Final Noel
“She showed you where she hid these?”Rafe opened the cloth, finding a tiny pearl stickpin, a gold watch fob, silver coins, and silver needles.
“Nah, I noticed the stone was loose when I was reaching for the clock.She’d stashed a few coins in the clock as well.I left them on the desk.Ought to be enough to pay for a decent burial, shouldn’t there?”He looked uncomfortable asking.
“I’m pretty sure the curate intends to see her respectably buried.The woman from the buggy...”Rafe added the fob and stickpin to his collection for taking to Oswald.“Had coins enough for tolls, not coffins.Did Willa ever talk of family?”
“We didn’t spend much time talking.I didn’t even know about Cooper.I thought she was all alone.”Looking uncomfortable, Fletch returned to the kitchen.
Rafe searched the rest of the house while he waited for Oswald’s mercantile to open, turning up several more small hoards tucked away in fairly obvious hiding places.It would take a thief a while to gather them all.But if anything had been stolen, Rafe had no way of knowing.
He heard Brydie scolding the men in the kitchen just as the clock chimed eight.The market would be opening.Wrapping the small box of gewgaws in his handkerchief and shoving it into his pocket, he trotted back downstairs.
Brydie tucked bread and buns into baskets and scowled at Rafe’s approach.“These oafs are eating up profits.We should charge them.”
“I’ll add it to the expense sheet I send to Hunt.”Amused, Rafe helped her prepare her market basket.“Guarding a house against a killer ought to earn something.”
She rolled her eyes.“So the captain ends up paying them double for guardingandeating, paying the curate for a funeral, and offering a free coffin and burial site on the manor grounds, plus your services.This does not sound like a reasonable means of running a village.”
“Alternative is taxing everyone and having a village treasurer pay the bills.”Rafe helped himself to one of the buns the others had left.It was pretty decent, if he did say so himself.He’d have added a spoon of sugar.
Humor restored at that ridiculous notion, Brydie laughed.“If we could collect taxes in the form of cabbages and carrots, that might almost work.”
“Since the church hasn’t even been able to collect that much in tithes, I’m guessing you’ll need a tax collector with a big stick.Are you walking?I’m going that way and can help you carry the load.”Rafe picked up several of her baskets.“You really need a cart to set up in.”
“Arthur delivered Lyn and Rob to your place.He’ll water the pony and leave the cart for me.What can we do for Verity to make up for all the time she’s spending watching Kate’s children?”Brydie hauled the rest of the bread baskets out after him.
“I’m not helping her much either.”Rafe sighed at the pleasant image he’d once imagined of the two of them running the inn side-by-side.“I need to hire more staff.”
“Well, we met a Mr.Ralph Parsons in one of the cottages up the lane, says it belonged to his granny.I’m thinking he’s the chicken thief.He might be looking for work.”Brydie sounded half-amused, half-worried.
“Just what we need, more scoundrels.You recognize him?”Rafe carried the baskets to the pony cart waiting in the inn yard.The mercantile wasn’t that far away.She just needed a place to display the bread out of the dust of the road.
“I wouldn’t want to testify in front of a judge, but I’m pretty sure he’s the one who grabbed me.He was roasting chicken when we stopped by.Has a horse too.He could be another ex-soldier come home to roost.Check to see if his shins are bruised if you go out there.”She climbed into the cart and grinned at him.
Rafe really didn’t want this job.
Walking beside Brydie’s cart, he studied the women selling their goods in front of Oswald’s store.Gravesyde was inhabited by widows and a few young women who, like Brydie, never married because the men all left for war or employment in the city.Rafe knew there were farmers still around, but they didn’t do the shopping.He’d be better off hunting killers at the tavern.Not a pleasant thought.
He waited until Oswald’s customers had left before stepping up to the counter with his box.“These are from Willa’s house.Do you recognize any of them?”
A gray-haired, wizened man of diminutive size, the postmaster and mercantile owner also acted as a pawn shop.He poked through the boxes and held up the stickpin.“Willa sometimes brought this in when she was short on blunt.Said it was her father’s.She always bought it back.”
“Nothing else look familiar?”Rafe hadn’t expected much, but he had to do everything he could think of, which obviously wasn’t enough.
“Spoon belongs to the manor.”Oswald shrugged.“All the rest are pretty common.Nothing worth more than a few shillings.”
“Thank you.”Rafe tucked the box back in his pocket.“Did Willa have you read her correspondence?”
Oswald nodded.“She could barely write her name.She had me write her answers.She didn’t really have no one to write though.”
What a sad small life the poor woman had lived.The men who visited had probably been her only glimpse of the outside world.“Do you remember what letters she received recently?And her replies?”
The merchant puckered up his nose beneath his wire-rimmed spectacles.“Few months back, she had a note saying Margie was ill and asking if she’d come visit.Margie was about the only one ever wrote her.They grew up together.”
“Did Willa reply?”Rafe remembered being told the baker’s daughter was named Margery, so that was most likely the Margie.“Do you remember the address?”
Oswald wrinkled his brow trying to recall the replies.“I think it came from Stratford, but that’s where most everything comes from, so I could be mistaken.Willa paid me by the word, so she was terse, just said she had no way of traveling, but she had room if they wanted to come to her.”
“They?As in the ill woman?”Rafe tried to puzzle that out, but the minds of women escaped his understanding.
