before you catch a cold.’
Jake huffed as he rubbed the towel over his neck. ‘I have been through worse for a story.’
‘I hope this is more to you than just a story.’
She looked at his chiselled features, the strange contorted shadows cast by the lanterns outside the inn. He held her gaze, his dark eyes deep with some emotion she could not quite identify.
Then he pushed the towel into her hands and walked ahead of her, head held high, back into the inn.
The next morning as Alkmene bustled down the stairs, she found the large room empty and just one table laid out with plates and cutlery.
‘Good morning,’ she called out to the hostess who came from the kitchen with a jug of milk, pretending not to feel the coldness extended towards her. She walked to the fireplace and admired the painting over it, asking who had made it.
The woman seemed to thaw a little, even taking a moment to stand up straight and study the painting with a pensive expression. ‘My father. He was a fine painter.’
‘He was, indeed,’ Alkmene said. ‘If there are any more of his works, looking like this one, I would like to buy one before I go back to London. My father is a botanist, you know…’
At the woman’s blank look she added hurriedly, ‘He studies plants, and moorland is one of his favourite sort of environment to study. I think he would very much like a painting like this one to hang on his study wall.’
She ambled to the table and peered into the jug of milk. ‘Fresh, I suppose? We don’t have that in the city. I have often wished to live in the countryside for a while and enjoy the fresh food. I suppose your eggs are also of your own chickens?’
The woman affirmed it with a nod. ‘I have a few scrambled for you if you will take them. I knocked on the door of your companion when I did on yours, but he is not showing.’
Alkmene smiled. ‘I think he drank too much last night and is still recovering. Men. You never know how they will behave.’
The woman scurried off, and Alkmene took her seat at the table. Shuffling her cutlery around, she wished Jake would show up so they could talk about small stuff and she would not feel so completely out of place. She tried to focus on the tasks for the day, the first of which was locating Wallace Thomson. She knew better than to ask her hostess where he lived, as the woman had obviously given her all last night to keep the talkative Thomson from revealing too much to the outsiders.
Just as the woman carried a bowl with scrambled eggs to the table, the door of the inn opened, and Jake strode in.
He wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches over a shirt without a tie. Around his neck were field glasses. He waved at her from the door and called out, ‘I saw a peregrine falcon. It will become a bright day. How about a stroll on the moor right after breakfast? I am sure we will see many more species.’
‘And I can look for the rare moss Father wanted to know about,’ Alkmene added right away. ‘Splendid idea.’ She gestured to the empty chair opposite to her. ‘Sit down and enjoy this fresh offering.’
Jake put the field glasses down on the table and sat, leaning over to her as soon as the woman had walked off back into the kitchen. He said, ‘I tried a tiny flower shop in a street turning off from the square. A woman was there putting out buckets with fresh flowers. I made sure she saw my field glasses as I started talking about having seen the nests of the barn swallows against the church tower wall, right under the edge of the extension. She engaged at once, telling me she loved those birds and had kept a record of their comings and goings ever since she was a little girl. I let her tell me all about it, biding my time, until I could say I had met one Wallace Thomson at the inn last night who had claimed to know the haunts of pheasants on the moor and to be willing to show me, but that I had been distracted by conversation with another man about hawks and Thomson had left the inn without telling me where he lived. I added with a smile that as he was native of course he had assumed I knew, but I did not. She was more than willing to point it out to me. So as soon as we have finished this, guess where we are going…’
His voice died down on the latter words as their hostess came back with black coffee and bacon that was a little burned at the edges but had a rich salty taste Alkmene had never experienced before. She was surprised that the woman who had appeared so rude last night was plying them with this big breakfast, but perhaps it was only a matter of money.
After all, Jake had paid for the stay.
She intended to recompense him in full on the way back home, but wasn’t saying anything about that just yet. He was a proud man after all. After they had finished their breakfast, Alkmene went up to get a silk shawl, which she tied loosely around her neck. If they did hit the moor after their visit with Wallace Thomson, it would come in handy to protect her hair-do.
Downstairs Jake was talking to a tall man with a large salt and pepper moustache and a hunting dog by his side. She stayed a few steps away from them to give him the opportunity to finish inquiries if he was making some.
At last Jake took his leave, and they walked outside into the sunshine and the singing of birds in the live oaks. Jake walked around his car a moment, before they took the cobbled street leading to the right.
‘That was the local constable,’ he explained. ‘He had heard I had received a soaking last night and wanted to know if I was pressing charges against the assailants. I faked surprise and said that I had been drinking myself and so had the lads, and I supposed they had wanted to show me that I was now one of them by dunking me in the local waters. I pretended not to have got any message that I should stop poking around. I was curious if he would warn me to take it more seriously, but he did not. He said he was glad I understood the local customs and wished me a pleasant stay.’
Jake hitched a brow at her. ‘So either he wants me to run into more trouble or he doesn’t understand anything about local sentiments.’
‘Possibly. If he came to work here after it all happened, he might not understand how sore the spot still is.’ Alkmene fidgeted with the scarf around her neck. ‘How far is it to this Wallace Thomson’s place?’
‘He seems to live on some small farm.’ Jake shrugged. ‘She said we’d see it easily enough.’
They walked past the natural stone walls of the small front gardens belonging with the neat village cottages, then crossed a wooden bridge running over a fast flooding brook. Alkmene halted a moment to look down on the water that foamed white.
Jake picked up a pebble and tossed it in. It vanished in a moment.
Alkmene leaned her hands on the rough wooden railing, then said, ‘Hey, there are letters carved into this wood. You see? Initials.’ She studied the scratches, some fresh, others age-old it seemed.
‘Must be initials of couples in love,’ Jake said.
Alkmene studied a few closer. ‘I wonder if those two ever put their initials here. Silas Norwhich’s brother and that woman.’
‘Mary Sullivan,’ Jake said pensively. ‘Wallace Thomson seemed eager enough to share about her, while the others all took offence. I wonder what can be behind that.’
Alkmene straightened up, and they continued, from the bridge down a dirt track that led between hedges and rows of trees. In the distance they discerned a little house, sunken to one side as if it was about to collapse. A goat on a rope grazed outside it, and a few ducks were looking for insects in the tall grass.
There was a stone well on the left, with a bucket beside it on a bench covered with moss. Everything was weathered, like time had nibbled away at it and nobody had bothered to ever give anything a dash of paint.
Jake knocked on the door, calling out for Wallace. There was no reply, no sound of shuffling from the inside indicating the man was coming to answer the door.
Jake gestured at Alkmene to stay out front while he rounded the house and looked in the back. Alkmene stood with the sunshine on