A Forgotten Murder (Medlar Mystery 3)

“With no romance?” Kate said with a sigh. “How boring.”

“I’m here,” Jack said. “Anytime you want romance, I can—”

“Boooo,” Sara and Kate said in unison.

Jack tried to act offended but he was glad that some of the horror of what they’d seen that morning was being dispelled.

“I know where we need to go,” Sara said. “And I’ve been dying to see it.” She started down the road at a rapid pace, doing what she called her “New York walk.”

“Where?” Kate asked Jack.

“I’m not sure but I believe ‘dying’ is the key word.”

Since the cemetery was behind them, Kate knew where her aunt was going.

Jack led the way. He’d become familiar enough with the layout of the property that he could take them to the front of the big house in a roundabout way. There were few people inside the house, but all it took was one glance outside to see the three of them moving through the trees.

The private chapel in front of the house was a rectangle with a steep roof and a little covered porch jutting out on one side. One end had a tower with a tall cone of a roof.

They approached from the long side so they were hidden from the house. There was a narrow door with a lock on it. The women looked at Jack in expectation.

“We’re going to get into trouble for this,” he murmured, then pulled a knife out of his pocket. It had a tiny awl blade that he used to open the lock.

Sara was looking up at the chapel. “This is a Victorian mishmash. Wonder where they got the pieces to put it together?”

As Jack pushed open the door, they heard the rusty hinges scraping. It had been a while since the door had been opened.

Inside, they gasped. The long, narrow and very tall interior was paneled in walnut in a design of squares inside squares. There was a header of carvings of sheep and their shepherds. The ceiling was beamed, with carved corbels. The end wall, from head height up, was an enormous arched window of stained glass. Each of the twelve panels showed a story from the Bible.

“So tell us all,” Jack said as he looked at Sara. He knew that in researching her historical novels she’d learned a lot about period architecture.

“The original building is old, probably thirteenth century, but it’s been changed. I think the tower was added later, mid-1400s would be my guess. That big window is relatively new, definitely Victorian.” She turned full circle. “Somebody did some collecting and brought it all here and pieced this together like a puzzle. And whoever did it had taste and a whole lot of money.”

“Not Bertram,” Jack said.

Sara smiled. “I don’t see a horse anywhere, so no, not him.”

Jack went to the front, then grinned broadly. “Look what I found.” He lifted the oak cover to a piano. “It’s an upright grand,” he said. “It’s all iron inside.” When he played a few chords, they echoed through the room. The acoustics were excellent. He looked around in awe. “You could play a harmonica in here and it would be as loud as kettle drums.”

The center aisle was flanked by oak benches with pretty cushions. Sara sat down on one of them, and Jack put the camera bag next to her.

She reached into her bag and took out a notebook. As a writer, she surrounded herself with pens and paper. This notebook had a drawing of a camera with colored thread sewn on the outline. She didn’t usually mix up her thoughts, and her camera book was for photo-related subjects only. But this was an emergency. “I want to go over what we’ve learned,” she said.

Jack was running his hands over the woodwork. As a craftsman, he appreciated all that had gone into the carving. “You mean who had a reason to kill Sean?”

“Exactly,” Sara said.

Kate was using her phone to photograph the big window. “Everybody had a reason.”

“Bertie liked Sean,” Jack said.

“As long as he worked here,” Sara said. “What if he said he was going to quit? And I’m not discounting your Puck.” She waited for a reaction from Jack.

“I thought of that,” he said. “Killer clearing her conscience. But she was only fourteen and—”

Kate interrupted. “I still think it’s possible that Sean left the night of the party, then came back years later and someone killed him. We don’t have a date of death.”

“Returned for what?” Jack asked.