"I can’t hear this now," Marina grumbled. Ironic since she was the only good listener I had ever known.

"Because of how you feel about her?" I asked. But I already knew the answer. I pressed my shoulders against the hard contour of the wooden chair and watched Marina cross and uncross her legs. She repeated this litany until finally an answer seemed appropriate.

"No, because of how I feel about you," she said leaning forward to reveal wide spread watery blue eyes. Eyes that I knew could, without notice, either contract and darken into menacing darts or flood with tears. "Why do you care so much, anyway?"

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? But she knew why, so it had come down to simple semantics once again. Words, their derivation, usage and misuse had been the subject of all too many discussions between us over the years. "Someone I care about is missing."

"You don’t know that," she replied taking a long drag from a cigarette. Marina shook her head and peered down at me from that lofty place inside her that I sometimes referred to as her throne.

"I’m on my way to call on Gloria. After all, they live together and have for the past year. I’d say there’s almost no chance she’ll know nothing about it."

"True, if there’s really anything to know about. It might do you good, actually, to talk to someone like her. Not that she’s capable of any real verbal exchange. God knows how much you worry about things that don’t need worrying about. When it comes to real problems, Kate, that’s when I start worrying about you." Marina grabbed my hand and held it for a few moments, reassuring telepathically that she was still my best friend despite our thorny association.

Marina never understood my connection to Sylvia. Sure, she knew the history, had heard the story told a thousand times a hundred different ways. She saw with her eyes and heard with her ears but had never really felt with her heart, nor could she appreciate why I had. Sylvia lived a kind of life that made sense to her. Instead of constantly doubting and wondering and questioning, she handled things simply and predictably. To refer to this quality as inimical would be to look at it quite the wrong way. I thought of it as practical. If she arrived home from work and found no food in her refrigerator, she turned right around with her coat on her arm and marched to the corner store. The why of it all remained irrelevant. I thought of all this on the endless connecting road between my house and the vast sea of woods surrounding the university. Sylvia’s house could be found, with prior directions, by adhering to a very narrow footpath for five miles where several decades’ worth of water had traveled as an offshoot of the Exe River. Marina lived between my house and Sylvia’s. Though still within the confines of Exeter, all three of us sort of found our way onto an empty expanse of uninhabited green on the corner of Dartmoor National Park -- secluded and moorish with a faint whiff of sea from the nearby channels.

I rehearsed what I would say to Gloria with each of my steps along the highly carpeted path, dense with a thick sog of damp orange leaves, some pine needles and an occasional cigarette butt. My last visit, almost four weeks ago, uncovered an abandoned beach towel and two condoms. ‘I’m looking for Sylvia’ were the only words my mind could conjure. Not the most polished opening, but it was to the point. She would understand perfectly what I was asking of her and all the implications it left. Gloria Renham would look at me -- at my tall, quiet stature, yielding face and slightly apologetic manner -- and immediately think what she had always thought about me. We did look alike, everybody said so. Mrs. Robesworth, who lived in the converted old farmhouse down the road, even started a rumor that we were actually sisters. And though Gloria might still admire me for taking her side in the controversy about turning the old library into a hotel, one irrefutable fact endured. She and her mother Sylvia were Renhams, descended from the distinctive lineage of the Stiltons of Windsor from five generations ago, and I was just a commoner from Leeds. Though I could disguise this fact with my affected speech and expensive clothing, nothing got past Gloria. She was, by far, the smartest woman I knew.

The rest it would come as no surprise, I felt almost certain. Having known her for twenty-seven years, I had learned to count on Gloria for only one thing -- to constantly act in Gloria’s own best interest. I could not disguise, as yet, my anticipation of her reaction to the news I would be bringing her. News that her mother was, indeed, missing and I knew about it. Though entirely false it would be, the woven web of lies would spill out of her mouth as jellybeans from a glass jar. And not just explanations for everything, but her response would come complete with clarifications of all the explanations. Gloria Renham never tired of this duplicity because it cost her no effort whatsoever. It was intrinsic.

My stomach grumbled and I looked at my watch as a reflex. Only eight in the morning, I already felt worn out. And the complex web of gray clouds gave me no comfort. Late October had customarily driven all sunshine out of the southwestern sky over Devon; but even so, today felt oppressively dark. My lower back creaked and ached with each step, sore from yesterday’s five hours of bending forward and lifting boxes of books. Mr. Sloan, my weekend assistant, had chastised me for not wearing the weight- lifting belt he had kindly brought for me. A densely boned, barrel-chested gentleman in his sixties, he informed me that lifting boxes of books wouldn’t strain him. He would be on the road about now, delivering the boxes of books we loaded yesterday to a few small village libraries between here and London -- two in Avon and another in Bath. I glanced at my watch again. After Gloria, Sloan would be next on my list to talk to, because he mentioned seeing her sprinting into the bank on the High Street the previous afternoon.

Gloria Renham prepared a typical English breakfast and made coffee at the same time every morning of her life. And today, in her mother’s charming house, she made no exception. I saw rounded tendrils of smoke curling out of her chimney from a football field’s distance away.

"Hello Kate." Gloria stood back a ways with her arms folded in front of her and offered me an empty stare. Her body language seemed to disapprove of my gazing up at her authentic, albeit weathered, thatched roof. "Are you coming in this morning or just appraising the property value of my house?"

"Have you made coffee?"

"Of course."

"All right, then," I acquiesced and clomped solidly through her doorway. She stood watching me for several moments before speaking again.

It was always this way with Gloria and me. Our mothers, Sylvia and my mother Lottie, were childhood best friends. So naturally we had been tossed together like an accidental ambrosia and assumed to be similarly joined at the hip. Sylvia and my mother were very alike creatures, and Gloria was just like them. Indifferent to human fancy, aloofly distanced from any show of emotion while adhering to a singular path of pragmatism. I was the oddball eccentric, chronically tardy to appointments due to gazing at the streaky sky at dusk. I tended to wear mismatched clothing, spoke my mind and lacked discipline. I was not like any of them, except for Sylvia. Though closely guarded, she also had a carefree side to her personality which I identified with as a child. This was by no means her general personality, though it tended to seep out in times of conflict. I remember the day I got expelled from grammar school because of a misunderstanding about something I was thought to have said. My mother, in light of all the evidence, sided with the school board and apologized profusely to them. None of our relatives blamed me, really, yet their embarrassment of the whole affair became evident when we didn’t see them for almost a year. Sylvia, on the other hand, was the one who kidnapped me from the principal’s office the day it happened while mother was still meeting with the board. She took me out for ice cream and drove us in her car to the London Zoo three hours away. ‘You’ll never fit in with everybody, Kate, and it’s okay not to fit in with some people. You’re fine just the way you are.’ Those words changed my life. This realization, I knew deep down, was precisely why I hadn’t slept since I first suspected Sylvia might be missing, and why Marina, my best friend, would never quite get it.

"Where’s your mother today?" I asked Gloria in a casual voice.

But no answer filled in the thick space of silence that had formed between us. I watched my old adversary stirring cream into my coffee and I felt a tinge of compassion for her at that moment. Over the years, resentment and anger had formed creases in her face and molded her body from a willowy flower into a knotty old tree trunk. No answer came to my question, yet no particular signs of shock or grief showed on her face. I was not surprised.

"Crumpet?" she asked placing the mug in front of me.

"No, thanks. I really came to see Sylvia."

"Yet you’ve just informed me that she’s missing, haven’t you?"

Go ahead, I thought. Be that way and I’ll have the police here questioning you by midday. "I thought I asked of her whereabouts, actually. When did you last see her?"

"On Monday. Today’s Thursday so that would be three days ago," she answered curtly jerking her head to one side. She plopped down in the chair across from me with her hands on her lap. "Mother does this from time to time, you know."

"Oh really? She goes on holiday without telling anyone first, without saying a word to her own daughter who lives in her house?" I asked in an escalated voice.

"I think you’d better go now. If I hear from mother, I’ll ring you right away."

Sure you will, you venomous old prig. Okay, I thought. You asked for it. "Oh, and how is your car running these days?" I asked standing at the door.

"Fine. Why do you ask?"

"I don’t know," I lied. "No reason really. It’s just that I thought you didn’t drive it very much anymore, but I saw you running into the bank yesterday afternoon as they were about to close. I assumed that you drove since it is quite a walk from here and you have that bad leg."

And suddenly the indifference from Marina and the tedious five-mile walk seemed well worth my efforts at the sight of Gloria’s discomfort. I had penetrated a wall. Her fists clenched and unclenched again, something that over the years had become a signature of her presence, and the muscles in her neck and shoulders sort of collapsed. "I don’t know where she is, I tell you. Believe me or not."

"You can lie to anyone but me, Gloria. I’ve known you too long. I promise you one thing, though, that I’ll be back here in three days with proof that you know where she is."

Having been formally educated as a librarian and, what’s more, a reference librarian, had its advantages. Not only did I have modern and historical reference material literally at my fingertips twenty-four hours a day, but also a tight network of scholarly professionals who could be called upon to provide useful information. In this case, the information I needed involved the floor plan of Sylvia’s house. Mr. Sloan, my weekend library assistant, had a son who worked as a clerk in the Town Hall records department.

"You see, I think she’s in there."

"In the house?" the young, blue-eyed man asked. "In her own house?" he emphasized.

"I have my reasons."

"You just said she was missing, though. Didn’t you?"

"Yes, yes," I replied shaking my head. "She is missing, since Monday to be exact about it. But I’m not saying that she’s in the kitchen in her bathrobe preparing tea."

The man paused to consider this. "So you’re saying that someone’s done something to her?"

I nodded.

"We generally ask people to examine the plans right here. You can have as long as you want with them. We’re open till 5:00." The man checked my response to this information, then continued talking. "Or you can take them for twenty-four hours with a five pound deposit."

It occurred to me as I looked into the man’s trusting blue eyes that I was asserting the possibility of homicide. All of my previous suspicions hadn’t consciously prepared me for this prospect. But Sylvia had been missing now for almost a week, and her only living child resided in her house and stood to inherit a very worthy estate.

I chomped on this thought during lunch at my favorite tea house in town. The hostess at Tinley’s recognized me from my last visit two weeks ago when I had sourly accepted an order of stale scones with my pot of tea. I apologetically asked her to clear the table to allow me to properly unfold the blueprints lent to me by Andrew Sloan at the Town Hall. A pretty, dark haired waitress looked on curiously as I laid out the layers of blueprints on the red tablecloth.

"You building a house, there?"

"No," I laughed. "It belongs to a friend," which was mostly true. Sure, it was her house, her lovely restored Victorian era thatched roof cottage nestled among rose bushes and honeysuckle. The only oddity lay in my conviction that she was either being held captive there or else, I sighed, perhaps even dead!

Of course, notifying the local police was first on my list. Well, maybe second. An eager young detective by the name of Rodney Blythe arrived at my house the following morning. Something about him, perhaps the cleanliness of his uniform or his slightly nervous way of talking, made me think that this was his first case. I sadly told him all I knew about the affair so far which, I feared, wasn’t very much at all.

"Her full name?" he asked taking a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket.

"Sylvia Orgain Renham. She’s sixty-four years old, active, in excellent health."

"Occupation?"

"A retired nurse. Her husband died four years ago. He was in the military for many years. I’m pretty sure she’s been living off of his retirement. Sylvia spends most of her time gardening."

"Do you know the address of her residence?"

"There’s no street number, and it’s the same street as mine, just a ways down a dirt path. Higher Hoopern Cottage, Higher Hoopern Lane, here in Exeter," I said and pointed east. "It’s about five miles of nothing but an open country road unofficially part of Dartmoor National Park. Except when it rains, it’s a lovely walk."

"What is your relationship with Ms. Renham?" the young man asked looking down to examine the tea I had placed on the table in front of him.

"Which?"

He looked up again. "Which what, Ma’am?"

"Which Ms. Renham? You see there are two of them. Sylvia, the one who’s missing, and then there’s her daughter Gloria who lives with her in the Victorian house."

"Victorian house, Ma’am? I’m not following. Is that the one just down the road?"

"I’m sorry, Detective. I’m afraid I’m not being very clear about things. It’s just that I feel very close to Sylvia and I fear something suspicious may have happened to her." The white-faced freckled young man looked earnestly at me and then gulped down half of the contents of the teacup all at once. Obviously not a tea drinker, I thought. "Sylvia’s residence is an old Victorian cottage, full registered, which she’s successfully restored all herself. Oh, well Gloria painted the front door," I mocked, shrugging my shoulders.

"Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm the older Ms. Renham? Does anyone at all come to mind when I ask this?"

I shook my head. "Not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I just remembered that a relative of theirs visited about two months ago. An attractive young woman in her twenties who I thought was a niece or a cousin. She only stayed there for a day or two and then left rather suddenly. I picked up Sylvia on the morning after the woman left - I take her grocery shopping once a week - and she seemed very preoccupied about it. She didn’t want to discuss it."

"Did you ask the daughter about it?"

I frowned. "To be honest, I just remembered it now. Gloria and I are not exactly close friends. We’ve known each other for, well, a long time. You see, Sylvia was my mother’s best friend. And when my own mother died five years ago, Sylvia sort of took on the role of surrogate. I guess this didn’t please Gloria much. But even before that, the rivalry ran through both our veins."

Marina agreed to search the cottage with me on Sunday. Gloria would be at church, as was her custom, praying for the sanctity of her own soul and silently cursing the rest of us. It was Saturday night, and I needed to clear the jungle in my head. I went into the kitchen and laid out everything on my large wooden table. There wasn’t much. Blueprints, notes, a transcription from my discussion with Andrew Sloan scribbled on a legal pad and the young detective’s business card. So, unwittingly, I had assembled a posse to be utilized in the finding of Sylvia. Myself, the Sloans, Marina, and now Detective Blythe. And it didn’t please me to realize how far out on a limb I was in the event that Sylvia might return. But it had been five days, I argued with myself. Five days with no word.

Marina, always the skeptic, needed more of an explanation. So I went over it all to her again as we walked the muddy path early Sunday morning. We had been careful to bring gloves with us to avoid leaving fingerprints, which we were wearing presently due to a biting morning wind.

"What makes you think she’s there, of all places? In her own home for God’s sake?"

I sighed. The detective had inquired about the same thing just two days earlier. "I checked all the trains leaving Exeter on the day I was supposed to take her shopping. We go once a week, you know. I’ve been taking her ever since mother died. I think Gloria believes that she walks the path by herself and returns on the bus with an armful of bags. So I knocked on the door and nobody answered. I stayed there knocking for ten minutes or longer, and then walked back to my house and rang. No one answered. Not all day, or the next day. I don’t even think Gloria was there. Or maybe they were both inside and didn’t answer the door, I don’t know."

"The trains, Kate. What were you saying about the trains?"

"Just that no one by the name of Sylvia Renham took a train anywhere on that day or any day that week. I called all the local hotels and hospitals. I called the airports in London, even."

Marina waved her palm in front of me to indicate ‘time out.’ "You mean to tell me that you called Gatwick and Heathrow and told them your friend is missing and would they please check all airline rosters for a Sylvia Renham?" She chuckled. "Why would they do this for you? I mean no offense, of course. It’s just that this seems like a rather immense task."

Marina read the cat-ate-canary expression on my face.

"Oh," she said with half disapproval.

"I simply told them I worked for Detective Blythe with the Exeter Police and he asked me to track down some information regarding a missing persons case."

"They probably recorded that call, Kate. Did you consider that?"

I nodded. "That’s why I called from your house." I smiled waiting for her reaction.

"You called an international airport impersonating a police detective -- from my house?"

"Don’t worry. They didn’t tell me anything. They said no one by that name flew on that particular day. To find out any more, I would have to ask Detective Blythe to order copies of the passenger lists to be faxed to him, and it could take some time."

"You’ve already arranged for this, I suppose?" Marina asked with feigned objection. I could tell she admired me for my quick thinking and ingenuity. The shadow of a smile showed faintly behind her practiced scowl. I knew this ploy, because she had learned it from me.

"I don’t need to see any passenger lists. I know where Sylvia is. She’s in the parlor."

"What parlor? Surely you don’t mean her own?"

I nodded, and pulled the folded sheets of expensive linen paper from the pocket inside my jacket and handed them to Marina. After a moment of scrutiny, she found a large flattish rock on the side of the path and sat down on it.

"What’s this?"

"Sylvia’s Last Will and Testament. I found it in mother’s hope chest. I thought I had gone through everything years ago after she died. But I found this folded and tucked into the binding of one of her old books. There’s a note in Sylvia’s own script on the first page."

Marina picked up the leaflets and cleared her throat. "Lottie: No one will understand the content of these pages but you because you know not only my deepest thoughts but the contents of my heart as well. The enclosed pages, which are I assure you fully executed, legal and even notarized as of the date of this note, reflect my exact wishes for the remaining life of the estate and all that goes with it. I leave all the money, the stocks, and bank notes to Clarissa Bain, my niece who lives in Yorkshire. All the artwork goes to you, and I suppose I’ll leave the decrepit old cottage to Gloria. It isn’t worth much anymore, other than the intrinsic value in old, preserved things you know she cares nothing about. That’s what we’re getting to be, aren’t we? Well preserved old ladies deeply tied to the past and the way things were when we were young girls. I’m planning to leave a copy of this document with Gloria, but knowing how things are between she and I, I thought it might be safer to give you a copy as well. And I know that if I outlive you, which I undoubtedly expect, dear Kate will keep things in order for me. Yours, Sylvia." Marina glanced at me with an odd look of admiration. "I assume you think that Gloria, after reading her copy of this, moved into the house to convince Sylvia to change the allocation, and now that she’s taken care of that task she’s taken care of her?"

"In a word, yes. Unless she failed to get the new will notarized, in which case this one would still be legal and binding."

Normally a leisurely ninety-minute walk along the leafy path, it took the two of us thirty minutes. We were so out of breath by the time we reached the cottage, we had to stand outside the front door for ten minutes to regain composure.

"Why the parlor?" Marina asked as we climbed in through the side window. I knew Sylvia kept it open ajar to allow a vent for the fireplace. Having been erected during the Victorian era, the wooden framed window had swelled far beyond the molding on the wall and took all four of our arms to open and close it.

"I examined the blueprints of the house, and there’s a tiny basement crawl space beneath the parlor. I’m not sure how you get to it, but it should be under that sofa there," I said pointing. In a moment, we had sinfully dragged the sofa across the delicate wood floors and lifted the edge of the burgundy wool carpet. We saw nothing that resembled a portal to a crawl space. So we replaced the carpet, moved the heavy bench back in its place and did the same with the other end."

"My, God, Kate. Look!"

I looked down at the wooden floor and saw a latched door no larger than the door on my microwave. How anything larger than a loaf of bread could be stuffed down there seemed beyond my comprehension, but when I shined the flashlight beam down into the space, it revealed a storage space surprisingly roomy. I lifted one leg in an attempt to lower myself into the space and Marina grabbed my hand and stopped me.

"Shouldn’t you take a minute and prepare yourself for what might be in there?"

"Yes, I probably should. But I’d prefer to get it over with as quickly as possible." When I had lowered myself entirely into the dark cobwebbed space, I discovered nothing that I had expected. The room carried a distinct wine cellar odor and, accordingly, an arrangement of dusty wine bottles lay along the inside perimeter of the space like sleeping soldiers. I reported as much to Marina.

"A wine cellar? Didn’t you see this in the plans?"

"Floor plans don’t show the contents of rooms, silly," I argued back. "They’re drawn up before a structure is erected." But she did have a point. The plans I had in my possession had been drawn up less than thirty years ago, and the house was nearly two centuries years old.

"Did you bring the plans with you?" she asked.

I shook my head sadly as we pulled back the carpet and moved the sofa.

"I just was wondering if you noticed any other crawl spaces beneath any of the other rooms. I mean, why would a house this size only have one? It seems at least possible, doesn’t it, that another room might have a similar space beneath it?"

After we had lifted the carpets in all of the rooms of the house, we moved outside to the guesthouse. The same burgundy carpet lay on the floor beneath a mercifully small sofa which we moved, this time, with ease.

Detective Blythe seemed to understand fully our reasons for doing what we did. "We have located the younger Ms. Renham, I am happy to report. She had purchased a ticket to Glasgow, apparently to get out of town for a while. Scotland Yard picked her up in Edinburgh and she’s on her way back here now. Although your methods were a bit questionable, we are grateful for your intervention."

"Even though it was based on a gut feeling?" I asked wiping my eyes for the fourth time this morning.

"Surely," he said. "A percentage of everything I do, every person I talk to and every lead I investigate is based on similar feelings. And again, I’m very sorry for your loss. I guess you have the exciting honor, now, of going up north to visit Ms. Renham’s niece, Miss Bain."

"I guess it’s an honor. Though the overall news is quite gloomy, I guess I might have a new neighbor for a while. After all, and to Gloria’s chagrin, Clarissa Bain of Yorkshire is a rich young lady now."

Two weeks later after Sylvia’s body was removed from the cottage and all the post mortem tests had been performed on her, Marina came to my office at the old library and had lunch with me. I told her what the Medical Examiner had found in her blood.

"Arsenic? Where does one get such a thing now a days?"

I just shrugged. "I rather think Gloria Renham’s capable of just about anything. Now how about helping me hang these pictures. I’ve got enough wall space in this library to display the contents of the Louvre."

"I thought we were having lunch?" she asked in her typical cranky voice.

My attention had been focused on the back of one the pictures Sylvia had bequeathed me in her will. The front image painted on the canvas was of an old English fox hunting scene around 1800. But the back was not sealed up tight with brown paper like the rest of the artwork. It was just cardboard stapled loosely to the wooden molding of the frame. "There’s something back here," I said and began pulling the cardboard off the hinges.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked.

The staples came out rather easily. I pulled out two from the top and only one was on the bottom. Kate knelt down beside me as I carefully lay the cardboard sheet down on the concrete floor. And between its surface and the back of the canvas board was -- another canvas. Not a canvas board like the principal artwork, but a sheet of thin canvas paper. I removed it from the frame and set it on top of the cardboard on the floor. Within seconds, tears filled my eyes as I saw the zoomed in image of two small children sitting next to each other.

Marina dutifully removed a handkerchief from her pocket and held it in front of me while her arm reached curiously around my body.

"What is it, Kate? My God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry before. Is that you? Did Lottie paint that?"

"Sylvia did," I replied. "It’s a portrait of Gloria and me when we were three years old. It was painted in the parlor of the guest house."