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‘That was quite some deduction you made,’ she said after he had made her a coffee and sat down beside her at a table in the empty restaurant.

‘I heard from Dad this morning. He was kept in overnight, but he’s fine. It turns out that Lars was having financial difficulties and was blackmailed into helping the Littleslades, who claimed they would expose his lack of planning permission for part of his building if he didn’t help them.

‘But while he had kept Dad prisoner for the last three weeks, he looked after him extremely well, feeding him properly, giving him all the books and entertainment he asked for, even allowing him to shower once a day, provided he didn’t try to escape.

‘In fact, it turns out that Dad had been planning to return the land to the Littleslades anyway. So he ended up treating his captivity at Lars’ place almost like an extended holiday.

‘I wasn’t best pleased about that, since I’ve been running his business for him. But he said it brought me back to Briar Speckles, and if anything, that was worth it.’

‘What’s going to happen now?’

‘Well, Dad’s hoping the courts will spare Lars a prison sentence if Dad vouches for him. Mark Bobbins suggested Lars will likely just get community service, probably picking up litter or cutting the grass verges. Something like that would help the village a little, wouldn’t it?’

‘What about the Littleslades?’ Kelly asked.

‘It’s a whole different thing for them,’ Edward said. ‘They’re in big trouble. Coercion, kidnapping, threatening behaviour. And it turns out it was Mr Littleslade who cracked me on the back of the head, thinking it would be best to get me out of the way. He could even be looking at attempted murder if he’s not careful.

‘Mrs Littleslade is likely just to go down as an accomplice. But nevertheless, they’re getting the book thrown at them.

‘Mr Littleslade confessed to pretty much everything last night at the police station, hoping it might help him get a lighter sentence. Apparently, he put on his wife’s old wedding dress, pretended to be Howling Gail, and robbed the spare change from the till at the Howling Gail Inn. He just wanted enough change to start the gambling off. That’s why he didn’t take any notes.

‘He shimmied down the drainpipe outside the window, drove up to Exeter, caught a late-night flight over to Paris, posted that postcard he’d coerced my father into writing at Charles De Gaulle Airport, and then flew back again the same night.’

‘Wow! He must have been exhausted,’ Kelly said.

Edward laughed. ‘You have to give him credit. He really did make some effort to pull this off. And all the while, my father was planning to give the land back anyway. Apparently, a land survey suggested the whole area is dangerous and will require extensive work before it can be made safe. The land is effectively worthless. My dad saw no reason not to give it back.’

‘And he didn’t think to just say?’

‘No,’ Edward said. ‘He was enjoying his stay at Lars’s place too much. Apparently, Lars had got him into a couple of Scandinavian detective series, and they’d been binge-watching them for days on end.’

‘I’m glad things seem to have sorted themselves out.’

‘There’s something else too,’ Edward said. ‘Apparently, while looking around that old cave to see if they could find any evidence to proof Pierce Littleslade’s claim that he attacked me, they came across human bones, uncovered in a minor rock fall.’

Kelly’s eyes widened. She remembered what she thought she had seen during her own aborted look around the cave, and then when she had discovered Edward.

‘Really?’

‘They weren’t recent, though. They haven’t done an analysis on them yet, but Mark said the forensics team thinks they’re about a hundred years old. The skull has a fracture, as though it was suffered in a fall. Another pair of bones, from a sheep’s skeleton found on a higher ledge, had fallen down on top of them, giving the skull the impression of having its own horns.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s quite the archeological find. My friends at Oxford would love to have a look.’

‘Huh,’ Kelly said. ‘Do you think it could be Jack Mellion? That missing journalist? Maybe he went up to the cave to look for William Medhurst and his sheep.’

‘He came down for the first parade, then came back for the hundredth. Who would have known?’

‘At least we might have found him in the end,’ Kelly said. ‘We found him, and you also found your father.’

Edward stared at her. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I found him … but I also found—’

The door to the restaurant came crashing open.

Old Ned stumbled in.

‘You got a minute?’ he said. ‘I’ve gone and lost Larry again.’

36

One Final Encounter