Upstairs were two bedrooms and a small bath. One bedroom was clearly Mr. Vess’s. The bed was covered with an old-fashioned white chenille spread. The bedside table to the left held a lamp, a vintage fifties electric alarm clock, a small water carafe with a top that doubled as a glass, three library books, and a pair of reading glasses. The right bedside table held only a lamp identical to the left one.
The other bedroom was fitted up as a study. A comfortable-looking reading chair stood by the front window, and the table beside it and the floor around it contained more books. At the other side of the room was a small mahogany secretary with a sleek modern laptop perched incongruously on its writing surface. A wooden file cabinet sat nearby.
I couldn’t resist scanning the books first. They were a mix of well-worn literature, apparently from Vess’s own library, and brand-new spy thrillers in plastic library covers. Then I made a beeline for the desk.
Not surprisingly, most of the papers had to do either with Mr. Vess’s investments—which were not unimpressive—or his work with the Trinity vestry. Fat files of paperwork from the search for the new rector. Notebooks full of financial reports going back fifteen years. More fat files of memos Vess had sent to the vestry about various issues, like the cost savings to be gained from installing lower wattage lightbulbs in the hallways and the shockingly extravagant use of toilet paper in the ladies’ toilets.
I wondered if Vess had built his comfortable home through lightbulb and toilet-paper economies. I hadn’t noticed any dimness in his lights, and I checked his bathroom and found that he had used fairly cushy double-ply toilet paper.
His desk file drawer contained what I assumed were his active projects—a series of files, each in its own neatly labeled hanging folder. LIGHTING USAGE SURVEY—that must be his project of hiding in the closet to see who was leaving lights on. COSTS/DAMAGES FROM CHRISTMAS INCURSIONS—good grief; he had already started a file with his complaints about our church-swapping activities. RECTOR PERSONNEL EVALUATION NOTES—I glanced through that to see that it was a laundry list of petty or imaginary transgressions by Robyn. He also had files on all the vestry members—including Mother. I had to leaf through that one. The gist of it was that he found Mother extravagant and much too insistent on having her own way, so he wasn’t completely incompetent at judging character.
I hoped his executor consigned these files to the shredder. I had trouble reconciling their pettiness with this house, with its mix of elegant functionality and quiet, understated beauty.
Maybe the house was Mrs. Vess’s creation. I remembered Mother talking about how Vess had fought the rest of the vestry tooth and nail over the very minor expenditures involved in sprucing up Robyn’s study—mainly a few gallons of paint, to be applied by volunteer labor.
“The man doesn’t seem to understand,” Mother had said. “Even if the styles haven’t changed, things just wear out.”
Maybe he’d kept the decor here untouched after his wife’s death. I hadn’t seen anything that couldn’t have been here for ten years, or even twenty. I could see him living here, blind to the house’s beauty but well aware of its comfort. Keeping everything unchanged not out of sentimentality but because that was the cheapest and easiest option.
Odd that one hanging folder was completely empty—the one marked THORNEFIELD INVESTIGATION.
I searched the rest of the file cabinet and the desktop. No THORNEFIELD INVESTIGATION misfiled under OFFICE SUPPLY INVENTORY or HOUSEKEEPING SAVINGS PROPOSAL or any of the other projects.
I was deeply immersed in the files when I heard a loud bang outside and started.
Chapter 30
I slipped over to the window on the side of the house where the sound had come from and peered out, careful to stay back far enough to minimize the chances that I’d be seen.
The back windows of Mr. Vess’s offices had a sweeping view of rolling pastures leading down to a large pond and a series of long, low, whitewashed sheds. One of the barns had a faded sign on the side reading PLEASANT VALLEY DUCK FARM.
A tall, lean figure in jeans and a faded corduroy coat came out of one of the sheds and I heard the loud noise again—it was the shed door being slammed closed.
I was willing to bet that I was looking at Quincy Shiffley’s farm, with one of his cousins dropping by to tend the ducks. A cousin who was slamming doors in a bit of a temper because he really didn’t want to be out in the cold feeding a bunch of ducks.
I was a little alarmed when the cousin began striding across the snow-covered pasture in my direction. But I soon realized he wasn’t aiming for the house. Two large white ducks were perched on the fence between Vess’s yard and the duck farm. In summer, no doubt they’d have fluttered down into the garden and begun foraging, but now they merely stared down at the snow as if disappointed. I watched from behind the curtain as the visiting Shiffley captured them—they looked cold and not really all that eager to escape—and strode back up the hill to the barns with one under each arm.