The Hen of the Baskervilles(13)

The horse owner led me to a stall containing a beautiful gray Percheron. He patted the horse’s nose, then opened the stall door and led me in.

“See?” He pointed to the Percheron.

Wrapped around the enormous horse was a quilt. A very familiar-looking quilt. I pulled out my camera and compared the photo I’d taken last night of Rosalie’s quilt with the fabric draped over the Percheron’s rump. Yes, it was the same quilt. And still beautiful, in spite of all the mud stains. Or were some of them manure stains? Maybe I should hope they were. Since moving to the country, I’d found that manure was one of the easiest stains to treat. But our reddish yellow Virginia clay …

I pulled out my cell phone and called the chief.

“We’ve had another theft,” I said. “And I’m afraid I’ve found the missing quilt.”





Chapter 6

Some misguided soul told Rosalie what was going on and she showed up at the barn while Horace was still doing his forensic examination of the scene. She didn’t react well to the sight of her poor, mistreated quilt. In fact, she reacted so badly that after a telephone consultation with Dad, Deputy Aida hauled her down to the Caerphilly Hospital to be looked after.

“I doubt if she’ll need to be admitted,” Aida said in an undertone to me while Mother and the quilting ladies helped Rosalie into the back of the cruiser. “But you know how good your father is with hysterical patients.”

“We must do something,” one of the quilting ladies said, as they watched Rosalie’s departure.

“Let’s take the quilt to Daphne,” Mother suggested. “At the Caerphilly Cleaners.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to entrust the Baltimore Album to a mere dry cleaner,” one of the ladies said. Clearly she wasn’t from around here.

“Daphne is no mere dry cleaner,” Mother said. “She is a fabric conservation genius.”

“Yes,” I said. “Around here, it’s generally accepted that if Daphne can’t get it out, God must want you to wear the stain.”

“She has some tricks for dealing with that horrible red clay,” said a woman I recognized as the head of the Caerphilly Quilting Club. “But let’s make sure Horace’s forensic testing doesn’t involve putting any nasty chemicals on it. When we had that burglary last year, you wouldn’t believe how hard it was to get all that fingerprint powder scrubbed away.”

“And before you haul the quilt anywhere, remember that it’s evidence.” I hated to put a damper on the quilt rescue, but I didn’t want them to interfere with Horace’s forensics. “Someone did steal it, possibly the same someone who still has those missing chickens. Let’s make sure the police don’t need to keep it.”

Horace was quick to assure them that fabric wasn’t a very good surface for fingerprints, and he had no need to put any chemicals on the quilt. With the chief’s permission, the quilters bore the quilt away to Daphne’s. Four of them insisted on helping carry it, each holding one corner of the folded bundle, and their slow pace and solemn faces made them look alarmingly like pallbearers.

“Is that true, or did you just not want to upset the quilters?” I asked Horace as we watched them depart.

“Well, they’re doing some really interesting things in Scotland with vacuum metal deposition to get fingerprints off fabric,” he said. “But it’s still in the early stages yet. And probably impossible to clean off. Still, it would be interesting to try.”

He sounded wistful. Lately I’d noticed that Horace often seemed disappointed at the relatively tame forensic challenges small-town police work had to offer.

“Well, we’ll all keep our eyes open for some more fiber evidence,” I said, patting him on the back. “Evidence that no one cares so much about.”

I dropped by the produce tent and sent the pumpkin owner and his father out for lunch at the Un-fair’s expense while two Shiffleys from the Shiffley Construction Company loaded the remains of the pumpkin into the barrels. Eight huge barrels by the time they finished.

“We just going to leave these here?” one Shiffley asked.

“Because this stuff’s already starting to stink,” the other pointed out.

“Yes, it will rot, and I have no idea if that will increase or decrease the weight,” I said. “Can we put the stuff on ice?”

“Would take a lot of ice,” the first said. “Cousin of ours has a refrigerated truck. We might be able to borrow that for a few days.”

“Fabulous.” I left them to handle it.

Time for me to return to my rounds. Luckily there weren’t too many more buildings to visit, and I was guardedly optimistic that by now, any other thefts or vandalism would have been discovered and reported.