Explore "Fire in the Thatch" by Edith Caroline Rivett on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Macdonald’s post the next morning brought him several reports, but the letter which interested him most was from Miss Elizabeth Vaughan. With an energy which he judged to be characteristic of her, Miss Vaughan had caught the night train from Exeter to the north of England and had reached Lannerdale the following morning. Here she had set to work immediately to collect the information which Macdonald had asked for. She sent him chapter and verse concerning the Hawkins branch of the family whose claim to Lannerdale she intended to dispute. Sidney Hawkins and his son Richard now lived near Portsmouth, and Macdonald immediately sent a telephone message to the police of that district asking for discreet enquiries to be made as to their doings and whereabouts on April 30th. Elizabeth’s next report dealt with the girl, the one and only girl, Macdonald noted, in whom Elizabeth Vaughan could suggest that her brother had been interested. “You asked me to let you know if I could get any news of her,” wrote Elizabeth Vaughan, “and though it seems quite irrelevant to me, I have done what you asked. The girl’s name was Molly White. She wasn’t a teacher, as I thought, but a hospital nurse. She was back in this district as recently as January of last year, because she was posted to the Military Hospital at Longbeck Hall, about ten miles from Lannerdale. She came over to visit my uncle and aunt. I am told that she left Longbeck last May, and she was married to someone in the south of England a month or so later. So far as I can gather, she had not heard of or from my brother since before the war, so I cannot imagine that her existence is of any interest to you. The more I think about this business the more certain do I become that accident is the real explanation. It seems quite crazy to think that anyone should have attempted to murder my brother. Of all the people I’ve ever known Nicholas was the least melodramatic and the most able to look after himself. I can believe that his cottage caught fire accidentally, but I cannot believe the other explanation.”
Macdonald showed this letter to Bolton; the Superintendent studied it carefully.