The Perfectly Pressed Handkerchief
The Nettleford Summer Fête had been held on the second Saturday of July for as long as anyone could remember, and this year was no different — except, of course, for the brooch.
Agnes Partly had been running the tombola stall since half past ten, selling tickets to ruddy-faced farmers and their patient wives, when the commotion began near the cake tent. A voice — shrill and unmistakable — cut through the warm afternoon air like a letter-opener through an envelope.
“It’s gone. My grandmother’s brooch. Someone has taken it.”
The voice belonged to Constance Drummond, sixty-two, widow of the late Gerald Drummond, and owner of a seed merchant’s business that still bore his name. The brooch in question was a Victorian piece — seed pearls arranged around a central garnet — and had been pinned to Constance’s cream linen jacket all morning.
Agnes handed her ticket roll to Dorothy Fitch, who helped on alternate fêtes, and made her unhurried way toward the gathering crowd.
Constance was surrounded by three people who had, apparently, been standing with her at the moment she discovered the brooch missing. There was Reverend Hollis, in his shirtsleeves on account of the heat, clutching a paper cup of lemonade. There was Martin Pearce, the estate agent, who always attended the fête in a blazer one season too warm for the weather. And there was young Petra Gill, the new librarian, holding a large canvas bag and looking thoroughly alarmed.
“I only noticed it was gone when I reached for my handkerchief,” Constance was explaining to anyone who would listen. “It must have been taken in the last ten minutes. I was standing right here — right here — when I felt a little tug at my lapel. I assumed it was the breeze.”
Sergeant Collett had been called from the refreshment tent, where he had been engaged with a slice of Victoria sponge, and was now attempting to project an air of authority while brushing crumbs from his shirt.
Agnes observed the three witnesses with the quiet attention she had once applied to thirty children doing arithmetic.
Reverend Hollis spread his hands helplessly. “I was looking the other way entirely. I’d spotted the Morris dancers arriving and turned to watch.”
Martin Pearce nodded. “I was just returning from the car park. I’d gone to fetch my — ” he patted his breast pocket “— my sunglasses. Came back not two minutes ago. I wasn’t even here when it happened.”
Petra Gill looked close to tears. “I was here the whole time. But I was searching in my bag for a pen. Someone had asked me about the library’s summer hours and I wanted to write them down. I wasn’t looking at Mrs Drummond at all.”
Sergeant Collett wrote everything down in his notebook with the earnest deliberation of a man who had attended a single training course on witness statements.
Agnes studied each face in turn. Then she studied their hands, their clothes, the small unthought details that people never considered important enough to manage.
“Sergeant,” she said pleasantly, “might I ask one small question?”
Collett sighed in the manner of a man who had dealt with Agnes Partly before. “Go ahead, Mrs Partly.”
She turned to Martin Pearce. “You said you went to fetch your sunglasses from the car park. Is that right?”
“That’s right.” He touched the frames now resting on his nose.
“It’s a warm day,” Agnes observed. “Very warm. You walked to the car park and back — I should think that’s a good four minutes’ walking in the sun — and yet your handkerchief is perfectly pressed. Not a mark on it.”
Pearce blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“A man who has been walking briskly under today’s sun — and I notice you’ve worn a blazer, which is brave of you — would have used his handkerchief at least once. We all have. Dorothy has used hers twice at the tombola stall. Reverend Hollis used his not five minutes ago; I noticed him dabbing his forehead. Even my own is somewhat the worse for wear.” She produced it briefly, then tucked it away again. “But yours is folded with a sharp crease and has clearly not left your pocket this morning.”
A silence settled over the little group.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Pearce said, but his voice had acquired a careful quality it had not had before.
“No,” Agnes agreed. “But it does suggest you didn’t walk anywhere in the heat. It suggests, rather, that you’ve been standing here, in the shade of this awning, for considerably longer than you claimed.” She paused. “Which would mean you were present when Mrs Drummond felt that tug at her lapel. And it would explain why you were so particularly precise about having only just returned — when a man with nothing to hide would simply have said he was nearby.”
Martin Pearce said nothing. The colour had left his face rather thoroughly.
Sergeant Collett, to his credit, acted promptly. A brief and unembarrassed search of Pearce’s blazer pocket produced the brooch, wrapped in a till receipt from the refreshment tent.
It emerged, in the days that followed, that Pearce had owed Gerald Drummond’s estate a significant sum — a private loan, made years before, which Constance had recently engaged a solicitor to recover. Whether he had imagined selling the brooch might offset his difficulties, or whether the impulse had simply overtaken him in a moment of foolishness, no one could quite determine. What mattered to Nettleford was that the brooch was returned, Constance Drummond received a formal apology, and the fête raised four hundred and twelve pounds for the church roof fund.
Agnes returned to her tombola stall, where Dorothy Fitch handed back the ticket roll with a knowing look.
“You saw something, didn’t you?” Dorothy said.
“I noticed something small,” Agnes replied, setting out a new row of prizes with quiet satisfaction. “The large things generally take care of themselves.”
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