“I can think of one thing that his missing file could be about,” she said. “It was just after Mrs. Thornefield died that our former rector broke his legs, poor dear. And with him laid up, and not the most practical soul at the best of times, he put Riddick in charge of disposing of Mrs. Thornefield’s belongings. And since Riddick had no idea whatsoever what any of it was worth, he was just going to call in a junk dealer to give him a bid on the lot. Imagine how much we would have lost if he had and the junk dealer he’d called had been a sharp or dishonest operator!”

“And Mr. Vess found out about it and sounded the alarm?” I asked.

“He most certainly did not,” she said. “He was as clueless as Riddick. But I’d been to see Mrs. Thornefield often enough, and I knew she had some very nice things, so I put a stop to the junk dealer plan.”

She was back to her Joan of Arc pose.

“So we’re having a rummage sale instead?”

“A very elegant auction and estate sale,” Mother said. “Poor Riddick took it hard. He was so mortified at the mistake he’d been about to make that he handed in his resignation. Dr. Womble talked him out of it, of course—made him promise that he’d at least see the new rector in. Maybe the missing file is about that whole unfortunate episode. But of course even Barliman could see that it wasn’t Riddick’s fault. He blamed Dr. Womble for not supervising him properly.”

“Do you think that’s what led to the rector’s retirement?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “The bishop had been ignoring Barliman’s complaints about dear Dr. Womble for years. It was the broken legs that made him realize the poor man just wasn’t up to it any more. And now that Robyn’s here, perhaps Barliman archived the missing file and just didn’t yet remove the hanging folder. “

“It wasn’t in any of the file drawers,” I said. “Maybe he just moved the contents to the file he’s keeping on Riddick.”

“He’s keeping a file on Riddick, too?” Mother exclaimed.

“He keeps files on everyone,” I said. “He’s even got one on you.”

Mother insisted on going back up to the office to see her file. She seemed to find its contents alternately amusing and exasperating. I was feeling a little down because my one potentially exciting and significant find seemed to be dwindling to just another of Vess’s petty, misguided crusades. Riddick’s file did contain a lot of notes about how he’d almost mishandled the Thornefield estate, although from reading the file you’d have gotten the idea that it was Mr. Vess, not Mother, who’d saved the day. So Mother might have explained away the one interesting thing I’d found.