“How long was that before she died?” I asked. “Maybe she downsized a bit. Sold some of the nicer furniture. To make sure the church got its full value.” Or to live on, if I was right about her having financial reverses.

“Only a few months. Look at this … this … rubbish!” She pulled a few items out of the box she’d been opening up and shook them at me, sending the flashlight beam darting wildly. In her left hand, along with the flashlight, she held a small bronze-colored statue of a scantily clad nymph. In her right she held a superlatively ugly china lamp.

“Maybe someone else donated a few boxes of junk that Robyn—or more likely the old rector—forgot to mention?”

Mother focused the flashlight beam on a label on one side of the box, which read THORNEFIELD ESTATE. BOX 14.

“I’ve opened up six boxes whose labels claim they are from the Thornefield estate,” she said. “And so far I haven’t found a single thing Mrs. Thornefield would have allowed in her trash can!”

She strode over to another box and began slicing at the packing tape with her nail file. Surely she wasn’t planning to inspect every box in the basement?

“Let’s work on that tomorrow,” I said. “Preferably once we’ve already moved the boxes—we’re only going to have to tape those up again to move them.”

“I can’t rest till we get to the bottom of this,” she said. But she did stop hacking at the box she was trying to open. “I think someone has stolen Mrs. Thornefield’s legacy.”

“We can’t possibly get to the bottom of it tonight,” I said. “And if someone did steal anything, you’re making it harder for the chief to figure out what happened. We need to leave those boxes sealed, so the guys from the Shiffley Moving Company can tell us if those boxes are packed and sealed the way they would have done it. That one you were working on—it looks to me as if it could have been opened up and then resealed.”

Mother frowned as she looked down at the box.

“How can you tell, dear?”

“The tape that’s closed up the top doesn’t quite match the tape on the bottom,” I said. “It’s a little more opaque. And there’s a little area right by the tape where it looks as if someone peeled off some tape, and the top layer of the cardboard with it.”

Mother bent down to inspect the label more closely.

“You’re right, dear. I wonder why I didn’t spot that.”

“You have to hold the flashlight at just the right angle,” I said. “You’d probably have noticed it immediately if you’d turned on the lights to do this.” I walked over to the wall and flipped the light switches.

Nothing happened.