Darcy laughed. “Good judgment. My one aim was to get you into bed, and I can’t believe I haven’t succeeded yet. I must be developing a conscience.”

“I do want to, Darcy,” I said. “It’s just that the moment never seems to be right.”

He grinned at me. “We’ll make a moment even if I have to whisk you off to Brighton to do so.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” I joked.

“How about Mr. and Mrs. O’Mara?”

Ah. There was the rub. I tried to say, “I can’t marry you,” but I couldn’t. Instead I joked, “I suspect I’ll have a good long wait, then, until you’re ready to settle down.”

“Who knows,” Darcy said, giving me a questioning look. “Stranger things have happened.”

We reached the jeweler’s, but it was closed. “I don’t believe it’s opened since the robbery,” I said, peering through the window into the dark interior.

“There’s a front door to one side,” Darcy said. “Maybe he lives over the shop. Try knocking.”

We knocked. We even rang the doorbell, but nobody came.

“Not at home,” Darcy said.

I stared up at the window with the curtains drawn across it. “Who would go out on a day like this?” I asked.

Darcy and I looked at each other. “You don’t suppose . . . ?” we said in unison.

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

IN THE TOWN OF NEWTON ABBOTT, DEVONSHIRE

DECEMBER 29

Darcy gave one last volley of knocks on the front door. As we were walking away a window opened above the next-door haberdashery shop. An elderly woman’s face looked out.

“You’re wanting Mr. Klein, are you? He’s not there, my dearies,” she said. “Leastways, I haven’t seen him since I got back from my daughter’s yesterday. I knocked to give him a piece of my daughter’s Christmas cake, but nobody answered so I think he must have gone away.”

“Any idea where he might have gone?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He has two daughters, I remember, but I couldn’t tell you where they live. He’s a very private man. Keeps himself to himself and it’s hard to get a word out of him.”

Darcy and I exchanged a look as we walked away. “We’d better go back to the police,” I said. “He could be lying there dead on the floor and nobody would know.”

The constable at the police station listened politely but clearly wasn’t taking us seriously. “Lots of folks go away over Christmas,” he said. “I don’t think you should worry yourself unduly, miss.”

“But we have reason to believe that the robbery of his store was linked to all these strange deaths. You know—Gladys Tripp, Mr. Skaggs.”

“And how might that be, miss?”

“It’s too complicated to explain now,” I said. “I’m sure Inspector Newcombe would act immediately if I told him what I now know.”