The Chapel in the Woods by Dolores Gordon-Smith

Author:Dolores Gordon-Smith [Gordon-Smith, Dolores]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2021-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

The following morning, Jack and Betty called on Tom and Rosalind Jago. As the maid showed them into the drawing room, Tom Jago rose to greet them with a wry expression.

‘Come on in, Major. Mrs Haldean, good to see you again. I don’t suppose you’ve found yet another body, have you?’

‘Tom!’ said his wife, shocked. ‘You mustn’t joke about such things.’

He rubbed his face with his hands. ‘No, I guess I shouldn’t.’ He gestured to a chair and looked wearily at Jack. ‘It’s strange to think that this time last week all that was on my mind was the fete.’

‘It’s been a long week,’ agreed Jack, sitting down. ‘Last Saturday I was putting up tents with Dusty Miller.’

‘And since then …’ Jago shrugged expressively. He cocked his head to one side, looking at Jack. ‘You’ll excuse me asking, Major, but is this just a social call? I guess Rosie and I have got kinda twitchy. I feel as if there should be something we should do, but I’m damned if I can think what.’

‘As a matter of fact, that’s what we’ve come about,’ said Jack. He looked at Betty. ‘This is your idea. Over to you.’

Gathering her thoughts, Betty plunged into an account of her meeting with Simon Lefevre, only to be stopped short by Tom Jago.

‘Hold on! The guy wrote me soon after we moved in. He wanted to look into the legend. At the time we were fixing the house so visitors were out of the question.’

‘And he was a complete stranger,’ added Rosalind. ‘For all we knew, he was some sort of con man. You say he’s on the level, Mrs Haldean?’

‘He’s a well-known man with a good few books to his credit. He does quite a bit of public speaking, too.’

Rosalind looked at her husband. ‘Well, Tom, what d’you think?’

He got up and paced slowly round the room, stopping to lean his hands on the back of the sofa where she was sitting.

‘Let’s do it,’ he said eventually. He raised his head and looked at Jack and Betty. ‘You may think I’m crazy but the more I find out about the legend, the less sceptical I am. There’s a heap of old papers in the library which give the history of the Caydens. They were real tough guys.’

‘I know they had a reputation as smugglers,’ said Jack. ‘Not that that’s unusual on this coast but they seemed to run the whole show for miles around.’

Jago nodded. ‘Yep. They were the big cheeses, sure enough. Successful, too. If anyone else tried to muscle in, they didn’t last long. The thing is, in the papers I’m talking about, there’s references to “unleashing the jaguar”.’

‘Are there?’ said Jack, startled.

‘Yep. And that’s followed by accounts of men found as we found Burstock and …’ His voice wavered. ‘… And Derek.’

He was silent for a few moments, then shrugged. ‘The thing is, in Florida I’d have laughed at the idea of a legend coming to life. But now? I d’know. I wouldn’t mind this Lefevre guy taking a look at those papers and the chapel.

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