Eleanor Whitcomb stared at the two copies of *The Country of the Pointed Firs*. One sat open on the office desk, a worn but true first edition. The other, the book-club reprint she’d pulled from the shelves downstairs, was a pale imitation. She knew Win Prentiss had seen the difference. He had cataloged the first and set it aside, just as he must have logged the impostor. The gap in his running sequence of lot numbers, she realized, would hold the proof. But she couldn't prove a *pattern* with a single example.
Merrow Harbor was quiet this Wednesday morning, a week on from the memorial. The wind had dropped, and the flags on the Landing hung still. Nell needed more than a hunch. She needed the alphabet of it.
She drove to the First Parish Congregational Church, its white spire a clean line against the blue. Isabel Crockett, retired librarian and keeper of the historical-society reading room, greeted her with a nod. The room smelled of old paper and beeswax.
“You’re looking for points of issue, Nell,” Iz said, not a question. She pulled a thick, red volume from a shelf marked REFERENCE. “A first edition isn’t just about the date on the title page. Publishers have their tells.”
Iz laid out a price guide from the nineteen-seventies, its spine cracked, next to a recent edition. She pointed to a page. “Sarah Orne Jewett, *The Country of the Pointed Firs*. The true first has the seagull device on the dedication page, a Boston imprint, and a single period at the end of the second line of text on page 14. See here?” She tapped a precise finger on the entry. “The book club editions, the reprints, they miss one of those things. Every time.”
“They don’t bother with the small stuff,” Nell murmured.
“They don’t need to,” Iz said, her voice dry. “It’s about volume, not scarcity. This information, Nell, it’s all here. Free to read.” She gestured around the room. “Public record, plain as day. What’s going on at Thistle & Vine, Nell?”
Nell considered the question. “A new way of valuing things.” She decided not to press on the books for now. “The select board meeting the other night,” she said instead. “Del Rood, from Harrowgate Coastal Partners. She knew about Cass’s chest.”
Iz’s hands, which had been resting on the price guide, tightened slightly, then relaxed. “Did she, now? Well. A big deal like that, they do their homework.” She changed the subject with a practiced ease, asking about Ruth’s memory care near Brunswick. Nell answered, the familiar ache of David’s absence a knot in her throat as she spoke about the challenges of balancing the care home’s invoices. It was a good two hours and Iz, for all her quiet precision, offered no gossip.
Back in Cass’s apartment above the shop, the silence felt heavy. Nell pulled down a spare piece of cardboard from a Hannaford delivery box and tacked it to the kitchen wall. She wrote ‘SUSPECTS’ in black marker at the top.
Underneath, she scrawled four names, each with a brief note.
**Curt Prentiss:** *Cash. Fast sale. Inheritance.* Win’s nephew. He wanted everything gone by the boxload, not by the count. He’d scoffed at a careful appraisal. He still had Win’s notebook.
**Theo Rackliff:** *Business. Win’s apprentice. Wanted appraisal.* Nell remembered his shiftiness at the memorial. She recalled reading his statement back to him that Thursday he couldn’t say Win’s name. He’d seemed eager to take over Win’s business, almost too eager.
**Delphine Rood:** *Parcel and chest. Harrowgate deal.* The woman who knew Cass’s chest by name, who had been staying at the Wexford inn for five weeks, measuring the town. Her presence on the Landing the morning Win was found, separated from the churchgoers, still gave Nell pause.
**Ro Pelletier:** *Her place. Eighteen years. What new owner means.* Ro, kind and careful, who logged every outgoing parcel in her copperplate hand. The woman who brought Nell whoopie pies by the each, always wrapped in wax paper. Ro had said Win saved the cellar good shelves for Friday nights. She’d also been the one to find him.
She stepped back, studying the board. These were the surface motives, the ones visible to anyone who paid attention. It was the careful eye of the probate paralegal, sorting facts from appearances.
The phone rang just after three o’clock. Alden Fitch, the estate’s lawyer in Wexford.
“Eleanor, a development,” Fitch’s voice was clipped. “Curtis Prentiss has pushed the Tidewater Estate Clearance bulk haul forward. Monday next.”
Nell felt a jolt. “Monday?” she said, her voice flat. “That’s five days.”
“Four business days, counting today, if they get an early start,” Fitch corrected. “He cited outstanding fees for storage of Win’s personal effects at the Ridge Road barn. A good twenty-five hundred dollars, he claims.”
“He is selling his uncle’s own things from that barn,” Nell said. “Uncle Henry’s, the whole lot.”
Fitch sighed. “That’s a separate matter, Eleanor. This is a lien. We’re advised to clear the premises. If the estate doesn’t want Tidewater on Monday, we’d need a formal injunction, and that’s a hearing we might not win, given the terms of the appraisal engagement.”
“But the appraisal isn’t finished.”
“It’s not,” he agreed. “But it’s also not moving fast enough for the heir.”
Nell looked at her small clue board. Curt, pushing for speed. Theo, evasive. Del, eyeing the contents. Ro, tied to her job.
“The cellar shelves,” Nell said, almost to herself.
“I’m sorry?” Fitch asked.
“Nothing,” she said, straightening her shoulders. “Understood, Alden. Monday.”
She hung up the phone. The one physical proof she had, the physical book substitutions Win Prentiss had begun to log, lay in the last shelves he touched, in the dark cellar. The bulk haul would scatter everything, box by box, unexamined. Monday was four days away.
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