said.
“Not platonic? Are you telling me that Emma was a lesbian?” she asked. Penny nodded.
“Well, Penny, that’s why she couldn’t say anything to the police! Even now, there’d probably be lots of folks in this town who wouldn’t want a lesbian teaching their children. But back then?” She gave a little snort and shook her head. “The poor thing. What must it have been like for her, all these years?” And then, as a new thought came to her, she sighed.
“She wouldn’t be too happy even today, knowing that her secret is out. I don’t suppose we could keep this quiet, could we? Just amongst ourselves, like?” She looked from one to the other and, when no one answered, reached into her large, overstuffed purse.
“Is it my turn, now? I managed to dig up some family history and found an interesting photo for you, Penny.”
Bethan and Alwynne changed places. Alwynne turned her back on her small audience while she taped a black-and-white photo to the whiteboard.
“Now then,” she began and pointed at the photo. “This is the Jones family, taken at a picnic, oh, sometime in the 1940s, best we can tell. I do so wish people would write the date on the back of their photos. Anyway, the parents here are Elywn and Myfanwy and you can see the three children. There’s the twins, Alys and Richard, probably about ten, and the baby is their younger brother, Alun.”
“Twins!” exclaimed Penny. “Alys and Richard were twins?”
Alywnne looked confused.
“Yes, of course they were. I am so sorry—I thought you knew. Richard was absolutely lost when she was killed. Took it very hard, he did. They always say twins have that very special bond.”
Penny settled back in the sofa with a small sigh. She exchanged a quick glance with Gareth and then turned her attention back to Alwynne.
“Anyway, the family had a little farm just outside Llanelen and made a fairly reasonable living. But the mother was a great one for education, even back then, and insisted that her children would be educated, and so they were. And they all made something of themselves. Alys went away to art school and had a good teaching job when she died and, by all accounts, was coming into her own as an artist. Richard became a solicitor, as you know, and the baby, Alun, became a vet. I think he really would have preferred to take up farming like his dad, but he did the next best thing, in his mind. He loves lambing time, does Alun. Practically lives in the fields with the farmers when all that’s going on.”
“That would be our local vet, then?” said Victoria. “Jones the vet.”
“That’s right.” Alwynne nodded. “He would have been in his early twenties when his sister was killed.”
She looked from one to the other.
“That’s all I have so far, but I’m sure I can find out more, if you want me to, Penny. I’d like to help.”
Penny stood up and went over to her.
“There are so many unanswered questions, and every bit helps.” She smiled in Gareth’s direction. “We need to find out everything about how she lived.”
Soon after the group broke up and began to drift toward the front door. Bethan offered Victoria and Alwynne a ride home, which they gladly accepted, and she steered them toward the car. Davies stayed behind and put his arm around Penny’s waist, pulling her to him.
“Do I have to go, too? Please don’t send me out into that cold, dark night.”
Penny laughed. “It’s barely September and it’s not that cold or that dark, and yes, you do. I’m not ready yet for that kind of entertaining, but when I am, you’ll be the first to know.”
Davies kissed her and then reluctantly released her.
“Make it soon.”
And then, spotting the large envelope Bethan had left on the floor, propped up against the legs of an easel, he asked rhetorically, “Now have we got everything?”
Following his gaze, Penny started to say something, but Davies held up his hand.
“Yes, we do,” he said with a smile. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Night, love.”
And like the others, he disappeared into the late summer night knowing that Penny would be devouring every word in the file before he’d turned the corner.
Eight
“There’s nothing like a good breeze on wash day,” Bronwyn Evans said to her husband, the rector, the next afternoon as she poured him his second cup of tea.
“Mmm hmm,” came a feeble attempt at agreement from behind a magazine.
Then, setting