Frodo, meanwhile, was resting at Sam's insistence and working on his book, but his investigations in Hobbiton continued apace. There were several points he had to follow up on.
He had asked Angelica and Peony to speak casually to Camellia's other friends. Social calls, Frodo had learned, were a good opportunity to hear useful bits of information, once they had been sorted out from the ordinary local gossip. Angelica and Peony were meant to find out if anyone else had received letters from Camellia before she'd gone away and, if they had, what she'd said to them. It was a perfect assignment for the two ladies to perform without his accompanying them; after his visit to the Bilburys, Frodo was afraid that his reputation as a detective would be a hindrance.
The ladies came to Bag End at tea-time that afternoon to report that there'd been no letters from Camellia--Angelica was apparently her only confidante--but that speculation on her disappearance was wild.
"Everyone who remembers Cammie's romance with that boy speaks of it openly," said Angelica. "All our old friends say they're surprised that she would do such a thing, but they all assume she has. So there's no longer any secret there."
"It was the first I'd heard of it," Peony mumbled reproachfully into her teacup; she obviously felt that Angelica and Frodo had kept this important and juicy piece of information from her.
"Darling Auntie, Frodo was asked particularly to be discreet," Angelica apologized to her with a gentle pat on the knee. "It was a secret. Only, there doesn't seem to be much point in it now, if everyone's talking."
"No," Frodo agreed glumly, "there doesn't." Anxious as Mrs. Stillwaters was to suppress it, the gossip about Camellia's defection would be all over the Shire in another week. There was no way to avoid a scandal now.
He wondered again what he would say to Camellia when they located her. Could her reputation be retrieved at all at this point?
Frodo had also sent Sam to inquire at the post office about the parcel he'd sent to Camellia in July. The Postmaster remembered it, since it was so much larger than the usual notes and letters that went through his office. He was sure it had been sent off to Budgeford in the eastbound courier's bag the same day that Frodo had brought in it, but he would ask the courier the next time he came by. Frodo planned to visit the post office in Budgeford when he returned there to find out if the parcel had been received, and if it had gone on to Stillwater Hall.
He was still puzzling over the question that evening--if Camellia had never received her letters, who had them?--when Merry and Pippin arrived at Bag End. They'd ridden down from Bindbole Wood as swiftly as they could.
"Did you find them?" Frodo asked the pair as soon as they came in.
"We found Rolo," said Pippin. "But, Frodo, wait 'til you hear what we have to tell you!"
"Rolo says he went home the day after he gave you Camellia Stillwaters's letters," Merry concluded, after he and Pippin had told Frodo what they'd discovered in Bindbole Wood. "He's been there since the middle of July, and hasn't seen her. He didn't even know she was missing, or so he claims."
"Could Camellia have been there, in hiding?" asked Frodo.
Merry shook his head. "Not in that cottage. It's far too small. The Bindbole family sleep in little rooms built off the sides. There's no place to hide, and we saw no sign of another person in the cottage beyond the Bindboles. It's crowded enough with all of them in there. Besides, I doubt Mr. and Mrs. Bindbole would've welcomed us in if they'd had something to hide. They seem like honest folk and if Rolo's lying, I don't believe they know what he's up to."
Frodo's head was swimming. On top of learning that Camellia hadn't received the package of letters, this news was astonishing and baffling... and disturbing. If Rolo wasn't lying and hadn't run away with Camellia, then everything he had assumed about the lady's disappearance was wrong.
Was Rolo lying? Was he keeping Camellia somewhere else in the Wood? If not, where was she? For the first time, Frodo considered the idea that, wherever Camellia was, she had not gone there willingly.
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