Frodo sat at the desk in his room at the inn the next day, writing a letter to Angelica to tell her about Camellia. He had already spoken to the Bolgers and Aunt Asphodel, and would have preferred to give Angelica the sad news of her friend's death in person too, but circumstances compelled him to remain in Budgeford a few more days; the news would come to Angelica by other routes before he could travel to Michel Delving to see her.
Sam came in. He wore a grim expression, and Frodo turned to him with wide, expectant eyes.
"They found her," he told Frodo. "One of the sherriffs just came by to tell you. Mr. Stillwaters finally told 'em where he put her."
"Where-" Frodo asked. "Where was she?"
"In one of the flower beds at the back of the house, by the big pond."
Frodo felt slightly sick again when he realized that he must have only been a few feet from the spot where she'd been buried when he'd sat talking with Val. "He didn't have to carry her far from the orchard," he said. "He had only to wait until it was dark, place her in the freshly turned earth, and put the flowers back. No one would know."
"Mr. Rakeweed told me about some of the bulbs in the back-garden being planted wrong, but I didn't think to tell you, Frodo," Sam said apologetically. "It didn't seem like much--you know how particular old gardeners are about having things done their own way, and besides, well, that Rolo wasn't any sort of a gardener. He wouldn't know how to plant bulbs proper."
"What about those clothes you found, Sam? Were they Rolo's?"
"They were Mr. Rakeweed's, from his garden shed off by the orchard wall. He said he'd let the lads who was hired to work in the garden wear 'em sometimes if they didn't have proper work-clothes of their own."
"And the person he saw with Camellia was wearing them?"
Sam nodded. "That's what he told me--'twas a young hobbit, wearing his old tweed coat and hat. As he lent them to Rolo last, he guessed it must be him."
"It's just as I thought. When we learned that Val had dressed more plainly than usual that evening, I wondered if he hadn't put on the sort of garments a gardener would wear--or even something of Rolo's if he could get hold of it." Frodo sighed. "When I first considered the idea that Camellia had been murdered, Sam, I knew that either Val or Rolo must have done it. There were reasons to suspect Mr. Bilbury, and Betula and that boy-friend of hers too, but there was no place any of them could have hidden her where she wouldn't have been found days ago. Val and Rolo had much better opportunities to hide her body where no one would ever find it.
"I was distracted by thoughts of the river, until Rolo told us that Val had hired him specially to dig up the flower beds at Stillwater Hall. I knew then where she was, and it was only a question finding out of which one had put her there.
"It wasn't until Mrs. Stillwaters told me that she'd dismissed Betula for 'getting above her proper place' that I realized the girl must have committed some sort of impropriety with Val. The lady of a great house would neither notice nor care if a maid-servant was dallying with a garden-lad, but with her son-! That would be an unforgivable breach. You know there was something of a scandal about Betula's leaving the Hall."
Sam nodded. "It was why her grand-dad took her away, over her 'troubles' with some lad."
"It occurred to me then that Val was not only the mysterious lad that Betula had had her 'troubles' with, but that he was in league with her over the theft of the letters. It was then only a matter of finding some proof. Finding her. I was afraid Val had done away with her too to keep her quiet--but it was only our repeated questions and the ruination of her friendship with Jorly that led her to fly from Frogmorton and return to her aunt's house."
"And we mightn't've have found her again, without Rolo."
"Thank goodness he was determined to prove his innocence to us! I wonder how far Val planned it in advance. He had that soft, turned-up earth inconspicuously ready for a burial. Do you think he intended to murder his wife once he read the letters she and Rolo had written each other? Or perhaps he thought of it even before that--what if he went looking for a wealthy bride with a discarded lover in her past?"
"You can ask him. That was the other thing the sherriff wanted me to tell you," Sam said reluctantly. "Mr. Stillwaters has been asking to see you, Frodo."
Since his arrest the evening before, Val Stillwaters had been kept in a room in the sherriff's office in Whitfurrows. It was a small but comfortable-looking room, Frodo thought as the shirriff on duty unlocked the door and showed him in, not like a prison at all. And Val did not look like a prisoner. He was freshly washed and his hair brushed. A carpet-bag containing some toiletries and clothing had been sent to him from Stillwater Hall, and he was in a clean shirt and waistcoat, this one of black velvet--elegant as always, but if he meant to wear it as mourning for his murdered wife, Frodo found it in questionable taste.
Val had been sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, but when Frodo came in, rose as if he meant to welcome his guest just as if he were in his own drawing room at home. "It's very good of you to come, Mr. Baggins."
"I was told that you wanted to talk to me," Frodo said reservedly as the shirriff shut the door, leaving them alone.
"I thought I'd like to make my farewells to you. I was too upset by the turn of events to say anything reasonable yesterday." Val had in fact been hysterical when the Chief Shirriff had taken him away. "I'm sorry we didn't meet before this, Mr. Baggins," he said as he returned to his seat, and invited Frodo to take the only other chair in the room. "I think that, under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed your company. You're a remarkably pretty young hobbit, and everyone says you're exceptionally bright--I've learned for myself how true that is. I suppose you think I'm unspeakably evil."
"No, actually, I don't." Frodo had seen unspeakable evil, felt its Eye upon him and felt its Darkness touch his own heart when he'd succumbed to the Ring's power; Val's crime, terrible as it was, was not even close to that dreadful blight upon the soul. Since Gandalf had once told him 'Nothing is evil in the beginning,' Frodo always made an effort to understand why people did the awful things they so often seemed to do. Without feeling any sympathy for Val, he could see how this had come about.
"I think you're very much like my cousin Milo," Frodo said. "You were both brought up by indulgent and affectionate mothers and spendthrift, gambling fathers, and you learnt to spend more money than you had. You're weak-willed, selfish, and unused to thinking of anyone but yourself. Milo was just the same until he married and had children, and got himself into debts so deep that he felt the full weight of responsibility to them and had to amend himself before they were all ruined. I think that, without his family, he might have ended up-Well, probably not in this same situation, but in irredeemable trouble. Your marriage might have saved you too."
Val did not argue with this assessment of his character, but the corner of his mouth twitched wryly at the last sentence. "Milo married Peony for love," he replied. "Whereas I married Camellia for her money, and she was in love with someone else. I don't believe I had the same chance for redemption."
"She might have helped you, even so. She mayn't have loved you, but she seemed to me to be a good-hearted girl--kind, unassuming, and easily swayed by the will of others. You could have persuaded her to give you whatever money you needed without resorting to murder for it."
Val looked at him with interest. "I didn't realize you knew her."
"I only met her once."
"You seem to know a lot about us, Mr. Baggins, but you're wrong there. It was when she saw how I needed money that Cammie began to be cool in her manner toward me. You can see why: her family had chased off that lad Rolo and pushed her to marry me because they thought he was the fortune hunter. They'd made a mistake."
"'A dreadful mistake,'" Frodo quoted Camellia's letter to Angelica, and wondered if this was what had been troubling Camellia and made her plan to leave.
"You've found out everything else. I'm surprised you didn't know that."
"There are one or two questions I haven't found answers to," Frodo admitted. "I'd be grateful if you'd tell me. Would you mind?"
Val shrugged. "What earthly harm can it do me now?"
"Very well then. Why did you have Betula take your wife's letters? How did you know about the letters in the first place?"
"I knew there was another boy when I married Camellia, but I hadn't heard his name nor anything else about him except that her aunt and uncle didn't think he was suitable," Val answered. "I didn't think much about it at the time, but after we'd married, I'd catch her sometimes reading those letters. She would hide them quickly away in her writing-box whenever she saw me. I began to wonder what could be in those letters of her. It drove me wild. I had to see them. I had to find out if she and this boy were still writing each other. Cammie was too much on her guard when I was about--I couldn't even get near that writing-box--so I... charmed her maid."
"Yes," said Frodo. "I imagine you can be quite charming when you wish to be." He had charmed Betula into theft, tried to charm Camellia into giving over her money, and had tried to charm him out of his suspicions as well. "How did you know it was Rolo when you hired him to dig up the flower beds for you?"
"I didn't know," Val responded, and chuckled. "You give me credit for more cunning than I possess. If I'd been as clever as that, and laid suspicion for Camellia's death on her lover, you can be sure he'd be sitting here now instead of me! No, Mr. Baggins. It wasn't in my head at all to place blame on him in the way you mean. I thought Rolo Bindbole miles away, and in no position to say that Cammie wasn't with him. I had no idea who the garden-boy was, until yesterday. But I couldn't have poor old Rakeweed do all that heavy work and turn up so much earth by himself. I caught sight of this young lad hanging about the place--I thought he must be the friend or relative of one of our servants, and asked him if he'd like to do a bit of work. It wasn't the first time Mother or I had hired someone to help in the garden, and I thought no one would think a thing of it."
"You wore his coat and hat."
"I borrowed the gardener's things from his shed. I needed something plain to wear, in case I was seen about the garden. And the hat hid my face quite well. Even Camellia didn't know me until we were face to face."
Frodo felt a shudder ripple down his spine. "Did she just happen to be in the orchard that night, or did you arrange that?"
"Oh, I arranged that," Val admitted. "I wrote her a note, in a hand as close to her lover's as I could make it. I said I--Rolo, I mean--was nearby and wanted to see her. I asked her to meet me in the orchard."
"No one's seen such a note," said Frodo, with some relief. Such a piece of evidence must surely have incriminated Rolo and confused the matter further.
"No," said Val. "She must have had it with her, in her skirt pocket or some such place. If they've found her, they'll no doubt find it soon enough. If anyone had found it before, it'd only have been taken as proof that she'd met with her lover that night and gone away with him. I thought it a very good plan. If Cammie didn't come to the orchard, she was safe. If she did come... well, she did, and here we are."
While he was grateful for these explanations, Frodo was disturbed by this frank and cool confession. After the hysterics and denials he'd witnessed last night, Val's calmness was chilling. He might be talking about the weather, or a game with his friends, or anything but how he had planned and committed a murder.
"As long as no one went after the errant couple, it might have worked quite well." Val lifted his eyes suddenly, meeting Frodo's with a hot, resentful glare--the first sign of strong emotion Frodo had seen since he'd come in. "If only Mother hadn't brought you into this!"
"I was already in it, Mr. Stillwaters," Frodo told him. "Your wife was my client. She engaged me to find her stolen letters weeks ago."
Val stared at him, then began to laugh. "I never had a hope then, did I? It was fated to disaster before I'd begun."
"You would've done better not to have started," said Frodo. "Camellia would still be alive."
"Yes, and so might I. They'll hang me, I suppose." The emotion was gone; the coolness had returned. "Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Baggins. Knock on the door to let the shirriff know you want to leave."
Late that afternoon, Mr. Horrocks, the Chief Shirriff, came to the inn in Budgeford and asked to speak to Frodo.
"I'm on my way to Stillwater Hall, Mr. Baggins," he explained when Frodo came into the entry hall, "but I thought as I'd stop by and tell you too, as you've been so much in this business from the first--it's been more your business'n ours, I'd say, 'til this last. Mr. Valerian's done away with himself."
In that first, stunned moment, all Frodo could say was, "Oh." He now understood Val's cool detachment, and what he'd meant by 'I'd like to make my farewells'. "How- What happened?"
"The lad on duty was bringing him his dinner, but couldn't get the door to open," Chief Horrocks reported. "When we did manage to push it in a bit, we found out why: Mr. Valerian'd hanged himself on a hook behind it, used his own neck-cloths by the look of it. We cut 'm down quick enough, but there was nothing to be done. He was long dead by then. Must've done it just after you was in to see him, Mr. Baggins. We never expected it of him, or we'd've kept a closer watch on him. He seemed like such a cheerful gent, not a care in the world even after he'd killed his wife."
"Yes, he would," said Frodo. "That was his way." He supposed that he ought to be glad that Val was dead and Camellia's murder avenged, but he didn't feel satisfied or vengeful or even sad. This brought his case neatly to an end, but it didn't make anything better. It didn't bring Camellia back.
"It's a mercy, if you ask me," Sam said. "At least, it's done now and over with quick."
"That's what I say myself," the Chief Shirriff agreed. "Spared poor Mrs. Stillwaters seeing her son brought up before a magistrate's court and, like as not, a public hanging, and it's saved us having to find a hangman to do the job official-like. But I can't go and tell her that when I bring her the news."
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