The next morning after obtaining directions from the innkeeper at Longbourne, Frodo went on to Tinsdale, which lay about twenty miles to the south and west. Tinsdale was a small and isolated village, far from the main Shire roads and rivers, tucked in among the hilly woodlands. Frodo was unsure if the name Mr. Rusk had given him was correct, but hoped it would be close enough that someone would recognize it.
The name was indeed the right one. The Mossops were no longer living, but they were remembered by many of their former neighbors. On the night of his arrival, Frodo spoke to several of these neighbors in the taproom of the only pub in Tinsdale, which was also the only place where he could find lodging. Mr. Ludlo Mossop had once been famous in Tinsdale for his travels far and wide to bring back exotic fruits and vegetables from other parts of the Shire to sell in his shop. The older folk recalled some sort of scandal about Mr. Mossop returning from one of his trips, and unexpectedly bringing home a wife along with his usual carts of produce, but it was all very long ago and no one could tell Frodo the details. The Mossops' greengrocery shop had stood just three doors down the high street from the inn. The shop was still there, but a family named Ruggle kept it now and they were no relation. Yes, the Mossops had had a child. A girl named Daisy.
This last piece of information interested Frodo. Was Daisy Mossop also Doriella, or had the Mossops had another daughter--a half-sister or stepsister to his cousin? It might be a pet name; Mr. Rusk had said that Dudo and Eulilla had called their daughter "something shorter" than Doriella.
He spent the next day making inquiries.
As far as Frodo could discover, there had only been one Mossop child. She seemed to be about the right age to be Dudo's daughter. If Daisy Mossop had been born to Eulilla after her second marriage, the neighbors would be more likely to recall her birth and remember her as a small child. Instead, those who remembered Daisy spoke of a girl in her tweens in the early 1400s. One or two old ladies who still lived near the greengrocery hinted that Eulilla had miscarried or given birth to a stillborn infant soon after she'd come to live in Tinsdale; Frodo surmised that this was the scandal that had led her to sudden elopement with Mr. Mossop and estrangement from her family.
He showed Lad's pictures to everyone who had known Daisy, but their answers were not conclusive. Some thought the drawings looked rather like her. Others said not. So many years had passed since she'd left Tinsdale. When they'd last seen Daisy, she'd been a lass of about thirty, and not a grown woman approaching middle-age.
Eulilla had died in 1412, and Ludlo Mossop followed three years later. Daisy had been keeping company with a lad named Murgo Burbage, who'd been apprenticed to her stepfather. Immediately after her stepfather's death, she and Murgo had married for respectability's sake. They were both living in the same smial behind the shop, and people would gossip terribly if they'd gone on living together without being married. The young couple had continued run the greengrocery by themselves for a little while, but neither possessed Mr. Mossop's taste for exotic produce nor the desire to go out and bring such delicacies back to Tinsdale. Eventually, the shop closed its doors.
Where had they gone? Frodo asked this same question of everyone he interviewed. Only the Ruggles, whom Daisy had sold the shop to, were able to give him any answer. Murgo Burbage had come from a place called Burridge. As far as they knew, he and Daisy had gone back there.
Before he went to bed in the little back room at the Tinsdale pub, Frodo wrote a long letter to Sam, partly about his discoveries so far, but mostly about how much he missed Sam. He promised to come home as soon as he'd traced the true whereabouts of his cousin. He hoped that his visit to Burridge would settle the question one way or the other.
Frodo wasn't entirely sure that Daisy Mossop was in fact Doriella Baggins, especially since the woman who claimed to be his cousin had presented herself by her maiden name instead of as Mrs. Burbage. If that Doriella was his cousin, it was possible that she'd chosen to use her original name to avoid confusing Aunt Dora with convoluted tales of stepfathers and husbands. If the woman was a fraud, then it was equally possible that she'd known or heard of the real Doriella by the name she'd had as a young girl and knew nothing about Doriella's later life.
If someone in Burridge could identify the woman in Lad's drawings as Daisy Burbage, formerly Mossop, then Frodo would be satisfied that she was his cousin. On the other hand, if Mrs. Burbage and her husband were still living in Burridge and could confirm that she was Dudo Baggins's daughter, then the woman now at Bag End was certainly an imposter. If that were the case, then Frodo intended to ask his true cousin to come back with him to Hobbiton to help him convince Aunt Dora that she'd been deceived. He felt sure that the Burridges would cooperate. From all he knew of their history, he doubted that they were wealthy; they would therefore be pleased to learn that they had rights to property in the north. The Bagginses wouldn't like Mrs. Burbage claiming her share of the Old Place any better than they'd liked the supposed Miss Baggins making a claim, but at least they would be sure that she was a relation and that Aunt Dora wasn't being cheated.
Burridge lay far to the south of Tinsdale, on valley roads through high hills. Even though it was only the second week of February, spring was already beginning here. Frodo saw many bright flowers in bloom along the roadside, and the trees were putting forth their first green leaves. The hard winter of the northern Shire was forgotten here, if any sleet or snow had touched it at all. A hobbit accustomed to this mild climate would surely sit near the fire and shiver if exposed to such cold weather.
When Frodo finally arrived at his destination and took a room at the Burridge inn, he was greeted by the innkeeper with exclamations of surprise and excitement. His name was well known: Burridge was not many miles from Uphill, and the village had talked of nothing but Frodo's investigation of the mysterious drowning of Mr. Uphill-Took's secretary the winter before last. Before that, they had listened eagerly for news about the missing Mrs. Budling, and how Frodo had found her safe and sound.
"Oh, we know all about you, Mr. Baggins, though you never set foot in our little village before," the innkeeper, Mr. Chodely, informed Frodo with glee. "You're a very famous hobbit! 'Tis an honor to have you stopping at our house. And what brings you to Burridge, sir? There's been nobody murdered hereabouts, and nobody's gone missing."
Once Frodo had explained his errand, Mr. Chodely called out, "Posey!" to summon a cheerful-faced woman wearing an apron and kerchief. "Posey my love, here's Mr. Baggins, the famous detective. You'll never guess--he's asking after the Burbages."
"Do you know them, Mrs. Chodely?" Frodo asked; from the way Mr. Chodely spoke to her, he assumed she must be his wife.
Posey did not correct him, but answered once she had bobbed a curtsey, "Goodness, Mr. Baggins--everybody in Burridge knew the Burbages. They were our neighbors, and kept a shop just down the way."
"A greengrocery?"
"No, bless you, sir. Doriella Burbage used to say she could never abide the sight of greens and vegetables getting old in their bins."
"They sold pots and crockery," Mr. Chodely added helpfully.
"Doriella?" Frodo grew hopeful at hearing this name resurface. "I thought she was called Daisy."
"Murgo called her that from time to time, sir," Mrs. Chodely explained. "But 'twas only a pet name, as married couples are like to do. Her right name was Doriella, and that's what her friends all called her."
"And where are the Burbages now? Do they still live here?" He had noted that the Chodelies both spoke of the Burbages in the past tense.
"They died, sir, this winter past," Mr. Chodely informed him with a note of apology.
"'Twas a fever," his wife added. "Murgo took it first, just before Yule, and poor Doriella afterwards. Having no strength left, after sitting up night and day nursing him, she died about a week later. They're both in the Burbage family vault if you've a mind to see it, sir."
"Here, you don't think they was murdered, do you, Mr. Baggins?" asked Mr. Chodely, keeping in mind who he was speaking to. "That's not what you've come for, to look into them dying so quick together like that?"
"Oh, no," Frodo quickly assured the couple. "Nothing of the sort. I was hoping to locate Mrs. Burbage. She was my cousin." He felt a little pang of sadness for a kinswoman he'd never known, and would never know now. He would go and visit the Burbage family vault before he headed home tomorrow. At last, he was sure that Doriella Burbage had been his uncle Dudo's daughter, and that the woman at Bag End was not. The Baggins would want to know as soon as possible.
The Chodelies clucked and murmured sympathetically. "I'm very sorry, sir," Mrs. Chodely said, then asked a question that took Frodo completely by surprise. "Then it's the children you've come about?"
"The children?" Frodo echoed. "They had children?"
"Of course, sir, a little lad and lass. Eudo and Eudora."
"Where are they?"
"They aren't here now," answered Mr. Chodely. "Miss Marda Burbage, that's Mungo's sister, took them off with her just after their mother was buried. She said as they had some wealthy relatives who lived up in the Westfarthing and the little ones had some money coming to them. Gentlehobbits, we took her to mean."
"Doriella used to say her father'd come from the gentry," Mrs. Chodely contributed, and looked Frodo up and down. "She must've meant you."
"Yes, I suppose so." Frodo reached into his waistcoat inner pocket for the pictures, knowing that the identification of the woman Lad had drawn was a mere formality now. He showed them to the couple. "Tell me, is that Miss Marda Burbage?"
It was. The Chodelies would know Marda anywhere. But how did Mr. Baggins happen to have pictures of her like that?
"I've seen her before. I've seen the children too," Frodo explained. As he returned the drawings to his pocket, he laughed. "As a matter of fact, we spent a night at the same inn on my way south and I didn't know it until now!"
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