The Inspector has been going through the Laaste Hoofstuk archive. It's an extraordinary thing, apparently: every letter, receipt and invoice the house has received in fifty years, filed in date order in acid-free boxes. Eduard never threw anything away, and for twenty-eight years someone has kept it all in perfect order for him.
In the box for November 1996, a month after the first Mrs Middelmaart died, she found a letter. Bekka had fallen from the gallery in the library one night that October. The inquest called it an accident, and Eduard never spoke of it again.
It's in the shop, on the page about books finding their way to new homes, the one where we explain how you can bring us the books you've finished with. Go to the bottom.
Meanwhile at Laaste Hoofstuk. Tessa has been avoiding the Inspector all month, and on Friday the Inspector finally asked her why. It took a while. Some years ago, on the dairy farm where she used to work, there was a man who hurt her, and when she went to the police nobody believed her and nothing was done. She hasn't trusted a uniform since. The Inspector listened to all of it. Then she drove Tessa home to Durbanville herself, in the little white van, and gave her the number of someone who would help.
What Tessa didn't say that night, and what the Inspector would only find out later, was why nothing had ever been done. The man at the dairy farm had a godfather with a great deal of influence and a habit of making things go away. Tessa had worked that out in September. She had been carrying it ever since, up and down the stairs of that man's house, with his laundry.
Two sealed clues ahead. Tomorrow's Saturday Marginalia (a line from Eduard's private notebook, in cipher) and Monday's Clue 16 go only to our newsletter subscribers. Sign up before tomorrow morning and you'll get both (You can scroll down right to the bottom of this page - look for the Join our mailing list box.
PS: Charlotte Brontë outlived both her younger sisters. Emily died in December 1848 and Anne five months later. In 1850 Charlotte brought out a new edition of their novels, with a note telling the world who "Ellis and Acton Bell" had really been. Grief often looks like that: someone asking for the papers and the books, because that's what's left.