After Sam had gone, Frodo went out to have a look around the garden by himself, but found the earth hard-packed, with no sign of anything being buried or dug up recently, and no hollows or patches in the fruit trees against the wall. He thought that he might ask Sam to come and have another look in a few days, after the baby had been born and things at Bag End had settled down--if he still hadn't found Lobelia's will by that time.
When he went back into the house, he looked into the other rooms. Thimula had said that Lobelia sometimes sat by the best parlor fire. Could she had left some clue there? No, nothing he could find. The room hadn't been opened for weeks; even the maid hadn't gone in for dusting. On the other hand, the second-best parlor, where Lobelia had been laid out, was spotless but no more revealing.
"What about this room?" asked Frodo, after trying a few more doors, and finding one locked.
"That? It was Lotho's bedroom," Thimula answered once she had come down to the end of the corridor to see which door he was referring to.
"Have you looked in here?"
"No, I've never been inside. It's locked--I mean, Auntie always kept it locked and I don't know where the key is."
Frodo was too much of a gentlehobbit to reproach her for not mentioning Lotho's locked room before, but his expression must have revealed his surprise at this glaring omission, for the young woman blushed and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Baggins. It was stupid of me, but I never gave it a thought. This end of the house is so rarely used. I don't think I've been so near that door since last autumn. Do you think that's where Auntie's will is?"
"We'll have to find the key and see."
A second search began in Lobelia's room, but by the time they had found it beneath the velvet lining on the lid of Lobelia's jewelry box, the afternoon had drawn in. Frodo tested the key to be sure it was the right one, but since he was still recovering from his bad spell and had eaten nothing but a couple of sandwiches since breakfast, he found he was suddenly feeling tired. He suggested they stop for dinner before they examined Lotho's room for the will. Thimula brought out several covered pots from the cold larder; there was a mutton-and-potato pie from Prunella Proudfoot, some vegetable soup from Peony, and a large apple-and-cheese tart from Mrs. Broadbelt. While these were reheated and Thimula put the kettle on for tea, Frodo helped his hostess by setting the kitchen table and slicing and buttering bread.
"There's no reason why I couldn't go to the market," Thimula said once they were sitting down for their meal, "but since Auntie died there was so much to see to, and whenever someone stopped in for a viewing or to express their sympathies, they brought something to eat. We have three kinds of cake for dessert. I'm grateful that Mimsy's stayed on to help me keep house. We've always had difficulty keeping servants here. Mrs. Tiggle, the cook, left two weeks before Auntie passed on. I don't know why. She and Auntie seemed to get on well enough. She'd worked for Auntie before--before Lotho died and she came north to live with us."
"May I ask a rather personal question?" requested Frodo. "When did Aunt Lobelia first speak of making you her heir?"
"Soon after she came to Hardbottle," Thimula replied. "She was utterly bereaved, and perhaps not in her right mind at first, for she spoke often of Lotho as if he were still alive, but gone far away. We'd heard little of what had happened to him up Hardbottle-way, but enough to know it was best not to question her about his death. It was then that Auntie first began to say she had always meant me to wed Lotho."
"Did she?" Frodo recalled that Lobelia had made such a claim last autumn, but he'd doubted it then, and still doubted now.
"She'd never spoken of it before that. My mother would have liked it, for they were good friends when they were girls, but I don't believe Auntie had a thought for it when Lotho was living. I had no dowry, you see."
Frodo nodded. "Aunt Lobelia would've preferred to find an heiress for her son. You've met my cousin Angelica?" Angelica promised to be the wealthiest young lady in this part of the Shire, for she was not only her parents' only child, but would inherit the property of her childless aunt and uncle who doted on her, and some portion of Aunt Dora's considerable fortune as well.
"The very pretty one who's married to the Mayor's son?" asked Thimula. "Yes, I've seen her at your aunt's house with her children. Auntie wanted a match between her and Lotho?"
"She once had an idea of it, but Angelica wouldn't have anything to do with Lotho and Lotho wasn't very keen on Angelica. Aunt Dora used to try and push me and Angelica together too, but Angelica had her heart set on Lad Whitfoot. She got precisely what she wanted in the end."
"Lucky girl. But she turned you down too?"
"Well, I wasn't terribly fond of her myself in those days. We've grown to be better friends since."
"I must admit I didn't care much for Lotho," said Thimula, "but if he'd still been alive when Auntie began to speak of me as her daughter-in-law, I would have given him a thought. A plain, poor girl can't be as particular as a beautiful and wealthy one and must catch her husband wherever he comes along, or resign herself to a spinster's life. At least, once we find Auntie's will, I shall avoid living as a poor spinster."
"You mean to stay on in Hobbiton, then?" Frodo asked her.
"If Auntie did leave me this house, yes. I've been happy here. I'll have a home of my own, and I may find a husband yet! Auntie did try to find one for me, you know. Most of the gentlemen near my age have married already, but there was a widower, Mr. Chinhold, whom I might've accepted if he hadn't quarreled with Aunt Lobelia. She never gave up trying, even when she took to her bed. She considered every eligible male in the neighborhood, except for you." She considered him thoughtfully. "Mr. Baggins-"
"Call me Frodo, please," he insisted. "After all, we are neighbors as well as cousins-by-marriage. It seems a bit silly to go on being so formal while we both call the same woman Aunt." Also, after they had spent the day together, he thought they ought to be on more friendly terms now that Lobelia was gone.
Thimula smiled. "Frodo, will you tell me, if it's not too personal--Why did Aunt Lobelia dislike you so much? I know that she wanted your house and felt it should've come to her husband rather than you."
"Yes, that's right. She taught Lotho that he could take whatever he wanted as his natural right, even if it belonged to other people."
"Like your Bag End?"
"That's one example, yes, but it isn't the only one. Lobelia and Lotho had a long history of making such unfounded claims in this part of the Shire. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you one story or another. If they haven't told you before, it's because they're fond of you and know you were fond of Aunt Lobelia."
"She was my only close relation after my mother died," said Thimula. "She took me in. I know she wasn't well-liked here in Hobbiton. Since I came to live here with her, I've begun to understand why. In Hardbottle, Auntie always made it sound as if everyone, the Bagginses, were conspiring against her to cheat her and Lotho out of what they were due. I see now that wasn't so. But is that the only reason she disliked you? No."
"When her umbrella was stolen, she asked me to find it," said Frodo. "I did, but it wasn't all in one piece."
"Her feelings against you seem rather excessive, even over an umbrella," Thimula said with that dry sense of humor Frodo had noted once or twice before. Then she ventured, "There was also something about Lotho's death. Auntie seemed to blame you for it."
"She did," said Frodo. "When Lotho first went missing, she went around saying I had something to do with it. She even went to the shirriffs to have me arrested. I was doing my best to find Lotho, to stop her accusations if for no better reason. I wasn't 'the famous detective' then--it was only the second time I'd investigated any such mystery. Aunt Lobelia had accused me of murder once before, after Uncle Bilbo disappeared."
"He's the uncle who used to own Bag End?"
"Yes, she claimed that I had made away with him once he'd made his will in my favor. I don't think she truly believed it--Uncle Bilbo had adopted me and made me his heir more than ten years before he went away--but she was angry and disappointed, and wanted to make trouble for me."
"Did she believe what she said about Lotho?"
Frodo shook his head. "I couldn't say. There is more," he admitted. How much could he tell her? Would she understand the terrible bargain Lotho had made with Saruman, and what disaster might have befallen the Shire because of it? Could any hobbit who had never seen Isengard imagine it? He and his friends had long ago decided that the secret was better kept among themselves. "Do you know how Lotho died?" he asked.
"I've heard the gossip," Thimula answered. "I know he drowned himself in a marsh. And there was something about a girl who had also died..."
"Her name was Daisy Puddlesby," said Frodo. "She was a farmer's daughter. Lotho wanted to marry her, but Aunt Lobelia wouldn't hear of it. When Lotho first disappeared from Hobbiton, I thought that he'd run off to Daisy. Then she was found strangled in a lane near her family's farm." Thimula gave a small gasp of horror. "Her parents said that Lotho had done it, and after Lotho was found in Rushock Bog with a rope tied to a millstone around his neck, that's what everyone else believed too. They still do."
"Did he do it?" asked Thimula.
"No," Frodo told her. "I didn't believe so even then, and I told Aunt Lobelia I would clear Lotho's name if I could. But in the end that wasn't possible. That's what she couldn't forgive me for, that her son is still regarded as a murderer."
Thimula was silent for several minutes as she finished her soup. Then she said, "Yes, I see now why she always said you were a poor detective. Who did kill the girl? Did you find out?"
Frodo nodded. "But I can't tell you. They're dead now too."
After dinner, Thimula was cleared the table and sent Frodo to explore Lotho's room. "Thank you, but I didn't ask you to come here to scrub dishes," she answered his offer to help with the washing up.
The feather-bed in Lotho's room had been rolled up against the headboard and the grate was clean of ashes and soot, but everything else remained in its place as if its occupant hadn't been dead for years. Lobelia must have been in here since Lotho's death, and surely since her return to Hobbiton, for there was little dust and no cobwebs. Lotho had kept a number of strongboxes in his room; when Frodo tried them, he found them all already unlocked--by Lobelia, presumably. If there had been money in them, she must have removed it long ago. The boxes that weren't empty contained Lotho's business correspondence, account books, and other papers related to his pipeweed plantation in the Southfarthing and other properties. If Lobelia hadn't already sold this property or bestowed it elsewhere, it would go to Thimula as part of her inheritance. She would be an extremely wealthy young woman.
Frodo looked through these papers to see if Lobelia had hidden anything among them, but didn't read them as thoroughly as he had read Lobelia's letters. One brief note, the last Lotho had apparently received, was in a large and elegant hand unlike any hobbits' writing Frodo had ever seen--but very like Gandalf's--and said simply, 'We have arrived. Come to us.' It was unsigned even by an S rune, but Frodo knew who must have written it, and what the outcome of this cryptic summons had been. He shuddered as he refolded it and put it back into the box.
To his surprise, there was a good collection of fairy-stories on a bookshelf beneath the shuttered window. These, he also looked through quickly. Most seemed to be the type of tale where industrious tailors or dimwitted third- or seventh-born sons went out to seek their fortunes and came into great wealth, kingdoms of their own, and princesses to wed through unexpected luck or magical gifts. His own boyhood reading had consisted of the same stories, but he wondered if his cousin had taken away different lessons from them than he had.
As he turned through the pages of one book, a tiny tin key fell out from between the pages. Frodo picked up it; after testing it in the locks of the opened strongboxes and looking under the bed and in the wardrobe to be sure there were no other box he'd missed earlier, he took it to the kitchen to show Thimula. "Here--do you know what this opens?"
"Why no..." Thimula took it from him to examine it. "It's much too small to fit any door. It's not a spare to Auntie's jewelry-box, and we've opened that already." She took a householder's ring of keys from her skirt pocket and compared the one Frodo had found with every key on it. None matched.
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