Page 20 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

The cottage smelt of babies and damp, and an underlying dirtiness Richard recognised from occasional visits to the poorer villagers.

The smell wafted out when the door was opened to his knock.

A short, blowsy woman, her hair scraped back in a bun, stood there, looking at him sullenly.

In the background, a baby began to wail.

Over her shoulder he saw a number of discoloured napkins drying in front of the fire.

‘What do you want?’ she asked sourly.

‘Are you Tabby Mattock? I’m Richard Tallant,’ he began politely.

‘I know who you are. Half your servants come drinking at the Dog. Not that I work there any more.’

From her expression, you would think she blamed him for that. She obviously wasn’t going to ask him in – for which he was grateful – so he leaned against the doorpost and said, ‘I believe you were walking out with William Sweeting, who’s a footman up at the Castle.’

‘Maybe I was. What’s it to you?’

‘You know that he’s been arrested for murder?’

She turned her head away, and picked at a back tooth with her little-finger nail. ‘Heard something about it.’

‘I have it on reliable evidence that he visited you on that particular evening, the evening Mr Speen disappeared. You are in a position to give him an alibi.’

She turned her face back to him, her eyes flat and hostile. ‘Why don’t you mind your own business? I don’t work for you, Mr Richard Tallant, so you can’t scare me.’

‘I have no wish to scare you, Miss Mattock. And it is my business, because William does work for me. I’m responsible for his welfare.’

‘My baby’s calling,’ she said, stepping back and trying to close the door.

Richard inserted a boot in the door’s path. ‘You can’t let an innocent man hang.’

‘Who says he’s innocent?’

‘You have evidence that would clear him. You must go to the police.’

She looked at him derisively. ‘Oh, yeah? What’s in it for me?’

‘You want paying for doing your duty?’

Suddenly she was spitting like a cat. ‘Don’t you talk to me about duty!

You men are all the same! You want your buttered bun, oh, yes, but you’re not so quick to pay for it, are you?

Your precious William promised to marry me, then he called off.

Now I’ve got a baby to bring up. Where’s his duty?

Where’s yours, if it comes to that? You ought to be paying for this baby.

It was your precious footman as put me up the pole.

Now he thinks I’m going to get him off, does he?

’ She gave a bark of derisive laughter. ‘Well, he can think again!’

‘Actually, William has stayed loyal to you. It wasn’t him who told me about you. He’s still refusing to say where he was that night.’

‘More fool him,’ she muttered.

‘He did visit you that night, didn’t he?’

‘Came to tell me he was calling it off, the dirty dog. Came to tell me he was chucking me and the baby on the rubbish heap. That ’s your sainted footman!’

‘I don’t say he’s a saint, Miss Mattock, any more than any of us,’ Richard said, giving her a sharp look, ‘and I don’t say he did right by you. But this is more serious. You can’t let him hang because he let you down.’

‘I can do as I please, Mister Tallant. Go away now. You’re letting the draught in.’ She tried again to close the door.

He caught the edge of it, to add to the resistance of his foot. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘I can’t pay you money to go to the police, because that would taint the evidence. But I can promise you this. You do the right thing by William, and I’ll see to it that your baby is supported.’

She gave him a very long, calculating look. ‘How much?’ she asked at last.

‘A shilling a week. Until he leaves school.’

‘Pigs might fly! I can guess how much of that I’d see once I’d been and told my story and got William off.’

‘I am a gentleman, and I keep my word,’ Richard said, holding his temper.

‘You can keep your word – I’ll keep the money. Five pun’ in me hand. Two years in advance. That’s my terms. Or they can stretch his neck for all I care. I’ll come and watch.’

An older woman appeared behind her, coming in from the scullery at the back. ‘Whatcher doin’, Tab? Whoyer talkin’ to?’

‘It’s him from up the Castle. Wants me to tell police William was with me that night.’

Mrs Mattock evidently knew which night was in question.

She came up close behind her daughter and squinted up at Richard’s face.

Then she smiled at him ingratiatingly, showing the stubs of her discoloured teeth.

‘She’s a respectable girl, my Tabitha. Respectable girls don’t like to have nothing to do with the police.

Doesn’t look good. Girl like my Tabitha goes inside a police station, everyone knows about it.

There’s talk. She was supposed to be prop’ly married by now, but that wicked man jilted her at the altar.

What’s she supposed to do now, with no job and no money?

And she’ll never get another job if she’s seen going in a police station. ’

‘She won’t have to,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll speak to the police, and they’ll send someone here to take her statement. I just need you to promise to tell them the truth, Miss Mattock. About seeing William that evening.’

The old woman laughed. ‘She can tell ’em about seeing William all right!’

‘Stow it, Ma,’ Tabby growled. To Richard she said again, ‘Five pun’. That’s my terms.’

‘I haven’t got that much on me,’ Richard said.

‘Then you’ll have to come back,’ she said flatly. ‘ Before the pleece come. If it’s not in me hand before they turn up, I’m saying nothing.’

‘And what’s to say you’ll speak up once you’ve got the money?’ Richard said. ‘Two before, and three when I hear from them you’ve done it right.’

‘You’re not as green as you look, Mister Richard Tallant,’ she said, with an unpleasant laugh. ‘All right, but I better get it, or it’s back to the police I’ll go and tell ’em you bribed me to lie to save William’s neck. Then you’ll be in trouble and he’ll get stretched.’

‘Agreed,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘You better,’ Tabby said, and shut the door.

Inside, mother and daughter exchanged a look. Mrs Mattock said, ‘A fiver?’

‘He said he’d support the baby, a shillin’ a week. I said two years in advance or it’s no go.’

‘But I thought you was going to that Miss Eddowes and givin’ the baby away?’

‘Well, he don’t have to know that, does he? Why d’yer think I want the money in advance?’

‘I dunno, Tab. Talking to the pleece – it’s dangerous. What if they finds out about the other chap and what you did—’

Tabby could move like a cat, too. She had her mother by the throat. ‘You shut your mouth, old woman. Nobody never knows about that, d’you hear?’ She let her go. ‘You talk too much.’

‘Sorry, Tab.’ She was frightened of her daughter when she got in a mood.

Years of pulling beer pumps had given her mighty strong arms and hands.

And if she lost her temper . . . She’d lost it with that other chap, the skinny one.

Two of ’em giving her the brush-off in one night.

It was no wonder she’d gone a bit crazy-like.

That soft William was lucky she’d bashed him first, before she really got her rile up . . .

‘Anyway, once I got that fiver and the baby’s out the way, I’m off out of here. They’ll never find me, even if they look. But if I ever find out you bin talking, I’ll come back and kill you, all right? You know I’d do it.’

‘I won’t talk,’ said Mrs Mattock. ‘Not about – that .’

‘Not about anything, you hear?’

Sergeant Mayhew was sternly disapproving. ‘I don’t say you haven’t come by some useful information, but you should have brought it straight to us, sir, and let us investigate, not gone asking questions yourself. Who knows what damage you might have done?’

Richard assumed humility. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. I didn’t think of that. I was just eager to prove William’s innocence.’

‘We have our job to do, sir, and it doesn’t make it any easier to have well-meaning members of the public getting in our way.’

‘I have no wish to get in your way, Sergeant, I assure you. And I’m more than happy to leave everything else to you. Can I take him home now?’

‘Certainly not, sir. We shall have to check up on it ourselves before we can accept the truth of it. And there’s still the question of the scratches and the black eye, and all his lies.’

Richard suppressed a grin. ‘I have an idea about that, Sergeant.’

Uncle Sebastian was back, and appeared at dinner that evening. He seemed subdued, but in a thoughtful way rather than sad or depressed. The dowager and Rachel were in London, so it was to the audience of Sebastian, Kitty and Alice that Richard told the day’s news.

‘He didn’t rush out of the house after Speen, as the police assumed.

He went straight to see Tabby, to try to sort out the truth.

He wanted her to be the innocent maiden of his dreams, but there was the unfortunate difficulty to get over, that she had told him human gestation takes six months, while someone else had told him it was nine months.

Which was true? If it was nine months, the baby couldn’t have been his, and she’d been lying to him. ’

Sebastian stirred. ‘Should you be talking about this sort of thing in front of Alice?’

‘I know about gestation from helping on the farms, Uncle,’ Alice said. ‘And I was the one who told Richard about Tabby’s baby. I promise I won’t be corrupted. Richard, please go on.’