Page 28 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

‘He is magnificent,’ Dora said with a grin, thinking back to their most recent lovemaking in the open air. ‘He looks very proper but when you get rid of these,’ she gestured to the clothing, ‘he’s very passionate.’

‘Little ears,’ muttered the older servant.

The laundress cackled. ‘Never ye mind about Annie. She’s heard it all, I can tell ye. I like to hear when others are blessed wi’ tha vigorous man. Her faither were ne’er one to set a woman’s world afire, if ye ken what I mean.’

‘I wish I could find me a soldier boy,’ sighed the romantic lass.

‘They’re mostly rogues,’ advised Dora. ‘Pick carefully.’ The other two chorused their agreement. ‘How about this household? Any soldiers here? It must be the home of a general at the very least.’

The women’s faces grew sombre.

‘Nay, lass, ye can’t ha’ ben in Cockermouth lang if ye haven’ae heard.’ The laundress quickly told the story of the master of the house being done for down south where all the bad things happen. ‘Maybe ye should think on stayin’ up north, mistress? Let another wife follow the drum.’

‘And allow some huzzy into my Jacob’s bed? Nay, I’ll be following if I can. He’s as faithful as they come when I’m there, but when I’m not…’ She let that hang, dripping with implications of male infidelity like the shirt now pegged to the line.

‘Yer reet, men will be men,’ agreed the laundress.

‘Any of that going on around here?’

‘Nay!’ said the older servant sharply. ‘Sir Richard was a kind maister, generous to all but faithful as the day is long. And he never let his boys mistreat any of us servants.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ soothed Dora.

The woman smiled sadly at the laundress. ‘Do ye remember when Maister Benjamin robbed the parson’s orchard?’

The laundress chuckled. ‘Aye, he marched the lad straight to the parson and made him confess. The poor lad blushed scarlet every Sunday for a year when he went to church.’

Dora knew she had to be careful if she wanted to winkle out the worst that could be said about the victim. ‘It is rare to meet such a perfect gentleman. I can’t say I’ve known one in all my life.’

‘Who ever kill’t him dead didna know what they were takin’ fra us,’ said the senior maid. ‘A saint, that was what he was to each and every one of us, always lookin’ out for those others neglected.’

Dora moved the conversation on to less pointed enquiries, circling back carefully to ask about the other members of the household.

However, unlike the Leyburn washing, there was no dirty linen waiting to be scrubbed.

Sir Richard had done nothing in Cockermouth to provoke someone to strike him down with such violence.

His reputation was as clean as the household wash was by the time she left.

Wending her way to the town square, Dora was mildly surprised to see Jacob sitting on a barrel, a cut of meat pressed to his temple. Her doctor had got himself into a fight, it would seem.

‘Jacob Sandys, what have you been doing?’ she asked, amused. She peeled away the compress to check the corner of his eye. ‘You’d be better off bathing that in clean water and getting some witch hazel ointment from the apothecary.’

‘Who has the medical qualification here?’ he grumbled, but he didn’t disagree. He threw the meat to a waiting dog who ran off with it to what must have been dog heaven.

They went to the nearest pump so he could clean his hands and wash his face.

‘You are not allowed to blame me for your headache,’ Dora said as she worked the handle, producing a gush of water. ‘I didn’t tell you to resort to fisticuffs, though I’d say it was a good disguise. No one would expect respectable Dr Sandys to get himself into a brawl.’

Dora did the purchasing of the witch hazel, applied the lotion and then they began the long journey home, hoping to get to familiar roads before it grew dark.

‘Are you going to tell me what you did to start the fight?’ she asked once they were out of the town and away from interested ears.

‘Why do you assume it was something I did?’

She looked at him then at herself, displaying her pink hands. ‘See, I emerge from my questioning cleaner than when I went in, whereas you come from the inn with your jacket torn, your knees and backside covered in dirt, and your face having made close acquaintance with another man’s fist.’

He laughed, conceding the point. ‘I asked if anyone knew anything unpleasant about our victim.’

She opened her mouth to protest at his crude question.

‘I didn’t go right to that point,’ he countered, anticipating her remark.

‘We had a few drinks first and they all started saying how wonderful he was, what a model gentleman, how he helped the local widows and orphans, that sort of thing. Eventually, I slurred out that no one could be that good, surely, skeletons in every cupboard, and…’

‘And a fist came out of nowhere, you were ejected from the taproom and the locals all congratulated themselves on defending the reputation of their much beloved magistrate.’ She nodded in understanding.

‘I got much the same story from the servants. If anyone had anything against Sir Richard, it sounds like it is going to be resentment for his role in their sentencing, no matter how deserved, or just because they took against magistrates on principle.’

Jacob sang the last lines of the bloody chorus of ‘The Marseillaise’, the French revolutionary battle hymn.

He had a surprisingly good baritone. ‘You think someone wanted to water the fields with his blood as a rebellious gesture? I’ve wondered about that.

Billingsgate seems an unlikely venue for an act of Jacobinical fervour and neither was he the most obvious candidate. ’

‘And yet, as a pleasant fellow who goes the extra mile to help the unfortunate, he might have been the only one our murderer could lure out of safety.’

‘His generosity being his downfall? Yes, I could see that.’ Jacob passed her a pasty wrapped in a clean handkerchief. ‘I bought you that at the inn, before the altercation.’

Dora had forgotten about eating so received it gratefully, a stomach growl seconding the thanks. She realised she was very hungry. ‘Your generosity is likely to be very enjoyably repaid when I get a chance.’

He grinned. ‘I live in hope. You know one interesting titbit I picked up? Slipknot’s name came up. Luke Knotte as he is known here. We should’ve thought of this but the generous benefactor who saw to his education was none other than Sir Richard.’

‘Now that is interesting. How did that happen?’

‘Remember Langhorne said Knotte’s father had been a farmer?

The old lord, Sir James Lowther, did not look kindly upon Michael Knotte when he had several bad seasons in a row and was unable to pay his rent.

Sir James ousted the family from the farm where they had lived for generations and they were forced to find other employment.

Mrs Knotte was already sickly– that was part of the reason Knotte’s father had got himself into debt, paying for her treatment and a servant to look after her.

She died soon after they were made homeless.

Michael Knotte found employment as a shepherd on a farm in Elterwater– that’s near my cottage, we must walk that way one day.

The one bright spot in the story is that Luke Knotte had shone at Cockermouth School so Sir Richard paid for him to stay on, as well as for the tuition for his university entrance examination.

Apparently, the lad is considered the Cockermouth version of the Ettrick Shepherd. ’

Dora began to hum ‘Donald MacDonald’, James Hogg’s famous song. Hogg, from modest beginnings in Scotland, had been dubbed the Ettrick Shepherd by the literary press.

‘Exactly. They’re expecting him to come up with something flavoured by the local dialect that will prove as popular.’

‘Have they met Knotte recently? I think his time at university has taken all the Cumberland out of him. He’s more likely to be fleeced in a card game in some fashionable gambling hell than clip a fleece off a sheep.’

‘But it is a connection between our murder victim in London and the missing Barton.’

‘Not to mention the manuscript. Sir Richard would think nothing of meeting his protégé if appealed to for help. Then there’s the shepherd’s crook used as a weapon– another sign pointing at Knotte– and we don’t trust coincidences.

’ Dora adjusted her seat, feeling the twinge of muscles in her back.

Damn side-saddle. ‘We know Knotte admires Wordsworth’s poetry.

Hmm, he is clearly worth a closer look. But there are two things against him. ’

‘Only two?’

‘I mean as a suspect. He appears to have a motive for liking Sir Richard, not for killing him, and how could he have been in London whacking him over the head with a crook if he has been here all summer?’

‘Ah yes, but has he? Do we know where he’s been, or have we merely assumed he was because no one mentioned him being absent?’

‘Well, that should be easy enough to find out. Do you think Moss is looking at him?’

‘I think Moss is looking at all of them, including Barton and Langhorne. The connection to Sir Richard might be through Knotte, but that might’ve given grounds for one of the others to take against him; it could have spawned jealousy or envy that Knotte had a patron, ready and waiting for him to produce something. ’

‘Under that reasoning the crook is a piece of vindictive literary criticism: you sponsored this terrible shepherd poet so deserve to die? I didn’t realise poetry could be so deadly.’

‘To some, like the young poet Thomas Chatterton, it is a matter of life and death.’

‘But Chatterton famously killed himself, not others.’

‘I would think if you felt that strongly, taking someone’s life, then your own, is entirely possible.’

‘We are back to Barton.’

‘Yes. Back to our missing client.’