Mrs. Jeffries Rocks the Boat (28 page)

“They’re out in the garden, sir,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. She brushed the dust off her hands and came towards the table. “As a matter of fact, I believe I hear them coming now.” She had a strong feeling that an announcement of some kind might be in the offing.

A moment later, the two of them came into the kitchen. They were holding hands.

Mrs. Goodge looked knowingly at Mrs. Jeffries.

“Good evening, Smythe, Betsy.” Witherspoon beamed at the two of them. Then he noticed their entwined fingers. “Oh dear, dear me. Smythe, do you really think you ought to be doing that?”

“I do, sir.” Smythe grinned wickedly. “I’m glad everyone’s ’ere. Betsy and I ’ave something to tell ya all.” He looked at the maid. “Do ya want me to say it?”

Suddenly, shy, she nodded. “Go on, then.”

He took a deep breath. “Betsy has done me the great honor of agreein’…”

“To get engaged,” Betsy interrupted. “That’s what we’ve agreed. We’re going to be engaged.”

“Gracious, how very wonderful,” the inspector enthused. “I’m so pleased for the both of you.”

“Congratulations,” Mrs. Jeffries said. She smiled broadly, delighted her intution had been on the mark. “I know the two of you will be happy. I think you’re perfect for one another.”

“Cor blimey,” Wiggins cried. “It’s about time.”

“All the best to both of you,” Mrs. Goodge added. “But you should have said something. I’d have made a special dinner for you. So when’s the wedding to be?”

“Thank you, everyone,” Betsy said. She gave her intended a fast, quick smile. “We haven’t set a date yet.”

Smythe, who seemed to be in a state of shock, simply stared at her.

It took a moment or two before Mrs. Jeffries realized that it wasn’t simply a matter of the man being lovestruck. He really had been surprised.

“As a matter of fact.” Betsy grabbed Smythe’s hand. “We’d best go back outside and talk a bit more.” She began tugging him toward the back hall. “We’ll be right back.”

As soon as they’d disappeared, Inspector Witherspoon looked at Mrs. Jeffries. “I say, did you notice that Smythe seemed to be a bit stunned?”

“Oh, that’s normal, sir,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “All men act stunned when they realize they’ve actually gotten engaged.”

“What are you playin’ at?” Smythe hissed at Betsy as soon as they were out of earshot. “If ya don’t want to marry me, all ya had to do was say so.”

“Don’t be daft,” she whispered. She reached for the back door, yanked it open and jerked him outside. “Of course I want to marry you. But I suddenly realized what we were about to do.”

Smythe glared at her. “What are you goin’ on about? We were about to tell the others we wanted to be married.”

“Right,” she agreed, “and then you were goin’ to tell them you were rich.”

“So? Why shouldn’t I tell ’em the truth? I’m right tired of livin’ a lie, Betsy.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she replied. “But think a minute. Where would that leave us? I’ll tell you where we’d be. Living all on our own in some big fancy house without any murders to investigate, that’s where. Are you ready to give it up?”

He frowned thoughtfully. “Why would we have to give up our investigatin’?”

“We wouldn’t have to,” Betsy said, “but you know as well as I do that it would be different. Oh, maybe not at first, but eventually things would start to change and before you knew it, we’d be too busy with out own lives to want to do any snooping about. Look, Smythe, you know I love you more than anything. But our investigations has made me feel right important. Like I’m contributing something to this world that only I can give…oh, I don’t think I know how to explain it, but I know I’m not ready to give it up. Not yet. I don’t want things to change. I’m not ready for it.”

“I think I know what you’re sayin’,” he agreed slowly. “But how long exactly are ya thinkin’ we ought to be engaged?”

“Not too long,” Betsy said, delighted that he wasn’t going to give her too much trouble. “Maybe a year or two. Just long enough for us to get some idea about how we’d be a part of things once we was married and livin’ on our own.”

Smythe was silent for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” he finally said. “I’m not ready to give up our investigatin’ either, and once we was married, we would want our own place. All right, then, we’ll be engaged for a bit. But just long enough to suss out how we’re goin’ to do things once we’re married.”

Betsy decided that was probably about as good a compromise as she was likely to get. She slipped her arms around his neck. “I’m so glad you understand, Smythe.”

He pulled her close. At least, he thought, now that they were officially engaged, she’d be much easier to handle.

She smiled up at him. Now that they were engaged, she thought, he’d be so much easier to handle.

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If you enjoyed
M
RS
. J
EFFRIES
R
OCKS THE
B
OAT
,
you will also want to read

THE DUMB
SHALL SING

by S
TEPHEN
L
EWIS
.

CHAPTER 1

Catherine had just come out into the garden with Phyllis to see what vegetables might be gathered for supper when she heard a confused cacophony of voices rise from the road that skirted the hill on which her house sat. She and Phyllis hurried around to the front, and there she saw a crowd heading toward the northern edge of Newbury, where the town ran abruptly into the untamed woods. The voices seemed to carry an angry tone. She turned to Phyllis.

“Catch up with them, if you can, and see where they are going, and to what purpose.”

She watched as the girl hurried down the hill and trotted toward the people, whose voices were becoming less distinct as they moved farther away. Catherine strained her eyes, keeping them focused on the white cap Phyllis wore, and she saw it hobbling up and down behind the crowd. The cap stopped moving next to a man’s dark brown hat. After a few moments she could see the cap turn back toward her while
the hat moved away, and shortly Phyllis stood before her, catching her breath.

“They are going to the Jameson house. They say the babe is dead. And they want you to come to say whether it was alive when it was born.”

She recalled holding the babe in her arms and seeing that he was having trouble breathing. She had seen that his nose was clogged with mucus and fluids, and she had cleared it with a bit of rag she carried in her midwife’s basket for that purpose. The babe had snorted in the air as soon as she removed the cloth and then he had bellowed a very strong and healthy cry. The only thing out of the ordinary during the birth that she could now remember was how the Jameson’s Irish maidservant eyed the babe as though she wanted to do something with it. Catherine had seen dozens of births, and usually she could tell when a babe was in trouble. This one had given no indication of frailty.

“Come along with me, then,” she said to Phyllis. “Just stop to tell Edward to watch for Matthew.”

Phyllis did not respond, and Catherine motioned to the tree under which Massaquoit had slept.

“You know,” Catherine repeated, “Matthew.”

“I see, yes, he should wait for Matthew,” Phyllis said.

“Edward need not think about going to lecture.”

“He does not think about that anyway,” Phyllis replied.

“Be that as it may, I do not think there will be lecture tonight,” Catherine said. “Now go along with you.”

The Jameson house was a humble structure of two sections, the older a little more than a hut with walls of daub and wattle construction, a plaster of mud and manure layered over a substructure of crisscrossing poles. Henry Jameson had recently built a wing onto the back of the house to accommodate his growing family, and this new room was covered in wooden shingles outside and was generally more luxurious inside, having a wood plank floor and whitewashed plaster walls.

It was in this room that Martha had delivered her babe.
Catherine remembered that the Irish servant girl had a little space, not much more than a closet, for a bed so that she could be near the infant’s cradle, and that the parents’ bedroom was in the original portion of the house. She also remembered how the girl had fashioned a crude cross out of two twigs, tied together with thread, and then hung it over her bed until Henry had found it there and pulled it off. He had taken the cross outside and ground it into the mud with the heavy heel of his shoe. There was a separate entrance to this side of the house, which gave onto a patch of wild strawberries, and it was before that door that the crowd had gathered.

As Catherine shouldered her way through the crowd, she felt hands grabbing at her sleeve. She was spun around, and for a moment she lost sight of Phyllis. Someone said, “I’ve got her,” but Catherine pulled away. Phyllis emerged from behind the man who was holding Catherine’s arm. A woman placed her face right in front of Catherine. She was missing her front teeth, and her breath was sour. She held a smoldering torch in one hand, and she brought it down near Catherine’s face.

“Here, mistress,” the woman said, “we’ve been waiting for you, we have.”

Phyllis forced herself next to Catherine, shielding her from the woman.

“Go,” Catherine said to Phyllis, “to Master Woolsey, and tell him to come here right away.”

Phyllis pushed her way back through the crowd, which was advancing with a deliberate inevitability toward the house. Catherine moved with the energy of the crowd, but at a faster pace, so that soon she reached its leading edge, some ten or so feet away from Henry and Ned Jameson, who stood with their backs to their house. Ned had his arm around the Irish servant girl, flattening her breasts and squeezing her hard against his side. She held a pitcher in her hand. It was tilted toward the ground and water dripped from it. The girl’s eyes were wide and staring as they found Catherine.

“Please,” she said, but then Ned pulled her even harder toward him, and whatever else the girl was trying to say was lost in the breath exploding from her mouth.

The Jameson girls, ranging from a toddler to the oldest, a twelve-year-old, were gathered around their mother, who stood off to one side. Martha’s gown was unlaced and one heavy breast hung free as though she were about to give her babe suck. Her eyes moved back and forth between her husband and the crowd, seemingly unable or unwilling to focus. The toddler amused itself by walking ’round and ’round through her mother’s legs. The oldest girl seemed to be whispering comfort to her younger siblings. Then the girl turned to her mother and laced up her gown. Martha looked at her daughter’s hand as though it were a fly buzzing about her, but she did not swipe it away.

Henry was holding the babe, wrapped in swaddling, and unmoving. It was quite clearly dead. He took a step toward Catherine and held out the babe toward her. His face glowed red in the glare of a torch.

“Here she is,” he shouted. He lowered his voice a little. “Tell us, then, if you please, Mistress Williams, was this babe born alive?”

“Who says nay?” Catherine asked. She looked at Martha, who stood mute, and then at the Irish servant girl, who did not seem to understand what was happening. Always the finger of blame, she thought, lands on some poor woman while the men stand around pointing that finger with self-righteous and hypocritical arrogance. She recalled how Henry had asked first what sex the babe was before he inquired as to his wife’s health. “Henry will be glad,” Martha had said as Catherine had held the babe in front of her so that she could see its genitalia. And then Martha had collapsed onto the bed, a woman exhausted by fifteen years of being pregnant, giving birth, suffering miscarriages, and nursing the babes that were born, and always there had been the poverty. She had not wanted to take Ned in, for there was never enough food.