The Deathly Portent (22 page)

“I could hardly fail to do so since Miss Beeleigh made it her business to mention my ladder’s existence,” he retorted, the acid note strong.

“Just so,” Ottilia agreed, adding, “It looks excessively heavy.”

She gestured towards the ladder and threw a questioning glance at her husband. Francis bent to test the truth of this. Going to the centre, he took hold of the wooden bars to either side and lifted. Ottilia saw the muscle strain under his coat sleeves. The ladder came up a foot or two, and then Francis set it down without comment.

Ottilia raised her brows. “Could one person carry it?”

“A strong man might, with difficulty.”

She glanced at Uddington, but he offered nothing by way of embellishment. “Well, I think we have seen enough.”

Back in the shop, Ottilia adopted a tone of deliberate friendliness. “You have been most cooperative, Mr. Uddington, and I thank you.”

He had made for the front door with alacrity and was engaged in drawing back the bolt. Completing his task, he turned and gave a tiny ironic bow.

“There is little point in my refusing to assist you.”

“And every gain.”

He chose not to answer this directly, head high as he regarded her through the lens of his spectacles. “Was there anything else, my lady?”

Ottilia adopted the lightest of tones. “Why yes, Mr. Uddington. Since the whole village appears to make free with your ladder, am I to take it you possess the only one long enough to reach the beams of the smithy roof?”

“The only one in the centre of the village, yes. The thatcher has one even longer, but he lives a half mile outside.”

“Too far to carry, or to risk being seen,” Francis suggested.

A derisive look entered the merchant’s features. “None would quibble at the sight of my ladder being carried anywhere in the village.”

Francis’s brows snapped together. “How convenient.”

Ottilia looked at her spouse. “It might be worth a general question at the Cock.”

He nodded. “I’ll set Ryde onto it.”

“No mention of the ladder, mind,” she warned once they were safely outside and out of earshot of the merchant. “We don’t want to alert the murderer. Let Ryde merely enquire if anyone was wakeful the night before Duggleby died.”

“You suppose the preparations to the roof must have been done then?”

“Don’t you? Any earlier and someone might have noticed.”

Light dawned in her spouse’s face. “And the ladder couldn’t have been taken during the day. But will it suffice you to know merely that someone was awake?”

“Yes, for once I have them, I will drag out just what I wish to know.”

Francis had laughed. “I’ll wager you will, unscrupulous wretch that you are.”

Regarding Uddington in the church now, where he sat in a side pew with the men who had acted as pallbearers, Ottilia recalled how eager he had been to see them off the premises. Yet he was, had he only known, rapidly shifting
down her list of possible suspects, particularly since his ladder was freely available to anyone in the village.

Her eyes refocused on the congregation as Ottilia tuned in once again to the vicar’s voice.

“And why,” the Reverend Kinnerton was saying, “beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

With which, the villagers once again looked sideways at one another. Never mind motes and beams, Ottilia thought. What price suspicion? Could it be that one of these had borrowed Uddington’s ladder? Could Uddington have slept through such a theft? One could not drag or carry a ladder of that size without a deal of noise.

Francis had reckoned that it would take a strong man, or perhaps two. Tisbury or Farmer Staxton perhaps? Her eyes ran over the party from the Cock and Bottle, all of whom looked to have donned their Sunday best for the occasion.

Molly Tisbury, still sporting a bruised and swollen nose along with puffed-up eyes, had partially concealed the dismaying picture under a black veil that fell from a poke bonnet. She was done up fine in black bombazine, frilled and beribboned. She was fidgety, Ottilia noted, her eyes tending to dart around, and little shivers shaking her frame now and then. One could scarcely blame her, with the shadow of Cassie’s vision hanging over her head.

Her husband was also in black, his breeches and countrified frock coat straining a little over his beefy frame. He was flanked by Will the tapster, who had donned a dark coat for the occasion over his working clothes. On Molly’s other side sat Bessy the maid, her apron discarded and a black shawl covering her blue cotton gown, and wearing a discontented expression under the regulation mobcap.

For this last, young Patty of the Blue Pig was to blame, as Ottilia knew. The Pakefields’ maid was seated on the other side of the aisle and well back from the front benches since Hannah, disfigured from yesterday’s contretemps, had chosen
to steer well clear of the Tisburys. Patty’s nose was in the air, her quarrel with Bessy doubtless in the forefront of her mind.

After yesterday’s catfight, there had been little opportunity to glean much more than had been extracted in the interviews with the Tisburys and Uddington. Ryde’s probing having yielded results, however, Ottilia had ventured towards the back premises of the Cock this morning, hunting down the chambermaid. She had come upon the two girls engaged in all-out warfare. Unlike their respective mistresses, they were at least confining themselves to words, albeit noisy and vituperative.

“You shan’t say as you be promised,” Patty was shouting as Ottilia came around the corner of the house, “for I know as Will bain’t said as much.”

Bessy came back strongly, both words and attitude almost a carbon copy of Molly, her mistress. “Oh? Oh? And how be you knowing what he say or don’t say? Fly on the wall, be you? Spider more like, I be thinking. Aye, and with poison in all them eyes as you be seeing with what you hadn’t ought.”

“If’n you mean as I seen you a-kissing of my Will,” snapped Patty, arms akimbo and red in her freckled face, “you be right for once.”

“Your Will, is it? I’d like fine to see his ring on your finger, that I would. Nor I won’t nor Domesday.”

“Nor you won’t see it on yours, neither, not if I know it you won’t.”

Bessy’s red cheeks suffused even more at this, and Ottilia thought it prudent to intervene.

“Dear me, children. Will you come to blows over a fellow who is clearly not fit for either of you?”

Both maids whipped around to confront her, and two angry faces struggled hopelessly to recover a semblance of demure servitude. Ottilia smiled at them equally.

“A man who would play you off one against the other is not worth fighting over, my dears.”

Bessy glanced at Patty, who steadfastly refused to meet her gaze.

Instead she lifted her chin at Ottilia. “Bain’t nowt, m’am. What be you wanting?”

“I came to find Bessy. But since you are here, Patty, I also have a question for you.”

“Aye?”

There was insolence both in the tone and the questioning look, but Ottilia forbore to comment upon this.

“Do you happen to know, Patty, how it was that the village came to hear about Mrs. Dale’s latest vision?”

If the girl’s cheeks had been flushed before, they now became positively crimson. Quick fright showed in her eyes and was swiftly followed by fury.

“Who be saying as I told it?”

“Did you?”

Patty fisted her hands on her hips, glaring. “Never said owt to no one.”

Ottilia kept her gaze steady on Patty’s face, although she could see Bessy’s eyes growing round with apprehension as her fingers fiddled with her apron. Guilt at having passed on the ghoulish tale? Or at having eavesdropped on her own account?

“No one at all?” Ottilia prompted.

Patty’s gaze dropped, and one leather-shod toe scuffed at the turf. A mutter barely reached Ottilia’s ears.

“I might’ve said it to Will.”

Ottilia sighed with satisfaction. “Ah, I see.”

The girl’s eyes came up, fierce now as they turned on Bessy. “But none other, so help me. Bain’t knowing if’n Will telled it, but if’n he did, I know who be passing it along.”

Ottilia watched Bessy’s cheeks suffuse. “Oh? Oh? Meaning me, I suppose? Bain’t me as said owt, you fussock! Not as Will bain’t told me, for as he would, seeing as I be his sweetheart.”

“That you bain’t,” Patty began, squaring up again.

“Peace!” said Ottilia sharply, stepping between them. “That will do, the both of you. If neither of you know the fellow well enough to realise how long-tongued is your Will, then I can only say that you are one as moon-eyed as the other.”

Neither maid appeared to relish this comment, but each continued to glare at the other, though both refrained from taking issue with Ottilia. She became brisk.

“Now then, Patty, run along, if you please. I want a word with Bessy. In private.”

For a moment it seemed as if the girl would refuse to leave the field to her rival. But Ottilia’s calm stare had its effect, and she went off with lagging steps, looking back a couple of times as if she suspected herself to be under discussion. In fact Ottilia’s mind was on matters far other than lovelorn rivalry.

“Bessy,” she began at once, “I want you to cast your mind back to the night before the blacksmith Duggleby died.”

The maid blinked, plainly mystified by this turn. “The night afore?”

“Just so.”

A frown creased the girl’s plump forehead. “Sunday night, you mean?”

“Yes, Sunday night,” Ottilia said patiently. “I understand you were wakeful. Do you remember?”

Bessy grimaced. “Aye, I do, m’am, for as I woke and couldn’t sleep no more for an age.”

“And you heard something?”

The girl nodded. “Aye, summat I did, nor I can’t rightly say what it be.”

“At what time was this, do you know?”

Bessy’s round-eyed look screwed instead into concentration. “Bain’t like as it be more’n two of the clock, m’am, though the village were quiet-like.”

Ottilia dropped lightly into the tone of easy camaraderie
she found so useful with the lower orders. “What did you hear, Bessy?”

“Voice a-cursing,” said Bessy promptly. “Nor it bain’t the master coughing and cursing as he do of a nighttime when he wakes too full of ale. Out of doors it be.”

Ottilia did not speak, merely eyeing the girl in a considering way that she knew would have its effect. Sure enough, in a moment Bessy piped up again, embellishing her tale.

“Grunting and cursing it be. Bain’t none too long, passing behind the house it be.” The girl’s brows drew together. “There were a thump. Loud it be, for as I dessay that be what woke me.”

“Thank you, Bessy, that is most helpful,” said Ottilia, satisfied.

Bessy frowned. “I don’t know that, m’am, for as it bain’t told you owt.”

Ottilia smiled. “Ah, but it has, Bessy.”

The girl looked interested, but Ottilia did not enlighten her further. She was tempted to bid Bessy not to throw her heart away on Will the tapster, but she refrained, having no faith in the power of words to dissuade any maiden sighing for love. Although if the truth be told, Ottilia suspected that this vying for the fellow’s attentions with Patty might be the glue that held her affections so firmly attached.

Besides, it was scarcely part of her function to be interfering with the love tangles of the locals. She had other fish to fry. And the first task was to discover if her suspicion was correct.

“One thing more, Bessy.”

“Aye, m’am?”

“You remember you kindly showed me the place where Duggleby’s body lay, that first day?”

A wary look crept into the plump cheeks, and Ottilia instantly knew she had guessed right. Bessy was having difficulty meeting her gaze. Ottilia softened her tone.

“There is no need to look so guilty, my dear. Your curiosity was natural, and I don’t blame you for listening.”

“I never—”

Ottilia put up a warning finger. “Don’t lie to me, Bessy. I am perfectly sure Mr. Pilton did not talk of his conversation with us, and yet your master and mistress knew he had told us of the fight between your master and the blacksmith.”

Bessy’s round cheeks were growing pink, and she began to look shamefaced, dropping her gaze to the ground as she muttered her defence.

“Thought as they had ought to know.”

“I understand. But the unfortunate result of your speaking out, Bessy, was to make Mrs Tisbury upset and suspicious, which helped to build the quarrel between your mistress and Mrs. Pakefield. Do you see?”

The girl nodded, her expression now troubled. Ottilia thought she had said enough. Bessy seemed a trifle more inclined to listen to her conscience than Patty, whose indiscretion was likely more damaging. Besides, Ottilia could not forget her own culpability in that quarrel. She smiled at the girl.

“Thank you again for your help, Bessy.”

With which, Ottilia left her and betook herself to one of the little row of cottages situated on this side of the brook, just opposite the ruined forge across the water.

It took a few moments for her knock at the door to be answered. She heard halting steps within. The door opened, and an elderly fellow squinted up at her, holding the doorjamb for support.

“Good day to you, Mr. Wagstaff.”

One of his uncouth cackles sounded. “If’n it bain’t the Lady Fan. Come for as to ask if I done for Duggleby now, have you?”

Ottilia smiled. “I will ask, if you wish to tell me.”

“Bain’t no sense in asking. If’n I had, I’d say nowt on it to you.”

“Very true,” Ottilia agreed coolly. “As it happens, I have not come for that.”

Mr. Wagstaff reached up a finger yellowed from tobacco and scratched his ear. “Nor you bain’t took to visions, neither, like that there Mrs. Dale. Not if I know it.”

Ottilia sighed. “I am sorry your daughter has been obliged to hear about that.”

The old man snorted. “If’n my Moll be daft enough to think on such drivel, more fool her. Take no account of such meself.”

“Well, you should,” Ottilia said tartly.

The rheumy eyes sharpened. “Aye? And for why?”

“Oh, not for anything Mrs. Dale might do, for she is no witch.”