The Deathly Portent (40 page)

It was immediately apparent that Mrs. Winkleigh had spoken nothing but the truth. The girl’s erstwhile assured air had deserted her, and her eyes—were they a trifle reddened from weeping?—had a tendency to wander. In an effort not to meet her gaze, Ottilia decided. Jenny did not take the outstretched hand, nor even look at it. Instead, her hands remained clenched on folds of her apron.

“Come and sit down, my dear.”

Ottilia took her gently by one shoulder, drawing her towards a wooden settle where she obliged the girl to sit. Taking her place beside her, she looked up at her husband and the housekeeper.

“Would you object to allowing me to talk with Jenny alone?” She saw refusal in Francis’s eye and remembered his intention to keep her in sight at all times. Not unhopeful, given the better atmosphere between them, she threw him a look of appeal. “Just outside the door?”

He hesitated and then nodded. Opening the door, he looked at the housekeeper. “After you.”

Mrs. Winkleigh did not move, her eyes going to the girl. “Do you want me to stay, Jenny?”

At this the Duggleby girl looked up. “Bain’t no need, m’am.”

Relieved, Ottilia waited until the door had closed and they were alone.

“You are troubled, I think, Jenny.”

The capped head bobbed in acquiescence, but still Jenny did not look at her. Ottilia opted for tactics designed to shock.

“Has it to do with the night Molly Tisbury was murdered?”

Up went the head, and a groan issued from the girl’s throat. But still she volunteered nothing. Ottilia took the bull by the horns.

“Was it you, Jenny, who was asked to take a message to Molly?”

At this, there was a frantic shaking of the head, and out it came at last. “Not me, m’am. But—but I’m afeared as it were Ma.”

Ottilia’s brain shot into high gear. “You think your mother may have been the messenger? What makes you say so?”

Tears had begun to trickle down Jenny’s cheeks, and her voice became hoarse. “Bain’t that. Not only.”

Then it was Bertha who took the message? But what more? Ottilia prised one of the clenched hands off the girl’s apron and held it fast.

“Tell me, Jenny. What is it you fear?”

The girl’s tear-drenched gaze turned to meet hers. “I think as Ma done it.”

Shock suspended all thought in Ottilia’s head for an instant. No, she must not be sidetracked. Although not for a moment had she suspected Bertha’s hand in Molly’s murder. But why not? The woman had strength enough. Only there
was no reason for her to kill Molly unless she had also murdered her own husband. Comprehension made Ottilia tighten her grip on Jenny’s closed fist.

“Are you thinking your mother also killed your father? Is that it, Jenny?”

A burst of sobs confirmed it. Jenny retrieved her hand and grasped her apron, throwing it up to her face and weeping into its concealing folds.

Ottilia made no attempt to quiet her, using the moments she must wait for the overwhelming grief to expend itself in furious thought.

Had she missed a trick? She had been so sure she had the answer, but doubt sprang up, throwing her calculations into disarray. Bertha had been a suspect in her husband’s death from the start. If it had not been for the evident apathy of her demeanour in the aftermath of Duggleby’s death, Ottilia must have counted her at the top of her list. In her experience, a guilty person did not fall into this frame of mind, their deeds weighing too heavy. Rather they took the attitude adopted by Uddington or the Tisburys, ready to attack any who chose to examine their actions.

“What makes you think this, Jenny?” she asked, when the girl’s sobs had abated.

The apron had slipped down, and Jenny gave a doleful sniff. “Like a cat on a hot bakestone be Ma. Bain’t like her, not even when her found as Pa—” She broke off and swallowed painfully.

Ottilia sought to turn the girl’s mind. “When did you notice her behaving like this, Jenny?”

“Nor two days,” muttered the girl.

“Since the night of Molly’s death, in fact?”

Jenny nodded miserably. “Nor her weren’t in the house that night, not ’til late.”

“How do you know? Did you hear her go out?”

“Bain’t that. Only young Ned be crying and woke me. I
thought nowt to it at first, expecting as Ma’d go in to him, for as he’ve been having bad dreams. Only he bain’t stopped a-crying, so I got up to him—and Ma weren’t in her bed.”

She ended on a note of panic, and Ottilia was moved to set a hand about her shoulders, which were racked by intermittent shivers.

“Did you wait up for her?”

Jenny’s head shook again. “I crooned Ned to sleep again and then went to my bed.” Her fingers twisted in her disarranged apron. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard Ma come in.”

“Do you know what time it was?” asked Ottilia without much hope.

“It be late, I know that.”

“You did not go in to your mother?”

Another desolate sob escaped the girl. “I dursn’t.”

“Why not?” prompted Ottilia. “It is not as if you could have known what had occurred that night.”

Jenny sighed a quick breath in and out. “I dursn’t for as I thought as Ma were up to smithy, searching.”

“For what?”

But here the girl would not be drawn. She kept her eyes averted and did not speak. What did she know of Duggleby’s alleged windfall, if anything? She was clearly aware of something, for her silence could not otherwise be explained. Matters were too desperate now for such reticence.

“Was it your father’s gold?”

Jenny flinched. “Bain’t none.”

Ottilia’s tone sharpened. “How do you know, Jenny?”

“For as he told me. He were drunk, else he’d have said nowt. He told Ma to spite her.”

Or did he? Ottilia was ready to believe the fellow had lied as easily to his daughter as to his wife. But she let it alone for the moment.

“Did you speak of your mother’s absence in the morning?”

Jenny shuddered. “How could I? That fretted her be, snapping at Ned and telling him to get out from under her
feet. Nor her’d no good word for me, neither. Nor you’d think as her bain’t done no cooking ever for her burned they sausages and near set the house afire pulling down the pot of porridge. Half the logs come with it and rolled near full across the kitchen floor.”

Evidence of a severely unquiet mind, Ottilia was bound to agree. No wonder Jenny’s suspicions had been aroused.

“And then no doubt you heard the news about Molly,” she said gently, “and put two and two together to make five.”

The girl’s eyes, bright with distress, came round to face her. “What be I to think? Nor that bain’t all. If’n Ma done for Molly, why’d her do it? Why, if’n her bain’t done for Pa?”

A fresh deluge of weeping ended this outburst, and Ottilia absently patted the girl on the back. At least she had judged Jenny’s intellect aright, she reflected. It was too much to expect she would make the jump to realising that more was needed by way of evidence than mere supposition. However, there was a great deal here to be checked, and Ottilia resolved to repair at once to the blacksmith’s abode.

T
here was nothing of the lacklustre about Bertha Duggleby today. Jenny had been right. On opening the door and spying Ottilia, she looked horrified and made to shut it in her face. Francis’s hand shot out, holding it strongly.

“Stand aside, woman, for we are coming in.”

For a moment the blacksmith’s widow held fast to the edge of the door, glaring defiance. Then, with a grunt of frustration, she let go and vanished inside the house.

Francis swept through the door, and Ottilia, following more slowly, could hear Bertha’s growling protests as she was bodily seized.

“The parlour, Fan,” said Ottilia hastily, throwing open the door she remembered from the last occasion.

Her spouse manhandled the woman into the little room and thrust her down into a chair.

“Stay!” he ordered, as if he spoke to a disobedient dog.

Mrs. Duggleby glared resentfully up at him, but she remained where she had been put. Francis released her and straightened up.

Ottilia shut the door and came into the room. She abandoned any notion of requesting her husband to leave her alone with the woman. Not that he would have agreed, as he had made plain on their way here once she had given him the gist of what Jenny told her.

“That settles it. I’m not leaving you alone in a room with a wretch who may have already murdered twice, so don’t waste your breath in asking.”

In vain had Ottilia argued that she was as certain of her facts as she could be.

“Until your scheme comes to fruition, Tillie, we will take no risks.”

The feeling of being unduly restricted had come back, but at this moment she was heartily relieved to have the strong arm of her husband just where it was needed.

She took a chair to one side of where the woman sat, noting that Francis retreated but a pace, his eyes trained upon Bertha’s limbs, alert, like the soldier he’d been, to any slight sign of her making a sudden spring.

Ottilia had no wish to cause dissension between mother and daughter, but she was hard put to it to know how to question the woman without giving away the source of her intelligence. She tried a simple approach.

“Bertha, had you heard that someone was sent to Molly Tisbury with a message on the night she was killed?”

There was an immediate effect. The woman’s face drained of colour, and her eyes grew round and fearful. Yet she did not open her lips in response.

Ottilia wasted no more time. “Was it you, Bertha?”

For a moment nothing in the creature’s aspect changed. Then abruptly she fisted her hands and set them either side of her forehead, tightly shutting her eyes.

“Never meant no harm,” came in a low mutter from her lips. “Bain’t my doing.”

“You mean you did not kill her?”

“Bain’t my doing,” she said again, beginning to rock back and forth, still holding her head as if it pained her.

Ottilia exchanged a glance with Francis, who was looking decidedly grim. He raised his brows, mouthing, “What now?”

Well might he ask! The woman was distraught. Guilt, yes, but for what offence? It was evident Ottilia would get no direct answer if she continued in this line. She sought for a way to calm the woman, in hopes of loosening her tongue.

“Bertha, have you been searching for your husband’s pot of gold?”

The change of subject broke into the concentrated absorption of Bertha’s mind, as Ottilia had hoped it would. The fists did not come down, but her eyes opened.

“Why wouldn’t I? Bain’t as he’d took it with him. If’n it be hid, in smithy is where it be.”

She was breathing hard, plainly driven beyond endurance. But by what? Curbing her impatience, Ottilia gentled her tone.

“Where did you look in the smithy?”

The woman’s hands, still curled tightly, dropped to her lap. She did not look at her interlocutor, nor at Francis, her gaze swinging this way and that, almost as if she spoke to herself. Too overwrought to be much aware of what was happening?

“All round I looked. In forge itself even. Pulled aside muck and timber. Dragged down his tools. Tried if’n the floor be hollow, if’n he’d dug a hole. Bain’t nowt. Bain’t nowhere.”

“Then it is perhaps safe to assume it does not exist, Bertha.”

At this, the woman’s countenance turned in Ottilia’s direction, fire in her eyes. “It be there! It be there someplace, nor Duggleby wouldn’t have beat me for looking if’n it bain’t.”

Ottilia seized on this. “When did that happen, Bertha? When did he beat you?”

“Night afore.” Her tone became vicious. “Dead, and the last I knows of him be his belt across my back.”

Startled, Ottilia sought to clarify this. “You did not see him at all after that? Until his body was found?”

“Aye.”

“Pardon me, but did he not come to your bed?”

Her mouth twisted, and Ottilia thought she bared her teeth.

“Not he. Left me with my back burning and went off to Cock. Likely he snuggled up along of some new doxy.” Her eyes narrowed with anger. “Only I heard him. In the night, I heard him.”

“Doing what?”

“In the smithy, do you mean?” asked Francis, cutting in for the first time.

Bertha barely glanced at him. “Aye.”

“What was he doing?” Ottilia repeated.

“Hiding that there gold, bain’t he?”

“How can you know that?” Francis again, speaking the thought in Ottilia’s mind.

“For as I heard the hammering. Up to roof he be, hiding yon gold up there.”

Ottilia’s eyes leapt to meet those of her husband, and she read the exact same surmise that had flown into her head. Not Duggleby, but the murderer. And Bertha had heard the preparations. Little did the woman realise how her words served to exonerate her. She did not kill her husband—and Ottilia’s surmise was correct.

“How could he get up to the roof?” she asked, guessing what was coming.

“Likely he took old Uddington’s ladder.”

“And put it back again the same night?”

“Aye, afeared as I’d see it and know his game. Not as I seen him Monday, for as he bain’t come in. Sent young Ned for to fetch his dinner. Nor I bain’t gone next or nigh forge.”

“Because of the beating?” Ottilia surmised.

“Aye. But now Duggleby’s gone, and the roof is down, and that gold bain’t there. It bain’t there.”

Her fists beat upon her knees, and Ottilia could not but recall how the creature had shown a mere suggestion of this underlying passion on the last occasion, when she had confessed her futile feeling for the wretch who’d betrayed her and his vows. With his loss, however, it appeared her love was rapidly turning to hate.

But there was yet the question of her involvement in the second murder. Ottilia phrased her question carefully.

“What were you promised, Bertha, if you took that message to Molly?”