by Jane Steen
In the end, Odelia stayed for almost two weeks—and if her purpose was to amuse and divert me, she certainly succeeded. In truth, I enjoyed having her to myself at Whitcombe. Her single-minded pursuit of art and her reluctance to appear downstairs until most of the morning was gone meant I had sufficient time to myself to catch up with my correspondence and spend time with Mrs. Eason, going over housekeeping matters. In the afternoons, she was a most congenial companion on walks, during which I would have plenty of time to enjoy the view or take Scotty for a stroll while Odelia made sketches of what she called “valuable background material.” O was a good horsewoman, so we rode out frequently to enjoy the fine early November weather. She had her dressmaker make us new, very smart riding habits in a fine black wool she’d ordered from London.
The weather deteriorated two days before O left and probably hastened her departure. I always found London rain the most bleak and depressing kind of weather, but O declared there was nothing worse than staring out of rain-streaked windows into thick mist as the clouds brushed the top of Whitcombe Hill.
The day after O left, the rain dried up, although the sky was still a solid mass of sulky gray cloud. I felt very much at a loose end, and by three o’clock in the afternoon I’d made up my mind to pay Farmer Hatherall that long-delayed visit. If he were out in the fields, I could talk to Susan and see how she was. It was my duty now that Justin was not here.
Matters were made easier—or possibly more pressing—by the fact that Farmer Hatherall had touched his hat to me in church the previous Sunday and spoken a few polite words of condolence as he passed by my pew. I reminded myself I had no reason to dislike him. He was known to be an intelligent, upstanding man, a teetotaler, and was called “Mr. Hatherall” by the lower classes in deference to his position as churchwarden. Justin had thought highly of him and had often counted as a blessing that he had such a hardworking, honest tenant.
I took the long way around for Sandy’s sake and once more agreed with Mank that he should take half an hour to gallop Puck while I was at Dene Farm. His return would give me a good excuse to leave.
I passed the spot Fortier had shown me with just a slight quickening of my heartbeat. Ned was right, wasn’t he? I shouldn’t clutch at straws. I merely shook my head over the devastation to the riverbank caused by the removal of the great willow that now lay a hundred yards back from the path, thick gouges in the turf evidence of the effort it had taken to drag it there. In the spring, I would have to ensure the riverbank was properly repaired.
Dene Farm was a large square house built of solid red brick. It had the tiled upper half so characteristic of our part of Sussex, decorated with two rows of round-cut tiles. The front door was surrounded by wooden fretwork, freshly painted white. The house had a well-kept look of prosperity and cleanliness, almost gentility with its carefully trimmed hedges, rose garden, and neat fenced kitchen garden to one side. Behind the house, I could hear the clucking of chickens.
The servant who answered the door knew me, as most people did. She greeted me cheerfully. Behind her, I saw the tall form of Farmer Hatherall loom into the narrow hallway.
“I’m sorry to descend on you like this.” I checked the state of my boots, wiping them well before walking into the house. The mingled scents of soap and stew greeted me from the open door of the kitchen. I could hear the sound of someone vigorously operating a butter churn.
“It’s no trouble, m’lady.” Farmer Hatherall was in shirtsleeves but quickly removed his jacket from a hook in the hallway and donned it before ushering me into his parlor. “There’s not so much to do with the ewes not spread around the fields. It’s hard to believe I didn’t have Sir Justin to oversee the breeding with me this year, but we managed.”
“I’m sure you did.” I sat down in a well-stuffed armchair. The parlor was a pleasant room, decorated with large samplers and a bright painting of flowers. A plain wooden cross hung from a nail near the door.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier to talk to you about the farm,” I said.
“Lord Broadmere and his man of business have already done that.” He spoke well, with a slight burr but with precision in his speech.
“Yes, I suppose they have.” I felt a twinge of annoyance, but of course I wouldn’t show it.
“That Mr. Brandrick knows almost as much as Sir Justin did about the care and breeding of sheep. Of course, they’ve more land than we have, but more of it’s rough grazing, and their ewes don’t get as fat as ours. The grass in the river bottoms makes the meat sweet.”
“I’ve heard Sir Justin say that a thousand times.” I smiled. What had started as a hobby of Justin’s on the slopes of Whitcombe Hill, which belonged to the house and not the farm, had long before our marriage become a consuming passion for both men. The sheep, in fact, were nearly all Justin’s, and “tenant” was not really the right word for Farmer Hatherall. A complicated arrangement existed whereby he shared in the profits of the meat sales in a carefully calculated proportion, taking into account their respective acreages and the number of sheep he either owned or managed for Justin. They had been so successful that Justin had been trying to buy some more land so he could increase the herd.
“You’ll take some tea, m’lady? Ruby!” He shouted into the hallway, and the servant appeared to tell him the kettle was already halfway to the boil.
“I’m grateful for your visit,” he said as he reseated himself. “It shows you care about how we go on now that Sir Justin’s gone.”
“And how do you go on?” I asked. “Is Susan well? And Maggie?”
“Aye, Maggie’s well.” A smile creased the farmer’s face. He was quite pleasing to look at, a bit like a German burgher, tall and well-built, with wavy light brown hair and intelligent eyes. A heavy fringe of whiskers that met under his chin disguised the fact that his face was a little too long to be really handsome.
“She married a dairy farmer, didn’t she?”
“That’s right. Out at Pincham. He owns his bit of land.”
I could hear a faint bitterness in the farmer’s voice. Justin had often told me Farmer Hatherall had the tiniest chip on his shoulder about being a tenant farmer rather than a landowner despite his high standing in the community. There was nothing for him to be ashamed of—Dene Farm was an excellent concern, and working alongside Justin had ensured the Hatheralls were better off than most tenant farmers in the vicinity. He could easily have made a good second marriage, but Justin said he seemed to find most of the suitable women beneath him.
“Do they have children?”
“Aye, three little girls.” A light came into his eyes as he said the words.
“And Susan? I haven’t seen her for so long.”
I held my breath, looking into the farmer’s face. He stared back into mine, seemingly reading my expression, and sighed.
“You’ve heard, then.”
“Yes. From Monsieur Fortier, the French physician. He explained that Susan became ill and that she’d told the inquest why. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”
He shook his head. “I can take care of her, thank you, m’lady. I’ll not cast her out. Maggie will take the babe and rear it as her own. Of course, the whole town will hear in the end, and probably every village for a league around, but we must make the best of it.”
“When will the child be born?”
“Sometime around the Annunciation.”
That was the end of March, and a most unfortunate allusion to the Virgin Birth. Susan must be four months along. I made an appropriate noise of sympathy for the father of a wayward girl. A kind father, moreover, who would not ban his daughter from his house and force her into the workhouse as so many would.
“I’d like to see Susan before I leave,” I told him. “I haven’t set eyes on her for years. She doesn’t come to church.”
His face darkened. “Susan walks to Pincham of a Sunday morning to join her sister at the church there. That started after—well, after she was no lon
ger welcome at Hyrst. We were worried the dowager countess would take against her again.”
“Ah.” Of course, my mother had attended services until about two years ago. “You should have let us know. We would have ensured that Lady Broadmere didn’t attend the same service as Susan.” I felt a little ashamed that none of us had thought of that particular difficulty.
“It’s been a good way for Susan to stay close to her sister, m’lady. She still needed a bit of mothering, you see. I think that’s what she was looking for at Hyrst, even though I told her it was presumptuous to think such a thing where the gentry were concerned. Her mother died giving birth to her, as I’m sure you know. Before that, two stillborn sons and one who only lived six months. It’s not surprising my children should cling to one another a little, even now that Maggie’s a wife and mother. It’s a shame her husband won’t have Susan to stay with them, but a man is lord in his own household.”
We fell silent as Ruby brought in the tea, pouring for us both and sparing me the social convention of presiding over the teapot. I drank the tea with pleasure—it was strong but good, and riding always made me thirsty. After a few minutes of small talk, I drew a deep breath.
“This may seem strange,” I began, “but I have a strong desire to know more about the circumstances of my husband’s death. I’ve been told so very little, you see.”
I had rehearsed this speech in my mind on the way to the farm. Reluctant as I was to let Fortier’s interfering ways perturb me, I felt I owed it to Justin to at least settle the doubt the Frenchman had raised in my mind.
“I know my brother and brother-in-law—Lord Broadmere and Sir Edward Freestone, that is—wish to protect my feelings,” I went on. “But the less I know, the more I listen to speculation. For example, I’ve heard that a question was raised at the inquest of my husband’s death not being entirely accidental. That it was suggested—well, not to put too fine a point on it, that he was pushed into the river or even held under the water. Could such a thing possibly be true?”
The farmer’s honest brow wrinkled in concern, his face suffusing with indignant color. “How could you have come to hear such a terrible thing?”
He leaned forward, and for a moment I thought he was going to pat my knee. “It’s quite right that a lady such as yourself should be protected from nasty, wicked gossip like that. With your delicate upbringing and all.”
Hang my delicate upbringing, I thought. I hoped he wouldn’t refuse to talk altogether on the pretext of sparing my feelings. I essayed a tremulous smile.
“Were there—very nasty details? Being kept in the dark is quite giving me nightmares. Please tell me everything you can. You may wish to spare me, but I beseech you not to. Help put my mind at rest.”
His face, on which thunder was gathering, suddenly cleared.
“You want to know these things so you can be reassured Sir Justin’s death was an accident?”
I put my cup and saucer down carefully, delivering my words in a loud whisper. “I simply want to feel my husband is at peace.”
“He is in Christ’s rest, I could swear to that.” The expression on the man’s face was strange; envious, perhaps, or sad or beseeching. I couldn’t read it. After a moment, he spoke again.
“You know I found Sir Justin’s body?”
“Sir Edward told me that.”
“It was the horse that alerted me.” He nodded in the direction of the front of the house. “Sir Justin’s horse, Puck. I was just on my way out of the house—Sir Justin had said he’d knock on my door, but he was late—and I saw the blessed horse, a-wandering and stretching his neck over my side gate, trying to get at the bit of greens I still had growing in a half barrel. So of course I started to wonder, and my first thought was to go to River Bottom. We were due to start separating out the skinny ewes, to graze them for a bit in Fat Quarter before putting the ram to them, and I knew Sir Justin’s habits. He always rode round by the river path, making sure all was well.”
I nodded. Justin spent hours in the fields on Puck, gazing at his much-loved sheep and setting small matters to rights.
Farmer Hatherall gazed out of the window for a moment. “I ran to get the horse quick before it ate my greens, but I didn’t feel overly alarmed. I knew it to have a mischievous streak, that animal. So I took it with me and walked along the path. There was a bit of mist in River Bottom, as there sometimes is just after sunrise, but it was going to be a fine day.”
“How long did you search for him?” I knew what he meant about the mist. Autumn mornings could sometimes present a view from Whitcombe House that looked like a bowl of smoke as the mist rose from damp fields.
“Twenty minutes, maybe more. I tied Puck to a gate and walked the path. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t see Sir Justin—until I saw him, that is.”
“In the water.” It gave me a strange feeling to say such a thing.
“Aye.” He nodded, sympathy on his face. “I almost missed him. Those brown tweeds of his sort of blended in, y’see, and he was all meshed up in the branches of that willow. I’d been waiting on Ted up at Twin Oasts to loan me his plow team and chains to get that blamed thing out. We’d been trying ever since the storm that felled it in September, but it was too big to manage without a proper team.”
“And Sir Justin was dead when you found him?” Of course he had been, but I wanted to hear the story.
“Most certainly dead, God rest him.” The farmer shook his head regretfully. “I was more or less certain when I saw him, but I jumped right in to make sure. Didn’t even think to take off my coat or shoes.”
“That was good of you.”
“Foolish of me, more like. I could have drowned too. But I didn’t think, m’lady. I was in the water up to my chest before I knew what I was about.”
“So you could stand?”
“Aye, that bit’s not too deep, as it turned out. Not that it was easy to get to where Sir Justin was, but I managed. They do say fright and excitement give a man strength he doesn’t usually have. I was that intent on getting him free of the willow and seeing if there was any hope. I got his face above water, and I—do you really want to hear this, m’lady?”
“I do.” I didn’t, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t shirk my duty.
“Well, I could see in a moment that life was well extinct, as the coroner said.” He hesitated, then plunged on. “His eyes and mouth were open.”
The tea I’d drunk sloshed uneasily in my stomach. I could have cheerfully slaughtered Fortier and his theories at that moment. I nodded all the same.
“I understand. Thank you for trying to get him out.”
“I thought I’d be able to get him onto the bank at least. But I soon realized I didn’t have a hope working on my own. The men who were supposed to be helping with the sheep were walking from Pincham and wouldn’t be there for a while. Sir Justin wasn’t a heavy man, but he was wearing tweeds, and they were sodden. I pushed and pulled and cursed for a while—got myself wet from head to toe and my hands all scratched up—and then I had the sense to start yelling for help, and Susan heard me.”
“She couldn’t be of much assistance, surely?”
“No more she could be, m’lady, and the fool girl’s first thought was to run up the path to see if the Pincham men were coming. All that did was make her sick, what with the baby and all. I was up to my calves in mud by that time and shivering with the cold, and I never yelled at her so hard in my life. Then she did the sensible thing and ran to the bridge, knowing Dan Smallie and his sons were living in the old ferry keeper’s cottage. Of course there were drays and suchlike already on the road, so we soon had all the help we needed.”
“I’m glad you were saved.” I gave him a half smile, my mind on Fortier’s theory. “How do you think Sir Justin got into the river in the first place?”
“Blessed if I know.” He frowned, looking out of his window once more. From this low down on the hillside, you couldn’t see much of the river, just a line of darker g
reen where the brambles grew along its banks. From Whitcombe, high above, the river was a limpid greenish-brown ribbon of water, spangled with the reflections of the sky as its surface rippled gently.
“I’ve seen him nearly go in once or twice before,” he said eventually. “There’s bits where the bank slumps, see.” He held up a hand at an angle to indicate a slope. “The sheep go down there to drink or find different grass or do whatever gets into their daft heads. I’ve told him before, just leave ’em be and most times they find their way up again. They’ve got four legs, after all, and know how to use ’em.” He snorted briefly.
“But that day a ram went in.”
“Aye, from Huck Bottom.”
“That’s on the other side of the river, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “We’d moved some younger rams there the day before since we were moving the ewes away from Willow Half. Seems one fool animal decided a field full of ewes was worth risking his life for. Found he couldn’t swim as well as he wanted to.”
“And Sir Justin decided the ram was worth risking his life for.”
He shrugged. “There’s no way of telling. Perhaps he slipped and fell, not seeing his way in the mist.”
“So you don’t believe in the notion of an assailant?”
His mouth turned down in derision. “Sir Justin had no enemies, as I’m sure your ladyship knows. No quarrel with anyone that I know of. If it weren’t uncharitable, I’d have a thing or two to say about those who spread wicked lies—”
He stopped short, listened for a moment, then called out. “I can hear you there, Susan.”
Curiosity twisted me around in my chair as the door opened. It was indeed Susan, but the years had erased the fairy child of my memories.