Mrs Carne the sour-faced housekeeper let us in, as teasy as when we first arrived. She showed us into the room we’d waited in before, and we waited again while she fetched the squire. I didn’t mind all the paintings of woods this time, nor all the wooden things in the room, for I was getting the measure of the place now. I mightn’t like it, but I had seen its tricks, at least. Mrs Haskell had explained things to me.
The squire arrived with his usual bellows and bluster, shouting at us, ‘You have the answer? You’ve come to claim the reward?’
‘We’re making good progress, Sir Vivian,’ Anna said.
He thumped himself into a chair and fixed her with his one good grey eye, an eager smile on his fat, flushed face. ‘You have it, then? Proof of the women’s guilt?’
Anna licked her lips. ‘We’re pursuing some important avenues.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ I said. ‘To ask you about it.’
He sat back and his smile was not so fulsome. ‘How may I be of assistance?’
‘The two women claim they were not at home on the morning Paul Haskell was seen near their cottage,’ Anna said.
‘You have spoken to them?’
‘Of course. To establish if they played a part in Paul’s disappearance—’
‘There’s no “if” about it, Miss Drake. They are guilty.’
‘So you have said, Sir Vivian.’
‘The fiends are lying about not being at home when the boy disappeared.’
‘It would be useful to confirm that,’ Anna said. ‘They say they were walking here, near the house.’
‘Here!’ he bellowed. ‘What nonsense! They came nowhere near the house that day.’
‘I see, and—’
‘The fiends do come here, you understand, to threaten Lady Phoebe. We are plagued by them.’
‘But they didn’t come on Tuesday?’ I said.
‘Correct, Mrs Williams. They did not come here because they were taking the boy. It is all quite clear.’ He spoke as if we were soft in the head.
‘How is Lady Phoebe?’ Anna said.
He studied his huge hands, the fat fingers clutching one another. ‘She cannot rest. Frets so, and will do until those women are gone from here.’
He looked up, his good eye roving between us, the lazy one so fixed, so still. I found myself wondering if the child would be likewise afflicted.
‘It has been worse since you came,’ he said. ‘I was mistaken in introducing you to her. Hourly she asks what you have discovered, if the boy is found. My attempts to reassure her fail for I can find no way to ease her questions.’
‘That’s to be expected, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘She fears for him, like everyone in the woods.’
‘Of course, of course. But my wife is such a fragile soul, and she has wanted her own child for a long time. Knowing that you are here, investigating, she fears your activities will upset things. Force the fiends’ hand.’
‘I can assure you, Sir Vivian, that we are working with tact,’ Anna said.
‘Haste, Miss Drake! That is what should concern you most. I need the women gone.’
‘These things cannot be rushed, but know that we are doing our best.’
‘Our best to find Paul Haskell,’ I added quietly.
He stood and so we were to go, I guessed. We were all but out the front door when the squire said something that took all the colour from Anna’s face.
‘I offered the reward to hasten the removal of the women across the river. If the task should not be completed in good time, I will have no choice but to seek help elsewhere.’
‘You have others offering their services?’ Anna said, trying not to sound like she minded but I knew all too well that she did. She had already counted out the thirty pounds in her head. Had already spent it on our future.
‘Not yet,’ the squire said. ‘But the next person who calls at this door will be considered. Good day to you both.’
And so we were out on our ears.
Before Anna had a chance to worry at these words, I was off.
‘Where are you going, Shilly?’
‘To see about a cat.’
SEVENTEEN
The kitchen window was ajar, to make use of the breeze, I thought, for it was hot in there with the big stove lit and pans all bubbling and steaming.
The girl who’d brought the tea when we first came to the manor house, Lucy, she was in the kitchen working pastry. Her little hands were red and coarsened, and she had flour everywhere, all over the floor and on her sleeves, which she hadn’t rolled up to save from the mess. Her fair hair had half-escaped her cap, as puffy as a dandelion’s head apart from near her face where the puff was gone and it was lank and stuck to her slick skin. By her side was a pie dish with the filling full inside it, smelling rich and good and reminding me of my hunger. Chicken, I thought, and my mouth watered.
Anna caught up with me and I was about to open the door, go in and ask the girl my questions, when I thought it better to wait, to watch through the open window, for her doings were odd. She fussed at her sleeves, looking as if she was going to roll them up, but she didn’t. Only rucked them with her floury hands, making a great mess that made no sense to me. A few times each arm she rucked. Scratched her arms.
Something slipped against my leg and I made a noise. Lucy looked up from her work and saw me, but saw something else too, something that made her pick up her rolling pin and shout, for Pigeon had leapt and forced the window’s catch with his mighty stripedness, and was now on the inside window ledge.
‘Don’t you dare!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t you bleddy dare!’
Pigeon stalked along the ledge towards her. He was no fearful scuttler or a slinker. He was all shoulders, prowl and swagger. I quite loved him, I realised, for his boldness. For him making clear his wants. But if I had been in Lucy’s shoes I wouldn’t have loved him for he would be a devil in the kitchen. He sprang for the table and was within a thick whisker of getting his paw into the untopped pie and flipping out a piece of chicken. But then Anna was rushing through the door. She helped Lucy push Pigeon to the floor and shooed him out – a pair of curses, four clattering heels.
The beast charged out of the kitchen, past me still outside. I feared for my ankles.
‘The door!’ Lucy shouted.
I slipped inside and made it fast behind me. Lucy was quick to shut the window with a thump.
‘You had a near-miss there!’ I said.
‘He’s why I can’t have the door open.’ She mopped the sweat above her lip with a floury wrist and gave herself a white moustache, as if she was an old man, though truly she was only a little younger than me – seventeen, I thought. ‘Window open is risk enough,’ she mumbled. ‘But I’d be fainting without some air coming in.’
I thought she was likely right. The heat of the kitchen pressed against me like a damp sheet. I pulled out a chair to sit and Lucy remembered then that she had two strangers in her kitchen.
‘You wanting Mrs Carne?’ she said.
‘That woman is the last thing we want,’ I said.
Lucy grinned. ‘You’ve met her, then.’
‘We have had the pleasure,’ Anna said.
She told Lucy that we were Miss Drake and Mrs Williams, for that was who we had brought to the kitchen, and said we’d been walking in the woods. She asked if we might have a drink for it was so hot outside. Lucy fetched us both a cup.
‘He’s a tinker, that cat,’ I said, trying to hide the kindliness I felt for him.
‘Isn’t he just!’ Lucy said. ‘I have to have eyes in the back of my head.’ She started working the pastry again and every so often tugged at her sleeves, but tugging hard. Tugging to scratch the skin beneath, I thought.
‘Does he often make off with food?’
‘He tries regular enough. One of these days that cat will find himself in a Pigeon pie.’
I caught sight of a few long, stripy hairs being worked into the pastry but I thought best not to say.
‘What about on Tuesday, around lunchtime?’ I said. ‘Did he get away with anything then?’
Her hands stilled on the pastry and I saw that they were very badly reddened indeed, almost rash-like, braggaty with it. Much more so than ordinary work would make them.
‘How do you know about that?’ she said.
‘We met some fellow walkers in the woods today,’ Anna said. ‘A pair of women. They were quite amused by Pigeon’s antics, told us a story about him making off with a pig’s foot.’
Lucy gave the pastry a vicious prod. ‘That bleddy animal … I got in so much trouble. Mrs Carne said she’d dock my wages the cost.’
‘So it did happen?’ Anna said.
‘Oh yes. Pigeon ate like a lord. But it was a leg of pheasant, not a pig foot. Pig foot wouldn’t have been so bad,’ she said sadly. ‘I seen them furriners when Pigeon took off. They didn’t try and catch him, and I was glad of that, even though it meant the leg was lost.’
‘Why didn’t you want them to catch Pigeon?’ I said.
‘Well, he’d have only scratched them, wouldn’t he, and then I’d have been for it. They’d have turned me into coal, like they did Paul Haskell. That’s what women like that do, isn’t it?’ Lucy picked up the rolling pin like she’d brain someone with it.
‘Do they walk this way often,’ I said, ‘the furrin pair?’
‘I only seen them a few times,’ Lucy said, ‘being stuck in here, but Simon – he’s with the horses – he says he seen the furriners here most days.’
‘And what do they do when they come this way?’ Anna asked. ‘Go down to the road?’
‘They don’t go nowhere. Just come out the trees and then they wait, looking at the house.’
‘Do they come up to the door?’ I said.
‘Not so close as that, and that’s the worst of it. They don’t do nothing when they come. Just stand and look at the door. Even if the weather’s dirty, they stand there. ’Tis a fearful sight. I’d rather they rang the bell.’
‘And this worries the squire?’ Anna said.
Lucy nodded. ‘That’s why Lady Phoebe’s moved into the east wing, to be away from the furriners when they come. She’s to be by herself for she’s needing quiet. None of us servants are to go down there.’
A bell rang somewhere deep within the house and Lucy was all of a flurry. ‘That’s for dinner and the pie not in yet. She’ll have me strung up from the chimney.’
‘Mrs Carne?’ I said.
‘Lady Phoebe.’
‘We’ll leave you to get on,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you for the drink.’
I was opening the door, watching for a striped trap waiting to spring, when I remembered we didn’t know how we were to get to Boscastle, and I made myself ask the way, though fearfulness was creeping up on me, going to that place.
‘’Tis easy enough,’ Lucy said. She laid the pastry across the top of the pie and cut away the hanging-over bits quick as you like. ‘The road goes straight there. Only a little more than two miles. It’s a good road, too. And on a day like this, be quite lovely, I should think, to be going down to the sea.’ She sighed and scratched her arm, but when she caught me watching she stopped, quicker than she’d cut the pastry. ‘When you reach the road you must go right,’ she said. ‘That’s the way to Boscastle. Don’t pass the old mill. That way is to Bossiney.’
We thanked her and left her to the kitchen and the worry of the dinner being ready. I’d done enough of that in my few short years. It was good to be free of cooking and cleaning for other people, even though I’d changed them for sometimes darker things. Uncertain things. Missing children and blinded women.
We passed Pigeon as we walked away from the house. He was sitting on the low wall that marked the little courtyard, facing the kitchen. His tail hung down behind him and he swished it to and fro, slow and steady as he planned his next attack. I scratched him behind one of his great big ears, and he leant into my touch. Lovely beast, Pigeon was.
‘Did you forget that Miss Franks said it was a game bird’s leg that Pigeon took?’ I asked Anna.
‘No, it was a test. If we’d given Lucy all the information we were seeking, we might have led her in her answer. Because she corrected me, the two accounts are more likely to each confirm the other.’
‘But the squire and Lucy, they say different about Miss Franks and Mathilda being here on Tuesday. Of the two of them, is it the squire lying?’
‘“Lying” is too strong a word,’ Anna said. ‘What’s more likely is he simply didn’t chance to see Mathilda and Miss Franks and so he believes they weren’t here, because that tallies with what he thinks happened – that they were across the river taking Paul Haskell.’
Pigeon jumped from the wall and ambled back to the kitchen window.
‘But if we believe Lucy,’ I said, watching the beast try to force the window open with his thick paw, ‘then Mathilda and Miss Franks were away from home on Tuesday.’
‘It would seem so. To reach here by noon, they would have been on their way by ten when Simon Proctor saw Paul near the cottage. Boscastle might still hold some answers, though. We need to know more about their past to make sense of what they’re doing here now. I’m sure that’s connected to Paul Haskell’s disappearance.’
‘So, if we learn more about the women, it’ll help us find Paul?’
‘I hope so. Time is running out for him.’
The road came in sight, where we’d left the coach when we arrived. That was two days previous, and though we had done a great deal of thinking and asking of questions, we were still without a name for who had taken Paul, and no trace of the boy himself.
On the far side of the road were more wretched trees but they were not so thickety there, and I knew that beyond them was the sea. To our left was the bridge we had crossed on our way to Trethevy, and near it the mill Lucy had talked of. I hadn’t seen that from the coach for by the time we passed it the trees had appeared and made me fearful.
‘Is that David Tonkin’s mill?’ I said. ‘Where he does the dyeing of cloth?’
‘He said that was upstream, didn’t he? No, that must be where Mrs Haskell was burnt all those years ago.’
I squinted but couldn’t see the state the mill was in. It still had something of a roof and at least two walls. There were brambles up the side but there were brambles up the side of everything in the woods. They were just as needed as stones in a wall, far as I could see.
‘Come on, Shilly!’ Anna called, setting off along the road at a fair pace. ‘We don’t have time for rummaging about in mills.’
‘What about Lucy, then? Do we have time to think of her?’
‘What about her?’
‘Her scratching. Surely you saw it.’
‘She wasn’t comfortable in her own skin, I’ll grant you. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.’
‘I’m just saying my thinking out loud. You do it often enough, Anna. Why can’t I?’
‘Ah, but my thinking aloud is relevant to the matter at hand, not idle speculation.’
‘Lucy’s scratching might be important,’ I said.
‘I hardly think a scullery maid having lice is significant to finding Paul Haskell.’
‘You can’t know that, not yet. We don’t know everything, do we? We don’t know how one thing might have a bearing on another.’
‘I think the only bearing Lucy’s lice have on anything is whether we catch them. She probably got them from Pigeon. They spend enough time together.’
I gave up arguing. There was nothing to be gained. I was growing used to her stubbornness, though that didn’t mean I liked it.
The road was twisty and turny but without hills, at least. The sun was warm and I didn’t want to be climbing. The trees on our left thinned out then thinned away and the sea was all at once before me. I laughed in surprise that it should creep up on me like that, such a huge thing, so fine-looking. There all the time, and yet I was only now coming to know it.
E
IGHTEEN
It was better for me to walk without talking, to try and forget where we were going. But the sea wouldn’t let me forget. Wouldn’t leave me alone. Its sounds reached me on the warm air, and I found that they were good. The sounds were of rolling, the water strange breathing and sighing, and the calls of birds cutting through. The sea’s birds were not like those of the woods. The sea’s birds were white, or maybe white-grey. They flew near enough for me to see their orange beaks and hear their squawks. I had seen them once or twice when I had lived on the moor. They were blown in by bad weather.
The only thing blowing in on that fine day was the smoke of Anna’s pipe. It drifted around me in the warm air. Just as Anna herself was around me, there and yet not there. For she was still a stranger. The sun caught my ring, Mrs Williams’s wedding ring that she had given me, made it wink. That decided me.
‘Now that we are working together,’ I said.
‘No good ever comes of such statements from you, Shilly.’
‘We should know more of each other. What of your family?’ The question made her cough with surprise so I knew I was on to a good line of thinking.
‘My family? I don’t see that’s important to the here and now.’
‘It’s important in knowing who you are. You know about my family – my mother dead before I went to work on the farm. My father signing me into farm service to save himself from feeding me. Him drinking.’
‘Him drinking?’
‘And my sister. Somewhere. She left years before my mother died. Now, your turn.’
She drew deeply on her pipe. ‘I have no family.’
‘You mean, none living?’
‘I mean none at all – living or dead.’
I stopped walking. ‘Why must you do this?’
‘Shilly, I—’
‘Why must you lie all the time? Am I not deserving of some truth from you? After all that we have seen together, the promise you made on the moor that we should be equals, that we should work together. That means we must know each other, Anna. You can’t ask me to be in those wretched woods, seeing all the terrors—’
The Magpie Tree Page 10