‘It’s no’ really like that, miss,’ he said, and although he refused to elaborate, something he had let slip before came back to me.
‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that you got into the house at night, even though you hate to be alone, because the boys tease you? Or are cruel to you somehow? You said the girls and the girls alone were the kind ones.’
‘I d’ae want to get anyone into trouble,’ Mattie said and he put on a spurt of pace – we were recrossing the fields towards the cottages again – and left me behind him.
‘But if someone is being mean to you, surely he deserves no loyalty,’ I said, puffing a little as I caught up.
‘Naeb’dy’s being anything,’ he insisted. ‘They do what they want and I just have to lump it. Same as ever, same as anywhere.’
Slowly, very deliberately, I put down my basket and stood with my feet planted well apart and my arms folded in front of me.
‘I am not moving until you tell me the rest,’ I said in the coldest voice anyone with a heart could turn on this child. It was a considerable effort too, because I wanted to clap my hands and click my heels at the discovery that there was a ‘rest’, that Mattie’s tale had not run out into sand after all. ‘I’m quite willing to stand here until Mr Osborne and your mother come to see what’s happened to us.’
‘My mammy’ll skin me alive,’ said Mattie.
‘I know. I’ll help her.’
He gave a huge sigh and started walking again.
‘I really, really hate being on my own in the dark,’ he said again. ‘And John and Harry and Stanley know it. But . . . they go out, miss. They go out at night, all three of them, and I’m on my own, and that’s why I go to the servants’ hall and play the piano. Because even though I’m on my own in the room, there’s Eldry and Millie underneath – and Maggie too before she left – and Mr Faulds through the wall, and Mrs Hepburn and Clara and Phyllis and Miss Abbott and it’s better than the carriage house by a long chalk, I can tell you.’
‘And where, pray, do the three of them go?’ I said. ‘Do you know? Can you tell me?’
‘The three of them d’ae go anywhere,’ Mattie said. ‘John and Harry go to the Free Gardeners’ or else to this club that Harry knows that serves drink after time, except on Monday night it was shutting at midnight cos it’s that kind of club but they went to watch the start of the strike, with the fireworks and all the speakers and the singing and they didn’t get back until all hours. And Stanley went out too. But he always goes on his own.’
‘So why did you stay put?’ I said, remembering this. ‘You assured me that you weren’t in the house that night.’
‘I wasnae,’ Mattie said. ‘I was looking out the windae to see if it was safe to come out, but it wasnae so I just had to bide where I was and I fell asleep in the end.’
‘What do you mean, “safe”?’ I said.
‘Well, Stanley,’ Mattie said. ‘Stanley didn’t get out of the way, miss, if you must know. He was in the back garden in the way of me getting in the basement door. He’s no’ usually.’
‘But what on earth do you mean?’ I said. ‘What was he doing? What does he usually do?’
‘Nae harm,’ said Mattie. ‘No’ really. He looks in at the windaes, miss. He likes to look in.’
‘What windows?’ I said, although I could guess already.
‘Well, Clara and Phyllis’s,’ said Mattie, ‘except they’re fly to him and they stop up all the wee holes in the shutters wi’ twists of paper. And he used to look in at Miss Abbott sometimes and I’ve even seen him taking a wee peek at Mrs Hepburn, but mostly he goes over the garden wall, to the other houses, where the maids d’ae ken him and maybe don’t shut their curtains so careful. But that night he didnae go over the wall. Like I said, he stayed in the garden at Number 31.’
‘Peering in?’ I said. ‘Since there was someone new to peer in at?’
Mattie bit his lip and nodded and I felt a flood of revulsion pass through me.
‘A peering tom?’ I said. Mattie flushed again. ‘And you kept it a secret?’
‘He held it over me, miss. About how I went out too, on account of how sometimes he was back before me.’
‘And the times he was back before you,’ I said, speaking slowly as I thought it through, ‘he might well have watched for you and he might very well have seen you coming out and hiding the key and—’
‘No,’ said Mattie. ‘I was careful. And if Stanley had known he would have used it himself, miss. That’s what he’s like. If he’d been able to get into the house he’d never stick at windaes – he’d have been inside peeping through keyholes instead. And he’d have hinted. He cannae stop himself hinting.’
‘Yes, hinting is Stanley’s favourite pastime,’ I said, unable to keep my lip from curling.
‘Aye,’ said Mattie, quietly. ‘And he’s hinted . . . I mean, he’s let on . . . Honest, miss, I d’ae ken nothin’ about that night but Stanley does. He tellt me.’
‘Oh, Mattie!’ I said and his head drooped like a wilting flower.
‘I didnae want to get him in bother,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘And it wasnae much anyway. It’s was jist that he said . . . it was when you were talking to us about how somebody must have let somebody in. Remember, miss? When you said that? Stanley was grinning like a cat and he said to me – really quiet – that you were wrong. That’s all – he jist said you were wrong.’
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I knew someone must have seen something. I knew it. Well, let’s see Stanley getting away with “hinting” to the superintendent, eh? He’ll crack like a nut.’
‘But . . . you dinnae think Stanley killed him, miss?’ Mattie said. We had reached the cottages again and he rested his basket on the low garden wall and turned a troubled face to me
I took a long moment and then answered only very grudgingly: ‘No. He had no apparent motive, he doesn’t have the stomach for it, and if he were guilty he’d keep his silly mouth shut. The teasing and hinting and hugging himself might be infuriating for the rest of us, Mattie, but it’s the stamp of innocence for Stanley. Now, come on. Let’s go in.’
Alec and I were invited to share the MacGibneys’ luncheon – bread, margarine and potatoes fried in yesterday’s bacon pan – and, astonishingly enough, after my morning of tramping the fields and struggling in the gooseberry bushes, I was able to make a good show of repaying them with a clean plate. Nanny Palmer would have been proud of me.
Mattie’s father had come home for his dinner and when it was eaten he, John and Grandad all lit their pipes and Alec joined them. In such a small room with such a low ceiling and with only one very little window – and that fastened tight – I should have been glad to leave the table and join Mattie’s mother at the sink, but she showed me with a glare that I was to keep away. (I supposed she did not foresee much skill with a dish-mop and did not want to risk handing her good plates to me to dry either, not in a room with a stone floor.) I should have been even gladder to leave straight away and return to Heriot Row to furnish Mr Hardy with my little bit of news – a way forward at last in all of this tangle – but we could not drag Mattie from his mother so early in the day.
‘My, that’s grand-smelling baccy,’ said Mr MacGibney Sr when Alec had got his pipe going well.
‘I like it,’ Alec said. ‘I wish I’d thought of bringing some more.’ All three generations of men shook their heads in unison.
‘You couldn’t bring tobacco on a Co-op chit,’ said John, ‘nor spirits neither. You’d need a licence for them.’
‘I meant as a gift,’ Alec said, but the head-shaking went on.
‘Cannae be too careful about “gifts”, time like this,’ said Mattie’s father, and I remembered what Alec had said about giving money to the men on the blockade.
‘Cannae believe we’ve come to this,’ said the old man. ‘We won that war for them. Broke our backs on fifteen-hour shifts we did and kept this country going. And now look what they’re at! Importing German coal.
German! Reparations, they say. Well, I’ve got a different name for it.’
‘Wheesht, Faither,’ said Mrs MacGibney. ‘Dinnae upset yourself.’
‘I dinnae care for me,’ said her father. ‘But what about the young lads, eh?’
‘Me and Mattie are no’ exactly carrying the torch,’ said John.
His father did not look at him, but spoke very firmly.
‘You might be on the surface now, lad, but you’re still a miner. You’ve nothing to be shamed for.’ There was just the slightest emphasis but it was enough to make Mattie’s head drop low.
There was a long silence. The MacGibneys were sunk in gloom, Alec was smoking steadily and looking sympathetic, but I writhed. My early training at tea parties, my instruction at finishing school, my two decades of adult life: all had instilled in me a horror of silence in any social setting.
‘The German element is shocking,’ I said. ‘Talk about insult to injury. But . . .’
Alec took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me. All the MacGibneys looked towards me too.
‘But what?’ said John.
‘But,’ I said, swallowing hard, ‘if their coal is cheaper than ours then ours has to come down too and everyone must just pull their belts in.’ I was quoting Hugh to a certain extent, but this part of his philosophy had always seemed above argument to me. Mrs MacGibney spoke up from the sink, without turning.
‘Everyone?’ she said. ‘You think Old Man Mair’s pulling his belt in to live off two pounds a week? You think if he said no he’d be down to five shillings strike pay?’
‘Two pounds?’ I said. ‘Two pounds a week? But it says in the papers . . .’
Now she did turn to look at me and she was almost laughing.
‘What papers have you been reading then?’ she said. ‘Tatler, is it?’
All the men laughed out loud at that. I did not mind; at least we were talking again.
‘You’re from another world, hen,’ said Grandad. ‘You need a wee lesson.’
Mattie and John groaned.
‘Oh, here we go,’ said their father.
The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and gestured to where his grandsons were sitting. ‘Turn they chairs round and show the lassie, boys.’ Mattie and John rolled their eyes but stood up. John leaned against the wall – his crutch was out of reach – while Mattie set the two chairs close by each other, sideways on to Alec and me. ‘See that here,’ said Grandad, pointing again, at the chair legs. ‘Could you fit yourself through there, hen?’
I looked at the gap between the front and back legs, below the seats, wondering where this parlour game might be leading to.
‘I daresay,’ I said. ‘It would be a bit of a squeeze, but I think so.’
‘Try it for a mile and a half,’ Grandad thundered, ‘pitch black but for a candle on your helmet and sweat running off you with the heat. Not a stitch on your body and scraped red with the rock and when you get to the end where you left off, there you’ve seven hours chipping out wee lumps wi’ a hammer and pushing them past you to your laddie to drag to the shaft for you and then a mile and a half back again and the same again the next day and the next day and—’
‘Dinnae upset yourself, Faither,’ said Mrs MacGibney again, ‘and let they boys sit back doon.’
‘I always imagined caves,’ I said, and the smiles showed me that I was not the first to have said so. ‘And was that what it was like when the roof collapsed on you two?’ I said to Mattie and John.
‘Not so bad,’ said John. ‘That tunnel was high enough to sit up in.’
I could think of no adequate response to this, and indeed spent the rest of the visit in near silence. The others talked until shortly after four o’clock, when Mattie’s mother asked him when he had to be getting back again. We could have stayed longer – Mattie certainly could have – but we could not in conscience take another meal from the woman so I did not demur, and Alec and I left Mattie to his goodbyes. (I noticed Alec’s baccy pouch tucked discreetly down beside the chair where he had been sitting.)
There was just one more vignette of pithead life for us to be treated to, unexpected, unlooked for and – whatever Alec’s frame of mind might have been after the hours in the little cottage kitchen – quite unnecessary to me. As we were making our careful way over the ash lane which led away to the road, with a wave for Mattie’s father who was back at the picket now, we heard the sound of another engine and a large motorcar of a type I could not name came along the lane towards us. It was driven by a chauffeur in uniform who drew up in front of us blocking our path. Almost before the motorcar had halted one of the back doors opened and a bulky man in a striped suit stepped down. I felt Mattie freeze at my side.
‘Are you the one that’s been driving in and out of here all day?’ said the man, striding towards the car and treating Alec to a glare. He caught sight of Bunty and Millie and stopped in his tacks. ‘Dogs?’ he said. ‘Dogs, is it now? Who the hell are you? Who’s that in there with you?’
He had arrived at our side now and was looking at us with angry puzzlement. Mattie seemed to puzzle him more than anything.
‘You’re not from the union,’ he said to Alec, ‘driving around with women and children. Who are you?’
‘I can’t see that it’s any of your business,’ replied Alec. ‘Who are you? You start and I’ll see if I feel like joining in.’ Beside me, Mattie was shaking.
‘I? I?’ said the man. ‘I’m the boss and I’m not going to be spoken to that way by some bloody do-gooder coming causing mischief on private land. Now get out of it before I call the police on you.’
‘Ah, Mr Mair, the manager,’ said Alec, making it sound as though he were playing Happy Families. ‘My name is Alec Osborne and I am neither a union representative nor a do-gooder. So we have that much in common, sir, but nothing else. I, unlike you, am a friend of the MacGibneys and have been visiting them in their time of need, as friends do.’
‘MacGibneys?’ said the man. ‘Matt MacGibney and those useless sons of his?’ Mattie let out a whimper, and I put my arm around him. ‘Five of them living in the lap of comfort in a good cottage and only one of them doing a man’s work for it. You have strange taste in friends, whoever you are. Now get off this land.’
As Alec stared back at him, breathing like a bull and struggling for a response, help came from the most unlikely quarter. Bunty – quite out of character and driven by who knew what noxious cocktail of terror, shock and cold fury rising from the three human occupants of the car – suddenly leapt, baying, for the open window and made a creditable attempt to take Mr Mair by his fleshy neck, snarling like a hound of hell. Alec stamped on the accelerator and got us away before she could actually connect with him, which was just as well, and Mattie, amazingly enough, was not further petrified by this latest turn but was unaccountably delighted, whooping and clapping and lunging over the front seat to hug Bunty hard.
‘My God,’ said Alec, laughing as well once he had recovered himself. ‘Dandy, what on earth? Has she ever done that before?’
‘Never!’ I squeaked, feeling weak from the parade of extreme emotions. ‘Whoever heard of an attack Dalmatian? Oh, why couldn’t Hugh have been here to see it? He’ll never believe me!’
Mattie had stopped laughing and was now hugging Millie, who had pushed her head in between him and Bunty when she felt that her friend had hogged the limelight for long enough.
‘Who’s Hugh?’ he said. ‘And why did you call Miss Rossiter Dandy, Mr Osborne?’
Thankfully, though, there was too much else going on for him to pursue such points, and after just one panicked glance between Alec and me in the driving mirror the questions sank without reply.
15
Back at Heriot Row, when we slithered out of a six-inch opening to prevent Bunty from surging out after us (and it was excruciating to leave her without saying goodbye, especially after such heroics), there was a sharp rap above. I saw Superintendent Hardy standing in the drawing-room window b
eckoning to me and without so much as going to my room to take my hat off, I sprinted up there with Alec behind me.
Hardy met us on the landing and gestured into the library.
‘I have something to tell you,’ I began as soon as the door was shut behind us.
‘You shall have to wait your turn,’ he said. ‘I have a great deal to tell you. Good solid results. I’ve had two men trying to trace Miss Abbott and Maggie all day.’
‘Oh, please tell me you’ve found them,’ I said, and then as he hesitated I realised that there is something worse than being missing and I hoped that he had not found them, that they had run off and were living high on the hog together somewhere.
‘I hope not,’ said Hardy, confirming my fears. ‘But let me tell you in an orderly fashion. Maggie’s family haven’t missed her yet, or at least they hadn’t until a police sergeant rolled up to tell them she wasn’t where she should be. Her mother said she usually gets a letter on Wednesdays but thought nothing of it, with the new position and the strike too. The bad news, the very bad news, is that the body of a young girl was found drowned off the Brigs of Fidra on Monday.’
‘The what?’ said Alec.
‘On the road to Berwick,’ said Superintendent Hardy. ‘A well-nourished and healthy young girl dressed in a manner suitable to a servant, and no one has come forward to claim her as their own. We’re taking Maggie’s father and brother down there just as soon as we can organise a car.’ He shook himself all over like a dog in the rain. ‘I’m glad it’s not me going along with them,’ he said.
‘And Miss Abbott?’
‘Now, Miss Abbott was missed,’ said Hardy. ‘Her sister, a Mrs Light, of Trinity, has been trying to find her since shortly after she disappeared in April. She sent several letters to this house but got no reply.’
‘Lollie never mentioned any of them,’ I said.
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 26