Page 55 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘Sit down, Martha dear,’ he said, ‘and pour the tea. How do you like it, Miss Hawkins?’

‘Strong,’ said Rose, still feeling uncertain. But the scones smelt delicious, and looked perfect, neat and round with shiny brown tops, and she felt a growl of hunger – it was a long time since dinner. Martha seemed as meek as a sheep now, and you wouldn’t know from looking at her that she’d ever been otherwise. But if she could turn that quickly she could turn the other way as well, and Rose was wary.

Michael Woodrow seemed to know that, picked up the plate and offered it to her. ‘Have a scone. You must be hungry. It’s so nice of you to come and see us. A little tea party makes a nice change to routine, don’t you think? Jam with your scone? Martha’s own bramble jam.’

‘Picked ’em myself last back end,’ Martha said, her eyes on her plate. ‘It were a good crop.’

Rose tried the scone, and it was delicious. She risked looking at Martha. ‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘Nice scone, nice jam.’

The atmosphere seemed to relax. Martha didn’t smile, but her shoulders went down.

‘Tell me about your brothers,’ Michael said. ‘Older or younger?’

‘Both younger,’ Rose said. ‘I had to be mother to ’em when I was a girl. Till they went out in the world.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘One’s in the navy and one’s in the army. That way they get their food and lodging. My dad always said—’ She stopped, wary of being the only one to talk.

‘Yes?’ he encouraged.

‘Get a job where your feet are under the table,’ she concluded. ‘That’s why I went into service.’

‘Yes, that’s wise,’ he said. ‘When I went to work for Lord Denham, a cottage came with the job. And now there’s this house.’

‘D’you like it here?’ Rose asked, finishing the scone.

Michael offered the plate again with admirable promptness. ‘The house, or the job? I like both. Martha loves the house – don’t you? – and the job is everything I’ve been working towards. To be dairyman in charge of my own herd!’

Rose wrinkled her nose. ‘Cows! They’re stupid, aren’t they?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘They’re capable of learning and remembering. And they can be affectionate.’

‘I wouldn’t fancy one licking me, like a dog.’

He laughed. ‘Well, they do that! And at Lord Denham’s once, when I sat down in the cow field against a tree to have my lunch, one of them came and couched down beside me, and I thought she was going to try to get on my lap!’

‘Lord and Lady Denham are coming to the Castle for Easter,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve to get the Queen’s Bedroom ready for them. That’s the one his old lordship used to sleep in, but his present lordship didn’t like it. Not one for being grand, Lord Stainton. He’d have taken one of the bachelor rooms when he came into the title, only his mother wouldn’t let him.’

‘Lord and Lady Denham are pretty grand,’ said Michael, ‘but I always had a good relationship with his lordship, because of the cows. I think they were the thing he loved most in the world.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not Lady Denham?’

‘Well, you know what titled people are like. They don’t generally marry for love.’

He happened to meet Rose’s eyes as he said that, and there was a moment in which the world seemed to pause, its attention caught just for a second, before it rolled on. Martha lifted the teapot lid noisily and inserted a spoon to stir the contents.

‘More tea?’ Michael offered prosaically.

CHAPTER NINE

The coroner was a medical man, tall and bony, in the sort of good tweed suit that had been bought to last a lifetime. His thin hair was eked carefully over his scalp; his bony beak of a nose supported gold-rimmed pince-nez at the top and a drop of moisture at the bottom – the room in the back of the Mermaid Hotel, which had been requisitioned for the inquest, was clammily cold. His red, bony hands rested on top of his papers, except when they wielded a large white handkerchief, as he listened in attentive silence to the police constable’s account, read out in a monotone from a notebook.

Then the police surgeon gave his account. ‘Deceased had suffered a severe blow to the cranium causing a fracture of the right temporal bone and severe intracranial haemorrhage.’

‘Would this blow have been fatal?’

‘It would have led to unconsciousness and death,’ the surgeon said, looking surprised. ‘In my opinion.’