Page 29 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

CHAPTER SIX

The cottage smelt of babies and damp, and an underlying dirtiness Richard recognised from occasional visits to the poorer villagers. The smell wafted out when the door was opened to his knock. A short, blowsy woman, her hair scraped back in a bun, stood there, looking at him sullenly. In the background, a baby began to wail. Over her shoulder he saw a number of discoloured napkins drying in front of the fire.

‘What do you want?’ she asked sourly.

‘Are you Tabby Mattock? I’m Richard Tallant,’ he began politely.

‘I know who you are. Half your servants come drinking at the Dog. Not that I work there any more.’

From her expression, you would think she blamed him for that. She obviously wasn’t going to ask him in – for which he was grateful – so he leaned against the doorpost and said, ‘I believe you were walking out with William Sweeting, who’s a footman up at the Castle.’

‘Maybe I was. What’s it to you?’

‘You know that he’s been arrested for murder?’

She turned her head away, and picked at a back tooth with her little-finger nail. ‘Heard something about it.’

‘I have it on reliable evidence that he visited you on that particular evening, the evening Mr Speen disappeared. You are in a position to give him an alibi.’

She turned her face back to him, her eyes flat and hostile. ‘Why don’t you mind your own business? I don’t work for you, Mr Richard Tallant, so you can’t scare me.’

‘I have no wish to scare you, Miss Mattock. And it is my business, because William does work for me. I’m responsible for his welfare.’

‘My baby’s calling,’ she said, stepping back and trying to close the door.

Richard inserted a boot in the door’s path. ‘You can’t let an innocent man hang.’

‘Who says he’s innocent?’

‘You have evidence that would clear him. You must go to the police.’

She looked at him derisively. ‘Oh, yeah? What’s in it for me?’

‘You want paying for doing your duty?’

Suddenly she was spitting like a cat. ‘Don’t you talk to me about duty! You men are all the same! You want your buttered bun, oh, yes, but you’re not so quick to pay for it, are you? Your precious William promised to marry me, then he called off. Now I’ve got a baby to bring up. Where’s his duty? Where’s yours, if it comes to that? You ought to be paying for this baby. It was your precious footman as put me up the pole. Now he thinks I’m going to get him off, does he?’ She gave a bark of derisive laughter. ‘Well, he can think again!’

‘Actually, William has stayed loyal to you. It wasn’t him who told me about you. He’s still refusing to say where he was that night.’

‘More fool him,’ she muttered.

‘He did visit you that night, didn’t he?’

‘Came to tell me he was calling it off, the dirty dog. Came to tell me he was chucking me and the baby on the rubbish heap. That’s your sainted footman!’

‘I don’t say he’s a saint, Miss Mattock, any more than any of us,’ Richard said, giving her a sharp look, ‘and I don’t say he did right by you. But this is more serious. You can’t let him hang because he let you down.’

‘I can do as I please, Mister Tallant. Go away now. You’re letting the draught in.’ She tried again to close the door.

He caught the edge of it, to add to the resistance of his foot. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘I can’t pay you money to go to the police, because that would taint the evidence. But I can promise you this. You do the right thing by William, and I’ll see to it that your baby is supported.’

She gave him a very long, calculating look. ‘How much?’ she asked at last.

‘A shilling a week. Until he leaves school.’

‘Pigs might fly! I can guess how much of that I’d see once I’d been and told my story and got William off.’

‘I am a gentleman, and I keep my word,’ Richard said, holding his temper.