A Fatal Secret. Faith Martin
She seems rather, er, protective of the family?’ He offered the opening gambit gingerly. In his opinion, servants either liked to gossip about each other, or shut up like clams. But he was betting that the housekeeper’s prickly personality and obvious sense of entitlement hadn’t won her any favour with the rest of the staff.
The old man grinned wryly. ‘Oh yes, sir, she be that. Of course, her and the old Lady, Mrs Vivienne – Mr de Lacey’s mother – were like this,’ he said, holding up his hands and entwining two fingers together. ‘So you can understand it, I ’spect.’
‘Oh I see. It sounds as if she’s been here some years?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Not that she’s a villager, mind. Born and raised in Brighton she was,’ the old man said, shaking his head and making the seaside town sound as if it were on a level standing with Sodom or Gomorrah. ‘But she met a lad from the village here when he was billeted near Hove during the war, and he married her and brought her back here to live. The old lady took a shine to her and so she went into service like. At first, it was supposed to be just while her Wilf was off fighting. But he didn’t come back from the war, o’course, like a lot of our brave lads didn’t, and so she sort of took to devoting herself to her mistress, like, as the ladies sometimes do. Yerse, real devoted to Mrs Vivienne, she was.’
Clement nodded. Yes, that explained quite a lot.
‘Well, we shall probably see you around from time to time, Mr Cricklade. If, in the meantime, you can think of anything you think we should know, just say so,’ Clement adjured him heartily.
The old man, however, looked slightly puzzled at this. ‘Like what, sir?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Well. Did Eddie ever look worried or scared that you can recall? Did he ever confide in you about anything that troubled him? Did anything you saw him doing strike you as odd? Did you ever see him talking to strangers?’
‘Oh right you are, sir. But I can tell you now, there was nothing like that. He was just a happy, normal little kiddie. And as for strangers…’ The old man shrugged graphically. ‘Round here, everyone knows everyone, if you see what I mean, sir. And like as not, everyone knows everyone’s business before you even know it yourself.’
Clement, who’d also grown up in a small village, did.
‘Mind you,’ the old man said, then hesitated when both Trudy and Clement looked at him keenly.
‘Yes?’ Clement urged.
‘Well, it might mean nothing, sir,’ the old man began, clearly reluctant to start what he’d finished. He began to shuffle his feet and looked uncomfortable, glancing up at the big house, then away again.
‘It’s all right, the squire has given us carte blanche to ask anything we want,’ Clement said.
The old man nodded. He might not have understood the fancy French-sounding words, but he got the gist of it all right. He sighed heavily.
‘Ar, well… See, sir, it’s on account of something sort of odd the boy said to me once.’
‘When was this exactly?’ Clement asked sharply.
‘Oh, a week or so before Easter, I reckon it must have been. I caught him tearing across the kitchen garden, almost trampling some strawberry plants. Told him to keep off. There was no harm in him, sir, but he could run a bit wild and be careless like, like all kiddies when they’re playing “chase” and such.’
‘I’m sure he was a good lad,’ Clement said, trying to keep a check on his impatience. ‘But what was it he said that made you worry?’
‘Well, not to say I worried, as such,’ the gardener said cautiously. ‘I just didn’t understand what he meant, sir. He asked me if all grown-ups were rich.’
Clement blinked. ‘Well, that sounds pretty normal to me. I suppose to most children, grown-ups always seem to have more money than they do!’
‘Yes, sir, that’s more or less what I told him, an’ all.’ The old man grinned. ‘But then he looked up at me, all serious like, and said something like, “Yes, but are they usually mad when you find out?” Well, sir, that sort of stumped me a bit,’ the old gardener admitted.
‘So what did you say?’ Clement asked, intrigued.
‘I asked him if someone was mad at him, and he shrugged, and said he thought they might be.’
‘Did he say who?’
‘No, sir, he didn’t. At that point, young Miss Emily, who he was playing chase with, ran up and “tagged” him and the pair went haring off. ’Course, at the time, I just forgot about it.’ The old man scratched his nose and looked uneasily at the coroner. ‘But now… well, it just makes me wonder a bit, what he could have meant, like.’
Clement nodded. He could well see how it might. A young boy hints that he’s got on the wrong side of somebody, and a week later, he’s found dead at the bottom of a well. He would wonder a bit too.
‘Well, I’m sure you have nothing to reproach yourself for, Mr Cricklade,’ he said heartily. ‘Children often say things that don’t amount to much.’
‘Thank ’ee, sir,’ the old man said, feeling at least better for having got things off his chest.
They took their leave of the old man, who set off to check his new potatoes for black fly, and Trudy looked at the coroner sharply.
‘Do you really think the poor lad had made an enemy of somebody?’ she asked.
‘It certainly sounds possible,’ Clement agreed. ‘But whether or not anybody will actually admit to having had cross words with him is another matter.’
‘It’s beginning to feel more and more as if the accident might not have been such an accident after all, doesn’t it?’ she mused tentatively.
Clement nodded. ‘It does, rather, doesn’t it?’ he agreed gravely.
‘Something tells me this investigation is going to be difficult though,’ she said dryly.
Clement paused to light his pipe, took a few puffs, and then shrugged. ‘Well, so what if it is? It’s nice to be out and about in the springtime, isn’t it, instead of cooped up in our respective offices.’
A blackbird, busy finding nesting material, chose that moment to burst into song, and with a smile, Trudy had to agree with him. Anything that got her out from under the watchful, disapproving eye of DI Jennings was all right in her book.
‘So, where next?’ she asked more cheerfully.
Clement nodded towards the roof of the dower house. ‘Well, why not call in at the dower house and see if anybody there was more observant than our Mr Cricklade?’
At the dower house they were again out of luck. Neither of the residents, it seemed, were at home.
This time, at Trudy’s suggestion, they had gone around to the back and to the kitchen entrance, which meant that a maid admitted them to the house. She appeared to be a village girl born and bred, still feeling happy to have her first job with ‘the family’.
Perhaps her relative inexperience led her to rashly inviting them into the kitchen, where the cook – a middle-aged, comfortably padded woman – looked on them with less enthusiasm.
But the coroner soon had her eating out of his hand, and within a few minutes, both he and Trudy were seated at the cook’s well-scrubbed kitchen table, eating wonderful, still slightly warm scones with home-made plum jam, and sipping from large mugs of tea.
Mrs Jones, the cook, had nothing but sympathy for the Proctors.
‘That