“What about her husband?”
“Tom Bull? ’E took it real hard. Nearly killed ’im, they say. ’E went off not long after, and my friend Mrs. Waller said ’is wife told ’er, in confidence, mind, that ’e wouldn’t be comin’ back.”
“Maybe he went off to find work. Dogger says a lot of men have done that since the end of the war.”
“ ’E had work enough. Worked for Pettibone’s brother-in-law.”
“Ted Sampson?”
“The very one we was talkin’ about. A foundryman, Tom Bull was, and a good one, so they say, even though ’e’d ’ad ’is troubles with the police. But when that baby girl o’ ’is got took, somethin’ ’appened, inside, like, and ’e went off ’is ’ead. Not long after, it were, ’e was up and gone.”
How I longed to blurt out to her that the body of Tom Bull’s baby daughter had been found in the Palings, but I dared not breathe a word. The news had not yet reached the village, and I didn’t want to be accused of leaking information that the police would sooner keep to themselves—at least for the time being.
“You’d better run along and clean up for dinner, dear,” Mrs. Mullet said suddenly, breaking in upon my train of thought. “The Colonel says you’re ’avin company to supper, so ’e won’t want to see dirty ’ands at the table.”
I held my tongue. In ordinary circumstances, I should have lashed out against such an impertinent remark, but today I had a new weapon.
“Quite right, Mrs. M,” I heard myself saying, as I trotted instantly and obediently to the door.
Here I paused, turned dramatically, and then in my best innocent-as-a-lamb voice, said, “Oh, by the way, Mrs. Mullet, Vanetta Harewood showed me her portrait of Harriet.”
The clatter of dishes stopped, and for a few moments there was a stony silence in the kitchen.
“I knew this day would come,” Mrs. Mullet said suddenly in an odd voice; the voice of a stranger. “I’ve been ’alf expectin’ it.”
She collapsed suddenly into a chair at the table, buried her face in her apron, and dissolved into a miserable sobbing.
I stood by helplessly, not quite knowing what to do.
At last, I pulled out the chair opposite, sat down at the table, and watched her weep.
I had a special fascination with tears. Chemical analyses of my own and those of others had taught me that tears were a rich and a wonderful broth, whose chief ingredients were water, potassium, proteins, manganese, various yeasty enzymes, fats, oils, and waxes, with a good dollop of sodium chloride thrown in, perhaps for taste. In sufficient quantities, they made for a powerful cleanser.
Not so very different, I thought, from Mrs. Mullet’s chicken soup, which she flung at even the slightest sniffle.
By now, Mrs. M had begun to subside, and she said, without removing the apron from her face: “A gift, it was. She wanted it for the Colonel.”
I reached out across the table and placed my hand on her shoulder. I didn’t say a word.
Slowly, the apron came down, revealing her anguished face. She took a shuddering breath.
“She wanted to surprise ’im with it. Oh, the trouble she went to! She was ever so ’appy. Bundlin’ up you lot of angels and motorin’ over to Malden Fenwick for your sittin’s—’avin’ that ’Arewood woman come ’ere to Buckshaw whenever the Colonel was away. Bitter cold, it was. Bitter.”
She mopped at her eyes and I suddenly felt ill.
Why had I ever mentioned the painting? Had I done it for no reason other than to shock Mrs. Mullet? To see her response? I hoped not.
“ ’Ow I’ve wanted to tell the Colonel about it,” Mrs. Mullet went on quietly, “but I couldn’t. It’s not my place. To think of it lyin’ there in ’er studio all these years, an’ ’im not knowin’ it—it breaks my ’eart. It surely does—it breaks my ’eart.”
“It breaks mine, too, Mrs. M,” I said, and it was the truth.
As she pulled herself to her feet, her face still wet and red, something stirred in my memory.
Red.
Red hair … Timofey Bull … his mouth stuffed with sweets and the silver lobster pick in his hand.
“Danny’s pocket,” he’d said, when I asked him where he got it. “Danny’s pocket.”
And I had misheard him.
Daddy’s pocket!
Red and silver. This was what my dreams and my good sense had been trying to tell me!
I felt suddenly as if a snail were slowly crawling up my spine.
Could it be that Tom Bull was still in Bishop’s Lacey? Could he still be living secretly amid the smoke that blanketed his house in the Gully?
If so, it might well be he who’d been outside smoking as I crept with Gry past his house in the dark. Perhaps it was he who had watched from the wood as Inspector Hewitt and his men removed Brookie’s body from the Poseidon fountain—he who had removed the pick from Brookie’s nose when Porcelain and I—
Good lord!
And Timofey had found the lobster pick in his father’s pocket, which could only mean—
At that very instant, the gong in the foyer was rung, announcing supper.
“Better get along, dear,” Mrs. Mullet said, poking at her hair with a forefinger and giving her face a last swipe with her apron. “You know what your father’s like about promptness. We mustn’t keep ’im waitin’.”
“Yes, Mrs. Mullet,” I said.