It’s hard to explain. It was partly the thought that Mrs. Mullet was going to miss Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach, that she was going to miss Franz Schubert and Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Domenico Paradisi and a hundred others that had been hanging round the halls of Buckshaw for as long as I could remember.
How empty the place was going to be. How bloody, awfully empty.
Mrs. Mullet wiped my eyes with her apron.
“There, there, dear,” she said, just as I had said to Daffy. “I’ve got some ’ot scones comin’ out the oven directly. There’s nothin’ like scones to dry up tears.”
I smiled at the thought, but not very much.
“Sit up the table and I shall put the kettle on,” she said. “A nice cup of tea is good for the gizzard, as the bishop said to the chorus girl. Oh! Sorry, dear! I oughtn’t to ’ave let that slip. It’s one of them sayin’s Alf picked up at ’is regimental dinner that makes you smile. I can’t think what come over me.”
What was she going on about? There was nothing remotely amusing about what she had said. In fact, it made no sense at all.
And yet it reminded me of something: the bishop.
And the bishop reminded me of the chancellor.
“Do you know anything about Magistrate Ridley-Smith?” I found myself asking.
“Just that ’e’s a Tartar,” she said. “Them Ridley-Smiths are an odd lot. Not right, like.”
“I’ve heard about the one who was made of glass,” I offered, “and the one whose pet alligator ate the chambermaid.”
Mrs. Mullet sniffed. “They were nothin’ compared with ’im,” she said. “ ’e’s a bad lot, magistrate or no. You keep clear of ’im.”
“But Harriet used to visit Bogmore Hall,” I said.
Mrs. Mullet stopped halfway to the Aga, the teakettle frozen in her hand.
“Wherever did you ’ear that, miss?”
The room had gone suddenly cold, as it does when you’ve gone too far.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said lightly. “Daffy or Feely must have mentioned it.”
“Miss Daphne and Miss Ophelia know nothing about it. It was a secret between Miss ’Arriet and me. Not even the Colonel knew. I used to make up the food ’ampers and she delivered ’em.”
“To Jocelyn Ridley-Smith?” I asked.
“Now, you listen to me, Miss Smartpants. Don’t you mention that name again in this ’ere ’ouse. They’ll think it’s all my fault and I’ll be given the sack for blabberin’. Now, off you go—and get them Ridley-Smiths off your brain.”
“Do you think it’s a sin that Harriet made friends with Jocelyn?”
“It isn’t a question of what I think. ’Tisn’t my place to think. I drags myself in ’ere every day and cooks for you lot and then I goes ’ome, and there’s an end of it.”
“But—”
“There’s an end of it,” Mrs. Mullet said loudly. “If I comes ’ome and tells Alf I’ve lost my place, I ’ate to think what ’e’d say. Now off you go.”
And off I went.
Mrs. Mullet had given me an idea.
Mrs. Mullet and Alf lived in a picturesque cottage near the end of Cobbler’s Lane, a narrow track which ran off the high street and went nowhere in particular.
“It’s what they call a ‘colder-sock,’ Alf says,” she had once told me. “Ends all of a sudden, like a sock.”
A ginger cat sat in a window, watching me with one open eye.
I knocked at the door and tried to look respectful.
I didn’t know much about the home life of the Mullets except those titbits that Mrs. M inevitably let leak. I knew, for instance, that Alf loved custard pie; that their daughter, Agnes, had left home in the last year of the war to study Pitman shorthand, and that her bedroom had been kept ever since as a shrine to the powers of the typewriter, but I knew little else.
The door opened and there stood Alf. He was a man of middle age, middle height, middle hair, and medium build. His only unusual feature was in the way he stood: ramrod straight. Alf, I remembered, had been in the army and, like Father and Dogger, knew a lot of things which must never be spoken of.
“Well, miss,” he said. “To what do we owe this prodigious great pleasure?”
The precise same words with which he had greeted me the last time I visited, six months ago.
“I’m doing some research,” I said. “And I’d appreciate having your advice.”
“Research, eh? Best come in and tell me about it.”
Before you could whistle the first two bars of “Rule, Britannia,” we were sitting in a tiny kitchen that was as neat as a pin.
“Pardon me for not layin’ on the ballroom,” Alf said, “but the missus don’t like havin’ ’er cushions made a mess of.”
“It’s all right, Mr. Mullet,” I said. “I don’t, either.”
“Sound girl,” he said. “Wizard good sense.”
I plunged right in. “I was chatting with Mrs. Mullet today about the Ridley-Smiths,” I said, matter-of-factly.
Which was true, as far as it went, but only just barely.
“Ah,” Alf said, noncommittally, not looking at me. “Anything else?”
“No—just the Ridley-Smiths. Magistrate Ridley-Smith, in particular.”
“Ah,” Alf said again.
“His wife was very beautiful,” I said. “I think I’ve seen a photograph of her.”
“Funny old thing, isn’t it,” Alf asked, “ ’ow every village has its secrets? Some things just not talked about. Ever noticed that? I ’ave.”
“And this is one of them, isn’t it?” I asked.
Alf busied himself with the teakettle, in exactly the same way Mrs. Mullet had in the kitchen at Buckshaw. I suppose when people have been married for centuries, they become like joined paper cutouts of each other.
“Lovely day,” Alf said, sitting himself down at the kitchen table. “Bit windy. Not bad for March, though.”
“I’ve been to Bogmore Hall,” I said. “I’ve seen Jocelyn Ridley-Smith. I’ve talked to him.”
There was only the slightest hesitation. If I hadn’t been looking out for it, I’d have missed it.
“ ’Ave you, by George.”
“Yes,” I said.
It was a bit of a stalemate.
Alf flicked a crumb off the tabletop, then bent down and picked it up from the floor, examining it as intently as if it were a bit of fallen moondust.
“I need your help, Mr. Mullet,” I said. “I’m doing genealogical research for an article I’m thinking of writing: The Norman Roots of Certain Families Residing in the Parish of—”
I could see by his grin, even before I finished speaking, that it wasn’t going to work.
“The truth is, I know that you were in the army,” I said, changing tactics. “I know that because of the Official Secrets Act there are things you are still forbidden to speak of. I am not going to ask you about them. I am not going to ask you about my father, for instance, and I am not going to ask you about Dogger. It would be putting you on the spot.”
Alf nodded.
“But I am going to ask you about Mrs. Ridley-Smith because … well, because I need to know. It’s important to Jocelyn, too. I hope you’ll understand. It could be a matter of life and death.
“Secrets or no secrets,” I added.
I could tell by the way he avoided my eyes that he was wavering.
“I know that you’re a great expert on the British military. Everybody in Bishop’s Lacey says so. ‘A walking encyclopedia,’ they call you.”
“Is that a fact?” Alf said.
“Yes,” I told him, crossing my heart with my first two fingers crossed, and extending my other hand so that he could see I wasn’t canceling out the cross with a negative sign behind my back. “It’s a fact. Mrs. Mullet says so, too.”
I could see him softening.
“You’ve ’eard of the Battle of Plassey,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
I shook my head no. Once I’d got him started, I didn’t dare interrupt.
“How about Clive of India?”
I shook my head again.
“Shocking,” he said. “We shall correct that PDQ.”
What could this possibly have to do with the Ridley-Smiths?
I couldn’t begin to guess.