The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

14

My stock rose a little when, after the tea and beer had been drunk – and I did quiet penance by insisting that I took my tea without either milk or sugar and drinking the horrid stuff to the last drop without a shudder – I volunteered to go with Mattie on an expedition to pick gooseberries, which Grandad had been nagging his daughter about all week but for which Mrs MacGibney did not herself have time.

‘Aye, well, you’ve your washing to do, I’m thinking,’ the old man said, but his daughter stuck her chin out and shook her head at him.

‘I am not taking they work claes and washing them,’ she said. ‘They get washed every other week and they’ve only done one. It would be bad luck and I’ll not do it.’

John gave a mirthless laugh and explained it to me.

‘Ma and the other wifies think if they wash the black claes and put them away it’ll be like saying there’ll never be work again. So there they hang stinking the house out.’

‘Nothing wrang wi’ the smell of coal,’ said Grandad. ‘That stink brought your mammy up and it brought you up too.’

‘Oh aye,’ said John, flipping his empty trouser leg. ‘It did the world for me.’

‘Let’s go then, Mattie,’ I said, standing. ‘We can take the big baskets you brought with you. No harm in being hopeful.’

‘And I’m going back over to talk to the men,’ Alec said. ‘There might be another wee message I can run while I’ve got the car here today.’ I stared at him. I had known for some time that he paid more heed to his servants than was proper, and I knew that he found the Scots tongue more delightful than did I, but to hear him talk of running a wee message was a new departure again. None of the MacGibney clan, however, seemed to mind his patronage and the three of us – leaving Bunty and Millie behind with their new friend and his energetic caresses – exited together.

The gooseberries were to be found along the side of the railway line some three fields distant and so off we trudged, Mattie carrying both baskets, one over each shoulder so that they formed a shell across his back, as though they might be armour against me.

We passed a collection of shaggy little ponies which were being patted, fed tufts of grass and – in some cases – ridden upon by a troop of small children.

‘I don’t suppose they mind the sudden holiday,’ I said.

‘Except their food’s locked up down in the stables and we’ve no’ much money to buy more with,’ said Mattie. I gave up looking for a silver lining then.

‘Right then, young man,’ I began. ‘I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you don’t realise the import of what it is you know. You will not be punished for withholding it, I assure you, but you must tell me.’

‘I went to my bed and went to sleep and got up and the first I knew at all was when Eldry come doon the stair in the morning like a ghostie and tellt Mr Faulds to get the police,’ Mattie said.

‘All well and good,’ I replied. ‘I believe that. But it’s these nights when master was out – the nights you told me of, if you remember – something about them is puzzling me.’ I waited but Mattie said nothing. We had reached the edge of the first field and were taken up with clambering over a post-fence for a moment or two. ‘How did you get out?’

‘Eh?’ Mattie said, in that infuriating way that children do.

‘After master returned and you locked up behind him, did you knock up one of the girls or get Mr Faulds to open up? And lock up again behind you?’

‘Eh?’ he said again. ‘The girls did nothing.’

‘Well, someone must have locked and bolted the kitchen door or the door in the sub-basement,’ I pointed out to him. ‘Surely, you didn’t leave the house open all night?’

Mattie was looking at me with an expression of apparently genuine puzzlement on his face.

‘That would be daft,’ he said.

‘So…?’ He simply shook his head and then returned his gaze to the ground where the going was rough and needed a little attention. ‘And how did you get into the carriage house?’ I asked him. ‘Did you have a key? Isn’t that door bolted too?’

‘There’s a key in it,’ he replied. ‘Or – well – hanging up beside it in the passageway.’

‘But how did that help?’ I asked him. ‘How did you get in if the key was on the other side?’

‘I can’t remember,’ Mattie said, almost as infuriatingly as just saying ‘eh’. ‘I’m confused. You’re tying me up in knots, miss, and I d’ae want to say the wrong thing and get anybody into trouble.’

‘Yes, you are in a tangle, aren’t you?’ I replied. ‘Perhaps this question will be easier for you.’ Mattie’s eyes were wide but he kept his head up, even if he did have the appearance of someone waiting for an axe-blow. ‘How did master ever find out that you were scared of the dark, Mattie?’

‘He-’ The look of puzzlement came back into his eyes. ‘I d’ae ken,’ he said. ‘That’s daft too, miss, eh no? That cannae be right.’ We had stopped walking now and were standing in the middle of the field like a pair of statues. ‘Or you know what it is,’ Mattie said at last. ‘It’s just different there. It’s all… different. And here it’s hame and it’s all fields and that and things are no’ the same so’s you cannae remember what it’s like when it’s…’ I was nodding, because although his stuttering attempt to explain was far from eloquent I recognised it as kin to the feeling I had had with Alec the previous afternoon when I had wanted to get up into the air, where I could see things, like Mattie was suddenly seeing things, out here in the field, in the open.

Not too far off from us was the unmistakable ridge of a railway siding, a few children dotted about its slopes with sacks in their hands, busily picking at the bushes growing there.

‘Let’s get the berries for your mother,’ I said, ‘and come back to all of this on the way home.’

Mattie’s eyes, I was astonished to see, filled up with tears until they were brimming and he shook his head roughly to scatter them before they could roll down his face.

‘You’re being dead nice to me,’ he said. ‘And I hate having to be no’ nice back, but I cannae tell on… anybody that’s been just as nice and let them down. I never wanted to let anybody down, ever.’

I had to tread very carefully now.

‘Your mother and grandfather,’ I said, ‘and your brother too, even if they are not always… nice, as you call it, even if they are not always kind, they do care for you. And just because someone else is kind, Mattie, that person does not necessarily care any more deeply. Certainly no one who truly cares for you would ask you to keep secrets for them which weigh so heavily upon you.’

‘They don’t,’ he said. ‘They’re no’ heavy secrets, miss, honest injuns they’re no’. It’s me keeping my mouth shut that’s making you think they are.’

Inwardly, I was cheering, but on the outside I remained calm and kept the kindly look on my face. Being nice to Mattie was what would swing all this in my favour, I knew. I turned and walked to the edge of the field where a chestnut tree most obligingly provided both shade from the sunshine and some canker-swollen roots for us to sit upon. Mattie followed me like a gosling, shrugged off the baskets and sat down.

‘I really, really, really hate being all on my own in the dark, miss,’ he said. I nodded and even put a hand out to squeeze his arm. ‘And I really, really, really love playing the piano. Only I never get the chance to practise it. Cos if anybody’s in the mood for a sing-song, Mr Faulds knows more tunes than me, from when he used to hear them in his music-hall days, and if nobody’s in the mood for music then they’re no’ in the mood for hearing me practising either, are they?’

‘But I’ve seen you practise making no sound at all,’ I said. Mattie grinned at me.

‘I learned how to do that in the night-time,’ he said. ‘They let me in, and I go to the servants’ hall where it’s still nice and warm and sometimes I read the song sheets and sometimes I practise, and I don’t make any noise.’

‘Who lets you in?’ I said. His face clouded again. ‘I promise that you won’t get anyone into trouble,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers behind my back.

‘Clara,’ he said, with a spasm of the pain it caused him flashing across his face. ‘Or Phyllis. One of the two.’

‘And how do they do it without Mr Faulds or Mrs Hepburn hearing them?’ I said. Mattie gave another grin at this, fainter but full of glee.

‘When Mr Faulds is locking up at night,’ he said, ‘he always does the kitchen door first, and one of the girls always stays up there and when he turns the key in the sub-basement they know he’s just about to shoot the bolts there and when he does, they shoot the bolts back again in the door upstairs.’

Instantly, I was back in my little bed in Miss Rossiter’s cosy bedroom, listening to the resounding clang of the bolts at night and the mysteriously less resounding clang of the bolts in the morning.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘My God, Mattie. You know what this means, don’t you? The house was open all night – lying open, all night, every night, including the night of the murder.’ Mattie was shaking his head so hard that his flaxen hair flew out around it like ribbons from a maypole.

‘No, it’s still locked,’ he said. ‘It’s just the bolts they open for me. But there’s a key, hidden in a wee hidey-hole in the bricks, away up high, and I can get in and then I can lock up again when it’s safe to leave, see?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Not quite so bad then. But doesn’t Mrs Hepburn hear you?’

‘She-’ Mattie bit his lip. ‘She’s another one that’s been dead, dead kind,’ he said. ‘That’s why I always stayed. All the girls and Mrs Hepburn were that good to me even if the boys werenae. She said the girls were her business and the boys were up to Mr Faulds to keep in line and since it was me she knew there was no hanky-panky. And that’s the truth, miss, because Harry and John and Stanley never knew about that key and they still don’t and Phyllis and Clara told me straight if they ever found out that would be the end of it, because I’m a good boy and like their wee brother but they others are men.’

‘So the other three lads know nothing about it?’ I said. ‘They couldn’t have got in without someone knowing.’

‘I d’ae think so,’ Mattie said.

‘And they don’t even know that you sneak out?’ I asked, thinking that the three of them had to be extraordinarily sound sleepers.

‘No,’ said Mattie, without meeting my eyes. He was still hiding something; I was sure of it.

‘So, the night master died. What did you see? Or hear?’

‘I wasnae there that night,’ Mattie replied. ‘I stayed in the carriage house and never went nowhere.’

It was very hard to settle for this; almost impossible to face that I had cracked Mattie’s great secret only for it to lead precisely nowhere. I supposed it was something to suggest to Mr Hardy that he find this key in its hidey-hole in the brick and test it for fingerprints. Further than that, I was at a dead-end again and it was with a clod of disappointment inside me as heavy as a sandbag that I trailed off to the gooseberries at last.

I had quite forgotten what a torturous thing a gooseberry bush is and since the little girls with the flour sacks had done the sensible thing and stripped the fattest and easiest-reached fruits before we arrived, Mattie and I were left to stretch deep into the thorny interiors to snag the little green pellets which remained. My grey serge, by the end of an hour, sported a great many loops of thread and puckered grazes which I am sure Miss Rossiter would have known how to remedy but which I simply rubbed at feebly as though the coat, like the arm underneath, might simply heal itself given time.

When I could stand it no longer, I began to extricate myself.

‘Come on,’ I said to Mattie, going over to where he was picking. ‘We’ve got a good lot and you’ve got roses in your cheeks already before you’ve even eaten a single one.’

His smile faltered. He really was the most sensitive child, whom even a bracing reference to his health struck as some kind of fault-finding. Then there was the fear of the dark struggling against his love of the piano. He had what would be called, if he were more gently born, an artistic temperament. And there was some kind of courage in his putting the art above the fear, I supposed; at least, my mother would have thought so. Picking my words very carefully to avoid hurting him again, I tried to tell him so but he only put his head down as low as ever and I could see a flush spreading over him.

‘It’s no’ really like that, miss,’ he said, and although he refused to elaborate, something he had let slip before came back to me.

‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that you got into the house at night, even though you hate to be alone, because the boys tease you? Or are cruel to you somehow? You said the girls and the girls alone were the kind ones.’

‘I d’ae want to get anyone into trouble,’ Mattie said and he put on a spurt of pace – we were recrossing the fields towards the cottages again – and left me behind him.

‘But if someone is being mean to you, surely he deserves no loyalty,’ I said, puffing a little as I caught up.

‘Naeb’dy’s being anything,’ he insisted. ‘They do what they want and I just have to lump it. Same as ever, same as anywhere.’

Slowly, very deliberately, I put down my basket and stood with my feet planted well apart and my arms folded in front of me.

‘I am not moving until you tell me the rest,’ I said in the coldest voice anyone with a heart could turn on this child. It was a considerable effort too, because I wanted to clap my hands and click my heels at the discovery that there was a ‘rest’, that Mattie’s tale had not run out into sand after all. ‘I’m quite willing to stand here until Mr Osborne and your mother come to see what’s happened to us.’

‘My mammy’ll skin me alive,’ said Mattie.

‘I know. I’ll help her.’

He gave a huge sigh and started walking again.

‘I really, really hate being on my own in the dark,’ he said again. ‘And John and Harry and Stanley know it. But… they go out, miss. They go out at night, all three of them, and I’m on my own, and that’s why I go to the servants’ hall and play the piano. Because even though I’m on my own in the room, there’s Eldry and Millie underneath – and Maggie too before she left – and Mr Faulds through the wall, and Mrs Hepburn and Clara and Phyllis and Miss Abbott and it’s better than the carriage house by a long chalk, I can tell you.’

‘And where, pray, do the three of them go?’ I said. ‘Do you know? Can you tell me?’

‘The three of them d’ae go anywhere,’ Mattie said. ‘John and Harry go to the Free Gardeners’ or else to this club that Harry knows that serves drink after time, except on Monday night it was shutting at midnight cos it’s that kind of club but they went to watch the start of the strike, with the fireworks and all the speakers and the singing and they didn’t get back until all hours. And Stanley went out too. But he always goes on his own.’

‘So why did you stay put?’ I said, remembering this. ‘You assured me that you weren’t in the house that night.’

‘I wasnae,’ Mattie said. ‘I was looking out the windae to see if it was safe to come out, but it wasnae so I just had to bide where I was and I fell asleep in the end.’

‘What do you mean, “safe”?’ I said.

‘Well, Stanley,’ Mattie said. ‘Stanley didn’t get out of the way, miss, if you must know. He was in the back garden in the way of me getting in the basement door. He’s no’ usually.’

‘But what on earth do you mean?’ I said. ‘What was he doing? What does he usually do?’

‘Nae harm,’ said Mattie. ‘No’ really. He looks in at the windaes, miss. He likes to look in.’

‘What windows?’ I said, although I could guess already.

‘Well, Clara and Phyllis’s,’ said Mattie, ‘except they’re fly to him and they stop up all the wee holes in the shutters wi’ twists of paper. And he used to look in at Miss Abbott sometimes and I’ve even seen him taking a wee peek at Mrs Hepburn, but mostly he goes over the garden wall, to the other houses, where the maids d’ae ken him and maybe don’t shut their curtains so careful. But that night he didnae go over the wall. Like I said, he stayed in the garden at Number 31.’

‘Peering in?’ I said. ‘Since there was someone new to peer in at?’

Mattie bit his lip and nodded and I felt a flood of revulsion pass through me.

‘A peering tom?’ I said. Mattie flushed again. ‘And you kept it a secret?’

‘He held it over me, miss. About how I went out too, on account of how sometimes he was back before me.’

‘And the times he was back before you,’ I said, speaking slowly as I thought it through, ‘he might well have watched for you and he might very well have seen you coming out and hiding the key and-’

‘No,’ said Mattie. ‘I was careful. And if Stanley had known he would have used it himself, miss. That’s what he’s like. If he’d been able to get into the house he’d never stick at windaes – he’d have been inside peeping through keyholes instead. And he’d have hinted. He cannae stop himself hinting.’

‘Yes, hinting is Stanley’s favourite pastime,’ I said, unable to keep my lip from curling.

‘Aye,’ said Mattie, quietly. ‘And he’s hinted… I mean, he’s let on… Honest, miss, I d’ae ken nothin’ about that night but Stanley does. He tellt me.’

‘Oh, Mattie!’ I said and his head drooped like a wilting flower.

‘I didnae want to get him in bother,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘And it wasnae much anyway. It’s was jist that he said… it was when you were talking to us about how somebody must have let somebody in. Remember, miss? When you said that? Stanley was grinning like a cat and he said to me – really quiet – that you were wrong. That’s all – he jist said you were wrong.’

‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I knew someone must have seen something. I knew it. Well, let’s see Stanley getting away with “hinting” to the superintendent, eh? He’ll crack like a nut.’

‘But… you dinnae think Stanley killed him, miss?’ Mattie said. We had reached the cottages again and he rested his basket on the low garden wall and turned a troubled face to me

I took a long moment and then answered only very grudgingly: ‘No. He had no apparent motive, he doesn’t have the stomach for it, and if he were guilty he’d keep his silly mouth shut. The teasing and hinting and hugging himself might be infuriating for the rest of us, Mattie, but it’s the stamp of innocence for Stanley. Now, come on. Let’s go in.’

Alec and I were invited to share the MacGibneys’ luncheon – bread, margarine and potatoes fried in yesterday’s bacon pan – and, astonishingly enough, after my morning of tramping the fields and struggling in the gooseberry bushes, I was able to make a good show of repaying them with a clean plate. Nanny Palmer would have been proud of me.

Mattie’s father had come home for his dinner and when it was eaten he, John and Grandad all lit their pipes and Alec joined them. In such a small room with such a low ceiling and with only one very little window – and that fastened tight – I should have been glad to leave the table and join Mattie’s mother at the sink, but she showed me with a glare that I was to keep away. (I supposed she did not foresee much skill with a dish-mop and did not want to risk handing her good plates to me to dry either, not in a room with a stone floor.) I should have been even gladder to leave straight away and return to Heriot Row to furnish Mr Hardy with my little bit of news – a way forward at last in all of this tangle – but we could not drag Mattie from his mother so early in the day.

‘My, that’s grand-smelling baccy,’ said Mr MacGibney Sr when Alec had got his pipe going well.

‘I like it,’ Alec said. ‘I wish I’d thought of bringing some more.’ All three generations of men shook their heads in unison.

‘You couldn’t bring tobacco on a Co-op chit,’ said John, ‘nor spirits neither. You’d need a licence for them.’

‘I meant as a gift,’ Alec said, but the head-shaking went on.

‘Cannae be too careful about “gifts”, time like this,’ said Mattie’s father, and I remembered what Alec had said about giving money to the men on the blockade.

‘Cannae believe we’ve come to this,’ said the old man. ‘We won that war for them. Broke our backs on fifteen-hour shifts we did and kept this country going. And now look what they’re at! Importing German coal. German! Reparations, they say. Well, I’ve got a different name for it.’

‘Wheesht, Faither,’ said Mrs MacGibney. ‘Dinnae upset yourself.’

‘I dinnae care for me,’ said her father. ‘But what about the young lads, eh?’

‘Me and Mattie are no’ exactly carrying the torch,’ said John.

His father did not look at him, but spoke very firmly.

‘You might be on the surface now, lad, but you’re still a miner. You’ve nothing to be shamed for.’ There was just the slightest emphasis but it was enough to make Mattie’s head drop low.

There was a long silence. The MacGibneys were sunk in gloom, Alec was smoking steadily and looking sympathetic, but I writhed. My early training at tea parties, my instruction at finishing school, my two decades of adult life: all had instilled in me a horror of silence in any social setting.

‘The German element is shocking,’ I said. ‘Talk about insult to injury. But…’

Alec took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me. All the MacGibneys looked towards me too.

‘But what?’ said John.

‘But,’ I said, swallowing hard, ‘if their coal is cheaper than ours then ours has to come down too and everyone must just pull their belts in.’ I was quoting Hugh to a certain extent, but this part of his philosophy had always seemed above argument to me. Mrs MacGibney spoke up from the sink, without turning.

‘Everyone?’ she said. ‘You think Old Man Mair’s pulling his belt in to live off two pounds a week? You think if he said no he’d be down to five shillings strike pay?’

‘Two pounds?’ I said. ‘Two pounds a week? But it says in the papers…’

Now she did turn to look at me and she was almost laughing.

‘What papers have you been reading then?’ she said. ‘Tatler, is it?’

All the men laughed out loud at that. I did not mind; at least we were talking again.

‘You’re from another world, hen,’ said Grandad. ‘You need a wee lesson.’

Mattie and John groaned.

‘Oh, here we go,’ said their father.

The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and gestured to where his grandsons were sitting. ‘Turn they chairs round and show the lassie, boys.’ Mattie and John rolled their eyes but stood up. John leaned against the wall – his crutch was out of reach – while Mattie set the two chairs close by each other, sideways on to Alec and me. ‘See that here,’ said Grandad, pointing again, at the chair legs. ‘Could you fit yourself through there, hen?’

I looked at the gap between the front and back legs, below the seats, wondering where this parlour game might be leading to.

‘I daresay,’ I said. ‘It would be a bit of a squeeze, but I think so.’

‘Try it for a mile and a half,’ Grandad thundered, ‘pitch black but for a candle on your helmet and sweat running off you with the heat. Not a stitch on your body and scraped red with the rock and when you get to the end where you left off, there you’ve seven hours chipping out wee lumps wi’ a hammer and pushing them past you to your laddie to drag to the shaft for you and then a mile and a half back again and the same again the next day and the next day and-’

‘Dinnae upset yourself, Faither,’ said Mrs MacGibney again, ‘and let they boys sit back doon.’

‘I always imagined caves,’ I said, and the smiles showed me that I was not the first to have said so. ‘And was that what it was like when the roof collapsed on you two?’ I said to Mattie and John.

‘Not so bad,’ said John. ‘That tunnel was high enough to sit up in.’

I could think of no adequate response to this, and indeed spent the rest of the visit in near silence. The others talked until shortly after four o’clock, when Mattie’s mother asked him when he had to be getting back again. We could have stayed longer – Mattie certainly could have – but we could not in conscience take another meal from the woman so I did not demur, and Alec and I left Mattie to his goodbyes. (I noticed Alec’s baccy pouch tucked discreetly down beside the chair where he had been sitting.)

There was just one more vignette of pithead life for us to be treated to, unexpected, unlooked for and – whatever Alec’s frame of mind might have been after the hours in the little cottage kitchen – quite unnecessary to me. As we were making our careful way over the ash lane which led away to the road, with a wave for Mattie’s father who was back at the picket now, we heard the sound of another engine and a large motorcar of a type I could not name came along the lane towards us. It was driven by a chauffeur in uniform who drew up in front of us blocking our path. Almost before the motorcar had halted one of the back doors opened and a bulky man in a striped suit stepped down. I felt Mattie freeze at my side.

‘Are you the one that’s been driving in and out of here all day?’ said the man, striding towards the car and treating Alec to a glare. He caught sight of Bunty and Millie and stopped in his tacks. ‘Dogs?’ he said. ‘Dogs, is it now? Who the hell are you? Who’s that in there with you?’

He had arrived at our side now and was looking at us with angry puzzlement. Mattie seemed to puzzle him more than anything.

‘You’re not from the union,’ he said to Alec, ‘driving around with women and children. Who are you?’

‘I can’t see that it’s any of your business,’ replied Alec. ‘Who are you? You start and I’ll see if I feel like joining in.’ Beside me, Mattie was shaking.

‘I? I?’ said the man. ‘I’m the boss and I’m not going to be spoken to that way by some bloody do-gooder coming causing mischief on private land. Now get out of it before I call the police on you.’

‘Ah, Mr Mair, the manager,’ said Alec, making it sound as though he were playing Happy Families. ‘My name is Alec Osborne and I am neither a union representative nor a do-gooder. So we have that much in common, sir, but nothing else. I, unlike you, am a friend of the MacGibneys and have been visiting them in their time of need, as friends do.’

‘MacGibneys?’ said the man. ‘Matt MacGibney and those useless sons of his?’ Mattie let out a whimper, and I put my arm around him. ‘Five of them living in the lap of comfort in a good cottage and only one of them doing a man’s work for it. You have strange taste in friends, whoever you are. Now get off this land.’

As Alec stared back at him, breathing like a bull and struggling for a response, help came from the most unlikely quarter. Bunty – quite out of character and driven by who knew what noxious cocktail of terror, shock and cold fury rising from the three human occupants of the car – suddenly leapt, baying, for the open window and made a creditable attempt to take Mr Mair by his fleshy neck, snarling like a hound of hell. Alec stamped on the accelerator and got us away before she could actually connect with him, which was just as well, and Mattie, amazingly enough, was not further petrified by this latest turn but was unaccountably delighted, whooping and clapping and lunging over the front seat to hug Bunty hard.

‘My God,’ said Alec, laughing as well once he had recovered himself. ‘Dandy, what on earth? Has she ever done that before?’

‘Never!’ I squeaked, feeling weak from the parade of extreme emotions. ‘Whoever heard of an attack Dalmatian? Oh, why couldn’t Hugh have been here to see it? He’ll never believe me!’

Mattie had stopped laughing and was now hugging Millie, who had pushed her head in between him and Bunty when she felt that her friend had hogged the limelight for long enough.

‘Who’s Hugh?’ he said. ‘And why did you call Miss Rossiter Dandy, Mr Osborne?’

Thankfully, though, there was too much else going on for him to pursue such points, and after just one panicked glance between Alec and me in the driving mirror the questions sank without reply.