The next afternoon Delia and Giles said goodbye and Delia told Robin that they would return the following Friday to collect him for the promised visit to see Arthur Crawshaw.
‘Do you think it will be all right for Robin to come back on the Monday morning?’ Delia had asked Peggy. ‘It will be very late when we return from Derbyshire. We’ll miss the last Hedon train.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Peggy had said. ‘I’ll speak to ’schoolmistress. I’ll tell her he’s been invited to a grand house and that he’ll tell them all about it when he comes back.’
On the train to Hull, Giles thanked Delia for inviting him. ‘The Robinsons are very nice people,’ he said. ‘You need have no worries about them taking care of Robin. They obviously love him as their own.’
Delia agreed that they did, but she was very quiet for most of the short journey, so Giles carefully probed a little further.
‘Their son?’ he said. ‘He didn’t put in an appearance.’
‘He’d be busy on the farm, I expect,’ she excused him. ‘It’s coming up to spring; there’s plenty to do in farming even though it’s only a small acreage. They always used to have two field horses and they’ve now got two others for the traps, so they’ve all to be fed in a morning before they’re put to work. Then they’ve a small herd of cattle to look after. I thought Jack might have come in for something to eat at midday.’ She paused. ‘I think he makes himself scarce when I come, and he’d know I was bringing a friend; Peggy would have told him. His wife, Susan, has apparently gone to see her parents and taken the other two girls with her.’
‘Ah!’ he acknowledged. ‘And what about the other incident? The gun shot. What was that about? You seemed nervous.’
She didn’t answer immediately but chewed on her lip. Then she murmured, ‘It was my father. I could tell by the direction of the shot. He would have been killing rats. Killing something, anyway.’
Deakin had gone off with the mule and cart, a pack of bread and cheese and a bottle of cold tea, and on his return at almost midnight his wife saw from the bedroom window that the cart was again heaped to the top, whatever was in it covered by a rubber tarpaulin. She could hear the barn door crashing against its frame, the mule objecting at being made to stand and Deakin swearing; she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and went downstairs to wait for him. It was over half an hour before he came into the house.
‘What ’you doing up at this hour?’ he grunted. ‘You should be abed.’
‘I was,’ she snapped back. ‘You woke me with your banging and crashing about. Haven’t you brought fish?’
‘I threw it back when I reached the landing,’ he sneered. ‘I’ve had a better catch than fish.’
‘Like what?’ she asked slyly.
He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘Never you mind; get off to bed.’
‘Don’t you want tea? Cocoa?’
‘If I do I can make it myself. I don’t need you for owt.’
And he didn’t, she deduced, and was vaguely disturbed.
The next day he was up early again. He hitched the mule to the cart and didn’t say when he would be back; he seemed elated over something. She didn’t immediately look in the barn, deciding to do her usual jobs first in case he returned and caught her out. She went through her routine of milking the goats and gathering the eggs, and thought that later she’d wring the neck of an old hen and cook it for Sunday dinner. At midday she ate a plate of ham and chutney and began to fidget with indecision. She made a batch of scones and ate one with a pot of tea, and it was after four o’clock before she began looking out of the window again.
‘He’s gone out on the river, I’ll be bound,’ she mumbled. ‘He’ll not be back till tonight. Mebbe I’ll just take a look while it’s still light,’ and with the resolution made, she put on her coat and pulled on a woollen hat and rubber boots and went out to the barn.
There were wooden casks sitting on top of tin trunks on the rully and they were heavy to move, but with much heaving and shoving she managed to roll one to the floor. But she couldn’t open it, not without him knowing, as the bung in the top was well and truly sealed and if she broke into it there’d be no sealing it up again. She put her nose to it and sniffed. Baccy? she wondered. There’s just a whiff of something. Or mebbe it’s brandy. She rolled the cask from side to side and thought that whatever was inside was swilling about.
The metal trunk the cask had been sitting on was easier, as she didn’t have to move it; it had a bolt through the catch. Fetching a box to stand on, she took a spanner from a hook on the wall and managed to knock the bolt out and lift the lid. The pungent aroma of tobacco filled her nostrils and she breathed it in. The catchment was covered in sacking and she felt down the sides of the trunk to ascertain if it contained only tobacco. It seemed as if it did, and, nodding her head, she guessed it was worth a fortune. She counted four trunks and six casks and thought that there was no possibility of her seeing any of the profit from it, for Deakin would secrete the money away once the goods were sold on and she wondered where the old miser would hide it.
Mebbe that’s where he’s
