[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening

her usual reaction in times of crisis. Grandfather was sitting very upright and rigid in his armchair. He looked like Moses, I thought, or perhaps the prophet Jeremiah. His right hand was clutching the knob of his ebony, silver-topped stick and with his left fist he was banging the table.

Aunt Kirstie said, 'Well, father, is there something you want with me?'

Grandfather glared at her.

'Where's your lodger?' he demanded.

'I wish we knew, father. Hasn't slept in his bed since that Thursday night,' she said.

'Well, get you up to Mrs Kempson's, my girl, and tell her he's sound asleep now. Take this boy and girl with you. She'll want to know all the tale. And then keep them out of my sight for a bit. Bringing all this trouble on us!'

Aunt Kirstie stared at him.

'You mean as Mr Ward's dead?' she asked, dropping her voice at the last word.

'That's my meaning, my girl, or so it seems, so get on up there quick as you can. It isn't any business of ours, except these children of Elspeth's have seemingly dragged us into it. Don't stand there gaping at me! Get along! Get along!'

'I'll get my good coat and hat,' said Aunt Kirstie. 'Mr Ward dead! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever will Mrs Kempson have to say?'

'The children better have a clean-up, too, hadn't they, if you're going to the big house?' said Aunt Lally in an undertone, as she saw us out. Aunt Kirstie agreed. To get us washed and into our best clothes took a little time and when at last we started out, Aunt Kirstie said she could not hurry up the hill. However, we reached the manor house eventually and our aunt rang the bell.

Apparently it was the butler's afternoon off, for the door was opened by a maidservant. Aunt Kirstie asked whether it would be convenient for her to speak to Mrs Kempson about something important, so, leaving us standing at the door, the maid said she would go and find out. She did not need to ask Aunt Kirstie's name. She came back in a very short time and took us to the ground-floor room in which Kenneth and I had been received the last time we had visited the manor house.

The room was in the sole possession of Mrs Bradley. She told us that Mrs Kempson was out, so, without consulting Aunt Kirstie, who did not know the whole truth, anyway, Kenneth told her our story. She listened without interrupting him. When, with a few interpolations from me and a few exclamations from Aunt Kirstie, he had finished the tale, she asked where the cottage was situated and then said she would ring up the police and that we had better return home at once, as the police would want to question us.

'Tell them the truth in a simple, orderly, straightforward fashion,' she said. 'Answer their questions briefly and to the point. I shall hope to see more of you later.' She told us to sit down while she telephoned. She had to go out of the room to do this, and while she was gone another maid brought Aunt Kirstie a cup of tea.

We could not tell the police much and I doubt whether they got anything at all useful from Poachy. Uncle Arthur was not very pleased when he came home.

'Police at my house?' he said. 'I've never been mixed up with the police, not the whole of my life. And where's it going to end? The law is cruel hard on poor people. It will be all right for that Kempson lot. They're rich. They'll get away with it. But he was our lodger, wasn't he? So they'll be on to us like the hand of God, and so I tell you, Kirstie.'

Aunt Kirstie harped upon another string.

'I don't know what come over you to want to go and play in that dirty old tumbledown shack,' she said sorrowfully. 'You got all our garden and all your grandfather's land, and the pigs and ducks and chickens and all, and your swing in the cartshed and all the fruit on the bushes, and The Marsh and the brook for your games. What call did you have to go and play in that there old dirty dump? Might have caught the fever or worse! And now we've lost our lodger, too, and not likely to get another when this comes out.'

We were silent. Her last observation affected us painfully, all the more so as it had not occurred to us, until she made it, that the death of Mr Ward, especially under such circumstances, would affect her and Uncle Arthur financially. Like my father and mother, they were anything but well off. Uncle Arthur's jobs on building sites-he was a plasterer by trade-were intermittent and I know now that, apart from allowing them to live rent-free-not nearly as much of a concession then as it would be nowadays-our grandfather, who disapproved of their marriage, did nothing to help them when they struck upon hard times, especially during the winter when there was no building going on. The most he would do-since he said once in my hearing that he could not let his daughter Kirstie starve-was to make the couple an occasional gift of a chicken or a piece of pork.

So we hung our heads and said nothing. The police came again next day, with more questions and with official notebooks in which they wrote down all Aunt Kirstie's answers about Mr Ward, and finished by saying that they would return in the evening when Uncle Arthur was home from work. We had taken refuge under the parlour table, which had a cover on it with a