“But that night he died, and it was then that I started wondering about that jelly in the pipkin, for him, liking scum as he did, and always having a saucer of it set aside for him, it wouldn’t have been difficult to have boiled up some poison for him without any danger of other folks touching it. And Pugwalker knew all about herbs and suchlike, and could have told her what to use. For it was as plain as print that poor father knew he was going to die, and peonies make a good purge; and I’ve often wondered since if it was as a purge that he wanted these flowers. And that’s all I know, and perhaps it isn’t much, but it’s been enough to keep me awake many a night of my life wondering what I should have done if I’d been older. For I was only a little maid of ten at the time, with no one I could talk to, and as frightened of my stepmother as a bird of a snake. If I’d been one of the witnesses, I dare say it would have come out in court, but I was too young for that.”
“Perhaps we could get hold of Diggory Carp?”
“Diggory Carp?” she repeated in surprise. “But surely you heard what happened to him? Ah, that was a sad story! You see, after he was sent to gaol, there came three or four terrible lean years, one after the other. And food was so dear, no one, of course, had any money for buying fancy goods like baskets … and the long and the short of it was that when Diggory came out of gaol he found that his wife and children had died of starvation. And it seemed to turn his wits, and he came up to our farm, raging against my stepmother, and vowing that someday he’d get his own back on her. And that night he hanged himself from one of the trees in our orchard, and he was found there dead the next morning.”
“A sad story,” said Master Nathaniel. “Well, we must leave him out of our calculations. All you’ve told me is very interesting—very interesting indeed. But there’s still a great deal to be unravelled before we get to the rope I’m looking for. One thing I don’t understand is Diggory Carp’s story about the osiers. Was it a pure fabrication of his?”
“Poor Diggory! He wasn’t, of course, the sort of man whose word one would be very ready to take, for he did deserve his ten years—he was a born thief. But I don’t think he would have had the wits to invent all that. I expect the story he told was true enough about his daughter selling the osiers, but that it was only for basket-making that she wanted them. Guilt’s a funny thing—like a smell, and one often doesn’t quite know where it comes from. I think Diggory’s nose was not mistaken when it smelt out guilt, but it led him to the wrong clue. My father wasn’t poisoned by osiers.”
“Can you think what it was, then?”
She shook her head. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I wish you knew something more definite,” said Master Nathaniel a little fretfully. “The Law dearly loves something it can touch—a bloodstained knife and that sort of thing. And there’s another matter that puzzles me. Your father seems, on your showing, to have been a very indulgent sort of husband, and to have kept his jealousy to himself. What cause was there for the murder?”
“Ah! that I think I can explain to you,” she cried. “You see, our farm was very conveniently situated for … well, for smuggling a certain thing that we don’t mention. It stands in a sort of hollow between the marches and the west road, and smugglers like a friendly, quiet place where they can run their goods. And my poor father, though he may have sat like a dumb animal in pain when his young wife was gallivanting with her lover, all the same, if he had found out what was being stored in the granary, Pugwalker would have been kicked out of the house, and she could have whistled for him till she was black in the face. My father was easygoing enough in some ways, but there were places in him as hard as nails, and no woman, be she never so much of a fool (and, fair play to my stepmother, she was no fool), can live with a man without finding out where these places are.”
“Oh, ho! So what Diggory Carp said about the contents of that sack was true, was it?” And Master Nathaniel inwardly thanked his stars that no harm had come to Ranulph during his stay in such a dangerous place.
“Oh, it was true, and no mistake; and, child though I was at the time, I cried through half one night with rage when they told me what the hussy had said in court about my father using the stuff as manure and her begging him not to! Begging him not to, indeed! I could have told them a very different story. And it was Pugwalker that was at the back of that business, and got the granary key from her, so they could run their goods there. And shortly before my father died he got wind of it—I know that from something I overheard. The room I shared with my little brother Robin opened into theirs, and we always kept the door ajar, because Robin was a timid child, and fancied he couldn’t go to sleep unless he heard my father snoring.
