is not the point. You make it sound like the idea I could be your wife is insulting to you or something.’
She realized as she said it that it might look like she was fishing for a compliment and waved her hand. ‘Never mind. It was a long drive.’
The woman had turned back to them with two keys, labels on them reading 12 and 18.
‘Can we also eat here?’ Alkmene asked. ‘We are famished.’
‘They finished it all before the division started,’ the woman said with a shrug. ‘I can find you some bread and cheese maybe, but it will cost you.’
Alkmene glanced at Jake, who nodded.
‘And everything must be paid in advance,’ the woman said.
Alkmene wanted to reach into her purse, but Jake stalled her and pulled out his wallet. ‘Please take the food up to our rooms if you will. Lady Alkmene will also want some hot water I suppose.’
Alkmene could have kicked him for using her title. She expected the woman’s jaw to drop and a flood of apologies to break loose. Even worse, if she called it out loud, the whole room might turn and start having more interest in her than in the dead cow being divided.
But the woman just gave her a dirty look from squinted eyes, grabbed up the money Jake had put on the counter and shuffled off, leaving them to find their own way up the stairs, to their rooms.
Jake unlocked Nr. 12 first and peeked in. It was not large but had a fine double bed and a big window with a view of the moors. The sun was just sinking, putting everything in a golden glow. ‘You have this one,’ he said. ‘I’ll go get your bags from the car.’
Leaving the door open, he walked off. His footfalls pounded down the steps.
Alkmene pulled the key from the lock and held it in her palm as she walked to the window. It looked out over the village square with the sad dead oak among the live ones, down the road they had followed coming here, and then across an unending stretch of moor.
The sunshine over the moor made the greys and greens look more cheerful, almost warm. Still something lingered in her system, a hint of malice conjured up by the empty square, the bleeding beef, the look of hatred in the woman’s eyes. These people lived in their own world, not welcoming strangers into it.
Certainly not fancy strangers who had come down from London.
She leaned on the windowsill as she stared out, scanning the land for as far as she could see it from left to right. Where was the infamous marshland where the woman whom Silas Norwhich’s unfortunate brother had loved had found her death? Maybe it was further away from here, or it was at the back of the inn? There was a bustle behind her and the woman came in, clanking a tin plate on the table with a chunk of bread and cheese on it. She held a knife in her hand. Pointing it at Alkmene, she asked, ‘What you be wanting here?’
‘Just sightseeing,’ Alkmene said with an innocent smile. ‘Birdwatching. And rare plants on the moor, you know.’ Her befuddled brain searched for some species her father was always raving about.
The woman shook her head. ‘No, you come from London. If you are here about that old business again, asking questions and opening up old hurt, you’d better leave again at first light. We don’t want to hear no more about it.’
Alkmene opened her mouth to say she was not here to hurt anyone, even to set old injustices straight, but the woman was not waiting for a response. Waving the knife, she continued, ‘You’d better leave again, at first light, unless you want something to happen to you.’
‘Anything wrong here?’ Jake stood in the door opening with her bags in his hands.
The woman spun to him. She hissed a moment like an angry tiger, then tossed the knife on the table beside the plate and brushed past Jake, who moved sideways to let her through.
Hitching a brow at Alkmene, he asked, ‘Did she mention something happening to somebody?’
‘Yes, me,’ Alkmene retorted, ‘or rather us unless we are smart and leave again at first light. They don’t welcome strangers who are digging into old hurt or something. I tried to say birdwatching and rare plants, but she didn’t buy into it for a moment. It is all your fault. You should not have mentioned my title.’
Jake dropped her bags on the floorboards beside the bed. ‘You had already said we were from London. Birdwatchers carry field glasses and cameras. Botanists wave the local “What grows where?” in the air.’
‘My father never waves “What grows where?” in the air,’ Alkmene protested. ‘He goes to places where he writes the “What grows where?” because before he came out, there was none.’
But Jake already said, ‘Besides, if you had wanted to travel incognito, you should have chosen less conspicuous clothes to wear.’
Alkmene glanced down. ‘These are my less conspicuous clothes.’
Jake rolled his eyes. ‘You still have a lot to learn. If you go undercover, you must look the part.’
‘You have not told me anything about going undercover.’
‘Well, what do you expect me to do? Go downstairs, stand next to the guy handing out the cow bits and say: By the by, we think somebody died here, say twenty-five years ago, or maybe she was murdered, or maybe it was just an accident, but in any case we’d like to know more about her and the baby she might or might not have borne.’
Alkmene saw his point. ‘That would probably get you lynched.’
Jake lifted a shoulder. ‘Maybe not that bad, but I would be taking a bath in that horse trough outside this inn. One authentic detail of Cunningham that I am not eager to get closely acquainted with if I can help it.’
Alkmene frowned. ‘That woman was hostile enough, but we can’t be sure all people here are the same. It seemed those folks downstairs had eaten their fill, had some beer and were happy with their meat. Maybe if you mingled and started up some conversation, you’d be getting somewhere.’
Jake nodded. ‘Maybe.’ He picked up the knife and skilfully sliced off a chunk of bread, covering it with two slices of cheese. ‘You can feed yourself without cutting off a finger?’ he asked.
Alkmene made a hitting gesture at him. ‘Will you go now?’
Laughing, he trotted off, carrying his meagre dinner with him.
While Alkmene was chewing on some of the very heavy bread, the woman brought her hot water. It was in a low porcelain basin with a crack in the edge. She put it on the table, still carrying that hateful look.
Alkmene said round the bread, ‘I’m sorry if you take offence to questions being asked about things that happened here that were not…right. But not everybody has the same opinion about everything. And not everybody is after a sensationalist tale, you know. Maybe we are here in the interest of someone who was treated unfairly and who should, after all those years, be vindicated.’
The woman stared at her as if she didn’t
