I should never have let my niece persuade me to give a trollop like you a chance when your last employer turned you off for chasing her sons. She never mentioned blackmail, though, curse her for a soft fool when you should clearly be in the local bridewell.’
‘We’re both bad, but you could’ve been better if you wanted. As for that milksop I worked for, I knew far too much about her spindle-shanked sons for her to risk it and they weren’t worth it, anyway. Miss Sommers is a better woman than either of us and took me in despite that woman’s spiteful tales, but you betrayed her long before I got here, didn’t you? So who will the world judge the worst rogue of us two, Madam Bartle?’
‘You spied on her for me, despite owing her a roof over your head, and blackmail is a serious crime. If you survive the little accident you’re about to have, you will regret relying on that weak sot from the Crown for aught but a roll in the hay, you know that, don’t you?’
‘He has me to put steel in him, Mrs Bartle, and I have this,’ the little maid said triumphantly and Callie heard her aunt gasp. ‘An account written by your husband of times he was ill after he ate with you and accidents he had on his way out to get drunk and not coming back as you claimed. He even knew a man you paid to murder him. They had a fine spree with the money, then you decided to do the job yourself and he went in fear of his life. He should have run instead of staying, but what a fool you were to keep his evidence.’
‘How did you get your grubby hands on such drunken nonsense?’ Aunt Seraphina whispered as if she dared not admit it existed out loud. Through the heavy stillness of the hot attic Callie could hear fear in her voice and knew this was true, as well.
‘I found the secret panel in your desk drawer I bet you wish was big enough for all the letters you stole over the years. Being bedridden herself, the old lady I was meant to keep quiet in my last position thought it a fine joke to teach me the tricks of such places and find things her son-in-law hid from his wife so she could make him do as she said.’
‘That’s where you learnt your disgraceful trade?’
‘Of course, and a cunning old besom she is, too,’ Kitty said admiringly. ‘Why else would he pay a maid to keep her happy when he hates her like poison?’
‘He still managed to dismiss you.’
‘That’s when I learnt never to trust sly witches like you and make sure I know more than they do. The old woman moved her treasures, then told her daughter I was warming her precious sons’ beds.’
‘You were lucky not to be whipped at the cart-tail,’ Aunt Seraphina scorned.
‘I knew too much, but then the old lady gossiped and I couldn’t get work. Don’t you look down your long nose at me, Mrs Bartle, I was born with nothing and make my way as best I can. You were born a lady and only took me on because I’m cheap and you thought I’d be so grateful I’d do whatever you bade me.’
‘And you would be on the parish now if not for me.’
‘Not I,’ Kitty said confidently and somehow Callie believed her. ‘I wouldn’t be set up for life neither, though, so I’m happy to tell your niece what you did if you don’t pay up. If this paper gets to the magistrates, stealing from your family and keeping a man and his wife apart all these years will be small beer next to wilful murder.’
It went so quiet in the chamber under the roof Callie could hear the crackle of paper as the girl held that damning account out of the Aunt Seraphina’s way as she did her best to grab it from her.
‘Enough,’ she whispered to Gideon, convinced the two people in that room were so absorbed in their struggle they wouldn’t notice if a town crier was standing on the stairs.
‘Indeed,’ he agreed, and somehow managed to launch himself up the last few stairs and past the partition wall as swiftly and silently as a hunting wolf.
He easily topped Kitty and Aunt Seraphina and snatched the letter from Kitty before she even took in the fact he was behind her, throwing it back to Callie. Catching by instinct, she laid it on the stair and got ready to join in if he was too gentlemanly to ward off two biting, spitting furies.
Gideon must have learnt the folly of being a gentleman with she-cats since they parted. He grabbed Kitty by the waist and lifted her off her feet so he could aim her at Aunt Seraphina like a weapon. Her wildly kicking feet landed a good few blows on Aunt Seraphina’s substantial person as the girl tried to turn in his arms to scratch and bite him. Luckily both women were soon winded and Gideon stepped back.
‘How enlightening,’ he said casually. ‘See if Biddy’s friend the groom has returned with the magistrate yet, will you, love?’ he asked Callie without turning round.
‘Of course,’ she said, carrying Bonhomie Bartle’s statement at arm’s length as if it were as noxious as the man who wrote it.
She ran downstairs, unsure Gideon’s gentlemanly instincts would let him hold those two at bay much longer. The memory of the deadly pistols he pulled out of his pocket as if he used them to hold felons up every day reassured her. For all she knew he ran such risks on a daily basis. She could see him doing exactly that when she turned her back on him. Occupied with her own thoughts, she watched Squire Evans ride up to the house as fast as his fat old cob would carry him and remembered the evidence in her hand. She darted into her term-time office and locked it in the box where she kept the girls’ pocket money. If Gideon chose to show it to the authorities she would hand him the key, but somehow she didn’t want her aunt’s downfall to be caused by a man she had despised and feared herself.
‘I still can’t take it in,’ the magistrate said after a spitting and furious Kitty was escorted off the premises with her bundle of belongings and Mrs Bartle locked in her room. ‘Mrs Grisham seems such an upstanding woman.’
‘I suspected nothing, Mr Evans,’ Callie said with a rueful shrug.
‘So why were you suspicious, Sir Gideon?’ the squire asked.
‘I just knew something was amiss,’ he said with that closed expression Callie hated. ‘I would rather our gullibility went no further, if you take my meaning, sir?’
‘Ah, yes, well I don’t see how that can be, Sir Gideon. If we prosecute the woman, we’ll need a good case and yours is by far the strongest.’
‘I intend to keep all the evidence pertinent to it in a safe place and if you return the letters Mrs Bartle used to blackmail her neighbours anonymously she will have nothing left to live on but her wits.’
‘No doubt she’d thrive, since “the wicked flourish like the green bay tree” as it says in our prayer books. Inconvenient to have all that linen washed in public, is it?’ The squire tapped his red nose with a beefy forefinger and reached for the glass of excellent brandy Aunt Seraphina kept for wealthier visitors.
‘Lady Laughraine and I will be living not fifteen miles away and I don’t want the whole world to know what fools we’ve been,’ Gideon agreed confidentially.
Apparently her husband had become a fine actor over the years they were apart. Callie suspected he didn’t care a straw what their neighbours thought, given the gossip it had been enjoying at his expense since before he was born. He was doing it for her. She shook her head to show him she could weather being thought a fool to tell the world her aunt was a thief and a liar. He pretended not to see, so she gave up and made an excuse about needing to steady the household and left the room. They would
