‘Long George told me.’
‘Ah.’ Long George was always a fool, Dodd thought; why did nobody know how to keep his mouth shut? And he had never liked Ill-Willit Daniel.
‘Andy Nixon is helped into his doorway by my appalling servant, Barnabus Cooke, who completes Andy’s happy evening by cutting his purse.’
‘Ay.’
‘Next morning, Andy Nixon is full of wrath and vengeance. He comes up with a plan for landing Barnabus in trouble and getting his own back on Atkinson. Probably he asks his master Pennycook for help, and Pennycook agrees to loan him a handcart and get hold of one of Barnabus’s knives. Nixon himself comes up to the Keep to get one of my gloves—perhaps at Pennycook’s suggestion, who has reason not to like me.’
‘Why’s that, sir?’
‘Oh, I’m interfering with the smooth corrupting of the victualling contracts for Carlisle. He was very upset.’
‘Oh.’
‘Andy Nixon with Kate Atkinson’s help then cuts Jemmy Atkinson’s throat in his bedroom; they bundle the body onto the handcart after dark and take it to Frank’s vennel, where they dump it along with Barnabus’s knife and my glove, and there you are.’
Dodd sipped some more of his beer and thought for a while.
‘Hm,’ he said.
‘Is that all? Hm? I think that’s what happened, don’t you?’
‘Ay, perhaps.’
‘Why don’t you agree?’
‘I didna say I dinnae agree.’
‘You don’t look as if you do.’
It occurred to Dodd that perhaps one of the things you learnt at Court was bald-headed persistence. Certainly Carey had that. He gave up trying to keep his counsel. After all, the Deputy kept saying he wanted to know Dodd’s opinion.
‘Ay well, sir, it’s in the character. He’s no’ a clever courtier like yourself, sir, Andy isnae. He’s a fine wrestler and a bonny fighter...’
‘So everybody keeps telling me.’
‘But he’s no’ a clever man. If he was angered enough to kill Jemmy Atkinson then he wisnae cool enough to think out all yon about gloves and knives.’
‘Perhaps Pennycook helped him.’
‘Ay. Perhaps. Will ye ask him yet?’
Sighing deeply Dodd finished his quart and followed Carey on his self-imposed mission to prevent the Deputy getting a knife in the ribs before he had a chance to do for Lowther.
***
They went straight to Maggie Mulcaster’s house, across the road from the shut-up Atkinsons’ place, and found Kate’s little girl Mary sitting by the door very slowly shelling peas. She had her tongue stuck out and she held her breath every time she pressed open a peapod which made her gasp occasionally when she forgot to breathe again.
Mary looked up at Carey and immediately flinched back. Her face crumpled up and she started to cry. The bowl slipped off her knees and Dodd bent down just in time to catch it from going into the mud.
Dodd squatted in front of her and put the bowl down on the doorstep.
‘Mary, Mary,’ he said gently, ‘d’ye know me?’
She nodded, very big-eyed. ‘You’re Mrs Dodd’s bad-tempered husband.’
Carey, who had looked glum at finding the little maid frightened of him, grinned at this, though Dodd failed to see what was funny.
She nodded and then shook her head. ‘She’s gone to fetch in Clover. She said it wis soft to leave her in our garden since there’s nobody there and she’s need of the milk as well for the extra pack of weans the Deputy put to her, the southern bugger, and what was he thinkin’ of arresting Kate and her a poor widow and us poor orphans. And I’m shelling peas,’ she finished with a sunny smile.
It faded and she shrank back again because the Deputy Warden had sat himself down on the step beside her. He took off his hat, put it beside him and scratched vigorously at his head. There wasn’t room for Dodd so he leaned against the wall.
‘Is it true you know the Queen, sir?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Carey simply. ‘She’s my aunt.’
Mary’s mouth opened, revealing a gap where she had lost one of her teeth.
‘What does she look like?’
Carey took a penny out of his belt-pouch, tossed it up and showed her the head.
‘She looks like that only her skin is pink and white and her hair is red.’
‘Does she really have a hundred smocks and kirtles and petticoats?’
‘More like a thousand.’
