‘Can you remember what his was wearing?’ Lister asked and she slowly shifted her gaze to him. Sedgwick pulled three small coins from his waistcoat pocket and let them fall on the wood.
‘Just ordinary,’ she said.
‘What’s ordinary?’
She drained the glass, making sure she took every last drop.
‘I don’t know. Dark coat, dark breeches, hose, shoes.’
‘What about his hair?’ the deputy wondered. ‘What colour was that?’
He watched her thinking, trying to remember. Finally she just shrugged again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s all right,’ he told her, pushing the money across the table and standing up.
Outside, the deputy kicked at a stone, and sighed as it skittered across the dirt.
‘She’ll be in there until it’s all gone.’
‘She wasn’t much help,’ Lister said.
‘I still think she saw summat. She wouldn’t have stuck to it like that if she hadn’t. We’d better go around and talk to people along here, see if anyone else noticed anything. You take the houses on that side, I’ll take these.’
‘I’d rather be on my way home to bed.’
Sedgwick grinned.
‘You can do that once you’ve talked to them. What do you think we pay you for?’ He ruffled Rob’s hair and gave him a friendly push. ‘Come on, there’s a dead lass and her baby to think about.’
The deputy found few people at home. Most were off at their work, wives and husbands both. Children of all ages ran wild between the houses and on the road, scattering and reforming like flocks of birds. They ran to him eagerly when he brought a coin from his pocket and let the light play on it. He squatted, looking from one face to the other, some still clean, others with the grime of a week or more on their skin.
‘Listen,’ he said, raising his voice to quiet them. ‘You, hush. I’m trying to find out about the fire over the road. Who saw it?’ They all nodded and started to speak but he was louder. ‘How many of you were out before it started?’
Three of them raised their hands.
‘Right. You lot come over here.’ He waited until they gathered close, the others wandering off, already bored. ‘This is important,’ he told them. ‘What did you see before the fire? Was there anyone around the house?’
Two of the boys shook their heads but one girl looked thoughtful.
‘You mean a man?’ she asked.
‘Anyone or anything,’ Sedgwick said gently.
She rubbed a runny rose with the back of her hand and closed her eyes to fix the picture in her mind.
‘Them as lived there had gone last week,’ she began. ‘I heard them move out in the night when it were quiet.’
‘What’s your name, love?’
‘Meg. Meg Smith.’
‘Right, go on, Meg,’ he encouraged her.
‘Yesterday my mam woke me up early to go and buy a jug of ale for my da so he could go to work,’ she said.
‘What time was it? Do you know?’
‘Don’t know,’ she answered, ‘but it wasn’t light yet. Just a bit lighter over there.’ She pointed at the horizon and looked at him questioningly. He nodded his understanding. ‘The door was open.’
‘Of the house, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
She shook her head. ‘Not until I was on my way back. There was a man coming out. He closed the door behind him and then he went down towards the church. I don’t think he saw me.’
The deputy smiled at the girl. ‘What did he look like? Did you see him properly?’
‘Not really,’ she replied slowly, concentrating. ‘He was big.’
‘As big as me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said doubtfully.
‘What was he wearing?’
She thought and finally shook her head. ‘Just clothes.’
He smiled at her. ‘Anything else you can remember?’
‘No,’ she answered with quick honesty.
He took her small hand and folded it around the coin.
‘You take that and keep it for yourself, Meg. Don’t let your mam or your da know you have it, all right?’
‘Yes.’ She ran off to join the others, her fist tightly clenched.
It wasn’t much, but at least it was a start and it made the woman’s story less of a drunkard’s dream. Now he had to hope others had been out and about, their eyes sharp and able to give a better description. Down here, though, there wasn’t much hope of that. They’d learned to look at the law with distrust and knew it was better to say nothing than a word too much.
He waited until Lister had finished his few brief questions of a man, and walked over to him.
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing,’ Rob answered wearily.
Sedgwick looked at the lad, his face drawn, the skin dark under his eyes. He’d need to be rested to work tonight.
‘You get on home. I’ll cover this.’
‘I will. It’s always harder to sleep during the day, isn’t it?’
‘You get used to it,’ the deputy told him with a laugh. ‘Like everything else in this job.’
Once Lister had gone he set to work again. He knew there was a chance he’d discover more if he worked alone. Rob was good at plenty of things, and he’d learned well since starting the previous summer, but he didn’t yet have the skill of talking to the poor. He’d never been one of them, he couldn’t read their faces yet or understand what might be in the things they didn’t say. He’d learn, in time, but right now things would go faster without him.
He spent the rest of the afternoon moving from house to house along the Calls, going all the way down to the Crown Inn by the graveyard of the Parish Church. The bells rang the hour a few times as he tried to cajole and charm the folk he found, but for all his hope and persistence there was little of help. Only two thought they might have seen someone and neither had paid attention to a figure on the street in the early morning.
Finally he’d had enough. His throat was dry from asking questions, his feet ached from standing, and he wanted to be at home with Lizzie and the baby. He stretched out his back and set off for the house on Lands Lane.
He felt the pride swell in him each time he unlocked the door. It only had a single hearth and a bedroom atop a large kitchen. But it was a house. All his life he’d lived in rooms, sometimes shared with other families, some dark and dank spaces. This felt like riches and grandeur. James had explored the place like another country and Lizzie had walked around slowly, touching everything in disbelief and wonder. The boss had upped his pay back in September, just after the new mayor took office, and they’d been able to afford this.
Lizzie looked up from her chair, a weary smile on her face. Isabell was in her arms, taking the nipple, only her head showing from the swaddling.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘Slept well, for once, but she cried all morning.’ She sighed and switched the baby to the other breast. He took her free hand, rubbing the palm lightly.
‘You look tired.’
She snorted. ‘You show me a mother who isn’t. We get by, like we always do.’ She stood as the baby finished and passed her to him. ‘You can look after her now. There’s the last of yesterday’s pie if you’re hungry.’
He held Isabell, her head over his shoulder, patting her back to wind her. He loved moments like these, revelling in the tiny girl with her warm, milky smell, the tenderness of her skin and the softness of her hair.
‘Aye, I could eat. Where’s James?’
‘He’s still out playing.’
A dark look crossed his face.
‘Leave it, John. Don’t worry, it’s still light.’
But he knew he’d fret anyway. The boy was five but he already had the wild spirit his father recognized all too well. For a while James had seemed happy; Sedgwick’s wife had gone off with a soldier and Lizzie had moved in, everything to James that his mother had never been. Then they’d moved to the house and Isabell had been born. Now so much of Lizzie’s time was taken with the baby, leaving James on his own, and he’d learned to leave quietly and stay away for hours.