‘He-’ The look of puzzlement came back into his eyes. ‘I d’ae ken,’ he said. ‘That’s daft too, miss, eh no? That cannae be right.’ We had stopped walking now and were standing in the middle of the field like a pair of statues. ‘Or you know what it is,’ Mattie said at last. ‘It’s just different there. It’s all… different. And here it’s hame and it’s all fields and that and things are no’ the same so’s you cannae remember what it’s like when it’s…’ I was nodding, because although his stuttering attempt to explain was far from eloquent I recognised it as kin to the feeling I had had with Alec the previous afternoon when I had wanted to get up into the air, where I could see things, like Mattie was suddenly seeing things, out here in the field, in the open.
Not too far off from us was the unmistakable ridge of a railway siding, a few children dotted about its slopes with sacks in their hands, busily picking at the bushes growing there.
‘Let’s get the berries for your mother,’ I said, ‘and come back to all of this on the way home.’
Mattie’s eyes, I was astonished to see, filled up with tears until they were brimming and he shook his head roughly to scatter them before they could roll down his face.
‘You’re being dead nice to me,’ he said. ‘And I hate having to be no’ nice back, but I cannae tell on… anybody that’s been just as nice and let them down. I never wanted to let anybody down, ever.’
I had to tread very carefully now.
‘Your mother and grandfather,’ I said, ‘and your brother too, even if they are not always… nice, as you call it, even if they are not always kind, they do care for you. And just because someone else is kind, Mattie, that person does not necessarily care any more deeply. Certainly no one who truly cares for you would ask you to keep secrets for them which weigh so heavily upon you.’
‘They don’t,’ he said. ‘They’re no’ heavy secrets, miss, honest injuns they’re no’. It’s me keeping my mouth shut that’s making you think they are.’
Inwardly, I was cheering, but on the outside I remained calm and kept the kindly look on my face. Being nice to Mattie was what would swing all this in my favour, I knew. I turned and walked to the edge of the field where a chestnut tree most obligingly provided both shade from the sunshine and some canker-swollen roots for us to sit upon. Mattie followed me like a gosling, shrugged off the baskets and sat down.
‘I really, really, really hate being all on my own in the dark, miss,’ he said. I nodded and even put a hand out to squeeze his arm. ‘And I really, really, really love playing the piano. Only I never get the chance to practise it. Cos if anybody’s in the mood for a sing-song, Mr Faulds knows more tunes than me, from when he used to hear them in his music-hall days, and if nobody’s in the mood for music then they’re no’ in the mood for hearing me practising either, are they?’
‘But I’ve seen you practise making no sound at all,’ I said. Mattie grinned at me.
‘I learned how to do that in the night-time,’ he said. ‘They let me in, and I go to the servants’ hall where it’s still nice and warm and sometimes I read the song sheets and sometimes I practise, and I don’t make any noise.’
‘Who lets you in?’ I said. His face clouded again. ‘I promise that you won’t get anyone into trouble,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers behind my back.
‘Clara,’ he said, with a spasm of the pain it caused him flashing across his face. ‘Or Phyllis. One of the two.’
‘And how do they do it without Mr Faulds or Mrs Hepburn hearing them?’ I said. Mattie gave another grin at this, fainter but full of glee.
‘When Mr Faulds is locking up at night,’ he said, ‘he always does the kitchen door first, and one of the girls always stays up there and when he turns the key in the sub-basement they know he’s just about to shoot the bolts there and when he does, they shoot the bolts back again in the door upstairs.’
Instantly, I was back in my little bed in Miss Rossiter’s cosy bedroom, listening to the resounding clang of the bolts at night and the mysteriously less resounding clang of the bolts in the morning.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘My God, Mattie. You know what this means, don’t you? The house was open all night – lying open, all night, every night, including the night of the murder.’ Mattie was shaking his head so hard that his flaxen hair flew out around it like ribbons from a maypole.
‘No, it’s still locked,’ he said. ‘It’s just the bolts they open for me. But there’s a key, hidden in a wee hidey-hole in the bricks, away up high, and I can get in and then I can lock up again when it’s safe to leave, see?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘Not quite so bad then. But doesn’t Mrs Hepburn hear you?’
‘She-’ Mattie bit his lip. ‘She’s another one that’s been dead, dead kind,’ he said. ‘That’s why I always stayed. All the girls and Mrs Hepburn were that good to me even if the boys werenae. She said the girls were her business and the boys were up to Mr Faulds to keep in line and since it was me she knew there was no hanky-panky. And that’s the truth, miss, because Harry and John and Stanley never knew about that key and they still don’t and Phyllis and Clara told me straight if they ever found out that would be the end of it, because I’m a good boy and like their wee brother but they others are men.’
‘So the other three lads know nothing about it?’ I said. ‘They couldn’t have got in without someone knowing.’
‘I d’ae think so,’ Mattie said.
‘And they don’t even know that you sneak out?’ I asked, thinking that the three of them had to be extraordinarily sound sleepers.
‘No,’ said Mattie, without meeting my eyes. He was still hiding something; I was sure of it.
‘So, the night master died. What did you see? Or hear?’
‘I wasnae there that night,’ Mattie replied. ‘I stayed in the carriage house and never went nowhere.’
It was very hard to settle for this; almost impossible to face that I had cracked Mattie’s great secret only for it to lead precisely nowhere. I supposed it was something to suggest to Mr Hardy that he find this key in its hidey-hole in the brick and test it for fingerprints. Further than that, I was at a dead-end again and it was with a clod of disappointment inside me as heavy as a sandbag that I trailed off to the gooseberries at last.
I had quite forgotten what a torturous thing a gooseberry bush is and since the little girls with the flour sacks had done the sensible thing and stripped the fattest and easiest-reached fruits before we arrived, Mattie and I were left to stretch deep into the thorny interiors to snag the little green pellets which remained. My grey serge, by the end of an hour, sported a great many loops of thread and puckered grazes which I am sure Miss Rossiter would have known how to remedy but which I simply rubbed at feebly as though the coat, like the arm underneath, might simply heal itself given time.
When I could stand it no longer, I began to extricate myself.
‘Come on,’ I said to Mattie, going over to where he was picking. ‘We’ve got a good lot and you’ve got roses in your cheeks already before you’ve even eaten a single one.’
His smile faltered. He really was the most sensitive child, whom even a bracing reference to his health struck as some kind of fault-finding. Then there was the fear of the dark struggling against his love of the piano. He had what would be called, if he were more gently born, an artistic temperament. And there was some kind of courage in his putting the art above the fear, I supposed; at least, my mother would have thought so. Picking my words very carefully to avoid hurting him again, I tried to tell him so but he only put his head down as low as ever and I could see a flush spreading over him.