‘It’s no’ really like that, miss,’ he said, and although he refused to elaborate, something he had let slip before came back to me.
‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that you got into the house at night, even though you hate to be alone, because the boys tease you? Or are cruel to you somehow? You said the girls and the girls alone were the kind ones.’
‘I d’ae want to get anyone into trouble,’ Mattie said and he put on a spurt of pace – we were recrossing the fields towards the cottages again – and left me behind him.
‘But if someone is being mean to you, surely he deserves no loyalty,’ I said, puffing a little as I caught up.
‘Naeb’dy’s being anything,’ he insisted. ‘They do what they want and I just have to lump it. Same as ever, same as anywhere.’
Slowly, very deliberately, I put down my basket and stood with my feet planted well apart and my arms folded in front of me.
‘I am not moving until you tell me the rest,’ I said in the coldest voice anyone with a heart could turn on this child. It was a considerable effort too, because I wanted to clap my hands and click my heels at the discovery that there was a ‘rest’, that Mattie’s tale had not run out into sand after all. ‘I’m quite willing to stand here until Mr Osborne and your mother come to see what’s happened to us.’
‘My mammy’ll skin me alive,’ said Mattie.
‘I know. I’ll help her.’
He gave a huge sigh and started walking again.
‘I really, really hate being on my own in the dark,’ he said again. ‘And John and Harry and Stanley know it. But… they go out, miss. They go out at night, all three of them, and I’m on my own, and that’s why I go to the servants’ hall and play the piano. Because even though I’m on my own in the room, there’s Eldry and Millie underneath – and Maggie too before she left – and Mr Faulds through the wall, and Mrs Hepburn and Clara and Phyllis and Miss Abbott and it’s better than the carriage house by a long chalk, I can tell you.’
‘And where, pray, do the three of them go?’ I said. ‘Do you know? Can you tell me?’
‘The three of them d’ae go anywhere,’ Mattie said. ‘John and Harry go to the Free Gardeners’ or else to this club that Harry knows that serves drink after time, except on Monday night it was shutting at midnight cos it’s that kind of club but they went to watch the start of the strike, with the fireworks and all the speakers and the singing and they didn’t get back until all hours. And Stanley went out too. But he always goes on his own.’
‘So why did you stay put?’ I said, remembering this. ‘You assured me that you weren’t in the house that night.’
‘I wasnae,’ Mattie said. ‘I was looking out the windae to see if it was safe to come out, but it wasnae so I just had to bide where I was and I fell asleep in the end.’
‘What do you mean, “safe”?’ I said.
‘Well, Stanley,’ Mattie said. ‘Stanley didn’t get out of the way, miss, if you must know. He was in the back garden in the way of me getting in the basement door. He’s no’ usually.’
‘But what on earth do you mean?’ I said. ‘What was he doing? What does he usually do?’
‘Nae harm,’ said Mattie. ‘No’ really. He looks in at the windaes, miss. He likes to look in.’
‘What windows?’ I said, although I could guess already.
‘Well, Clara and Phyllis’s,’ said Mattie, ‘except they’re fly to him and they stop up all the wee holes in the shutters wi’ twists of paper. And he used to look in at Miss Abbott sometimes and I’ve even seen him taking a wee peek at Mrs Hepburn, but mostly he goes over the garden wall, to the other houses, where the maids d’ae ken him and maybe don’t shut their curtains so careful. But that night he didnae go over the wall. Like I said, he stayed in the garden at Number 31.’
‘Peering in?’ I said. ‘Since there was someone new to peer in at?’
Mattie bit his lip and nodded and I felt a flood of revulsion pass through me.
‘A peering tom?’ I said. Mattie flushed again. ‘And you kept it a secret?’
‘He held it over me, miss. About how I went out too, on account of how sometimes he was back before me.’
‘And the times he was back before you,’ I said, speaking slowly as I thought it through, ‘he might well have watched for you and he might very well have seen you coming out and hiding the key and-’
‘No,’ said Mattie. ‘I was careful. And if Stanley had known he would have used it himself, miss. That’s what he’s like. If he’d been able to get into the house he’d never stick at windaes – he’d have been inside peeping through keyholes instead. And he’d have hinted. He cannae stop himself hinting.’
‘Yes, hinting is Stanley’s favourite pastime,’ I said, unable to keep my lip from curling.
‘Aye,’ said Mattie, quietly. ‘And he’s hinted… I mean, he’s let on… Honest, miss, I d’ae ken nothin’ about that night but Stanley does. He tellt me.’
‘Oh, Mattie!’ I said and his head drooped like a wilting flower.
‘I didnae want to get him in bother,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘And it wasnae much anyway. It’s was jist that he said… it was when you were talking to us about how somebody must have let somebody in. Remember, miss? When you said that? Stanley was grinning like a cat and he said to me – really quiet – that you were wrong. That’s all – he jist said you were wrong.’
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I knew someone must have seen something. I knew it. Well, let’s see Stanley getting away with “hinting” to the superintendent, eh? He’ll crack like a nut.’
‘But… you dinnae think Stanley killed him, miss?’ Mattie said. We had reached the cottages again and he rested his basket on the low garden wall and turned a troubled face to me
I took a long moment and then answered only very grudgingly: ‘No. He had no apparent motive, he doesn’t have the stomach for it, and if he were guilty he’d keep his silly mouth shut. The teasing and hinting and hugging himself might be infuriating for the rest of us, Mattie, but it’s the stamp of innocence for Stanley. Now, come on. Let’s go in.’
Alec and I were invited to share the MacGibneys’ luncheon – bread, margarine and potatoes fried in yesterday’s bacon pan – and, astonishingly enough, after my morning of tramping the fields and struggling in the gooseberry bushes, I was able to make a good show of repaying them with a clean plate. Nanny Palmer would have been proud of me.
Mattie’s father had come home for his dinner and when it was eaten he, John and Grandad all lit their pipes and Alec joined them. In such a small room with such a low ceiling and with only one very little window – and that fastened tight – I should have been glad to leave the table and join Mattie’s mother at the sink, but she showed me with a glare that I was to keep away. (I supposed she did not foresee much skill with a dish-mop and did not want to risk handing her good plates to me to dry either, not in a room with a stone floor.) I should have been even gladder to leave straight away and return to Heriot Row to furnish Mr Hardy with my little bit of news – a way forward at last in all of this tangle – but we could not drag Mattie from his mother so early in the day.
‘My, that’s grand-smelling baccy,’ said Mr MacGibney Sr when Alec had got his pipe going well.
‘I like it,’ Alec said. ‘I wish I’d thought of bringing some more.’ All three generations of men shook their heads in unison.
‘You couldn’t bring tobacco on a Co-op chit,’ said John, ‘nor spirits neither. You’d need a licence for them.’
‘I meant as a gift,’ Alec said, but the head-shaking went on.
‘Cannae be too careful about “gifts”, time like this,’ said Mattie’s father, and I remembered what Alec had said about giving money to the men on the blockade.
‘Cannae believe we’ve come to this,’ said the old man. ‘We won that war for them. Broke our backs on fifteen-hour shifts we did and kept this country going. And now look what they’re at! Importing German coal. German! Reparations, they say. Well, I’ve got a different name for it.’