“Her what?” asked Muntle, leaning in.
“Her moof,” said Tattycoram, and then she touched her own “moof ” by way of demonstration. “And den not a few seconds later I hear da glass a’ crackin’ and den da sound of her a’ screamin’ as she go down. It be a horrible sound and I had a mind to go in and find out if it was wot I feared it to be, but den I tink the better of it. I tink dis madman could toss me out dat winder too, so I pull meself back into a corner of da passage and I wait for him to go out. And dat’s all dat I heerd and all dat I know.”
“You’ve been quite helpful, Tattycoram,” said Muntle, rising to place a genial hand upon her shoulder. “If I require anything further from you, where may I find you?”
“I go back to Blackheath soon as I leave dis place.”
Muntle nodded. “Safe travels, child. You’ve been a great help to us.”
As Antonia walked Tattycoram to the door and then down the steps and through the shop to the lane, Muntle and I fell into contemplative silence. Eventually, I sighed and shook my head. “It does seem awfully tidy as earwitness testimony goes, doesn’t it, Muntle?”
“Cut and dried and bound and sheathed,” returned my friend. “But sometimes things are exactly what they seem. We have no reason not to believe the girl. Mrs. Pyegrave had taken up with a nice, young, no doubt good-looking horseboy as paramour, and Pyegrave found out. But rather than agree to his demand that she terminate her relationship with the young man, she turns it all back at her husband with a threat of her own, and he is compelled to deliver the consequences right on the spot.”
“The Tya-dya-dya Project. Here, though, things get mirky.”
“Aye. I’ve never heard of anything with a name even remotely similar. Have you?”
I shook my head. “Whatever it is, it cannot be widely known…”
“Yet still of sufficient import,” interrupted Muntle, “to send Janet Pyegrave to her death for merely threatening to divulge it. That and this ‘fête’— whatever that refers to. It really is quite an intriguing business, Trimmers.”
“And obviously worth pursuing.”
“Yet such pursuit would prove tricky.”
“How so?” asked Antonia, having returned to the room to join the conversation in medias res.
Muntle folded his arms and chewed upon his nether lip for a moment. “It is, frankly, the servant-girl’s word against Pyegrave’s. And set one against the other, credibility is generally more heavily weighted on the side of an M.P.P.”
Antonia snorted and then began to shake her head. “So are you saying, Muntle, that there is no way for Pyegrave to be brought to justice?” Now Antonia placed her hands on either side of her head as if to still it, although the picture was more of a woman in the throes of torturous exasperation. “For I now have little doubt about the man’s culpability in his wife’s death. Yet because, at present, everything rests upon the testimony of this one poor miner’s daughter, Pyegrave appears set to walk free for the remainder of his days! Do I apprehend the situation correctly?”
“I cannot see means to any other outcome,” said Muntle in an apologetic tone.
“Even when you consider…” Antonia’s eyes brightened. “…the possibility that there may have been someone who lived in that street who, unlike Tattycoram, actually saw it — someone watching in the night as Pyegrave approached the window and tossed his wife out of it as if she were the unwanted contents of a brimming slop pail!”
“If that be so, Miss Bocker, the person has yet to come forward. No, my dear lady, I suspect that everyone was sound asleep in their beds at that late hour.”
“Not if the couple’s argument carried itself loudly into the street. Perhaps someone was drawn to their window by the noisy contretemps but is presently too reticent to recount voluntarily what they witnessed. Perhaps you need only cast about, then do a bit of tugging here and there to retrieve all sorts of pertinent witness testimony.”
“I must tell you, Miss Bocker,” began Muntle, clouding Antonia’s hopeful countenance with his furrow and frown, “that I may very well be prohibited from pursuing this investigation.”
“Stuff and nonsense! You are sheriff of Dingley Dell! It’s within your purview to inspect and enquire as you see fit. A woman is dead, my dear sir, and there now exists a decided difference of opinion as to how she got to be that way.”
“Sooth to tell, Miss Bocker, I do not maintain the unbridled independence in my offices that you assume. I answer to the Minister of Justice— the honourable Lord Mayor Feenix — who answers, in turn, to the Cabinet at large.”
Antonia reacted quickly to Muntle’s admission by punching her fist indelicately into a bolster — a bolster, no doubt, sewn by one of Pyegrave’s own upholsterers. (Life in the tightly-circumscribed Dell of Dingley was filled with many such little ironies, some funny and flavourful, others bitter and biting.) “A woman lies stiffening upon a mortician’s table, murdered by her husband who will never be brought to justice because a collier’s daughter is never to be believed. It boggles the brain, gentlemen.”
“Indeed,” said Muntle.“But don’t despair entirely, Miss Bocker. I will endeavour to pursue the investigation as expeditiously as I am able, to see how much I can learn before the Ministry of Justice orders me to close the case.”
Antonia shook her head. “That will not do, for they will, no doubt, shut you down from waft of your very first interview. I suggest another course. Set the formal investigation aside. For all intents and purposes you’ve heard nothing from this char-girl, and I doubt that once she’s back in Blackheath there will be much about her story that will venture out, for residing in Blackheath is commensurate with residing upon the distant Malay Peninsula for all that most Dinglians care about that isolated flock. You have only Pyegrave’s word that it was an accident that took the life of his wife, and that is how it shall stand, whilst I take a few liberties of my own to ask questions of the neighbours. Would you raise an objection, sir, were I to conduct a few instatutory probings of my own?”
“I suppose not, provided you exercise only the utmost discretion in how you conduct your questionings.”
Antonia nodded as I added that “someone should also have a word with the stableboy Jemmy. I should like to know if there is truth to the predicating action: his involvement with Mrs. Pyegrave.”
“Your landlady, Mrs. Lumbey, rides at Regents Park, does she not?” asked Antonia.
“Ever and anon,” I replied.“She can’t afford to make it a weekly outing.”
“But you’ll go with her on her next visit to put yourself in close proximity with the boy,” said Antonia, becoming quite invigourated by the prospect of our extrajudicial investigation.“By the bye, I take it that neither of you gentlemen has heard of anything called the ‘Tya-dya-dya Project?”
Muntle and I shook our heads as one.
Antonia continued: “Given the fact that very little goes on in this valley that is not passed from one to another like a contagious head cold, those few secrets that are being kept close must be large secrets indeed, and this one in particular of such significant import that a man should take such an extreme action upon the mere threat of disclosure.”