Charles Palliser by The Quincunx Read Free Book Online Page B

things ain’t always so simple as they appear.”
    “That’s right,” Bissett said. “Mrs Belflower’s too partial to that gal by half. And to young Greenslade, too.”
    “I cannot believe it was Job,” my mother declared. “You really don’t think, Mr Emeris, that it was the tramper who came begging yesterday?”
    “I do not. It were jist chance that he happened to come by that same arternoon. And only consider, ma’am, the fambly what that gal come from.”
    “Aye,” Bissett put in, “and as you’ve jist said, Mr Emeris, she was seed last night with Job. And she was out all night.”

    A WISE CHILD

    25

    At that moment we heard a banging at the back-door. Mr Emeris and Bissett exchanged glances and as she made for the door he said: “Don’t let her speak to Mrs Belflower.”
    She returned with Sukey who was red-eyed and exhausted and now looked stunned at finding herself brought before the majestic embodiment of the Law.
    “I’m sorry I stayed out so long, ma’am,” she said timidly. “You see, uncle was took bad (and aunt is poorly, as you know) so I was up all night with him till my sister come up.”
    “Oh Sukey, it’s nothing to do with that,” my mother began.
    Mr Emeris held up his hand warningly: “If you’ll be good enough to let me examine her, ma’am.”
    At this word Sukey visibly blenched. However, frightened as she was and the more so as she gradually realized what was being charged against her and Job, she remained unshaken in her assertion that she had gone directly to Hougham and had stayed there until just now. Even Bissett’s attempts to break this story down were unavailing, though she reduced the girl to tears. And so Mr Emeris had to concede that the evidence against her and Job was inadequate to justify seeking a warrant yet — though he remained convinced of the guilt of at least the latter and sure that he would succeed in proving it once he had shewn the tool to Mr Limbrick and examined Job himself.
    The sun was shining from a clear sky when, early that afternoon, we left the house, my mother in a white walking-gown and straw bonnet against the sun and I in my white beaver hat and pale blue frock-coat. We set out towards the centre of the village and after a few minutes passed the little old church with its big, untended graveyard. The smoke ascended straight up into the blue sky from the low-browed cottages with their dark little windows.
    As we walked we discussed the great event and my mother repeated her belief that the burglar had been the tramper.
    “If I see him again,” I vowed, “I’ll hold onto him and shout for Mr Emeris.”
    She suddenly stopped and said anxiously: “Promise me, Johnnie, that you’ll never speak to anyone you don’t know?”
    “But there never are any strangers in the village.” I added bitterly, glancing to our right: “That’s why the inn has shut down its livery-stables.”
    Almost opposite the church stood the village’s only inn, an old, half-timbered building which seemed to lean into the road as if peering sideways for possible customers. And so it might well have done, for now that the turnpike was finished that took the high road half a mile away from the village, no travellers ever stopped there and it had sunk to the status of a mere public-house. The carriages that had rattled through the village on their way to change horses there until a year ago were no more than a dim but glorious memory for me now.
    “Can you read the sign?” my mother asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “The Rose and Crab.” Then I had to admit: “But I’m not really reading it because I know what it says, though I would recognise the ‘R’ and, of course, the ‘C’
    even if I didn’t know that that was what they were. If you see what I mean.”
    When, long ago, I had asked my mother why the inn had such a strange name, she had suggested that the crab referred to was the type of apple. However, the painting on the sign was so weather-worn