Chapter 16
Charles Holt had to admit that he felt very much more conspicuous in the little village of Hollerton than he did in the somewhat more sophisticated village of Belton.
Still, needs must, and he had installed himself at the hostelry he had avoided on his last visit whilst he waited for his driver to make some preliminary enquiries.
As he spooned down what was essentially some sort of inedible stew made of turnips, Charles congratulated himself on having been clever enough to employ a most superior driver.
The man had proved very helpful indeed, not to mention discreet, and Charles thought him to have a very welcome sort of wile about him.
He had decided to send the driver on ahead so as not to immediately intimidate the Clarkin family. Much better any request for them to speak to an attorney, especially when they were unlikely to have ever employed the services of one in their lives, come from somebody of their own station in life.
Charles’ self-satisfaction and delusions of grandeur had most certainly come back to him, and he was feeling very clever indeed. The fact that his successes to date had been due entirely to his driver was not something that he was going to contemplate for long.
The accolades would be all his, not to mention the satisfaction of bringing down a most flippant and self-assured young man as James Harrington.
As he peered down into the watery stew, occasionally prodding at a floating piece of turnip with a spoon he was not entirely sure was clean, Charles grimaced. The less time he spent in the village of Hollerton, the better he would like it.
Still, whatever he discovered he might keep to himself for a day or two whilst he enjoyed a little further relaxation in the fine rooms at the coaching inn at Belton. Unless, of course, he managed to discover something of such great import he would feel compelled to leave immediately.
Just as he had decided to give up on the appalling stew altogether, his driver returned with something of a bright expression on his face. The expression alone gave Charles the highest hopes the Clarkin family had agreed to meet with him.
“Well?” he said as he dropped the spoon down into the bowl and pushed it away from him across the table. “What news?”
“They have agreed to meet with you, Sir,” the driver said triumphantly. “Or at least the husband has. The wife is a different matter; there is a nervousness about her.” The driver was smiling wickedly. “Which I reckon means there’s a secret in there somewhere.”
“Very good,” Charles said in a most satisfied manner. “And where am I to meet them?”
“They are home, Sir, and expecting you to call upon them within the hour.”
“Very well, then I shall waste no time.”
“They are expecting me to come back with you, Sir, if you have no objections,” the driver said, and Charles wondered if that was the truth or if the man was just intent on hearing the rest, his curiosity having got the better of him.
“Well, why not?” He rose to his feet, his chair scraping noisily against the cold grey flagstones. “Lead the way.”
The moment he was outside the Clarkin residence, Charles thought he could already see why it might be that a young woman who had spent so many years at Thurlow Manor might very well not be a frequent visitor to her old family home. As far as he could see, it was little more than a hovel.
Of course, it was nothing of the kind. The Clarkin home was simply a small worker’s cottage, neat and reasonably clean, certainly not wealthy, but not entirely impoverished either.
But Charles Holt always had an unnecessarily strident reaction to such things, thinking that he would rather die than find himself in a position any lower than his own.
“Come in, Sir,” said a nervous woman in her middle fifties as she opened the door cautiously.
If she was Ruth Clarkin’s mother, she was certainly a good deal older than Charles had been expecting. From all that had been gleaned from the Baron’s drunken driver, Ruth Clarkin was just eighteen years old.
He had expected the mother to be no more than early forties at the oldest, and already his suspicions were beginning to rise.
“Thank you, my dear woman, and how kind of you to see me at such short notice,” Charles said grandly and strode past her into the little room that opened out from the doorway.
There was no porch, no entrance hall of any kind, just a door from the street that led straight into the living quarters. Charles refrained from shuddering, although he hoped that his business would be concluded sooner rather than later.
Good afternoon, Sir,” said a man of around the same age who, when he rose to his full height from the chair he had been sitting on, was almost a foot taller than Charles.
He was the same age as the woman but looked fit and vital enough for his years. “I am John Clarkin, and this is my wife, Hetty. What is it that we can do for you, Mr Holt?”
“I appreciate that my appearance is rather sudden, Mr Clarkin, but I have some questions I wish to ask you about your daughter.”
“Jane? Why? What would you want to know about Jane, Sir?” The woman said nervously.
“You have more than one daughter then, Madam? For I was truly referring to Ruth.”
Charles was looking at John Clarkin and could see a little flash of relief in his expression. Was it possible that they favoured one daughter over the other? If that were the case, perhaps it would be easier to find out something of Ruth than he thought.
“Oh, I see,” John Clarkin said and had gone from looking relieved to looking a little shifty.
His wife, on the other hand, looked afraid. His driver had been right; there was a secret in this house.
“Your daughter Jane is married, I presume?” Charles said conversationally. “Or does she live here with you still?”
“Oh no, bless me, Jane has been gone for years. She has children of her own now, a boy of nine and a girl of eleven,” Hetty Clarkin said with pride.
“Then Jane is a good bit older than Ruth, is she not?” Charles said, and Hetty looked suddenly as if she had fallen into a trap of her own making.
“Yes, there was a good space of time between them, Sir,” she said, but her face flushed scarlet, and Charles knew that she was lying.
“Before I continue in my questioning, Mr and Mrs Clarkin, I perhaps ought to tell you that I have not come empty-handed,” he said and removed a well-stuffed velvet purse from his pocket.
John Clarkin’s eyes immediately lit up, and Charles knew there was certainly a negotiation to be had. However, when he peered at the wife, he envisaged a little resistance.
“I don’t know what you think we can tell you, Sir,” Hetty said, her cheeks still blazing with discomfort.
“I’ll deal with this, Hetty.” John Clarkin stepped in a little aggressively.
“John,” Hetty Clarkin began in a frightened, agitated manner.
“I’ll deal with it,” he repeated, and Hetty fell silent.
“I understand, Mr Clarkin, that you do not see very much of Ruth,” Charles went on, keen to strike whilst the iron appeared to be hot.
“She has not been back here since the day she left when she was nothing but a girl of eleven years,” John said with a look of disgruntlement. “But I have seen her alright, out and about with her mistress, playing the part of lady’s maid.”
“Playing the part?” Charles said, and Hetty visibly stiffened.
“Oh, give over, Hetty. We don’t owe Lord Cunningham anything anymore.” John Clarkin was playing right into Charles’s hands, albeit a little aggressively, and he could not help wondering if it was the bulging purse which had swayed him.
In Charles’s experience, money usually won out.
“He was good to us, John. And he paid us.”
“I know, Hetty, but that stopped the day the child left here, didn’t it? What consideration has he given to us since for keeping his secret all these years? Nothing, that’s what. Not a penny.”
“The child is not with us anymore, John. Why would His Lordship need to keep paying us?” Hetty looked desperate, every bit like a woman who knew that the day she had feared for a long time had finally come. “And think of all the years I worked for him. We have things to be grateful for, John.”
“Don’t you think His Lordship has things to be grateful for, Hetty? Us having to bring up a brand-new baby when our own was already nearly grown?”
“You speak as if he forced us, John.”
“He did not need to force us, did he? You were so ready to do your master’s bidding, even though you hadn’t worked for him for years.” John Clarkin was getting angry.
“And he didn’t need to force you either, John. One mention of the money, and you were all for it,” Hetty said.
Charles stood and watched and listened. He suddenly thought he probably did not need to ask any more questions but simply bear witness to the marital argument that was ensuing.
He did not need to interrogate them at all, for the Clarkins were giving away all their secrets without any sort of careful manipulating on his part. The lower orders really were every bit as stupid as Charles Holt had always thought them to be.
“Well, there isn’t any money now, is there? If a secret is supposed to be kept, it needs to be paid for,” John said firmly and looked at his wife with such a thunderous expression that Charles had a sudden fear he would strike the woman. “Go on out into the kitchen, Hetty,” he said, and Charles breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’s the problem with my wife, Sir,” John Clarkin continued after his wife had scuttled off into the kitchen. “She still thinks she works up at the big house. She is a loyal type, always was, and that’s why she was the first person he came to when he found himself in a spot of bother.”
“He? A spot of bother?” Charles said a little impatiently. “Do you mean the Baron? Lord Cunningham?”
“Yes Sir. I mean Lord Cunningham alright.” He gave a judgemental little smile. “And we raised the child; we made up all sorts of little lies so that everyone in Hollerton would think she was our own. Raised her right too, and that’s a fact. But she has got herself away now, living up at Thurlow Manor as if she was born to it. Thing is, what Ruth doesn’t know, and I do, is that she was very nearly born to it. The wrong side of the blankets, but one of their own nonetheless.”
“Are you telling me, Mr Clarkin, that Ruth is not your child?” Charles could smell success, and it was a bigger success than he could ever have imagined.
Whatever he paid out now to John Clarkin would be returned to him tenfold, even twentyfold, perhaps even more, when the Duke got to hear of it all.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And we raised her here for the first eleven years of her life.” John Clarkin paused for a moment, and Charles thought, disconcertingly, that he could see a little regret in the man’s face.
“For all the good it did us. Well, Hetty has always been a loyal sort. She worked hard for the Baron up at the Manor, but then she married me, and her service there finished. Still, years later, when he had nowhere else to turn, the Baron arrived at our door all desperate and inside-out with a squealing infant in his arms. Newborn, that’s how young she was.”
“And he asked you to raise the child? For money?”
“That’s exactly what he did. He asked us to raise her as if she was our own. We were to keep his secret, and he would pay handsomely for her upkeep. Once his wife had died, and the girl was old enough to work, it came as no surprise to me that he came back for her. Said he wanted to give her a good life, keep her as lady’s maid to his daughter. Lady’s maid, I ask you! His daughter has no title to speak of.” The man seemed ludicrously dismissive at that point.
“Miss Charlotte?” Charles said pointlessly.
“Yes, that’s right, Miss Charlotte Cunningham.”
“And what of Ruth? Does she still believe that you and Mrs Clarkin are her parents? Or has she found out otherwise?”
“Well, we never told her. But I was not surprised when she didn’t come back here. She never really fit with us, even though Hetty tried to love her. But that’s the thing when you’re raising somebody else’s child; they don’t feel like yours. And we were getting on in years, well, past the age of raising young ’uns, at any rate.”
“So, to be absolutely explicit, Mr Clarkin,” Charles said and fingered the purse in a very obvious manner, pleased to see that the man’s eyes fixed upon it hungrily. “Am I to take it that Lord Cunningham himself fathered the girl?”
“Yes Sir, that is the truth of it.”
“And might I take it that the mother of the child was not his wife? Not the woman who had given birth to Miss Charlotte Cunningham?”
“That’s right, Sir. And that’s the thing which bothered him more than anything, the idea that his wife might get to hear of it. She was still alive then, you see, and the Baron kept telling my Hetty over and over again that it had just happened, that he had not meant to hurt his wife, and that he could not bear for her to find out.”
“And who was the mother of the child? And where is she now?” Charles was determined to cover every eventuality.
“He never did say who the mother was, but Hetty and I always had an idea that it was somebody who worked up at the house. A servant, you know?”
“Did you have your own suspicions as to who the woman might be?”
“No, none at all. By that time, Hetty had been out of Thurlow Manor for so long that she didn’t really know many of the staff there. I think it was that little bit of distance, not to mention Hetty’s kind and loyal nature, that led Lord Cunningham to our door in the first place.”
“Well, Mr Clarkin, you have been very helpful. Very helpful indeed,” Charles said, and with a certain amount of ceremony, handed John Clarkin the purse.