The door cracked open an inch or two, and the eye of a three- or four-year-old girl peeked out.
“May I come in?”
The crack closed again. Why hadn’t he used a more soothing voice, or at least smiled to ease the child’s trepidations?
He knocked a second time, and this time the door was opened by a painfully thin boy, around seven or so. “Who’re ye?”
“Felton Northwood. I am come to see Mrs. Hodgetts, if you please. May I come in?”
The boy frowned, wiped snot from his red nose, and jerked back the door. “I’ll get me mam.”
Taking off his hat, Felton entered the room whose walls bore grime and cobwebs. The windows were glassless. The floorboards gritty. The only furniture was a couple wooden stools, an empty cradle, and a crudely built table in the corner by the hearth.
The boy motioned his sister to a pile of rags, then tested the knob on a closed door. It must have been locked. He tapped twice and whispered, “Mam? Someone’s come.”
No one answered, so the boy backed away and stood in front of his sister, arms crossed, as if to protect her from whatever threat Felton might pose.
Several minutes later, the door burst open. A man came out first, wearing but shirtsleeves and stained buckskin breeches, with greasy hair strung into the eyes that couldn’t meet Felton’s. He rushed out the door without saying a word.
Mrs. Hodgetts emerged next. Had he seen her before? Perhaps the woman who had yelled into the Jester’s Sunlight at an ill-behaving husband? She was as worn and rawboned as her son, with messy brown hair cascading around hollow cheeks. Her skin was so pale the only color in her face was the blue-tinted circles beneath both her eyes. “Wot ye want wif us?”
He switched his hat to the other hand. “I am sorry to come. I am sorry to disturb you at all, but—”
“Go ahead and tell the likes o’ everyone wot ye saw today.” Her thin arms hugged each other. “Find out any’ow, they will, and wots I care wot they fink of me?”
“Mrs. Hodgetts, I didn’t come for—”
“Don’t ye call me that.” Her nose wrinkled. Her chin raised. “Call me a lightskirt or the devil ’iself, but don’t call me that man’s name. Dead now, ain’t he? Three days an’ his body ain’t even cold…and already his missus be ’aving someone else in his place.” A dry laugh left her lips. “That’s wot ye’re thinkin’, eh, mister?”
A burn of unease worked through him. Dare she talk this way before the children?
“That’s right, mister. Say nuthin’ like the righteous fool ye are…but I gots rights to do wot I do. And I’m goin’ to keep on doin’ it too. I’ll not see me children starvin’ or let them take us to the work’ouse. Already lost one child, I did. But ye fink he cared?” She stumbled toward the cradle. Hunkered down beside it. “Six weeks ago…that’s ’ow long since the baby died. And he didn’t even cry. Didn’t come to bury it neither. If I ’adn’t told him, who knows if he would have noticed it was gone?”
Felton glanced at the children across the room. The boy had his head down. The little girl had fallen asleep in her rags. What kind of man was their father that he should be so hated in his own household?
And what did it have to do with Eliza?
“Wot ye want?” the woman said again. “Say it and leave us. And if me husband owed ye money, ye can take the clothes we wear ’cause that’s all we ’ave left.” She glanced at the bedroom door. “That and scraps for the gossipmongers.”
“I want to know what your husband should have against Eliza Gillingham.”
“Who?”
“Eliza Gillingham, daughter of the viscount of Monbury Manor. Your husband tried to kill her.” He paused. “Twice.”
The woman’s face stayed bent over the empty cradle. “I don’t know nuthin’ about that. ’Sides, the constable said he was thievin’ in the carriage ’ouse.”
“He was strangling Miss Gillingham to death.”
“Tried it on me too, he did. He was always like that. Hitting on me—or the boy there. Are ye done?”
“No. Tell me more about your husband. Where did he work?”
“He didn’t. Not towards the end.”
“What did he do?”
“Be hanged if I know. Gots to where he didn’t come home more’n a night or two a week. He was always there at the Jester’s Sunlight. Drinkin’ away my children’s bread. Killin’ my baby.” Her voice choked, and she wrapped her arms around the length of the cradle. “Get out of ’ere, whoever ye are, and leave us alone.”
