Then why did she feel guilty? As if she deserved that accusation of unkindness, delivered anonymously, as though it was from the whole village?
She should go the shop. But she found she could not face people. Were they all whispering about her? Would they tell Mr. Grey and Mrs. Silver? And would they tell Charles?
Tell Charles what? That she had made a mistake? Indulged in a moment of frustration with a child? Put her husband before a sick child?
A doctor’s wife,thisdoctor’s wife, had to hold herself to the highest standards. And Emmeline had failed.
*
Constance and Solomonwent next to the blacksmith’s shop, a short walk away. They found him hammering away at his anvil,the muscle of his right arm bulging and flexing as he worked. He was a large man somewhere in his fifties, with a graying beard and thick, scowling eyebrows.
“Mr. Nolan?” Constance said pleasantly from the doorway.
The man grunted, presumably by way of greeting, took three more swipes with his hammer, and laid it down. “Yes?”
“My name is Grey,” Solomon said, going up to him. “This is Mrs. Silver. Dr. Chadwick has asked us to look into the matter of the anonymous letters received by several people in the village. We believe you are one of them.”
He grimaced. “Stupid, pointless piece of paper. Burned it.”
“Did you burn the envelope too?” Constance asked without much hope.
“Course I did.”
“Can you tell us anything about it?”
“It was an envelope. Like those in Keaton’s. What else is there to tell you?”
“Was it written by hand?” Solomon asked patiently.
“All in capital letters.”
“Well, what about the letter itself? I gather it was composed of letters and words cut from newspapers?”
Nolan nodded, curtly, and picked up his hammer again.
“What did it say?” Constance asked.
He glowered at her. “Some rubbish I paid no attention to.”
“And yet you told Dr. Chadwick about it. It must have affected you in some way,” Constance said.
Nolan glared at her. “It annoyed me at the time. Doctor’s got no cause to go pulling strangers in to talk about it.”
“Well, it seemed a good enough cause to him,” Solomon said. “And it would help us to know the wording of your letter.”
“We’re not here to judge the accuracy or otherwise of these accusations,” Constance added. “As you say, we are strangers and it’s not our business. But if we know who’s sending them,perhaps we can—er…discourage them. Do you know or suspect anyone?”
Nolan sighed. “No. Not sure I care. It said something like,Keep your fists away from the children or lose more than your temper.”
Constance blinked. “Do you beat your children, Mr. Nolan?”
“I don’t have any children,” he retorted. “If I did, I’d bring ’em up with more manners than some of those little tearaways. I have to chase hordes of them out the shop some days before they burn themselves. It’s not a toy shop in here.”
“No, indeed,” Constance soothed. She had once been quite used to the blows of the adults she annoyed, till she learned to avoid them by smiling and dodging. “Was there one particular incident when you had to do so, perhaps a little roughly?”
“Aye,” said the blacksmith, hitting the horseshoe before him with more aggression than seemed necessity. “School was out, and it was pouring wet, so they all came rampaging in here. Ain’t safe, is it? So I told ’em to get the hell out, and when they didn’t, I chased them.”
“With fists?” Solomon asked, just a little too smoothly.
