Constance was rightabout needing to observe the children. Even if none of them were directly responsible for the letters, they could easily be part of the motive. Parents would do anything for their children, even things that would not otherwise enter their heads. And here in Sutton May, there seemed to be too many conflicting views of them.
They had been lively and attentive in school, but certainly not rowdy. Nolan the blacksmith told a very different story. Depending on who one spoke to, Edgar Chadwick was a studious boy or a bully. Wildness was blamed on the Dickies, or on the Gimlets, whose own son was angry for understandable reasons, yet still seemed to be friends with Edgar.
Strolling down from the policeman’s house—he had not been at home—Solomon and Constance were in time to see Ogden opening the classroom door and allowing the neat if chattering line of his pupils to emerge into the schoolyard. The smallest ones came first. One or two of them lurked in the yard, waiting for older siblings, while others surged out of the gates, vanishing in all directions with waves and shouts to friends. The younger children were taken in hand by the older, a couple marched along the road leading out of the village, and then across fields, the others scattering with their fellows.
Ogden closed the door and went back inside.
Solomon and Constance followed the biggest swarm of children down toward the Keatons’ shop. One small girl ran around her big brother to put him between her and the blacksmith’s.
“Best part of the day?” Constance said lightly as they caught up with a group of lads.
They all grinned at her. One or two tugged their caps. “Always is!” one said.
“Don’t you like school?”
“Like it better than we used to,” the biggest boy pronounced. “Mr. Ogden’s not so bad.”
“Has he not been your teacher very long?”
“Few years. We had Miss Fernie before that.” He shook his head, and there was a good deal of muttering against poor Miss Fernie.
“She lives over there,” one of the boys said, pointing to a neat little cottage, where a curtain twitched. “Still comes out and tells us off if we’re too noisy, tries to make us go straight home.”
“Nothing to do with her anymore,” another muttered. “She just can’t stop interfering.”
“Well, we were in her garden once,” the first boy said reasonably. “Though she was furious mad about that.”
Someone else to look at? Solomon almost groaned. He felt they were sinking deeper into this case without achieving anything. But then, he always felt that.
“You’re Mr. Grey, aren’t you?” said one of the biggest boys. “My father’s friend?”
“Ah, you must be Edgar Chadwick,” Solomon replied. “Pleased to meet you at last.” He regarded the boy beside him, who was a bit smaller, though his clothes were rougher and just a little too short.
“Richard Gimlet,” this boy said, shoving his cap to the back of his head and grinning in a swaggering kind of a way, though his eyes, meeting Solomon’s gaze, were almost challenging.
“I met your mother this morning,” Solomon remarked. “Aren’t you going in the wrong direction for home?”
“Not going home. Yet.”
None of them seemed in a particular hurry to go home. Two older girls stood at one corner, chattering while a smaller boy tugged at one of their hands. A few boys were playing tag up and down the road, trying to involve other children as they went, to occasional cries of “I’m not playing!”
“Who else is who?” Solomon asked. “Which are the Keaton children?”
“The twins?” Edgar said, nodding toward a boy and girl, walking backward toward the shop, still calling to their friends. “There. Paul and Petrina. She’s talking to Jill Dickie.” Who clearly wasn’t on the road going immediately home either. “Paul’s arguing with Timmy Raeburn the vicar’s son and Jack Lance from over the hill.”
The shop door opened just then, and the Keaton children stopped talking to stand aside for a woman to come out. It was Mavis Cartwright, the mother of the vicar’s parlor maid, and she did not look best pleased to find herself surrounded by so many noisy children.
The Keaton children greeted her politely. Some of the others, more distant, were nudging each other as she sailed around the corner toward the square, her nose in the air. A couple of the children followed her, mimicking her while their friends laughed. Mrs. Cartwright spun around, and the mimickers walked on with perfect innocence as their friends laughed harder.
“The Lord will judge,” Mrs. Cartwright exclaimed, and marched on, her head high.
“And so will she,” Constance murmured beside Solomon. She had been walking among some of the girls, who were now on the other side of the road along with Edgar and his companions. “The children don’t like her.”
“They don’t like their old teacher either,” Solomon noted. “Which may or may not be interesting.”
Chapter Ten
Boredom alone wouldhave made Peregrine Mortimer look forward to one of his aunt’s extraordinarily dull parties. In this case he added the attraction of cards, where he might just make enough money to get himself back to London, and of course flirtation, not merely with the charmingly respectable Sophie Chadwick, but also with the mysterious beauty Mrs. Silver—who, for some reason, he suspected was not respectable at all.
