Of course. Miss Mortimer had never married because she had been repelled by her father’s faithlessness, his adultery even with his wife’s maid…
“You couldn’t say no to the master,” Mavis said. “No one did. But I should have. I should have had the strength and I didn’t. But you mustn’t think the mistress turned me off with nothing. I got a pension and the right to live in the Green Lane cottage. Miss Jessica never took that away, though she must know. Everyone knows.”
“It must be hard in a small community like this,” Constance said gently. “When everyone is aware of your business.”
Mavis shrugged. “It’s old news and no one can say I haven’t repented. Mrs. Raeburn even took my innocent Alice on. She’ll be fine.”
“And you?” Constance asked.
“Me? I’ll be fine too.”
“No one is unkind to you? No one casts up your past?”
“No point, is there?”
Constance resorted to bluntness. “Then you have never received one of those anonymous letters?”
“Course not. Not one can say I don’t know my own sin!”
“Who doesn’t?” Constance asked, watching her carefully. “Who is too full of their own righteousness?”
Mavis sniffed. “Not for me to say.”
“I don’t mind saying. For the greater good, you might nod or shake your head. Miss Fernie?”
Mavis didn’t answer, but then, she didn’t need to. Her wildly flaring nostrils said it all.
“Miss Jenson?”
Mavis shook her head.
“Young Mr. Mortimer?”
Mavis’s lip curled. “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree there. Old Mr. Mortimer to the life, he is. But he knows he isn’t righteous. He just doesn’t care.”
“Mrs. Chadwick?”
A vehement shake of the head.
“Sophie Chadwick?”
A puzzled frown, a shrug, and a half shake.
“Edgar?”
“He’s a child!”
“Children can see things in very black-and-white terms.”
“And in that they are right,” Mavis declared.
“Hmm. Tell me, in your opinion, would it ever be right to send an anonymous letter of accusation? Frightening people?”
Constance watched the expressions chase across Mavis’s bewildered face. She had been judged for most of her life since she had conceived her daughter, even though servants were all too often powerless to deny their masters. But she seemed singularly incapable of judging. What Constance had imagined might be scorn for others was merely the armor protecting Mavis from the constant slights she felt she deserved.
*
Solomon, having seriouslyconsidered going first to the Silver and Grey offices, got the hackney to set him down in front of his own house.
