The Keeper of Secrets by Judith Cutler

with her reading and her writing and her figuring! It’s Mr Campion says this, and Parson says that, and next thing I know she’s her ladyship’s own abigail, and well above the touch of a plain man like me. And it’s all your doing!’
    ‘Are you in your cups, man? Now,’ Hansard continued, as Matthew dropped back, abashed, ‘you may make your apology to Mr Campion and take yourself off.’
    ‘Not until I know why you are here at this time of night. I had thought my aunt must be ill,’ he added, with real anxiety.
    Hansard explained, without so much as a hint that the death might be unnatural.
    Matthew did not even feign regret. ‘That penny-pinching old – I am sorry, Aunt, for I know you loved him always, as if he had been your own son, but he has left this estate in even worse heart than he found it. And as for that spendthrift son of his, and his vicious, evil ways – well, I am glad the old man is gone, but I fear his successor will be worse, far worse.’
    ‘Come, come – enough of this,’ Hansard broke in. ‘You will have Mr Campion here thinking that you are of a revolutionary turn. Be on your way, man.’
    ‘I care not this much what Mr Campion thinks,’ he averred, snapping his fingers. ‘The man who has stolen my intended.’ All the same, he picked up his hat.
    I followed Matthew through the door. ‘I am sorry you think I have turned Lizzie from you, Matthew,’ I said, all the time feeling deeply guilty as once that had been my precise intention. ‘But she has certainly not turned to me,’ I added with complete truth. ‘Nay, nor to any other man, so far as I know.’ Unbidden, there flashed into my mind the memory of her first encounter with Jem, when they looked as if their eyes had been fastened together. But I would admit nothing, not even to myself. ‘As for your sentiments about bad landlords, you would be surprised how much I share them.’
    ‘Share sentiments, do we? Well, let me tell you this, Parson. I intend to win my Lizzie back – and she is something we shall never share.’
    I nodded as emolliently as I knew how. ‘Go back inside and bid farewell to your aunt as she deserves, Matthew. If you are angry, it is not with her, and she needs the comfort of a beloved nephew tonight.’
    ‘I do it for her, not for you. Nor for him, neither. Why, it would have been a privilege to wring the man’s neck.’ With that, he went back inside, and was still there when Hansard left. We could see their heads framed in the window as we mounted our horses.
     
    ‘Her ladyship? Give evidence? In public?’ I demanded, my voice rising with every question. ‘Every feeling is offended. You cannot mean thus to expose my cousin.’
    Hansard leant back in his favourite chair and took anothersip of some excellent brandy. ‘Alas, it will hardly be evidence, and it will certainly not be in public – at least, not in the taproom of a public inn. Her ladyship will simply have to give an account – on oath – of what happened to her husband the day he died. In view of the circumstances, I am sure the coroner – a fellow justice, Sir Willard Comfrey – will permit her to speak in any room in the Priory large enough to hold a jury. Don’t look like that, Tobias. The law should treat us all equally. It never will, of course, but we must make some effort to pretend it will.’
    ‘No suspicion can fall on her ladyship?’ In the village there were rumours enough that she had pushed Elham into the water and held him down. If pressed, even Mrs Beckles found it hard to deny she had her doubts about the complete accuracy of my cousin’s account, but she took every care not to impute blame she could not substantiate.
    ‘Do you think it should?’ Hansard asked quizzically. ‘I will inform the jury that I long apprehended that he would have a seizure – which he might well have done. I shall observe that the bridge was well looked after, but that Elham’s dead weight might well have been enough to