‘I understand perfectly. Yes, Mr Emming somehow doesn’t quite fit in with village life, but blackmail is an ugly word, Will, and I don’t think we’d better use it.’

‘Folks will talk, especially in a small place like this, but I wasn’t thinking of going so far as that.’

‘I’m sure you weren’t, and I ought not to have done. Our task is difficult, though. Suspicion by the cartload, and not a spoonful of proof. And, talking of cartloads, what sort of fellow is Ed Brown?’

‘Oh, pretty fair,’ said Will; and did not enlarge upon this. He served his stew in great dollops on to the two large plates, and he and his black-eyed visitor ate in companionable silence.

CHAPTER 6

Saturday’s Child

‘Shepherds in humble fearfulness

Walk safely, though their light be less.’

Sidney Godolphin

Mrs Bradley did not need to wait long before she had her talk with young Robert Emming, for he came to the manor house on the Tuesday following New Year’s Day to see Jonathan. He was a quietly angry young man, and when Jonathan had heard his story he suggested that Mrs Bradley should be invited to hear it, too.

The thaw had set in suddenly one afternoon at the end of Christmas week, and the snow had all disappeared by New Year’s Night. Everywhere was either incredibly green or incredibly muddy, and the little mill stream was twice its usual size.

Emming had found the going slushy, to say the least, and was embarrassed at having to present himself to an elderly, leering, black-eyed lady at a time when he was bemired over the ankles, but he soon forgot the condition of his boots and trouser turn-ups in telling her his tale, for her attitude was friendly and sympathetic, and her questions were pertinent. The anonymous letter-writer, it appeared, had been at it again, and Emming had received two vituperative notes. The first had been delivered at his lodgings. He lived in two rooms at the carpenter’s house and was looked after by the carpenter’s wife, and the letter, which had come by post from Cheltenham, had been delivered by Sidney Blott on Christmas Eve. The second letter had been addressed to the village school, (apparently in error), and Sidney Blott had been far too intelligent to deliver it there; so he had handed it in to the carpenter’s wife with the remark that he supposed Mr Emming would like to have it before Old Mother Acres (the school cleaner) went and trod on it or lit the fire with it or something.