‘’Ow d’yer mean?’ The poor thing stopped chewing the pie. Somehow she wasn’t enjoying it quite so much.

‘Well, if you think about it… it’s as plain as the nose on your face, Amy,’ Cook said in slow, deliberate tones, the frown deepening in her forehead and causing Amy to grow anxious again. ‘If Miss Emma does succeed in beggaring the master and he’s left to live on what he gets from being a circuit judge, you and I both know it won’t be enough for him to keep this big house… nor his servants.’ She saw the light dawning in Amy’s widened eyes, as she added cautiously, ‘That means the housekeeper, the parlour maid… then me and you… we shall all of us end up in the workhouse together if the worst comes to the worst.’

‘The mistress won’t,’ Amy thoughtfully corrected, ‘’cause I heard her say as how she had “a small nest-egg put away”… Oh, Cook! What shall we do? I ain’t got no “nest-egg” put away, and I don’t expect you have neither.’

For a short while there came no answer from Cook, who had lapsed into deep thought on the scullery maid’s last words. Well, Amy was wrong, thought Cook, because a ‘nest-egg’ was just what she had got put away… safe and secure these many long years. But her ‘nest-egg’ wasn’t bonds nor money, nor anything that might at first glance buy a roof over her head. Dear me, no! It was nothing more than a letter written to her by Mrs Manfred, the former housekeeper at Breckleton House. Poor Mrs Manfred who had been hanged over twenty years since for her part in the ‘murder’ of Miss Emma’s husband, Gregory Denton. All the same, that letter was the roof over Cook’s head in her old age, and the food in her belly, and a few guineas to make life comfortable too. It was a sad and sorry letter written by a gentle soul about to face the gallows and, as a body might want to do in such a terrible situation, Mrs Manfred had poured out all her innermost fears in that same letter. Not only her fears, but her dark suspicions regarding the master himself, whom she believed to know a great deal of the circumstances surrounding the death of both Miss Emma’s parents. The letter indirectly accused Caleb Crowther of being a murderer, no less!

‘I said… I don’t expect you’ve got a nest-egg put by any more than the rest of us… and as you told me yourself, you’re well past sixty-five,’ remarked Amy, who always regarded the elderly cook to be a fountain of all wisdom. ‘So what will we do if the worst comes to the worst?’ There were tears in her voice, and her eyes were suspiciously bright as they implored the round, aged face across the table, ‘What shall we do, Cook? Where can we go?’

‘Now don’t you fret yourself,’ warned Cook. ‘The worst hasn’t happened yet… and if it does, then we shall have to think again, won’t we, eh?’