Page 92 of The Housekeeper's Secret

‘It’s safe here,’ Davy mumbled. His voice was hoarse, his words indistinct, as if he’d fallen out of the habit of forming them.

‘How did you get in?’

Davy shuffled over to the fireplace and dropped the chestnuts onto a coal shovel, laying it carefully over the remains of a faintly glowing fire. (He can look out for himself in the woods, no doubt about that…) ‘The tunnel, of course,’ he replied, with a hint of scorn. ‘From the church. It went to the old house, before this one. No one knows about it except—’

He broke off abruptly, his face closing again like it had in the woods.

‘Henderson,’ Jem guessed.

Davy was crouching in front of the hearth, his broad back hunched over, his grimy coat blending into the gloom. He had gone very still.

‘Henderson makes it his business to know everything at Coldwell, doesn’t he?’ Jem said, with difficulty. ‘And to stop everyone else finding out what it suits him to keep quiet.’

Pain was throbbing in big, florid pulses through his shoulder and down his arm. It was echoing around inside his head. He wanted so much to lie down on the dusty floorboards and sleep.

Not now, he told himself ferociously. Not yet.

Davy shuffled the chestnuts on the fire shovel.

‘But you know just as much as he does, don’t you? More, I bet…’ It was hard to speak around his swollen tongue and the great tiredness that dragged at him. ‘You’re like the watchman here, Davy…’ He made himself pause, balancing his burgeoning sense of urgency with the need for caution, to avoid alarm. ‘You saw what happened that night years ago, didn’t you? When the gentlemen had an Indian banquet in this very room, and the boy went missing…’

Davy set the shovel down with a clatter, so the chestnuts rolled across the hearth. He didn’t stand upright, but his hands covered his ears, like they had that day in the snow. He rocked his body, making a high whimpering sound.

‘It’s all right…’ With a mammoth effort, Jem hauled himself to his feet and leaned against the wall until the fog of pain cleared and the urge to vomit passed. ‘It’s all right, I promise. He can’t hurt you.’

He reached out to put a hand on Davy’s shoulder, but the boy flinched as if he’d landed a blow. ‘I never said anything!’ he cried, ‘I didn’t! He made me swear on my mam’s life—he said if I ever said one word he would cut my tongue out. He said he done it to a boy in India. One word, he said…’

Dear God.

‘He’s a bad man.’

So that’s why Davy the chatterbox had stopped speaking. Wincing, Jem sank down onto the window seat, cradling his left elbow in his right hand as a white shaft of pain speared his shoulder. Closing his eyes, he breathed out through tight lips, concentrating on the whistle of his breath.

Out… and in again. Out and in.

‘I’ve said it now, haven’t I?’ Davy moaned. ‘I’ve said words and now I’m going to get into trouble… But what they did was worse and nobody told them off, not even the constable…’

Jem’s eyes opened a crack. Davy was rhythmically hitting his fists against his head. It almost seemed that he was talking to himself, letting the words he had held back for so long spill out.

‘You won’t get into trouble,’ Jem prompted hoarsely. ‘I promise. What did they do?’

Davy thrashed his head from side to side. ‘They took his clothes off!’ It was an anguished wail. ‘He was wearing… clothes like that—’ In the glow of the fire he pointed to the portrait. ‘But when I found him, he was…’

‘Naked?’

Davy nodded, his eyes wide, his face a mask of shock. Jem felt his throat close in anguish. And anger.

‘He was sleeping. He didn’t know the good places to go, like I do. It was too cold to be out without a coat… there was a… a sharp frost—’ (Jem heard the voice of Mary Wells in those words.) ‘I put my coat over him, and I was going to get my mam, but he caught me… the bad man. He made me show him where the boy was.’

Through the blue shadows Jem could see the imploring expression on his face. ‘He picked the boy up and carried him, but he didn’t take him to the house. He took him to the tunnel and left him there, and he told me not to say one word. He told the constable that the boy had run away! Everyone believed him, but it wasn’t true. He told a lie.’

So that was it. The information Jem had chased all these years.

The ending to the story.

Jack, the blond-haired kid who had loved animals and bread pudding—who had been shy and quiet and had no patience for reading and writing but could recognise any bird from its song and any tree from its leaf—had been stripped naked by a pack of baying men and left outside in the woods on a November night. And Henderson had chosen to get rid of him like rubbish to protect his master’s name.

He wanted to tell Davy that it was all right. To reassure him he wouldn’t be hurt and thank him for trying to help Jack. In a minute he would, when the ache in his throat had subsided and he could speak. But for now, he turned his head away and pressed his cheek to the window, where his tears felt warm against the icy glass.

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