Mary's Child Read Free Page B

was a handsome woman now and the heads of a number of men turned as they passed. She saw that and preened herself.
    Arkenstall touched a hand to the brim of his hat. ‘Good morning.’
    She sniffed, glanced out at the rain and answered, ‘Only because I’m getting out of here and back to London.’
    ‘You have work there?’
    ‘I’ll soon get some. I’m known on most o’ the halls down there,’ she said with careless confidence.
    Arkenstall believed her. He had made it his business to find out about Martha Tate, billed as ‘Vesta Nightingale, Dance and Vocals’. He had learnt that she had talent but suspected it was being squandered. He took an envelope from his pocket and passed it to her.
    She took it, pulled off one of her gloves with sharp white teeth and counted the banknotes inside the envelope. She held it close to her breast as if it was a child, her red lips moving. Satisfied, she put the envelope away in a handbag carried over her arm.
    ‘Right, then. I’m off.’ She turned towards the ticket-barrier.
    Arkenstall said, ‘I went to see the child’s new parents. I think she will be happy with them.’
    Martha shrugged. ‘I expect she will.’ Then defensively, ‘She wouldn’t have had much of a life wi’ me.’
    Arkenstall agreed, ‘No . . . ’ He lifted a hand to his hat but she was already walking through the gate in the barrier. He finished, speaking softly to himself but the words addressed to her retreating back, ‘No, I don’t suppose she would.’
     
    He could have taken a cab from the station – three of them stood outside, the horses with their heads hanging – but instead he chose to jump on a horse-drawn tram that was just starting to move away. He paid his twopence to the conductor and flipped another penny to an urchin who ran alongside turning cartwheels. He saw it caught in one quick-grasping, grubby palm and heard the yelled, ‘Thank ye!’ Then he moved inside to a seat. It was time to report to his client.
    When he got down from the tram the rain had stopped and a watery sun was peeping through clouds driven on the wind. He walked now, because he welcomed the exercise and took pleasure from it, and from being quit of his office for a while. That was why he had taken the tram rather than a cab. He breathed deep of the clean air, sweet after the smoke and dust down by the river.
    This was Ashbrooke, a different part of the town, where there were quiet, wide streets lined with trees and large houses. His client lived in one of those houses. It stood high and wide in its own grounds, surrounded by a high wall, with rooms on three floors and, oddly, a tower rising tall out of its centre. Arkenstall lifted his gaze to the room at the top of it. He knew that was his client’s study, where he liked to work, looking out over the intervening houses to the river and the sea. The wrought-iron gates stood open now, leading to a carriage drive which ran through a belt of trees, then a close-cut lawn, to a turning circle outside the front door.
    Arkenstall walked up the drive, boot heels crunching on the gravel. A flight of six broad, shallow steps lifted up to the front door. That stood open but there was an interior door inside the porch thus formed, with a stained glass panel above a glittering brass door knob and letter-box. He yanked at the bell-pull beside the front door and waited.
    He heard no sound of the bell, ringing somewhere deep in the house, but in seconds the door was opened by a maid, smart in black dress with white apron and cap. She bobbed a curtsy and held the door wide so he could pass in.
    ‘The master’s expecting you, sir.’ She took his hat and gloves as he removed them, then his overcoat as he shrugged out of it.
    ‘Thank you.’ Arkenstall followed her along the hall. There was a fragrance from a vase of flowers on a side table and a smell of floor and furniture polish. He glimpsed, through an open door on his right, the gleaming floor of the long