No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [129]
“It’s all over tossled,” Mrs. Channery retorted. “Oi can’t be frabbed doin’ the work, an’ I can’t be payin’ that daft man what does Mrs. Copthorne’s. She pays him twice what he’s worth, the more fool her! An’ it’s still full o’ meece! I seen ’em!”
Joseph could sense Judith biting her tongue. “Perhaps that’s why I like it,” he replied, refusing to be put off.
“Makes yours look good, do it?” Mrs. Channery demanded.
“Yes, it does,” he agreed, smiling at her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Judith’s expression of disgust. He noticed an enormous borage plant overtaking its neighbors. “And you have quite a few herbs.”
“Gardener, are you?” Mrs. Channery said drily. “Thought you was an airy-fairy sort o’ man up at the university.”
“One can be both,” he pointed out. “My father was, but I expect you know that.”
“No idea,” she responded. “Scarce saw him. Long enough to be civil, an’ then he were off again like Oi’d bit him.”
Judith sneezed—at least it sounded something like a sneeze.
“Really?” Joseph said, his attention suddenly held as if in a vise. “He didn’t stay with Mother the last time she was here?”
“Din’t even stay for tea.” She shook her head. Chocolate cake, Oi had. An’ Madeira, both. Looked at it loike he hadn’t eaten for a week, then went straight out o’ the door an’ got into that great big yellow car of his. Smelly things, cars,” she added. “An’ noisy. Dunno why a civilized man can’t use an horse an’ carriage. Good enough for the queen, God bless her memory.” Her lips thinned, and she blinked several times. “Don’t get horses goin’ mad an’ runnin’ all off the road into the trees an’ killing good folk!”
“Yes, you do!” Judith contradicted her. “Hundreds of horses have taken fright at something and bolted, taking carriages off the road, into trees, hedges, ditches, rivers even. You can’t spook a car. It doesn’t take fright at thunder, or lightning, or a flapping piece of cloth.” She drew in her breath. “And wheels fall off carriages just as often as off cars.”
“Thought you’d lost your tongue,” Mrs. Channery said with satisfaction. “Found it again, have you? Well, nothin’ you say’ll get me into one of them machines!”
“Then I shan’t try,” Judith answered, exactly as if it had been the next thing she had intended. “Do you know where he went?”
“Who? Your father? Do you think Oi asked him, Miss Reavley? That would be very ill-fatched up o’ me, now wouldn’t it?”
Judith’s eyes widened for a moment. “Of course you wouldn’t, Mrs. Channery. But he might have said. I imagine it wasn’t a secret.”
“Then you imagine wrong,” Mrs. Channery pronounced with immense pleasure. “It were a secret. Your dear ma asked him, an’ he went four wont ways about answerin’. Just said he’d be back for her in an hour . . . an’ he weren’t! Took him an hour and a half, but she never said a word.” She fixed Judith with an accusing eye. “Good woman, your ma was! No one left like her no more.”
“I know,” Judith said quietly.
Mrs. Channery grunted. “Shouldn’t have said that,” she apologized. “Not that it ain’t true. But it don’t do no good cryin’. Not what she’d have wanted. Very sensible woman, she were. Lots o’ patience with others what was all but useless, but none for herself. An’ she’d have expected you to be like her!”
Judith glared at her, angry not only at what she had said, but that she, of all people, should have known Alys well enough to have understood so much about her.
“You were very fond of her,” Joseph observed, to fill the silence more than anything else.
Mrs. Channery’s lips trembled for a moment. “O’ course Oi were!” she snapped at him. “She knew how to be kind without lookin’ down on folks, an’ there ain’t many what can do that! She never come by without askin’ first, an’ she ate my cake. Never brought any of her own, like needin’ to keep score. But she brought me jam now an’ then. Apricot. An’ Oi never told her as how the rhubarb jam was horrible. Like so much boiled string, it were. Oi gave it to Diddy Warner, her with the toddy-grass all up in the air like a gummidge. That surprised her. Should have seen the look on