Shattered Dreams (19 page)

He
turned to Tilly and shook his head. “Sorry about that. Come and sit
in here. At least it is warm. We will see what she can come up with
by way of food. Although, don’t hold out much hope that it will be
reasonable fayre,” Harry warned darkly. “The last time she made me
cake, we had a good door stop for several weeks.”

Zack
sniggered and perched precariously on the plush seat within the
sitting room alongside Tilly and Suzanna.

Although
he could have done without the pious stares of the people in the
paintings staring down at him from the walls, the thick rugs that
covered the dusty floors looked wonderfully posh, and were
something that Zack had never seen before. He tried to ignore the
sudden urge to take his boots off and wriggle his toes in the one
beneath his feet, to see if it was as soft as it felt. After
several moments of thoughtful silence, he reached down with his
fingers instead only to sneeze when a fine plume of dust
immediately rose to tickle his nostrils.

“
God, has she ever cleaned?” Tilly asked, then gasped when she
realised how ungracious she has just sounded.

Harry
shook his head. “I doubt it,” he grunted. “Neither of them do
anything as far as I can tell.”

The
clatter of pots in the kitchen was the only sound that broke the
silence that had settled over everyone. However, it was too loud to
be normal. Tilly wondered if the housekeeper was banging them to
make a point to the master of the house, or whether she was just
really bad at cooking, or really clumsy.

Suddenly, the house fell silent. Moments later, the slam of
the back door made them all jump. Nobody moved. Tilly turned to
look out of the window, and gasped at the sight of Mr and Mrs
Dandridge stalking angrily down the driveway with carpet bags in
their hands.

“
Isn’t that your staff?” she asked Harry with a frown as she
nodded toward the window.

“
Seems like they have decided to leave,” Zack pointed out as
he craned his neck to get a better look.

“
Aren’t they going to wait for their wages?” Suzanna asked,
and turned to look at Harry.

“
I have no doubt that they have already helped themselves to
more than their wages. I bet the housekeeping money has just gone
with them,” Harry replied, seemingly unconcerned.

“
Have we just interfered with your investigation?” Tilly
asked, wondering if they should all find somewhere else to
stay.

Harry
grinned at her. “Right now, I want them both out of this house,” he
replied frankly. “I have done for a while, if I am honest. I have
enough proof that they have been altering the accounts to hide the
fact that they had planned to steal money from the safe. When I
arrived here, I took an inventory of the house contents. I have no
doubt that the inventory I do tomorrow will not match. The items
that will be missing will undoubtedly be found if we visit the pawn
brokers around these parts. Even more importantly, the descriptions
of the people who have traded the stolen items will match the
descriptions of that useless pair. It will be enough to enable us
to arrest them for fraud and theft.”

“
Why? I don’t know them. Why would they go to the time and
trouble to steal the Rectory seal, and forge a letter to get me
here?” Tilly demanded with a frown.

“
I don’t know yet,” Harry replied confidently. “But we are
damned sure going to find out.”

“
Wouldn’t it have been better to keep them here so you can
keep an eye on them?” Tilly asked. “I am not trying to tell you
what to do, or anything,” she hastily added.

“
I think that we have to push them a little. We can follow
them now, and see who they meet up with. You will be under
permanent guard while you are here, and will be safe from any
threat those two might otherwise have posed.” Harry sighed and ran
a weary hand down his face. “Right now, we think that the letters
you both received, the Dandridges’, and the missing governor at the
poor house, are all linked in some way. We just don’t know how
yet.”

“
There is something I don’t understand,” Suzanna sighed and
waited for Harry’s nod. “If they wanted us here, why leave us to
rot in that poor house?”

“
I have no idea, but we will find out,” Harry assured
her.

Once the
Dandridges’ had disappeared from sight, he pushed out of his chair
and motioned them all to stay right where they were.

“
I am going to go into town and get some pies off someone.
Make yourselves at home. Lock the door behind me, and don’t let
anyone in until I get back. I won’t be long,” he said as he hurried
out of the door.

Before
anyone could speak, the door slammed closed behind him and left
them all in slightly stunned silence.

“
What do we do now?” Zack asked blankly when Harry turned out
of the end of the driveway. “Why is he on foot?” he asked nobody in
particular.

Tilly
took the opportunity to study Harry as he made his way down the
road after the Dandridges’. She didn’t tell Zack as much, but she
rather suspected that Harry was following them.

“
I think that we need to take a look at that kitchen, and see
what state the housekeeper has left it in,” Tilly
sighed.

If there
was a morsel of food to be found in there, she would find it. She
was so hungry that she was going to start to eat her own shoe if
she didn’t get even a stale chunk of bread to gnaw on.

“
Wait!” Zack burst out, and looked first at Tilly, then
Suzanna. “Shouldn’t we lock the house like he told us to? I mean,
we don’t know if the Dandridges’ will come back. Harry said that he
doesn’t want them in the house at the minute.”

“
He has a point,” Suzanna sighed and hurried to the door to
slide the top bolt across the front door.

They all
made their way into the kitchen. Although it was dirty, smelly, and
had clearly no organisation to it whatsoever, there was at least a
semi-fresh loaf of bread in the centre of the kitchen table, and
half a pound of butter beside it. It was enough for now.

Tilly
tore off several chunks, and slathered them liberally with butter
before she divided them up, and sat down with Zack and Suzanna to
eat. They all devoured their repast hungrily, and washed it all
down with some of the fresh water Suzanna collected from the well
outside.

“
God, this place needs cleaning,” Suzanna sniffed in disgust
as she picked a dirty dish rag off the back of a chair and tossed
it toward a bucket of slops on the floor beside the
door.

“
I cannot remember it being this bad before,” Tilly murmured
with a frown.

“
You have been here before?” Zack asked
incredulously.

Tilly
explained what had happened to her to bring her to Tooting Mallow.
It felt wonderful to be able to talk freely without being subjected
to the malodorous stare of the warden, and they all enjoyed the
opportunity to exchange small talk while they ate.

When
they eventually lapsed into a comfortable silence, Tilly turned her
attention to Zack.

“
What about you? What’s your story, Zack?”

“
My mam ran up some debts trying to feed me and keep a roof
over our heads. When we got thrown out of our lodgings, we had no
choice but to go to the poor house. She got sick last year and
passed away.”

“
But they didn’t send you to an orphanage,” Tilly sighed. It
seemed that nothing the staff in the poor house did was usual, or
normal.

“
I have heard some nasty rumours about the orphanage, and
didn’t want to go. So I lied and pretended I had family,” he looked
frankly at Suzanna, then Tilly. “When my mam and me went to the
poor house, they didn’t fill out the Register for us either. I
remember just walking in through the front door and the warden
taking us straight to our room, just like they did with you, Tilly.
They didn’t ask us for our names or nothing.”

“
They didn’t fill out the register for me either,” Suzanna
announced quietly.

“
Did your mam ask for you both to leave?”

Zack
shook his head. “We had nowhere to go, see? She owed people money
and couldn’t pay them back. If we stayed in the poor house, it
meant that they couldn’t come after her for the money.”

Tilly
had no doubt that his story was something that had happened to many
people up and down the country. She still couldn’t understand why
someone would willingly go to a poor house though, especially when
one had a small child. They were effectively being imprisoned for
their parent’s problems, and that didn’t seem fair, or right, at
all.

“
What do we do now, Tilly?” Suzanna asked and studied the
bucket on the floor that appeared to be full of rotting food. “We
are going to get poorly eating out of somewhere like
this.”

“
Let’s get to work then,” Tilly announced. She felt stronger
now that she had food inside her belly. If they could scrub the
walls and floors from dawn to dusk in the poor house, the least
they could do was earn their keep while they lived under Harry’s
roof.

Suzanna
nodded and looked at Zack. “There isn’t much any of us can do to
help with their investigation, but we can do our bit to keep this
place working properly.”

“
I’ll get some water,” Zack declared, and swept an empty
bucket off the floor to do just that.

Suzanna
began to gather the dirty pots into a pile. “I will wash these.
Then we can clean this place and see what state the rooms upstairs
are in.”

Fortified by food and, with a renewed sense of purpose, Tilly
rolled up her sleeves and set to work.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“
Here! Lady! Let me buy those two baskets off you,” Harry
called, and slammed to a stop in front of an old woman. When she
stopped to look at him, he named a sum of money that made her stare
at him as though he had lost his mind. Unsurprisingly though, when
he held the money out, she snatched it off him and handed the
baskets over with a smirk of thanks seconds before she scurried
away.

Harry
knew that he had just been robbed, but didn’t give a damn in light
of his desperate need to purchase enough food for everyone. When he
had left the Rectory earlier, his thoughts had been focused on
following the Dandridges’ to their new home before he had turned
his attention to the need to purchase food.

Thankfully, they had taken rooms at a lodging house right in
the centre of town. While he was relieved that they hadn’t caught
the first post chaise out of town, he couldn’t help but wonder why
they hadn’t left. There was the matter of their thefts to take into
account after all. They were either extremely confident that their
thefts wouldn’t be noticed, or were up to something else that had
yet to be discovered. He rather suspected it was the
latter.

Aware
that the Dandridges’ may not stay in one place for long, Harry
quickly sent a young boy to take a note to Barnaby at the poor
house, and then turned his attention to the shopping. He stopped
off at a bakery and purchased several loaves of bread, some cakes,
buns and an entire tray of pies, and ordered the baker to deliver
them to the Rectory as a matter of urgency. He then hurried over to
the butchers, and purchased several prime cuts of meat along with
sausages, bacon and cheese, and then moved on to one of the market
stalls where he selected enough vegetables to feed a small
army.

With his
pockets now empty, his newly purchased baskets heavily laden, and a
veritable army of overloaded traders behind him, Harry made his way
back to the Rectory. As he walked, he was very aware of the almost
desperate need to get back to Tilly. Not Suzanna and Zack, but
Tilly. He tried to tell himself that his interest in her was just
professional responsibility because she was now part of his
investigation, but he knew that wasn’t the case at all.

He was
positive that the connection he felt with her had absolutely
nothing to do with his work, or her situation. The strong emotion
that had passed between them earlier was nothing short of
awareness; a deep, sensual awareness that only usually existed
between a man and a woman who needed, and wanted, to be
together.

“
Stand back,” he warned Tilly, as he made his way to the back
door. Her smile of welcome was so wide that when she answered the
door, he found himself smiling back somewhat dazedly as he slid his
burden onto the table, and stood back to instruct the rest of the
traders where to leave their goods.

“
I think I may have gotten a little carried away,” he declared
ruefully, when an assortment of baskets, boxes, and bags appeared
on the newly scrubbed kitchen floor.

“
Good Lord, what have you done?” Harry stared around him in
stunned disbelief as he absorbed the shock transformation of his
now pristine kitchen.

A sink
full of freshly washed pots sat drying on the small table, seated
on a newly scrubbed floor. The freshly washed kitchen table sat
complete with new table cloth and a small arrangement of flowers
arranged haphazardly a badly chipped jug. Everywhere smelled of
soap and lemon, and now, thanks to his shopping, pies and freshly
baked bread.