She set a rough willow basket on the ground, then placed both hands across each other on the handle of her old cane. Her chin slowly sank to settle on top of her hands.
It looked so like a practiced routine that Cecilia was hard-pressed not to laugh.
“There now,” the woman said. “I’d hoped to catch the vicar before he went off again, but the day be yet young. I am Mrs. Hull,” she said in a forthright manner, though her voice crackled and hissed with age. There was a lively energy in the woman’s eyes that belied her feebleness.
“I am Lady Branstoke,” Cecilia returned.
The old woman nodded. Thought for a minute, then continued. “I live down the path here in the last tiny almshouse cottage…at least for now. The vicar wants me to move to themiddle one so he might have the end one for the curate he hopes to get, you see.” She compressed her lips and shook her head. “But I don’t want to move. I like my little house. ’Tisn’t much, and I have it fixed up the way I like it. Yes, just the way I like it,” she told Cecilia in a manner that sounded quite pleased with herself.
“You are truly fortunate,” Cecilia said pleasantly, hoping for an opening to question this woman about Mrs. Jones.
“Could you tell him that?”
“I’m sorry, tell him what?” Cecilia asked.
“That I don’t want to move to the middle almshouse,” the old woman said matter-of-factly.
“Me?”
“Yes,” the woman said, lifting her head from her hands that rested on the cane. “You’re a toff. He listens to toffs.—Not that he doesn’t listen to others as well, mind you, but he listens to toffs better…” Her brow furrowed. “I suppose we all do if we know what is good fer us.”
“I’m sure you can talk him round to your way of thinking,” Cecilia said with a smile. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Naturally, you being a lady and all.”
The woman’s manner amused Cecilia, and she found she quite liked her. She might make a good ally in their investigation. “How well did you know Mrs. Jones?”
“Purty well, if I do say so meself. She helped get me to living in the almshouse when we found out me pension was gone, taken back by my last employer when he lost everything at cards.”
“Took your pension? I didn’t think that was possible,” Cecilia said.
The woman shrugged philosophically. “Don’t know how he done it—weren’t much—but he done it. But Mrs. Jones, she helped me, she wrote to the Earl of Mortlake on my behalf.”
Cecilia’s brow furrowed. “Why did she need to appeal to the earl?”
“’Cause he paid for the almshouses here. The old earl did afore him as he built ’em, and now who’s ever the current earl gets to say as to who gets to live in ‘em.”
“I didn’t know that!” Cecilia said. “Is the church and all its property in his living?”
“Yes, on account of this used to be the Mortlake family seat when the title came down to him after helping defeat the Roundheads.”
“What do you mean when you say:used to be the family seat?” Cecilia asked.
“The old earl, he got a bigger, fancy property in Sussex and built a grand house there. Leastwise, that’s what they say. They hardly ever visited Mertonhaugh.”
“But now they live here,” Cecilia stated.
“On account of the fire destroying that grand house. Served him right for abandoning Mertonhaugh, I say.”
“You seem to know a great deal about the area.”
“Born and bred here, only moved to Maidstone for the years I were in service… Mrs. Jones used to ask me questions about the area all the time, particularly about the people, or I should say the parents and grandparents of the people who are here now. Folks seem to like to talk about their families, and Mrs. Jones told me what I told her gave her the openings she needed to start good conversations.”
“Most clever. Do you believe she could have committed suicide?” Cecilia asked.
Mrs. Hull gave a short, soft laugh. “Mrs. Jones? ’Cor, no. She was one to solve problems, not run away from them, if you know what I mean.”
“I do, indeed. Did you know her daughters?”
