Hope smiled at Florence as Stanley, scowling hard, went over to the sink. She watched him give his hands a cursory wash under the tap before drying them on the front of his jersey, causing Mrs Partridge to roll her eyes. ‘There’s a perfectly good towel right there on the hook behind you,’ she said.
‘Don’t you want to know my news?’ he said, ignoring this last reprimand and sitting at the table next to Annelise, who was chewing on a biscuit and looking adoringly at him. Given half a chance, she would follow round after the boy just like Bobby.
‘I for one would like to know what’s brought you home in such a lather of excitement,’ said Hope.
‘Me too,’ said Florence, cradling the sleeping baby in her arms and adjusting her blanket.
‘It’s old Ma Foghorn,’ Stanley said with undisguised relish.
‘That’s Lady Fogg to you, young man,’ scolded Mrs Partridge.
‘What’s happened to her?’ asked Hope.
‘She’s been taken off to the police station. Shoved into the back of a police car, she was. ’andcuffs … I mean Handcuffs and all!’
‘No! She couldn’t have been,’ said Florence. ‘She’s a pain, but surely not a criminal?’
‘Did you actually see it happen?’ asked Hope.
Stanley wrinkled his nose. ‘No, but that’s what Mrs Bunch said happened. You ask her when she comes tomorrow; she was the one who was telling everybody about it. I was just coming out of the sweet shop and she was there with a crowd around her. She said Constable Ashwood had to push Ma Foghorn into the car, and all the while she was shouting that she was going to report him to his superiors.’
‘So what is she supposed to have done?’ asked Mrs Partridge, putting a glass of milk on the table in front of Stanley. Hope could see that despite the woman’s high dudgeon, she was itching to know more.
‘She’s been accused of hoarding food, of buying stuff on the black market from a man in Sudbury. He sold her false petrol coupons and all and she’s been hiding everything in the cellar.’
‘How did the police find out about it?’ asked Florence.
‘Mrs Bunch says she fired one of her maids earlier in the week, accused her of deliberately smashing a teapot, and to get her revenge the maid told Constable Ashwood about the stash in the cellar, which Ma Foghorn thought nobody knew about.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Partridge with a tut of disgust, ‘so much for us all being in this war together. Some folk always have to think their need is greater and that they’re above the law.’
‘But what if it isn’t true?’ asked Hope, unable to believe that a woman of Lady Fogg’s standing, a supposed pillar of the community, could behave so disgracefully. ‘What if the maid told Constable Ashwood a pack of lies?’
‘She has been driving around in the Daimler a lot more than you’d expect her to be able to, given the restrictions on petrol,’ said Florence. ‘Do you suppose Sir Archibald was in on it?’
‘Nothing would surprise me,’ said Mrs Partridge. ‘They say wartime either brings out the best in a person, or the worst. Stanley Nettles, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times, please don’t slurp your milk.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Partridge.’
‘When you’ve finished, why don’t you get out from under my feet and find something to do in the garden?’
When Stanley had gone, taking Annelise and Bobby with him, Hope asked Mrs Partridge if everything was all right. ‘You don’t seem your usual self today,’ she said, refraining from suggesting that Stanley had been lucky not to have his head bitten off, and for no real reason.
The older woman sighed and sat in her chair by the range. She took up a bundle of knitting. ‘Oh, take no notice of me, I’m just a bit tired.’ She sighed again. ‘Must be getting old.’
‘It’s probably the extra work we’re putting you to,’ said Hope. ‘With any luck after tomorrow, when we’ve interviewed those who have responded to the advert, things will get better. Trouble is, with so many girls leaving the village to go off and do their bit for the war, I don’t suppose we’ll have the best of the crop. Evelyn was saying that their latest maid at Meadow Lodge has just left to join the Land Army, and she’d only been with them a short while. She’s the third girl to go in the last week.’
‘In search of excitement, no doubt,’ said Mrs Partridge. ‘Young girls these days are all the same. Just don’t you go getting any ideas, Florence; I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
Florence smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.’
Hope watched the girl run her hand over the baby’s head, stroking her downy hair with a tenderness that brought a sadness to her. Poor Allegra, it should have been her sitting here with them and holding that dear little baby.
It still didn’t seem real that Allegra was dead, and Hope continued to be haunted by the memory of being so short with her cousin that afternoon just before she had gone into labour. Romily had told her not to dwell on it, that it would have been the last thing on Allegra’s mind once the baby had decided it was time to come. Hope knew she was right, as she was with so many things, but it was a lesson in learning to keep one’s temper under control.
‘I’ll keep an ear out for Annelise,’ said Florence, ‘if you want to go and do some work.’
‘Would you?’ said Hope gratefully.
