“A blind woman this time, is it?” mused the postmaster, scratching his chin. “I don’t recall no blind woman a-coming here to fetch no letters.”
“But someone might have called on her behalf,” Ottery pressed him. “A friend, perhaps.”
The postmaster eyed them both dubiously. “You don’t have no name, then?”
“No,” replied Ottery with a patience Raith could only admire, “that is why we are asking. We know that the woman concerned lives in a cottage, at no great distance from here. At one time Miss Charlton, about whom we asked previously, was staying with her.”
The postmaster was shaking his head, a frown creasing his brow. There was no recognition here, and Raith’s heart sank.
But one of the clerks whose function was to sort the mail had been hovering in the background, apparently waiting on a query. He spoke up suddenly. “Your pardon, Mr Briggs, but would it be Mrs Hoswick as the gentlemen is after?”
Hope quickened in Raith’s breast. “Who is she, fellow?”
“I don’t know no Mrs Hoswick, lad,” objected Briggs.
“I were thinking of Toly Aughton, the apothecary’s boy down Hopsford way, sir.”
“Oh, young Toly?” said Briggs, his face clearing. “Ah, yes, gentlemen, maybe that’ll be it.”
Raith was on the point of bursting in, but he was checked by Ottery’s hand on his arm. As well his lawyer had so ready an understanding of his moods.
“How does this boy Toly come into the picture, Mr Briggs?” Ottery asked gently.
But it was the clerk who answered. “He come and fetch the letters for Mrs Hoswick, sir, as is blind and lives in a village about a half-mile from his master’s shop.”
“That’s right,” agreed Briggs. “Now I think of it, sir, he come in not a few days agone. There was a letter seemingly, wasn’t there, lad?”
“Aye, sir,” said the clerk, looking awed. “Franked by a lord it were.”
Raith exchanged a glance with Ottery. “What name?”
Ottery clarified it. “The lord’s name, lad. Do you recall?”
“Couldn’t hardly read it, sir,” uttered the clerk disparagingly. “A scrawl it was.”
His lordship gave a wry smile, as he asked, “Was it “Raith”?”
“Aye, that would be it.”
Ottery became business-like. “Right then, my lad. Where may we find this Toly Aughton?”
