Chapter Ten
The cottage was minute. Was it from here that Rosina had written that fateful letter? The woman who opened the door had her eyes, but they moved constantly, in the way of blind people, and it was clear they saw nothing.
She was a pudgy female, of less than average stature, with a wrinkled face under a large mob-cap, and a slightly grimy apron tied about her middle. She looked, Raith thought, exactly like a nurse.
“Who’s this you’ve brought, Toly?” she said gruffly, just as if she could see them both.
“It’s two gennelmen, Mrs H. Come to find you. I didn’t rightly know if I ought to have brung ’em. Only I didn’t like to refuse, seeing as—”
“I think, ma’am, that we can speak for ourselves,” Ottery interrupted. “May we come in?”
The nurse raised her chin, moving her head from side to side as though she took in something of the look of her visitors. Almost Raith would swear that she could see. After a moment, she nodded, somewhat grudgingly opening the door.
It led directly into an incommodious kitchen, which must nevertheless, Raith thought, be the biggest room in the place. The two of them, great-coated as they were, seemed to dwarf the place. The nurse bade them all sit down, herself moving to an open range where she set a copper kettle to the fire. Raith noted how she felt her way about, marvelling at her resilience.
He seated himself on a plain wooden chair at one end of the table, while Ottery took his place next to him. The boy hovered by the door. The elderly dame then turned from the fire, and came to the table. She did not sit.
“You’re the one, I think,” she said, turning her face in Raith’s direction.
“The one what?” he asked, in quick reaction.
“As wants to see me.”
“Your guesses are uncanny.”
She shook her head. “It ain’t guesswork, sir, not by a long way. When you’ve lost one sense, you find you can use others a deal better.”
“I have heard it said so,” Ottery put in. “It is reassuring to discover it is true.”
“Now you, sir,” said the nurse, turning to him, “are one as comes along of t’other. It ain’t nowise your affair as you’ve come for.”
“You are perfectly correct,” said Ottery, with a lift of the eyebrow and a smile for his client.
Raith was experiencing the most extraordinary sensation of premonition. This woman knew just who he was.
As if she read his thought, she turned her sightless eyes towards the door. “I thank you, Toly, and you can leave the gentlemen safe here with me. They ain’t nowise harmful.”
“You sure, Mrs H?”
“Yes, you run along, boy. ’Tis private business as this gentleman has with me.” She waited only until the young lad who had been their guide had left the cottage and shut the door. Then she moved back to the range. “Now, my lord, you’ll take tea?”
She did know! Raith exchanged a glance with his lawyer, and found his own amazement reflected in the other’s face. The nurse was busying herself with a pot and a set of cups and saucers. He put it into words. “How do you know me?”
“Ah, that would be telling,” said the elderly dame over her shoulder. She spooned tea-leaves into the pot.
Raith grimaced at the lawyer. Ottery grinned. He looked at the woman’s back.
“How long have you lived in Withibrooke, Mrs Hoswick?”
“Since just after Mrs Charlton upped and died,” she said, without turning round. “I’d a deal better have stayed with my dove, but it weren’t to be. He wouldn’t have me, not as my sight were going.”
Raith mouthed at Ottery, “Who?” and received a lift of the eyebrows, and a quick shake of the head. Perhaps it was too soon to probe.
She was extraordinarily handy with the teacups for a blind person. Raith jumped up to accept them from her, passing a saucer with a cup containing the steaming brew across to Ottery. It was not a beverage to which he was partial, but it would be politic to drink it. He would not wish to offend this woman’s sensibilities. He watched her place her own dish carefully in front of her, some distance from the edge of the table. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down, facing Raith.
“Now, my lord, tell me. How is my Rosy? Fourteen days it’s been. Is she well? Is she happy?”
Raith could not speak for a moment, silenced by his consciousness of the distress to which he had reduced the girl for whom this female obviously cared deeply. She had been counting the days. What was he to tell her?
