Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

I pushed forward in my seat. “As if he were putting on a show through his reaction to it.”

“Yessir, yessir. Dat was as it happened.”

Antonia, who was taking notes of her own, looked up from her tablet, chewed the end of her pencil in brief thought, and then said, “Tattycoram, my dear girl. You must now try to remember everything that was said in that room prior to Mrs. Pyegrave’s unfortunate defenestration. What can you recall of the exchange?”

Tattycoram nodded and took a sip of the chicory, then looked about the room. “Is dere be a sweetmeat or two for me to eat as I be recollectin’?”

“I have a cupboard full of sweetmeats in the shop below, my dear. Harriet, go down and fetch Tattycoram a few liquorice drops.”

Tattycoram smiled her approval and began to search her brain with the help of her roving, contemplative eyes. “Dey was feetin’, as I done said.”

“What were they fighting about, Tattycoram? Do you remember?”

Tattycoram coloured a bit but quickly recovered. “I will tell it, but it be a ting I woo-na in polite compnee normally say.”

“We understand,” said Muntle. “We will not judge the messenger regardless of how unseemly the message.”

Receiving this preemptive acquittal of her character, Tattycoram proceeded: “Da master was a’ blazin’ over da mistress. He done found out a ting ‘bout her — a not very good ting.”

“What did he find out?” asked Antonia, licking the end of her pencil in eager anticipation of the intelligence.

“Dat she had been wit another.”

“With another—?”

“Not her husband. Dat she was wit another in da flesh-to-flesh.”

“Flagrante delicto!” exclaimed Muntle.

“Not necessarily,” cautioned Antonia. “How did he find out, Tattycoram? Certainly he didn’t walk in on Mrs. Pyegrave in the very midst of the assignation.”

Tattycoram shook her head. “And it warn’t a man besides. He ain’t no more den a boy of eighteen like meself. It be da stableboy Jemmy wot works at da Regents Park. It was head groom who done toll to Mr. Peegrove wot he seen Peegrove’s wife a’ doin’ wit da stableboy in the back of dat dere stable. He tolled it to Peegrove for coin, I ‘spect. And Peegrove he go to his wife in da bed and ask her if it be true and she say it were true, every word of it, but he ain’t to do a ting bout it, or else’n she’ll go and tell everybody ‘bout — and here I cain’t but hear da words too clearly.”

“What did they sound like?” I prodded. “The words that you couldn’t quite hear?”

“I change me mind. I could hear dem, govna. I just can-na remember all da parts a dem.”

“This makes no sense,” said Antonia in an underbreath. Harriet entered with a tray of sweetmeats, from which each of us plucked up a lozenge except for Muntle who swiped a handful and stuffed them into his waistcoat pocket. (This act confirmed Muntle’s love of liquorice, about which hitherto I could only conjecture.)

Tattycoram popped the sweetmeat into her mouth and began to suck it, employing both of her dusky cheeks. “I will tell you wot it sounded like to me ears.”

“You do that, dear,” said Antonia, raising her voice slightly to be heard above the sound of sucking and slurping (for even Harriet had taken a black lozenge into her mouth to enjoy).

“She say — Mrs. Peegrove — dat she will go and tell everybody ‘bout da Tya-dya-dya projette.”

“The ‘Tya-dya-dya —?”

“ Projette. ”

“You must mean pro ject. Oh what a most curious name!”

“It weren’t probly dat zactly. But it sounded some-ten like dat.”

“Yes, I understand, my dear. And was there anything else?”

“She say how she a’ goin’ to tell everybodys ‘bout da fett. She a’ goin’ to ruin the fett for one and all.”

“The fett ? Like, do you mean fête, as in some sort of festival?”

“I don’t know the word, begpardon.”

“And how did Mr. Pyegrave respond to this threat by his wife?”

“He yell to her dat she will na do it. He kill her first.”

“Did he really say that, girl?” asked Muntle, looking up from his notetaking. “It sounds terribly tidy.”

Tattycoram nodded. “It be tidy I s’pose, but it be true, Mr. Sherf.”

I struck in, “How much time would you suppose passed from statement of the threat to the point at which we can all now assume Pyegrave pitched his wife through the window?”

“Meebe a minute or two or tree. Dem two went back and forth for a short spell. ‘Are you really goin’ to go and tell all dem tings?’ And she say yes, she’s a’lookin’ aforward to doin’ it. And he ask her again meebee two more times and da answer da same each at every askin’, and den he musta gone right to her at dat instant ‘cause dere den be a sound like he be liftin’ her from da bed, all da covers a rustlin’ and da sound of da bedstead thumpin’ and bumpin’ and dere’s a mufflin’ sound coomin’ too like meebee he got his hand over her moof.”

“Her what?” asked Muntle, leaning in.

“Her moof,” said Tattycoram, and then she touched her own “moof ” by way of demonstration. “And den not a few seconds later I hear da glass a’ crackin’ and den da sound of her a’ screamin’ as she go down. It be a horrible sound and I had a mind to go in and find out if it was wot I feared it to be, but den I tink the better of it. I tink dis madman could toss me out dat winder too, so I pull meself back into a corner of da passage and I wait for him to go out. And dat’s all dat I heerd and all dat I know.”

“You’ve been quite helpful, Tattycoram,” said Muntle, rising to place a genial hand upon her shoulder. “If I require anything further from you, where may I find you?”

“I go back to Blackheath soon as I leave dis place.”

Muntle nodded. “Safe travels, child. You’ve been a great help to us.”

As Antonia walked Tattycoram to the door and then down the steps and through the shop to the lane, Muntle and I fell into contemplative silence. Eventually, I sighed and shook my head. “It does seem awfully tidy as earwitness testimony goes, doesn’t it, Muntle?”

“Cut and dried and bound and sheathed,” returned my friend. “But sometimes things are exactly what they seem. We have no reason not to believe the girl. Mrs. Pyegrave had taken up with a nice, young, no doubt good-looking horseboy as paramour, and Pyegrave found out. But rather than agree to his demand that she terminate her relationship with the young man, she turns it all back at her husband with a threat of her own, and he is compelled to deliver the consequences right on the spot.”

“The Tya-dya-dya Project. Here, though, things get mirky.”

“Aye. I’ve never heard of anything with a name even remotely similar. Have you?”

I shook my head. “Whatever it is, it cannot be widely known…”

“Yet still of sufficient import,” interrupted Muntle, “to send Janet Pyegrave to her death for merely threatening to divulge it. That and this ‘fête’— whatever that refers to. It really is quite an intriguing business, Trimmers.”

“And obviously worth pursuing.”

“Yet such pursuit would prove tricky.”

“How so?” asked Antonia, having returned to the room to join the conversation in medias res .

Muntle folded his arms and chewed upon his nether lip for a moment. “It is, frankly, the servant-girl’s word against Pyegrave’s. And set one against the other, credibility is generally more heavily weighted on the side of an M.P.P.”

Antonia snorted and then began to shake her head. “So are you saying, Muntle, that there is no way for Pyegrave to be brought to justice?” Now Antonia placed her hands on either side of her head as if to still it, although the picture was more of a woman in the throes of torturous exasperation. “For I now have little doubt about the man’s culpability in his wife’s death. Yet because, at present, everything rests upon the testimony of this one poor miner’s daughter, Pyegrave appears set to walk free for the remainder of his days! Do I apprehend the situation correctly?”