Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“I cannot see means to any other outcome,” said Muntle in an apologetic tone.

“Even when you consider…” Antonia’s eyes brightened. “…the possibility that there may have been someone who lived in that street who, unlike Tattycoram, actually saw it — someone watching in the night as Pyegrave approached the window and tossed his wife out of it as if she were the unwanted contents of a brimming slop pail!”

“If that be so, Miss Bocker, the person has yet to come forward. No, my dear lady, I suspect that everyone was sound asleep in their beds at that late hour.”

“Not if the couple’s argument carried itself loudly into the street. Perhaps someone was drawn to their window by the noisy contretemps but is presently too reticent to recount voluntarily what they witnessed. Perhaps you need only cast about, then do a bit of tugging here and there to retrieve all sorts of pertinent witness testimony.”

“I must tell you, Miss Bocker,” began Muntle, clouding Antonia’s hopeful countenance with his furrow and frown, “that I may very well be prohibited from pursuing this investigation.”

“Stuff and nonsense! You are sheriff of Dingley Dell! It’s within your purview to inspect and enquire as you see fit. A woman is dead, my dear sir, and there now exists a decided difference of opinion as to how she got to be that way.”

“Sooth to tell, Miss Bocker, I do not maintain the unbridled independence in my offices that you assume. I answer to the Minister of Justice— the honourable Lord Mayor Feenix — who answers, in turn, to the Cabinet at large.”

Antonia reacted quickly to Muntle’s admission by punching her fist indelicately into a bolster — a bolster, no doubt, sewn by one of Pyegrave’s own upholsterers. (Life in the tightly-circumscribed Dell of Dingley was filled with many such little ironies, some funny and flavourful, others bitter and biting.) “A woman lies stiffening upon a mortician’s table, murdered by her husband who will never be brought to justice because a collier’s daughter is never to be believed. It boggles the brain, gentlemen.”

“Indeed,” said Muntle.“But don’t despair entirely, Miss Bocker. I will endeavour to pursue the investigation as expeditiously as I am able, to see how much I can learn before the Ministry of Justice orders me to close the case.”

Antonia shook her head. “That will not do, for they will, no doubt, shut you down from waft of your very first interview. I suggest another course. Set the formal investigation aside. For all intents and purposes you’ve heard nothing from this char-girl, and I doubt that once she’s back in Blackheath there will be much about her story that will venture out, for residing in Blackheath is commensurate with residing upon the distant Malay Peninsula for all that most Dinglians care about that isolated flock. You have only Pyegrave’s word that it was an accident that took the life of his wife, and that is how it shall stand, whilst I take a few liberties of my own to ask questions of the neighbours. Would you raise an objection, sir, were I to conduct a few instatutory probings of my own?”

“I suppose not, provided you exercise only the utmost discretion in how you conduct your questionings.”

Antonia nodded as I added that “someone should also have a word with the stableboy Jemmy. I should like to know if there is truth to the predicating action: his involvement with Mrs. Pyegrave.”

“Your landlady, Mrs. Lumbey, rides at Regents Park, does she not?” asked Antonia.

“Ever and anon,” I replied.“She can’t afford to make it a weekly outing.”

“But you’ll go with her on her next visit to put yourself in close proximity with the boy,” said Antonia, becoming quite invigourated by the prospect of our extrajudicial investigation.“By the bye, I take it that neither of you gentlemen has heard of anything called the ‘Tya-dya-dya Project?”

Muntle and I shook our heads as one.

Antonia continued: “Given the fact that very little goes on in this valley that is not passed from one to another like a contagious head cold, those few secrets that are being kept close must be large secrets indeed, and this one in particular of such significant import that a man should take such an extreme action upon the mere threat of disclosure.”

I nodded. It was indeed a Dinglian paradox: that everyone knew everything about everyone else except for those select things known only to a select few. Perhaps the ‘Tya-dya-dya Project’ was pet name for some nefarious business matter in which Pyegrave, by reputation not one of the most scrupulous businessmen in the Dell, had engaged to his detriment— a difficult situation made all the more problematical for him should its particulars be broadcast by a retaliatory spouse.

For the time being, the thing would remain a befuddling mystery in both fact and in the very pronunciation of its odd name. But all was destined to come eventually to light, this first stone of revelation having begun its ineluctable and catalytic journey down that mountainside of earlier mention.

— NOTES—

COFFEE, a beverage rarely imbibed in its pure, unadulterated state due to its high cost and scarcity. When drunk by all but the wealthiest class within the Dell, it is most often prepared through infusion at one of two coffeehouses in Milltown that employ an infusing apparatus of local invention. In its pure form it is a drink of luxury for the members of Dingley Dell’s most exclusive club, the Cavendish Coffee-Room.

The beverage is commonly adulterated by one of the following additives: the ground roots of the dandelion (informally denominated “Wishie,” nickname for the mature dandelion clock); carrot (“Orange Brew”); parsnip (“Sativa,” after its species name Pastinaca sativa ); beet (“Red-cup”); acorns (“Squirrel Juice”); and beans (“Toots”).

week had come and gone and there was no sign of Newman.Alice’s prediction that if her brother was outside the Dell he would make a speedy return had not come to pass.

The worst was contemplated and the worst was ventured in grave whispered voices, but still my brother and sister-in-law had not yet given up wishing and praying for their son’s safe restoration to the bosom of his family. Indeed, there was a small ember of hope that burnt within my heart as well, for I had fabricated a plan: in two days the Outland brokers would make their fortnightly visit to the Summit of Exchange, and I was determined to have a word with them to find out what, if anything, they knew of Newman’s visit. I knew that even though my nephew could be nowhere now but the Outland, there still existed the sliver of a chance that he did not have to go the way of all the other Departed. My meeting on Monday morning would give me opportunity to bellow a little more oxygen into that hope-filled ember. Hundred to one the tradesmen would decline to answer my questions, but I could not let this day go by, no matter how potentially unavailing, without the earnest essay.

The tradesmen were a strange and mysterious breed, saying and indicating little as a rule beyond those things that served to grease the wheels of our mutual commerce: wheels that had spun with well-oiled ease for above a century, and which through all those years of uninterrupted mercantile intercourse, had afforded a good many Dinglians lives of relative comfort, and for a smaller, more privileged few among us, lives of inordinate amenity. This is not to say that the privileged did not have their own interpersonal conflicts to resolve or the occasional accident (consider Mrs. Pyegrave) or debilitating illness from which to recover (though hardly ever did illness in the Dell rise to the level of outright epidemic or plague, and we knew that we were quite blest in this respect).