Mary's Child

by Alan Stoker Esq, Irene Carr

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Set in the bustling shipbuilding community of Sunderland at a time of turmoil
abroad and grinding poverty at home, this is the unforgettable story of
Chrissie.

Adopted at birth by caring parents, she has a rosy childhood
and is determined to work hard and succeed. Until tragedy strikes, throwing her
on the mercy of a family where the new woman of the house has every intention of
getting rid of her - by whatever means it takes.

Penniless and
desperate, Chrissie struggles to support herself as the Victorian years give way
to the outbreak of the Great War. And hanging over the throughout her many
ordeals is the mystery of her true parents and her connection with the likes of
Jack Ballantyne, heir to a local shipyard.

Whatever destiny throws her
way, Chrissie and Jack find their paths continue to cross . . .

Release date: October 11, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 288

Sample

Chapter 1

13th January, 1894. Monkwearmouth in Sunderland.

 

Mary brought the child home. She wrapped the mewling scrap of life in her knitted shawl and left Agatha, the narrow-faced midwife, tending the whining mother lying exhausted in the bed. Mary went out into the night, passed through the pitchy darkness of the yard that was close under the shadow-casting loom of the houses and so came into the back lane where there was a little light. The wind had swept the sky clear of the near-perpetual coal smoke from the hundreds of chimneys ranked along the roofs but she could still smell it and the salt from the sea. Now a few stars blinked through cloud.

She hurried, breathing fast but with excitement not effort; she was still young. She clutched the bundle close to her breast and almost ran because of the winter’s cold and her fear that it would grip the child in her arms. But she went carefully, eyes cast down to be sure of her footing because she must not fall. There had been a dusting of snow on the cobbles when she came this way an hour before; the message had come to her then that the birth was imminent. Now that concealing whiteness had become dirty slush, slippery under her feet as her button boots splashed through it.

She came to her own back gate, shouldered through it without letting go of the child – Harry could bolt it later – and plunged once more into the black hole of her own yard. The rear wall of the house lifted in front of her and she pushed through the back door into the passage. Her boots had made little sound in the slush of the yard but each footfall on the bare boards of the passage came like a muffled drumbeat. She thought that the Wards upstairs might hear her but it did not matter. Harry Carter had heard his wife coming and as she reached the first door opening out of the passage he pulled it wide. She stepped past him into the gaslit room beyond and at last drew a full breath. She was home.

She crossed the kitchen with the table at its centre and sat down on the cracket, the little four-legged stool, in front of the coal fire. She rested her booted feet on the brass fender and laid the child down carefully on her knee. The boots dripped into the fireside and started to steam.

Harry Carter, short, broad and just a year older than his young wife, came to stand over her. He said doubtfully, ‘You’ve got it?’

Mary turned her face up to him, laughing with excitement and joy. ‘Aye, I have! And not “it” – her, a little lass!’ She cautiously, carefully eased back a corner of the shawl to peep in at the child, felt at her small face and body with a finger and said softly, ‘She’s warm as toast and sound asleep.’ She stood up, almost eye to eye with Harry but slim and thin faced, brown hair drawn back in a bun. ‘Do you want to hold her a minute?’

‘Aye.’ He held out his arms and took the child, awkward with nervousness but eager for the moment. He and Mary stood with heads bent close together. He was first to return to harsh reality: ‘Are you sure we’re doin’ the right thing?’

‘I am!’ Mary was definite. ‘A new year, a new bairn, a new life! It’s a dream come true!’

‘Mebbe. But they’re short of orders at Ballantyne’s and there’s not another ship to work on when this one’s finished. They’re laying men off. What if I get the sack?’

‘You haven’t got the sack, and if you did it would probably only be for a week or two till you got a job in one o’ the other yards. And I’ve got my job at the ropes.’

‘But that depends on the ships. If they’re not building, they’ll not want the ropes.’

‘Everything around here depends on the ships. But there’ll always be ships, they’ll always want ships and yards to build them, so stop worrying.’ Mary stood on tiptoe and kissed him and he grinned at her, then looked down at the sleeping child.

He asked, ‘What are we going to call her?’

Mary’s smile slipped away for a moment, then returned. ‘She’s already named. Her mother wants her called Chrissie.’

‘Chrissie?’ Harry thought about it then tried it again, ‘Chrissie Carter.’ He grinned. ‘Aye, that sounds all right.’ Then, serious again, ‘And you’re sure she’s ours?’

‘That she is, and no going back. Martha Tate is a single lass and the father’s let her down. She doesn’t want the bairn, she’s made that clear.’

Harry was dubious. ‘She’s a theatrical, been on the stage in London and all over. From what I’ve heard she’s no angel.’

Mary admitted, ‘I daresay she’s no better than she should be. But she’s been taken advantage of and left in the lurch.’

‘Who is the father?’

Mary shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Only that he’s from a family that owns one o’ the yards on the river, a rich man’s son. More than that, Martha won’t say.’ Now she reached up for the child. ‘But it’s time she was in bed. Come on.’

They went through into the other room, the bedroom, that faced on to the street. There was a grate in there but no fire in it and their breath stood on the air in front of them as Mary whispered, ‘Did you put the shelf in?’

‘Aye.’ Harry reached over the side of the cradle, pulled back the blankets and took out the square foot of black steel plate that was the oven shelf. Mary laid the child in its place, on the square of sheet that the plate had warmed, and tucked the covers in around her. Harry carried the plate back into the kitchen and slid it into the oven alongside the fire that heated it. Then he shut the back gate and back door, moving quietly on his toes on the boards of the passage. He turned off the gaslight and groped his way into the bedroom by the light from the kitchen fire. He paused and stooped low over the cradle for a minute, his face close to that of the sleeping child so he could just see her in the gloom. Then he undressed and climbed into bed and into Mary’s arms.

She whispered, ‘I’m that happy! I’ve always wanted a bairn and the doctor said I couldn’t have one, but now I have.’ She corrected, ‘We have.’ But then she asked anxiously, ‘Did you have your heart set on a boy?’

Harry breathed, ‘No. She’s a bonny lass.’ And later, after thinking about it, marvelling at their good fortune and worrying about this new responsibility, he wondered: ‘How could anybody give a bairn away?’

 

Martha Tate was recovering now in a similar bedroom, but this one had a fire in the grate because of the birth. There was a smell of unwashed dishes and past meals from the kitchen next door. Martha sat up in the bed and demanded, ‘Give me a drink, Aggie, and not bloody tea.’ She could be a beauty, but now was bedraggled, her face twisted sourly.

The midwife took glasses from a cupboard and lifted a bottle, squinted at it. ‘There’s a drop o’ rum left.’

‘That’ll do. Anything.’

‘Think I’ll have a drop myself. It’s been a hard night.’

Martha complained, ‘A bloody sight harder for me.’ She held out a long-fingered hand. ‘Give us that!’

Aggie poured generously and passed one glass to Martha. ‘All the best.’ She was a woman of thirty, sharp eyed and narrow faced, falsely smiling with thin lips.

Martha seized the glass. ‘Same to you.’

They sipped at the neat spirit and Martha licked her lips. ‘That’s better. Thank God that’s over. Another few days and I’ll be off. I’ve been stuck in this bloody house for months.’ At that time a woman hid her pregnancy from the world.

Aggie sniffed, reproving, ‘You were glad enough of the place when you came.’

Martha was quick to acknowledge it: ‘Ah! That I was. I couldn’t go back to my own folks in Newcastle. When they weren’t preaching at me they’d be taking every penny I’d got. And they threw me out years ago because I’d gone on the stage.’ She drank, then amended, ‘Well, they were going to but I did a flit before they could kick me out o’ the door. So I wouldn’t go back to that hole and I’m grateful to you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Aggie added slyly, ‘And you’ll be settling up with me when you go.’

‘’Course I will.’ Martha’s upper lip curled. ‘The feller that got me like this, his father’s got plenty o’ money. If he can find it to build ships then he can find it for me. The bugger will pay through the nose.’

They both drank to that, laughing.

 

Ezra Arkenstall came two days later.

All the houses were the same. They stood in long lines on either side of the cobbled street, twenty or more in a block. There were two rooms and the passage on the ground floor, and upstairs two more rooms and, over the passage, a cubicle just big enough for a narrow bed. There was row after row of them, lying close to the River Wear because they were built to house the men who worked in the shipyards.

Arkenstall came in the evening, walking down the hill towards St  Peter’s church but turning off into one of the streets. Darkness had fallen some hours ago but he could see at the end of the street the glint of the sea under the moon. A ship was coming in between the enclosing arms of the two piers, steaming up the river towards the docks. The wind coming off the sea drove up between the rows of houses and snatched at the tails of his dark woollen overcoat. There were few people about but those who saw him stared curiously because they did not see many of his kind down there.

He was in his forties, with a pointed beard and wire-rimmed spectacles, vigorous but with the slight stoop come from long hours at a desk. The overcoat covered a well-cut suit and his boots were expensive and highly polished. He had money. He was a solicitor, senior partner in the firm of Arkenstall, Eddrington & Halliwell, though Wilfred Eddrington had died of consumption three years before.

He stopped at a front door, closed against the wind but not yet bolted for the night. He opened it without knocking because that was unnecessary in these streets. He closed the door behind him, took off his bowler hat and walked along the uncarpeted passage to the kitchen door at the rear. This time he knocked and waited.

The midwife opened the door to him and his nostrils twitched at the stale smell of cooking but he asked, ‘May I see Miss Tate, please?’

Aggie led him through the kitchen, its table laden with dirty dishes, into the bedroom. A small table stood beside the bed, holding a pack of cards, a hand of them face down, a scattering of small change, two empty bottles of stout and two half-full glasses. Martha Tate laid her own hand of cards face down on the coverlet when she saw Arkenstall and said, ‘Oh, it’s you again. I’ve been expecting you but not this quick. How did you know?’

He answered, ‘That is my business.’ He turned to the midwife and asked, ‘Will you excuse us, please?’ He watched Aggie’s back as she flounced out of the room, and saw that the door was closed behind her. Then he swung back to face Martha Tate.

Twenty years separated them but the gap seemed narrower. The woman was darkly attractive with a wide mouth, full breasts and long legs that showed through the sheets, but there was a hardness about the fine-boned face that added years. Arkenstall thought, The face of a fallen angel, then chided himself for being melodramatic.

He looked around the room and said, ‘Where is the child? Have you found it a home?’

Martha answered, ‘I have. I didn’t want her, couldn’t drag her round the halls, could I? She’s gone to a couple up the street: Carter, downstairs at number eight.’

‘A girl, then.’

‘That’s right. Now let’s get on with it.’ Her tone was brusque.

The solicitor’s lips tightened in anger but he said, ‘When I called on you a month ago it was because you had obtained an interview with my client at which you stated that you had met his son when you were appearing at the Empire Theatre here—’

Martha broke in, ‘That’s right. I’m billed as Vesta Nightingale, vocals and dance. But we’ve been through all this before.’

Arkenstall nodded. ‘But I want to ensure there is no mistake nor misunderstanding. To go on: you further alleged that the young man was the father of the child you were carrying.’

‘So he was.’

The solicitor said, ‘He has been dead for six months now and cannot deny the charge or admit it. His father does not believe it to be true.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t. But I’m telling you the truth.’ Martha Tate was defiant. She looked him straight in the eye but he was not impressed. In the courts he had seen that same direct gaze from guilty men trying to brazen it out.

He said, ‘Nevertheless, you cannot prove his paternity and my client refuses to accept liability on his behalf.’ He held up a hand as Martha opened her mouth. ‘Wait, please. Let me finish. A month ago I said my client, though denying any liability, might as an act of charity be prepared to make a once-and-for-all payment to cover the expenses of the confinement. I can now say that he is prepared to do this, provided you sign a disclaimer to the effect that his son was not the father of your child.’

Martha sneered, ‘He’s trying to buy me off!’

Arkenstall kept a hold on his temper. ‘The father is still mourning and does not want the boy’s name sullied.’ The young man had been killed in an accident in the shipyard, slipped and fallen from the deck of a ship under construction. Arkenstall wondered briefly how he would have felt in the father’s place. He himself had married late in life and his own son was barely two years old. The mere thought of losing him was horrifying. His fingers fumbled as he took the paper from his pocket. ‘I have the disclaimer here.’ He handed it to Martha and she took it but did not read it.

She demanded, ‘How much?’ Then added quickly, muttering, eyes sliding to the door, ‘Keep your voice down.’

Arkenstall said softly, ‘One hundred pounds.’

Martha licked her lips. That was more than some men earned in two years in the yards. She asked, ‘What if I don’t sign?’

Arkenstall said flatly, ‘You get nothing.’

She glared at him, ‘Suppose I took him to court or told the papers? There’s one or two reporters would love a story like that from Vesta Nightingale.’

Arkenstall would not be moved. ‘They might. But would they pay you a hundred pounds?’

Martha tried a different tack, smiled and wheedled, ‘Make it two hundred.’

But Arkenstall shook his head and said with distaste, ‘My client made it clear he would not bargain. That is his final offer.’

Martha sighed, put a hand to her brow in a theatrical gesture of weariness and gave in. ‘What can a poor girl in my position do? I’ve got to get to London to work. I’ll sign it.’

Arkenstall had one of the newfangled fountain pens in an inside pocket but he did not offer it. Martha Tate leaned out of the bed to reach a chest of drawers and took from one of the drawers a pen and a bottle of ink. Arkenstall glimpsed a packet of cheap stationery in the drawer. The letter to his client had been written on similar paper – and probably on the table in the kitchen next door.

He held up a hand, ‘One moment.’ He took the disclaimer from her and folded it so only the foot of the sheet showed, with the spaces for signatures. He opened the door and saw the midwife rising from her chair – or, he wondered, sinking hastily into it? But he called her, ‘Will you come in, please?’

Martha scratched her signature at the foot of the sheet and Aggie added hers as a witness.

Arkenstall said, ‘Thank you.’ He waited and Aggie took the hint and left the room again. When the door was closed he took an envelope from his pocket and tossed it on to the bed. ‘There are fifty pound notes in there. I will give you the balance at the station.’

Martha snatched up the envelope and counted the money, licking her finger to flick over the notes. Then she tucked the envelope away under her pillow and Arkenstall said, ‘When you register the birth – the certificate asks for the name of the father.’

She shrugged, ‘I’ll leave that empty.’

‘And the child – have you given her a name?’

Martha smiled mockingly, ‘Yes, I have. She’s Chrissie.’

Arkenstall froze in the act of putting the disclaimer in his pocket and glared at her. She smirked up at him, enjoying his anger. Then he swallowed it and buttoned his overcoat, picked up his hat. ‘Let me know when you are leaving. I will meet you at the station.’

‘I’ll do that, never you fear.’ She was still grinning as he let himself out of the bedroom.

He crossed the kitchen and the midwife held that door open for him. He paused a moment then and said softly, ‘I paid the messenger you sent to say the child had come, but this is in case he cheated you.’ He shoved a folded pound note into her hand and walked out on her muttered thanks.

In the street he took a deep breath, glad that the worst was over.

He walked up the street to number eight. All the houses were the same but this one had a front doorstep a shade whiter than most, a passage scrubbed cleaner. Letting himself in, he walked down the passage to the Carters’ door. He took off his bowler and knocked at the kitchen door again. The young woman who opened it was dark-haired and slim, a white apron knotted about her trim waist. She smiled as she peered up at him, his face in shadow from the gaslight in the passage behind him.

He asked, ‘Mrs  Carter?’

‘Yes.’ The smile faded a little as she became wary and realised he did not belong there.

He said, ‘My name is Arkenstall. I am a solicitor. I understand you have a child here and I would like to talk to you about her.’

‘What about her?’ The smile had gone now. Mary Carter’s hand had tightened on the door, ready to slam it in his face, but then she decided that would not do. Reuben Ward, father of the family who lived upstairs, might come home drunk, staggering up the passage, at any time now. She did not want him to see this man at her door. Nor did she want to answer Arkenstall’s questions there.

She opened the door wider and said reluctantly, ‘You’d better come in.’

Arkenstall entered and noted the scrubbed table, the oven that gleamed from black-leading and the clean linoleum on the floor. A stocky young man got up from an armchair beside the fire, a blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms, and Arkenstall said, ‘Mr  Carter?’

Harry’s answer was a guarded: ‘Aye.’ He, too, was suspicious of this well-dressed stranger.

Mary would not be thought ill-mannered and asked, ‘Would you like to sit down, sir?’ She indicated the other armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

‘Thank you.’ Arkenstall sat, bowler held on his knees, but the young couple stood, looking down at him.

Mary came straight to the point and demanded again, ‘What about Chrissie?’

Arkenstall blinked at that use of the name, silently cursed Martha Tate, but said evenly, ‘Are you aware of the claims made by the child’s natural mother as to her parentage?’

Mary’s lips pursed. ‘That I am. She didn’t give any names but I know the young feller left her in the lurch.’

Arkenstall detected her hostility but went on, ‘I represent the father of the young man accused. My client does not believe his son was responsible, nor does he accept any liability, but he wishes to ensure the child is properly cared for. He recognises your taking the child as an act of kindness and instructs me to tell you that you will never want.’

Mary asked, narrow eyed, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that he is prepared to pay a reasonable allowance to cover the cost of raising the child.’

‘No!’ Mary almost shouted the word. Harry, startled, laid a hand on her arm. She took a breath, steadied herself and went on, quieter now but still definite, ‘Not a penny! We want nothing off you! If that young fly-by-night’s father has something on his conscience he can pray! He’ll get no help from us in easing it!’

Harry squeezed her arm and said gruffly, ‘Go canny now, lass.’ But the gaze he turned on Arkenstall was just as hostile as hers.

Mary put a hand over Harry’s. ‘All right, all right. But that young feller took advantage of that lass, promised her the moon then left her when she fell for the bairn.’ She eyed Arkenstall and went on, ‘My Harry’s not a boozer like some, and I’m a good manager. The bairn is ours now, with a decent home and a decent life in front of her. The rest she can leave behind. All we want from you is to get out of here and leave us alone.’

Arkenstall stood up. ‘Very well.’ They stepped aside to let him pass but he paused then and asked, ‘May I see the child?’

Mary hesitated, suspicious again. ‘She’s just been fed. I was going to put her to bed now.’ She hesitated still, but then decided, ‘I can’t see any harm in you having a look at her. Let him see, Harry.’

So Arkenstall stepped forward and peered down at the small pink face, the eyes closed, a wisp of dark hair. He did not see any resemblance to the alleged father of the child but she was only a couple of days old. As for any likeness to the mother, Martha Tate .  . . ? He decided there was not. There was only innocence in this small face. But maybe that would change as she grew – to be what?

Mary said defensively, ‘She’s clean, well fed and healthy.’

Arkenstall smiled at her. ‘I’m sure she is. But I can see that.’ He moved on to the door and opened it. He paused again for a moment then, hat in hand, to glance once more around the kitchen, comfortably warm with the fire in the grate compared to the chilly bareness of the passage. He knew that providing linoleum for the passage would be an expense shared with the family living in the three rooms above, and if they would not or could not pay . . . He said, ‘I think the child will do well with you. Good night.’

As the door closed behind him Mary moved into Harry’s encircling arm, so he held her and the child. He stroked her hair and soothed her. ‘There now, he’s gone. Calm down.’

She looked up at him, defiant. ‘I’m not sorry. I meant every word and I stand by what I said. That lass was badly done by.’

‘I believe you.’

‘You would if you’d listened to her, like I did.’

‘All right, you’ve sent him off.’ He was silent a moment, then added, ‘Mind you, one o’ these days we might wish we’d taken that money he offered.’

‘Never!’ She pushed away so she stood at arm’s length. ‘If we took that money then in a few years the father might try to claim the bairn back, and if he could show he’d paid for her keep all along because he’d meant to have her, then they might give her to him.’

‘Could they?’ Harry was appalled. ‘They’ were the courts and the law; he knew nothing of either, wished to know no more.

Nor did Mary. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know for sure, but I’ll not trust them. I’m thirty now, we’ve wanted a bairn for nearly ten years and thought we’d never have one. Now I have I’m not going to risk losing her.’

 

Arkenstall went to the railway station a week later, splashing through the puddles spotted with the falling rain. Inside the high-roofed, echoing concourse there were the mingled smells of damp serge, coal smoke, steam – and horse manure from the cabs ranked outside. Martha Tate stood by the ticket office. She wore a coat, shoes and silk stockings and a wide-brimmed hat that all looked new. So did the umbrella she held out from her side so its folds, collapsed now she was sheltered from the rain, would not drip on her finery. Arkenstall thought that there was some of the first fifty pounds he had given her; the umbrella alone must have cost four shillings. She was a handsome woman now and the heads of a number of men turned as they passed. She saw that and preened herself.

Arkenstall touched a hand to the brim of his hat. ‘Good morning.’

She sniffed, glanced out at the rain and answered, ‘Only because I’m getting out of here and back to London.’

‘You have work there?’

‘I’ll soon get some. I’m known on most o’ the halls down there,’ she said with careless confidence.

Arkenstall believed her. He had made it his business to find out about Martha Tate, billed as ‘Vesta Nightingale, Dance and Vocals’. He had learnt that she had talent but suspected it was being squandered. He took an envelope from his pocket and passed it to her.

She took it, pulled off one of her gloves with sharp white teeth and counted the banknotes inside the envelope. She held it close to her breast as if it was a child, her red lips moving. Satisfied, she put the envelope away in a handbag carried over her arm.

‘Right, then. I’m off.’ She turned towards the ticket-barrier.

Arkenstall said, ‘I went to see the child’s new parents. I think she will be happy with them.’

Martha shrugged. ‘I expect she will.’ Then defensively, ‘She wouldn’t have had much of a life wi’ me.’

Arkenstall agreed, ‘No . . . ’ He lifted a hand to his hat but she was already walking through the gate in the barrier. He finished, speaking softly to himself but the words addressed to her retreating back, ‘No, I don’t suppose she would.’

 

He could have taken a cab from the station – three of them stood outside, the horses with their heads hanging – but instead he chose to jump on a horse-drawn tram that was just starting to move away. He paid his twopence to the conductor and flipped another penny to an urchin who ran alongside turning cartwheels. He saw it caught in one quick-grasping, grubby palm and heard the yelled, ‘Thank ye!’ Then he moved inside to a seat. It was time to report to his client.

When he got down from the tram the rain had stopped and a watery sun was peeping through clouds driven on the wind. He walked now, because he welcomed the exercise and took pleasure from it, and from being quit of his office for a while. That was why he had taken the tram rather than a cab. He breathed deep of the clean air, sweet after the smoke and dust down by the river.

This was Ashbrooke, a different part of the town, where there were quiet, wide streets lined with trees and large houses. His client lived in one of those houses. It stood high and wide in its own grounds, surrounded by a high wall, with rooms on three floors and, oddly, a tower rising tall out of its centre. Arkenstall lifted his gaze to the room at the top of it. He knew that was his client’s study, where he liked to work, looking out over the intervening houses to the river and the sea. The wrought-iron gates stood open now, leading to a carriage drive which ran through a belt of trees, then a close-cut lawn, to a turning circle outside the front door.

Arkenstall walked up the drive, boot heels crunching on the gravel. A flight of six broad, shallow steps lifted up to the front door. That stood open but there was an interior door inside the porch thus formed, with a stained glass panel above a glittering brass door knob and letter-box. He yanked at the bell-pull beside the front door and waited.

He heard no sound of the bell, ringing somewhere deep in the house, but in seconds the door was opened by a maid, smart in black dress with white apron and cap. She bobbed a curtsy and held the door wide so he could pass in.

‘The master’s expecting you, sir.’ She took his hat and gloves as he removed them, then his overcoat as he shrugged out of it.

‘Thank you.’ Arkenstall followed her along the hall. There was a fragrance from a vase of flowers on a side table and a smell of floor and furniture polish. He glimpsed, through an open door on his right, the gleaming floor of the long dining-room-cum-ballroom that stretched from front to rear of the house. But the maid led him to a door on the left of the hall.

She knocked on this, opened it and announced. ‘Mr  Arkenstall, sir.’ Then stood back.

The room looked out on the front of the house. It was large and high-ceilinged, furnished with a chesterfield and several leather armchairs. There were pictures on the walls, all of ships built in the Ballantyne yard, and three round tables crowded with framed photographs, vases of flowers and an aspidistra. A big fire burned in the grate and there were two bay windows. Arkenstall’s client stood at one of these, had turned at his entrance and now came towards him.

George Ballantyne was a shipbuilder. He was in his early fifties, tall and broad-shouldered, a powerful man both physically and in the affairs of the town; a thousand men worked for him in his yard on the river. His dark hair was still thick, though greying at the temples. He was clean shaven in an age when most men wore beards, with only a thick, wide moustache above the mouth set firm. A pair of startling blue eyes looked out at Arkenstall as Ballantyne greeted him.

‘Good morning, Ezra. Have a seat. Would you like anything? Coffee?’ He neither drank nor served alcohol in his house before noon. When Arkenstall refused Ballantyne told the waiting maid, ‘Thank you. That will be all.’

The maid left, closing the door quietly behind her, and the two men sat in armchairs facing each other across the fire. Arkenstall recalled sitting at another fireside a few nights ago with two young people staring at him, defiant and suspicious. He began his report.

‘I followed your instructions. When I heard that the child was born I called on the mother  . . .’ He recounted his interviews with Martha Tate and then the Carters and finished, ‘I have just come from the stati