The Rector’s wife was making her way along the congested quay, lifting her skirt to negotiate mooring ropes and puddles of liquid spilling from broken casks. Her good-looking groom walked behind her carrying a bulky package across both arms. It looked heavy and she turned to check that he was keeping pace with her.
‘Had you heard the rumour that he’s her lover?’ Charlotte murmured. She had brought the gig to a halt to allow a brewer’s dray to finish unloading casks of beer onto the cobbles in front of them.
‘What? Her groom? But… he’s younger than she is.’
‘So is her husband,’ Charlotte said. ‘He’s a handsome creature – and far too clean and well-turned out for a groom if you ask me.’
Mrs Finch had stopped at the gangplank of another vessel where four sailors were struggling with a very large crate. ‘Do take care! That is full of china. Oh, you clumsy man!’ One of the unfortunate sailors hit a bollard with the corner of the case and set it down hurriedly.
‘She must be spending lavishly if she has goods arriving on two separate vessels,’ Charlotte remarked. ‘You would think she’d arrange to have things shipped together from London. Ah, now the way is clear – and there is Squire Jenner.’
‘Looking remarkably furtive,’ Laura said. ‘You don’t suppose that building is a…’
‘Brothel? Might be, I suppose. Rather early in the day for a card school. Probably if I were married to Mrs Jenner I too would be seeking some light relief elsewhere.’
‘What a pity neither of us is in a position to twit him on the subject. He deserves to be made uncomfortable, in my opinion.’
Charlotte drew in against a warehouse wall. ‘Will you be all right here for a few minutes? I must just go in to settle that account.’
‘I will be perfectly all right, Tansy seems very calm. If you hand me the reins I do not think you need to tie her up. She isn’t going to need much of my attention.’
But she was paying attention, she realised. Paying attention to Charlotte because that seemed a strange place to be paying a bill for fish. Paying attention to Squire Jenner who had stopped looking shifty and was now in earnest conversation with what looked like the captain of the brig moored opposite to her. The man was leaning on the rail and Jenner was speaking with rapid, stabbing hand gestures as though trying to drive a point home. The other man shifted a little, spat over the side, then said a few words, shrugged and walked away from the rail. Jenner stormed up the gangplank after him.
Laura watched with interest, half expecting a fight to break out, but both men vanished from sight. Then she ducked her head again as her Aunt Finch came back along the quayside, appearing from behind Laura and making her jump when she stopped almost alongside the gig.
The older woman was tapping her foot impatiently, an unusual sign of agitation in someone who was usually so controlled. Perhaps the sailors had broken some of the china. Her groom stepped up alongside her, very close and said something, too low for Laura to hear. She shivered. Surely Aunt Finch was not having an affaire? The Rector’s wife? And with this man who, for some reason, was making Laura feel decidedly uneasy.
Then her aunt said something to him, he stepped back and Laura saw the Rector walking towards them. The two met, spoke and then turned, arm in arm and Laura saw Mrs Finch glance at her husband. It was just one look, but it was betraying.
She despises him, Laura realised. Then the look was replaced by the usual calm indifference.
She was still puzzling over the Rector’s marriage when Charlotte emerged from the warehouse, jotting something in a small notebook. She glanced up and down the quayside and made a few more notes before turning and walking briskly towards the ships’ chandler’s store at the far end.
Really, this is like some stage farce. People keep popping in and out, just missing each other. Perhaps she should drive on a little and pick Charlotte up when she came out of the chandlery. And what on earth did she or Mr Hogget need from a ships’ chandler’s?
All it needed was for the landlord of the Mermaid to appear and the Swinburns to arrive en masse and everyone connected with the mystery would be to hand. Tansy walked on stolidly, hardly baulking when a man walked out of the warehouse door right into the mare’s path.
It was the Mermaid’s owner, just as though Laura had conjured him up. And that was the warehouse Charlotte had gone into. Perhaps they were both buying fish from there…
Tansy plodded on around the man and stopped again outside the chandlery when Laura gave an absent-minded tug on the reins. What was going on? Or was it simply that these local people were going about their perfectly innocent business and she was seeing something sinister in everything?
Charlotte came out, her notebook still in her hands and with no sign of any purchases.
‘I caught you up,’ Laura said after a swift glance around to make sure none of her neighbours were within earshot.
‘Thank you.’ Charlotte climbed into the gig and took the reins.
‘One can never have too much rope, I always think.’
‘What?’
‘The chandlery. So useful for rope.’
‘I wanted to find a source of tar. The pigsty roof is leaking.’ Charlotte sent Tansy along the quay instead of turning around.
She must be intending to take the lane up to the coast road at the far end, despite the fact that it was narrow and awkward. On the other hand, Laura thought, her suspicions nagging at her again, this route gives Charlotte a view of every single ship in the harbour.
And tar? Surely repairs to pigsties were the province of the man of the house or his workers? Although, if Charlotte had said she was driving this way, perhaps Mr