A Season of Knives by Chisholm P F

Author:Chisholm, P F [Chisholm, P F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2012-05-08T21:00:00+00:00

‘Ay, sir. His name’s Andy Nixon.’

Where had he heard that name before? He remembered the extremely pregnant Mrs Leigh with her nasty particles of gossip.

‘Andy Nixon?’

‘Ay. Mr Pennycook’s rent-collector.’

That fitted. That all fitted nicely into place. Carey’s jaw set. ‘He’s Mrs Atkinson’s lover, isn’t he?’

Dodd sighed regretfully. ‘Ay sir. They was childhood sweethearts, but Kate Coldale’s mother wouldna let her marry a man wi’ no land and no prospects, seeing she had a good dowry in property, and she was married off to Jemmy Atkinson instead. But I canna see Kate…’

‘It looks bad for her, though. If she conspired with her lover to kill her husband, that’s a wicked crime. It’s petty treason. She…’

Dodd was looking at Carey with peculiar directness. Go on, thought Dodd, tell me you’ve never at least toyed with the notion of shooting Sir Henry Widdrington, tell me you haven’t.

Carey’s voice did trail off and he looked at the floor. Up again. ‘It’s a crime,’ he said more quietly. ‘It has to be a crime. If it wasn’t, none of us could sleep easy in our beds.’

‘Depends how ye treat yer wife, though, sir,’ said Dodd with all the smugness of the happily married. ‘And what her lover thinks of it and what kind of a man he is.’

Carey studiously ignored the personal implications of all this.

‘You think Andy Nixon’s capable of slitting Atkinson’s throat?’

‘Oh ay, sir. Andy Nixon wouldnae do the job he does if he couldnae use a blade.’

‘And Mrs Atkinson? Do you think she knew?’

Dodd shrugged. ‘I dinna ken sir.’

‘Well, let’s go and find out.’

‘We need a warrant, sir…’

‘I’ll get the bloody warrant,’ Carey growled. ‘Fetch the men.’

Kate Atkinson was just about to lock up her house for the night when there came an almighty hammering on her door. She opened it and was faced with a waking nightmare: the tall Deputy Warden with a piece of paper in his hand that gave him the right to search her house, and behind him six men to do it. At the tail of them all was Janet Armstrong’s bad-tempered husband looking very uneasy.

They tramped their muddy boots up the stairs and into her bedroom; she hadn’t been sleeping on her marriage bed, but on the truckle bed beside it, as she told them. Two of them went out into the back yard and started gingerly raking through her midden heap. She didn’t go with them but sat on the window seat in the downstairs living room and looked at her clenched fists. When little Mary started to wail because she was frightened by the high comb of the Deputy’s helmet, she did nothing because there was really nothing comforting she could say to her. Occasionally wisps of thought would gust through her mind. I should have gone to Lowther. I should never have told Andy. What can I say?

‘Mrs Atkinson,’ came a powerful voice from upstairs. ‘Will you come here, please?’

She went and found the Deputy Warden and Henry Dodd staring at the mattress of her marriage bed.

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