Secret Mischief by Robin Blake

Author:Robin Blake [Robin Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

The food I’d ordered now came in, all too late for poor hungry Fanny. I paused over this thought for a moment. The law takes its course and justice is blind, as everyone knows. Blind to hunger. Blind also to poverty and misfortune, as often as not. There was nothing a man could do about that, or not in a moment. Not in between breakfast and dinner. So I ate my dinner.

‘I shall take Fanny Kirby some food afterwards,’ I said. ‘And then I shall try old Dolland. I do not think he’s cajolable into rescinding the warrant on the poor girl but we must try.’

Fidelis, the slowest eater that ever lived, picked up his knife and surveyed the meat and lid of pie-crust on his plate, without showing any haste to devour it.

‘So, she has won you over, Titus.’

‘Has she not you? Do you still say she had a hand in her mistress’s death?’

‘I see no reason to change my mind.’

‘But, surely, the girl is intelligent and deliberative. She scorns to be blown around by chance, or by the devices and persuasions of evil men. I don’t think she could easily be talked into harming Miss Pettifer unless she wanted to do so. And I see no reason why she should. I think the inquest has found correctly.’

‘No, Titus, it has miscarried. I keep to my previous opinion on the case, and that is exactly because, not in spite, of the character you give Fanny Kirby. She is pert enough and resourceful enough to take an opportunity when one is offered. And I believe it was offered by Captain Garland, somehow. Probably during one of Fanny’s visits to the market in Ormskirk. Fanny is not shy of men. He would have got into conversation with her, might even have got into bed with her. Then he offered her money for intelligence about Miss Pettifer. They might even have plotted together to get her out of the way.’

‘So you think Fanny pushed her mistress into the windmill sail with the aim of removing her from the list of tontine survivors?’

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘It may have been planned, it may have been improvised. Fanny puts on a good show, but that is her profession, is it not? However, even if there was an accident at the mill, did she not have the opportunity in the night to finish the job?’

That is her profession. My friend had often asserted his violent aversion to prostitution.

‘You are against her only because you think of her as a whore,’ I said. ‘But just remember – she is not one now. She has resigned from the profession.’

‘Once a whore, always a liar,’ said Fidelis. ‘That is my experience.’

I was about to ask him to enlarge on this ‘experience’ when Robert Furzey whom I had sent for to share our meal came in. As he filled his plate with pie, he asked what we’d learned from Fanny Kirby.

‘One point is, she’s from Preston,’ I said. ‘She’s one of Doddy Kirby’s lasses.

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