Page 159 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

‘I’d like a word with him, if you please.’

‘He’s a good, quiet lad. A good worker, never any trouble. What is it about?’

‘I have received information that he may have been involved in an incident. Would you send for him, please? I’d like a word with him.’

Moss got up and went to the door. There was no difficulty in securing a messenger – all too many people were hanging around innocently engaged in nothing very much. In the following interval, the policeman waited with positively geological patience, which made Moss feel fidgety and ill at ease by contrast – a mayfly beside a mountain. When William appeared hesitantly in the doorway, Holyoak said, ‘I’d like to speak to the young man alone, if you don’t mind.’

Moss felt he was on firmer ground here. ‘But I do mind. I am in loco parenthesis to all my staff, particularly the younger ones. I must be present.’

Holyoak looked questioningly at William, who blushed under scrutiny and managed, with an heroic effort, not to put his hand to his face. The scratch had been a deep one, and the healing line was still visible. ‘I don’t mind,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d like Mr Moss to be here.’

‘Very well, then,’ said Holyoak. He took out his notebook and consulted it – not that he needed to, but people expected it. It impressed them. ‘I have received information that you were out of the house on the evening of Wednesday, the fourth of November.’ William’s lips moved as he calculated the date. ‘Last Wednesday. Where did you go?’

William glanced at Moss as if he might answer for him, but then was captured by the mesmeric gaze of the policeman. ‘I went to see my mum.’

‘It was your evening off?’

‘No, I had a message she was ill. One of her neighbours sent for me.’

‘What neighbour was that?’ Holyoak appeared to be writing down what William said, which disconcerted him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. A burst of inspiration came to him. ‘Ma lives in Acres End Row. She’s got lots of neighbours. They all look out for her in the Row. She – she has these funny turns. But when I got there, she was all right again. So I come back.’

‘And did you see this neighbour, at your mum’s house?’

William had to think. ‘No. No, she’d gone home. ’Cause my ma was all right.’

‘Did she mention which neighbour it was who helped her?’

‘She never said. Or I don’t remember. I was a bit upset. I was worried about her. It’s all a bit muddled in my head.’

‘I see. And what happened on the way back?’

William chewed his lip, his eyes fixed desperately on the dark, handsome face. ‘I – I fell into a ditch in the dark. It was all brambles. I couldn’t get out. I kept slipping in the mud. I got all scratched.’ His hand got halfway to his cheek this time before he dragged it back.

The constable’s pencil moved implacably across the page. ‘Did you meet anyone else on the way there, or on the way back?’

‘No,’ William said. He chewed his lip.

The pencil stopped. The dark, steady eyes looked up, into William’s, straight through the back of them and into William’s head. ‘Are you quite sure? No one at all? No man, woman or child?’

‘I never met no one,’ William said.

Holyoak moved his feet slightly more apart, making himself even more unrockable. With his weight spread and anchored into the ground, an earthquake would have had a job knocking him off balance. ‘Now, I want you to be quite clear about this, William Sweeting. Did you at any point on that evening meet, or see, or speak to, or have any dealings with Edgar Speen, valet in this house?’

‘No! I never seen him. Why you asking me this?’ William said, a little wildly. There was a bead of sweat on his upper lip. ‘I never done nothing. Tell him, Mr Moss! I’ve never been in trouble.’

Moss opened his mouth to speak, but Holyoak stopped him with a glance. ‘That’s all right, William. You can go now.’

When they were alone, Holyoak turned to Moss and folded over a new page in his notebook. ‘Now, Mr Moss, when that young man got back on Wednesday evening, you went to meet him at the back door, is that right? Why did you do that?’

Moss bent his brow in apprehension. ‘It wasn’t his evening off. He shouldn’t have gone out. I went to reprimand him and ask where he’d been.’

‘And he told you the same as he’s just told me.’

‘Yes,’ said Moss. He thought of something, hesitated, then said, ‘Yes,’ again.

‘And what was his condition?’