“I shouldn’t think you had to do much to send him over the edge where you’re concerned,” Jeremy said with a smirk. “You have surprised me, I will confess. I had not thought you had it in you to bring William Nye to his knees.”
“I have done no such thing,” Mina said, flushing. Involuntarily, she glanced over to the window to watch Nye making back for the kitchen door.
“Colfax has boxed at country fayres,” he announced as he came through the door. “So, he would do at a pinch.”
Jeremy threw up his hands in mock horror. “No one listens to me,” he complained. Mina sliced into another onion. “Faugh!” Jeremy complained, jumping up from his seat and pressing a hand to his nose. “Foul stench!”
“Well, I’m sorry for your sensitive nose, but I’ve another twenty to peel and slice before lunchtime,” she scolded him.
Jeremy laughed, tipped his hat to her, and sauntered out of the door. She watched as he and crossed the courtyard and clapped a hand to Colfax’s shoulder.
“Does he usually come to watch the boxing?” she asked.
“Fairly often,” Nye admitted, his eyes on her.
“I need to get on with these onions,” she said hastily. “It’s been one interruption after another this morning.”
He grunted, drained his teacup, and strode out of the kitchen, a frown still on his face.
Mina managed to get through the next couple of hours without disturbance and by the time Edna appeared to make some sandwiches for lunch, she had finished the onions and was halfway through the potatoes.
“There’s a sack of swedes needs bringing in for you too,” Edna pointed out, somewhat undermining Mina’s sense of achievement. She ate her bread and cheese as Edna pinned out the first lot of washing to dry and Nye carried in the sack of swedes on his shoulder from an outhouse.
“You may as well bring in your trunk from the stable now,” Mina pointed out to him as he set the swedes down next to the table.
He made no answer, but Mina was gratified to see him cross to the stables after leaving the building. She kept an eye on the window as she carried on with the potatoes and sure enough, five minutes later he reappeared with a battered trunk on his shoulder which he brought in and carried straight past her with it and out to the hall. When he reappeared, he halted next to the table.
“You’ll need to go through it, some stuff needs throwing out, some for mending.”
“You’re happy for me to do that?” she asked, looking up.
He nodded. “There’s nothing interesting, just work clothes, my razor, some spare change. I’m going down to the cellar to sort out some barrels. If anyone comes by, tell them to wait.”
“Very well.” She watched his back as he left the room and remembered how Ivy had said he jealously guarded over the cellar. She turned back to her diminishing pile of potatoes with pursed lips.
She had just dropped the last peeled potato into a bucket of cold water when Edna appeared carrying a basketful of wet sheets. “This is the last of it,” she puffed. “I’ll get it out on the line now, weather permitted.”
“There’s been no spots of rain,” Mina said. “Shall I help you? I could do with a stretch of my legs.”
Together, they collected in the washing that had dried and hung out the wet sheets. Then Edna joined her efforts parboiling up the cubed potato and swede and frying off the minced beef and onions. Once all the ingredients were prepared, they fetched out the flour, butter, and suet for a mammoth batch of dough making.
They weren’t finished with this task until well after six o’clock when they ate a simple supper of leftover fish pie together in the kitchen. Nye joined them to eat a plateful before hurrying back to whatever task he’d left.
Mina allowed herself to be persuaded to take a bath that evening and took a hurried wash in the tin bath in the scullery, listening to Edna banging the cupboards and the pots and pans in the kitchen. By the time she emerged, Edna had formed fifty half-moon shaped pasties already which she placed under teacloths.
“They’re all the better for resting before their glazed and baked,” she explained. “I’ll make a second batch first thing in the morning while these are in the oven.”
“Maybe I could help, if you could show me how, Edna.”
“I’d be glad to. Goodnight, Mrs Nye.”
Mina made her way hurriedly up the stairs, anxious to avoid all with her wet hair and her petticoats slung over her arm. She was lucky and made it up to the attic undetected. Once there she drew on her nightgown and set about towel-drying her hair.
It was at that point that she noticed Nye’s battered trunk set down against the far wall of the bedroom. She stared at it a moment, noticing the straps were unbuckled. He had given her permission to sort through his things, she remembered, and it must only be around seven o’clock. Far too early for her to climb into bed. Pulling on her bed socks, she padded over the floorboards toward it, carrying her hurricane lamp with her. Settling cross-legged before it, she set the lamp down beside her and threw back the lid.
Inside was as Nye had said, a jumble of work clothes in varying condition. Mina soon made a pile for mending and a pile for tidying away into the chest of drawers and the wardrobe. Underneath this was an assortment of penknives, cufflinks, razors, bits of string, handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, braces, and a collection of old pipes.
Mina was surprised by this as she had never seen Nye with a pipe, but here she found cherrywood, meerschaum, and even clay pipes all looking well worn and in somewhat sorry repair. Some were carved into curious semblances—a dog’s head on one, a naked woman wrapped about the bowl of another. There was even a couple of pipe tamper tools, one in the shape of a mermaid and the other of a lady’s stocking-clad leg, but she found no tobacco pouch.
These were assuredly Nye’s personal effects, she thought, carrying the items to the drawers on the side of the bed he invariably slept on. Though she found no letters or even postcards among the items, she did find a sheaf of papers pertaining to his ownership of Vance House and the deeds to the inn itself, the only other paperwork she found was two photographs tucked into a folded piece of cardboard.
The first she took to be of a father and son with their identical flinty glares and stiff studio poses in their Sunday suits. Their expression though was the only likeness between them. The man was of a solid square build with a big square jaw, close-cropped hair, and sideburns which Mina judged to be of a sandy light brown color although it was always hard to tell in the black and white of photographs. The boy she knew immediately to be William Nye. He was a tall handsome boy of about eleven years, but much darker than the man whose hand rested on his shoulder, with hair that curled at his nape and brow and straight eyebrows that looked almost black. Was this Nye with the man who raised him and gave him his name? Mina turned over the photograph but found no writing to tell her if she had guessed correctly, only the studio’s stamp.
Picking up the second photograph, she saw the features she already knew from the inn’s sign The Merry Harlot. This one had two words printed on the reverse. Ellen Nye. The artist who painted it must have used this photograph for reference, she thought, flipping it back over to look at the tumbled curls and the bonny face of the fourth viscount’s mistress. Thoughtfully she placed both photographs in the top drawer of the bedside cabinet also.