Previously in this series: Just Another Minute, Please, Miss — Hoping That My Suit Might Not Prove Entirely Distasteful To Ye — I make Ninepence A Shilling And I Saw A Dog Once’t.

Something rather nasty, I believe
I really couldn’t tell you
All I know is she paid her rent on time and kept herself to herself — which is more than I can say for some people. Will that be all, then, Mr, ah…?
Summat
Nowt
Something untidy, we were given to understand
Ah, but the North keeps her secrets as close as her children, now then, doesn’t she, Inspector?
Trouble of some sort
Was it some kind of trouble?
I didn’t think it my place to ask. Come to think of it, I don’t think it your place to ask, either
Not the sort of thing that happens around here
The usual sort of thing that happens up there
Really, I had thought you a man of the world — what usually comes of that sort of thing in that part of the country?
It was all covered up, wasn’t it?
Terrible thing, that
Well, the girl was never the same again, of course
What ever became of the child?
I believe in polite circles one refers to it as ‘resigning under a cloud’
Polite circles don’t have a word for that sort of thing
He was always rather evasive on that point
Something less than a scandal and more than an embarrassment
Why, nothing at all, of course
The farm burned down the following autumn — birds nested in the chimney, they said. Ask the ashes.
Finger in the till, I’d always thought
She had excellent references
My dear, I’m quite certain that none of us worried for an instant about what our Northern cousins might consider done or not done — what they do, we do not; what they consider not done, we don’t consider at all
Whatever it was, it followed him down, even here
Aye, that business
Aye, you won’t hear folk’ll talk of that any more
Aye, you won’t hear folk’ll talk of that nae more
I heard the boy left shortly thereafter, although I never heard where
Aye, that was a bad business
Aye, that were bad business
Aye, that were a bad business, that
Something that required her to leave it, and in a great hurry too
A curious business
The school closed down, I know that much
Nothing ever came of it
Should be, o’that
Well, some said it was like as such, and others were said it t’weren’t
[Closes door]
Nobbut
Wild things —
Was there talk?
She left the North — let’s let the North keep whatever stories it might have about her.
There was talk, now
People will talk
I never heard any talk of it
It was all so very long ago
Superstitious talk, that; fit only for sheep and them that keep them
I’ve got to get back — someone’s got to mind the store — let me go —
But how ridiculous! This is London, not some murrain-raddled grange! Such things just don’t happen now-a-days
If there war’n talk, I din’auld naen for’t
Oh, who remembers such things? Mind your step as you go, then.

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What Happened Up North?

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