Death Below Stairs

by Jennifer Ashley

  • • •

  I next tackled Mr. Davis; metaphorically, of course. I cornered him in the butler’s pantry, where he was decanting the wines for supper—a robust red to go with the beef and in its sauce and a sweet wine for pudding. The white wine for the fish would stay in its bottle until needed.

  “That man you brought in,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “What do you know of him?”

  Mr. Davis glanced up, his elbows out as he let the wine trickle from the bottle into the decanter poised to catch the red stream. He quickly focused his attention on the wine again, slowing the flow as the bottle began to empty.

  “You mean McAdam?” Mr. Davis asked. He peered at the bottle and the sediment collecting in the remaining liquid, raised the bottle’s neck so only the last clear drops would trickle out to the decanter, and then upended both vessels and set them on the table. “He’s harmless, he is. Makes deliveries up and down this street, but he’s having hard times and wouldn’t mind the extra odd job. He won’t give you trouble, Mrs. H.” Mr. Davis’s lips twitched. “From what I’ve seen, the ladies don’t much mind him coming around.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve observed him about,” I said coolly. It would be odd to claim I hadn’t as Daniel delivered all over London, including to the last London house I’d worked in. Anyone could easily discover that fact.

  Mr. Davis gave me a shrug. “He comes and goes. Just watch that the maids don’t succumb to foolishness around him. Though he seems honorable, for his sort.”

  I could say nothing about this—what kind of honor did a man have who pretended to be such different people?

  I wondered though—if Mr. Davis knew Daniel from the streets, and presumably others in the household did as well, would they not have recognized him when he arrived to visit Lord Rankin last night?

  “Who was on the door after supper last night?” I asked abruptly. “Letting people in and out, I mean. Visitors and such.”

  Mr. Davis looked perplexed. “Rufus, I believe. There were no visitors last evening though. The master or mistress would have told me who was expected. Ah—” He gave me an enlightened glance. “Are you of a mind that a visitor was let in but hid instead of leaving again, and so killed Ellen?”

  Far from what I’d been thinking, but I shrugged. “I am wondering, that is all.”

  “Hmm. Well, it’s a terrible thing.” Mr. Davis swirled the dregs of the wine bottle, peered at the cloud inside, then poured the gritty sediment into a small bucket on the table beside him. “I hope the police find the fellow soon and hang him high. Now, Mrs. Holloway, shall we have a taste?” He held up the decanter invitingly.

  I stared. “Of the master’s wine?” I kept my voice down but put all my disapproval into it.

  “Not to worry, Mrs. H. I mean just a nip. I always taste it, in case it’s off. It would never do for the master to have befouled wine now, would it?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Davis took two plain glasses from a cupboard and poured about a finger’s width of wine from the decanter into each. He slid a glass to me and lifted his. “To your good health, Mrs. H.”

  I could have refused, saying I’d have no truck with stealing the master’s supplies, but it was such a small amount, and Davis was right. I always tasted my food before I sent it up in case a mistake had been made in the seasoning, or some disaster such as fish sauce having been used in the dessert cream. Likewise, I tasted the wine before I put it into my food—I’d certainly never do otherwise.

  I lifted the glass, tipped it to Mr. Davis, and drank. The wine was good, rich, and full. “An excellent vintage,” I pronounced.

  “It ought to be,” Mr. Davis said. “He brings it in from France. But he can afford to, can the master. The previous Lord Rankin was a parsimonious miser. The food and drink have much improved in this house since the present Lord Rankin took over, I can tell you.”

  Another reason Mr. Davis put up with Lord Rankin’s eccentricities, I surmised.

  As I left Mr. Davis to more decanting, it occurred to me to wonder—Lord Rankin had sent for Sinead last night to bring up the tea. The staff, and indeed I, had assumed it was for his usual reason of the master having his bit of recreation with one of the maids, but Daniel had already been with Lord Rankin when I’d entered his study.

  Lord Rankin had been furious to see me, because he’d expected Sinead. Had asked for her specifically. At the time I’d thought it because she’d be so relieved that the master didn’t want to have his way with her that she’d never notice Daniel in the room, but Lord Rankin could not necessarily count on that fact.

  There was nothing for it but that I must find Daniel forthwith and shake some answers out of him.

  • • •

  Daniel had apparently left the house to run errands. I had too much to do to look for James again to find him for me, so I sent the footman called Rufus—a thin lad with a shock of blond hair—scurrying out to look for James instead.

  I started to describe James but it turned out that most servants around here knew him, as they knew Daniel. For explanation, I told Rufus I wanted James to run an errand for me. I could see that he wondered what errand, but one look at my stormy face made him close his mouth and not ask me.

  James clattered down the scullery stairs with Rufus not long later, and I abandoned rolling out the pastry for my lemon tart to beckon James upstairs and outside with me.

  “I need to speak to your father,” I said when we reached the street.

  James looked perplexed. “I told him already. He works here now, don’t he?”

  “I mean in private. I can’t very well ask him questions in the kitchen. There’s always someone about.”

  “Right you are.” James gave me his sunny look and prepared to dash off.

  I grabbed his jacket and tugged him back. “Bring me some item so that it looks as though I needed you for a true errand.” I pressed tuppence into his hand. “Think of something. Oh, and if you can just ask about for a Mr. Timmons and discover whether he went home, and—well, anything you can find out about him.”

  James blinked, but his swift mind filed my questions away, and off he went, giving me a wave behind him.

  • • •

  Supper was a difficult meal tonight, as I had no true assistant. Mary, whom I’d recruited, had brought back all the correct things from the market and was eager enough but dreadfully inexperienced at cookery. She handed me salt to put into the sweet custard instead of sugar, spilled a good measure of flour, and dropped the peeled bits from the carrots into the soup instead of the chopped carrots themselves.

  Mrs. Bowen emerged to resume her duties, if tiredly. She admonished poor Mary until she had the girl in tears, which did not make matters better. In the end, I put Mary in the scullery to help with the washing up, and had Paul, who was a bright boy, assist me. He did well, though he complained bitterly about doing “women’s work.”

  “Chefs are men,” I pointed out as I directed him to take the heavy roasting pan out of the oven. The pan contained the beef I’d already braised and then set to roast, and now I scattered chopped potatoes around the beef and ladled the pan’s juices over all. “Famous ones at that. See how far you might rise?”

  “But they’re French,” Paul said glumly.

  “Not all of them.” I waved for him to shove the pan back into the roasting oven, and I worked the lever for the bellows to bring the fire up high. “Many chefs are as English as you or me, but they give themselves French names so they’ll be hired on. Paul is a perfectly good French name. You should do well.”

  Paul only scoffed, not believing me.

  Now to prepare the rest of the vegetables. The stove had a water pipe that rose up from the oven, with a little valve I could turn to let out steam. I put greens in a pot and slid it beneath the pipe, turning on the steam, which cooked the vegetables but left their bright color. The car
rot soup, rescued, was simmering, waiting for me to finish it with cream and perhaps a bit of grated nutmeg. For pudding, I had my tart made with custard and the last of the winter’s lemons—the tart was smooth on the tongue and had an exquisite mixture of sweet and savory. It was cooling in the larder, away from the heat of kitchen. I perspired freely over the great, hot stove, a towel in my apron pocket with which to wipe my face.

  I was somewhat distressed to see that Sinead wasn’t much missed, except by Mrs. Bowen. The maids and footmen were shocked, there was no doubt, and whispered among themselves, but they took up her duties and filled the hole her absence made without saying a great deal about it. But then, we had no choice, did we? We performed our tasks or we’d be sacked. A lordship was not going to pay his staff to sit about and weep.

  During all the scurrying, chopping, basting, kneading, and stirring in the kitchen, James returned carrying a loaf of white sugar that I knew had cost more than the tuppence I’d given him. He whispered into my ear as he handed it to me, along with the tuppence, “Dog and Bell, Edgware Road.”

  I gave James a nod, wondering how Daniel expected me to meet him so far from the house. I turned away to rescue the greens from over wilting, and when I looked around again, James had gone.

  At last the meal was ready to go up, the cream of carrot soup resting in its tureen; the fish pale in its butter sauce; the beef proudly browned and crackling with heat, its sauce of wine, demi-glace, and shallots poured around its base; the potatoes crisp; the greens resting in a bowl with a light sprinkling of a wine and lemon sauce; the lemon tart to be set on the sideboard for after. Mr. Davis departed with his decanters of red and bottles of white, and I and the maids shoved the dishes onto the dumbwaiter.

  Instead of waiting to see what came back tonight, I set Paul and Mary to watch and tell me what dishes were eaten and what not, shucked my apron, and told Mrs. Bowen I was going out to take some air. The servants’ meal was already prepared, waiting to be warmed and served, and she and Mary could do that.

  Mrs. Bowen only gave me a stony glance and belatedly told me to take care. I donned my hat, coat, and gloves, and set off.

  London after dark is a different place than in daylight. There is as much hustle-bustle as always, but now the gentry are out and about as well as less salubrious members of society—the inebriated, the ruffians, and the ladies looking to entice a man from the straight and narrow.

  Lord Rankin didn’t go much to the theatre, opera, and homes of his neighbors, Mr. Davis had told me. Our master preferred to work every day, eat a good meal every night, and then retire. Drove his wife spare, Mr. Davis said, though Lady Rankin often went out with friends after supper and left her husband at home.

  I moved past carriages loaded with ladies and gentlemen in finery, past shops blazing with light as they catered to the final customers of the evening, past young women in false finery looking for their first customers. I was able to climb onto an omnibus heading north past Oxford Street, tucking in my skirts so they wouldn’t be sat upon by the passengers to either side of me, all of us packed in tightly. The omnibus bumped its slow way along the street, pulled by a team of hardworking horses.

  I pushed my way out in the middle of Edgware Road, twitching my skirt from the grasp of a gentleman who for some reason was trying to finger it. I gave him an admonishing look as I descended—he ought to know better.

  The Dog and Bell was a public house in a lane off the Edgware Road. I paused outside its lighted windows, the thick glass distorting my view of the interior, the door firmly closed against the cold air. As a respectable woman, I would hardly go into a taproom, but I was not certain how I was to find Daniel if I did not go inside. I could enter the snug, but I’d never been to this particular pub and had no idea where that was.

  Daniel solved the problem by coming outside for me. He tipped his cap, bent his elbow to invite me to grasp his arm, and led me inside, like a man taking his young lady for an outing on a fine London night.

  7

  The snug in the back of the pub was a cozy room with benches lining its walls under high windows. A door cut off the noise from the taproom, and the windows to the outside world were set high enough in the wall to lend a modicum of privacy.

  Only three other patrons were using the snug—a couple quite involved with each other and an older man wearing a frown that creased his face. The elderly man looked disapproving of the noise and singing coming from the other parts of the pub as well as of the spooning lady and gent at the next table.

  The couple and the man looked up when we entered and gave Daniel nods of greeting. “McAdam,” said the young man, who had a round, rather sweating face. His sweetheart flashed Daniel a smile, but it was clear her interest was for her beau.

  “Now, then, McAdam,” the older man said, before he went back to nursing his pint.

  The couple, after sending me a curious glance, began to mind their business again. I strove to look innocuous as Daniel led me to the very back of the room, where the benches bent in with the narrowing walls, rather like the bow of a ship.

  The barmaid who scooted in to take up empties from the other tables had a plump bosom, a few missing teeth, and sleek blond hair. She gave Daniel a wide grin but departed again without asking if he wanted anything.

  Daniel left me at the table while he stepped to the taproom, returning after a few minutes with a pint for himself and a half for me. I sipped politely from the glass he put in front of me, but I hadn’t much use for ale.

  “Is this your local?” I asked him.

  Daniel shrugged. “One of them.”

  Likely he had one in every neighborhood in London. What guise did he use in those? Or was the Daniel I sat across the table from the true one?

  “How are you, Mrs. Holloway?” he asked me comfortably. “We’ve not had a proper chat since you left Richmond.”

  No, we hadn’t, but I considered that scarcely my fault. “I did not flee my kitchen to meet you here for inane chatter,” I said. I kept my voice low, though the others in the room seemed to have no intention of listening. “What are you up to?”

  Daniel leaned back, resting his shoulders against the smooth wall. The light here was dim, only a few kerosene lamps to give us illumination. Under them, Daniel’s hair was very dark, his eyes midnight blue, and I noticed a few lines about his mouth I hadn’t seen before.

  “If you mean why did I traipse through the servants’ hall with your butler this afternoon—I sent word to Lord Rankin asking if I could be there,” Daniel said, copying my quiet tone. “He’s letting me look into the death of the kitchen maid.”

  “Is he?” I asked in surprise. “So he has some concern for it after all.” My outrage returned. “He tried to give me the sack, the wretched man.”

  Daniel frowned as he lifted his glass and took a noisy sip. “That might be a good thing, actually.”

  I sent him an indignant look. “Me on the streets begging for a position? Hardly good, Mr. McAdam.”

  “I mean good because Rankin’s behavior shows he does not suspect that you and I are allied. I do not want him to know. Also, it would be safer for you if you were gone from that house.”

  I deliberately ignored his last statement “Allied?” I turned my glass around the table. “Are we allied?”

  “I hope we are friends.” Daniel studied me in that way he had—watching, and calculating the effect of every one of his words.

  “Do not try to turn me up sweet,” I admonished. “We are not like them.” I motioned with my eyes at the couple who had their heads together. They were not kissing—I hoped they had the sense to refrain from that in a public place—but they were quite taken with each other.

  Daniel had kissed me before. More than once. I’d allowed it, but I was no longer certain it had been wise. The glint in his eyes told me he remembered the kisses, and remembered them well.

  “I di
d not say so. Friends, I meant, Mrs. H.”

  “Mrs. Holloway,” I said. “I do not know why my name has degenerated to a single letter.”

  “A sign of affection.” Daniel took another sip of ale. As he did, I saw him . . . change.

  Outwardly, he remained exactly the same—a working man in a coat of a thick weave somewhat threadbare at the elbows and frayed at the collar. A black kerchief tied around his neck exposed a bit of brown throat above his heavy cotton shirt. His hat lay crumpled on the bench next to him, and his square-toed booted feet rested near my bench.

  Daniel’s appearance remained the same, but his eyes quieted and grew more thoughtful, his countenance smoothing into that of the man I’d seen upstairs in Lord Rankin’s study. Gone was the roguish twinkle in his eyes and his lopsided smile. The man across from me now was one who gazed out at life in all its ugliness and vowed to use the power he had to do something about it.

  I no longer wondered that the inhabitants of Lord Rankin’s household hadn’t recognized Daniel when he’d visited in a polished suit and greatcoat. I’d never have known who he was in Lord Rankin’s study if he hadn’t turned around. Even then, I might not have recognized him had I not already seen him in both guises.

  I slid my ale aside and leaned across the table. “By the bye, who did let you into the house last night? It could not have been Mr. Davis—he’d have known you straight off when you came ’round this morning.”

  Daniel continued to look somber. “The girl you call Sinead—she let me in herself.”

  My eyes widened in astonishment. “She did no such thing. Mr. Davis would never let a kitchen maid answer the front door. No maid, in fact. Footmen answer the doors, guide guests about, and serve meals—Mr. Davis might be chatty, but he does know how to instruct a household.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Perhaps she was commanded to by Lord Rankin. I know only that it was she who admitted me and showed me upstairs to the study.”