‘Whatever made you think that?’ Albert laughed over his shoulder. It was not a pleasant sound. ‘If you must know, I was going to my room to get a … a handkerchief. I heard noises coming from this room and thought it my duty to investigate.’ He turned and stared at her, as if challenging her to question his version of events. ‘But I must say, Miss Denning, I find your being here highly suspicious.’
‘Well then, I suggest you speak to the inspector,’ retorted Rose, having recovered a little from her fright. ‘He will confirm my story.’ She felt it imperative that she appear undaunted, and she knew full well Albert was unlikely to approach the police of his own volition.
It was a relief when Albert finally left the room, banging the door closed behind him. She heard him whistling as he proceeded down the corridor. She had not realised how very frightened she had been until she noticed she was trembling. Slowly, Rose lowered herself on to the bed and shivered. More than anything she wished to flee from Cooper’s room, to leave it far behind her and pretend that the confrontation with Albert had not occurred. But she was frightened of running into the footman, to whom she was determined to give a wide berth, at least for a while. She put a hand to her throbbing head. For the first time she acknowledged her precarious position. By continuing with her disguise and undertaking her own investigation she would be rubbing shoulders with both the thief and the murderer, treading on eggshells lest she give herself away. As she looked around her, the room took on a sinister air. The attics were so very far removed from the rest of the house, both from the main part of the manor and from the servants’ hall and associated workrooms. Here anything might happen, and it almost had. Confined to the servants’ quarters as she was, she felt herself to be an anonymous, faceless individual, unlikely to be missed.
She proceeded to give herself a severe talking to. It did not do to let her thoughts run wild and lose her head. She had suffered a fright, that was all. It would pass. It might well be very tempting to retreat to Lavinia’s room and hide, but it would not progress the investigation. She must find the murderer and the thief, who might well be one and the same person.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Rose quickly let herself out of the murdered woman’s room and peered cautiously along the corridor which, to her relief, was empty. She thought of the enclosed servants’ stairs and shivered as a vision appeared before her of Albert lurking in the dark, waiting for her. She heard the muffled voices of Pearl and Agnes a little way off. In her present feeling of loneliness, they were a welcome sound indeed. Even before she had given any thought to what she was doing, she found herself making her way towards them, as if her feet had a mind of their own. She reminded herself that she had a perfectly good reason for seeking them out. For she needed to talk to Agnes. She had wanted to speak to the girl ever since she had first heard about her crying and seen her tear-stained face.
It was only when she appeared at the girls’ door, and saw their upturned faces staring up at her apprehensively, that she realised, with all the excitement of recent events, she had entirely overlooked the significance of what she had found during her search of the dead woman’s room. Then her focus had been on completing the task as quickly as possible before she was disturbed. Only now, walking down the corridor and collecting her thoughts had she had an opportunity to evaluate her findings. With a sudden burst of comprehension, she realised that she had unknowingly unearthed two clues.
‘I’m not being rude, Miss Denning, but I don’t see what it has to do with you,’ said Agnes indignantly.
The girl had not gone to any pains to conceal the fact that Rose’s unexpected return to the sickroom was, at least from her point of view, most unwelcome. This was in sharp contrast to the reception Rose had received from Pearl. The girl had given her a warm smile and motioned for her to enter and to sit down on one corner of the bed.
‘Edna told me that Mrs Field had scolded you for smoking in the courtyard,’ Rose said, attempting to adopt a sympathetic tone in spite of Agnes’s surly manner.
‘What if she had? It was my own fault. I know old Fieldy doesn’t like me smoking.’ Agnes stared miserably at one of the dusty floorboards. ‘I should have come up to my room and opened the window. That’s what I usually do. Smoke out the window, I mean.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Then I steal into the kitchen and eat some mint. Works a treat, it does.’
‘Why, what a lot of effort you have to go to just to have a smoke,’ said Rose. ‘It doesn’t seem very fair. Why shouldn’t you smoke a cigarette if you want to?’
Agnes eyed her suspiciously, as if she doubted the sincerity of Rose’s words.
‘Well, as I said it’s my own fault,’ the housemaid muttered. ‘I know what the old dragon’s like.’
‘You must have been particularly upset this time.’
‘What do you mean?’ Agnes asked her warily. ‘I was no more upset than usual. She’s just a silly old woman with old-fashioned ideas. Martha and me, we don’t take any notice of her.’
‘Edna said you cried like anything. Terribly upset she said you were,’ Rose said, not altogether truthfully.
‘Did she indeed? Well, she should learn to keep her mouth shut.’
‘Agnes!’ The scullery maid looked aghast.
‘I’m sorry, Pearl. I didn’t mean to upset you, but Edna’s no business gossiping about me to all and sundry.’ She gave Rose an insolent glance. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Denning, I’m sure. But it’s not right, it isn’t. I’ve a good mind to –’
‘Agnes, it’s obvious you were crying about something else,’ said Rose quickly. The interview had started inauspiciously and continued in that vein. She had neither the time nor the patience to try and coax the truth out of the girl by gentle means. A more direct approach would be necessary. ‘I think something else upset you, something that has been worrying you for a little while. Am I right? You lit a cigarette as an excuse to go out into the kitchen courtyard to be alone, so you could decide what to do.’
Agnes gaped at her, her mouth wide open, her eyes large and frightened. She began to tremble in obvious distress, whether as a result of astonishment at Rose’s mind-reading skills, or due to the knowledge she held so guiltily within her, it was hard to tell. An ominous silence had fallen upon the attic room like a heavy rain cloud; the other two had caught some of the girl’s nervousness. Pearl, her eyes bright, looked as shocked as Agnes. But she betrayed no furtive gestures, no trembling lip. Instead, she was brimming with excitement, as if some thrilling drama was about to be played out before her to enliven an otherwise drab existence. Even Rose was affected. She had thought it possible, because of the changed manner of the girl, that Agnes was hiding some piece of information that was causing her distress. But she had in ignorance assumed it was something relatively trivial. Only now she felt less certain. With bated breath she waited for the girl to speak, but the silence seemed to drag. There was no clock ticking to relieve the quiet, no sounds associated with the servants going about their business; only the noise of three women breathing, two in anticipation and one in dread.
In the end the prolonged silence was broken by Agnes, not with a vehement denial as Rose had feared, but with a droop of the shoulders, followed by a sigh of resignation. The housemaid stared down at her lap and worried the fabric of her uniform with fingers that clenched and unclenched.
‘I don’t know how you know what you do. I thought I’d been ever so careful.’ Her voice had sunk to a whisper. Gone was the bluster and the sullen temper. Instead, here was a frightened girl staring at the world through unshed tears, wondering what to do for the best.
‘It would be much better to tell us what is worrying you,’ Rose said gently.
‘Why should I?’ A defiant spark still existed in the girl’s breast. ‘You’re just a visiting servant. It’s nothing to do with you. If I tell anyone, it will be old Fieldy or one of them policemen.’
‘Very wise,’ said Rose. ‘Only I don’t think you will.’
‘If
I know something, why shouldn’t I tell them?’
‘Because you are afraid.’
Agnes looked up startled and then looked down again at her crumpled skirt. There threatened to be another prolonged silence. Rose bit her lip with impatience. Perhaps Pearl felt the same, for it was she who broke the silence this time.
‘Tell Miss Denning, Agnes, do,’ said Pearl, learning forward and squeezing the girl’s arm. ‘She’s ever so kind. Edna says so and you know how good she is at reading people. Miss Denning will know what to do.’ She stared at Rose, as if for reassurance. ‘You will won’t you, miss?’
‘Yes,’ said Rose quickly. She had a sudden dread that Pearl might be tempted to reveal her identity.
‘I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,’ sobbed Agnes. ‘I wish I hadn’t seen them, really I do. It was just my bad luck, it was.
‘What did you see?’ asked Rose, slightly more sharply than she had intended.
‘I can’t,’ sobbed Agnes. ‘I can’t tell you. Martha’s my friend, you see.’
‘Martha?’ The word of surprise had sprung from the scullery maid’s lips. Looking at Pearl, Rose saw that the girl had turned pale. The look of excitement had gone from her eyes, to be replaced by one of trepidation. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t say anything, Agnes. We don’t want to get Martha in trouble.’
‘Listen, both of you,’ said Rose. She spoke firmly and clasped the hand of each. ‘You must say what you saw, Agnes, if not to me, then to the police. It’ll all come out in the end, it always does. If Martha’s in trouble, and I very much hope she is not, I shall do my best to help her.’ She stared at their scared faces and said quietly: ‘I daresay she was provoked.’
‘It isn’t Martha who’s in trouble, miss,’ said Agnes. ‘Though it’ll hurt her something terrible, it will.’
‘Are you saying that you know something that will get Albert in trouble?’ asked Rose.
Inwardly she uttered a sigh of relief. Martha was not implicated in the murder. Rose knew it to be a weakness of hers, an inability to detach herself and keep her personal feelings from influencing her investigations. On at least one previous occasion she had tried to shield someone she had feared might be guilty of a crime. But, try as she might, she had not been able to rid her mind of the image of Martha, a desolate creature, eyes puffy and red from frequent crying, sobbing bitterly as she pleaded with Albert to tell her the truth about the missing necklace. She remembered the way the footman had spoken to the girl so roughly, with hardly a care. Rose recollected that her sight at the time had been hindered by the existence of the bedsheet hanging between them like some great screen. She had been forced, therefore, to rely solely on her hearing. With her sight obscured, her other senses had been heightened so that she could recall not only the very words that had been spoken, but the tone in which they had been uttered.
There was a sharp intake of breath. It was her own. She realised now something that had not struck her at the time. Something that she had disregarded, much as she had overlooked the clues in Velda Cooper’s room.
‘Yes,’ Agnes was saying. ‘Poor Martha. It’ll break her heart, it will. He’ll never do right by her. I’ve told her and told her ’till I’m blue in the face, but she won’t listen. Headstrong she is when she wants to be. He’s a wrong’ un and a wastrel. Even Mr Mason thinks so, and Albert’s his nephew. If it weren’t for his good looks …’ Agnes blushed, suddenly aware that her voice had run away with her. ‘I shouldn’t have gone on like that, not to you Miss Denning. But when I get started on something, I can’t stop. My mother says it’s a failing. I just –’
‘What did you see, Agnes?’ Rose said, trying to keep the impatience from her voice. A few minutes ago she had been prepared to hang on the girl’s every word. Now her thoughts were elsewhere. With the sudden realisation of what the scene played out before her with the bedsheet represented, she was eager to be gone. Agnes’s next words, however, brought her up sharp.
‘I saw him kiss her. I saw Albert kiss Miss Cooper.’ Agnes smiled in spite of herself as she saw Pearl’s eyes grow large in disbelief.
‘You never!’
‘I did. Ever so passionate it was, the kiss. I thought, hello, what’s going on here?’ Her face became serious again. ‘I’ve been that worried. Yesterday, it was, I caught them. In the library they were, as bold as brass. ’Course that room don’t get used much when the master’s not here. They thought they’d not be disturbed. But I’d left my duster in there by mistake and I went to get it before Mrs Field noticed.’ She bent forward and spoke in a conspiratorial fashion: ‘She follows Martha and me around the house. Wants to make sure we’ve dusted proper. Runs her finger over the furniture, she does, tops of bookcases and the like. Ever so particular, she is.’
‘Did they see you?’ asked Rose, her mind racing.
She had fully expected Agnes to tell them about her being witness to a further altercation between the pair, a continuation of the row that had erupted in the servants’ hall the day before. It had never occurred to her that Albert and Velda Cooper might be lovers. Idly she recalled to mind Lavinia’s observation, which she had dismissed so readily, that in all likelihood the murderer was a jealous or rejected lover.
‘I don’t know. I saw them as soon as I opened the door. I closed it again awful quick, but it must have made a noise. I ran all the way back to the servants’ hall.’ All mirth had gone from Agnes’s voice now. ‘I’ve been so worried. I didn’t want to get Albert in trouble, and I was scared he’d know it was me that had seen them. He’s been giving me ever such strange looks.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you think Miss Cooper threatened to tell Martha about them? Is that why he done her in?’
‘We don’t know that Albert did kill Miss Cooper,’ Rose reminded her. ‘But it certainly gives him a possible motive. I suppose he might have killed her to keep her quiet.’
‘She’d have been the sort to tell Martha, all right,’ said Agnes with feeling. ‘Full of spite she was. She would have taken a delight in telling her. And Martha, she’d not have stood for it. Albert carrying on with another woman, I mean. Albert would have known that. He’d have lost her and, though he doesn’t treat her right, he loves her in his own way and she him.’
Pearl nodded in agreement. To Rose, she looked a little scared. Rose remembered her own fear when Albert had come upon her unexpectedly in the deceased’s room. She had not doubted for a moment that he would not flinch at using force to still her tongue. It was, therefore, perfectly feasible that, if provoked, he might have stuck the lady’s maid with the first suitable instrument that had come to hand.
Rose reassured the maids that they had done the right thing in disclosing what they knew and told them that the innocent had nothing to fear from the truth being known.
As Rose left the maids to ponder on the footman’s guilt, it struck her as rather odd that neither of them had given voice to the other possibility. If Martha had become aware of Albert’s deception, which might well have happened if Velda Cooper had spoken to her as they thought likely, might it not have been she who had struck the fatal blow to rid herself of a rival for her lover’s affections?
Chapter Twenty-five
‘Lavinia,’ said Rose, closing the door behind her and sinking gratefully down on the bed, kicking off her shoes, ‘it really is absurd you ringing for me all the time.’ She removed the hated spectacles and flung them across the bed; so careless was her gesture that they landed on the floor. ‘You do know I am trying to investigate a murder? Had you forgotten? I’m not really here to be your lady’s maid.’
‘Don’t I know it!’ retorted Lavinia rather haughtily. ‘I just thought you might appreciate a nice hot cup of tea, that’s all. I don’t suppose you have anywhere to drink one downstairs. I take it you aren’t allowed back in the servants’ hall yet?’ She patted her nose with a powder puff. ‘And it would look awfully suspicious if I stopped summoning you. Still, I wish I hadn’t bothered if you are going to be in this moo
d.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rose, suitably chastised.
She decided to make amends and helped herself to a cup of tea, pouring one out for Lavinia for good measure, which she took over to her and placed on the dressing table. Lavinia, gazing despondently in the mirror, gave her a brief wave by way of thanks.
‘You can’t stare at your face all day,’ said Rose. ‘Surely even you get bored of looking at it?’
‘Yes, I jolly well can. And, anyway, there’s not much else to do here.’
‘You could keep Mrs Grayson-Smith company.’
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about that woman.’ Lavinia made a face in the mirror and swivelled around in her seat to face her friend. ‘I swear she wants to be arrested for that wretched maid’s murder. You should have heard her, Rose. The things she told the police! It was absolutely ghastly. And worse than that, she made me look a complete fool.’
‘That can’t have been too difficult,’ Rose said, grinning in spite of herself.
Lavinia retaliated by sticking out her tongue. But the mood was lifted and the artificial roles of mistress and servant, accentuated by their very different clothes, had evaporated and been replaced by the easy camaraderie and familiarity that usually existed between the two women. The mood, however, turned swiftly from frivolity to one of responsibility. There was a serious note to Rose’s voice when next she spoke.
‘So Mrs Grayson-Smith told the police about being blackmailed?’
‘She did,’ groaned Lavinia. ‘Even though I told her not to. She really is a very silly woman. Honestly, you should have heard her, Rose. When the inspector asked her if she knew if that Cooper woman had any enemies, she said “Yes, me”’. Lavinia chuckled in spite of herself. ‘You could have knocked the inspector down with a feather, he was so surprised. Because of course he was expecting her to say she didn’t know, which made it even more ridiculous that she had to go and open her mouth and say something so damning.’
Murder in the Servants' Hall Page 23