by Faith Martin
And with that, Elsie took a determined bite of steak.
‘We’re sorry, Janice, to have it blurted out like that,’ Gayle said, giving Elsie a reproving look. ‘It’s a bit of a shock, I know.’
Jenny barely heard Gayle’s soothing words to Janice, who had started to weep quietly over her plate. She was still staring at Elsie. That the kitchen maid had been brutally blunt was not in question: it was the fact that she had been so brutal that held Jenny’s attention.
It had always been her opinion that people who came out with callous statements in times of tragedy did so not necessarily because of a lack of feeling, but more often than not in a vain attempt to cover up deeper feelings. Without any evidence save her own instinct, she was sure that Elsie, placidly mashing gravy into her potatoes, was in the grip of some strong emotion.
But what? Fear? Grief? Anger?
‘Oh, how terrible!’ Janice wailed at last. ‘I can’t believe it!’
‘I’m afraid the police will want a word, Janice,’ Malcolm Powell-Brooks interrupted her, running a harassed hand through his hair.
Jenny glanced at him, aware that the only occasions she’d seen him without his habitual artist’s smock were at mealtimes. Although it was never as paint-smeared as Lady Roberta’s, it did tend to cover him like a tent, with voluminous pockets and loose sleeves. Now, dressed for dinner, Jenny could quite see why Lady Roberta was so star-struck, for he looked exceedingly handsome in his lightweight blue suit. Especially tonight, when shock had made him paler than ever, lending him the air of a Shakespearean tragic hero.
‘I don’t know anything,’ Janice said quickly, interrupting Jenny’s musings. ‘Why should the police want to talk to me?’ she added defensively. ‘I wasn’t even here.’
Meecham, who had obviously not been listening but had been off in a world of his own, suddenly rose and glanced tellingly at the clock. Jenny jumped up and ladled piping-hot rhubarb into a beautiful dessert bowl, and gave the custard a final reheating. It was creamy and pale, and just a little sweeter than usual. But for once, the cook’s thoughts were on other matters. And it took something very momentous indeed to take Jenny Starling’s mind off food. Especially a decent custard.
‘Janice, what time did you leave, exactly?’ she asked, taking the rest of the dessert to the table and feeling not at all offended that nobody rushed to ladle out some helpings.
Janice gave her an odd look, and the cook smiled beguilingly. ‘It’s just that the police are bound to ask, and sometimes you can get so confused if you haven’t got things straight in your mind first,’ Jenny wheedled craftily.
‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so,’ Janice said, her pretty blonde brows furrowing in concentration. ‘Well it must have been, I don’t know, a quarter to two when I left here.’ She didn’t sound very sure, but Jenny put that down to her rather vague nature. Some people were just naturally not very well organized.
‘And where did you go?’ the cook persisted casually, reaching for the rhubarb.
‘To meet Danny, of course.’ Janice sounded surprised. ‘We had arranged to meet at the bottom of the hill, so I took the shortcut through Seth’s precious vegetable garden and down the old footpath. You know.’
Jenny didn’t know, since she’d not yet had time to even explore the castle properly, let alone the surrounding village, but it all sounded reasonable enough.
‘Why didn’t Danny come up to the castle?’ Malcolm asked, just a little of his old mischievous self breaking through.
Janice gave him a fulminating glance. ‘Like I just said, I’d already arranged to meet him at the bottom of the hill, that’s why,’ she said waspishly.
Didn’t want him hanging around Ava, more like, Jenny thought. She’d seen for herself the way Danny had been trying to worm his way into the governess’s favour.
Which was odd that, when you thought about it.
‘And did you?’ Jenny asked, firmly keeping her mind on the matters at hand. ‘Meet him there, I mean?’
Janice glanced at her quickly. ‘Why do you ask?’ she challenged defensively, only now realizing how cleverly the cook was grilling her.
Jenny shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. ‘It’s just that the police are bound to ask you, that’s all.’
‘You see, Danny would be your alibi, dear heart,’ Malcolm said helpfully.
‘Oh, I get it,’ Janice said miserably.
Something’s wrong, Jenny thought astutely, and sighed heavily. She had hoped that at least one person could be eliminated from the list of suspects, and Janice, being the only one not here this afternoon, had looked like the ideal candidate for being in the clear. Now though, even that looked unlikely.
Meecham returned, empty dishes bearing mute testimony that at least the family’s appetites continued unabated. And why shouldn’t they, Jenny thought, with just a pinch of asperity. They were the only ones who didn’t have a possible murder charge hanging over their heads.
Nobody suspected them, after all. Unless . . . Jenny paled slightly. Oh no. Don’t go there! Firmly, she turned her thoughts back to Janice. ‘So, was Danny waiting for you?’ she prompted, and Janice bit her lip unhappily.
She shook her head reluctantly. ‘No. He stood me up, didn’t he.’
‘Oh hell,’ Jenny said, with feeling. ‘Did you go straight into the village? Were you seen?’
‘Oh yes,’ Janice said eagerly. Too eagerly.
By her side, Meecham paused in the act of pouring out some custard. He glanced quickly at Janice, then away again.
‘What did you do then?’ Jenny prompted. Really, she thought crossly. This was like trying to pull teeth.
‘Oh, not much. Took the bus into Banbury. Did a bit of shopping. Saw a film.’
‘Which one?’ Jenny asked quickly, and added offhandedly, ‘If it was any good, I might take a look myself.’
‘Oh it was some sort of weepie,’ Janice said, then frowned. ‘You know, one of those sugary-sweet American ones? Thing is, I can’t quite remember what it was called.’
This struck Jenny as odd, given the girl had only just seen it, but supposed it was plausible — after all, those films were all the same. ‘And you never returned to the castle? When Danny didn’t show up?’
Janice vehemently shook her head, and again Meecham stared at her, then turned away abruptly. But by then Jenny had already gone to the stove and so missed the butler’s sharp glance.
The cook’s thoughts were elsewhere anyway. Janice had been stood up. Danny had failed to show. Where had he been instead?
‘I think, Janice,’ Jenny said, beginning to stack the dishes, ‘that you should find the police and tell them the truth. There’s an Inspector Bishop and a Sergeant Myers about somewhere. I’m sure they haven’t left. I should go and see them and get it over with, if I were you.’
She returned to the table, noting that Janice couldn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘It would be better if you sought them out and offered your own story, rather than wait for them to come to you. It might look a bit odd, otherwise,’ she added quietly, sure that the maid had got the message by now.
Jenny sat down and then promptly shot back up again, with just a small ‘yip’ of surprise. Startled, everyone half-rose, varying looks of panic on their faces as they stared towards the cook.
Jenny, though, had not been stabbed.
Staring down at her chair and rubbing her ample bottom, which was tingling unhappily, she reached forward and lifted Henry from her chair, holding the tortoise aloft and scowling at the aloof-looking reptile.
‘How the dickens did this creature climb onto my chair?’ she asked breathlessly. If the circumstances had been different, she might have believed one of her fellow diners had put him there deliberately as a practical joke.
The tortoise certainly got about for such a cumbersome animal.
Elsie was the first to break out into laughter, which immediately set everyone else off. Jenny held Henry out in front of her as if he had leprosy, and laughed the hardest
of them all.
Naturally, because they were all laughing like loons, Inspector Bishop chose just that moment to walk into the room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Inspector Bishop came back the next morning at 7:30, having slept like a log. He must have woken up like one too, for as he walked into the castle’s warm kitchen his face was wooden, and he was walking in a particularly stiff manner. He’d come to keep Miss Starling ‘appraised.’
He’d had a phone call at his house late last night from the chief constable himself who’d told him to get this case solved fast. But word was now rife in the village. Already, he could feel them banding together. Who knew what clues were being buried? What alibis were being sharpened up? If the killer was local and popular, it would make his life practically unbearable.
Jenny took in the policeman’s misery with one all-seeing glance and grabbed a plate. She herself had been up since six, unable to sleep, her mind going round in circles. Although it was true that she had helped the police in the past, she’d never been caught up in anything quite like this. For a start, nobody at the castle appeared to have a motive for killing Ava Simmons. At least, none that she knew of. But then, she was a stranger here. She didn’t know these people well. The castle might be teeming with all sorts of secrets that she had no way of tapping into. And yet, she must. She didn’t like murder. And she certainly didn’t approve of people getting away with it.
She carefully lifted three sizzling sausages, two rashers of thick bacon, two fried eggs, tomatoes and fried bread from the pan and transferred them to the plate.
Where to start? Ava Simmons — respectable woman, middle class, well educated and perfectly pleasant — just wasn’t your average murder victim. So why was she dead?
Bishop, who’d come away from home on a piece of toast and a boiled egg, watched the approaching plate with acute envy. That envy turned to astonished delight when the cook put it in front of him. ‘There’ll be toast and marmalade to follow, Inspector,’ she said mildly, and poured herself a cup of tea.
‘So, I expect you’ve questioned all the cleaners from the village and checked their alibis? And the gardeners?’ she began, so conversationally that Bishop, tucking into a succulent sausage, nodded his head without even thinking about it.
‘I did, but no dice.’ Bishop waved a fork smeared with egg, and shook his head. ‘Not that it’s likely one of them did it. No, I think we can rule them out.’
Jenny sighed. She’d rather feared as much.
‘Sir George, Lady Vee, the colonel and Mrs Attling were all together at the time of the murder,’ she murmured, missing the strange look Bishop sent her way. Then he was smearing tomato over his fried bread and crunching down in bliss. ‘So that leaves us . . .’ she finished softly.
Bishop nodded, looking at her closely. The fact that she had even dared to suspect Lord Avonsleigh and company had raised her inestimably in his opinion. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
At least the woman seemed to have some ability. ‘Yes,’ he agreed bluntly. ‘And of you lot, Meecham and Gayle alibi each other. Lady Roberta and her art tutor do likewise. You and Elsie were together apart from that one time. By the way, I’ve had Myers do a dry run on that cellar thing, and Elsie could have done it, but only at a real stretch. And that’s assuming that she knew Ava Simmons was in the conservatory beforehand. Even so, she would have had to run at a fair old clip all the times in between, and I doubt the old girl has it in her.’
Jenny, remembering Elsie’s silent gait and surprising agility, wasn’t so sure. But she was not about to tell the inspector that.
‘I don’t see how Elsie could have known that Ava would be in the conservatory,’ she said instead. ‘Unless they’d arranged to meet there. You didn’t find any note, did you?’ she asked, without much hope.
Bishop shook his head, dunking his bacon in egg yolk. ‘Nope. Only correspondence we found in her room was the odd letter to her father, and a letter from the Lady Beade Girls’ School, offering Ava Simmons the post of fine art tutor. So we know she was leaving. Or seriously thinking about it, anyway.’
Jenny felt a cold shiver pass over her arms. She couldn’t help but frown, and the inspector paused in his ravenous eating, watching her closely. Catching his eye, Jenny gave a slight shrug. ‘I find that very odd, Inspector. Ava had only been here a short time. Why would she seek a new job so soon?’
‘Perhaps she knew she’d made an enemy of someone here at the castle and thought she’d better get away. Quick.’
Jenny waved her hand. ‘That’s the first thing that occurred to me. But . . . I’ve heard of the Lady Beade School. It’s a top-notch affair. I can’t understand why they’d offer a provincial gallery-owner’s daughter the job of art tutor. I mean, they could have their pick. Now if it had been Malcolm Powell-Brooks they’d asked, I’d have understood it. He graduated from the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. But Ava Simmons?’
‘She was the governess, or tutor or whatever, to a lord’s granddaughter,’ Bishop pointed out lamely.
‘The Lady Beade has daughters of nobility coming out of their ears, Inspector,’ Jenny pointed out with a small smile. ‘No. It all strikes me as particularly odd. Do you think you could spare someone to go down to Lady Beade’s and learn a little more? When did she apply? Before or after coming here? Why was she chosen? That sort of thing.’
Bishop nodded his head. He told himself it was the least he could do for someone who’d given him such a good breakfast. And he’d be humouring her ladyship, and her orders to keep the cook ‘appraised.’
But in his heart, he suspected that Jenny Starling had got something. That she’d picked up on something that he had missed. Perhaps bringing the cook in on the investigation wouldn’t be such a bad idea, after all.
* * *
By nine o’clock the kitchen was full, and Bishop wisely absented himself. Jenny noted that most of her colleagues had regained their appetites. Only Meecham seemed uninterested in the feast, and nibbled desultorily on a piece of toast.
‘Well, I suppose I’d better go up and see their nibs,’ Malcolm said, a little nervously. ‘I mean, someone has to take over Roberta’s other lessons until a replacement has been found.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be relieved by your offer to stand in, Malcolm,’ Gayle reassured him kindly, and watched him go with fond eyes.
Jenny glanced at her thoughtfully, then at the disappearing back of the art tutor. So that’s the way the wind blows, is it, Jenny mused. And worried. Would someone of Malcolm’s ilk look on a maid-cum-tour-guide as a possible partner? She rather doubted it.
She shook her head and hoped for the best. Gayle was a sensible girl. Let’s just hope she was only being her usual, helpful self. Gayle as the peace-maker — not Gayle the smitten.
‘I hear the police have been in the village, questioning people,’ Janice said quietly, looking wan and dark-eyed. ‘I expect they’re learning all sorts of things by now.’ She fingered a small brooch on her dark blue blouse nervously. Jenny had never seen her wearing it before. It was a silver ballerina, and looked totally out of place on her uniform.
Janice, unaware that she was fingering the brooch so compulsively, was thinking about her Danny. He’d been in just a little bit of bother with the police once. Something about not being properly insured on his motorbike. If word got back to her dad she’d be for it.
‘Damn coppers,’ Elsie barked. ‘They’d better not go near my old mum. Upsetting her and all.’
Jenny was surprised to hear that Elsie’s mother still lived. She’d assumed that Elsie lived in at the castle, but perhaps she went home every night.
‘Don’t worry. All that’s old news, Elsie dear. Why would the police want to know about it?’ Gayle said, making the cook’s ears perk up.
‘What old news?’ Jenny asked, with a carefully general smile.
Gayle, however, looked promptly disconcerted. She darted an apologetic glance to Elsie, who was showing definite s
igns of unease.
‘Oh, nothing. Nothing really,’ Gayle murmured lamely. Jenny let the embarrassed silence deliberately drag. She glanced at Elsie, who was staring into her cup of tea, then at Janice, who looked away quickly.
‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose it matters now,’ Elsie finally said gruffly, the silence stretching her nerves. ‘Me old mum never married me dad. Whoever he was,’ Elsie added bitterly, lifting her chin defiantly.
Jenny met her gaze without expression. Although illegitimacy meant nothing nowadays, she supposed that when Elsie was born her mother would have been branded a scarlet woman. And even nowadays, in villages full of mostly older folk, she supposed something of a slur still attached itself to unmarried mothers.
‘No, Elsie, I shouldn’t think it matters a bit,’ Jenny said kindly. ‘You want some more bacon? I fried some extra.’
For a second the old kitchen maid’s eyes swam, and Jenny realized with a pang that she’d been expecting some kind of cruel put-down. Being born illegitimate had obviously been a burden that had haunted her all her life. It was all such a shame since nobody would give it a second thought nowadays.
Elsie, in fact, lived in unnecessary dread of the fact that her employers might find out about it, and give her the sack. Even the old cook had always been a little scornful about it. That this new cook was so obviously different caught her off guard. She felt her stomach tremble in the way that it always did when she felt herself getting mushy, and she sniffed. Loudly.
‘All right. Wouldn’t say no,’ she agreed, more harshly than she’d meant. Jenny, however, didn’t seem to notice. She returned with the frying pan and heaped out some bacon onto Elsie’s plate.
Elsie began to eat with evident pleasure.
But at the back of her eyes lurked a look of fear that pained Jenny for the rest of the day.
* * *
Malcolm Powell-Brooks hesitated at the door to the breakfast room. His palms felt just slightly damp. Then he knocked briskly, and tensed. He hated dealing directly with Lady Vee. She was just so damned formidable.