Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘And he gave his blessing?’

  ‘Almost,’ said Lollie. ‘My father was the last bishop of Brechin.’

  ‘Rev. Percival?’ I said. ‘I remember him very well. I met him many times.’

  ‘Well, he insisted on Pip becoming an Anglican, but apart from that he made no objections. I was only eighteen, but my mother – she was never strong – had died three years before and my father was fifty when I was born,’ said Lollie, ‘and his health was beginning to fail, so I think he was glad to know I wasn’t going to be alone. Glad to see me settled and secure, you know.’ She laughed a little at her own words.

  ‘And you must have taken to him,’ I said. ‘To Pip, I mean.’

  ‘I fell head over heels the moment I saw him,’ she said. ‘Well, no, not the very moment, but within ten minutes. A bumblebee had got itself mixed up in the tennis net and some of the other boys were taking swipes at it with their racquets. I told them to stop and tried to pick it out, but Pip put his fingers in the holes of the net all around the bee to stretch it and then he blew – very gently – and it flew away. He told me our skin can feel like hot coals to bees’ feet. Well, to spiders and all kinds of creepy-crawlies.’

  ‘How . . . touching,’ I said, trying not to sound as though I were smiling. Entomology was an unusual route into courtship, but I did not doubt her sincerity.

  ‘We were married the following spring,’ she said, ‘and we were very happy. We went on cruises and visited lots of exciting places.’

  ‘Visiting relatives?’

  ‘No,’ said Lollie. ‘There aren’t any. Well, there are actually any number of cousins but they’re not on speaking terms.’

  ‘He turned even his cousins against him?’

  ‘No,’ said Lollie. ‘None of that was Pip’s fault. It was his grandfather – rather a horrible old man. He held the purse strings and so he thought he could tell everyone what to do. And he disowned all his sisters, because of their “disappointing marriages”, and the family went its separate ways. No, we just travelled to anywhere that sounded like fun. America and the Indies and we went to Africa but it was shockingly hot – and then we came home and found this house and I was looking forward to . . . well . . .’

  ‘Babies?’ I guessed.

  ‘That is, I was hoping for them – we both were – but then Pip started to change, off and on, and things became rather strained between us until, last Christmas, what I told you happened and since then it’s been just awful. And the worst thing about it is that sometimes – most of the time even, and always when anyone is watching – he seems just the same sweet old Pip as ever, so that I never know what to expect and I can’t tell anyone and I . . . I almost begin to doubt my reason sometimes. I—’

  ‘Sssh!’ I said. I had heard a floorboard creak outside on the landing. Slowly I sat up and put my eye to the space between two panels of the screen, peering through it at the door handle. For minutes nothing happened, although I was sure from the very silence that he was out there, listening, as tense as we were, and then I heard a footstep and another going away down the stairs. ‘He’s gone,’ I said to Lollie in a whisper, ‘but we should stop talking now.’

  It was a remarkably quiet night, I thought, as I lay there. I had never lived in a town and when Hugh and I used to take a London house, before the war and the children, the streets rang with life until the early hours of morning. Here though, on this Monday night in Edinburgh, nothing came in at the open windows except the occasional sound of a policeman’s heavy tread as he passed with measured pace along the street and back again. Just after midnight struck, there was some distant shouting and catcalls, and I wondered if somewhere, in some other part of town, the start of the strike was being celebrated or lamented, but it was very distant shouting and I turned over and burrowed deeper into the blankets, feeling sleep begin to steal close to me and hearing Lollie’s breathing start to slow.

  It was light when next I opened my eyes, but in Scotland in May that is no help to one and I squinted at my wristwatch before so much as stretching, in case more sleep might be in the offing.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Lollie’s voice. ‘I was just about to wake you. You’d better get back down to your room before Clara arrives, don’t you think?’

  I sat up a little, shuddering at the empty brandy glass on the table, and swung my feet to the floor.

  ‘How much time do I have?’ I croaked, standing and stumbling towards the bathroom where my clothes were laid. Last night, padding up and down the stairs in the lamplight seemed neither here nor there, but being four flights away from my bedroom in my nightclothes with the household stirring gave me a nasty creeping feeling up the backs of my legs this morning. I dressed hastily, dragged my hands over my hair, stuffed my nightdress into a cupboard until later and let myself out onto the landing.

  All was quiet enough up here, but from below I could hear the scraping of a grate shovel as someone cleared a fire and from further below that, there was a sudden dull boom. Yesterday morning I should have been at a loss to explain such a noise arising from what sounded like the bowels of the earth but now I knew it to be the sound of Mrs Hepburn, shutting an oven door with her knee. I stopped at Pip’s door on my way past and put my head near to the panelling, but there was no sound from inside so I crossed to the stairway and started down it.

  Between the drawing-room and dining-room floors I met Eldry on her way up. She was carrying two trays stacked one on top of the other and was in the striped morning dress which she wore above stairs, but had a capacious brown apron over it. She looked startled to see me, but I carried off the encounter very well.

  ‘Where’s Clara?’ I demanded. ‘It’s she whom mistress is expecting.’

  ‘Not feeling very well this morning, Miss Rossiter,’ said Eldry, ‘so I said I’d bring the trays and do the fires both together.’

  I frowned at her. A tweenie should not on any account be carrying tea trays and certainly should not be raking ashes and touching tea things in the same apron. I was surprised at Mr Faulds for letting this pass.

  ‘Couldn’t the valet have helped?’ I asked. ‘Harry?’

  ‘Harry’s not up yet, I don’t think,’ said Eldry and it seemed to me that she was blushing a little. ‘Besides,’ she said softly, ‘I dinna mind.’ She turned her eyes towards the back of the house, towards – I thought – the garden and yard and carriage house in the mews, where Harry would be sleeping, and smiled a very small and rather secretive smile. ‘I dinna mind taking on a bit extra to spare him.’

  Ah, I thought, remembering Phyllis’s teasing.

  ‘I’ll take mistress’s off your hands anyway,’ I said. ‘She’s awake already. No sound from him yet, though.’ I nodded at the uppermost of the two trays where a teacup, pot and milk jug, along with a rolled-up Scotsman, were laid on a plain cloth.

  ‘Good!’ said Eldry. ‘I hope I can get in and out without him stirring. I havenae got his paper, see?’ She sounded rather fearful. ‘He takes The Times but it never came. And when Mattie went round to the paper shop to get it, they said they had none, cos there’s no trains and so they’re all stuck in London. No trains at all, miss, nor buses nor trams, and Mattie said he met a man who’d walked up from Leith and the docks are as quiet as the grave and even the gasworks! I never thought it would really happen.’

  ‘Nor I,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

  ‘So Mattie got a Scotsman instead, but I cannae make up my mind whether to take it in or leave him with none.’

  ‘Take him the Scotsman,’ I said. ‘The strike’s not your fault. He can’t blame you for it.’ Eldry said nothing but looked far from consoled by my breeziness. ‘Or I tell you what,’ I said, ‘let me take his tray in to him.’ I welcomed any chance to see more of Pip, for I was still far from knowing what I thought about any of it.

  ‘Oh, I couldnae, Miss Rossiter,’ said Eldry. ‘It wouldn’t be right, miss. You’re mistress’s lady.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, trut
hfully.

  ‘Beg pardon, Miss Rossiter, but you would if you kent him,’ Eldry said and flushed.

  ‘So I believe, dear,’ I answered. ‘Well, how’s this? I’ll take mistress’s and let’s leave the doors open and if he gives you any bother when you go in I’ll come in at your back and sort him out for you. He doesn’t scare me.’

  Eldry bit her lip and opened her eyes very wide. It was an expression she often wore and one which did nothing to enhance her meagre claims to beauty.

  ‘He’ll put you on notice, if you’re not careful,’ she said. ‘But he’ll no’ try anything with both of us there, at least.’

  We managed the handover of the bottom tray quite smoothly even there on the stairs and Eldry’s chin was as high as mine as we processed upwards. I had no worries: it was Lollie who had engaged me and it was only Lollie who could sack me; in fact it was rather odd that he had got involved in the matter of Phyllis, the housemaid. I wondered again what it was she had done.

  Upstairs, Eldry made her way to the back landing, to negotiate the night latch which began the circuitous secondary route to Pip’s bedside. She managed the little key admirably well one-handed while balancing the tray on the other and I left her to it, knocking softly on Lollie’s door and sweeping in, the way Grant always swept into my room when she was dressed and I was not, as though taking match point in some game.

  Lollie, though, was in her bathroom and missed it. The water was gurgling and steam was coiling out around the half-open door. I put the tray down on her bed, opened the blinds, plumped her pillows and was turning to leave again – Eldry could come in and light the fire; there were limits to my collegiate helpfulness and to my domestic expertise – when I heard a scream.

  For a second I stood still, listening. Was it inside the house? My eyes flew to the open windows, but then there came another and the sound of running footsteps, footsteps on floorboards – this was no street accident outside. I tore across the floor and out onto the landing. Someone – Eldry – was banging on the inside of Pip’s bedroom door, still screaming.

  I raced across the hall, through the little passageway, through the bathroom – still shuttered – and swung around into the bedroom through the open door. Here the curtains were drawn back and the shutters folded away, but I could see no one – no sign of Pip – nothing except Eldry beating on the other door, sobbing, begging for someone to let her out.

  ‘Turn the key,’ I shouted. ‘Eldry, it’s still locked – turn the key!’ But she was beside herself, tugging on the handle, whimpering now, and she clung to me as I got to her and took her in my arms, feeling her shaking.

  ‘There, there,’ I said, as I opened the door for her. ‘Shush now. What did he do to you?’

  Eldry stumbled out into the hall, shaking her head, and pointed past me. I swung round, thinking he must be coming up behind me, but saw nothing. She slid down the wall until she was sitting, still pointing. Over by the bed, the tray was on the floor, the teapot broken and empty, the sheets of newspaper scattered around. I walked towards it and as I got closer I began to see.

  It was a high-set Victorian bed, matching the rest of the furniture in the room, and the footboard was almost as tall as the head, hiding the bed from the rest of the room until one came around the side of it. The blankets were pushed down, but the top sheet was drawn right up over the pillows. I could not clearly see the outline of the man underneath, though, because just where the pillows began the sheet was held away from the mattress, like a tent, around something sticking up there. Where it did touch down again, all around, there was a bloom of red, seeping up through the linen from underneath, spreading like ink into a dampened blotter, and now that I was close there was a smell too, like old coins and like the gamekeeper’s cart on the way home after a good day and like the worst of the hospital during the war, which I had almost forgotten.

  Leaning over very carefully, I picked up the edge of the sheet and lifted it away. Underneath was more – sickeningly more – red: a lake of red, thick and clotted, darkening to purple at its deepest, spreading across the bed, seeping upwards over the pillows, covering the pyjamas, coating the neck, filling the ears, matting the hair, so only Pip Balfour’s cold white face rose above it. His eyes were open, clouded, and his mouth was open too and blood had spurted and run into it, outlining his teeth in rusty orange, and what had tented the sheet over him was the knife, a long, bone-handled knife, lodged to its hilt and standing straight up out of his neck, pooled all around with blood that was almost black. With the back of one hand I touched his forehead, where no blood had spattered; it was cold. I let the sheet drop back down again and retraced my steps to the little passageway.

  My fingers were numb as I dropped the latch on the inside of the door and I tested and retested it to make sure I had locked it shut and not open. I locked the door between the hall and the bathroom, then the door between the bathroom and bedroom, and then I crossed the room and took the key out of the main bedroom door, stepped outside, closed the door, locked it and put the key in my pocket.

  Eldry looked up at me from where she was still sitting on the floor.

  ‘Is it master?’ she said. I nodded. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Another nod. Then she sat up a little straighter and sniffed hard. ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘Go downstairs and tell Mr Faulds to telephone to the police,’ I said. ‘Can you do that? You’re not going to faint, are you?’ Eldry shook her head and got, rather unsteadily but very determinedly, to her feet.

  ‘I’ll hold on to the rail,’ she said. ‘But can you get the tray, miss?’

  ‘Never mind the tray,’ I said.

  ‘I cannae leave it there all dropped and broken.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But the police,’ said Eldry, sounding tearful again. ‘They’ll find my fingerprints on it and it’s right beside the bed, beside the body. I opened the shutters and took it over to him.’

  ‘I’ll tell them what happened,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  This seemed to satisfy her and she turned to leave, but then stopped and looked back at me.

  ‘I tell you something, miss,’ she said. ‘I don’t blame her, do you?’

  It took me a moment to find my voice and even when I did it was shaking.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Eldry,’ I said. ‘And don’t let me hear you saying such things again.’

  But my heart was thudding – great dull, painful thuds – as I went back to Lollie’s bedroom door and pushed it open. She was back in bed, with a cardigan jersey on over her pyjamas and a cup of tea balanced in her lap. I stayed on the landing in the shadow where she could not see me.

  ‘Clara?’ she said. ‘Is that you? Tell Eldry not to bother with the fire since she hasn’t lit it yet. I think it’s going to be a lovely day. Did you hear that funny noise just then? I was running the taps but I’m sure I heard some kind of commotion.’

  The greatest actress in the world, surely, could not have summoned such a speech and delivered it in that sunny voice, with that smile, if she had seen what was there in the other bedroom, much less if she had made it happen. And yet, I thought, and yet . . .

  I walked forward into the light so she could see me.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Dan— Miss Rossiter, I mean,’ she said. ‘Did you hear that hullabaloo? Has Phyllis seen a mouse again?’ I closed the door behind me. ‘Dandy?’ she said, looking at me properly for the first time. ‘You look terrible. What’s happened? What’s he done now?’

  5

  Mr Faulds was purple with rage, but I would not be moved.

  ‘On what authority?’ he demanded, standing in front of me, shaking with anger.

  ‘On the authority of an informed citizen, Mr Faulds,’ I said. ‘And on the authority of the mistress of the house, who is now, following this horrific event, the head of the house. And on the—’

  ‘Miss Rossiter,’ he said, making an enormous effort to calm down and speak as reasonably as I spoke to him. ‘Mig
ht I remind you that you have been a member of this household since yesterday, whereas I have run it for the last three and a half years, so I don’t give scat for any of your clever-clogs talk. Now, give me that key.’ He was bellowing again by the end of the speech and I glanced towards the staircase, where most of the other servants were ranged upon the steps looking through the banisters at us.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mr Faulds,’ called out Mrs Hepburn from Lollie’s room, where she was administering hugs and, I suspected, more brandy. ‘Get away somewhere else if you can’t stop shouting!’ Her voice dropped again and we could hear the soothing murmur of her comforting Lollie with something close to a lullaby. ‘Hush-a, hush-a, hush now, my good brave girl.’

  ‘Miss Rossiter’s right, you know, Mr Faulds,’ said Harry, and a couple of the maids nodded in support of him. ‘The less traipsing about and touching stuff there is, the easier the coppers’ll see what happened. If there’s footprints or the likes.’

  ‘No’ like you to be on the side of the law, Harry,’ said John.

  ‘I should have been consulted,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘It’s only what’s right and proper. I should have decided whether to telephone the police station. I’ve no intention of touching anything.’ But his actions belied his words; he was shifting from foot to foot, inches from the door, and shooting its locked handle endless darting glances, like a puppy who had been trained not to scratch at things but was dying to.

  ‘Oh, Mr Faulds, please,’ I said. ‘If you had seen it you’d wish you hadn’t. There’s nothing right and proper to be done about it any way you look. And I’m not trying to take centre-stage, I assure you. Let’s please all go back downstairs and wait for the police. If they need someone to show them round, you can volunteer for that – I’m sure I don’t want to.’