‘What do you mean, “up into the air”?’ said Alec, which was very kind of him, for he might easily have taken offence at my sharing out of the blame in the way I had.
‘Hm?’ I said. ‘Oh, just life below stairs, you know. I hadn’t expected it to feel so literal, but to eat and work and sleep in a sub-basement with a whole house pressing down upon one is not conducive to leaps of reason. I just think if I could climb a high hill and look down I’d be able to see more.’
‘Well,’ said Alec, ‘I don’t think we can manage a hill, but we can certainly get you up into the air. Look, you wrap two cakes in your hanky and I’ll wrap two in mine.’
‘Four cakes?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you have any luncheon?’
‘One each,’ said Alec. ‘You – as befits the boss of this little outfit – have been marvellously focused but I’m far more easily distracted and I can’t stand it any more. Listen.’
When I did, I could hear the duet from the pavement: low, sustained howling and a series of percussive little yips.
‘She’s a very bad influence on Millie,’ said Alec, grinning. ‘Come on, let’s take them up the Scott Monument and tire them out for the evening.’
The Scott Monument – erected in honour of Sir Walter specifically and not, as I had long believed, to the general and misspelled glory of the Scots race – was a kind of airy turret in High Victorian Gothic style, not attached to anything but just rising up out of the grass as though some ecclesiastical architect had lavished all of his attention on the decorative touches but forgotten to build the cathedral itself. ‘Better than the Albert Memorial’ was the best one could say about it, and it was smaller, too – and sooty black, like everything in Edinburgh which cannot brush itself down or send itself to the laundry – so at least it did not draw the eye.
I had never climbed up it before, had in fact congratulated myself on not letting my sons find out that one could (for they would have badgered me to death on every shopping trip if they had known), and should have realised, from the fact that I had never noticed anyone else scaling its heights, that the staircases were hidden away at its core. As Alec, Bunty, Millie and I toiled up the darkest, narrowest, steepest spiral staircase imaginable, breathing in the sharp stink of damp, tarry stone, I could not help thinking that I could have reproduced the experience in the six floors of Number 31 in far greater comfort, and saved my sixpence.
‘I’m expecting a helter-skelter at the end of all this,’ said Alec, sounding rather out of breath, and I laughed. We had arrived at the first landing and while Alec investigated the little room in the centre I paraded the terrace which wrapped around it. At least, I tried to; one could not actually walk all the way round because at one corner there was a door blocking the way.
‘It’s locked,’ I called to Alec.
‘Probably a cupboard,’ he replied, but I had crouched down to peer into the keyhole and I could see light.
‘No, it goes through,’ I said and rattled the handle. ‘It’s certainly locked though. I wonder why.’
‘Never mind, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘There’s air and light as requested.’
‘Not nearly enough,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Let’s go up again.’
The staircases got even steeper and narrower as they rose and by the time we stepped out onto the little terrace at the crow’s nest I did indeed feel a lift in my spirits to be looking across the rooftops at a far horizon instead of out of my barred window at the cherry tree.
‘I think I might be missing Perthshire,’ I said. ‘I think after all these years of distant forests and hilltops it’s finally got to me.’
‘Right,’ said Alec, who was still at the top of the stairway, examining the stonework and ignoring the panorama. ‘Now that you’re up here looking down,’ – at this he gulped – ‘what do you see?’
‘Well, give me a minute,’ I said, ‘it’s not like putting a penny in a slot machine and getting a bar of chocolate.’ I craned around the corner, trying to see beyond a jutting buttress. ‘You must get a good view to the Old Town too.’ I put my foot on a kind of stone skirting board and hoisted myself up.
‘Dandy, do be careful,’ said Alec, and put a firm hand around my arm, squeezing really quite tightly. ‘There’s a pathway round – you don’t have to clamber.’ I looked down at him. His lips had disappeared and although he had not looked tired a moment ago there was now a purple patch under each eye.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘You look very peculiar.’
‘Heights,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘I always forget. Now for God’s sake come down, or I shall faint and you’ll have to roll me down all those stairs again.’
I hopped down and stood beside him, feet squarely planted, while his colour returned to normal.
‘Now, please try to concentrate,’ he said. ‘You told me this idea was in reach when you were lying in bed. Is it about Pip’s bedroom? Something you saw near his bed? Something out of place in Lollie’s bedroom?’
‘Hush,’ I said. I was looking down at the view again now, at the long empty street, its tramlines shining like snail trails, and the few people scurrying about on the pavement, all looking very similar under their hats from up here. I could not tell which of the rooftops was 31 Heriot Row, for the fronts of the houses were hidden behind the trees of Queen Street Gardens, but I trained my gaze at where I thought the house must be and thought hard. I almost had it. I could almost touch it, just out of reach.
‘Say it,’ said Alec, very loudly in my ear.
‘Say what?’ I said. ‘Alec, I’m trying very hard to think and you’re making it harder.’
‘I was trying to help,’ he said. ‘I thought if you just blurted something out perhaps it would turn out to be the clue that unlocks it all. Psychology, you know.’
‘The locked door,’ I said. Alec tutted but I shoved him to shut him up. ‘Not the one downstairs. I mean, The Locked Door. In general. That’s what this case would be called if it were Sherlock Holmes’s. The case of the locked door. That’s what I hear last thing at night and first thing in the morning, lying in my bed; Mr Faulds, locking the doors. And Pip locked his bedroom door. And Lollie can’t sleep in a room with a locked door. And the mews door was locked in the daytime and one assumes that the back mews door – the garden door – was locked up at night. And Mattie had to stay in the vestibule to open the locked front door for his master and then lock it again after him. There’s something about all these locked doors.’
‘How would he get out?’ said Alec. ‘On the late nights, I mean.’
I shrugged. ‘I suppose he went out earlier, when the house was still open or at least when Faulds or Stanley were still about.’
‘No, not Pip,’ Alec said. ‘The hall boy cowering in the dark. What’s his name? Mattie. After he let Balfour in, how would he get out to go to bed in the carriage house?’
I leaned over and kissed him roundly first on one cheek and then on the other.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Alec, you are a genius. That is it. How did Mattie get through a locked and bolted door in the night? That’s what’s been pricking at me.’ I beamed at Alec but his answering smile was so uncertain as to be hardly deserving of the name. ‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, most unconvincingly, ‘only hadn’t we agreed that the story of waiting in the hall wasn’t true? No more true than the TB visit or the trouser pockets or, indeed, the will? I mean, it’s good to have these loose ends cleared up but it doesn’t get us anywhere we hadn’t got already.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said, and put my hand up to stem the tide of argument which began. ‘I know. I know what we said, but Mattie certainly knows something, I’m sure he does. Clara, Phyllis and Mattie. When I asked them all about locked doors and people creeping around in the night yesterday dinner-time the two girls stared at me as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths and missed poor Mattie trying to catch their eyes to see if he should speak up or stay silent.’
�
�Well, those three would be rather jumpy, wouldn’t they,’ Alec said. ‘If Clara’s story is the only real one and the other two are just made up.’
‘Although, to be fair, John was discomfited too, Stanley squirmed like a worm on a hook, and Millie and Eldry blushed to the roots of their hair.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Alec. ‘Are you absolutely sure you weren’t imagining things? Or wait: perhaps they were all staring and blushing because they had heard the cook and butler creeping around in the night and couldn’t believe you were being so indelicate as to ask about it.’
‘I’m still going to lean very hard on Mattie,’ I said. ‘Those two girls are as tricky as a bag of knives – Lord, I simply cannot remember that expression! – but Mattie is the weak spot. If I manage to get him on his own he’ll never be able to hold firm against me.’
‘You sound very fierce,’ said Alec. ‘I’m glad it’s not me keeping secrets. What can I do to help you, here on the outside, as it were?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ I replied. ‘Find the missing persons. In case – as I fear – the police get nowhere with it. Start with George Pollard.’
‘No such man,’ said Alec.
‘Well, check at least. And the same for Josephine Carson. That should be easy enough. There will be a marriage certificate and Pip was twenty-six so you’ll only have to look through about eight years’ worth at the very most.’
‘Oh, so breezy when it’s not you!’ said Alec. ‘Only eight years’ worth indeed. What if they weren’t married in Scotland? How am I supposed to get to London to Somerset House? On a donkey? And what if they were married abroad?’
‘Maggie and Miss Abbott then,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Lollie where the lady’s maid moved on to but I know that Maggie went to North Berwick to work for a baronet. She should be easy enough to find.’
‘North Berwick?’ said Alec. ‘Might as well be the North Pole right now.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Harry told me this morning that there’s petrol to be had again. He was complaining, of course, saying that “that toad Churchill” – not kind but not inaccurate either – has got soldiers delivering petrol all over the big towns. Actually, he was saying that there are vans marked “Petrol” delivering – oh, I don’t know – larks’ tongues and long-stemmed roses, but there must be some petrol getting through too. Enough for North Berwick, anyway.’
‘So what are we doing rambling around public parks and up and down monuments then?’ said Alec, heading for the top of the stairs as though there were not a moment to lose.
‘I didn’t know Maggie and Miss Abbott were crucial before we talked it all through,’ I reminded him.
‘Can’t think why,’ he said. He was plunging ahead, already out of sight, and surprisingly for one with a fear of heights he seemed to have no qualms about racing down a dark, twisting staircase with a lively spaniel tugging him to go even faster. I, on the other hand, had never been more sorry for Bunty’s poor training and when she had almost pulled me off my feet for the second time I am afraid that I unclipped her lead and let her slither down to catch up Alec and Millie, with only a ‘Watch out!’ to warn of her arrival.
I was returning early, thanks to Alec’s eager departure, and turning the corner of Heriot Row I met Clara sauntering towards me, swinging a duffel bag. She stopped when she saw me.
‘You’re back sharp,’ she said. ‘Are you no’ feeling well?’
‘Just run out of things to do,’ I said. ‘I’ve no family to visit and my friend that I was meeting had to go.’ She gave me a pitying look at that; one surmised that she would never run out of amusements on a May afternoon. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘The baths,’ said Clara. ‘It’s not my day or anything but Mrs Hepburn said I could go. My afternoon free is on a men’s day, see? So I’d never get there else.’
‘Mrs Hepburn is very kind to you all,’ I said. I had fallen in with Clara and was walking away from the house again.
‘Are you . . . ?’ Clara began, eyeing me warily. ‘Are you chumming me, Miss Rossiter?’
‘If you don’t mind,’ I said. Clara gave a tight smile and said nothing. She could not have sent a stronger signal that she dreaded Miss Rossiter’s awkward questions if she had tried.
‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘but they don’t hire out towels. You can borrow mine, though.’ I laughed and shook my head.
‘I don’t have a bathing suit with me,’ I said.
‘Oh, they hire out costumes,’ she said. I tried not to show what I thought of this idea.
‘Yes, a very kindly soul is our Mrs Hepburn,’ I said again. ‘I’m not surprised that Mr Faulds is captivated, are you?’
Clara had one of those faces upon which every thought passing through her mind is played out. Now, an impish amusement and natural taste for gossip fought with an equally natural suspicion (and disapproval) over an upper servant like me sucking my teeth with a lower servant like her about my equals and her betters. Or perhaps the disapproval was for two such ancient persons as Mrs Hepburn and Mr Faulds giving in to passion.
‘Well, I was surprised, Miss Rossiter, to be honest,’ she said. ‘They’ve been awfy discreet. And I thought I could tell when Mr Faulds liked a girl – you know – that way. I mean, he’s always had a right soft spot for Phyllis and he never hid it better than a boil on his—’
‘Nose?’ I said quickly. The usual expression had always struck me as rather nonsensical; a boil where Clara had just been about to place one is hidden for much of the time in the ordinary way of things.
‘Miss Rossiter, you’re terrible,’ she said. ‘I thought when you first turned up you were a right old stick-in-the-mud.’
‘It’s my face,’ I said. ‘And these clothes, but I assure you I’m not, dear.’
We tramped on for a while, down sweeping crescents and along endless quiet rows of tall houses, until it occurred to me to wonder where we were heading. After all, Mattie was set to walk nine miles to his village on the morrow.
‘Where exactly are these baths?’
‘Glenogle,’ said Clara. ‘Stockbridge. We’re nearly there.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Miss Rossiter?’ I waited, trying not to perk up too visibly. ‘Do you really think they’ll put mistress out? And the rest of us? Mr Faulds says no.’
Now, in truth, Alec and I had all but decided that the will was nonsense and would not stand, but if Clara needed an incentive to do her duty, then my duty was clear.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid. Unless the police can catch the man who did this – if it’s Cousin George, that is – then it’s a grim lookout for all of us.’
‘Poor mistress,’ Clara said. ‘Poor us an’ all. I’ll never get another parlourmaid’s job in a house with all that company. Not in Edinburgh, anyway.’
‘No indeed,’ I agreed. ‘I shall be very lucky to be a lady’s maid and not a cook-general.’
‘Can you cook, then?’ said Clara. ‘I cannae even do that. I’ll end up in a factory. Or a shop. Living back at my mammy’s in the middle of nowhere. She ayeways said that Balfour job was too good to be true.’
‘Let’s hope that someone saw something and will speak up, then,’ I said trying to sound like justice raining unstoppably down, but only succeeding in sounding like Nanny.
‘I suppose,’ said Clara, ‘but even if it brings no good to mistress or to me, I just can’t see myself helping to punish whoever killed him. I’d have killed him myself if I’d thought of it. And I just don’t give a—’
‘Tinker’s cuss?’ I said.
‘You have a wonderful way with words, Miss Rossiter,’ she said. ‘As good as Mr Faulds when he gets his music-hall patter going.’
‘But you’re not protecting anyone in particular, Clara, are you?’
‘Like who?’ said Clara.
‘It might not be that you saw someone covered in blood leaving master’s room, you know,’ I said. ‘It could be something else entirely. Someone who perhaps . . . o
h, let’s say . . . suddenly had extra money she – or he, of course – shouldn’t have.’
‘What money?’ said Clara. ‘Where does money come into it?’
‘Well, if someone opened the door up to let George Pollard into the house, she – or he, of course – might have been paid for it. That’s all.’
Clara had stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘But no one could open a door without somebody else hearing,’ she said.
‘True,’ I said. I looked along the street and then back at her, standing there in front of me like a statue. ‘Shall we go on?’
‘We’re here,’ said Clara. ‘This is it. Come in and have a wee look. See if you fancy it for another time.’
We were on one of those Edinburgh streets, of which since the city clings to the side of a steep hill there are many, where sunlight never reaches down between its high walls and the road is carved deep like a fissure. To the natural darkness was added an extra measure of gloom from the dark, red stone of the baths, mossy and wearing little sprouts of fern like buttonholes here and there. Inside, beyond the turnstile, the tiled passageways were just as dark and even damper and smelled of floor soap and chlorine. The chlorine, at least, was a smell which had nothing but happy memories for me, making me think of lidos in the south of France and a hotel Hugh and I had stayed in once in Italy which, despite the endless sunshine, had a covered swimming pond under a glass roof beyond its foyer – for the Italians, one supposed, who could find it too chilly for the sea and could look glamorous in cashmere wraps when I and the other Englishwomen were hot and red in limp cotton frocks with our waves melting.
The pool at Glenogle was under a glass roof of its own, but was otherwise as unlike the pond at the Miramalfi as my own tin bath before my bedroom fire at home. Wooden changing cubicles were ranged up and down its sides, most of their doors left open onto inelegant heaps of discarded clothes and, on hooks outside them, the kind of demoted bath towels – thin and grubby – that mothers hand out to children to take swimming. In the pool itself, a flotilla of girls and women bobbed around looking, in their rubberised bathing hats with the straps firmly buckled under their chins, like a squadron of pilots after an unfortunate water landing.
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 22