She glanced over her shoulder again, this time with raised eyebrows.
‘The way Miss Blake carried on, you mean?’
Annie nodded. ‘Danny O’Grady said it was better than a floor show. He was one of the footmen.’ She grinned. ‘I never saw her in that dress, but Danny said it was so low-cut you could practically see her navel. It was all he could do not to spill the soup when he bent to serve her. He said it was like looking down the Grand Canyon.’
Lily waited until her hostess had filled the tea-pot with boiling water and brought it to the table.
‘What was your job?’ she asked.
‘I was an upstairs maid. I did the bedrooms and cleaning with Mary Keen. Mary was sweet on Danny. They got married later and went back to live in Ireland. She’s got two nippers herself now, like me.’
Annie settled herself at the table. Her brown eyes shone.
‘I got hitched myself during the war. I was working in a factory up in Birmingham. We had an anti-aircraft unit stationed only a couple of streets away. Bert was one of the gunners. That’s how we met. You married?’ she asked.
Lily shook her head. ‘Still looking.’ She could see from her hostess’s animated expression that she was enjoying the chance to reminisce and that the best way to proceed would be to keep chatting to her in a relaxed way. It was a trick she had learned from working with Billy Styles, who had picked up the technique from Mr Madden (or so he said), the man who had taught him his trade. Except—according to Styles—it hadn’t been a technique with his old chief. It was just the way he was; different from other coppers.
‘How long did you work at Foxley Hall?’ she asked.
‘Seven years.’ Annie lifted the top of the tea-pot to check the state of the brew and then filled their cups. She handed Lily the milk jug. ‘I started when I was just a girl, doing the rough work: laying the fires, cleaning the oven, polishing the shoes. Later I got to be a proper maid.’
‘And when did you leave?’
‘At the same time Mrs Castleton did. That was in 1939, after Sir Jack died. She couldn’t stay there any longer. I don’t mean anyone was pushing her out. As far as Sir Richard was concerned, she was as good as married to his father and Foxley Hall was her home for as long as she wanted it to be. But she couldn’t stand to be there without Sir Jack, so the house was shut up and the staff went their way.’ She sipped her tea. ‘With the war on, I was ready to leave. I’d had enough of service. But all the same I felt sad. We were lucky to have worked there, all of us, and we knew it. It wasn’t like being in service elsewhere; more like being part of a family. But I understood how Mrs Castleton felt. It could never have been the same without Sir Jack.’
She smiled to herself.
‘The day I arrived to work there—I was all of fifteen—he had me brought to his study and he said, “I want you to be happy here, Annie. I want you to think of it as your home. If you have any problems, bring them to me. We’ll sort them out.” And he meant it, too. I remember how he used to make a point of praising us and paying us compliments. It wasn’t what you’d get in most places, I can tell you. “Oh, I like the way you’ve done your hair, Annie,” he would say. That sort of thing: it was meant to make you feel better. When Mrs Castleton came to stay we thought things would change. But we needn’t have worried. She just made everything run better in the house, like you’d expect a woman to, but quietly, with just a word here and there. And when the house was finally shut up she did her best to find jobs for everyone who wanted to stay in service. We’re still in touch, her and me.’
Annie’s smile blossomed.
‘She gave us a lovely wedding present, Bert and me: a full set of cutlery. And she sends us a card every Christmas, and never forgets the kids’ birthdays. That colouring book and those crayons are a present from her. Isn’t that so, Winnie?’
The little girl looked up shyly, nodded, and then bent to her task again.
Annie added more hot water to the tea-pot. Lily handed over her cup for a refill.
‘To get back to that week-end,’ she said. ‘The dinner apart, do you remember anything unusual happening? Anything to do with the guests, I mean: in particular, Miss Blake, Mr Garner and that Chinese, or half-Chinese, bloke, Mr Wing?’
‘Oh, him?’ Annie rolled her eyes. ‘He was a strange one, all right. He’d look at you with those black eyes of his and you’d wonder what was going on in his mind. He gave Mary and me the creeps.’
‘Were you surprised when he showed up with Miss Blake? They don’t sound like the kinds of guests you’d expect to find at a house like Foxley Hall.’
‘Oh, well, as to that . . .’ Annie Potter’s tone was philosophical. ‘I can tell you we had our share of rum ones over the years, people Sir Jack picked up on his travels. We had a bullfighter once, I remember. He used to chase Mary and me around his room if he caught one of us up there alone. Sir Jack had to turf him out in the end.’ She laughed. ‘But you’re right—Wing and that Miss Blake didn’t exactly fit in. Though she thought she did.’
‘Oh . . . ?’ Lily raised an eyebrow.
‘She was trying to play the lady, making out she was at home, putting on airs.’ Annie was scornful. ‘It wasn’t too bad the first evening they were there—Friday, it would have been. From what I heard she didn’t create at dinner that night; she saved it all for the next day. But I didn’t take to her. You can always tell a real lady from the way they treat servants. But she didn’t know how. She thought she was better than us, but I could see through her.’
‘What about Mr Garner?’ Lily realised she’d come across a shrewd judge of character. ‘What did you think of him?’
‘He was all right, I suppose.’ Annie wrinkled her nose. ‘He’d been a guest at the house often. When he first came down he was still single and he used to give us the eye—me and Mary, and Daisy Davenport, too; she was one of the downstairs maids. You could see he fancied the girls; but I reckon he was afraid of doing anything to upset Sir Jack. Then he got married and that stopped; he behaved better.’
‘What did you think of him, though? Did you like him?’
Raising her cup to her lips, Annie considered the question.
‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Not really. He was charming enough, and good looking, too. But it was all on the surface. Not like Sir Jack. You always knew where you stood with him. He never hid his feelings, never pretended. Everything about him was real. Like when that girl was murdered—you could see how terrible he felt. She was his guest, staying under his roof, and he couldn’t forgive himself for allowing it to happen. Except, of course, he didn’t: allow it, I mean.’
She paused to make sure that Lily understood her meaning.
‘He hardly knew her. But that didn’t make any difference in his mind. He thought he’d failed her in some way, and he took to his bed after that. He wasn’t well anyway—we all knew that—but it really hurt to see him getting worse by the day. I think it broke Mrs Castleton’s heart. But there was nothing to be done and he died a year later, right after the war started.’
Lily swallowed the last of her tea.
‘So other than what happened at dinner, there was nothing special that you can remember?’
Annie shook her head. She gathered the cups off the table, placing them, with their saucers, one on top of the other. She looked questioningly at Lily. It was clear she wanted to get back to her work.
‘Just one more thing, and then I’ll leave you in peace. Think back to the day Miss Blake was murdered. I know Mr Garner went out in the morning and didn’t return until after her body was found. But where was Mr Wing: what did he do after lunch?’
‘Went up to his room to rest, most likely.’ She shrugged. ‘They all did. Except Miss Blake, of course: she went out.’
‘One of the maids saw her leaving, didn’t she?’
‘That was Daisy. She’d been dusting downstairs
and she saw Miss Blake leave by the side door and go into the garden.’
‘Where did she go then—Daisy, I mean?’
‘To the kitchen, where the rest of us were, having a break, chatting. Lunch had been cleared away and there wasn’t much for us to do until tea time.’
‘So if someone else—I mean one of the guests—had come downstairs and followed Miss Blake out, no one would have seen them?’
‘You mean Mr Wing, don’t you?’ Annie eyed her shrewdly.
Lily shrugged. ‘I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to get the lie of the land.’ She paused, considering her next question. ‘When did you first hear about the murder? What time was it?’
Annie thought. ‘It was close to four o’clock,’ she said, ‘or maybe a bit earlier. They were starting to get things ready for tea in the kitchen. Old Pat Duckworth, the village bobby, rang the doorbell and Mr Hargreaves went to answer it. He didn’t come back for nearly ten minutes, and when he did he told us what had happened. He had had to break the news to Sir Jack, who was still upstairs in his room, resting. He came down to talk to Pat and quite soon afterwards the other guests appeared from upstairs. Apart from Mr Garner, that is—he hadn’t got back yet. Sir Jack got them together in the library and told them what had happened.’
‘And Mr Wing was among them?’
Annie nodded.
‘So as far as you knew he hadn’t left his room?’
‘That’s right.’ Annie squinted at her. ‘But what you’re thinking is he might have?’
‘If he had, was there anyone else who would have seen him? What about the rooms upstairs, the bedrooms? Could he have been spotted from a window up there?’
Annie shook her head. ‘If he went out of the garden the same way Miss Blake did, he would have gone down the yew alley, and he couldn’t have been seen in there. The branches grew together at the top; it was like a tunnel. It went all the way to the gate at the bottom.’
She studied Lily’s face, as though expecting to see some change in her expression.
‘When was the first time you saw him?’ Lily continued to speak in a neutral tone. ‘After lunch, I mean.’
‘When the guests came down from their rooms and Sir Jack got us all together in the library—guests and staff—and told us about the murder. He looked terrible. He was that cut up.’
‘How did Mr Wing take the news?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at Sir Jack and at Mrs Castleton and wondering if there was anything we could do for them. I didn’t take any notice of Mr Wing. In fact, I don’t remember seeing him until a few minutes later when I went upstairs with a pile of clean linen and towels to put in the airing cupboard. Mr Hargreaves had told us we had to carry on as normal until the police arrived. He didn’t want us sitting around in the kitchen gossiping.’
‘You say you saw Mr Wing upstairs? Where was that, exactly?’
‘In the passage. The guests’ rooms were off it. He was coming towards me and we passed by one another. He didn’t say anything. Just nodded as he went by.’
She sat back. Lily smiled.
‘Thanks, Annie,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a great help. Sorry to have bothered you. I know you’ve got work to do.’
She glanced down.
‘And it was nice to meet you, Winnie. I can see you’re really good at colouring.’
The little girl blushed with pleasure. Lily prepared to rise, but then checked her movement when she saw that the look on her hostess’s face had changed. Annie was staring out the window at the back of the kitchen where there was only the empty yard.
‘Annie . . . ?’
She turned slowly towards Lily. Her face wore a puzzled look.
‘I’ve just remembered something,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t have been there.’
‘Who?’
Mr Wing. It never struck me at the time. But I’ve just realised . . .’ She stared at Lily. ‘You see, the upstairs linen cupboard was at the end of the corridor, and Mr Wing came walking towards me from that direction. But he had no business being there . . .’
‘No business . . . ?’
‘His room was at the other end of the passage—his and Mr and Mrs Garner’s. Sir Jack’s other guests were a couple called Lord and Lady Cairns. Their room was near the cupboard and Miss Blake’s was across the passage from theirs.’
She went on staring at Lily.
‘So . . . so where could he have been coming from? That’s what you’re wondering?’
Annie nodded mutely.
‘It couldn’t have been from this Lord and Lady Whatsit’s room?’ Lily wanted to be sure she’d got it straight. ‘He’d have had no business in there?’
‘That’s right. And anyway, they were still downstairs.’
‘So there was only one other room he could have been coming from?’
Annie nodded mutely.
‘He must have been in Miss Blake’s room,’ she said. ‘But what was he doing there?’
14
‘SO THE ASSUMPTION IS Wing went into the Blake woman’s room to look for something?’
Angus Sinclair added a question mark to his statement.
‘But it couldn’t have been the pendant. She was wearing that when she went out.’
‘Wing wouldn’t necessarily have known that,’ Madden pointed out. Having received a full report on Lily Poole’s visit to Whitechapel from Billy Styles before he returned home from London for the week-end, he had walked down from the house to give his old friend an account of the latest developments in the re-opened investigation. ‘But I agree it’s quite possible he was looking for something else.’
‘But what, I wonder?’
The chief inspector snipped a blood-red rose off one of his bushes and added it to the stems lying on the grass behind him. Whether his gout was truly in remission—he was still moving about gingerly—or whether the Yard’s decision to re-open the Portia Blake inquiry had sent a dose of adrenaline through his system, the chief inspector was looking more like his old self, alert and energetic.
‘What else could he have wanted to get his hands on?’
‘We discussed that,’ Madden said. ‘Mrs Castleton overheard Miss Blake tell Wing she had put something “in a safe place”. Billy was going to get in touch with Portia’s sister. It was she who collected Portia’s effects from the flat she was sharing with Audrey Cooper. There might be something among them that will shed light on the mystery.’
‘Unless Mr Wing found what he was looking for and pocketed it.’
The chief inspector ran his eye along the line of roses, searching for another victim.
‘You say some other members of the staff have also been spoken to? Did they offer anything new?’
‘Not really. Billy talked to Tom Derry in Canterbury, but he had nothing to add to what he had already told me, and he also saw the downstairs maid, Daisy Davenport. But she could only confirm what she said at the time about Portia leaving the house after lunch. The butler, a man called Hargreaves, retired to Bournemouth. Joe Grace has spoken to him, but other than giving an account of that dinner that accords with Richard Jessup’s, the only thing he had to say of any interest was that he thought Rex Garner was more disturbed than he let on by the way Miss Blake was behaving. He was trying to ignore it, Hargreaves said, but actually he was furious. At least that’s what Hargreaves thought.’
‘But Garner himself hasn’t been approached yet?’
‘He went up to Scotland for the grouse shooting. He’ll be back in London next week. Billy plans to interview him then.’
The chief inspector snipped off a last rose. Bending to collect the others that were lying on the grass, holding the prickly stems in his gloved hands, he led the way up the short path to the front door of his cottage. Madden followed. The roses were for Helen and he assumed that the
chief inspector was going in search of some paper to wrap them in.
‘And what of Mr Stanley Wing.’ Sinclair paused at the door. ‘Have you anything more on him?’
Madden shook his head.
‘But I’m wondering whether Richard Jessup might have something to tell me on that score. He’s only just returned from his business trip; but according to the message Helen took, he wants to see me as soon as possible. I’ll know more by tomorrow.’
• • •
It was Mrs Castleton who had relayed the invitation. She had telephoned the previous evening to say that Jessup hoped that both Madden and his wife would lunch with them that Sunday at his house near Petersfield. Helen had taken the call, and when she joined Madden in the drawing-room he had seen from her expression that she was pleased.
‘That was Adele,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t received my letter yet, but that’s because she’s been down in Hampshire looking after the Jessup children. His wife had to fly back to America at short notice. Her father’s unwell and her mother had asked her to return. Why Adele rang was to ask us both to drive down there on Sunday. She said Sir Richard was anxious to see you. The way she said it made me think it might be important. He’ll be home later tonight—he’s been away on business—but he wanted Adele to ring us as soon as possible so that we’d have time to decide. I accepted at once and told her I would only ring back if you felt we couldn’t make it for some reason.’
There being no such reason—Madden had been as eager as she to accept the invitation—they set off in mid-morning with Sinclair’s roses wrapped in newspaper lying on the back seat of the car knowing that the journey would take the better part of two hours. Jessup’s house lay beyond the bounds of Surrey, in the county of Hampshire, near a village called Hawkley, a famous beauty spot and one that the Maddens had visited more than once before the war, when week-end drives in the country had been commonplace: a time distant in memory now. Although the government had finally taken pity on the long-suffering population and re-instated the modest wartime petrol ration, there was little of the precious fuel to spare. As a doctor, Helen had always been able to obtain a supply for her work, but she was reluctant to use it for private purposes, so it had been down to Madden to provide the coupons for their trip. And since his own car, a venerable Humber which had spent the war years sitting on blocks in the family garage like a beached whale, was no longer regarded as reliable for a journey of any distance (it needed a thorough overhaul and new parts that were not presently available), it was Helen’s Morris Minor that they took.
The Death of Kings Page 17