“Sir! Are you all right? Did I say something? I’m sorry if I did. Squealing like that … perhaps I should never … but Lady Cecily said it would be all right—I should tell you what I knew. And I wouldn’t want someone who can’t answer back to catch it for something she didn’t do. They’ll put the blame on the weakest. It’s always their way.”
It wasn’t Joe’s way. The footman’s words punctured his swelling rage and gave him back some sort of control over his emotions. He said coldly, the policeman’s reasoning taking over, “Have you thought, Ben, that on this occasion, the family might be only too grateful to accept Miss Joliffe’s story? If push came to shove and they all had to come clean, that is. If she’s in the clear, so is Alexander. As you said—they supply each other with an alibi for the hours before and the time of Lady Truelove’s death. Though, of course, chivalry would always reduce a gentleman to silence. He would never give away a lady’s secret, even when he’s standing in the dock at the Old Bailey and the hangman is knotting his noose. He—they—are never going to reveal their situation to an official police enquiry.”
“That’s why they’ve sent for you, sir. Friend of Sir James and Lady Cecily, you can work it all out discreetly. No need for red faces, eh?”
Joe knew that if he were to get at the truth it would have to be extracted from the most skilled liar he had ever come across—Dorcas herself.
“Ben, did you report the, er, midnight wanderings to Lady Cecily?”
Ben hung his head. “Should ’a done, shouldn’t I? Trouble if I did and trouble if I didn’t, I reckon …”
“Ben, you are in no way to blame. You were put into a bad situation. If trouble there’s been—the fault lies with others. Well—did you?” he insisted.
“No, I kept my mouth shut. I told her everything up to Miss Dorcas turning in for the night. Thing is—Master Alex is in a spot of bother at the moment.” He hesitated.
“I’m aware of the young master’s problems.”
“Ah. Well … I wouldn’t want to get him into worse trouble. None of us would. He’s all right is Master Alex. Never any trouble to the female staff, unlike some. Us indoors—we’ve always covered for him. Don’t like to see a bloke get picked on, even when it’s his own doing it.”
“And his mother’s his most demanding critic?”
“Always! Especially since he came back from London this time. She’s got him on a tight rein and I didn’t want to say something she’d not want to hear and that would get him into further trouble. As well as doing the girl no good—her reputation would have been shot to pieces. If I’d spoken out that would have been a headache for four people.”
“And you wouldn’t want to be known as the spreader of gossip?”
“You’ve said it! We’re supposed to keep quiet about what we see and hear.” Ben’s eyes gleamed suggestively. “People wander about in the night, like I told you. Sometimes they need a guiding hand back to their own billet. Unless we want our ears torn off by Mrs. Bolton, we say nothing. Well, over a ciggie round the back of the dairy, having a laugh with the other lads, that’s different.”
Joe strained to keep his focus on the job in hand when all he wanted to do was flee back to London, pursue Dorcas to Highgate or wherever she was hiding out and wring the truth from her. Professional routine rescued him from rash action. He remembered Cecily’s interrupted assertion that her son James had an alibi for the night of Lavinia’s death and decided to follow it up. “Lady Cecily claims that James has a cast-iron alibi for the time in question. Can you confirm …?”
“Oh, yes, sir. When the house was settled and everyone in their rooms I escorted her ladyship down to the drawbridge—I always see her back safely over to her own place. That’s the Dower House. About a hundred yards away down the drive. They leave the bridge up till I get back. We were just going over the bridge when Sir James comes haring up all of a lather. ‘Don’t you worry, Ben,’ he says, ‘I’ll see Mama home. Tell them they can put the bridge up now. I’ll be at the Dower House for the night.”
He anticipated Joe’s question. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Her Ladyship has a nice little guest suite of her own and Sir James does occasionally … um …”
“Seek refuge?”
“Run to his mum’s! He didn’t come back until they rang with the bad news to fetch him back over.”
“Ben, there’s something more you can do for me. For me and her ladyship,” he thought it prudent to add. “When next you’re sharing a smoke with the lads, ask about—discreetly!—if the valet that Mr. McIver’s brought down with him is what he says he is. Body servant? Chauffeur? Or is he really employed in McIver’s professional sphere? Has he by any chance got a camera in his kit? I like to know these things. I’m shy around cameras in the sweating hands of the press.”
“Camera? Old Blenkinsop? Naw! Why would he? Known Clarence for years, Mr. Styles has. Old mates.” He gave a sly smile. “But that new lady’s maid his wife’s brought … she has! Calls herself Chloe.”
“New, Ben?”
“She’s not the one they had with them last time they were here—back in April when …”
“That weekend …”
Ben nodded. “The other girls say she’s French but I’m not so sure … She’s been put to bunk up with our Rosie. And Rosie watched her unpack. She was very careful to warn Rose to keep her hands off her stuff, it was fragile. Cheek! Rosie checked it over later, of course. She says it’s not your common or garden Kodak—it’s a posh German thing. ‘Leica’ would that be? What would a lady’s maid be doing with a Leica?”
“Thanks for that, Ben. Look—your Rose is a smart girl, is she?”
“I’ll say!” Ben sighed his admiration. “Bright as a fresh-minted sixpence. Good with her fingers and knows how to keep her mouth shut. What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Ben, I think you’ve guessed! I think it might be to the advantage of the mistress and her family, to say nothing of Scotland Yard, if any film shot on the premises were to be, um …”
“Fiddled with? Exposed to the light? Before it leaves the house? I know how to do that. My uncle’s got a Rollei. I can’t be seen cruising about down the female staff’s corridor but I can show Rosie what to do.” Ben made his calculations and said, but without triumph in his tone, “Ah! I didn’t get it wrong then—you do think someone killed her? Bashed her head in with a horseshoe and blamed the horse? Wouldn’t be the first time. Someone who knew what she was up to?” He concentrated hard. He had the intelligent, absorbed face Joe had seen so often in his police recruits. Replying to Joe’s uncomfortable silence, he said more firmly: “Her ladyship had no visitors that night. When Grace said good night just after midnight and left to go to her own room that was it. She was alone until Grace woke her and dressed her to go off down to the stables. She dismissed her on the doorstep and off she went with just those two poor little old lads. No. Gracie’s in the clear. She came and had early breakfast with the rest of us lower servants in the kitchen. Whatever happened to Lady Truelove, it was all her own doing. She riled that horse off her own bat. Nobody helped her. Just because a fair number aren’t sorry she’s a goner doesn’t mean any of them done her in.”
The footman wriggled with a sudden rush of uncertainty. “Look, sir. Grace told me something … I wasn’t to mention it to a soul unless it looked like they were going to kick off an investigation and try to put the blame on someone. Then I was to get hold of Adam Hunnyton and bend his ear. Adam would know what to do she said, him being the police.”
“Go on, Ben, Adam and I are working on this together.”
“She said she’d kept something back and put it in her own room. A memento of her mistress, or some such, she said.”
“She didn’t say what it was?”
“No. She said what it wasn’t. Not jewellery, not a gown, not a picture, nothing she might be accused of stealing. You had to be very careful around Lady Lavinia.”
“Ben, I need to take a look in Grace’s room. R
ight now. Take me to Mrs. Bolton.”
THE NERVE CENTRE of the whole house, Joe thought. The Housekeeper’s Room. On the ground floor, it was strategically placed close to the company rooms and the kitchens and butler’s suite.
Mrs. Bolton had made no reference to the lateness of the hour when Ben had signalled to her across the crowded kitchen. A quick word to deputise one of the older women, and she had come out of the hurly-burly and led them into the calm of her parlour next door. Doors were lying open to let the air circulate, one onto a still-room in blue-and-white Delft tiles where Joe glimpsed a central table loaded with pots of strawberry jam and bottles of green cordial and another open onto a capacious pantry which, he guessed, adjoined the butler’s rooms. A third, which remained discreetly closed, he assumed to be the housekeeper’s bedroom.
A fine set but it would be impossible to separate work and personal space, Joe thought. The Housekeeper, inevitably, became the heart of the House. Still, he knew some Metropolitan officers who appeared to live their lives in their office and sleep at their desk. He’d felt the compulsion himself on many occasions, had even, in his earlier years, been physically hauled out of his chair and bundled off home by his landlord. Ex–police inspector Alfred Jenkins had known the dangers.
“At this hour I usually treat myself to a tisane. I’m having lemon balm, gentlemen. Would you like some?”
Joe gratefully accepted for both of them. Mrs. Bolton snatched up a large handful of a sweet-smelling herb from the windowsill, stuffed it into a big white teapot and filled it with water from a kettle singing on the stove.
“Will you be staying, Ben?” she asked.
After a quick exchange of looks with Joe, Ben said, “Just long enough for a swig o’ your tea, Mrs. B. Just what the doctor ordered at this time of day.”
“Then make yourself useful, my lad, and draw up a chair for the commissioner by my tea table. We’ll take it over there at the window. Might as well catch a cooling breeze while we can.”
Ben bustled to and fro setting up a folding tray-table with white cloth and china mugs and borrowing three chairs from a large round central table already laid out for the upper servants’ breakfast. Joe counted eight places. Orders for the day would be dished out with the porridge, gossip exchanged with the toast and marmalade.
Feeling suddenly clumsy amid the practised dexterity, Joe moved his large form away from the scene of action and went to stand by a dresser whose upper shelves were crowded with books. He noted the essential Burke’s Peerage, an Olde Moore’s Almanack, a dictionary, and smiled to see a very ancient copy of The Accomplish Ladie’s Companion, the essential reference book of every woman in charge of a household since 1685. His mother had had one always within arm’s reach of the stove. He remembered that the title page of this book was crowded with lively illustrations of ladies in long gowns and headdresses taking delight in roasting, boiling and pastry-making as well as the more arcane arts of distilling “spirituous liquers,” preserving herbs and composing medicinal ointments, some of a very dubious nature. Joe had good reason to believe that the cure for croup in infants, as laid out for the “accomplisht ladie,” was decidedly more dangerous than the ailment itself. At least the recipe for macaroons did not appear in the same chapter as the one guaranteed to rid a household of rattus rattus and all his fleas. “Almonds” and “arsenic” were sensibly segregated.
He wondered if the recipe for gingerbread came from these ancient pages.
Stiffly corseted, though her slim figure didn’t require much in the way of whalebone, Mrs. Bolton creaked down onto the chair Ben held respectfully for her and began to pour the tea. A lady approaching sixty, he would have guessed, composed and elegant. Her face was attractive but sought no appreciation from others. She was a woman who would always absorb more from her audience than she gave out. “I know who you are, sir, and why you are here,” she said briskly, challenging him with grey eyes as sharp as his. “Lady Cecily has spoken to me and asked that I give you all the help you require.”
Her voice had the clarity and enunciation of a governess, which he understood from Ben that she had been earlier in her life. “Schoolmaster’s daughter or some such,” he’d reported, “fallen on hard times. The old story! But with Mrs. Bolton it’s likely true. If she catches you running she’ll grab you by the ear and growl ‘Festina lente!’ at you. The old dear’s got a good head for figures what’s more. None of the tradesmen try it on with Mrs. B.,” Ben had finished with pride.
She had followed her mistress Cecily from the Midlands when she came as a bride to Melsett and in later years had taken over the duties of housekeeper. She was now looking at him expectantly.
For a moment Joe was at a loss. Where to start? They’d all recited their stories to other interested parties and must have reached that stage of tedium when people either clammed up or began to embroider on the original to avoid further boredom. Always a difficult moment.
Joe sipped, savoured, and put his cup down. Grey eyes stared into grey eyes. “Mrs. B. I’ve had a rough day.” From the glancing focus on his sticking plaster and the accompanying twitch of the corner of her mouth, Joe gathered his encounter with Virbio, servant of Diana, had not gone unreported. “Why don’t you tell me what help I need? I’m sure you know.”
The twitch became a smile and the enlivened face took on the radiance of the goddess Minerva. Joe saw suddenly why the staff spoke of this woman with such respect.
“If you’ve just been upstairs with Ben I’m thinking you’ll be wanting these.” She hauled on a key chain attached to the belt of her skirt and selected a key ring. “Here you are. The big one unlocks Grace’s room. I doubt you’ll find anything helpful in there—it has been cleaned out regularly since the awful event and Grace has nothing to hide. She was caught up in all innocence in the machinations of others, Commissioner. Grace is not … a plotter or an evil-doer by nature. She’s a Suffolk girl with all their admirable qualities. There’s nothing more I can tell you. Mistress Cecily gave her leave to go home to Bury. It’s not an excuse, though I’m sure you must be suspecting—collusion? Would that be the word? No—her mother is very ill—not expected to live out the summer, I’d say. Heart trouble. Grace has arranged for her sister to go down and mind her mother next week and we’ll see her back on duty then. But that’s not much help to you. I’ll give you her mother’s address in Bury, should you wish to pursue her. Meantime—as for me—I can only report impressions. Do you want to hear them in the absence of hard evidence?”
Joe was thinking that any impression coming from the firm mouth of Mrs. Bolton was worth ten times most people’s idea of evidence and he accepted gratefully.
“It was the gingerbread that made me suspicious. Grace came in here and asked for a slice for the mistress. Just before midnight. With her cocoa. Lady L. didn’t like spicy things. Grace didn’t deny it when I guessed it was a craving of someone about three months gone, if you know what I mean. We had a bit of a laugh over it. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard as much hinted at but this was the first concrete clue.”
“How much gingerbread did she take away?”
“I gave her enough for three normal portions. Her ladyship had quite an appetite. I didn’t want to risk her putting Grace to the trouble of coming downstairs again for more. I was going to put it in the pig slop bucket anyway. It had gone hard and no one fancied it much.”
“Was anything left of it?” Joe asked, feeling foolish.
“Not a crumb. No idea what she did with it and Gracie’s not saying but by morning it had all vanished. Betty, who does out the rooms on that floor, reported that there was a strange smell in her ladyship’s room and she had to fling all the windows wide open to clear it.”
Joe nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Bolton. I think I know what that was. And no—it wasn’t your gingerbread! Can you tell me why the room is still in its original state?”
“Mistress Cecily’s orders, sir. ‘Touch nothing,’ we were told. ‘You may clean surfaces
but that’s all.’ ”
“Mistress Cecily, ah, yes …” Joe said, speculation in his eye. “Back in the saddle again. Things are moving more smoothly with the old mistress in charge again, would you say?”
Mrs. Bolton’s chilly expression warned him she would say nothing of the sort. Discretion even after death was the rule for housekeepers. She unbent so far as to confide, “Mistress Cecily and I understand each other well, Commissioner. Indeed, we arrived here at Melsett on the same day, over forty years ago. She brought me down with her from her father’s household when she married. I was given a position of rising authority here with the task of raising the level of domestic discipline and capability. Under Sir Sidney—the bachelor Sir Sidney—things had become regrettably lax.”
Joe smiled. “What I see is a credit to your efforts, Mrs. Bolton. As well run a household as I ever saw, I do believe.”
Enid Bolton seemed pleased by the compliment
“Well, thank you Mrs. Bolton.” Joe began to get to his feet, the interview over. “Just one more thing.” He touched his plaster and grimaced. “How much per week do you pay the Green Man of the Woods to heave logs at your house guests?”
If he had thought to catch her out he was disappointed. She chuckled. “You’ll not find that villain’s name on my books, sir! You rightly guess I do all the payments for indoor and outdoor staff. That’s been the way since we lost Steward Hunnybun and he was replaced by a Farm Manager. Albright is very good in his way, but he doesn’t have Adam’s insight and tact. Adam calls by and gives a hand still if ever I need him but luckily I have a head for figures and it’s no trouble. You may inspect the household accounts if you wish.”
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