‘Will do.’
Chapter Nine
‘Cracking piece of bacon, is this, Mrs Varley.’
‘Well, thank you, Mr Chitty. Your appreciation is much appreciated, I’m sure. Can I tempt you to some more cold turkey?’
‘Don’t mind if I do, Mrs Varley.’
‘Addie!’ cried Mrs Varley.
There was no response.
‘Addie!!!’
Little Addie, little adenoidal Addie, wiping her two grimy little hands on her apron, came running in from the coal-house.
‘Did you call me, mum?’
Mrs Varley spluttered in disbelief.
‘Did I call you? she says! Who else was I calling? Stop yer twittering and cut Mr Chitty another slice of turkey. And make sure it’s nice and thick.’
‘Yes, mum. Right away, mum.’
‘Oh no, my lass, not right away. You’ll wash yer hands first. And proper, mind. They’re positive caked with muck.’
‘Yes, mum.’
As Addie hurried over to the sink, Tomelty, the ffolkeses’ Irish gardener and general handyman, lit up a Senior Service, gave his scarlet braces a devil-may-care snap and ran his fingers through his wavy, dreamy, Brylcreemy, jet-black hair. Something of a self-fancying Don Juan, the terror of the village girls, with his gleaming white teeth and smouldering five o’clock shadow, he was slouching at the far end of the kitchen table from Chitty, his Senior Service in one corner of his mouth, his trademark sneer in the other.
Watching the butler sup his steaming tea, he commented amiably, ‘Well, Mr Chitty, this ’ere murder business don’t appear to ’ave done your appetite no ’arm.’
‘Ah, Tomelty,’ replied Chitty, extracting with repulsive gentility a sliver of bacon which had got lodged between two of his front teeth, ‘must keep our peckers up, you know.’
There was a pause.
‘You’re very quiet, Mr Farrar,’ someone said.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘What do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘Who’s going to be the murderer’s next victim?’
‘Tomelty!’ Chitty snapped at him. ‘Just you watch that tongue of yours! I won’t have you scaring the womenfolk with sly talk of murder. Not whilst I’m master in this kitchen.’
Chitty had been a boxing referee for some years before entering domestic service and seldom let his inferiors forget it.
‘No talk o’ murder? Fat chance!’ exclaimed the chauffeur. ‘Nothin’ this int’r’stin’ ’as ’appened at ffolkes Manor since I began workin’ ’ere. And you think you can stop us talkin’ about it? You’ve gone funny in the ’ead, you ’ave. Aren’t I right, Mr Farrar?’
‘Ye-es. Whatever else can be said about it, Gentry’s murder is certainly interesting.’
‘I’m surprised at you, Mr Farrar, you so well educated!’ said Mrs Varley. ‘Interesting? What word is that to use about a guest found with a bullet in his brains?’
‘Heart, surely?’
‘Heart – brains – what’s the difference? A man’s been shot dead. I can think of a lot of words for that, but interesting wouldn’t come top of the list.’
‘And I can think of a lot o’ words for Raymond Gentry,’ said Tomelty, ‘and int’r’stin’ wouldn’t come top o’ that list neither.’
‘We-ell, that’s true enough,’ said Mrs Varley, recalling just how recently it was she had been furious with the late gossip columnist. ‘Slimy is more like it.’
‘Now, now, Mrs Varley,’ said Chitty. ‘As you yourself just said, the poor man’s lying dead upstairs. A little Christian charity is called for.’
‘Poor man!’ said Mrs Varley, warming to her theme. ‘The gall, the unmitigated gall, asking for bacon and eggs at eleven in the morning! Where did he think he was? The bleedin’ Savoy hotel! He had a right bleedin’ nerve, if I may say so. Pardon my French, Mr Chitty.’
Chitty, who clearly shared the sentiment – for he too had found himself at the receiving end of more than one of Gentry’s sallies – felt nevertheless that it had been ill-expressed.
‘Language, Mrs Varley, language …’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Chitty, but you’re not above denying, I’m sure, he was an all-round bad lot who deserved everything that was coming to him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know as how I’d go that far …’
Addie, meanwhile, whose squashed little features could just conceivably have been appealing had she known how to make herself up and pinned back her hair so that it wasn’t always dripping into her eyes, came over to the table with an extra-thick slice of turkey and prodded it on to Chitty’s empty plate with the blunt edge of a large bread knife.
‘Coo!’ she said to nobody in particular. ‘I wouldn’t ’alf like to foxtrot to one o’ them Savoy bands like you ’ear on the wireless. Better than the Christy Minstrels you get on Southend pier.’
‘Well, you never will, so forget it,’ replied Mrs Varley. ‘Go and bring the rest of the coal in.’
‘Yes, mum.’
She skittered off, nearly colliding with Iris, the upstairs maid and one of flame-haired twin sisters who had entered the ffolkeses’ service on the same day. The other’s name was Dolly and, identically pert in their identical maids’ outfits, they were next to impossible to tell apart.
‘Oh, me poor feet!’ Iris groaned. ‘They’re fair killin’ me!’
She collapsed on to the chair next to Tomelty’s.
‘’Ello, beautiful,’ he greeted her with the uncouth coquetry he had long since patented. His was a line as subtle as semaphore and you couldn’t help wondering how it ever worked. Yet it did, again and again.
‘Want me to give you a massage?’ he hopefully proposed.
‘Cheeky monkey! Oooooh!’ she sighed ecstatically as she tipped off her shoes under the table – the heel of the left with the toe of the right, the heel of the right with the toe of the left. She started vigorously rubbing the soles of her feet. ‘I’ve been dyin’ to do that for the past hour. They’re red raw!’
She let out a sigh of pleasurable anticipation.
‘Tomorrow’s me mornin’ off and I’m goin’ to set the alarm clock to six o’clock – just to remind meself I can go straight back to sleep. Bliss!’
‘So what’s happening up there?’ asked Mrs Varley, who was shovelling the third of four spoonfuls of sugar into her tea. ‘Still all in a state, are they?’
‘Not ’alf. S’why they’re keepin’ us downstairs – cos of all the dirt that’s bein’ spilt. As I was leavin’ the drawin’-room with the tea-tray, that actress, Cora what’s-’er-face, was callin’ Gentry a lyin’ ’ound – “a lyin’ ’ound” – them were ’er actual words an’ she fair spat ’em out! I wouldn’t like to meet ’er on a dark night.’
‘Well, you never will, so forget it,’ said Mrs Varley, who couldn’t have got through the day without plentiful dippings into her kitty of stock phrases.
‘It’s a turn o’ speech, Mrs Varley. What they call an allergy.’
‘I don’t hold with allergies. Plain English should be good enough for anyone.’
She thoughtfully sipped her tea, pinkie upraised in the refined manner.
‘I’m surprised, though, to hear you say she was spitting mad. She always struck me as so swelte and sophisticated.’
‘Swelte?’ said Iris derisively. ‘That stuck-up thing? Swelte, my –’
‘Iris!’ warned Chitty. ‘Language!’
‘Sorry. But I ’ad to laugh, you see, at somethin’ she let slip out.’
‘Who?’
‘The so-called Cora Rutherford.’
‘What do you mean “so-called”?’
‘Well, it was like this. They was all havin’ their tea, even the copper, and she – Cora Rutherford – she was tryin’, you know, to brighten up the mood with one of ’er antidotes. She’s got a ton o’ them antidotes.’
‘I don’t hold with antidotes.’
‘Oh, put a sock in it, Mrs Varley! Go on, Iris, what h
appened?’
The kitchen was all ears. Addie had come back from the coal-house and was standing as inconspicuously as possible at the garden door – she was an inconspicuous creature at the best of times – while Dolly, who had just returned from her duties upstairs, took a seat on the other side of Tomelty from Iris.
‘Well,’ said Iris in a stage whisper, ‘she was sittin’ close to the fire in that fur wrap of ’ers –’
‘Isn’t it somethin’, though!’ Dolly interrupted her with a sigh. ‘I’d just die – I’d kill – for a mink wrap like that!’
‘It’s not mink, it’s fox.’
‘It’s mink.’
‘Fox!’
‘Mink!’
‘Girls, girls, surely it doesn’t matter?’
‘How right you are, Mr Farrar. It’s most aggravatin’ to be interrupted in an antidote ’ardly before you’ve started,’ said Iris, glaring at her sister.
‘As I was sayin’ before I was so rudely interrupted,’ she continued, ‘she was tellin’ ’em all some story about ’er bein’ a little kid – it wasn’t about the theatre for once – it was about ’ow she’d been misbehavin’ with some local boy – no, no, not what you’re thinkin’, Tomelty, you Irish tink, you – you with your one-track mind! Seems ’er an’ this boy ’ad been splashin’ about in a mud pool together an’ when she got home ’er mum was blazin’ mad at the state of ’er clothes an’ ticked ’er off no end – an’ she, Cora, she said this witty, rude thing back at ’er mum – which was atcherly the point o’ the antidote – but what made everyone laugh out loud was when she repeated what ’er mum said when she ’eard ’er say this witty thing’ – Iris switched to an uncannily convincing imitation of Cora Rutherford’s accent – ‘“So dear Mama turned to me and cried, ‘How dare you speak to your mother like that, Nelly!’” Nelly!’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Addie.
Iris burst into raucous, dirty, gravelly laughter.
‘Nelly! There she was, tellin’ ‘er antidote an’ bein’ so witty an’ all, an’ she got so carried away she clean forgot ‘er name was supposed to be Cora. She didn’t even finish the story. She clapped ’er ’ands over ’er mouth and that pasty face of ’ers – just like one of Mrs Varley’s soda scones, it is! – went quite peuce. I daresay ’er name isn’t Rutherford neither. Ramsbottom more like.’
‘Now, now, Iris,’ said Chitty, who realised he was fighting a losing battle in defence of the decencies, ‘we don’t want any of your lip in this kitchen.’
‘Little Nelly Ramsbottom,’ Iris went on unrepentantly, ‘the queen o’ the back-to-backs!’
Her chant – ‘Lit-tle-Ne-lly-Rams-bo-ttom!’ – was taken up by Dolly and even, though at first circumspectly, by Addie, the three of them beginning to dance a conga round the kitchen table.
‘Wheeesht, all of you!’ an indignant Mrs Varley shouted at them. ‘What a way to behave when there’s a dead body in the house!’
‘Go on,’ said Tomelty, ‘you said yerself as ’ow Raymond Gentry was a bad lot. You’re not about sheddin’ tears over ’im now, are you?’
‘No, I am not,’ she replied. ‘But it’s not a pleasant thought – sharing the house with a murderer.’
‘You needn’t go botherin’ yer ’ead about that,’ he retorted with a snort. ‘This murder is strictly a toffs’ affair. It’s a fine art for the likes o’ them – a snooty sport, bit like fox-’untin’. We might feel like murderin’ one o’ them, but you can bet yer last farthin’ they’d never dirty their manicured fingers murderin’ one of us, for sure if we ain’t good enough to invite to cocktails we ain’t good enough to murder neither. If one o’ that bunch upstairs was to kill one of us, ’e’d be oystercised all right – but you know for why? Not cos ’e’d done a murder but cos ’e’d stepped out of ’is own class!’
For all his rough-diamond exterior Tomelty could be quite eloquent.
‘Can you see any o’ them takin’ the time or trouble to bump one of us off in the attic an’ leave it lookin’ like no one’s come in or gone out? Some ’ope! If ever we ’ave ours comin’, we’ll get it the good old workin’-class way, a quick bash on the back o’ the noggin outside the Dog an’ Duck. ’Ave no fear, Mrs Varley, your life – aye, an’ your virtue, too – is safe as ’ouses!’
‘Here, you!’ said Mrs Varley heatedly. ‘My virtue’s my business and don’t you forget it! If the late Mr Varley was alive to hear what you just said, he’d be spinning in his grave!’
‘Given how flippant you’ve all been talking about him,’ remarked Chitty, ‘I’d say that, if anyone’s spinning in his grave at this moment, it’s Raymond Gentry.’
‘’E’s not in ’is grave yet, silly,’ Iris pointed out, while powdering the tip of her nose from a pink powder-puff. ‘’E’s still in the attic just where they found ’im. Not decent, I call it, leavin’ a dead body without coverin’ it over or anythin’.’
‘Oh no, Iris!’ little Addie suddenly piped up. ‘That’s what the police tell you to do when there’s a murder.’
‘What?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘Nothin’? What you mean, nothin’?’
‘You’re not to do nothin’ at all. I read it in a book.’
Mrs Varley performed what in the films they call a double-take.
‘You read a book!?’
‘I’ve read two books, Mrs Varley,’ Addie answered gamely. ‘Jessie passed ’em on to me when she ’anded in ’er notice. You remember Jessie, mum? ’Er as up an’ married the ’aberdasher’s son an’ went to Great Yarmouth for ’er ’oneymoon.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Varley grimly, ‘I do remember Jessie. I also remember we don’t talk about Jessie around here. Those banns were posted a mite too hastily for my liking. And to think the Vicar allowed her to get married in white! There’s such a thing as being too Christian!’
‘Anyway, mum, Jessie gave me these two books of ’ers. Quite ’ighbrow they was. One was The Vamp of the Pampas. Ooh, was that hot stuff!’
‘Language, Addie, language! This isn’t Paris, you know.’
‘Sorry, Mr Chitty.’
‘And what was the other, dear?’ he asked.
‘Well, that’s the funny thing. It was one o’ that Miss Mount’s that’s one o’ the Master’s guests.’
‘What one was it?’ Dolly asked.
‘Oh, Dolly, now you’re askin’,’ said Addie. ‘I think it was called Murder somethin’ …’
‘Well, that don’t get us much forrader,’ said Tomelty, his eyes swimming heavenward. ‘Just about every one of ’er books ’as “Murder” in the title.’
‘That’s it! That’s the one!’
‘What one?’
‘No Murder in the Title! It was called No Murder in the Title an’ it was really good! The murder takes place in the first chapter – an’ really gory it is, too! The victim – ’e’s some kind of big businessman, Hiram Rittenhouse – Hiram B. Rittenhouse the Third – a Napoleon of Finance, they call ’im – an’ ’e’s found squeezed inside a trouser-press in ’is suit at the Dorchester.’
‘You mean they put ’im inside the trouser-press, suit an’ all?!’ cried Iris.
‘No, ’is suit. Like in one o’ them big ’otels. Not just a room but a suit.’
‘Gerraway! What you mean is a sweet!’
‘No, I don’t. I do so mean a suit. Anyway, all the time you’re readin’ the book, you remember the murder bein’ done in the first chapter an’ you know who done it an’ you can’t work out ’ow the detective – that’s a woman called Alexis Baddeley – you can’t work out ’ow she’s goin’ to save the man who’s been arrested for it – he’s an ’andsome, clean-cut young Yank, Mike somethin’ – I don’t remember ’is second name – no, no, no, call me a liar, I do so remember, it was Mike Rittenhouse, that’s right, ’e was the Napoleon’s penniless nephew – an’ you can’t work out ’ow she’ll save ’im from bein’ ’ung, seein’ as ‘ow he definitely done it cos you read about ’im doin�
� it before you read anythin’ else.’
Having been talking, uninterrupted, for probably longer than ever before in her young life, Addie stopped to take a deep breath.
‘Well, don’t leave us all on tintacks, Addie,’ said Mrs Varley. ‘Did he do it or didn’t he?’
‘No, ’e didn’t!’ cried Addie, beaming triumphantly at everybody in turn. ‘That was what was so clever about it. It’s only at the very end you discover that in the first chapter ’e was at the pictures – which ’e told the police again an’ again ’e was – an’ what you read in that chapter is not ’im killin’ ’is uncle as ’e’s supposed to ’ave done but a similar-like murder ’e saw in the picture show that – what’s the word? – inspirated! – that inspirated the real murderer. But cos it’s the first thing you read, an’ cos, after ’e comes out of the picture show, ’e walks along Bond Street worryin’ about this terrible thing ’e’s done an’ you think it’s the murder ’e’s worryin’ about – but it’s atcherly cos he spent all ’is money on this loose woman ’e met at a Lyons Corner ’Ouse – an’ cos you’ve got it in your ’ead for the rest of the book that ’e’s the one that done it, it comes as ever such a surprise that it wasn’t ’im as killed ’is uncle after all!’
Flushed with what she imagined had been the unqualified success of her storytelling, she’d failed to notice that an opaque expression had started to glaze her listeners’ eyes.
‘Blessed if I can understand it,’ said Mrs Varley.
‘No more can I,’ said Dolly, shaking her head.
‘You got the wrong end of the stick as usual, Addie, my dear,’ said Chitty in what he doubtless intended to be a kindly voice.
The kitchen-maid was now close to tears.
‘No, I didn’t. It’s a really clever idea when you think about it.’
‘I don’t hold with ideas,’ said Mrs Varley. ‘Cause of half the problems in the world, ideas are.’
‘But this young Yank, this Mike, you see, everyone says ’e –’
‘Now don’t start all over again,’ said Tomelty. ‘We couldn’t make ’ead or tail of it the first time and, knowing you, you’ll only make things worse. Why’d you have to tell us all that anyway, I’d like to know?’
The Act of Roger Murgatroyd Page 13