Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains (14 page)

‘No, you misunderstand me,’ said Hardy. ‘That’s perfectly natural – of course it is. It’s the other one that I’ve got my eye on. Amelia, is it? The one that’s in no kind of state at all.’

‘Millie?’ I asked, unbelieving. ‘Surely you can’t be serious? You think that sweet girl could have taken a knife and . . .’ But even as I spoke I felt a flicker of unease about it. She had indeed been remarkably unperturbed throughout the morning, neither fainting nor crying, and she had bent over the knife with an eager interest which did, upon reflection, strike one as unseemly.

‘I’ll ask the doctor what he thinks,’ said Hardy. ‘Whether a girl could have done it at all. I think I hear him coming.’

I took my time joining the others again, dawdling on the turn in the stairs trying to think it through. The superintendent was seeing ghosts in empty corners, I was sure, but
someone
had done it and it must have been someone who slept in the house, since bolted doors could not be reasoned away. I was almost sure that it was not Lollie, although I should have liked to be surer. Eldry and Phyllis had motives, and Eldry at least was far from at ease, but they would have needed Millie and Clara respectively to cover for them. Mrs Hepburn had no room-mate to outwit and was anything but sorry about the death, but she appeared to suspect her mistress, and so unless that was a ruse she could not be guilty herself. It would be a clever touch, to affect suspicion of another, and I did not know Mrs Hepburn well enough to say whether she were capable of such subtlety. Of Mr Faulds, too, I did not yet know enough to form a view; a matter I should remedy right away.

He was there in his armchair in the servants’ hall with the rest of the menfolk and Clara, who was crouched on a fender stool, busy stitching. Stanley was in Mrs Hepburn’s seat and PC Morrison sat at the furthest corner of the table from John, Harry and Mattie, staring resolutely into space.

‘You’re wanted now, dear,’ I said to Clara, who leapt to her feet as though I had fired a starting pistol. She hurried towards me and thrust her sewing into my hands.

‘About time,’ she said. ‘Can you carry on with the armbands, Miss Rossiter? I’ve done seven – five to go.’

‘Yes,’ I said, clutching ineffectually at the bundle and feeling the needle pierce my skin. ‘Now then, what stitch are you using, let me see now . . .’ I sank into my own chair, squinting at the tiny stitches in the black cloth. A drop of blood welled up on my pierced fingertip and I sucked it.

‘I suppose you’ll be next, Mr Faulds,’ I said, ‘and then perhaps we can all get a bit of peace and quiet to ourselves.’ I looked meaningfully at PC Morrison’s profile as I spoke. Mr Faulds, though, had clearly not forgiven me for my thrusting behaviour earlier in the day and merely inclined his head with a tight smile. I bent to my sewing again, but I saw that two more drops of blood had come and had dripped onto the strip of serge. ‘Bother it,’ I said, ‘I think I’ll need to put a dressing on this.’ I held my finger out to show Stanley. (I have often noticed the relish with which servants, like children, will describe and even exhibit any wound, swelling or rash which might befall them and I thought this a very Miss-Rossiterish touch.) Stanley, to my surprise, squeezed his eyes shut and twisted his head away from me.

‘Stanley cannae stomach the sight of blood, Miss Rossiter,’ said John, from the table. ‘Here, Harry, mind of that time I gashed my arm open working on the motor and Stanley had to take his dinner at the kitchen table to keep away from me.’

‘Have a heart,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t mind him, Stan.’

‘I do apologise,’ I said to the footman, who was trying to look haughty but not making a very impressive job of it. ‘Is there a first aid box anywhere?’

But even the thought of the first aid box, it seemed, was too much earthy reality for Stanley and it was Harry who got to his feet to show me in the end.

‘All right by you?’ he asked Morrison rather insolently as he passed. Morrison, who had perhaps been told by now that I was trusted by the superintendent and could be trusted by him, nodded curtly.

‘And bring back some smelling salts for Stan, will you no’?’ John called after us.

‘You hold your tongue,’ said Stanley. ‘Yelling like that with a corpse in the house. You’ve no idea how to behave, have you? You don’t deserve to be with decent people.’

‘Enough,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Quit bickering, both of you.’

Harry led me to a small room, no more than a store-cupboard really, stocked with blocks of yellow scrubbing soap and jars of green soft soap, tins of floor polish and boot polish and the great stone jars of marmalade which, for some reason I never understood, always lived with the cleaning supplies.

‘Cracks beginning to show, eh?’ said Harry, when we were inside and could not be overheard.

‘It has been a very trying morning,’ I agreed, ‘and the more so for you lot, I suppose, just sitting there. At least the girls have had a chance to unburden themselves and get back to work.’ Harry nodded. He had found the first aid box – just a large tin painted white – on a high shelf and was prising its lid open.

‘We’ve got some of those sticking plasters,’ he said. ‘They’re no’ bad if you don’t wind them too tight. Master brought them back from America last time they was over.’ He gave me one of the little waxed packets and put the lid back on the tin again. I had never seen one of the things and it took a moment of fumbling before I got it unwrapped and managed to apply it to my finger.

‘That was very generous of him,’ I said. ‘Of Mr Balfour, I mean. He can’t have been all bad.’

‘He was as bad as they come,’ said Harry. ‘Not just a mean so-and-so, but useless – they’re all useless. Don’t know the meaning of a day’s work, just play like bairns their whole lives. He played at building toy boats, Miss Rossiter. Did you know that? A grown man and he spent his days making toy boats that didn’t even float.’

‘And you spent your days dressing him,’ I said. This point still puzzled me.

‘Not me,’ said Harry, ‘I’m only twenty-five. I’ve got plenty days left. If I escape the noose, like.’

He threw me such a challenging look as he said this, almost as though he were daring me to make something of it, that I felt a surge of anger rise up in me.

‘John’s not the only joker in the pack then,’ I said and had the pleasure of seeing that I had surprised him. ‘The police know that the back doors were locked and bolted, Harry. You are not under any suspicion.’

‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘They don’t think one of the girls would have unbolted a door then?’ This brought me up short and for a while I said nothing, remembering how Eldry had told me they all ‘helped each other out’, remembering how the two housemaids had rushed to comfort Mattie the evening before.

‘But Mrs Hepburn would have heard it,’ I said. ‘Her room is just by the kitchen door.’

‘Aye, and yours is right by the one in the sub-basement,’ Harry agreed. ‘You’d have heard for sure. If everyone was in their beds like good girls and boys somebody would have heard something.’ His tone was mocking but he could not, surely, have guessed that I was with Lollie all night and so I ignored him.

‘Harry,’ I said, ‘can I speak seriously to you for a minute?’

‘I don’t care that he’s dead and I don’t care who killed him,’ he said. ‘So if that’s what you’re on about the answer is no.’

‘But presumably, like me, you don’t want to see an innocent party accused?’ I said. ‘Even if you don’t mind the idea of the guilty going free.’ Harry nodded. ‘Well, it’s about Eldry.’

‘What about her?’

‘This morning, when you lifted her up and carried her downstairs, you didn’t happened to notice if there was a stain on her dress, did you? Or on her apron? Anywhere really.’

‘A stain?’ said Harry, looking uncomfortable for the first time.

‘A bloodstain. Only she said that she had got blood on herself when she went in with the tray.’

‘Well, I didn’t see it,’ said Harry. ‘So I don’t think—’ He stopped short and stared at me. ‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘how is that “clearing the innocent”? You’re checking what she said against what I say – that’s not “clearing” anyone.’

‘I was hoping you
had
seen something,’ I told him. ‘Otherwise, I don’t know what to think and what to say to the superintendent.’

‘And she just come out and told you this, did she?’ Harry asked.

‘I found her in my little laundry room, washing her clothes,’ I said. ‘And—’

‘God almighty,’ said Harry. ‘She’s never at that again, is she?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, but Harry shook his head.

‘Ask one of the girls if you can’t guess,’ he said. ‘That man deserved ten knives in him for what he did, miss, if you ask me.’

‘Did he ever do anything to you?’ I asked. ‘Besides offend you.’

‘He did,’ Harry said, licking his lips and struggling with what appeared to be an unpleasant memory. ‘He belittled me, rubbed my nose in the difference between the two of us as if I wasn’t twice the man he’ll ever be if you stripped away the accident of birth and the trappings of privilege.’

‘Yes, but what did he actually do?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Harry.

‘You’ll have to tell the police.’

‘It’s not like that,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘But I’ve never told anyone, that’s all.’

‘We don’t get to choose what we tell the police, my boy. Not in the midst of a murder investigation. Even you must see that.’

‘But it’s just daft,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell that copper – it’s just stupid. And I wouldn’t even know what to tell him.’ I waited and after a pause he blurted out: ‘He took my clothes.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘See? It’s daft. He went into my trunk down in the carriage house there and took my clothes away. I think it was after we were talking one time – him and me – about ownership and wealth, him acting all interested and that, drawing me out, and then he took every stitch I had to my name.’

It was, I thought, a neat way to undercut someone’s droning on about the sins of ownership but rather a nasty one. I cast a look at what Harry was wearing now and he caught me.

‘I got it all back again,’ he said, looking down at his shirtsleeves and black trousers. ‘But he’d cut the pockets out. And when I went and challenged him he said I wouldn’t be needing pockets since I had no time for possessions to put in them. It was late at night and he was drunk and I was . . . I was feart.’ He turned out his pockets now and I could see that they were made of mismatched cloth, stitched on the stubs of the pockets which had gone before. ‘I fixed them up myself,’ he said. ‘The girls would have helped me but I never told them. I was feart and I didn’t understand why and that scared me even more.’

‘Madness is frightening, Harry,’ I said. ‘I understand perfectly.’

‘Aye, madness,’ he said, leaping on my suggestion as though it was a stroke of genius. ‘He made me feel as if
I
was going mad too.’ He shook his head as though to cast it off from him. ‘Like how any chance he got he would take the scissors to my coat or snip away at my breeks cuffs. Just wee digs, just to remind me.’

I nodded. This Pip Balfour – creeping about with scissors, snipping away – sounded exactly like Lollie’s midnight visitor with the nasty taste in poetry.

‘And yet you stayed,’ I said, as I had said to Lollie too.

‘I did,’ said Harry. He had shrugged off the troubling memories and was smiling again. ‘And the glorious day has dawned, miss, hasn’t it? Not the proper glorious day, but this’ll do to be going on with.’ With that he left, switching off the light and leaving me alone in the dark.

7

By luncheon, Mr Faulds too had made the journey up to the little parlour and back again and so, with all possible suspects interviewed – for Mrs Hepburn had indeed been vociferous on the topic of her sharp ears and the secure fastening of the house at night-time – PC Morrison was relieved of his watch and was given instead the even duller task of standing outside Pip Balfour’s bedroom door guarding the body until the coroner’s cart came to take it away to the mortuary. Superintendent Hardy had departed, hurrying off down the stairs to the street, trailing sheaves of notes behind him – and as for Sergeant Mackenzie, he had never returned after his first exit. Lollie was asleep, luncheon was served, all was calm.

‘So,’ said Mr Faulds, gripping the edge of the table with both hands and looking at his staff ranged up and down the sides, ‘I think a short grace is in order.’ Eleven heads bowed. Ten remained bowed, but I admit that mine popped up again to watch him. ‘Dear Father,’ he said, with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his hands pressed together, ‘we thank Thee for Thy bounty and for our deliverance from dark days. We ask that Thou bless this house in its hour of uncertainty and bring peace to the troubled breast of our dear mistress. We pray that Thy mercy be showered on the soul of our departed master and we ask that Thou willst bring us all safely through the storm to a happier future according to Thy holy will. Amen.’

I was speechless, although a chorus of amens rumbled out from everyone else readily enough. Mr Faulds’s prayer, if I understood it, could be paraphrased as: thank you for Pip Balfour’s death. Please look out for us during the investigation, show Lollie that she’s better off without him, make sure no one gets punished and, anyway, he deserved it.

‘What happens now, Mr Faulds?’ said Phyllis. She was already dressed for her afternoon out in a coat-dress of daffodil yellow and a straw hat, and looked the picture of springtime despite the black armband. ‘What will the police do next?’

‘Nothing that should be discussed at the dinner table,’ said Mrs Hepburn. She had passed a loaded plate up to Mr Faulds at the far end and now turned to me. ‘How many slices, Fanny?’ It was boiled mutton of all things and I could not help thinking of the knife as Mrs Hepburn forked a thick slab onto my plate for me. ‘And take plenty tatties,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a draining time of it and you’ll need your strength.’