Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains (22 page)

‘She’s on her way from Inverness,’ said Lollie, ‘but might take some time.’

Mr Ettrick shook his head and tutted, then ushered Lollie up the steps and through the glass doors with one hand in the small of her back and the other thrown wide as though to ward off any harm coming at her in a flanking manoeuvre. I supposed that a solicitor had to be solicitous, if anyone did, and she was a new widow and very fragile-looking, but still as I followed them – Miss Rossiter, of course, was not included in the ushering – the crease of concern between his brows and the way he stooped over her, as well as that arm shielding her from one knew not what, began to worry me.

We crossed a dark hallway, deeply carpeted in blue plush and shining with the gleam of mahogany, the glitter of brass and the wink of polished mirrors, and rose up a set of wide and shallow stairs. Somewhere, deep in the innards of Murray and Ettrick, at least a few typewriting machines were clacking away like crickets, but these front parts – the stairs and the cavernous room we were taken into at the top of them – were hushed and still, free of any modern trappings and looking, with their tall cases full of well-bound books and deep button-backed chairs, exactly like a club library, only less smoky.

I seated myself neatly on a hard bench just inside the door and watched as Mr Ettrick led Lollie to an armchair and settled her into it as though she were a grandmother. As he turned away from her, his frown deepened and he rubbed his palms on his trousers.

‘Now . . . Mrs Balfour,’ he said, once he had sat down on the other side of an imposing desk, and clasped his hands together on top of it. ‘First of all, please allow me to say how very sorry we are. Murray and Ettrick have long been honoured to serve the legal needs of the Balfour family and we feel in our small way some of the shock and disbelief this most dreadful event must have brought to you.’ The words were conventional, but Mr Ettrick was an old hand at it and the tone and expression were perfect. Then he faltered. ‘Let me say, dear lady,’ he went on, looking down at his hands on the desk, ‘that we did not draw up your late husband’s will, nor did anyone in this office co-sign it as witness. We merely held it. We . . . that is to say, I . . . no one read it until yesterday morning.’ At this point Mr Ettrick’s discomfort led him as far as to acknowledge my existence. He gave me a quick look and then glanced towards the empty chair beside Lollie. I rose silently and came to sit in it.

‘Very well then,’ he continued. He wore the usual tall stiff celluloid collar of the town solicitor and at that moment it appeared to be strangling him. He gulped once or twice, then took a pair of small spectacles out of his breast pocket and wound them onto his ears with some deliberation. He was a man in his fifties but just then I could see the twenty-year-old he had once been. He drew towards him the green paper folder which was the only item on the desk-top and opened it.

‘
I, Philip James Balfour of 31 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, do declare this 5th day of March in the year 1926 that this is my last will and testament and renders all earlier testamentary documents bearing my name null and void
.’ Mr Ettrick cleared his throat and gripped the paper a little tighter. ‘
I hereby give and bequeath everything of which I may die possessed or which may be hereafter due to me, both heritable property and moveable assets, in their entirety, to my cousin, George Pollard, formerly resident in St Mary’s Square, Gloucester
.’ The solicitor bent his head and I felt Lollie stiffen in the chair beside me. ‘
This disposition of my estate is in recognition of and recompense for the iniquities meted out from my forebears to that branch of the Balfour family connected by marriage to the Pollard family and to which my esteemed cousin belongs
.’

‘He can’t do that,’ I said, putting an arm along the back of Lollie’s chair. ‘Mr Ettrick, I must protest in the strongest terms to you subjecting Mrs Balfour to this performance. You know very well that under Scots Law the widow cannot be disinherited.’

Mr Ettrick was holding up a hand like a policeman stopping traffic.

‘If you would allow me, Miss er . . .’ he said, and bent his head to continue reading.

‘But he can’t,’ I insisted. ‘This is nonsense.’

‘Please,’ said Mr Ettrick. ‘If you would have just a little patience. I am coming to it, I assure you.
I appoint Bertram Ettrick, Solicitor, as my executor and overseer of the trust and request specifically that he expedite with all possible haste the removal from my house at Heriot Row all servants and other residents, including Miss Walburga Percival
.’

‘What?’ said Lollie and I felt a jolt pass through her.

‘There’s a little more,’ said Mr Ettrick, his voice so quiet now that I could hardly hear it. ‘There’s a codicil, requesting that George Pollard, after the will is fully executed of course,
ascertain the burial place of my wife, Josephine Beatrice Balfour née Carson, born 22nd August 1890 and died 10th July 1924, and erect there a monument, the choosing of which I entrust to him, assured of his affectionate attention in this matter
.’

‘Who?’ said Lollie. She was sitting forward, straining out of her seat, almost keening towards him, trying to understand. Mr Ettrick, unable to bear the look upon her face, directed his gaze instead at me.

‘Who witnessed it?’ I asked and he nodded slightly, as though acknowledging the sense of my question.

‘It was witnessed by a Miss Margaret Anne Taylor and a Miss Jessie Armstrong Abbott. Neither are known to me.’

‘Abbott and Maggie,’ said Lollie, in a dazed voice. ‘My maids, Mr Ettrick. Two of my maids.’

‘Ex-maids,’ I said, furiously thinking what that might mean, for it had to mean something.

Mr Ettrick had risen and gone to a section of bookcase lower than the rest where a sherry decanter and glasses were set out. He poured himself a stiff measure, swallowed it in one gulp and then refilled his glass and two others. He handed mine to me with a grim look and then placed Lollie’s carefully into her hand, wrapping her fingers around it. She put it down into her lap without a glance, but I admit that I knocked mine back just as readily and as indecorously as Mr Ettrick had his first and, I saw, his second.

‘I thought you were a maid yourself, madam, at first,’ he said to me. ‘I do beg your pardon.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Now, Mr Ettrick, the question is this: is it legal? It’s perfectly wicked, but is it legal? Will it stand?’

‘Ah!’ said Lollie and she raised her hands as though at some spectacle laid out before her, letting her glass tumble down, spilling sherry over her skirt and stockings. ‘1924! And we were married in 1921. And so we weren’t married, were we? I see.’ She sounded relieved, happy to have sorted the puzzling words of the will into something that made sense to her; she even smiled a little, but no sooner had the smile left her lips than she swayed back in her seat and then in one fluid movement, like an eel, she slipped downwards and, unless I had caught her under her arms and held her, would have slithered onto the floor.

Mr Ettrick, sturdier after all than the strangulated neck inside the stiff collar suggested, easily took her weight from me and carried her over to a sofa against the far wall, where he laid her down and stood over her, shaking his head and breathing loudly.

‘If this earlier marriage to Miss Carson is right enough,’ he said, ‘and if she really did die in 1924 then, yes, I daresay it’s perfectly legal and I’ll have no choice but to execute it. The wording is not what I would have written myself, but – most unfortunately – it’s clear enough that any objections would be batted away as cavils. If I had known what was in it, it would have been a different matter, though, I can tell you. Murray and Ettrick have never been party to any such thing in eighty years of practice, Miss er . . .’

‘What interests me particularly,’ I said, thinking back over all that I had just heard, ‘is the two years’ delay. Have you ever come across such a thing before? Is it usual?’

‘Never,’ said Mr Ettrick. He stooped to retrieve Lollie’s sherry glass and returned it to the tray, taking the opportunity while he was there to pour himself a third measure. ‘It’s quite common to have a stipulation that a will has to be executed within a year, or two, or five, if there’s some doubt as to whether the legatee can be traced, for instance. But as to
waiting
two years, I have no idea.’

On the couch, Lollie shifted a little and moaned softly.

‘I’ll fetch the chauffeur,’ I said. ‘She should be at home.’ Then I shook my head and laughed. ‘Home! She has no home, does she? You are charged to break the household up as soon as you can manage it.’

‘Expedite with all possible haste,’ said Mr Ettrick, nodding. ‘It sounds marvellous, doesn’t it, Miss er . . . but Mr Balfour had no legal training and, legally speaking, it doesn’t mean a thing. That is, I interpret it as meaning “carry out with as much haste as is commensurate with the comfort and convenience of all affected parties”. Yes, indeed, that’s what it means to me.’

Mr Ettrick, in other words, was that fabled beast: a lawyer with a heart of gold. He was in Pip’s employ and could not resign from it, but he was in Lollie’s corner. He was a small mercy in all of this and I thanked heaven for him.

10

‘And you had no idea, madam?’ said Superintendent Hardy. He was sitting on the dressing stool in Lollie’s bedroom looking like a shire horse in a hat shop against the lavender silk. Lollie had gone straight to bed upon her return and when I had tried to get her up again, tried to persuade her that it was highly improper to summon the policeman to her bedside, she had only laughed a rather hysterical laugh and asked me why she should care about what was proper now. She laughed again as Hardy spoke to her

‘Not “madam”,’ she said. ‘“Miss”! I’m not a married woman. I’m a . . . I’m a . . . I don’t even know what the current term is for what I am.’

‘Mrs Balfour,’ said Superintendent Hardy, who must have been squirming but was hiding it very well. ‘My dear madam. Let us pay no attention to any of that until we see what’s what. I for one don’t believe it.’

‘Then why would he have said it?’ said Lollie. ‘Written it? Put it in the most serious document anyone ever writes in his life?’ I was standing beside the window looking out along the street for her doctor, to whom I had sent an urgent message to attend. Lollie, I feared, was beyond the reach of toast water, fish custard, or even port and brandy now, and as pitiful as her tears had been in the first throes of grief, as worrying as her blank, pale face and toneless voice had been when the shock had benumbed her, this was worst of all. Now her eyes glittered and her voice had a rich chuckle in it, and she made me think of a child’s balloon dancing at the end of its string as the breeze tried to twitch it away. I only hoped the doctor would come soon with some kind of stout medicinal tether for her.

‘It seems perfectly in character to me, Lollie dear,’ I said. She and Hardy both turned towards me. ‘He did have a weakness for rather cruel little practical jokes, didn’t he? The goose with mouse stuffing? Perhaps this will was another of them. Perhaps he meant to show it to you. He can’t have expected to die at twenty-six, after all. He probably meant to enjoy your distress then tear it up and write a new one, a real one.’

‘What goose?’ Lollie said, and I found it far from reassuring that out of all I had said,
this
was the point she chose to question. With relief, I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall man with a large leather bag striding confidently along the road. He took the steps to the front door of Number 31 at a bound and as he disappeared from my view I heard the unmelodious clank of the bell sounding far below.

‘That’s the doctor,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down and meet him.’

But outside the door, Hardy laid an arm on mine and drew me into the boudoir.

‘Let one of the maids go tripping up and downstairs with the doc,’ he said. ‘You’ve more important business to see to. Now, as Mrs Balfour asked you: what goose?’

I told him as briefly and as dispassionately as I could, about the mouse in the goose, the chopped-out pockets in Harry’s clothes, the nasty way Pip Balfour had had of stranding people alone at night in the dark and the cold. ‘I don’t think there’s a single person in the household to whom he wasn’t thoroughly callous at some time,’ I said, counting them off on my fingers. ‘Actually, I don’t know about Stanley, the footman. I haven’t spoken to him. But the men are immaterial. It’s the girls we need to worry about. They were in the house.’

‘But Dr Glenning said a girl couldn’t have done it,’ Hardy reminded me.

‘A typical girl couldn’t have, perhaps,’ I said, thinking of Millie, ‘but that’s not the point. I was already thinking that one of the girls might have let someone in, let him in the back door unheard by Mrs Hepburn and unheard by me, since neither of us were where we should have been. Only I didn’t know which girl and couldn’t imagine
who
she had let in. I was thinking along the lines of a swain come to avenge her honour, I suppose. But we can cast the role now, Superintendent, wouldn’t you say?’

‘George Pollard?’ said the superintendent. ‘Does he even exist? I thought you didn’t believe in that will. I thought you said it was a joke.’

‘There’s
something
very odd about it,’ I said. ‘Something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I’m afraid when I dismissed it I was only trying to calm Mrs Balfour. I think it’s real enough. And if Pip Balfour’s cousin knew its terms, then he had the strongest possible motive to persuade someone in this house to open up the back door one night and let him in.’