Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains (36 page)

I laid a hand out and picked the topmost book from where I had left them on my nightstand. My much-ridiculed notebooks, I thought, as I flipped through the pages. There were my first impressions of the household: Lollie –
sweet and confused, inclined not to believe her own experiences but rather to cling on to her hopes even in the face of bitter experience to the contrary;
Mrs Hepburn –
sharp-tongued but good-hearted, kind to her charges
and a later note squeezed in –
food sent back and tricks played – soup/water, goose/mouse
; Eldry –
shy, easily frightened, PF
foisted attentions against will. Unstable – stains/washing find out more?
; and Pip Balfour himself
– unassuming, friendly, shirtsleeves! Model yacht!! Hard to see beast L. speaks of. Seems absol. unexceptional & pleasant yg man. Brilliant actor???

Stanley must be further on. Yes, that was right, I had not set down my thoughts about him until after the meeting in the carriage house that day. I picked up a second and a third notebook and found it at last. I turned the page towards the window and began reading.

Stanley. Footman. Smug, boastful (esp. re superior training), ingratiating, hates blood. Hints but knows nothing of import. Hates PB, because father/TB/visit.
This had been scored out and changed to:
would never pay TB
visit – fears blood. Could not stab someone. Conclude: innocent as has always seemed
(more’s the pity)
. I stared at the page in front of me. I traced the words with my finger and spoke them under my breath. ‘Innocent as has always seemed’?

So where were the notes about my suspicions? About what I had thought of Stanley all along? I got out of bed and walked up and down the bare floor staring at the journal in my hands. How could such lies be there in my book, in my writing, when I had not written them and never would write them, and where was what I
had
written, what I must have written, about all of his blunders and my growing certainty? I stopped pacing and threw the book down onto the bedcovers.

I was still standing in the middle of the floor when Alec came back to the door again.

‘Dan?’ he said. ‘Are you still in h—?’ He came right into the room and took my arms in his hands. ‘Dandy?’

‘Alec,’ I said, and I was surprised at the smallness of the voice that came out of me. ‘Something is wrong.’ I led him over to the bed and sat him down on it, opening the notebook and laying it on his lap.

‘I didn’t write that,’ I said, pointing.

Alec skimmed the page quickly and then looked up at me.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

Alec shut the book and looked closely at the cover.

‘It’s your book, though, isn’t it? I recognise it.’ I nodded. It was certainly mine. Alec opened it again and peered at the binding. ‘It’s a proper page,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been bodged in with glue. And it’s your writing, darling. I’d know it anywhere. I always said you take too many notes. And now there are so many you can’t even remember writing them. Lesson for next time: less writing.’

I nodded. Writing, I thought. Handwriting. Names signed in writing. I was close to it now; I had almost caught hold of the end of it. And yes! There it was.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Listen to this.’ A will in Pip Balfour’s writing, referring to a cousin no one has ever heard of and a wife who probably did not exist, and bearing the signatures of two women who cannot be found. And a note in Stanley’s writing accusing himself of a crime he could not have committed – because of the blood – and left to prove a suicide he could not have committed – more blood – and now this. A journal entry in my own writing which I did not write, saying things I did not think and omitting things I did.’

Alec whistled.

‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘Alec, there’s a forger at the bottom of this.’

‘Hang on, though,’ Alec said. ‘The will, I grant you, is worth forging and the signatures to it, obviously. And the confession. But why would anyone forge a note in your personal papers?’

‘I don’t know why. I’m very confused about things this morning. I feel almost . . . drunk.’

‘Well, you looked at least “almost drunk” when you came up from your cosy time in the pantry last night,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps it hasn’t worn off yet. What were you drinking?’

‘I can’t remember,’ I said, and ignored Alec’s tutting and rolling eyes. ‘But I’m sure about this.’

‘A forger, though,’ he said. ‘I always thought that a forger had to copy what lay before him and that it took long hours of practice and draft after draft to get it right.’

‘So?’

‘Well, just that that would do for a will that could be worked upon in secret for as long as it took to perfect it, but could a forger dash off a suicide note or slip an entry into a journal without a single crossing-out or false step to betray him? It seems more like some kind of party trick or magic turn, not part of a carefully planned murder. Sorry, darling, I think this particular leap of genius can be cured by two aspirin and a prairie oyster.’ He gave me a very unsympathetic grin and left again.

His words, though, had left their mark upon me. Party trick, he had said. Magic turn. Words which sent me scurrying to put on my clothes, drag a brush through my hair and fly down and down and down the four flights, back to the servants’ floor. If anyone had heard of such a thing it would be Mr Faulds, I told myself, for had he not spent the last part of the evening before regaling me with tales of impressionists and ventriloquists, mind readers and spirit writers, and all the ways there were to fool a gaping audience about who one was or where or what one could see or touch or do? If this feat of forgery were possible, then Mr Faulds would surely have come across it somewhere along the way. And besides, the thought of pouring even a little of this out to Mr Faulds was as comforting as a warm blanket and a mug of cocoa. Mr Faulds would help me.

He was at the head of the table, in his waistcoat with a cotton breakfast napkin tucked into his collar against splashes of yolk on his black tie, but he gave me a sunny smile as I rushed in and did not hesitate to follow me out into the passageway when I said I needed a word with him. He ushered me into his pantry with the utmost courtesy and I sat down again on the seat I had occupied the previous evening.

‘It’s about writing,’ I said. ‘Gosh, this is all so muddled. But it just occurred to me that no one who saw the will being written is here to confirm it. And obviously, poor Stanley is not here to say whether he wrote the note that was found beside him, and there’s another thing too – it doesn’t signify but it started me wondering – and I just think that maybe there’s something peculiar about all this suspicious writing of things and I wondered if you had ever heard of anything like that, in your music-hall days. One of these clever tricksters you were talking about last night or something? Could such a thing be done, do you know?’

Mr Faulds was staring at me with his eyes very wide and his mouth just slightly open, but I could see that behind the frozen look on his face his mind was whirring just as fast as mine.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What have you thought of? Has something struck you too? What is it?’

‘What on earth put such an idea into your head?’ said Mr Faulds.

‘Am I right?’ I said. ‘Have I solved it?’

‘Solved it?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Why on earth would you be looking to solve anything, Fanny?’ He was gazing at me with the oddest expression and I remembered that Fanny Rossiter was not in the business of solving things. He did not seem to disapprove, though. His regard was sorrowful, as though I had filled him with some regretful sadness of some kind.

‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Just listen. I never heard of such a thing. And you can be sure I would have.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Really?’

Mr Faulds tapped his fingers against his cheek and thought hard, but he was soon shaking his head.

‘You must be thinking of the spirit writers I was telling you about. But they had huge sheets of white card and the “spirit pens” – all done with a wire, you know – were great black things that made writing you could see from the back of the gallery.’

‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘I really thought I’d got a hold of something there.’

‘Listen, Fanny,’ he said again. ‘Just hush now and listen to me.’

But before he could go on there was a rap at the door. A spasm of annoyance passed over his face as he barked out permission to enter. It was Eldry, looking startled at his tone.

‘Beg pardon, Mr Faulds,’ she said, ‘but that Osborne, Aunt Goitre’s chauffeur, is asking urgently for Miss Rossiter.’

Mr Faulds looked very slowly between Eldry and me before he replied.

‘You’d better run along then, Fanny my girl. But you need to tell that young man how to behave himself when he’s a guest below stairs in another man’s house. You tell him from me.’

‘
He’s
in a funny mood this morning,’ said Eldry when the door was shut behind us. I nodded but did not reply. Alec was standing in the open garden doorway, smoking, and turned round when he saw me, throwing his cigarette out onto the grass and starting up the stairs. I followed him. When we were out of Eldry’s earshot I asked him what the trouble was.

‘I was worried about you,’ he said. ‘Phyllis said you came panting in and dragged Mr Faulds from his bacon and eggs and disappeared with him. I didn’t know where you’d got to.’

We were on the ground floor and I veered off the stairway and into the small back parlour which I knew would be empty once the fire was laid for the day.

‘Never mind where I
had
got to,’ I said, when we were inside with the door locked behind us, ‘ask me where I’ve got to now. I’ve got a lot further in the last five minutes, I can tell you. I went to ask Mr Faulds about the forgery because last night he was telling me all about card tricksters and voice throwers and people who could guess objects held up in the audience when they were blindfold and all that sort of thing. Now, he was adamant he had never heard of such a thing. He thought long and hard and drew a blank. But I’ve just realised something.’

Alec gave a loud tut and rolled his eyes, for he hates these dramatic pauses when I do them even though he does them himself every chance that comes.

‘Mr Ernest Faulds,’ I went on, ‘has said that he has no singing voice, and has “heard” lots of music-hall songs over the years – “heard”, mind; not “played” – and spoke of comics as though of a separate race and said he had no time for magic acts and is not much of a dancer and in short . . .’

‘In short, has never said outright what it was he did onstage,’ said Alec.

‘Precisely. And did not like it one little bit when I started talking about trick writing. And here’s another thing: one time I teased Faulds about “neglecting his talents” working as a butler instead of treading the boards and he shut down like a trap. I couldn’t understand why I had offended him so, but now I see.’

‘How could forging handwriting make a stage act?’ Alec said.

‘How can card tricks?’ I countered. ‘The question is how can we find out? Or do we just go to Hardy with what we’ve got and tell him Faulds is the man? That he forged the will and the suicide note and killed Pip and Stanley?’

Now, Alec actually screwed his face up, so little did he think of my brilliant leap of reasoning.

‘I shall come to the police station with you and wait outside,’ he said, ‘but if you want to march into Hardy’s office and shout “Ta-dah!” it will have to be a solo act, I’m afraid.’

‘What a shame it’s Sunday,’ I said. ‘I could have telephoned to the stage-door of the Swansea Alhambra or the Leicester Whatever and asked if anyone remembered him. Ernest Faulds the Forger. It even sounds like a music-hall turn.’

‘Well,’ said Alec, ‘I really don’t think this is going to go anywhere, Dandy, but if you’re determined, you should know that Sunday is the busiest day backstage, all hands on deck for the departure of the outgoing artistes and the arrival of the next lot for the week to come. And also, if Fabulous Faulds the Forger played Leicester and Swansea then he would surely have played the Edinburgh Empire too.’

‘Will you come too?’ I said. ‘I’ve never knocked on a stage-door before.’

‘Nor have I!’ said Alec, just too emphatically to be quite plausible, and I smirked, wondering which curled and powdered little songbird had tempted him into hanging around with red roses and invitations to supper. ‘But I’ll happily tag along.’

There was indeed a great deal of activity in the lane behind the Empire Theatre, with trunks and hampers being carried out to carts waiting at the roadside, and stagehands trotting up and down between the backstage proper and the workshop which lay at the farthest end of the lane. There was even the inevitable argument going on out front on Nicholson Square, between the men in the carts and the men in the armbands.

‘I’m nowt to do wi’ no carters’ union,’ said a pugnacious-looking little man who was holding one end of an enormous trunk whose other end already rested on the flat bed of his cart. The horse in the shafts was looking back at the commotion with eyes which had seen it all. ‘I work for Moss’s Empires and I’m already having enough trouble today trying to get this show over to Glasgow with no bloody trains and no bloody buses and not even a barge on the canal. And so help me if you don’t get your neb out you’ll not recognise it next time you look in a glass, I can tell you.’

Alec and I sidled past as casually as we could and just as casually mounted the stage-door steps and entered the theatre. I sniffed deeply, expecting some romantic aroma from all I had heard and read on the matter, but there was just must and paint and lamp oil and I concluded that one would need to be devoted already to all things theatrical for such a smell to quicken one’s blood.

‘Name?’ said a voice at our side, making both Alec and me jump. We turned to see an elderly man wearing a velvet blanket around his shoulders like a shawl, clutching a tattered sheet of paper and looking at us over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles.