Into the Valley of Death (7 page)

“Different? But what?”

“We need to frighten Master Burch, my dear. To frighten him to the very back of his teeth.”

“So that he will tell us, not simply that he lied in the witness-box, but who it was that made him lie?”

“I always thought you knew one end of the stick from the other, Miss Unwin.”

“Yes, that is all very well. Yet how are we to frighten the fellow? How am I to do it, since you seem to think this falls to my lot?”

“Ah, not altogether to your lot, no. To one of us after the other, I rather think.”

“Then tell me what I myself must do.”

“I think this. You must go to him, as soon as may be, in the guise you told me you have already once adopted, the lady writer from a magazine. You will not find it easy to persuade him to talk. But at least you must manage him in such a fashion that he does talk to you for a little, that he does answer some questions about his evidence at the assizes. You won’t get him to modify by one jot those parrot words of his, but that won’t matter. All you have to do is to make him remember the saying of those words in court, in short his abominable perjury, and to call to mind the man who forced him—how, we do not know—to commit that perjury.”

“Yes,” said Miss Unwin. “Yes, I can do that.”

She almost rose from her chair and set off for Arthur Burch’s farm that moment. But then she remembered her morning’s work.

“Mr. Heavitree,” shes said. “This is difficult indeed. You see, in order to have all the gentry of the county under my eye, I have persuaded the housekeeper at Monkton Hall to take me on for the evening of General Pastell’s ball tonight as
a lady’s-maid. But she wants my services within the hour, and I think, going about the house with my fellow servants, I may well learn something that at least might be helpful to me tonight.”

Mr. Heavitree sighed once more. “Then we shall have to wait till tomorrow to carry out what I may call the Burch side of our investigation,” he said. “Time is pressing, of course. Three clear days only remain now. But it cannot be helped. Your going to the Hall may after all prove our best way forward. And perhaps, too, there’s something to be said for letting Master Burch stew for a little. Yes, stew and worry, worry and stew. I rather like it”

Miss Unwin waited only to tell Vilkins, who was herself due to go back to the Hall for the busy evening ahead, that her plan had succeeded. Then she snatched a bite to eat and set out again for General Pastell’s big house.

She found preparations for the ball in full swing.

Ahead of her as she trudged the last hundred yards up the hill to the tall iron gates she saw the men of the local band, their bandmaster chivvying them from the rear, their bright brass instruments dazzling in the rays of the sun, making their way to the house to rehearse. In the grounds, gardeners were going to the back doors with flowers by the barrowload. Two others had heaved from the ice-pit in the shadiest corner its last remaining enormous block of ice, shipped in winter from distant Norway. Protected from the sun now by layers of dampened sacking, in the cool of a pantry indoors it would be broken into pieces and used to chill champagne and make the ice-puddings without which any self-respecting ball would be considered a failure.

Indoors, Mrs. Perker, plainly harassed, received her with a quick command.

“Go to the servants’ hall. Ask for Rosa, who was poor Mrs. Pastell’s maid before she died. She will give you a dress that I
trust will fit, and then, lady’s-maid or no lady’s-maid, you must help where you’re wanted.”

But after this she took a step nearer and dropped her voice.

“And as to you-know-what, you must shift for yourself as best you can. And you may be sure I have not told a soul.”

By which Miss Unwin knew that one soul at least must have been told. And that that one soul would tell another, and that other yet one more. If the man who had shot Alfie Goode was to be at the ball, it was more than likely that sooner or later he would learn that a female detective, one of those creatures more written about in sensation novels than active in real life, was there to spy on him. But fictional exaggerations might well stand her in good stead. The man she wanted to start from his lair might be all the more nervous because of them, and perhaps all the more ready to make a move. It would be a dangerous move for her, no doubt, but, if all went well, a fine false move.

She found almost at once that some of her guesses were correct. When she entered the servants’ hall, more than one pair of eyes regarded her with more curiosity than a mere ordinary newcomer might expect. And when she was taken by Rosa to see if one of her crisply starched black cambric dresses would fit, she received final confirmation.

Rosa said nothing directly. A dress was found and a few stitches put in it to adjust the waist. Then, as Miss Unwin, now from head to foot a servant once more, was leaving the bedroom, Rosa ventured one quick remark.

“There now, miss, you’ll be as fine a lady’s-maid as myself.”

The “miss” was the betrayal. Miss Unwin thanked her new fellow servant and ignored the tiny slip.

For the next few hours, in fact, she had little opportunity to think of how she had stepped down from governess to maid, and not much more chance, as it turned out, of working at the reason she had had for her descent. When “the whole county” is coming to a ball in a house in only a few hours, each and every servant in that house will be kept busy one
way or another, from housekeeper of twenty years’ service to lady’s-maid just employed that day.

So Miss Unwin—plain Unwin now—made herself useful, and did no more than hope she might learn a little. She collected newly polished lamps from the lamp-room, with their wicks well trimmed, ready for the night’s illumination in a country house as yet far from having the convenience of city gaslight. She took a fresh jar of beeswax to a pair of footmen dragging the gardener’s boy on a polishing mat up and down the parquet of the ballroom. She fetched candles by the box to fit into the glittering chandeliers. She went to the still-room to take from its cupboards and long shelves preserves and liqueurs and put them where, when the supper hour came round, they would be needed. She even stepped outside once to the game-larder, isolated in its back courtyard where its rank odours would not be offensive, to bring well-hung birds to the kitchens.

She made sure, too, that she had everything she herself might want in the little morning parlour, where during the ball she was to sit and be ready to assist with hot tongs if careful curls had fallen from their place or with needle and thread if some minor repair was needed.

So, in the end, only once in all the hours of preparation did she find a moment to do something towards furthering the task she had undertaken. This was when, late on, she caught a glimpse of Vilkins, busy as herself. She managed to draw her aside.

“Dear,” she said hurriedly, “you, too, can play your part tonight.”

“What, me a female detective? You don’t know ’oo you’re a-talking to.”

“Oh, yes, I do, my dear. To someone who has eyes in her head, and good sharp ones, too.”

“Well, I won’t say as ’ow I can’t see what’s in front o’ me nose.”

“And there are a good many good people who let themselves
be blinded when it comes to that. So this is what I want you to do tonight. Simply look and listen. And if you see or hear anything that seems even a little out of place, let me know of it when you can.”

“Out o’ place?”

“Yes, just that. Because, unless I’m very much mistaken, there will be here tonight amidst all the festivities one man who will be out of place indeed. A murderer, my dear, no less.”

“An’ what’ve I got to look out for? Blood on ’is ’ands?”

Miss Unwin smiled. “No, nothing as plain as that, I’m afraid. But that man killed a villain not so many weeks ago, and, more to the point, he is even now hoping and praying that the law in its majesty will kill a good man for him before the week is out. So he may not manage to behave quite as he should. And perhaps, only perhaps, either you or I shall catch a glimpse of that ’not as he should.’”

“Then I’ll keep me old peepers as peeled as peeled,” said Vilkins. “Trust me for that.”

Then at last there came the hour of the ball. Carriages rolled up to the wide-open door of the old house. Ladies in gowns of gauze and muslin were handed down from them. Gentlemen in evening dress stepped out afterwards. Gentlemen in evening dress or, Miss Unwin noted, watching discreetly from the doorway of the little morning-room where she was on duty, very often in military uniform, as might be expected when a general entertained.

It was at this time, too, that she got her first sight of General Pastell, standing at the back of his long entrance hall welcoming the guests. She was impressed, even deeply, by what she saw. The General was so plainly a soldier, for all that he was no longer of an age to be active. But the utter straightness of his back, the firm set of his shoulders, the rigour of his white moustaches, all proclaimed the military man even more than the glitteringly epauletted uniform he wore so proudly. Yet even from a distance it was plain that he radiated kindness and good humour. Each new guest appeared to be questioned about health and family and kept long enough for a full answer. And each one left him smiling.

Yes, Miss Unwin thought, I can well understand a man like that taking so much trouble to save a lowly soldier from the gallows. No wonder Mrs. Perker accepted at once that daring lie that he had employed a private inquiry agency even at this late hour. Why, it might be thought the old gentleman had some special reason for his kindness.

But she had no time now to speculate on the character of the man under whose roof she was working in secret. Lady
guests began to flood into the morning-room to leave wraps and cloaks, and more than one needed help to repair some minor disaster to hair or complexion that had occurred on the journey to the Hall.

Eventually, however, the rush ended. The band Miss Unwin had followed up to the house earlier in the day could be heard from the ballroom blowing and scraping hard as they could go, and from elsewhere in the big house came the sound of conversations and laughter.

In the scurry of the arrivals, Miss Unwin had had little time to eavesdrop on what one lady was saying to another, though she thought that if some particularly scandalous subject had arisen, she would have caught it. But it was not likely, she reasoned, that the real gossip of the neighbourhood, which might give her a clue as to who could be a victim of Alfie Goode’s extortion, would be broached at the start of the evening. Ladies not in the inner circle of county society must be present as well as those at the heart of affairs. So the latter would certainly be restrained—until two or three of them happened to be alone in the room together.

Just then the stately figure of Mrs. Perker, contriving somehow to be unobtrusive at the same time, came sailing in. There was no one else in the room, and the housekeeper at once placed herself within an inch or two of Miss Unwin’s chair.

“I think I ought to tell you, miss,” she murmured, though with no loss of dignity, “there has not been one single person invited tonight who has not appeared. I say no more. You will understand.”

“Yes,” Miss Unwin murmured back with gratitude. “I do indeed understand, madam. But—but I am somewhat hampered by not knowing the names of so many of the guests.”

“I had thought of that,” Mrs. Perker whispered. “Take this.”

And from the bosom of her dress, embellished for the evening with a brooch of garnets, she took a long sheet of paper,
thrust it into Miss Unwin’s hand, and at once glided away in a swish of black satin.

Miss Unwin looked at the sheet. It was the housekeeper’s own carefully written-out list of all the guests, their names and styles. If the man she had to find was in truth a member of county society, then his name was surely here and he himself was dancing to the
rum-tum-tum
beat of the music in the ballroom or sitting somewhere in conversation.

But, dancing in cotillion or quadrille or tucked away in talk as he might be, how could she get so much as a look at him? Let alone catch him, whoever he was, by some lucky chance appearing more preoccupied than a reveller should be? Or— and this was perhaps a little more likely, she thought—making discreet advances to a lady not his wife?

She decided that she had to risk deserting her post for a little and go quietly here and there about the house as if busy on some errand. Perhaps she would catch a glimpse of someone behaving in the way she had described to Vilkins. A gentleman in the library, where the butler presided over a table set with silver pails of champagne on ice, drinking to excess? She might be lucky.

But, glance this way and that as she would, she saw nothing in any way out of the ordinary, and the minutes went ticking and ticking by.

A feeling of depression began to cling round her like a heavy mist. All that she had gone through to get herself here at this heaven-sent time, and was she going to have nothing to show for it?

Then, having stayed away from her post a good deal longer than was wise, as she made her way back she did have a single stroke of luck. It was not a matter of seeing a dancer looking as if he would rather be anywhere than in the whirl of a lively galop. Nor was it the sight of some secret toper. Nor of a yet more secret lover amid the banks of ferns and hothouse plants in the conservatory.

It was simply overhearing one man talking with another as
she hurried past the open doorway of the small room on the outside of the house specially fitted up for gentlemen to smoke in.

“Yes,” she just caught the words, “a damned female detective. I had it from Miss Troughton, who heard it from one of the maids.”

She came to a halt, looked left and right to see if she was observed, and, finding the coast clear, sidled nearer the open door.

“Some nonsensical idea of General Pastell’s,” she heard the voice resume. “Something to do with this fellow they’re hanging.”

“Oh, yes, I know. Old soldier.”

“I dare say. But to have a spy in the house, and a female one, too. It’s not what I call decent.”