Unholy Alliance (18 page)

“An’ Phyllis, the mistress’s maid, who’s off
in Kingston. An’ Mr. Struthers an’ his boy Cal, out in the stables.
An’ Giles, who run off after Alfred died.”

“Where are Miss Finch an’ Mr. Bragg right
now?”

“Prissy got things set up in the dining-room
a while ago, then went to her room. She’s very upset, findin’ a
dead body like that.”

“Understandable. An’ Mr. Bragg?”

“He’s tendin’ to the fireplaces upstairs.
He’ll be down here shortly,” she said, and flushed a bright
scarlet. “Fer some food,” she added.

“Is there a place where I can interview you
people in private?”

“You don’t think any of us did in poor Mr.
Chilton?” she cried, hopping off the sink.

“No, no, not at all. But I’ve found that
servants see an’ hear things that are usually helpful to us.
Nothin’ fer
you
to worry about.”

Looking only marginally relieved, Hetty said,
“Well, there’s the big pantry over there. It’s got a table. I could
clear it for ya, an’ take in a couple of chairs from our eatin’
place back there.”

“I’d be most pleased if you’d do that fer
me,” Cobb said, and flashed her his most ingratiating, gap-toothed
grin.

While Hetty cleared the jars and pots off the
pantry table, Cobb carried two wooden chairs into the little room
and set them up. He removed his notebook and pencil from his pocket
and arranged them on the table. Hetty brought in a candle-lantern
and lit a candelabrum on a nearby shelf. The door would have to be
kept ajar to provide both extra light and an exit-point for the
smoke. It wasn’t the Elmgrove library, but it would do.

As Hetty turned to go, Cobb said as gently as
he could, “Hetty, lass. I’d like to start my questionin’ with
you.”

***

“I want ya to tell me everythin’ that happened down
here from about suppertime on.”

Hetty looked as if she wanted to ask why, but
there was enough of the authority figure in the constable seated
opposite her – despite his bristled hair, red nose and winking wart
– to make her drop her eyes and do as she was bid. The question was
not hard to answer, she informed Cobb, because last evening was a
repeat of the previous one. As Chilton, Bragg and Finch served each
course upstairs, the soiled dishes came down via the dumb-waiter
and were scrubbed clean by herself and Tillie. Mrs. Blodgett, with
help from Cal Struthers, got the fresh food into the dumb-waiter,
and generally supervised the operation. Abel Struthers, the
stableman, was again conscripted to tend the fires in the northwest
wing and replace chamber-pots where needed. Without the services of
the disgruntled Giles Harkness or the regular upstairs maid, all
hands were needed. But by nine-thirty the dining-room was tidied,
the dishes and pots were washed and put away, and everyone
exhausted. Long before that, Mrs. Blodgett, as she had done the
evening previous, collapsed in her chair and had to be helped to
bed by Tillie, who decided to sleep in a cot beside her mistress.
And soon after, the Struthers duo left for their cottage behind the
stables.

“So everybody down here was in bed by, say,
quarter to ten?” Cobb said when he was finally able to get a word
in.

“We get up before the sun, we do. There’s no
late nights fer the likes of us.”

“An’ all of you, except fer Mrs. Blodgett,
have rooms off the hall at the bottom of the stairs back
there?”

“Yes. Austin an’ Prissy have their own rooms
an’ Tillie an’ me share. If Giles don’t come back, I’m to move into
his place.”

“So you an’ Bragg an’ Prissy went in there
about the same time?”

Hetty looked flustered for the first time
since she had realized she wasn’t likely to be arrested. “No. Not
exactly. I mean, I went first. I barred the door that goes to the
woodshed an’ the back yard, an’ went inta my room. I just got
undressed when I heard Prissy an’ Austin come down the stairs,
talkin’. Then I heard their doors open an’ close.”

Cobb pretended to scribble this down, as he
had done all along, then peered up, chewing his pencil. “What were
they talkin’ about?”

Hetty went beet-red, the blood draining down
alarmingly into her tiny, vee-shaped chin. “I – I don’t eavesdrop
on other people’s conversations,” she stammered.

“But they definitely went to bed –
separately?” Cobb felt himself begin to redden.

The scarlet chin rose up and jutted out. “I
told you, I heard two doors slam.”

“Okay, okay, you made yer point. So you’re
sayin’ that a little before ten o’clock, everybody down here was
tucked in an’ sawin’ logs?”

Hetty paused while her pasty complexion
returned slowly, then said, “I did hear Tillie come out into the
kitchen – to get a glass of water fer Mrs. Blodgett, I suppose. I
didn’t hear nothin’ after that.”

Cobb thanked her, and then asked her to seek
out Austin Bragg and bring him to the pantry.

***

Austin Bragg, in the prime of his manhood and too
handsome for his own good, was not in the least intimidated by the
crudely uniformed constable sitting across from him in a pantry
that formed a portion of what he considered his home turf. He did
not wait for Cobb to begin.

“I suppose you think I did away with my boss
because he dressed me down in front of the guests on Wednesday?” he
said somewhere between a snarl and a taunt.

Cobb stared down at his notebook. “I gather
you didn’t take to the new man?”

“How could I? Chilton was an English snob who
treated us all down here like we was dirt.”

“But yer master, Mr. Macaulay, wasn’t about
to send him packin’, eh?”

Bragg glowered, a gesture that might have
made him appear menacingly attractive to the ladies but to anyone
else it rendered him momentarily ugly – and repulsive. “The bugger
was efficient enough an’ knew his job. I’ll give him that much. But
he wasn’t Alfred, was he?”

“I was gonna start off this talk Mr. Bragg,
with a simple request to have you tell me what you did, what you
seen an’ what you heard upstairs after supper. Could you do that
fer me? An’ I’ll try not to suppose too much.”

Bragg’s belligerence softened perceptibly,
and he said in a more straightforward manner, “Prissy an’ me served
the supper in the dining-room, tryin’ not to bump into the butler
who never took his eyes off us an’ never once said anythin’
complimentary about our work, even though we had to carry on
without Phyllis’s help or Giles Harkness assistin’ the girls down
here.”

“Nothin’ unusual happened at supper?”

“Nothin’ that I saw. I was far too busy to
notice what any of the gentleman guests were doin’.”

“What did you do after supper?”

“I helped Prissy an’ Chilton tidy up the
dining-room. I’d already stoked up the boiler in the bathroom, but
I went into the master’s wing to see if old Struthers had managed
the fires in the rooms there. The fires have to be damped down
properly an’ bricks set out to warm fer Prissy, who gets the beds
ready. Can’t have gentlemen gettin’ cold bottoms now, can we?”

Cobb ignored the invitation to slag his
betters. “Did anybody use the big bathtub?”

Bragg thought about that. “I was pretty busy,
but I did see the older Frenchman with the baggy eyes go in there
about nine o’clock. He took care of himself.”

“Anybody else?”

“Somebody was splashin’ around in there a few
minutes after he left, but I don’t know who.”

“Did you see Mrs. Macaulay’s medicine bottle
on the shelf in there at any time last night?”

“I know where she keeps it. We all do. I
stoked the fire in the stove in there before supper, but I couldn’t
tell you if it was on the shelf or not. Is that what killed
Chilton? We heard it was somethin’ in the wine he drank.”

“You don’t know of any
loud-an’-numb
bein’ used down here by any chance?”

Bragg stiffened. “’Course not. Mr. Macaulay
is strict about drugs of any kind. If we need medicines, he has the
doctor supply them, an’ he pays. He’s a good man. We all feel
terrible that he’s got mixed up with the likes of Graves
Chilton.”

“Do you keep wine in yer room?”

“What the hell are you drivin’ at? We don’t
need to keep wine or anythin’ else in our rooms. Mr. Macaulay gives
us enough fer our meals, from his own cellar. You think just
because it was a servant that got killed that the culprit’s got to
be one of his own kind, don’t you? Well, I didn’t kill him, an’
neither did anybody else down here. Why don’t you poke yer whiskey
nose about upstairs an’ leave us alone!”

Cobb made as if to write this remarkable
statement down in his notebook. Then he glanced up and tried to
look stern. “Where were you at midnight last night?”

Bragg, who was already quite agitated, began
to shake with anger. “Damn you, Cobb! I was in bed, and I stayed in
bed all night!”

“You come down here about a quarter to ten,
with Miss Finch, from yer duties upstairs an’ the two of you went
straight to yer rooms?”

“Where else would we go? Into the parlour for
brandy an’ cigars?”

“Can you prove you didn’t sneak out after all
was quiet an’ go skulkin’ about upstairs, where you might’ve seen a
light in the butler’s office?”

Bragg looked as if he were about to lunge
across the table and throttle his interrogator, but caught himself
just in time. Instead, he sat back, and let his entire body relax,
as a satisfied smirk lit up his face. “If you must know, constable,
I was not in my own room or my own bed.” He paused to let the
salacious implications of this manly revelation sink in, and waited
for Cobb to respond. He was now enjoying himself.

Cobb had little choice but to ask, “Whose
room were you in, Mr. Bragg?”

“I shared a warm bed with Priscilla Finch.
All night. An’ we didn’t do a lot of sleepin’.”

Cobb kept eye contact as he replied, “Talkin’
philosophy, I take it?”

Bragg snorted. “We were doin’ things the
likes of you only dream about.”

“Enough so’s she’ll remember you bein’
there?”

“If you got any more accusations to make,
make ‘em now, Cobb. I got work to do.” Without seeking Cobb’s
assent, he got up, kicked the chair aside, and ambled out. As he
reached the stairs, he began to whistle.

Cobb was so hot under the collar he thought
it might ignite and incinerate his tie. He had put early money on
Austin Bragg at short odds, but if the pompous braggart really had
an airtight alibi, then all bets were off. For the moment, though,
he had only Bragg’s word about whose bed he had shared.

When Hetty Janes poked her head in a few
moments later, he asked her to fetch Priscilla Finch.

***

Although Prissy had managed to stifle her tears, the
aftermath of prolonged weeping had left her pretty face devastated.
Even her dazzling flaxen curls had gone limp. If she and Bragg had
tangled and tingled all night, Cobb thought, the discovery of
Chilton’s body had dampened down those delights pretty quickly.
That is, if they had been delights.

Cobb tried to get her to stop nibbling at the
knuckles on her right hand and teetering on the edge of the chair
across from him – by taking her gently through her routine actions
at supper and afterwards. To no avail. Her answers were brief and
guarded. Something was going on here, beyond her understandable
upset of the early morning, he thought.

He persevered. “You turn down the gentlemen’s
beds at night an’ tidy them up the next mornin’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you happen to notice any bottles of
liquor or wine among the gentlemen’s effects whilst carryin’ out
these chores?”

Prissy went chalk-white. “I did not! I’m not
a snoop! Mr. Macaulay wouldn’t like that, would he?”

“’Course he wouldn’t. I didn’t mean to say
you was a snoop, but one of the gents could’ve left his bottle of
comfort, like, on his night-table.”

“Well, I didn’t see none.”

“Fine. That’s very helpful, Prissy. An’
that’s all I’m doin’ here – beggin’ yer help.” He flashed her the
Cobb grin.

She waited, unsmiling.

Cobb kept his voice perfectly level: “You
finished yer chores, then, an’ come down here an’ went straight to
bed in yer room?”

Prissy began trembling all over, and Cobb
feared she would burst out bawling and he would be forced to end
the interrogation, as he never knew how to handle a weeping female.
“Anythin’ you tell me, Prissy, is
confa-dental.
Nobody else
will need to know. I promise.”

Prissy dropped her pretty chin on the
starched border of her apron and kept it there as she said, “Austin
an’ me are plannin’ on gettin’ married, as soon as we get enough
saved up.”

“I see,” Cobb said in his most fatherly
manner. “So you sometimes cuddle in together – to keep warm on a
chilly night?”

“Once or twice. I know it’s wrong, but –
”

“An’ you an’ Mr. Bragg were in
your
room all last night?”

Prissy nodded.

Damn! Cobb said to himself. There goes two
suspects with one blow. While he was willing to think Bragg a liar
and exaggerator, the emotions gripping this pretty but pathetic
young woman before him were unquestionably genuine. She and Bragg
were lovers. And yet, he suddenly remembered, Marc had mentioned
that the butler had made a play for Prissy, though it was unclear
what her response had been. But if Bragg had found out, he would
have had a much more compelling motive than ridding Elmgrove of an
overbearing butler. Still, if Prissy stuck to her story, nothing
further could be done about Bragg – for now. Cobb decided not to
press the girl any longer, wary of the female floodgates. Instead
he said, “You been very helpful, miss. An’ yer secret will be safe
with me.”

She mumbled a thank-you, got up slowly, as if
in a daze, and left.

That her affair was a secret here in the
closed community of servants was doubtful, to say the least, Cobb
mused. Mrs. Blodgett would know all, chapter and verse. Still, this
wasn’t the old country, thank the Lord, and such goings-on among
the staff were seldom cause for alarm or dismissal, especially if
the business was kept discreet. Loyal and competent servants were
as scarce as hen’s teeth in Toronto. Even illegitimate babies were
tolerated and often raised in the household, despite the ravings of
several churches. Cobb approved heartily. He despised hypocrisy,
and found so-called class divisions a prime example of that
particular human failing.