The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

8

Skulking around the streets of the New Town like a private eye in a Brighton guesthouse, I had missed the removal of Pip Balfour’s body, but I came upon the rest of the household restoring itself around an open bottle of rum and the inevitable pot of tea.

‘A terrible thing,’ said Stanley, with his mouth pushed out and his ample chin sunk on his chest. Millie nodded, biting her lip, but Mrs Hepburn flicked him an irritated glance and Clara rolled her eyes at Eldry.

‘It’s not something I ever thought to do,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘hold the front door open for my master to be carried out in a black box and put on a cart like something for the rag and bone man.’

‘And all them next door out on their steps watching,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘That’s the last time I find a packet of butter for her when she’s not sent her note in to the dairy in time. The besom! But I daresay I’d have been keen enough to see what was to do if it had been in their house and I shouldn’t call her for the same. I’ll take some biscuits through to her when they’re cooled.’

‘I’d better get back up to mistress,’ I said, but Mrs Hepburn waved me into my chair.

‘You take your rest while you can, Fanny. We’ve been popping up, the girls and me, off and on, and she’s dead to the world. Sleep’s the best thing for her today. I’ve got a jug of toast tea making and I’ve ordered in some calves’ feet for jelly, be ready by tomorrow night. That’ll set her right again.’

‘Toast tea?’ I said and there were a few giggles from the younger servants until Mrs Hepburn fixed them with a glare.

‘Just burnt toast steeped in water while it cools and then strained through,’ she said. ‘And don’t you go sniggering, John Petty, because you were happy enough to have it that time you caught the gastric flu and couldn’t keep a boiled egg down.’

‘Mrs Hepburn, please,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘don’t remind us of it. We were a sorry crew that week, Fanny. Harry and Maggie didn’t succumb but the rest of us were laid flat. I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow. Ah, but mistress was like a mother to us all, remember, Kitty?’

‘Aye, and she made that stew – as if we weren’t sick enough already,’ said Eldry, to a gale of laughter and a few groans, and then they settled back into a comfortable silence again. I looked around them. No one was tense, no one was anxious. Now that Eldry had recovered her spirits and Mattie had cheered up there was nothing to show that this was not an ordinary afternoon in a well-staffed and under-stretched establishment. The clock ticked, the fire crackled and the only other sound was the click of Millie’s knitting needles and the occasional snip of scissors as Clara unpicked a hem for restitching.

‘By, but I’m missing my News,’ said Mrs Hepburn presently. ‘It feels that funny not to be catching up with the world at teatime.’

‘More power to their elbows,’ said Harry. ‘And we’ve got our news anyway.’ He waved a printed sheet in the air. ‘Official strike bulletin, straight from the TUC District Committee. So we won’t need to let another copy of that scab rag over the door.’ He gave a pointed look to Mattie who ducked his head.

‘I didnae ken,’ he said. ‘It was for master, not for me.’

‘Give it a rest, Harry,’ Clara said. ‘It’s not as if it was Churchill’s bloomin’ Gazette. You’ll no’ catch germs off it.’

‘And I cannae see mistress wanting one of your bulletins,’ said John.

‘Besides, there’s more going on than the blessed strike,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘I’d like to see what they’re going to print about our do today for a start.’

‘I won’t sit and have it read out to me,’ said Harry. ‘Nor Mattie.’

‘And I won’t,’ said Eldry, gazing at Harry as she spoke. John snorted, but Harry himself affected to notice nothing.

‘I can bring you some news,’ I said. ‘There are gangs on Princes Street. A policeman told me.’

‘Gangs?’ said Eldry and Millie together.

‘Gangs of what?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Gangs of who?’

‘Here, Mr Faulds,’ said Clara, ‘did you bolt the front door at the back of they mortuary men?’

‘Gangs of respectable citizens exercising their right of free assembly,’ said Harry loudly over us all. ‘See what it says here, Miss Rossiter?’ He jabbed his bulletin. ‘No attention should be paid to rumours. The official bulletin, which will be issued at least daily, will keep you advised.’

‘I am simply passing on what was told to me by a policeman in uniform,’ I said, although Harry looked unimpressed by such credentials. ‘But I do appreciate your point,’ I went on. ‘And our right of free assembly is something to defend most strenuously. They can only dream of it in the streets of Moscow these days.’ Harry, who had opened his mouth to spout on some more, shut it again. Hugh would have been proud of me.

I took Lollie’s toast tea up to her at six o’clock and found her wide awake, staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom. She gave a faint smile when she saw the glass in my hand.

‘Pour that away, will you, Dandy?’ she said. ‘And then tell Mrs Hepburn it did wonders for me.’ I was curious enough to take a sip of the stuff as I bore it off to the bathroom and it was a revelation: the recipe had not sounded appetising, but how a combination of toasted bread and plain water could come to taste so extravagantly vile was beyond me. I rinsed out the glass and returned to Lollie’s bedside.

‘I’m trying not to think about what’s happening,’ she said, sitting up a little. Despite her words I could hear that the note of numb disbelief was gone from her voice and it relieved me. ‘About what they might be doing to him, right now. I’m trying to think about happier times instead, but I can’t help wishing I had been brave enough, before they took him away, not just to say goodbye, but to see what was done. To see it. So that I shouldn’t be wondering. Superintendent Hardy said he had been stabbed. That’s the trouble. It’s such a very striking word that it’s hard not to imagine. Was it in the heart? I keep wondering where would be quickest and least painful. Was it in the heart, Dandy?’

‘Can’t you just put it out of your mind altogether?’ I asked, but Lollie’s face, as I spoke, told that this was a blunder.

‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘It wasn’t quick, was it? It was slow and dreadful and that’s what you don’t want to tell me and-’

‘His throat,’ I said, speaking over her and cursing myself.

Lollie lay back down and looked straight up at the ceiling while her breathing returned to something near normal.

‘And what kind of knife was it?’ she said at last.

‘One of the carving knives from the kitchen. Mrs Hepburn recognised it.’

‘I see. Well, at least I can be sure he didn’t suffer too much then,’ she said. ‘I mean, if his throat was cut he can’t have. What’s the name of the big vein – or is it an artery? I never know the difference, do you?’

‘The jugular,’ I said, and I did not correct her assumption. If she could carry on thinking of a clean cut and instant oblivion, all the better. I wondered if she would have to attend the inquiry, or would choose to attend a trial, were one to come, in the end.

‘And Mrs Hepburn,’ said Lollie, ‘she will throw the knife away, won’t she?’

‘I should be very surprised if Superintendent Hardy is thoughtless enough to return it,’ I said, with a shudder. ‘Are you going to get up again today, Lollie? I wouldn’t advise it.’ Lollie shook her head. ‘Well, let me run you a cool bath and then I’ll ask Mrs Hepburn to send up… what? Some scrambled egg?’ I shifted a little before carrying on with the next bit, feeling a heel for even suggesting it. ‘Then if you didn’t mind, I wondered if perhaps you could do without me overnight. Actually, I was wondering if perhaps I could say downstairs that you felt in need of familiar faces and perhaps someone else could step in completely. It’s just that I’d learn so much more if I were down there, on the spot as it were, than up here with you.’

‘On the spot,’ said Lollie as though she had never heard the expression and were trying to decipher it. ‘Do you think one of them knows something about it, Dandy? Do you think one of them let someone in?’

‘No, not exactly,’ I said, turning for the bathroom again. I did not want to trouble her with all the bothersome details of keys and bolts and overhearings, for I was certain such thoughts would be keeping me awake long into the night and they would certainly stop the widow from resting easy. Besides, until Hardy came back with news of the brandy glass, she was still a suspect and the less I told her the better. ‘Don’t dwell on it, dear,’ I said. ‘We shall know more tomorrow when Superintendent Hardy returns.’

‘But do swap places, by all means,’ she said, ‘if you’re sure you don’t mind them thinking that you’ve displeased me in some way.’

‘Not at all,’ I assured her. ‘I shall ask Clara then. Or,’ I said, speaking carefully. ‘Phyllis. When she gets back.’

‘Either would be fine,’ said Lollie.

‘You’d feel safe, I suppose, with them?’ I asked. ‘You don’t suspect that one of them might be mixed up in any of this?’

‘Do you?’ Lollie sat up a little and stared at me.

‘I haven’t formed particular suspicions at all yet,’ I said. ‘But I do want to know this, Lollie dear.’ I asked her then about Pip’s wallet and pocket change and about staff pay and tips and bonuses and any other money that might be left lying around anywhere. (Hugh always keeps the safe in his business room locked up and changes the combination with feverish regularity, but – as he never tires of informing me – not everyone (meaning me) has the good habits of an orderly mind.)

She managed to tell me that Pip kept very little cash upon his person as a rule and tended to walk up to the bank when he needed to, hardly used the safe at all (as I saw would be sensible for a town dweller – and how it flattened me to realise what a country mouse I had turned into not to have thought of that for myself), then she began showing signs of mounting agitation again and I drew the interview to a close.

‘I’ll go and get one of the girls then,’ I said, soothingly.

‘No, I’m fine for now,’ Lollie said. ‘Just send Phyllis up at bedtime, would you?’

Phyllis was compliant enough about spending the night on the little chaise in her mistress’s bedroom.

‘Good to get away from your snoring,’ she said to Clara, who stuck out her tongue.

‘I’ll fill her hot bottle for you to take up,’ I said. I knew that Grant always filled mine, on those many nights of the year when even a sleeping Dalmatian pinning the blankets down upon one was not enough to outwit the perishing cold. ‘Nice day out?’ I asked tremendously casually, as we waited together for the kettle to come to the boil.

‘Not bad,’ said Phyllis.

‘What did you do?’ I said.

‘Pictures,’ said Phyllis.

‘On a beautiful day like this was?’ I said, tutting. ‘You youngsters and your films!’ I reached for the kettle just as the steam started to jet out and carried it carefully to the draining board where the bottle was waiting. ‘I thought you’d been on a picnic when I saw you with your big bag.’

‘No, not today,’ said Phyllis. I screwed the stopper into the hot bottle and wiped it dry. The trouble with being undercover, I thought to myself, was that one could not just keep digging away with question after question as usual; not without gaining a reputation as a nosy parker and making everyone clam up completely. Phyllis took the bottle and left me.

Mr Faulds was locking the house for the night again. He turned the key in the back kitchen door, took it out and hung it on a hook hidden in shadows and almost out of reach. ‘Master’s instructions,’ he said, seeing my puzzled look. ‘But I’m with him all the way. I’d no more leave a key in a door inside than out. For one, a thief can slip a sheet of newspaper under and push the key out then pull it back through.’ I nodded; I had done this myself to get out of my dormitory and onto the streets of Paris, or rather had watched with fingers crossed as Daisy did it for me. ‘But even when the door’s too snug-fitted like this one is,’ he went on, ‘they can reach right in with a pair of pliers and twist the key round from the barrel end. I knew a girl once who did it inside a box in a magic act, and it doesn’t take any strength to speak of, it’s only knowing the knack like so many things.’ He had shot both bolts home, top and bottom, as he spoke and now he tried the handle, giving it a good rattle.

He was at the sub-basement door when I picked my way carefully down the steps minutes later with my cocoa – Mrs Hepburn had whisked the milk to within an inch of its life as it boiled and had added extra cream, so that the cup had a coxcomb of froth like a barber’s shaving mug which threatened to spill over at every step – and as he threw the bolts the sound seemed to reverberate through the walls and echo across the arched stone ceiling above us.

‘Safe as houses, Fanny,’ he said. ‘You’ve nothing to fear.’

Somehow, something about him saying it that way was more disconcerting than if he had said nothing and once inside I found myself peering timorously out into the dark garden and standing quietly behind my locked door listening for the sounds of I knew not what. I heard Clara come downstairs, go into her room across the passageway and lock her door behind her, then I heard the squeak of her bedsprings as she sat down.

It took me well over an hour to finish writing up my notes and by the time I had got to recording my last conversation with Lollie, I was stiff-necked and sour-mouthed with exhaustion, hardly thinking about the words as I scrawled them, scarcely able to believe that this was the end of the same day that had begun with Eldry climbing the stairs, worrying about nothing more than the wrong newspaper for her master.

Superintendent Hardy arrived at ten the following morning, striding into the house with great confidence and a new lease of energy; or as Clara, who witnessed his coming, described it: ‘As if he owned the place and was just gonny paint it.’

He called for me as soon as he had finished with Lollie and I entered the parlour to find him standing looking down along the garden, rocking slightly on his heels.

‘All alone, Superintendent?’

‘We haven’t so much as a constable to spare,’ he said, turning round. ‘There were two hundred strikers down at Waverley station this morning, all walked in – miles, some of them – to stand on the pickets, and it takes time and men to clear it. You’ll have heard about yesterday, I’m sure.’

‘The gangs?’

‘I’ve a man in hospital and a police horse dead.’

‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

‘He got hit by a brick bouncing back out of a smashed shop window,’ said Hardy, very grim. ‘But he’ll recover.’ I did not like to admit that, of course, it was the horse after which I was asking.

‘I think it’s very foolish of the Congress,’ I said. ‘If ordinary people see mobs in the street it will only frighten them and harden their resolve.’

‘If you ask me, the unions are as surprised as anyone,’ said Hardy. ‘And the TUC can’t believe what they’ve started – everybody banging on their door asking to join up so they can down tools for the miners. Teachers was the last thing I heard on the wireless this morning. Teachers! This was from London, mark you, not here.’

‘That’s something then,’ I replied. ‘And you seem to have lots of volunteers.’

‘Hah!’ said Hardy. ‘Yes, well, the men at the electric works heard that there were students driving the electric trams and promptly downed tools – didn’t want to be supplying the juice for a blackleg service. So now there are students in the electric works too.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Is that wise?’

‘They’re engineering students,’ said Hardy, but he looked far from happy.

‘And what news of our case?’ I asked.

‘News indeed,’ he said. ‘Solid facts – bite down on them and break a tooth, just the way I like it. The doctor was up first thing and examined the body and it’s very revealing. There was a good dose of sleeping draught in his stomach, taken with brandy most likely. I asked Mrs Balfour if her husband was accustomed to use such a draught and she told me that no, Mr Balfour was an easy sleeper, never troubled with insomnia or with bad dreams. So that’s the first thing. And there was nothing in the dregs of your glasses, by the way.’

‘So it begins to look as if the widow’s in the clear?’

‘Especially since Dr Glenning’s considered opinion is that a girl couldn’t have done it. Not one in a hundred, he said.’

Here the superintendent flicked through the pages of his notebook. It had filled considerably since the previous day, pages and pages of close, pencilled writing. At last he found what he was looking for and held it up to the light.

‘Not only was the knife driven in with some force, held there and twisted around to open the wound and expedite the flow of blood – you’re not going to faint, are you? Good. – which would have required considerable strength, but the victim was also held down to allow the attack to take place. There is bruising suggestive of a hand placed very firmly against the victim’s right shoulder before decease, effectively pinning him against the mattress. This bruise is four inches in width, five inches in length and with faint fingermarks showing a span of nine inches. The placing of this bruise and the clockwise rotation of the blade inside the wound point together towards a right-handed man. So there you have it. The murder was done by a right-handed man who was locked in the house over the night in question.’

‘Mr Faulds,’ I said.

‘Means and opportunity,’ said Hardy.

‘And a motive?’ I asked. ‘Mr Faulds is one of the few who has not told tales of his master.’

‘And don’t you find that suspicious in itself? The others are incriminating themselves left, right and centre, bathed in innocence, and he’s the only one biting his tongue?’

I could not decide whether this showed Hardy shaping up to the task of detecting or was merely an echo of his army days and his desire to have everyone in perfect line.

‘I haven’t actually got round them all yet, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘I’ve still to speak to two of the other men and I haven’t had a chance to hear anything from the kitchen staff either.’

‘Well, then I suggest, Mrs Gilver, that you – if you’ll forgive me – run along and make a start on it. Only send Mr Faulds up to me when you’ve finished with him, would you?’

‘Superintendent,’ I said, carefully, ‘if you’ll forgive me, should you really interrogate him all alone? I rather thought there had to be two of you.’

‘Oh, I’m not here to interrogate him,’ he said. ‘I’m just here to collect him. I’m taking him into the station for the interview.’

I found Mr Faulds in his pantry, dressed in a long green baize apron and with sacking sleeves over his cuffs, the whole place reeking of Goddard’s powder and ammonia. An elaborate table centrepiece lay in several pieces in front of him.

‘Our sins will find us out, Miss Rossiter,’ he said in greeting. ‘Master never liked this, we never used it and so I never cleaned it but all the best’ll be laid out for the funeral so I’m taking my chance today and with luck mistress’ll be none the wiser.’

‘It’s pretty hideous,’ I said. ‘Indian?’

‘An elephant parade,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know… I always thought it looked quite something all set out down the middle of the table, joined together trunk to tail, all the howdahs full of bon-bons.’

‘Was it a wedding present?’ I said, thinking that it rivalled the worst of mine. (A gold – solid gold – pickle jar fashioned like some kind of goblin’s head. It was Indian too, from a rich aunt of Hugh’s who, apparently, hated him.)

‘No, it came down to him through the family,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘From when that branch of the Balfour family were out there. All right for some, eh?’ He looked around at his own surroundings with a half-mocking expression of disgust on his face but I, who had so recently seen Eldry and Millie’s dank little lair, could not commiserate with him over his comfortable pantry. It had a pile carpet on the floor – no grey hair and red tape edging for Mr Faulds – and papered walls, and was bright with ornaments and pictures of a quality which would not have disgraced Pip Balfour’s own bedroom (and had, I thought, probably started their life there before being passed on). What was even more surprising was the well-stocked little bookcase whose leather-bound volumes of Restoration dramatists, Romantic poets and the essayists of the Enlightenment hinted that Ernest Faulds, for all his music-hall days, was a man of some learning. A man, too, who liked his comforts: a door was half-open onto his bed-sitting room which rivalled anything I had ever heard about gentlemen’s clubs for the profusion of leather, oak and dark red velvet to be found there.

‘Come now, Mr Faulds,’ I said, ‘this all seems very commodious. I’ll bet you’ve stayed in theatrical digs that weren’t half as cosy.’

‘What I could tell you about theatrical digs would make a turn in itself,’ he agreed. ‘There was one landlady always took in from the Bradford Alhambra used to count the peas. I’m not joking or jesting, Fanny, she counted out the peas onto your plate. I tell you what, we never dared tell her the old joke about the mean landlady from Aberdeen in case it gave her ideas.’ I waited. ‘Chap complained about the bedbugs one time and she charged him extra for keeping pets in his room.’ I could not help laughing.

‘But seeing your rooms here,’ I said, ‘I’m asking myself if I’ve finally found the one person the late Mr Balfour was good to. I mean, that leather armchair is a real beauty.’

‘That’s mine and came with me from my mother’s when she passed away,’ said Mr Faulds, more soberly. I waited but he said no more, just went on polishing with his head down.

‘Well, speaking of coming into things,’ I said, ‘I haven’t just missed a bonus day, have I?’

‘Bonus day? What’s one of them?’

I was surprised that he did not know, for they interest servants enormously and they were a regular part of life in every house I had lived in.

‘Master’s birthday or mistress’s, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Or the anniversary of the wedding. Birth of sons too, most usually. All the staff get a divi.’

‘Now, why would you think that?’ said Faulds, eyeing me closely. Before I had thought of a way to allude to Phyllis’s windfall, though, he went on: ‘Easy to see you didn’t have time to get acquainted with Philip Balfour Esquire.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re not the exception that proves the rule then? With master.’

‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘He was a fair old puzzle. Nice as ninepence one minute and then he would just turn. And a trial to a pretty girl, Miss Rossiter, as you’ll no doubt have been hearing. I felt for them all, most acutely. Kitty and me both. But what can you do? When the mantel of privilege clothes a man from head to toe, who’s going to listen to you complaining?’

‘You sound as though you’ve been reading Harry’s bulletin,’ I said and Faulds shook his head, sucking his teeth in a show of sorrow.

‘Harry’s a young hot-head. Thinks he needs to change the whole world just to rise in it. He’d be better looking to his talents for his fortune and letting the world go its way.’

‘That’s rather caustic,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Harry would say he was interested in fairness for all and not just a leg-up for himself.’

‘I’m sure he would,’ said Faulds, even more witheringly, making me laugh. We were so cosy I even went as far as to say:

‘But as to one’s talents, and to rising in the world, aren’t you rather neglecting both, giving up the stage for butlering?’

I had gone too far. Faulds’s smile snapped away as though it had never been.

‘Don’t concern yourself about me, Miss Rossiter,’ he said.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ I said, blushing.

‘Granted,’ he said, with a faint inclination of his head. ‘Now, if you’ll forgive me, I need to get on.’

‘Actually, Mr Faulds,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid you can’t. I’ve enjoyed this little chat but I was, in fact, sent to fetch you. Superintendent Hardy wants you.’

‘Well he might,’ said the butler, ‘but he’s not going to get me, Miss Rossiter.’

‘I remember,’ I said, and quoted him. ‘The innocent have nothing to fear from the truth.’

‘Exactly,’ said Faulds. ‘No matter what Harry’s bulletin has to say.’ And with that he began to unroll his cuffs and prepare himself for the interview.

In the kitchen, Mrs Hepburn too had pronounced it time to begin preparations for the funeral tea to come; she had two enormous pans bubbling on the hotplate of the range and was just plopping into one of them a ham of such girth that one could not imagine how she would ever carve it. From the scullery came sounds of vigorous scrubbing and Millie’s voice raised in song.

‘Oh, Fanny!’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘There’s a relief. One less thing to worry me anyway. I’m just crossing my fingers and doing these hams now and if the funeral’s held up well then they’ll spoil but how I’m supposed to get a ham cooked with no kitchener to cook them on is something they’ve won’t tell me.’

‘No kitchener?’ I echoed, looking at the great hulk of the Eagle which was pulsing with heat as usual.

‘Not after today,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘A hundredweight of coal! I ask you! This beastie can burn that up every other day. So I’m switching it off and we’ll have to make do with thon useless contraption.’ She pulled her chin down and nodded to the far corner where a neat little electric stove sat proudly. It had been covered with a dustsheet up until now and its gleaming blue-grey sides and sparkling white enamel doors suggested that it had never seen active service before today.

‘Mistress insisted we had one,’ she said, turning her back on it and nestling up to the front fender of her beloved range. ‘Nasty scootery wee thing – it looks like something that belongs in a lavatory, Fanny, not a kitchen. Not if you ask me. But it’ll boil a pan just the same when all’s said and done, so there we are.’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘But what did you mean just then, Mrs Hepburn, by a relief?’

She blinked at me for a moment or two before answering.

‘Oh!’ she said at last, ‘Yes, only that Eldry said that policeman had made a beeline for you and I was worried he’d put two and two together and come up with the only new face in the household to pin the blame to.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘none of that. I daresay if it had been the usual kind of thing – trinkets missing, cash mislaid – the new girl would be for it, but murder? Murder’s too serious for… casual suspicion.’ Mrs Hepburn nodded. ‘I heard one time,’ I said, inching my way towards the question of Phyllis again, ‘of a maid – sly little minx – who took to helping herself when a new girl had started, knowing who’d get the blame.’

‘Lord!’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘There’s twisty for you, eh? You’d have to be wicked to the core to think of such a thing.’

‘Have you ever been in a house with a light-fingered maid, Kitty?’ I asked her, trying out the name for the first time. I was pleased to see that she did not bristle.

‘Never,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘I’m glad to say. Or if I have she’s been too clever to get caught at it. You certainly don’t need to worry about that kind of thing here. And don’t be feeling down in the mouth about mistress’s funny turn either,’ she went on. ‘She didn’t mean any slight to you, only natural she wants some old familiars round her. Clara’s up there now to let Phyllis get the dining room swept out at last, seeing it’d lain two nights and a day as it was.’

Mrs Hepburn was hopping from shelf to table to stove, dropping various leaves and little seeds into the ham pot, and would have looked like a witch at her cauldron, but for the pink dress and sparkling white apron.

‘I’m not at all offended,’ I said. ‘It is understandable and I’m sure she’ll be herself again in time.’

Mrs Hepburn wiped the tip of her nose with the back of her hand and looked at me.

‘She’ll get the chance to be herself for the first time in years,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen her go from a girl to a ghost and I’m looking forward to seeing the woman.’ She nodded very firmly and turned back to the range before continuing. ‘And I’m looking forward to feeding her too, Fanny, and not have him always finding fault and deciding he can’t take one day what he ate without a murmur the day before. And not having my good food come back all cut about and wasted so we couldn’t even get the finishing of it up. One time, you know, he poured water into the soup and sent it back saying it was cold, then another time he put a mouse – a dead mouse – into a goose I had roasted and called me up to the dining room to show me and tell me what he thought about my kitchen and my “high jinx” or whatever it’s called.’

‘Hygiene?’ I guessed.

‘And I asked him,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ignoring me, ‘I said, Mr Balfour, I said, how do you suppose that goose got roasted and the poor wee mouse stayed cold, sir? And he had no answer for that. But you’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you, Fanny?’

‘Not tell the superintendent, you mean?’

‘Well, not tell the girls, really,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Because… well, it was a lovely goose and the wee mouse was only in the cavity and I thought as long as I carved the meat off and threw the carcass away. It wasn’t as if I went making stock with it.’ Then Mrs Hepburn winked and gave a huge laugh which shook her all over like a good bowl of jellied broth.

‘Your face, Fan!’ she said. ‘I’m just having fun with you. I put the whole thing out to the pig bin and scrubbed the plate with soda near until the pattern come off. And you can tell that Mr Hardy whatever you like.’

‘Not that it would matter now anyway,’ I said. It was time to tell her. ‘Because he told me that the doctor says it was a man who did it. He could tell from the body that a woman couldn’t have.’

‘A man?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘What man?’ Once again as I had seen her do before she took her collar and shook it as though trying to fan away a sudden flush. ‘Dear goodness, they never think there was some devil in creeping around! We could all of us have been killed in our beds. Does mistress know?’

‘I think so,’ I said, ‘but actually – this is going to come as a nasty shock, Mrs Hepburn, but actually, Mr Hardy suspects Mr Faulds.’

Mrs Hepburn let go of her collar and patted it smooth, frowning.

‘Of what?’ she said. ‘Does he think Ernest didn’t lock up properly? Are they blaming him for somebody getting in?’ I hesitated and saw her face fall. ‘No, never!’ she said. ‘Ernest? He couldn’t have. He didn’t – he couldn’t have.’

‘That’s very loyal of you, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘Even I think it seems most unlikely and after the length of time you’ve known-’

‘No, no, you misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘I know he didn’t. No one could know surer than me.’

‘Because… you did?’ I breathed.

Mrs Hepburn stared at me and made a kind of choking noise that might have been a gasp of laughter.

‘Lord, no! God love you, Fanny, what an imagination! No, not that bad.’ Now she really did laugh, albeit in a flustered way. ‘Bad enough, mind,’ she said, and with a glance into the scullery, she went on in a low voice, ‘I know he didn’t do it because I was with him. All night – and he never left the room.’

‘Y-you were… ahem… I see,’ I said. ‘Gosh, yes, I see.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she said. ‘I can see in your face you don’t. I don’t myself, come to that. A cook has to be above reproach, looking after all these young girls like I am, and you’d think I’d know better.’

‘Well, I must congratulate you on your discretion at least, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘Both of you. I should never have guessed, and I don’t think the youngsters know.’

‘It’s not discretion,’ said the cook. ‘And there’s nothing much for them to know. We don’t have an understanding as such. Not an engagement, anyway. Oh, we get on well enough and he’s a nice enough man and a lot less snooty than some butlers I’ve known, even if his training isn’t all it might be, but that’s all. Except that a few times, at night, I suppose you’d say our natures have just… got the better of us. And then in the morning it’s back to normal and almost like nothing happened at all.’

‘Mm,’ I said, trying not to smile, for really the thought of the ruddy-cheeked and hefty-shouldered Mrs Hepburn being transported to some netherworld where passion reigned and then returning at dawn to start the breakfasts was highly distracting. ‘Well, it’s very fortunate, Kitty.’ I had no hesitation in employing her Christian name now. ‘Mr Hardy has taken him to the police station but with such an alibi he’ll be out again in no time.’

Mrs Hepburn dropped down into a chair with her hands covering her mouth. When she took them away her lips were trembling.

‘They’ve taken him?’ she breathed.

‘Yes, but don’t worry. When he tells them you were with him, they’ll soon-’

‘I know him,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘He’ll not save himself. He’s too much of the gentleman to save himself.’ She clapped her hands on her knees, rose from her seat and started to untie her apron. ‘I’d better get down there,’ she said. ‘Millie! Come through here and keep an eye on the pots. Auntie’s just popping out. Bring your trotters with you if you’ve finished cleaning them and you can get them split in here on the table.’ Millie appeared at the scullery door. Her apron was splattered with blood and soaked with water so that some of the red stains had paled to pink, and I found myself taking a step backwards at the sight of her.

‘Where are you going, Auntie Kitty?’ she said.

‘Just running a wee message for Mr Faulds,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘You know what you’re doing now, don’t you?’

With that she was off. I caught sight of her flying along the passageway to the front area door a moment later with her hat jammed on tight but her coat still open and streaming behind her.

‘Auntie Kitty’s in a right hurry,’ Millie said. She was ferrying a large colander full of pigs’ feet to the kitchen table, dripping watery spots of blood on the floor all around her. She tipped them out and they rolled onto the table, one coming to rest against a sugar dredger.

‘I’ll just tidy up a bit,’ I said, hastily moving the dredger, a leather-covered grocer’s book and a pile of clean cloths to one of the sideboards.

‘Is mistress feeling better today?’ said Millie. ‘She was all upset yesterday, wasn’t she?’ With great concentration she set a small saw against one of the feet just where skin met horn and began scraping it back and forward. Her tongue was peeping out and her eyes were squeezed half-shut with concentration. When the saw dropped through and hit the table underneath, she dropped it and winced. ‘I should have put a tablet down,’ she said, examining the scar on the scrubbed boards. ‘Auntie Kitty’s told me half a dozen times.’ Then she turned to the stove and dropped the sawn-off trotter into one of the pots bubbling there. ‘Oh!’ she said, looking into the water. ‘What’s that in there? I thought it was stock.’

‘It’s a ham,’ I told her and she grinned.

‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ she said. ‘That was lucky.’

I had been wondering how to lead her towards the topic of interest to me, but now I thought that surely such a featherhead as this, one who puddled her way through life cushioned against its cares by her own innocence of them, must often find that questions loomed up at her out of nowhere.

‘What did you think of Mr Balfour, Millie?’ I said. ‘Did you see much of him?’

Millie disappeared into the scullery and when she returned she was carrying a cleaver in her hand and looking as stern as her pink and white face and round cheeks would allow.

‘Too much, miss,’ she said. ‘He was a bad man and he did silly things that he shouldn’t have.’ My stomach turned inside me. Not Millie too! She was a child and had not half the guile of some children one has encountered.

‘To you, Millie?’ I said, hoping that perhaps she was merely repeating gossip.

‘Auntie Kitty said to me not to say,’ she said. ‘Because what you don’t know can’t hurt you and if Stanl- I mean, if a nice boy one day asked you anything, then he wouldn’t want to know the nasty things that you had done.’

With a sinking certainty, I knew that Millie’s hopes regarding Stanley were doomed; he was a young man of great ambition and even greater self-satisfaction and his plans, whatever they were, would not include taking the hand of a simple scullerymaid and making her dreams come true. As I watched Millie centre one of the trimmed trotters on the table and take aim, I wondered suddenly how long she would be able to hang on to that simplicity, where there were good men and bad men and simple right and wrong and what one did not know could not harm one. She raised the cleaver to her shoulder and brought it down so fast that the blade whistled before it split the bone apart with a crack like a gunshot. The two halves dropped away and the cleaver was left sticking up out of the table. Millie bit her lip and gasped.

‘I’ll get one of the boys to wrench it out for…’ I began, but Millie had splayed one hand on the table, gripped the handle hard with the other and, after one mighty tug, pulled the cleaver out again. I could not take my eyes away from her hand – spread out broad and strong on the table-top – and could not help hearing again in my mind what she had said about making sure a nice boy never knew the nasty things one might have done. Did Stanley have a reason to hate Pip Balfour, as had so many of the others? Would Millie, blind with love, have gone as far as avenging her beloved footman?

‘Now you really must get a board, Molly-moo,’ I said. ‘Or that table will be kindling by the time you’re done.’ Millie giggled and wiped her cheek, leaving a smear of blood there, then went to the scullery to fetch one.