The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

6

I stared at Eldry through the shifting steam in the washroom. Her voice was so faint now that I could hardly hear her at all through the muffled air. ‘It must have come off on me when I went to his bedside,’ she said. ‘Or where else could it come fae?’

I let my breath go. I put the brandy glasses down on the small ironing table behind the door, being careful not to shatter the cracked one, and turned back to her.

‘You mean this morning?’ I said. ‘When you took the tray in?’ Eldry nodded. ‘I didn’t notice it,’ I said, trying to get a clear picture of her as she had been during those few short and furious moments of confusion. She had had her back turned to me as she banged on the door and she had sunk down with her knees up; I could not remember having seen her front at any time. ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘How could you have got blood on yourself just from walking up to the bedside and away again?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, ‘but how else did it get there?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ I said. Then her eyes opened very wide and she put her hands up to her cheeks.

‘You don’t think I hurt him?’ she said. Her hands were very red against her white face and her fingers looked like claws as she pressed them into her flesh. ‘I could never, miss. All that blood. I could never.’ She was swaying slightly and I stepped quickly over towards her and took hold of her hands. They were pulsing with heat, and all of a sudden I was aware of just how steamy and soft the air was here in this little room, and how the distemper on the walls was running with beads of moisture and blistering. I put one finger into the sink of water and yelped.

‘Eldry, your hands,’ I said. ‘Come and sit down. Your poor hands!’ I pushed her down into my little armchair and then went back to the laundry room. I pulled on the chain and felt the plug give way at the bottom of the sink. As the water drained, with a horrid sucking sound, a greyish mass rose out of the sinking tide of suds. I turned the cold tap on and once the bundle had cooled a little I began hauling at it, sorting it into pieces. Every stitch she had had on must have been in there. Knickers and vest, bodice and petticoats, stockings, her dress and her apron – white and black, wool and linen all mixed in together. I let the cold tap run and run and when it was icy I filled a deep bowl and carried it very carefully back to the armchair.

‘Put them in here,’ I said to her. ‘Silly girl!’ I had decided that brisk but affectionate exasperation was the strong suit here. ‘Apart from anything else, Miss Etheldreda, hot water sets a bloodstain so nothing will ever shift it. A cold water and salt soak is what you need.’ I blessed Grant for my crammer course in laundry work on Sunday, during which I had learned this snippet; not only was it a thrillingly convincing line for Miss Rossiter to deliver but it was also true. If there had ever been blood on those ruined clothes of Eldry’s I should be able to find it. I decided against trying to feed them through the mangle but simply squeezed the worst out of them and hauled them up over the drying rack, and shut the door behind me. Nothing is more depressing than the sound of dripping.

‘I don’t want them to think I killed him,’ she said to me when I joined her again. ‘The police. My mammy would never forgive me if it all came out and everybody knew.’

‘If it all came out about what kind of man he was?’ I said, guessing. Eldry nodded. ‘Did he make a nuisance of himself with you?’ I said. She nodded again, just a dip of her chin against her chest. She did not raise her head again afterwards.

‘I was a good girl,’ she said.

‘And a kind girl,’ I agreed. ‘Taking the tray this morning when Clara wasn’t well.’

‘We all help each other out,’ she said. ‘We always do. And Mrs Hepburn is like an auntie to us all – not just Millie – and Mr Faulds is a kind man. He’s so fond of Phyllis and he’s been good to me too, miss.’ She was looking a little brighter now; perhaps it was beginning to dawn upon her, with Mr Balfour gone, what a pleasant establishment his widow’s household might be.

‘Now, Eldry,’ I said. ‘No more nonsense. You must be brave and sensible because you are going to be interviewed by the police, dear. They will want to know everything about this morning and about last night too. So why don’t we run through it together now and I’ll help you decide what to say.’

Eldry was adamant that she could not have crept out in the night without Millie hearing her and when I accompanied her to their shared bedroom I agreed. We were at the front of the house and here the sub-basement seemed very different. The only window was high and rather green and one had to stand right up against it and crane one’s neck to see the area steps and the street railings above them. Even in the mid-morning Eldry had to put a light on.

‘That’s Millie’s bed,’ she said, pointing towards a rather dishevelled little bedstead with a knitted bear propped up against its pillow. Her own was neater, although by no means the picture of precision mine had been the previous day. Clearly whoever had readied Miss Rossiter’s room for her, it was neither of these two. Between the beds was a box with a candlestick, a small prayer book and a couple of photographs, pasted onto board and propped up using opened hairpins. There was a washstand, a large oak chest standing on its end serving as a wardrobe and a small chest at the end of each bed. The floor was stone, but was covered here and there with rag mats. Under the window in the dankest corner of the room a third bed, stripped bare to its mattress, stood neglected.

‘That was Millie’s until Maggie took off,’ Eldry told me, ‘then we had a shift around. I hope she does get the kitchenmaid’s position and doesn’t need to move back again.’ I sat down on Eldry’s bed and bounced up and down a few times, hearing the grating squeak of slightly rusty bedsprings so familiar from the convalescent home in the war. Back then, the damp which caused the rust had come from windows thrown wide summer and winter to the insidious drizzle and driving rain. Here, the window was shut tight and there was a tiny fireplace with evidence of coal having been burned in its grate, but nothing would ever warm and dry such a subterranean room. When Eldry sat down on Millie’s bed, there was another screeching of springs and our knees were practically touching. The girls could have held hands at night without even straightening their arms.

‘And I suppose you lock your door?’ I asked her.

‘In this house,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t you?’

I went over to the door and turned the key, with a scrape and a clunk. Clearly, if either of the two lower maids had left in the night, the other one had to be in cahoots and covering for her. I believed Eldry, I thought, although I would still check her clothes very carefully when they were dry, and I could not imagine Millie – that dewy, blinking little baby doll – driving a knife into Pip Balfour’s neck, but I was looking forward to asking her what she made of her master, if indeed she had ever met him to form a view.

‘We’d better join the others,’ I said, unlocking the door. ‘If PC Morrison says anything to you just send him to me.’

Phyllis was skipping down the stairs from the ground floor when we climbed up again.

‘Where have you been?’ she said, stopping when she saw Eldry. ‘That big policeman – what’s he? An inspector? – was looking for you, but he took me instead. So I’ve told him what I know which was nothing and now I’m free as a bird.’ She grinned at us and jumped the last few steps down onto the flags then strolled off towards the kitchen. ‘He wants Mrs Hepburn next,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘Well, thank all that’s holy for that then,’ said Mrs Hepburn, hearing her. ‘And after I’ve said my piece I can get on without thon big lummock breathing down my neck.’ She appeared in the kitchen doorway unrolling her sleeves. ‘No disrespect meant to you, Jimmy,’ she called back, ‘I know you’re only doing your job, lad. Now come on, Molly-moo. Come with me.’

‘Eh, Mrs Hepburn,’ said PC Morrison, hurrying out after her. ‘It’s one at a time. It’s just you the now and Miss eh… Miss eh… Molly-moo after.’ He was coatless now and had the glossy look about the mouth of someone who had just eaten a liberally buttered bun.

‘Away and get,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘My niece Amelia is only sixteen and she needs her auntie.’

‘You can mebbes chum along when Superintendent Hardy calls for her,’ said PC Morrison, ‘but he only asked-’

‘Aye well, he’s asked and no one can do more,’ said Mrs Hepburn. Millie had joined her and was being firmly brushed, tweaked and smoothed into presentable shape, submitting with great docility. ‘But I’ve no time to be running up and down stairs. I’ve a fish custard to make for mistress’s luncheon – nothing gentler nor more strengthening after a shock – and the rest of them to feed and you two more than likely. We don’t all have a canteen we can turn to, you know. Come on, Moll.’

She bore Millie away upstairs leaving PC Morrison mouthing ineffectually after them. Phyllis giggled and stuck out her tongue at him.

‘Just as well you’re here and not at the pickets if you can’t stop Mrs Hepburn getting her own way,’ she said. ‘That big man Hardy said I could get on with my duties now I’ve made my statement, and it’s my half-day free today – the first Tuesday of the month – so does that mean I can go out and meet my pal after dinner?’

‘I’m not… I mean, no,’ said Morrison. He had blushed when Mrs Hepburn was setting him down and was blushing again now as Phyllis twinkled up at him, his voice climbing up the octaves as he struggled to stamp his authority on the scene.

Phyllis put her hands on her hips and swayed gently from side to side, like a gypsy dancer. All she lacked were the streamers and tambourine.

‘We’ll see what Mr Faulds thinks,’ she said and left us.

‘I’d better go back up to Mrs Balfour,’ I said, ‘and leave you to…’

‘Herd cats,’ said PC Morrison, with feeling. ‘It’s like no house of mourning I’ve ever been in before, miss, I can tell you. More like a gala day.’

One could appreciate his sentiments, what with the buns and with Phyllis skipping around like a spring lamb, but there was Eldry as counterbalance. I looked about myself for her, but she had slipped away again.

The front door bell clanked as I was passing through the ground floor and I stopped, hoping to hear who it might be arriving. It clanked again but there was no noise from the downstairs region at all. Was no one coming? Surely PC Morrison had to let one of the servants out of his custody to answer the door. I wondered where Phyllis was. Then, with a start, I remembered Miss Rossiter and hurried forwards. I had never in my life opened a front door, my own or another’s, to a visitor and for a second I felt a cold trickle at the thought that it might be a friend of the Balfours, an acquaintance or neighbour, who knew me.

It was not. It was, in fact, a thin and flustered-looking man in his seventies with a well-polished Gladstone bag in one hand and a slim pocket watch open in his other, the police surgeon, I presumed. Behind him, a young man in a lavishly crumpled suit and wearing a soft hat on the back of his head was leaning against the railings puffing steadily on a cigarette. At his feet sat a large black case of mackintoshed cardboard, bulging out of shape around its contents and held closed by a stout brown leather belt. I could not imagine who he might be.

‘About time too,’ said the doctor. ‘Do you know I had to walk here? All the way from Morningside? And I rang twice.’ He had that peculiarly strained sort of Glaswegian voice which makes every utterance sound plaintive. I bobbed at him, which seemed to mollify.

‘Please come in, doctor,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you the way. And um…’

The other man hefted his case into his arms, holding it like a football, and trailed.

‘Prints,’ he said, with a grin and an eye-roll towards the doctor. I grinned back.

‘I should have an assistant too,’ the doctor went on. ‘This is all most irregular. Run and get one of the constables, girl, and he can step in to help me.’

‘I can’t, I’m afraid, sir,’ I said. ‘There’s only one and he’s been put to watch over the witnesses until the super’s seen them.’

‘This is most unsatisfactory,’ said the doctor, as I led him upstairs. ‘So much for the famous “volunteers”.’

‘Well, there’s usually three of me and I’m not whining,’ said the other man. The doctor ignored him and spoke to me.

‘Where exactly are we going?’

‘I ken,’ said the fingerprint man with a wink. ‘You might at least have seen to it that he got stabbed in the front lobby and saved us all these stairs. Is this what they would call “the servant problem”?’

I was sorry to see the back of this character, if not of the doctor, when I delivered them to Mr Hardy on the bedroom-floor landing, but Lollie took all my attention when I joined her. Her shock had deepened and was now something I had thought never to see again after the war. She was numb to the point of bonelessness, sitting huddled in bed like a puppet with its strings cut, nursing the photograph of Pip which had been in her bathroom, and so although I longed to be downstairs with the others, I found myself at the little bookcase between the windows looking for something to read aloud as I had done when one of my children had a tooth- or tummy-ache which required distraction. There was a well-thumbed set of Mrs Molesworth and I selected The Carved Lions, my favourite of the lot, opening it at chapter one. Before long Lollie uncurled a little, stretching her legs down under the covers and leaning back more easily on the banked-up pillows behind her. After another half-chapter her eyes were drooping and eventually she began to breathe deeply and let the photograph frame fall softly forward against her chest. I read on, quieter and quieter, slower and slower, and then stopped.

As I pulled the door shut behind me and let my breath go at last, the doctor was just emerging from Pip’s bedroom, with a roll of oilcloth in his hand and a sour expression on his face.

‘Here, girl!’ he said, and his face pursed up even further as I put a finger to my lips and shushed him.

‘Beg pardon, doctor,’ I said, ‘but I’ve only just got Mrs Balfour off to sleep.’

‘That’s of no interest to me,’ he said, in his complaining voice, clearly not one who felt that his Hippocratic oath covered the whole broad sweep of humanity. ‘Take this to Superintendent Hardy for me and tell him I’ll be with him shortly.’ He thrust the little oilcloth bundle into my hands and wiped his own with a large handkerchief. ‘You might as well make yourself useful.’

‘Is it the knife?’

‘It’s none of your business what it is,’ he replied.

‘Should you be giving it to me?’ I said. ‘Aren’t I a suspect?’

‘It’s been dusted,’ he said, forced into an explanation in spite of himself, which made his lips purse so tight they all but disappeared completely, ‘and I’m not going to start running up and down fetching and carrying just because nobody’s seen fit to give me an assistant. So get on with you and less of your lip.’

With what I hoped was a look of withering pity – for snapping at maidservants really is the mark of a pitiable man – I took the bundle from him and hurried downstairs with it, just in time to see Mrs Hepburn and Millie emerge from the back parlour where Hardy had been interviewing them.

‘Much good it did him to put me behind and upset my niece here,’ said the cook when she saw me. I was becoming acclimatised to her style of conversation and joined into the stream of this one without any trouble.

‘You couldn’t tell him anything to help him then?’

‘I was tucked up in my bed and Millie was tucked up in hers,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘And you can be sure if I’d heard any goings-on I shouldn’t have, I would have been up and at them. It’s a heavy responsibility, Fanny, to be in charge of all these girls, and it’s not only my Millie I watch out for.’ She had been eyeing the oilcloth as she spoke, and I seized the moment.

‘You can help though, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘You’ll never guess what this is. The doctor just gave it to me to bring to the super. It’s the knife.’

‘They’ve found it?’ she said in tones of wonder (not knowing, I suppose, that it had been anything but hidden). I nodded.

‘Why would he leave it?’ she asked, shaking her head. ‘With all you hear about fingerprints and all-sorts like that. You’d think he’d take it away with him again.’ Clearly, the import of the locked-up house and the hidden Yale key had not struck Mrs Hepburn yet and she was still imagining some kind of fiendish, and remarkably ungreedy, burglar. ‘What did you mean, Fanny, when you said I could help?’

Carefully, and with a glance at the parlour door, I opened one flap and then the other of the oilcloth wrapping and lifted the knife up into the light.

‘Have you ever seen it before?’

The knife was still crusted and smeared with blood around the hilt, although its blade had come clean as it was removed and now shone dully. The pale bone handle was black with fingerprint powder, which had come off onto the cloth too. All three of us gazed at it. I was no expert but it looked to me to be an ordinary and rather elderly cook’s knife, of the sort used to carve meat in a kitchen or nursery, although not in the dining room. Its blade had been sharpened many times and was now thinner along its length than where it joined the handle.

‘That’s your mutton knife, Auntie Kitty,’ said Millie.

I glanced at Mrs Hepburn to make sure. She swallowed and nodded.

‘And when did you last see it?’ I asked her. ‘Where does it belong?’

‘I washed it last night with Eldry,’ Millie said. ‘I used it to poke the sausages for the pie. It’s got a lovely sharp point, Miss Rossiter, see?’ She reached out towards it but I drew it swiftly away. ‘And then Eldry dried it and we put it back in the knife cupboard.’

‘And I locked it before I went to my bed,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘like I always do. Every night without fail and afternoons too when it’s my day out or Mr Faulds’s.’

‘Because you can’t be too careful with knives,’ said Millie.

‘And the key?’ I asked. Mrs Hepburn was plucking at her collar again, her face reddening.

‘Oh, Fan!’ she said. ‘This doesn’t look good, does it? I don’t see how anyone sneaking in through a window could get into my knife cupboard.’

‘Who keeps the key?’ I insisted.

‘Well, I’ve got one,’ said Mrs Hepburn, patting her key ring, ‘and… Oh my!’

‘What?’ I asked. I could hear movement inside the parlour and I wrapped the knife up again quickly. ‘What is it?’

‘Mill,’ she said, turning to her niece. ‘You trot along back to the kitchen and get started on the carrots for me. Scrape, mind, don’t peel – they’re as fresh as fresh.’

She drew close to me as Millie disappeared and she spoke urgently.

‘Mistress could never have got that knife,’ she said. ‘There’s a spare key and as to who knows and who doesn’t, your guess beats mine – there’s a couple of they youngsters as sharp as knives themselves and not much gets past them. But there’s no way mistress would know.’

‘What happened to someone sneaking in?’ I said and got a wry look in return.

‘That was good enough for the police and the papers,’ she said. ‘I would have swore on my life to spare mistress any trouble for it – he’s no loss and no one will miss him. But if that’s the knife then-’

The door behind her began to open and she sailed away, moving very fast and remarkably silently on her wooden soles. I started forward to greet Mr Hardy.

‘The knife, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘With the doctor’s compliments. It’s one of the kitchen knives, kept in a locked cupboard with a key some of the servants knew about and some didn’t. I’ll try to find out which for you.’

‘You do that,’ he said, ‘and send me up the last maid, would you?’

‘There are two more to go actually,’ I told him. ‘You missed one earlier.’

‘Oh no, I’ve seen her,’ said Superintendent Hardy. ‘She came in while Mrs Hepburn and the girl were here. It turned into a bit of a party. She came to tell me she hadn’t done it.’

‘Eldry?’ I said. ‘A plain girl? Thin nose?’

‘She’s in quite a state. And Mrs Hepburn isn’t so calm as she’d like us to think either.’

‘I shouldn’t read anything into that, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘It’s been a great shock to everyone.’

‘No, you misunderstand me,’ said Hardy. ‘That’s perfectly natural – of course it is. It’s the other one that I’ve got my eye on. Amelia, is it? The one that’s in no kind of state at all.’

‘Millie?’ I asked, unbelieving. ‘Surely you can’t be serious? You think that sweet girl could have taken a knife and…’ But even as I spoke I felt a flicker of unease about it. She had indeed been remarkably unperturbed throughout the morning, neither fainting nor crying, and she had bent over the knife with an eager interest which did, upon reflection, strike one as unseemly.

‘I’ll ask the doctor what he thinks,’ said Hardy. ‘Whether a girl could have done it at all. I think I hear him coming.’

I took my time joining the others again, dawdling on the turn in the stairs trying to think it through. The superintendent was seeing ghosts in empty corners, I was sure, but someone had done it and it must have been someone who slept in the house, since bolted doors could not be reasoned away. I was almost sure that it was not Lollie, although I should have liked to be surer. Eldry and Phyllis had motives, and Eldry at least was far from at ease, but they would have needed Millie and Clara respectively to cover for them. Mrs Hepburn had no room-mate to outwit and was anything but sorry about the death, but she appeared to suspect her mistress, and so unless that was a ruse she could not be guilty herself. It would be a clever touch, to affect suspicion of another, and I did not know Mrs Hepburn well enough to say whether she were capable of such subtlety. Of Mr Faulds, too, I did not yet know enough to form a view; a matter I should remedy right away.

He was there in his armchair in the servants’ hall with the rest of the menfolk and Clara, who was crouched on a fender stool, busy stitching. Stanley was in Mrs Hepburn’s seat and PC Morrison sat at the furthest corner of the table from John, Harry and Mattie, staring resolutely into space.

‘You’re wanted now, dear,’ I said to Clara, who leapt to her feet as though I had fired a starting pistol. She hurried towards me and thrust her sewing into my hands.

‘About time,’ she said. ‘Can you carry on with the armbands, Miss Rossiter? I’ve done seven – five to go.’

‘Yes,’ I said, clutching ineffectually at the bundle and feeling the needle pierce my skin. ‘Now then, what stitch are you using, let me see now…’ I sank into my own chair, squinting at the tiny stitches in the black cloth. A drop of blood welled up on my pierced fingertip and I sucked it.

‘I suppose you’ll be next, Mr Faulds,’ I said, ‘and then perhaps we can all get a bit of peace and quiet to ourselves.’ I looked meaningfully at PC Morrison’s profile as I spoke. Mr Faulds, though, had clearly not forgiven me for my thrusting behaviour earlier in the day and merely inclined his head with a tight smile. I bent to my sewing again, but I saw that two more drops of blood had come and had dripped onto the strip of serge. ‘Bother it,’ I said, ‘I think I’ll need to put a dressing on this.’ I held my finger out to show Stanley. (I have often noticed the relish with which servants, like children, will describe and even exhibit any wound, swelling or rash which might befall them and I thought this a very Miss-Rossiterish touch.) Stanley, to my surprise, squeezed his eyes shut and twisted his head away from me.

‘Stanley cannae stomach the sight of blood, Miss Rossiter,’ said John, from the table. ‘Here, Harry, mind of that time I gashed my arm open working on the motor and Stanley had to take his dinner at the kitchen table to keep away from me.’

‘Have a heart,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t mind him, Stan.’

‘I do apologise,’ I said to the footman, who was trying to look haughty but not making a very impressive job of it. ‘Is there a first aid box anywhere?’

But even the thought of the first aid box, it seemed, was too much earthy reality for Stanley and it was Harry who got to his feet to show me in the end.

‘All right by you?’ he asked Morrison rather insolently as he passed. Morrison, who had perhaps been told by now that I was trusted by the superintendent and could be trusted by him, nodded curtly.

‘And bring back some smelling salts for Stan, will you no’?’ John called after us.

‘You hold your tongue,’ said Stanley. ‘Yelling like that with a corpse in the house. You’ve no idea how to behave, have you? You don’t deserve to be with decent people.’

‘Enough,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Quit bickering, both of you.’

Harry led me to a small room, no more than a store-cupboard really, stocked with blocks of yellow scrubbing soap and jars of green soft soap, tins of floor polish and boot polish and the great stone jars of marmalade which, for some reason I never understood, always lived with the cleaning supplies.

‘Cracks beginning to show, eh?’ said Harry, when we were inside and could not be overheard.

‘It has been a very trying morning,’ I agreed, ‘and the more so for you lot, I suppose, just sitting there. At least the girls have had a chance to unburden themselves and get back to work.’ Harry nodded. He had found the first aid box – just a large tin painted white – on a high shelf and was prising its lid open.

‘We’ve got some of those sticking plasters,’ he said. ‘They’re no’ bad if you don’t wind them too tight. Master brought them back from America last time they was over.’ He gave me one of the little waxed packets and put the lid back on the tin again. I had never seen one of the things and it took a moment of fumbling before I got it unwrapped and managed to apply it to my finger.

‘That was very generous of him,’ I said. ‘Of Mr Balfour, I mean. He can’t have been all bad.’

‘He was as bad as they come,’ said Harry. ‘Not just a mean so-and-so, but useless – they’re all useless. Don’t know the meaning of a day’s work, just play like bairns their whole lives. He played at building toy boats, Miss Rossiter. Did you know that? A grown man and he spent his days making toy boats that didn’t even float.’

‘And you spent your days dressing him,’ I said. This point still puzzled me.

‘Not me,’ said Harry, ‘I’m only twenty-five. I’ve got plenty days left. If I escape the noose, like.’

He threw me such a challenging look as he said this, almost as though he were daring me to make something of it, that I felt a surge of anger rise up in me.

‘John’s not the only joker in the pack then,’ I said and had the pleasure of seeing that I had surprised him. ‘The police know that the back doors were locked and bolted, Harry. You are not under any suspicion.’

‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘They don’t think one of the girls would have unbolted a door then?’ This brought me up short and for a while I said nothing, remembering how Eldry had told me they all ‘helped each other out’, remembering how the two housemaids had rushed to comfort Mattie the evening before.

‘But Mrs Hepburn would have heard it,’ I said. ‘Her room is just by the kitchen door.’

‘Aye, and yours is right by the one in the sub-basement,’ Harry agreed. ‘You’d have heard for sure. If everyone was in their beds like good girls and boys somebody would have heard something.’ His tone was mocking but he could not, surely, have guessed that I was with Lollie all night and so I ignored him.

‘Harry,’ I said, ‘can I speak seriously to you for a minute?’

‘I don’t care that he’s dead and I don’t care who killed him,’ he said. ‘So if that’s what you’re on about the answer is no.’

‘But presumably, like me, you don’t want to see an innocent party accused?’ I said. ‘Even if you don’t mind the idea of the guilty going free.’ Harry nodded. ‘Well, it’s about Eldry.’

‘What about her?’

‘This morning, when you lifted her up and carried her downstairs, you didn’t happened to notice if there was a stain on her dress, did you? Or on her apron? Anywhere really.’

‘A stain?’ said Harry, looking uncomfortable for the first time.

‘A bloodstain. Only she said that she had got blood on herself when she went in with the tray.’

‘Well, I didn’t see it,’ said Harry. ‘So I don’t think-’ He stopped short and stared at me. ‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘how is that “clearing the innocent”? You’re checking what she said against what I say – that’s not “clearing” anyone.’

‘I was hoping you had seen something,’ I told him. ‘Otherwise, I don’t know what to think and what to say to the superintendent.’

‘And she just come out and told you this, did she?’ Harry asked.

‘I found her in my little laundry room, washing her clothes,’ I said. ‘And-’

‘God almighty,’ said Harry. ‘She’s never at that again, is she?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, but Harry shook his head.

‘Ask one of the girls if you can’t guess,’ he said. ‘That man deserved ten knives in him for what he did, miss, if you ask me.’

‘Did he ever do anything to you?’ I asked. ‘Besides offend you.’

‘He did,’ Harry said, licking his lips and struggling with what appeared to be an unpleasant memory. ‘He belittled me, rubbed my nose in the difference between the two of us as if I wasn’t twice the man he’ll ever be if you stripped away the accident of birth and the trappings of privilege.’

‘Yes, but what did he actually do?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Harry.

‘You’ll have to tell the police.’

‘It’s not like that,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘But I’ve never told anyone, that’s all.’

‘We don’t get to choose what we tell the police, my boy. Not in the midst of a murder investigation. Even you must see that.’

‘But it’s just daft,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell that copper – it’s just stupid. And I wouldn’t even know what to tell him.’ I waited and after a pause he blurted out: ‘He took my clothes.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘See? It’s daft. He went into my trunk down in the carriage house there and took my clothes away. I think it was after we were talking one time – him and me – about ownership and wealth, him acting all interested and that, drawing me out, and then he took every stitch I had to my name.’

It was, I thought, a neat way to undercut someone’s droning on about the sins of ownership but rather a nasty one. I cast a look at what Harry was wearing now and he caught me.

‘I got it all back again,’ he said, looking down at his shirtsleeves and black trousers. ‘But he’d cut the pockets out. And when I went and challenged him he said I wouldn’t be needing pockets since I had no time for possessions to put in them. It was late at night and he was drunk and I was… I was feart.’ He turned out his pockets now and I could see that they were made of mismatched cloth, stitched on the stubs of the pockets which had gone before. ‘I fixed them up myself,’ he said. ‘The girls would have helped me but I never told them. I was feart and I didn’t understand why and that scared me even more.’

‘Madness is frightening, Harry,’ I said. ‘I understand perfectly.’

‘Aye, madness,’ he said, leaping on my suggestion as though it was a stroke of genius. ‘He made me feel as if I was going mad too.’ He shook his head as though to cast it off from him. ‘Like how any chance he got he would take the scissors to my coat or snip away at my breeks cuffs. Just wee digs, just to remind me.’

I nodded. This Pip Balfour – creeping about with scissors, snipping away – sounded exactly like Lollie’s midnight visitor with the nasty taste in poetry.

‘And yet you stayed,’ I said, as I had said to Lollie too.

‘I did,’ said Harry. He had shrugged off the troubling memories and was smiling again. ‘And the glorious day has dawned, miss, hasn’t it? Not the proper glorious day, but this’ll do to be going on with.’ With that he left, switching off the light and leaving me alone in the dark.