The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

7

By luncheon, Mr Faulds too had made the journey up to the little parlour and back again and so, with all possible suspects interviewed – for Mrs Hepburn had indeed been vociferous on the topic of her sharp ears and the secure fastening of the house at night-time – PC Morrison was relieved of his watch and was given instead the even duller task of standing outside Pip Balfour’s bedroom door guarding the body until the coroner’s cart came to take it away to the mortuary. Superintendent Hardy had departed, hurrying off down the stairs to the street, trailing sheaves of notes behind him – and as for Sergeant Mackenzie, he had never returned after his first exit. Lollie was asleep, luncheon was served, all was calm.

‘So,’ said Mr Faulds, gripping the edge of the table with both hands and looking at his staff ranged up and down the sides, ‘I think a short grace is in order.’ Eleven heads bowed. Ten remained bowed, but I admit that mine popped up again to watch him. ‘Dear Father,’ he said, with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his hands pressed together, ‘we thank Thee for Thy bounty and for our deliverance from dark days. We ask that Thou bless this house in its hour of uncertainty and bring peace to the troubled breast of our dear mistress. We pray that Thy mercy be showered on the soul of our departed master and we ask that Thou willst bring us all safely through the storm to a happier future according to Thy holy will. Amen.’

I was speechless, although a chorus of amens rumbled out from everyone else readily enough. Mr Faulds’s prayer, if I understood it, could be paraphrased as: thank you for Pip Balfour’s death. Please look out for us during the investigation, show Lollie that she’s better off without him, make sure no one gets punished and, anyway, he deserved it.

‘What happens now, Mr Faulds?’ said Phyllis. She was already dressed for her afternoon out in a coat-dress of daffodil yellow and a straw hat, and looked the picture of springtime despite the black armband. ‘What will the police do next?’

‘Nothing that should be discussed at the dinner table,’ said Mrs Hepburn. She had passed a loaded plate up to Mr Faulds at the far end and now turned to me. ‘How many slices, Fanny?’ It was boiled mutton of all things and I could not help thinking of the knife as Mrs Hepburn forked a thick slab onto my plate for me. ‘And take plenty tatties,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a draining time of it and you’ll need your strength.’

‘But d’you think we’ve seen the last of them?’ Phyllis persisted.

‘I think,’ I said, ‘that we’ll be seeing quite a lot more of them, don’t you, Mr Faulds? Mrs Hepburn?’ A few glances flicked towards me. ‘They’ll keep going until they find out what happened.’ A couple of the younger servants glanced uncertainly towards the butler. ‘The best way to get rid of them and get things back to normal for mistress,’ I went on, ‘would be if we could tell them something to help them “crack the case”. Help them solve it.’ I looked around the table brightly.

‘Come up with a story, you mean?’ said Stanley. ‘That’s a thought, Mr Faulds, isn’t it? And I could give you some good ideas for it.’

‘No!’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean anything of the kind. I meant tell them anything we actually know to help them find out what actually happened – tell the truth and get to the bottom of it all.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, lass,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘It maybe hasn’t struck you yet, new as you are, but there’s only two ways it can be.’ I waited while she dished out potatoes to Eldry, Millie and Mattie and nodded at them to start eating. ‘Either it was mistress, and we’re none of us wanting to see her clapped in jail and the house broken up with all of us on the street, or it was someone sitting round this table. So you just mind what you say.’

I gazed at them all: Mrs Hepburn quite impassive, pulling her meat into shreds with her fork; Mr Faulds watching me with an unreadable look upon his face, one hand around his beer glass; Clara, pale and solemn, sitting with her head bent; John with a little twist of a grin on one side of his face, enjoying the scene; Phyllis in her straw hat looking as though she had not a care in the world; Stanley staring at Mr Faulds, waiting for guidance; Eldry eating quickly but with little enjoyment, jabbing the food up on her fork and snapping it off again with her teeth; Harry, uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and toying with his knife, food forgotten; Millie mashing butter into her potatoes with a small smile; Mattie watching her, grimacing at the sight, or perhaps the sound, of the lumps of butter being squashed through the tines of her fork as though it were something disgusting. Before the silence could grow any more deafening, I spoke up again.

‘Are you really saying – all of you – that you would remain under suspicion yourselves to protect… whoever it is?’ I said. ‘Everyone? No one will speak up?’

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘It’s not that bad. At least, for me it’s not. I don’t know who it was.’ There was a murmur of agreement to this point. ‘But I don’t care who it was either.’ At this the murmurs rose almost to a cheer.

‘And that’s enough,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Phyllis, where are you going in that hat, eh? What’s his name and what does his dada do?’

Phyllis giggled, John took up the tease with gusto and the rest went on wolfing their food or picking at it as their habits or current moods took them.

Presently, Mr Faulds turned to me.

‘Miss Rossiter,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d be so kind as to go through to the kitchen and get the pudding. Mrs Hepburn looks dog-tired and we like to help each other. Clara, you go too and fetch in a pot of tea.’

I had only half cleared my plate of mutton but I had no appetite for the rest of it and so I rose and followed Clara out of the room. She walked stiffly, quite unlike the easy, willowy girl who had greeted me at the area door less than a day ago.

‘Are you feeling any better?’ I said to her as we entered the kitchen. Clara took a cigarette out of her apron pocket and held it against the hot bar of the range to light it.

‘Better than what?’ she said, putting the cigarette to her lips. ‘Want one?’ I shook my head.

‘Eldry said this morning you were indisposed.’

‘Oh!’ she said, smiling faintly. ‘That. Aye, well, it wasn’t a good time for me to go into his room, that’s all.’

‘Forgive me, dear, but what do you mean?’

Clara gave me a shrewd look out of her little eyes.

‘I’d have put you down for a woman of the world, Miss Rossiter,’ she said. ‘I’d have put money on Miss being just for politeness like Mrs Hepburn is.’ She drew deeply on her cigarette and blew out the smoke in three long plumes. ‘Phyllis and Eldry and me took turns of when we had to go into his room, that’s all. To make sure we wouldn’t come away with no wee souvenirs, see?’ I could feel myself blushing.

‘Good grief!’ I said, and then a fresh thought struck me. ‘Phyllis told me that she had escaped his attentions.’

‘She was lucky,’ said Clara. ‘She never got caught by him in one of his moods. Don’t ask me why, because… I’m not meaning to be nasty but if he went for Eldry he’d go for any-… Well, I don’t want to be nasty. It must have just been the luck of the draw. He’d have got her in the end.’

‘But why didn’t you stop going altogether? Harry could have stepped in, surely? Why didn’t you tell Mr Faulds and ask him- Well, no, probably you wouldn’t have cared to tell Mr Faulds, but why not Mrs Hepburn?’

Clara laughed a bitter laugh. ‘Aye, why not just tell everybody everything, eh?’ she said, and the way she spoke reminded me of Harry; the same troubled confusion on her face and in her voice too. There was surely more here than she had hinted at so far.

‘I do think,’ I said carefully, ‘that perhaps the worst of what master did was managing to make everyone else ashamed instead of himself.’ Clara looked up sharply at me. ‘To make everyone keep his grubby little secrets for him.’ I paused and smiled at her, trying not to look as though I were holding my breath, waiting. Clara’s cigarette burned forgotten in her hand, the ribbon of smoke rippling a little in the waves of warmth from the stove.

‘You’re right, Miss Rossiter,’ she said, speaking in a soft and wondering sort of voice. ‘That’s just exactly right, the way you said it.’

‘When in fact you have nothing to fear from speaking of your troubles to your friends,’ I said. ‘They all knew him. They know the fault was his and you did nothing wrong.’

With this, though, I had gone too far. Clara came out of her dream with a harsh intake of breath and blinked at me.

‘Did I not now?’ she said. ‘If only.’

‘You mean you did do something?’

Clara laughed again but there was no humour in it.

‘I didn’t stick a knife in him if that’s what you mean. You don’t really think that, do you?’

Before I could answer there was a knock on the half-open kitchen door and Mattie put his head around it.

‘Mrs Hepburn says she’s not chivvying you and to say sorry and something else I’ve forgotten, but John and Harry are ready for their puddings, so I’ve come to get them.’

‘You don’t need to knock at the door, daftie,’ said Clara. She jumped down from the table where she had been perching and gave her cigarette to Mattie to finish. Then she seized a cloth, opened the oven and drew out a steaming dish of rice pudding bubbling away merrily under a dark russet skin. ‘I’ll come back and do the tea,’ she called over her shoulder, leaving Mattie and me behind her.

Mattie took a tentative puff of the cigarette, grimaced and threw it onto the fire. I thought I should show willing and I took down the largest of the teapots which were ranged on the chimneypiece and gingerly poured in a little hot water from the kettle to warm it through.

‘Careful, miss,’ said Mattie, then bit his lip. ‘Sorry, but you d’ae look fair handy with that, if you’ll pardon me.’

‘Perhaps you could help?’ I said, holding the pot out to him. He beamed with pleasure and took it from me.

‘I always make the tea at home, at my mammy’s,’ he said. ‘Been doing it since I was a wee tiny boy.’ I looked around myself helplessly; I did not even know where the sugar and milk might be and I wished I had a cigarette to keep my hands busy.

‘So what do you make of all this then, Mattie?’ I said. His face stilled again, the smile gone.

‘Master?’ he said. I nodded. ‘I d’ae ken, miss. I’m glad I never saw it. Was it as bad as Eldry said?’

‘It wasn’t very nice to look at,’ I told him. ‘But what I really meant was what do you make of… what Mr Faulds said? And Harry?’

‘I d’ae ken,’ said Mattie again. I waited, sure that more would come if I let it. Mattie spooned tea leaves into the pot and then reached up to replace the caddy on the chimneypiece. ‘I’m no’ sorry he’s deid,’ he said at last, ‘and I’d be right sorry to see any o’ them through there deid. Hanged, I mean, miss. Even Stanley.’

‘Stanley?’ I could not help echoing. ‘Why him, in particular?’

‘Sorry,’ said Mattie. ‘Sorry, I shouldnae have said that. Just that him and me don’t get on as easy as me and the rest, that’s all. He swanks it a bit to the rest o’ us. And he can be a wee bit two-faced an’ all, miss. He’s aye sucking up to Mr Faulds, but you should hear what he says about him when his back’s turned.’

‘I have,’ I said. ‘Snippets, anyway. But I have to agree with you, Mattie. I can’t think of any of our friends through there that I would see hanged, even after only a day of knowing them. Stanley included.’ We shared a smile. ‘But I am sorry that Mr Balfour died the way he did, for he did me no harm.’

The silence this time was even longer, but eventually Mattie spoke up.

‘He didnae harm me either, miss,’ he said softly. ‘No’ really. It was my own stupid fault, being such a… nancy. That’s what he called it. All it was was he made me wait up for him, up in the wee lobby place, at the front door, when he was out, no matter how late he was out. In the dark there. I’m feart for the dark, miss, and he knew it but he wouldnae let me get Harry or anyone do it instead of me – it had to be me because I’m the only one that was feart.’

‘That’s beastly,’ I said. ‘And quite unnecessary too.’

‘Well, I had to open the front door for him, miss,’ said Mattie, ‘and then lock up again at his back, pull his boots off and take them to clean. Only he wouldnae let me keep a light on, so I just had to wait in the dark. Not every night, mind,’ he said. ‘Only when he was out somewhere. And anyway, I just needed to stop being daft.’

‘I can’t agree with that, Mattie,’ I said. ‘No one can say why one person is frightened of the dark and another isn’t, but there’s no need to go calling yourself unkind names.’

‘Oh, I ken fine why it is,’ Mattie said. ‘It’s why I’m here instead of at the pit still, miss. I was in a fall – a collapse, like – and I was trapped until they came to get me out.’

‘Trapped down a mine?’ I said, grimacing. I could not imagine anything more terrifying, and I could not imagine this child, with his blond hair and his slight frame, ever doing anything so filthy and dreadful as mining.

‘I was putting for my big brother,’ Mattie said.

‘Putting?’

‘Dragging the cart,’ said Mattie. ‘My big brother was at the face and I filled the cart and dragged it back to the road for him.’

‘But aren’t there lifts?’ I said, puzzled. ‘Pulleys?’

Mattie nodded, looking just as puzzled, and then he gave a smile.

‘The coal road, I mean, miss,’ he said. ‘Underground. Joins the shaft to where the coal face starts. Anyway, there was this wee collapse. Naeb’dy died and it never got in the papers and it was only a few hours but… John lost a leg, miss. So I’m lucky really. Only I couldnae go down again, not even for a fortune. It’s no’ like I didnae try.’

‘And master knew this?’ I said. Mattie nodded. ‘But still made you sit in the dark all alone and wait for him?’ Another nod. ‘Unspeakable!’ But even as I spoke up so stoutly – and truly I was incensed on young Mattie’s behalf – there was a question about his story, at least one, which did not make sense. Something about it troubled me. ‘Mattie,’ I began, but someone appeared in the doorway before I could continue. It was Mr Faulds himself, and both the hall boy and I stood almost to attention.

‘What’s happened to that tea?’ he said. Mattie rapidly filled the pot with water, swiped up a large milk jug from where it had been sitting on a stone shelf under the window and left us.

‘Well, Miss Rossiter,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Fanny, if I may. You’ve been talking to Clara and Mattie, have you? And what say you now? Are you getting to think he’s no loss?’

‘I’m certainly beginning to think you must all love mistress a great deal to stay in a house that had him in it too,’ I said. ‘And here’s another thing, Mr Faulds. You didn’t see what was done to him, but you’ve all heard about it. Aren’t you scared to be in the same house with someone who could do such a thing? Aren’t you worried at all that now he’s started he won’t stop?’

‘He, Fanny?’ said the butler. ‘Who’s this “he”? I’m the only “he” that’s had the finger pointed and if it was me who did it, I’ve nothing to fear, now have I?’

‘Did the superintendent point his finger?’ I said. ‘You don’t seem unduly troubled by it.’

‘The innocent have nothing to fear from the truth,’ he said.

With Mr Faulds’s permission, and since Lollie seemed set to sleep the day away, I went out after luncheon. I had told the cook and butler as we sat together in the armchairs that I hoped they understood but I just needed to get out into the fresh air and lift my eyes to the hills (this was one of Grant’s coded expressions for whenever she feels like sloping off and can think of no actual reason). The cost of my freedom was to regale them with the details of what I had seen, once the youngsters were all safely out of the way and the servants’ hall door was firmly closed behind them. Mrs Hepburn merely sucked her teeth, shook her head and continued unwrapping and devouring an endless succession of mint toffees, but Mr Faulds was badly affected by the tale and wiped his neck and forehead several times with his handkerchief before I was done.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘I hope them police will have the cleaning of it all, Mrs Hepburn. I hope them sheets and blankets won’t get left for our girls to tackle.’

‘I’ll take care of them if it falls to us,’ I said. ‘I was a nurse in the war and I’ve seen worse.’

Mr Faulds shuddered.

‘I’ve never been any good with the likes of that,’ he said. ‘Not as bad as poor Stanley, but bad enough. I saw a man hang himself – by accident, this was – in the backstage at the Bristol Hippodrome in my performing days, caught himself up in the ropes and couldn’t get free and it was the only time in my life I couldn’t go on. I was in my dressing room as grey as a ghost and put to shame with all the chorus and the dancing girls getting on with the show.’ Mrs Hepburn tutted again and offered him a toffee.

As I made my way up the steps and along the pavement minutes later, I considered the point; one which had not struck me before. One thinks often of the evil required to do murder and – for want of a better word – the courage, but one cannot ignore the fact that a would-be murderer must also have the stomach for it, at least where a stabbing is concerned. Firing off a pistol at a distant figure or tipping a packet of powder into a glass before melting away are one thing, but driving a kitchen knife into the neck of a man while he looks one in the eye… surely I could take at least the screaming Eldry, the gulping Stanley and the quavering Mattie off the list of possible suspects, unless one of them was a very accomplished actor indeed? And Mr Faulds, so he claimed, could not have done it without fainting dead away. Then again Millie, the superintendent’s rather peculiar ideas about her placidity notwithstanding, was hardly my idea of a murdering fiend. As to the other three: to have met Clara, Phyllis and Mrs Hepburn in the street and supposed any of them capable of such an act would be hard enough; to entertain the notion after twenty-four hours at close quarters with them was beyond ridiculous. And yet it had happened; still whenever I closed my eyes I could see that white face rising up out of a sea of red, beseeching me.

So, here I was, doing what I was ever wont to do: that is, turning to Alec Osborne to beg him to help me. I only hoped, as I let myself into the kiosk at the corner of Darnaway Street and piled up my collection of pennies, that the extra bustle of the morning had died down so that the telephone lines were there for the asking again.

There was a little delay, as it happened, a few extra ticks and thumps and one or two sighs from the girl at the exchange. She asked me if I would not rather try later; I assured her that I had chosen to telephone just when I wanted to. She sighed again, said something I affected not to hear and then at last I heard ringing.

‘It’s Mrs Gilver, Mr Barrow, for master,’ I said, before I could help myself. ‘For Mr Osborne, I mean, Barrow, if you’d fetch him.’ There was a long, windy silence down the line. Barrow, Alec’s valet and, in the absence of a housekeeper, the self-appointed boss of Dunelgar, takes himself inordinately seriously for a man of his age. As well as that, I am never very certain what he thinks of me. Perhaps he is an empire-builder, who looks forward to the day when Alec’s household will swell and he will be borne along on the rising tide and finish as butler with valets and footmen to jump when he clicks his fingers. If so, then no doubt he blames me for Alec’s continued bachelorhood – a ridiculous notion, for I have been most encouraging on the topic of Alec’s settling down, except when I have been downright bossy. There was a whisper of an alliance only the previous winter and I had cosseted it as though it were a kindling fire which I had lit with my last match, but it came to nothing.

Alec picked up the earpiece at the other end and broke in on my meandering thoughts.

‘Dandy,’ he said, and I heard the click of him resettling his pipe, which meant he was prepared for a long and luxurious chat, if the girl on the exchange would let us have one. ‘How goes it across the great divide?’ he said. ‘Have they seen through you yet? Bunty has settled in like a daughter of the house, by the way. Not fretting at all.’

‘There’s been a murder,’ I announced and managed to get quite a chunk of the pertinent history across in the ensuing silence before Alec came to himself again and started badgering me.

‘But the men were all locked out apart from this Faulds character?’ he said, cutting me off from explaining that very fact with great clarity. I sighed.

‘Yes, and the maids are all two to a room and, as I say, I’m pretty sure Lollie couldn’t have done it without me hearing although I’m getting the brandy glass checked to be sure. So I’m stumped and begging you to come and help me.’

‘Well, ordinarily, of course,’ Alec said. ‘Ordinarily try and stop me, but I’m stranded, Dan. I’ve got enough petrol in the Vauxhall to get down there but not back again, and some of the garages are closed already.’

‘But surely garage mechanics are their own bosses?’ I said. ‘Why should they shut the pumps, for heaven’s sake?’

‘They’ve run dry from everyone stocking up,’ Alec said.

‘Panic buying?’ I said. ‘How disgusting. How selfish people are. They’ve forgotten all our lessons from the war already.’

‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘Also, I never thought of it in time. No, we are not finished,’ he said in his most commanding voice as the pips sounded and the girl broke in. ‘At least another three minutes. At least.’ The line changed back from breathy to muffled as she left us again. ‘Is there any sign of a motive, Dan? From anyone except the wife, that is?’

‘Hah!’ I said. ‘The place is bristling with motives like a porcupine. You were wrong when you thought him a ninny, you know. Lollie’s summing-up was much nearer the mark: a cruel, vindictive, philandering pig. A seducer of the maids and a brute to the menservants. Some of the things he did, Alec, one wonders how he ever dreamed them up they’re so lavishly nasty. And Clara the parlourmaid can’t bring herself to speak of whatever he did to her even now, so it must be extra specially horrid. No one is sorry he’s gone.’

‘Still,’ said Alec.

‘Oh yes, I know,’ I said. ‘And Lollie at least is keen for me to stay and try to get to the bottom of it for her.’

‘Well, if it makes more sense to come at it from this end,’ said Alec, ‘is there anyone you can put out of the running? Anyone who didn’t have a motive?’

‘I haven’t heard anything from Mr Faulds on his own account,’ I said, ‘although he hated him with a passion in comradeship, certainly. And… let me see… Mrs Hepburn dropped a very vague hint yesterday but I need to press her. And then there’s Millie, the scullerymaid – kitchenmaid in waiting – but I can’t think that she would have much to do with him.’

‘Oh?’ said Alec.

‘Have you ever met yours?’ I said.

‘Good point,’ Alec said. ‘No, indeed. Although I daresay there is such a creature about the place somewhere. What about the rest of the men?’

‘I’ve yet to speak to John and Stanley,’ I said, ‘but the thing is that the men are in the clear anyway, because they were locked out, remember?’

‘Doors can be unlocked,’ said Alec. ‘You must be thorough about this, Dan.’

I considered trying to explain to him the difference between his bedroom, muffled with carpet and curtains, miles from any door, and the maids’ and cook’s rooms with their linoleum over stone, their echoing bareness and the sound ringing along the empty passageways of scraping locks and iron bolts and wooden soles and marble steps.

‘Hm,’ I said in the end.

‘And on another note, what are the police making of it?’ said Alec. ‘And of you, come to that?’

‘Very little so far,’ I replied. ‘They’re rather stretched with all the picket duty – or is it the strikers who one says are on picket duty? Well, you know what I mean – so it was a superintendent who poled up this morning, very flustered and very displeased to be flustered – he is formed for gravitas, really – but he practically had his Big Blue Book for Policemen in his hand, folded open at Murder. So when I debunked Fanny Rossiter and waved Hutchinson’s name in front of him he rather fell on my neck.’

‘Fanny?’ said Alec. ‘And debunked? Where do you get these words? Do you have to pay a subscription?’

‘You’ll find,’ I said, trying to sound withering, ‘that debunking comes from Oscar Wilde. When they find out that Algy’s dying friend isn’t dying.’

‘That would be de-Bunburying,’ said Alec. ‘Do you know when the post-mortem’s going to-’

‘Phyllis!’ I said. I put my hand up to the glass to screen my eyes and peered out along the street. Phyllis the housemaid, unmissable in her yellow coat-dress, was walking smartly along towards India Street carrying a medium-sized suitcase. I spoke into the mouthpiece again. ‘Alec, I’ve just seen one of the other maids with rather more luggage than she would need on an afternoon off. She’s making her way towards the tram stop, bold as brass. I think she’s heading for the hills.’

‘Not by tram she’s not,’ said Alec. ‘But you’d better ring off and give chase anyway.’

I crashed the earpiece back into the cradle and – as I realised later – leaving tenpenceworth of pennies behind me, I slipped out of the kiosk and streaked across the road to the corner where Phyllis had disappeared. Hoping that no one could see me, I flattened myself against the wall and poked my head around to peep down the street after her. She was nowhere to be seen. I stepped away from the wall and rounded the corner properly, looking up and down each side, but there was no mistaking it. There were no carts, motor lorries or trees for her to be hidden behind, no more kiosks or even pillar boxes, no shops she might have stepped inside. She was gone. She must have started running, I realised. Perhaps she saw me peering out of the kiosk at her. I went at a very fast walk, almost running myself, to the corner of Jamaica Street and then to the next corner again, where Gloucester Place and Circus Gardens just fail to meet, and looked around in all directions. There was no sign of her anywhere. She could not possibly have rounded two corners in the time it took me to get here and there were no alleys or lanes for her to have dodged into; Edinburgh’s New Town is well known for the endlessness and unbrokenness of its many stretches of Georgian splendour.

There was only one explanation, I thought, as I stood there with my hands on my hips letting my breath slow down again. She had gone into one of the houses. Perhaps she had given notice and left, or had simply left – ‘flitted’, like Maggie – to a new situation already lined up before the events of the morning, in response to Pip’s threats of dismissal. But would a maid roll up to her new position in that coat and that hat, looking as though she were going for a walk along a promenade with her young man? Hard on the heels of that thought came another. What if she were indeed going to join a young man, in a flat in one of those houses, escaping from what she had done? What if she had robbed Pip Balfour of some valuable item that no one yet realised was missing and was making off, dressed up to the nines and sure she had got away with it?

‘Everything all right, miss?’ said a voice. I started and turned to see a rather elderly-looking policeman standing at my side. He was regarding me with an expression more quizzical than helpful.

‘Absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘I was supposed to meet up with a friend of mine but she’s given me the slip somehow.’ The policeman had reared backwards somewhat when I spoke and was looking at me with outright hostility now.

‘Just the one friend was it, miss?’ he said. I stared at him.

‘As it happens,’ I answered. ‘Why?’

‘Fine and well,’ he said. ‘I’ll take your name just the same though.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said. ‘You most certainly shall not.’

‘Oh, is that right then?’ said the policeman, squaring up.

‘It is,’ I replied. ‘I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong and I’m surprised, I must say, to find you hanging around here harassing innocent passers-by when your fellow officers are stretched to breaking point with the strikers.’ He took a step or two backwards, I am pleased to say. ‘Do you know Superintendent Hardy?’ I demanded. He nodded, swallowing hard and making his prominent and rather ill-shaven Adam’s apple sink into his collar and bob up again. ‘Well, so do I.’

‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ said the constable, who had instinctively pulled at his coat to smarten himself when he heard Hardy’s name. ‘Only I am minding out for the strike. I’m back in for it – been retired five years, properly. There’s trouble down on Princes Street and we’re trying to see where it is the gangs are forming. I thought you were standing there in the middle of the junction like that waiting for your pals.’

‘Gangs?’ I said. ‘On Princes Street?’

‘By the station there,’ said the policeman. ‘And a big crowd at the Tron too. Five arrests already and a policeman in the infirmary.’ I said nothing. ‘And what with you dressed so plain but speaking so fancy – if you’ll forgive me – I put you down for one of they intellectuals.’

‘I assure you, my dear fellow,’ I said, ‘that I am neither an intellectual nor a Bolshevist nor any kind of sympathiser.’ At that moment, I caught sight of a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye and turned towards it. Phyllis was shutting an area gate about halfway up India Street. ‘There she is now!’ I said to the constable. Phyllis hefted her suitcase more comfortably into her grip and made her way back the way she had come.

‘Oh, really?’ he replied with what seemed to me to be an unwarranted level of interest.

‘I’ll just run after her, if that’s all right,’ I said, already beginning to move. ‘Keep up the good work, Constable.’

He gave me a knowing look and turned away.

Of course I had no intention of sprinting after Phyllis really, but I did want to see where she had been and try to work out what she might have been doing there. She had definitely come up from below stairs, but if she were merely visiting a friend why had she only stayed a minute and what was in the suitcase? Bloodied clothes would be my first guess and I should like to get inside the place before they were put into a furnace by her accomplice.

It was a grey stone house like any other in the streets surrounding, not so grand as the Balfours’ in Heriot Row and ill-kept in a vague way; as I drew nearer, the collection of bright new bell pushes set in by the front door revealed that it had lately been divided into flats. The basement windows were dusty, the area flags brown with dead moss which had been sluiced with ammonia but not scrubbed clear. An unprepossessing place, in all, but it had one feature of great interest to me. In the fanlight above the basement door, there was a crude painting of three brass-coloured balls. Without thinking about what I should do once inside, I opened the gate and descended.

The door was unlocked, but whoever waited inside was well warned of any visitor, for a string of tiny gold bells hanging behind it were set tinkling as I entered. A long passageway distempered in a tobacco colour stretched away in front of me, but on the nearest door, sitting ajar, a cardboard sign proclaimed it to be the Reception & Showroom.

A counter had been erected, cutting the room in half, and behind it were countless tiers of shelves, all around and above the fireplace, where the elaborate black-leaded range from when this room was a kitchen still crouched, glowing orange and radiating a most unwelcome heat for such a warm day. The shelves were stacked with brown-paper parcels, done up with string and bearing labels which hung down and fluttered in the rising heat.

On my side of the counter, in contrast to the neat shelves, was such a profusion of objects that one hardly knew where to rest one’s eyes. There was a rack of fur coats on wooden hangers, very rusty and stiff-looking fur coats too, with the large flat collars of twenty years ago. There were three tailors’ dummies, each dressed in a greying wedding gown and with a hat sitting on its shoulders and a pair of satin slippers resting against its solitary leg. There were glass cases of jewellery: barnacled brooches, dented watches and wedding rings, thin from wear, all set out against velvet. There were tea-chests full of odd golf clubs and a battalion of perambulators each piled high with folded linens. In pride of place were four wireless sets on a walnut table, and around the top of the room – on the high shelf where one would look for the largest of the pie dishes and trenchers, the rarely used platters and pans – there were perhaps a hundred dusty hatboxes, joined together with ropes of spider-web like bunting.

‘Help you?’ said a voice.

I stepped towards the counter and saw sitting in a low, armless chair with a knitted cover – a nursery chair, I suspected – a small woman in her mid-thirties, but dressed like a grandmother with a piecrust top to her collar and ropes of suspiciously large white pearls hanging down over her boned bodice and pooling amongst her spreading skirts. My first thought was that she was in fancy dress for some reason, but as I noticed the profusion of brooches behind the pearls and the number of mismatched rings on her fingers I realised that she was simply dressed from stock. She was smoothing flat a sheet of brown paper on her lap.

‘First time?’ she said. I nodded. ‘Well, what have you brought me?’ She got to her feet and as she came forward at least the spreading skirts were explained for she walked with the rolling gait of someone with one leg much shorter than the other and I guessed that there was a block-soled boot hidden under her hemline.

‘What have I brought you?’ I said and then hesitated. She regarded me calmly from under a fringe of tight brown curls, slowly winding some string into a figure of eight and stowing it away in a drawer under the counter. I opened my bag, hoping to see something I could press into use to get things started, but it was Miss Rossiter’s bag and was empty except for a handkerchief and a purse of money. I took out a ten-shilling note and put it on the counter. The little woman spread her arms wide, showing off the bounty of golf clubs and perambulators behind me.

‘Take your time,’ she said. ‘Jist whistle if you want a case opened.’ She was turning away when I spoke.

‘I’m not looking for trinkets,’ I said. ‘I need your help with something and I would like to pay you.’

‘Can’t help you there, doll,’ she said. ‘I don’t deal in the sticky stuff. Fifty with a chit or twenty-five, sign on the line.’

I did not understand a word of this and told her so.

‘I don’t have anything to do with stolen goods,’ she said, speaking slowly as though to an idiot. ‘You can get half the value of your item if you have a receipt to prove you own it or a quarter if you just sign your name and leave an address. You’d be better off doon Leith if that’s not to your fancy.’

I took another ten-shilling note out of my purse and put it on the counter.

‘The young woman who was just here,’ I said, ‘the girl in yellow. What did she bring you?’ The little woman shook her head, her small brown eyes quite flat with lack of interest in the banknotes. I thought for a moment. If Phyllis had pawned something of Pip’s I had to know. If she had pawned something of her own, one had to wonder why she suddenly needed money and to ask oneself if it were perhaps because someone had seen her do something and that someone had to be paid to keep quiet about it. Clara was the obvious candidate for the role, for she alone could have witnessed Phyllis leave her room in the night, but Clara hated Pip enough to forgive his murder and besides, she was not a blackmailer, surely. Hot-tempered, perhaps, and inclined to be huffy, but she was not the kind to sneak and threaten.

‘I’ll bet,’ I said to the little woman, ‘that she took twenty-five and signed for it.’ Her face remained inscrutable, so I tried another tack. ‘She is in my employment, you know,’ I said, hoping that my voice would trump Miss Rossiter’s good grey serge, ‘and I suspect her of stealing from me.’

‘That lassie works to Mrs Balfour,’ said the pawnbroker. ‘What are you at?’

I reasoned to myself that since I would be telling Superintendent Hardy about Phyllis’s visit and he would come and get it out of this remarkably stubborn little person in the end anyway, I would be saving him some of his meagre time if I took care of it now.

‘You’ve not heard what happened at the Balfours’ today?’ I said. ‘Phyllis didn’t tell you?’ She shook her head. ‘Mr Balfour is dead,’ I said. ‘He was found this morning with a knife in his throat and nobody knows who did it, but all suspicious behaviour needs to be explained, don’t you see? Now, will you tell me what Phyllis pawned?’

‘Nothing,’ said the woman, who had paled at the news. ‘She was in to redeem today.’

‘You mean to take her belongings out again?’

‘Aye, that’s it,’ said the woman. She had opened another drawer under the counter and lifted out a sheaf of paper labels. ‘She’s a regular here, madam. She has a taste for nice things – well, you can tell that from looking at her – and she’s not good at waiting for them either. Here we are.’ She had found the label she was looking for and turned it towards me. The pencilled writing on it had been rubbed off to let the label be used again but was still faintly visible.

‘One gold ring,’ I said, squinting at it. ‘Ladies? Lace? What does it say here?’

‘One gold ring, large. One gold ring, small. Her ma and pa’s, most likely, or grandma’s maybe. One silver-gilt prayer book. One black coat, one tweed rug, one set silk nightclothes duchesse satin peach, coffee lace,’ said the woman. ‘I’d say the nightie and the rug were maybe lifted from the house, would you no’? But I like to give folks the benefit and say they were passed on.’

‘And can you tell me,’ I said, speaking rather softly as though that meant I were not really asking, ‘how much she paid to redeem them?’

‘I shouldn’t really,’ she said. ‘And if my ma was here she’d take her hand off me…’

‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘before she comes back…’

The little woman gave me a sad smile.

‘Oh, there’s no coming back from where she’s gone, madam,’ she said. ‘It was seventeen pounds Miss McInnes gave me today for redemption.’

‘Gosh,’ I said, thinking that if this were the going rate for a few baubles and old nighties, there had been times in the past when I could have furnished myself with very useful amounts of pocket money if I had had the nerve to shove some of my treasures over a pawnshop counter. There is a set of Sèvres too hideous to display, much less eat off, which is seeing out its days in a crate in an attic; and much of my grandmother’s jewellery is wilfully ugly and just shy of being worth resetting in wearable form. The pawnbroker read my mind and set me straight.

‘That’s got a fair bit of interest on it, mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve had it a good while.’ I looked again at the upper shelves of parcels, where the paper was sun-bleached even in this basement room and the labels were curled up like autumn leaves.

‘Of course,’ I said, hoping that I was not blushing. ‘Well, thank you. I shall try to keep Superintendent Hardy from troubling you.’

‘No odds to me,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve nothing to hide from the coppers.’ She gave me a shrewd look as she sat herself down again, gripping the edge of a shelf and kicking her lame leg out as she fell backwards. I wished I had given her more than a pound, suddenly, and did not like to leave such a good little person, all alone in this frankly quite depressing setting. As I let myself out into the passageway, however, I met a youngish man in his shirtsleeves carrying in his arms a fat toddler with tight brown curls and round brown eyes.

‘Afternoon,’ he said to me, and then to the child, ‘Let’s see if Mammy’s got the kettle on yet, Daisy, eh?’

I put my unneeded sympathy away again and retraced my steps to the kiosk. Inside, seven of the pennies had gone but three were still where I had left them.

‘Me again, Barrow,’ I said, and then, ‘Alec, darling, do you think you might answer the telephone yourself for a while? It’s not very sensible to be using up my three minuteses waiting for Barrow to track you down.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Alec. ‘Stop nagging. What happened?’

‘Well, I’ve had my assumptions about the nature of humanity pleasantly overturned,’ I said, thinking of the strapping young man and his crippled wife, and of the two remaining thruppence bits, ‘but as far as Phyllis goes, it seems she has suddenly come into funds. Petty cash to the likes of you, guv’nor, but quite a tidy sum to a housemaid. Seventeen pounds, at least. I need to ask Lollie whether Pip kept that kind of money in his pockets and if not we must ask ourselves where else she could have got it from.’ Hanging a dog on the strength of a bad name and the sudden acquisition of seventeen pounds is not good detecting, of course, but one could not help the idea that a girl who was fond enough of finery to pawn her grandmother’s wedding ring, who could be in as jolly spirits as Phyllis was today when all around was death and calamity, had just the kind of single-minded toughness required of a murderer or indeed a blackmailer of murderers. Who in the house had seventeen pounds lying around to have blackmailed out of him – or her – was another question.