“That’s why they’ve sent for you, sir. Friend of Sir James and Lady Cecily, you can work it all out discreetly. No need for red faces, eh?”
Joe knew that if he were to get at the truth it would have to be extracted from the most skilled liar he had ever come across—Dorcas herself.
“Ben, did you report the, er, midnight wanderings to Lady Cecily?”
Ben hung his head. “Should ’a done, shouldn’t I? Trouble if I did and trouble if I didn’t, I reckon …”
“Ben, you are in no way to blame. You were put into a bad situation. If trouble there’s been—the fault lies with others. Well—did you?” he insisted.
“No, I kept my mouth shut. I told her everything up to Miss Dorcas turning in for the night. Thing is—Master Alex is in a spot of bother at the moment.” He hesitated.
“I’m aware of the young master’s problems.”
“Ah. Well … I wouldn’t want to get him into worse trouble. None of us would. He’s all right is Master Alex. Never any trouble to the female staff, unlike some. Us indoors—we’ve always covered for him. Don’t like to see a bloke get picked on, even when it’s his own doing it.”
“And his mother’s his most demanding critic?”
“Always! Especially since he came back from London this time. She’s got him on a tight rein and I didn’t want to say something she’d not want to hear and that would get him into further trouble. As well as doing the girl no good—her reputation would have been shot to pieces. If I’d spoken out that would have been a headache for four people.”
“And you wouldn’t want to be known as the spreader of gossip?”
“You’ve said it! We’re supposed to keep quiet about what we see and hear.” Ben’s eyes gleamed suggestively. “People wander about in the night, like I told you. Sometimes they need a guiding hand back to their own billet. Unless we want our ears torn off by Mrs. Bolton, we say nothing. Well, over a ciggie round the back of the dairy, having a laugh with the other lads, that’s different.”
Joe strained to keep his focus on the job in hand when all he wanted to do was flee back to London, pursue Dorcas to Highgate or wherever she was hiding out and wring the truth from her. Professional routine rescued him from rash action. He remembered Cecily’s interrupted assertion that her son James had an alibi for the night of Lavinia’s death and decided to follow it up. “Lady Cecily claims that James has a cast-iron alibi for the time in question. Can you confirm …?”
“Oh, yes, sir. When the house was settled and everyone in their rooms I escorted her ladyship down to the drawbridge—I always see her back safely over to her own place. That’s the Dower House. About a hundred yards away down the drive. They leave the bridge up till I get back. We were just going over the bridge when Sir James comes haring up all of a lather. ‘Don’t you worry, Ben,’ he says, ‘I’ll see Mama home. Tell them they can put the bridge up now. I’ll be at the Dower House for the night.”
He anticipated Joe’s question. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Her Ladyship has a nice little guest suite of her own and Sir James does occasionally … um …”
“Seek refuge?”
“Run to his mum’s! He didn’t come back until they rang with the bad news to fetch him back over.”
“Ben, there’s something more you can do for me. For me and her ladyship,” he thought it prudent to add. “When next you’re sharing a smoke with the lads, ask about—discreetly!—if the valet that Mr. McIver’s brought down with him is what he says he is. Body servant? Chauffeur? Or is he really employed in McIver’s professional sphere? Has he by any chance got a camera in his kit? I like to know these things. I’m shy around cameras in the sweating hands of the press.”
“Camera? Old Blenkinsop? Naw! Why would he? Known Clarence for years, Mr. Styles has. Old mates.” He gave a sly smile. “But that new lady’s maid his wife’s brought … she has! Calls herself Chloe.”
“New, Ben?”
“She’s not the one they had with them last time they were here—back in April when …”
“That weekend …”
Ben nodded. “The other girls say she’s French but I’m not so sure … She’s been put to bunk up with our Rosie. And Rosie watched her unpack. She was very careful to warn Rose to keep her hands off her stuff, it was fragile. Cheek! Rosie checked it over later, of course. She says it’s not your common or garden Kodak—it’s a posh German thing. ‘Leica’ would that be? What would a lady’s maid be doing with a Leica?”
“Thanks for that, Ben. Look—your Rose is a smart girl, is she?”
“I’ll say!” Ben sighed his admiration. “Bright as a fresh-minted sixpence. Good with her fingers and knows how to keep her mouth shut. What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Ben, I think you’ve guessed! I think it might be to the advantage of the mistress and her family, to say nothing of Scotland Yard, if any film shot on the premises were to be, um …”
“Fiddled with? Exposed to the light? Before it leaves the house? I know how to do that. My uncle’s got a Rollei. I can’t be seen cruising about down the female staff’s corridor but I can show Rosie what to do.” Ben made his calculations and said, but without triumph in his tone, “Ah! I didn’t get it wrong then—you do think someone killed her? Bashed her head in with a horseshoe and blamed the horse? Wouldn’t be the first time. Someone who knew what she was up to?” He concentrated hard. He had the intelligent, absorbed face Joe had seen so often in his police recruits. Replying to Joe’s uncomfortable silence, he said more firmly: “Her ladyship had no visitors that night. When Grace said good night just after midnight and left to go to her own room that was it. She was alone until Grace woke her and dressed her to go off down to the stables. She dismissed her on the doorstep and off she went with just those two poor little old lads. No. Gracie’s in the clear. She came and had early breakfast with the rest of us lower servants in the kitchen. Whatever happened to Lady Truelove, it was all her own doing. She riled that horse off her own bat. Nobody helped her. Just because a fair number aren’t sorry she’s a goner doesn’t mean any of them done her in.”
The footman wriggled with a sudden rush of uncertainty. “Look, sir. Grace told me something … I wasn’t to mention it to a soul unless it looked like they were going to kick off an investigation and try to put the blame on someone. Then I was to get hold of Adam Hunnyton and bend his ear. Adam would know what to do she said, him being the police.”
“Go on, Ben, Adam and I are working on this together.”
“She said she’d kept something back and put it in her own room. A memento of her mistress, or some such, she said.”
“She didn’t say what it was?”
“No. She said what it wasn’t. Not jewellery, not a gown, not a picture, nothing she might be accused of stealing. You had to be very careful around Lady Lavinia.”
“Ben, I need to take a look in Grace’s room. Right now. Take me to Mrs. Bolton.”
THE NERVE CENTRE of the whole house, Joe thought. The Housekeeper’s Room. On the ground floor, it was strategically placed close to the company rooms and the kitchens and butler’s suite.
Mrs. Bolton had made no reference to the lateness of the hour when Ben had signalled to her across the crowded kitchen. A quick word to deputise one of the older women, and she had come out of the hurly-burly and led them into the calm of her parlour next door. Doors were lying open to let the air circulate, one onto a still-room in blue-and-white Delft tiles where Joe glimpsed a central table loaded with pots of strawberry jam and bottles of green cordial and another open onto a capacious pantry which, he guessed, adjoined the butler’s rooms. A third, which remained discreetly closed, he assumed to be the housekeeper’s bedroom.