Joe smiled. “What I see is a credit to your efforts, Mrs. Bolton. As well run a household as I ever saw, I do believe.”
Enid Bolton seemed pleased by the compliment
“Well, thank you Mrs. Bolton.” Joe began to get to his feet, the interview over. “Just one more thing.” He touched his plaster and grimaced. “How much per week do you pay the Green Man of the Woods to heave logs at your house guests?”
If he had thought to catch her out he was disappointed. She chuckled. “You’ll not find that villain’s name on my books, sir! You rightly guess I do all the payments for indoor and outdoor staff. That’s been the way since we lost Steward Hunnybun and he was replaced by a Farm Manager. Albright is very good in his way, but he doesn’t have Adam’s insight and tact. Adam calls by and gives a hand still if ever I need him but luckily I have a head for figures and it’s no trouble. You may inspect the household accounts if you wish.”
Mrs. Bolton got to her feet and selected a large red leather-bound ledger, the last in a series, from the bookshelf. She placed it on the table. “Help yourself,” she invited. “Lady Lavinia could never be bothered. I can’t be certain she quite followed the calculations when I insisted on having her signature at the month’s end. I don’t believe she knew the price of a packet of pins! But no—to answer your question—‘Goodfellow,’ as he likes to call himself, among other things, is not on the house payroll. Never has been. ‘It’s a personal contribution, Enid, and none of your business,’ Adam said when I asked him where the buffoon got his beer money. I don’t think Adam knows either.”
“Can you tell me in what ways Mr. Goodfellow bothers the household?” Joe asked as though merely requiring confirmation of knowledge he already had.
“Peeking and prying!” The answer came at once. “The maids don’t like to be working in the dairy and see his ugly face leering at them through the window. They don’t feel free to kick off their shoes these hot days and dabble in the moat to cool off as they’d like to. He’s always drawn by the sight of a bare leg. He pushed Rose off the edge last summer and stood by laughing as she sank under—in the afternoon uniform she’d just put on all fresh from the laundry press. Just as well Ben heard her scream and came running. Pest! It’s like having a hornet buzzing about all the time. Never knowing where it’s going to plant its sting.”
“Don’t the men take some action?” Joe cast a sideways look at Ben, noting his suddenly clenching fists. “Did no one step forward to remonstrate on Rose’s behalf?”
“He’s too slick to do anything when the men are about. Though I do recall that Goodfellow fell into something less salubrious than moat-water shortly after Rosie’s escapade.”
Ben reddened and grinned.
“The men servants work hard for their pay, Commissioner, and they don’t like to see him louting about, pretending to do a bit of coppicing here and a bit of fencing there when all he hangs about for is dressing up, scaring people and getting sozzled down the pub of an evening. But their hands are tied. He has the master’s ear, you might say. Lady L. couldn’t stand him, though she couldn’t get him dismissed either. Heaven knows—she tried often enough!”
“Where did he come from? Anything known?”
“He’s been here since before the old master died. Sir Sidney knew him. From his army days? He fetched up here as a down-and-out … oh, thirty years ago … and Sir Sidney, who was a very generous man, gave him a part time job, helping with estate work, sometimes with the horses. He’s been here ever since. He ‘arrives with the cuckoo, that harbinger of Spring, and leaves the moment Jack Frost returns to crackle the surface of the moat with his icy breath.’ That’s what he tells the guests in his spirit-of-nature way. May to September, in my vocabulary. His sister’s a seaside landlady in Southend. She’d tell you she kicks her brother out at the arrival of the first summer holiday-maker and doesn’t let him back until the last one has left. The man’s a total fraud and an exploiter of the Truelove family’s generous nature. My advice—don’t ever ask him to take his mask off.”
“Too late, Mrs. B.! I have looked on the true face of the nasty, blood-sucking rogue. But I see worse in the mirror every morning.” He grinned as he pointed to his left cheek. “And he hasn’t done much to improve the landscape. I owe him one.”
“Well, if you want to know more, Mr. Styles will inform you. He’s been here longer than any of us.”
Joe thanked her for her help and drained his herb tea. “Now then, Ben,” he said and turned to Mrs. Bolton. “If you can spare this excellent chap for another half hour, we’ll get back to work.”
THE WELL-OILED LOCK clicked and the door swung open on Grace Aldred’s room. Cheerful and well appointed, Joe thought. In many ways a plainer version of her mistress’s boudoir. Everything here was scaled down in size, subdued in colour, less sumptuous in quality. A dressing table (pinewood, not mahogany) was draped in a white machine-made lace cloth and Grace’s brush and comb (tortoiseshell, not silver) were laid before a swivelling mirror on barley-sugar twist uprights. The curtains were of a pretty chintz but of a pattern too large for the room. They’d been cut down to size from some grander space, Joe thought. The bed was pin neat and made up with fresh linen but even here the coverlet showed signs of thrift; it was a patchwork sewn from scraps of silk and velvet. A square of embroidery had been left ready to be picked up again on the footstool by the one comfortable chair set beside the fireplace. To occupy the few quiet moments before the bell he noticed on the wall next to it rang to summon Grace to her mistress a few yards down the corridor.
The personal items were sparse. A photograph of two little girls in their Sunday best. Grace and her sister? A copy of last week’s Film Fun magazine by the bedside, open at a photograph of Cary Grant. There was little of Grace herself here. She seemed to be merely an adjunct to her mistress, herself a faded scrap, a piece of the household patchwork.
Joe stood quietly in the doorway, absorbing the atmosphere with Ben moving in anxiously behind him. Joe recognised that Ben’s loyalties were being stretched again. He was uncomfortable with his own presence in a maid’s room and doubly uneasy that Joe was here, missing no details with his sharp, trained eye.
“I don’t think this is going to take long, Ben,” he said. “Don’t worry—we’re not going to have to search through sock drawers and read entries in diaries. If I’ve got this right, Grace will never know we’ve even been in here. Come in and shut the door. Look around. What was it you suppose Grace wanted someone in authority to see? It all looks perfectly normal to me.”
“Nothing here.” Ben shrugged and took a pace back towards the door.
Joe fingered the key ring. “Hang on. What’s this? Two more small keys. What do they unlock?”
Ben took them, feeling the weight. “This here’s the key to her maid’s box. That’s kept up in the attic with the trunks when it’s been unpacked. This other one …” He glanced around. “It must unlock the wardrobe. That’s where she keeps her uniform and her spare shoes.”
“Have a look, shall we?”
Joe unlocked the large cupboard which, in an earlier, more glorious existence, must have been called an armoire. He was faced by a neat array of uniform, dark blue morning and pale blue afternoon dresses, lined up on embroidered hangers padded out with lavender stuffing. Heavier winter coats and serge dresses lurked behind them, protected from the moth by balls of fragrant cedarwood dangling like rough necklaces from the hangers. He was about to close the door when he smelled it. A base undertone, barely holding its own against the predominant cedarwood and lavender. As he shunted forward a handful of garments the smell intensified. He worked his way beyond the winter clothes to the back of the cupboard and the last item of clothing was revealed. A dark green waterproof cape of the kind ladies used to cover themselves when out riding occupied the space, looking, in its deliberate isolation, rather sinister, Joe thought. He pulled it forward on its hanger and looked around for somewhere to carry out an inspection.