“No. Can’t say as I was, sir. No one so grand as you. I had hoped Adam Hunnybun might come and set everything straight. I wasn’t sure quite how he’d manage it—he doesn’t often visit these days. I was waiting for him to come back.”
“How did you come by the rain cape your mistress was wearing that night?”
Grace looked affronted at the question. “I was her personal maid, sir. Who else would have the sorting out and cleaning of her things? It came back from the hospital with the rest of her clothes. They went on the bonfire.”
“Cleaning? You had preserved the cape in its uncleaned condition. Why?”
“I wasn’t happy about that rubbish she was meddling with. Witchcraft, she called it. Monkey-business, I thought. I had bad feelings about the whole silly scheme. I didn’t want to get the blame. They always go for one of us when someone high and mighty takes a tumble and I was the one who’d been to Mr. Harrison’s and bought the stuff she had me smear on that gingerbread. I thought someone ought to know the truth of the matter. How I tried to put it right. Tried to stop her getting hurt.”
Grace frowned and paused, wondering whether to go on.
“Tell me what happened that night, Grace. I should like to know what you did to protect Lavinia from herself.”
“She swore me to silence, sir. Told me what she was planning—to tempt that great savage horse out of its stall where it had been holed up for a week and attract it to her with those oriental spices. Horses love them, she said. They call them ‘drawing herbs.’ Sounded a bit dangerous to me so I …” She sighed and was uncomfortable in telling the rest of her story. “So I disobeyed the mistress. First time I’d ever gone behind her back. I told someone. Someone I could trust and who knew all about horses. ‘Can that be safe?’ I said—luring a beast towards you like that? She’ll get herself killed. And I don’t want to be blamed for it.”
“What advice were you handed, Grace?” Joe proceeded with caution. Gentling. Leading her on. She knew where she wanted to go; all he had to do was reassure her that she was on the right path.
“Good advice!” she said defiantly. “It made sense to me. Lady Lavinia must have gone and done something wrong … The horse wasn’t supposed to even come out of its stall …‘He must not be drawn,’ I was told. ‘You’re right, Grace, that’s madness. That animal has a bad record. What you need is something to keep it well away from the mistress. A smell that will repel it, not encourage it to venture out. Leave it to me. I know just the thing that’ll have it backing off. You must find a way to smear the substance I’ll give you onto the cake instead of the spices from the chemist. Can you do that?’ Well, of course I could. Nothing easier. It was handed to me sealed up in an old jam jar. I did all that nonsense about making a paste of the spices from the chemist and smearing the gingerbread I got from the pantry like the mistress told me to. She wasn’t paying much attention because she doesn’t like strong smells and—mixing and cooking—all that’s servants’ work and she wasn’t interested. I chucked the spicy slice away in the pig pail and put the muck from the jam jar on another slice. That’s the one I stowed away in her pocket ready for the morning. It smelled disgusting, even to me. ‘That’ll keep anything at a safe distance, man or beast,’ I thought. Was I to blame, sir?”
“Not at all, Grace. Don’t concern yourself. You did your best. What any dutiful maid would have done. But, sensibly, you kept the cape as evidence that you’d tried to avoid a disaster in case someone like me came calling? Your little insurance policy?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Joe’s voice was authoritative but kindly as he asked for his last piece of information. “Grace, I need to know whom you consulted in your hour of need. Who was it who supplied you with the good advice and the bating mixture?”
Her eyes skittered from side to side and he thought for a moment she was about to refuse this last fence. At last, she told him.
Joe’s response on hearing the name was instant and decisive. He grabbed Grace by the shoulders and pulled her further into the shadows. “Grace, I’m taking you straight to Adam Hunnyton’s cottage, where my car is parked. I’m going to ask Adam to drive you back to Bury right away to your mother’s house and there you are to stay until he comes to fetch you back again. I’ll tell them at the Hall that there’s been a telephone message from you: your ma’s taken a turn for the worse and you’ve got to stay on. That will be perfectly acceptable.”
He didn’t add: “Indeed, something of a relief for one person up there.” Arranging another murder so soon after the last might be a bit tricky with a house full of guests. What would they come up with? A garrotting in the drying ground? A sudden surge of lethal current from one of those new-fangled ironing machines? He didn’t want to terrify the girl.
But Grace was thinking things through. “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer” had been cocky young Ben’s assessment, but she was by no means the dullest, Joe guessed.
“Am I in trouble?”
“Possibly. Though you haven’t deserved to be and I shall say so.”
“Will I get the sack?”
He must have hesitated a fraction too long.
“Worse than the sack? Is that what you’re trying not to say, sir?”
“I think it’s not impossible that steps might be taken …” he started to say with annoying imprecision. “Look, Grace, there is much at stake. Things you have no inkling of. Not very certain I do myself. Come with me. We’ve no time to lose. Adam will know what to do for the best—I’m no more than a stranger here.”
HALF AN HOUR later Grace Aldred was safely—and happily—stowed away with Adam’s sister. Rather than make the journey back to town and into a family situation Grace had just left, a stay with her old friend Annie was much to be preferred.
Having gone without the ‘light collation’ on offer for lunch at the Hall, Joe had wolfed down a piece of fruit cake and a mug of tea at Hunnyton’s cottage. Grace had accepted a biscuit, listening nervously as the two men spoke to each other in short sharp phrases, looking constantly at their watches, calculating times and distances and making plans. Grace, while not managing to follow much of the professional-sounding conversation, seemed to sense that everything stemmed from the action she had taken on that ghastly April morning and she twitched with feelings of guilt and foreboding. It was not over yet and someone was for the high jump. But these two men who spoke over her head in soldiers’ voices seemed to have her welfare at heart and they assured her it would all soon be dealt with and she wasn’t to worry. Joe had seen her safely off to Annie’s house in the company of the superintendent, whom she seemed shyly to adore.
Joe strolled into the hall and greeted Styles with the self-satisfaction of a man just returned from a post-luncheon constitutional. He walked swiftly about the corridors for a while, smilingly avoiding conversation with anyone and finally headed for the telephone room. He emerged after a few minutes, leaving the door open and calling for the butler. “Ah, Styles! There you are. Sorry, I seem to be treading on your toes today … I was in there talking to the Yard. The phone rang as I put the receiver down. Thought it must be my superintendent with an afterthought but no—it was for you. The Aldred household ringing from Bury, courtesy of the grocer. A three-penny bit to hand and time of the essence so I took a message.” Joe’s eyes went slightly out of focus as he recalled a piece of lightweight information. “Grace’s mother’s taken a turn for the worse. Heart trouble. Grace won’t be back until Wednesday at the earliest. Apologies and all that. Oh, and would you please tell Mrs. Bolton she’s sorry about the … gophering? I say—does that make sense?”
Styles smiled. “Perfect sense, sir. Mrs. Bolton will be relieved to hear there’s been a communication. Tea has been cleared, I’m afraid, sir. Shall I summon up another pot? No? The dressing gong will sound at seven for dinner at eight.”