Mrs. Blandings was a tall thin woman with a narrow mouth and a narrow chin and permanently narrowed brown eyes glinting from either side of a curved, narrow nose. She had been a handsome woman once, but time and care had deepened the hollows of her face and hardened the edges. Her hair was white and it was curled so tightly that patches of pink scalp glistened between the coils. She wore a long black cotton dress so heavily starched that it rustled like dead leaves whenever she breathed.
She kept her hands on the kitchen table, her fingers interlaced. The hands were thin and almost elegant but her knuckles were red, as though she’d been pounding them against bricks.
“I will not dally,” she told Inspector Marsh grimly. “I am incapable of dallying. Constitutionally.”
“We won’t take much of your time, Mrs. Blandings,” Marsh assured her. He hadn’t been doing much dallying himself. We’d come down here at nearly a run and he hadn’t quoted Shakespeare once.
We were sitting down at a table in the comer of the kitchen. It was a huge room, maybe thirty feet high. Fireplaces and ovens were built into the stone walls. There were five or six big wooden cupboards and six or seven long wooden shelves sagging beneath rows of heavy porcelain canisters. Four big sinks were built into the marble counter. Hanging on the walls were pots and pans and saucers and colanders and bowls and caldrons. There was a big metal drain in the floor, so you could hose everything down after you butchered your whale.
“Lady Purleigh tells me,” said Marsh, “that the two of you were together yesterday when you heard the rifle shot.”
“Poachers,” she said. “No respect at all these days.”
“And where were you, exactly, when you heard the shot?”
“In the conservatory. Discussing dinner with her ladyship.”
“How long have you been employed here, Mrs. Blandings?”
“All my life.”
“So, doubtless, you know the family well.”
“Yes.”
“Would you say it was a happy family?”
“Certainly.”
“No arguments, no dissension?”
“None.”
“But even in the best of families, surely-”
“It isn’t my place to speak of other families. You asked about this one. Was it happy. Yes, I said.”
Marsh nodded. “So you did. Are you prepared to speak about ghosts, Mrs. Blandings?”
She eyed him skeptically. “Ghosts?”
“Were you aware that one of the guests, a Miss Turner, claims to have been visited by a ghost on Friday night?”
“Nonsense. The woman must be hysterical.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Of course not. But what I believe is hardly your concern, is it?”
Marsh smiled. “Do you believe, Mrs. Blandings, that the late Earl committed suicide?”
“I have no opinion on the matter.”
“None?”
“None.”
“The Earl had been infirm for some time,” said Marsh.
“For three years.”
“Had you been given any reason to believe that his condition might have been improving?”
“Improving? He was paralyzed.”
Marsh nodded.
Mrs. Blandings glanced impatiently around the room, looked back at Marsh. “Are we finished? I’ve things to do.”
“Yes. For the moment. But I should like to speak to one of the kitchen maids. A young woman named Darleen.”
“The O’Brien girl? Why?”
Marsh smiled. “Forgive me, Mrs. Blandings, but that s hardly your concern, is it?”
She blinked, and then she pursed her lips and stood. “I’ll send her in,” she said, and left.
Marsh turned to me and smiled. “Not exactly forthcoming, was she?”
“Maybe Darleen will be different.”
Darleen was different. She wore black patent leather shoes and white cotton stockings and a black button-up cotton dress printed with tiny pink fleurs de lis. It was a conservative outfit, or it was supposed to be, and probably she’d worn it to church this morning. I felt sorry for the minister.
She was in her early twenties and her body was so lush and ripe beneath the dress that she might as well be naked, and she knew it. She swept into the kitchen flickering like a colt and she tossed back her thick red hair and grinned at us. “And what’ve you done to poor Mrs. Blandings, you two? The poor old dear is givin’ off more steam than an express train.”
Both Marsh and I had stood. “Miss O’Brien?” he said.
“That’s me,” she said, and she cocked her head and smiled. Her eyes were green and bright and her cheeks were dusted faintly with freckles, cinnamon on cream. “And you’re the police, I hear. Come all the way from the great city of London.”
“I’m Inspector Marsh. This is Mr. Beaumont. Please, Miss O’Brien, be seated.”
She plopped down into the same seat Mrs. Blandings had used. She stretched out her long legs and she crossed them at the ankles and slapped her hands into her lap, like a little girl playing at being a grown-up. She smiled at me and then at Marsh.
Marsh and I sat down. “Miss O’Brien,” he said, “I intend to be straightforward with you.”
“Sure,” she said, and she sat back and opened her eyes in mock innocence, “and haven’t the police always been straightforward?”
“You’ve had some experience of the police, have you, Miss O’Brien?”
“Haven’t all the Irish? Experience of the Garda and the English.” She smiled. “But that’s over now, isn't it? Home Rule has come-finally, but better late than never.”
“Yes,” said Marsh, “to be sure. Miss O’Brien, we know about your late-night visits to the room of the late Earl. We know that these have been going on for some time.”
She smiled again. “Briggs. He’ll be the little bird that sang. Nasty pommy poof.”
“So you don’t deny it.”
She shrugged. “And what would be the point?”
“No point whatever.”
“There you are, then. And now you’ll be runnin’ off to her ladyship with the story. And young Darleen is sacked again. Well, fair enough. It’s back to Ireland for me anyway. We kicked out the ruddy English, and once we kick out the ruddy priests we’ll have a paradise on our hands.”
“Miss O’Brien, so long as you cooperate, I see no need to apprise Lady Purleigh, or anyone else, of your relationship with the Earl.”
“Cooperate, is it?” She grinned and put her elbow on the table. “And just what sort of cooperation was it you had in mind?”
“Merely the answers to a few questions.”
“Well, get on with them then. Always a treat to answer questions from the police.” She looked at me, looked back at Marsh, jerked her head toward me. “He doesn’t have much to say for himself, this one, does he?”
“Mr. Beaumont is acting as an observer.”
“And he’s a demon at that, isn’t he.” She smiled at me.
Marsh asked his questions. Yes, she’d visited the Earl once or twice a week over the past four months. She couldn’t get away more often than that. Yes, she visited only at night. Yes, she’d waited until Carson, the Earl’s valet, was asleep, so she could creep past his room. Yes, she’d heard from other servants that the Earl had often argued with his son, Lord Purleigh, but she and the Earl had never spoken about his son. “Or much of anything else,” she smiled. And, no, she didn’t believe that the Earl had committed suicide.
“How, then, did he die?” Marsh asked her.
“An accident, wasn’t it? They say the door was locked when the gun went off.”
“How do you suppose he obtained the pistol?”
“One of the servants?”
“You seem to be doing an admirable job of containing your grief at the Earl’s death, Miss O’Brien.”
She glared at him for a moment. Then she said, “Listen to me, Mr. Inspector Marsh from London. I liked the poor sweet man. That toad Briggs, he’s told you about the money, I don’t doubt. And you’ll not hear me denyin’ the old man slipped me the odd crown or two, now and again. And why shouldn’t he? He wanted me to buy some lovely new dresses for myself, didn’t he, and nice handmade shoes, and silk stockings, so I could come to him looking like a lady. And who was I to tell him no? The good Lord knows he could afford it. But I liked him. He was dear with me, and he was as grateful for my bein’ with him as a wee young boy. Well, he’s dead now, and I’m sorry. I hope he’s happy as a lark wherever he is, that’s the God’s honest truth, but if you’re waitin’ for me to start wailin’ and weepin’ for your sake, then you’re in for quite a wait, Mr. Inspector.”