Upstairs, Eldry made her way to the back landing, to negotiate the night latch which began the circuitous secondary route to Pip’s bedside. She managed the little key admirably well one-handed while balancing the tray on the other and I left her to it, knocking softly on Lollie’s door and sweeping in, the way Grant always swept into my room when she was dressed and I was not, as though taking match point in some game.
Lollie, though, was in her bathroom and missed it. The water was gurgling and steam was coiling out around the half-open door. I put the tray down on her bed, opened the blinds, plumped her pillows and was turning to leave again – Eldry could come in and light the fire; there were limits to my collegiate helpfulness and to my domestic expertise – when I heard a scream.
For a second I stood still, listening. Was it inside the house? My eyes flew to the open windows, but then there came another and the sound of running footsteps, footsteps on floorboards – this was no street accident outside. I tore across the floor and out onto the landing. Someone – Eldry – was banging on the inside of Pip’s bedroom door, still screaming.
I raced across the hall, through the little passageway, through the bathroom – still shuttered – and swung around into the bedroom through the open door. Here the curtains were drawn back and the shutters folded away, but I could see no one – no sign of Pip – nothing except Eldry beating on the other door, sobbing, begging for someone to let her out.
‘Turn the key,’ I shouted. ‘Eldry, it’s still locked – turn the key!’ But she was beside herself, tugging on the handle, whimpering now, and she clung to me as I got to her and took her in my arms, feeling her shaking.
‘There, there,’ I said, as I opened the door for her. ‘Shush now. What did he do to you?’
Eldry stumbled out into the hall, shaking her head, and pointed past me. I swung round, thinking he must be coming up behind me, but saw nothing. She slid down the wall until she was sitting, still pointing. Over by the bed, the tray was on the floor, the teapot broken and empty, the sheets of newspaper scattered around. I walked towards it and as I got closer I began to see.
It was a high-set Victorian bed, matching the rest of the furniture in the room, and the footboard was almost as tall as the head, hiding the bed from the rest of the room until one came around the side of it. The blankets were pushed down, but the top sheet was drawn right up over the pillows. I could not clearly see the outline of the man underneath, though, because just where the pillows began the sheet was held away from the mattress, like a tent, around something sticking up there. Where it did touch down again, all around, there was a bloom of red, seeping up through the linen from underneath, spreading like ink into a dampened blotter, and now that I was close there was a smell too, like old coins and like the gamekeeper’s cart on the way home after a good day and like the worst of the hospital during the war, which I had almost forgotten.
Leaning over very carefully, I picked up the edge of the sheet and lifted it away. Underneath was more – sickeningly more – red: a lake of red, thick and clotted, darkening to purple at its deepest, spreading across the bed, seeping upwards over the pillows, covering the pyjamas, coating the neck, filling the ears, matting the hair, so only Pip Balfour’s cold white face rose above it. His eyes were open, clouded, and his mouth was open too and blood had spurted and run into it, outlining his teeth in rusty orange, and what had tented the sheet over him was the knife, a long, bone-handled knife, lodged to its hilt and standing straight up out of his neck, pooled all around with blood that was almost black. With the back of one hand I touched his forehead, where no blood had spattered; it was cold. I let the sheet drop back down again and retraced my steps to the little passageway.
My fingers were numb as I dropped the latch on the inside of the door and I tested and retested it to make sure I had locked it shut and not open. I locked the door between the hall and the bathroom, then the door between the bathroom and bedroom, and then I crossed the room and took the key out of the main bedroom door, stepped outside, closed the door, locked it and put the key in my pocket.
Eldry looked up at me from where she was still sitting on the floor.
‘Is it master?’ she said. I nodded. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Another nod. Then she sat up a little straighter and sniffed hard. ‘Good,’ she said.
‘Go downstairs and tell Mr Faulds to telephone to the police,’ I said. ‘Can you do that? You’re not going to faint, are you?’ Eldry shook her head and got, rather unsteadily but very determinedly, to her feet.
‘I’ll hold on to the rail,’ she said. ‘But can you get the tray, miss?’
‘Never mind the tray,’ I said.
‘I cannae leave it there all dropped and broken.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘But the police,’ said Eldry, sounding tearful again. ‘They’ll find my fingerprints on it and it’s right beside the bed, beside the body. I opened the shutters and took it over to him.’
‘I’ll tell them what happened,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’
This seemed to satisfy her and she turned to leave, but then stopped and looked back at me.
‘I tell you something, miss,’ she said. ‘I don’t blame her, do you?’
It took me a moment to find my voice and even when I did it was shaking.
‘Don’t be silly, Eldry,’ I said. ‘And don’t let me hear you saying such things again.’
But my heart was thudding – great dull, painful thuds – as I went back to Lollie’s bedroom door and pushed it open. She was back in bed, with a cardigan jersey on over her pyjamas and a cup of tea balanced in her lap. I stayed on the landing in the shadow where she could not see me.
‘Clara?’ she said. ‘Is that you? Tell Eldry not to bother with the fire since she hasn’t lit it yet. I think it’s going to be a lovely day. Did you hear that funny noise just then? I was running the taps but I’m sure I heard some kind of commotion.’
The greatest actress in the world, surely, could not have summoned such a speech and delivered it in that sunny voice, with that smile, if she had seen what was there in the other bedroom, much less if she had made it happen. And yet, I thought, and yet…
I walked forward into the light so she could see me.
‘Oh, it’s you, Dan- Miss Rossiter, I mean,’ she said. ‘Did you hear that hullabaloo? Has Phyllis seen a mouse again?’ I closed the door behind me. ‘Dandy?’ she said, looking at me properly for the first time. ‘You look terrible. What’s happened? What’s he done now?’
5
Mr Faulds was purple with rage, but I would not be moved.
‘On what authority?’ he demanded, standing in front of me, shaking with anger.
‘On the authority of an informed citizen, Mr Faulds,’ I said. ‘And on the authority of the mistress of the house, who is now, following this horrific event, the head of the house. And on the-’
‘Miss Rossiter,’ he said, making an enormous effort to calm down and speak as reasonably as I spoke to him. ‘Might I remind you that you have been a member of this household since yesterday, whereas I have run it for the last three and a half years, so I don’t give scat for any of your clever-clogs talk. Now, give me that key.’ He was bellowing again by the end of the speech and I glanced towards the staircase, where most of the other servants were ranged upon the steps looking through the banisters at us.
‘For pity’s sake, Mr Faulds,’ called out Mrs Hepburn from Lollie’s room, where she was administering hugs and, I suspected, more brandy. ‘Get away somewhere else if you can’t stop shouting!’ Her voice dropped again and we could hear the soothing murmur of her comforting Lollie with something close to a lullaby. ‘Hush-a, hush-a, hush now, my good brave girl.’
‘Miss Rossiter’s right, you know, Mr Faulds,’ said Harry, and a couple of the maids nodded in support of him. ‘The less traipsing about and touching stuff there is, the easier the coppers’ll see what happened. If there’s footprints or the likes.’