‘Don’t mention it, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said, thinking if that was Miss Rossiter being ticked off then there were no words for what Dandy Gilver née Leston had received from the tongues of Nanny Palmer, Madame Toulemonde and Grant over the years. ‘I’ll get back downstairs to them all if you’ll stay with mistress now.’
Mrs Hepburn dropped her voice even further and turned partly away.
‘I think you’re wanted next door,’ she said. ‘But see and get a port with brandy from Mr Faulds when they’ve finished with you.’ I nodded. The port and brandy cure-all was a favourite with my own dear Mrs Tilling and, although I had resisted so far throughout childbirths, bereavements and a fire in the attics, I could imagine that today might be the day I succumbed to its charms. I took a deep breath and went out of the bedroom.
On the landing, Mr Hardy was standing with his hands on his hips looking about himself with a furious expression on his face. The sergeant, in contrast, leaned back against the banister rail with legs straddled well apart and a handkerchief pressed to his mouth.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Hardy, seeing me. ‘Miss eh… Miss…?’
‘Rossiter,’ I said.
‘And you found…?’ He jabbed a finger at Pip’s bedroom door.
‘With one other,’ I said. ‘Eldry. Etheldreda, the tweenie. She took the tray in but she didn’t lift the sheet.’
‘You liftit the sheet?’ said the sergeant, looking at me with respect.
‘I had to make sure there was nothing to be done,’ I said. ‘I mean, I could tell there was a great deal of blood but there was just a chance he was still alive. I was a nurse in the war.’
Mr Hardy tugged his coat straight and tweaked his cuffs – girded his loins, in fact, for the task ahead.
‘In that case, Miss Rossiter,’ he said, ‘we’ll start with you. Now. Downstairs, I think. There must be a room that’s not in use this morning. And Sergeant Mackenzie? You go and find a telephone and get the surgeon and see if there’s anyone in the station who can slip along with some fingerprinting… things and if not… And tell PC Morrison to round up the rest of the servants and keep an eye on them all until we can…’
‘Right you are, sir,’ said Sergeant Mackenzie, sparing Hardy from the problem of ever ending this speech. ‘I’ll get straight to it.’
I led Superintendent Hardy downstairs and into the back parlour where Lollie had held the interviews. The fire was unlit, which gave a cheerless air to the place, but the day was warm enough to do without one. Hardy sat at the little papier mâché writing table (looking a lot like the big bad wolf looming over the house of sticks) and opened a new notebook at the first page. I sat on the same hard wooden seat as before and reported the story of meeting Eldry on the stairs, of hearing her scream, running to her aid and letting her out of the bedroom door. I was just about to go on and tell the superintendent about what I had seen under the sheet, when he interrupted me.
‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Why did she lock herself in in the first place?’
‘No, you misunderstand me,’ I told him. ‘The main door was still locked from the night before. Eldry had gone through the dressing room – the bathroom.’
‘And that was open?’ said the superintendent. ‘Now, why would the murderer close one door and leave the other open?’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘They were both locked up tight. The key to the door of the little hallway that leads into the dressing room is kept on the lintel and Eldry let herself in with it.’
‘One of these Yale locks?’ he said. I nodded. ‘And the key of the main door was on the inside when you got there?’ I nodded again. ‘Good God,’ he said and glared at me. ‘You see what this means, don’t you?’
‘I do, sir,’ I replied.
‘I’ve been thinking someone must have got in. Even though there’s nothing missing as far as we could see. There was quite a bit of disturbance last night here and there. I suppose I thought some devil had broken in but…’
‘But only someone who knew the house well would know about the Yale key,’ I finished for him. ‘And actually, Superintendent, the house as a whole was very secure last night. Mr Faulds, the butler, was locking up when I went to bed. He’s a bit of a stickler for it by all accounts.’
‘Good God,’ said Hardy again. ‘This is going to be an all-out scandal. This is going to need seeing to.’ He could not have looked less keen to do the seeing if he had sprinted for the door and pounded on it begging for release, but he squared his shoulders and sat up a little straighter. ‘Right then. I’ll need a list of everyone who was in the house and I’ll need to speak to them all. I’ll need your full name to start with.’
‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘Well, then. I’m employed under the name of Frances Rossiter. Miss.’ Superintendent Hardy looked up at me with his pencil in mid-air. ‘My married name is Gilver,’ I went on. ‘That is to say, my real name is Dandelion Dahlia Gilver. When I took this job, I changed it. My relations would not otherwise countenance my employment, I don’t suppose.’
‘Gilver,’ said the superintendent, looking thoughtful ‘Gilver?’
‘It’s a prominent name in Perthshire,’ I said and Hardy nodded. ‘I thought it best to change it under the circumstances.’
Hardy looked at me for a while without speaking and I did my best to meet his gaze square-on. He was not, I thought, an unintelligent man, only rather flustered by this extraordinary day. Perhaps he had come in sideways from the army straight to his desk and had never gathered statements and tracked suspects before. He certainly had nothing cunning about him, but rather the unstoppable look of someone who spent his youth being pushed to the front of the team in games of rugby football. Yes, that was it! If I had passed him on the street I should have guessed that he was a very prosperous and still rather sporting Borders beef farmer; he was completely out of his element sitting here today.
‘The circumstances being that you’re working as a maid,’ he said finally.
‘Well, a companion is perhaps a better way to express it, Superintendent,’ I replied. ‘Mrs Balfour is not – was not – happily married and she felt herself in need of a champion, while she considered what to do about it, but she felt also that her husband wouldn’t be pleased to think she had turned to someone for help and so I was smuggled in, I suppose you would say. As her maid. To help.’
There was another long silence to be got through now. I waited it out, trying to look a good deal more confident than I felt.
‘And how long have you been here?’ said Hardy at last.
‘Since yesterday,’ I replied. ‘I arrived at teatime.’
He put down his pencil and folded his hands on top of the notebook. His jaw, which was square enough even at rest, now stuck out in the most marked fashion.
‘You arrived yesterday, using a false name,’ he said, and I noticed for the first time how deeply shadowed his eyes were under the strong brow, ‘to help Mrs Balfour with the problem of her husband.’
I often tell myself that after years of constant detecting my days of naivety are in the past, that no longer do I put on my red cloak and set off for my grandmother’s cottage with a basket of treats, but it was not until that very moment that I saw the forest of trees pressing in all around me and realised that being used as an alibi was not the worst suspicion which could fall upon me.
‘Superintendent Hardy,’ I said, all thought of subtlety vanished, ‘do you know an inspector called Cruickshank from Linlithgowshire?’
‘I’ve heard the name,’ said Hardy. ‘I can’t say I remember ever meeting the fellow.’