‘Or how about Inspector Hutchinson, from the Perthshire Force?’ I asked. Superintendent Hardy’s stern face split into a grin.
‘Maynard Hutchinson?’ he said. ‘Everybody knows him. The stories I could tell you about him would make your hair curl.’
‘Well, then telephone to him and ask him about-’
‘Mrs Gilver!’ exclaimed the superintendent. ‘Dandy Gilver?’
‘At your service,’ I said, letting out a huge sigh of relief. ‘Truly, Superintendent: at your service and awaiting instructions.’
‘So what was all that about a companion?’
‘All true,’ I said. ‘More or less. Mrs Balfour called me in to help her. To be a witness to her husband’s behaviour and a champion of her cause. He was a complete brute, you know. I don’t imagine anyone will be mourning him once the shock has passed over.’
‘Sounds to me as if she’s dropped you right in it, madam,’ Hardy said.
I held up my hand.
‘Miss Rossiter, Superintendent, please. Not madam. If I’m to stay here and help I need Fanny Rossiter more than ever, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Ah now, I don’t know what I think of that,’ said Hardy. ‘You saw him up there – what had been done to him. You could be in grave danger, and I can’t let a civilian – not to mention a lady – risk herself that way.’
‘Oh come now, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you just tell us that you had called in all sorts of extraordinary manpower to handle the strike?’
‘Retired officers and territorial soldiers and suchlike,’ said Hardy.
‘Well, what’s one more? I’ll even sign a contract if it would help.’
So it was that Superintendent Hardy allowed the ranks of his constabulary to be swelled by one more volunteer and I became a special constable of the Edinburgh City Police. For all I know, I might still be one; I do not recall any formal release from my duties anyway.
‘Here, you haven’t got the dog with you, have you?’ asked Hardy. ‘Don’t tell me you brought the dog.’
‘I haven’t, in fact,’ I said. I could only imagine what the caustic Mr Hutchinson had said about my beloved Bunty at whatever policemen’s shindig he had enlivened with tales of our adventures.
‘Just as well,’ said Hardy, and returned to business, with another great roll of the powerful shoulders and another answering creak from the delicate chair in which he was sitting. ‘So. Miss Rossiter. Do you have your own room or can you account for any of the other maids?’ ‘Other’ was said with a bit of a twinkle, but I knew that my answer would soon snuff that out. If, that was, I could bring myself to deliver it.
‘I owe Mrs Balfour whatever loyalty I can give her,’ I said.
‘But?’ said Mr Hardy.
‘But,’ I went on, ‘as I’ve had occasion to point out to earlier clients in past cases, I am not a “hired gun”.’ Hardy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My children,’ I said. ‘Dreadful taste in story papers. What I am, come what may and no matter who is paying me, is a servant of truth.’
‘So…?’ asked Mr Hardy.
So… I told him, feeling like the worst kind of sneak, especially as he clearly thought that Lollie installing me in her very bedroom was getting on for elaborate and roused suspicion rather than quashing it.
‘But I don’t think she could have got out and back without me noticing,’ I said. ‘Although…’ A further and even more damning possibility had just occurred to me.
‘Although what?’ said Hardy.
‘She shoved a nightcap down me with some insistence. If I were to lay my hands on the glass, could it be tested to see if she’d put some kind of sleeping powder in it? I mean, I’m sure she didn’t but it would be good to be able to discount it completely.’
Hardy gave me a sharp nod of approval and agreement, then rubbed his jaw again.
‘What about washing?’ he asked. ‘Even if she had you doped up – and let’s hope not, eh? – could she have run the hot water without waking the house? I know I couldn’t in my bathroom but this place seems pretty plush and maybe the plumbing is silent.’
‘Why do you assume…?’ I said and then stopped.
‘There would have been a fair amount of blood,’ said Hardy, confirming what I thought. ‘She – or whoever – would have had to wash at least the hands and arms.’
‘In that case, I think not,’ I said. ‘Certainly, I don’t think she could have used her own bathroom. And I don’t really think she slipped me a powder and I don’t even think she killed her husband. But…’
‘But if it’s not her then who is it? I only wish you had been here longer, Miss Rossiter, and could tell me a little about the household.’
‘I can tell you a surprising lot,’ I said, and this time I felt no compunction. ‘I only met Mr Balfour briefly and he seemed perfectly pleasant then but – as I say – he was not well loved, Superintendent. Not by the maids anyway.’ Mr Hardy gave me a look which seemed to enquire whether it were the age-old problem. I threw a look back confirming that indeed it was. He sighed. ‘And rather an extreme case,’ I said. ‘There have been two recent departures: a Miss Abbott, my predecessor, and a kitchenmaid, Maggie, who flounced off on Saturday night. Phyllis, the housemaid, is on notice as we speak.’
‘On notice, eh?’ said Mr Hardy. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘But could a woman have done it?’ I asked.
Hardy shrugged.
‘The doctor will be able to tell us more about that,’ he said. ‘Have you heard anything from any of those strapping lads downstairs to make you think one of them might have wanted to kill him?’
I thought back to the evening before, John teasing Harry about the use of the razor. Surely he was only teasing? Still, I had wondered how someone of Harry’s views could bear to be a servant, and a valet at that – the most intimate of servant-master relationships, surely. And then what had been wrong with Mattie this morning? And why was Mr Faulds so very desperate to get into the murder room and so very angry at my preventing him?
‘There’s a lot of chattering,’ I said. ‘Probably nothing more than chattering, but still – I think it would be worth your while interviewing all of the staff very closely.’
‘I’ll speak to Mrs Balfour first,’ said Hardy. ‘Then start on the fainting tweenie. If you would just go and tell them? Also, say to that Mrs Whatsername – the cook – to go and join the others, would you? And don’t forget the glass.’
It was gone from where I had left it on the small table by the chaise, but before I chased after it to the kitchens I pulled back the covers on Lollie’s bed and scrutinised the sheets, top and bottom, for it had occurred to me that I had seen no more of her than her head before she had hurried off to her bath earlier that morning and, if Superintendent Hardy were right about the blood, there might be traces of it here somewhere. But the linen was white and fresh, hardly even creased, and smelling faintly of lavender and of Lollie’s Heure Bleue. The same scents were mingled in her drawers and in the trays of her wardrobe, where nightdresses and underclothes lay in orderly, crisp-edged piles. There was no way she could have stuffed any bloodstained articles in there, even if she could have opened the drawers and doors without wakening me. I went into the bathroom, where there were more neat arrangements, of towels this time, and no sign of anything rolled up or stuffed away where it should not be except my own nightgown. I held her hand towel up to the light from the bedroom doorway and could see not the slightest mark upon it. I turned on the sprinklers of the shower-bath and, as I had suspected, it sounded like rain on a tin roof, impossible for anyone – sleeping powder or none – to sleep through. Even the taps of the hand basin gurgled and spat loud enough to wake anyone in the next room.