‘Me again, Barrow,’ I said, and then, ‘Alec, darling, do you think you might answer the telephone yourself for a while? It’s not very sensible to be using up my three minuteses waiting for Barrow to track you down.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Alec. ‘Stop nagging. What happened?’
‘Well, I’ve had my assumptions about the nature of humanity pleasantly overturned,’ I said, thinking of the strapping young man and his crippled wife, and of the two remaining thruppence bits, ‘but as far as Phyllis goes, it seems she has suddenly come into funds. Petty cash to the likes of you, guv’nor, but quite a tidy sum to a housemaid. Seventeen pounds, at least. I need to ask Lollie whether Pip kept that kind of money in his pockets and if not we must ask ourselves where else she could have got it from.’ Hanging a dog on the strength of a bad name and the sudden acquisition of seventeen pounds is not good detecting, of course, but one could not help the idea that a girl who was fond enough of finery to pawn her grandmother’s wedding ring, who could be in as jolly spirits as Phyllis was today when all around was death and calamity, had just the kind of single-minded toughness required of a murderer or indeed a blackmailer of murderers. Who in the house had seventeen pounds lying around to have blackmailed out of him – or her – was another question.
8
Skulking around the streets of the New Town like a private eye in a Brighton guesthouse, I had missed the removal of Pip Balfour’s body, but I came upon the rest of the household restoring itself around an open bottle of rum and the inevitable pot of tea.
‘A terrible thing,’ said Stanley, with his mouth pushed out and his ample chin sunk on his chest. Millie nodded, biting her lip, but Mrs Hepburn flicked him an irritated glance and Clara rolled her eyes at Eldry.
‘It’s not something I ever thought to do,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘hold the front door open for my master to be carried out in a black box and put on a cart like something for the rag and bone man.’
‘And all them next door out on their steps watching,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘That’s the last time I find a packet of butter for her when she’s not sent her note in to the dairy in time. The besom! But I daresay I’d have been keen enough to see what was to do if it had been in their house and I shouldn’t call her for the same. I’ll take some biscuits through to her when they’re cooled.’
‘I’d better get back up to mistress,’ I said, but Mrs Hepburn waved me into my chair.
‘You take your rest while you can, Fanny. We’ve been popping up, the girls and me, off and on, and she’s dead to the world. Sleep’s the best thing for her today. I’ve got a jug of toast tea making and I’ve ordered in some calves’ feet for jelly, be ready by tomorrow night. That’ll set her right again.’
‘Toast tea?’ I said and there were a few giggles from the younger servants until Mrs Hepburn fixed them with a glare.
‘Just burnt toast steeped in water while it cools and then strained through,’ she said. ‘And don’t you go sniggering, John Petty, because you were happy enough to have it that time you caught the gastric flu and couldn’t keep a boiled egg down.’
‘Mrs Hepburn, please,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘don’t remind us of it. We were a sorry crew that week, Fanny. Harry and Maggie didn’t succumb but the rest of us were laid flat. I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow. Ah, but mistress was like a mother to us all, remember, Kitty?’
‘Aye, and she made that stew – as if we weren’t sick enough already,’ said Eldry, to a gale of laughter and a few groans, and then they settled back into a comfortable silence again. I looked around them. No one was tense, no one was anxious. Now that Eldry had recovered her spirits and Mattie had cheered up there was nothing to show that this was not an ordinary afternoon in a well-staffed and under-stretched establishment. The clock ticked, the fire crackled and the only other sound was the click of Millie’s knitting needles and the occasional snip of scissors as Clara unpicked a hem for restitching.
‘By, but I’m missing my News,’ said Mrs Hepburn presently. ‘It feels that funny not to be catching up with the world at teatime.’
‘More power to their elbows,’ said Harry. ‘And we’ve got our news anyway.’ He waved a printed sheet in the air. ‘Official strike bulletin, straight from the TUC District Committee. So we won’t need to let another copy of that scab rag over the door.’ He gave a pointed look to Mattie who ducked his head.
‘I didnae ken,’ he said. ‘It was for master, not for me.’
‘Give it a rest, Harry,’ Clara said. ‘It’s not as if it was Churchill’s bloomin’ Gazette. You’ll no’ catch germs off it.’
‘And I cannae see mistress wanting one of your bulletins,’ said John.
‘Besides, there’s more going on than the blessed strike,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘I’d like to see what they’re going to print about our do today for a start.’
‘I won’t sit and have it read out to me,’ said Harry. ‘Nor Mattie.’
‘And I won’t,’ said Eldry, gazing at Harry as she spoke. John snorted, but Harry himself affected to notice nothing.
‘I can bring you some news,’ I said. ‘There are gangs on Princes Street. A policeman told me.’
‘Gangs?’ said Eldry and Millie together.
‘Gangs of what?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Gangs of who?’
‘Here, Mr Faulds,’ said Clara, ‘did you bolt the front door at the back of they mortuary men?’
‘Gangs of respectable citizens exercising their right of free assembly,’ said Harry loudly over us all. ‘See what it says here, Miss Rossiter?’ He jabbed his bulletin. ‘No attention should be paid to rumours. The official bulletin, which will be issued at least daily, will keep you advised.’
‘I am simply passing on what was told to me by a policeman in uniform,’ I said, although Harry looked unimpressed by such credentials. ‘But I do appreciate your point,’ I went on. ‘And our right of free assembly is something to defend most strenuously. They can only dream of it in the streets of Moscow these days.’ Harry, who had opened his mouth to spout on some more, shut it again. Hugh would have been proud of me.
I took Lollie’s toast tea up to her at six o’clock and found her wide awake, staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom. She gave a faint smile when she saw the glass in my hand.
‘Pour that away, will you, Dandy?’ she said. ‘And then tell Mrs Hepburn it did wonders for me.’ I was curious enough to take a sip of the stuff as I bore it off to the bathroom and it was a revelation: the recipe had not sounded appetising, but how a combination of toasted bread and plain water could come to taste so extravagantly vile was beyond me. I rinsed out the glass and returned to Lollie’s bedside.
‘I’m trying not to think about what’s happening,’ she said, sitting up a little. Despite her words I could hear that the note of numb disbelief was gone from her voice and it relieved me. ‘About what they might be doing to him, right now. I’m trying to think about happier times instead, but I can’t help wishing I had been brave enough, before they took him away, not just to say goodbye, but to see what was done. To see it. So that I shouldn’t be wondering. Superintendent Hardy said he had been stabbed. That’s the trouble. It’s such a very striking word that it’s hard not to imagine. Was it in the heart? I keep wondering where would be quickest and least painful. Was it in the heart, Dandy?’
‘Can’t you just put it out of your mind altogether?’ I asked, but Lollie’s face, as I spoke, told that this was a blunder.
‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘It wasn’t quick, was it? It was slow and dreadful and that’s what you don’t want to tell me and-’