‘All alone, Superintendent?’
‘We haven’t so much as a constable to spare,’ he said, turning round. ‘There were two hundred strikers down at Waverley station this morning, all walked in – miles, some of them – to stand on the pickets, and it takes time and men to clear it. You’ll have heard about yesterday, I’m sure.’
‘The gangs?’
‘I’ve a man in hospital and a police horse dead.’
‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘He got hit by a brick bouncing back out of a smashed shop window,’ said Hardy, very grim. ‘But he’ll recover.’ I did not like to admit that, of course, it was the horse after which I was asking.
‘I think it’s very foolish of the Congress,’ I said. ‘If ordinary people see mobs in the street it will only frighten them and harden their resolve.’
‘If you ask me, the unions are as surprised as anyone,’ said Hardy. ‘And the TUC can’t believe what they’ve started – everybody banging on their door asking to join up so they can down tools for the miners. Teachers was the last thing I heard on the wireless this morning. Teachers! This was from London, mark you, not here.’
‘That’s something then,’ I replied. ‘And you seem to have lots of volunteers.’
‘Hah!’ said Hardy. ‘Yes, well, the men at the electric works heard that there were students driving the electric trams and promptly downed tools – didn’t want to be supplying the juice for a blackleg service. So now there are students in the electric works too.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Is that wise?’
‘They’re engineering students,’ said Hardy, but he looked far from happy.
‘And what news of our case?’ I asked.
‘News indeed,’ he said. ‘Solid facts – bite down on them and break a tooth, just the way I like it. The doctor was up first thing and examined the body and it’s very revealing. There was a good dose of sleeping draught in his stomach, taken with brandy most likely. I asked Mrs Balfour if her husband was accustomed to use such a draught and she told me that no, Mr Balfour was an easy sleeper, never troubled with insomnia or with bad dreams. So that’s the first thing. And there was nothing in the dregs of your glasses, by the way.’
‘So it begins to look as if the widow’s in the clear?’
‘Especially since Dr Glenning’s considered opinion is that a girl couldn’t have done it. Not one in a hundred, he said.’
Here the superintendent flicked through the pages of his notebook. It had filled considerably since the previous day, pages and pages of close, pencilled writing. At last he found what he was looking for and held it up to the light.
‘Not only was the knife driven in with some force, held there and twisted around to open the wound and expedite the flow of blood – you’re not going to faint, are you? Good. – which would have required considerable strength, but the victim was also held down to allow the attack to take place. There is bruising suggestive of a hand placed very firmly against the victim’s right shoulder before decease, effectively pinning him against the mattress. This bruise is four inches in width, five inches in length and with faint fingermarks showing a span of nine inches. The placing of this bruise and the clockwise rotation of the blade inside the wound point together towards a right-handed man. So there you have it. The murder was done by a right-handed man who was locked in the house over the night in question.’
‘Mr Faulds,’ I said.
‘Means and opportunity,’ said Hardy.
‘And a motive?’ I asked. ‘Mr Faulds is one of the few who has not told tales of his master.’
‘And don’t you find that suspicious in itself? The others are incriminating themselves left, right and centre, bathed in innocence, and he’s the only one biting his tongue?’
I could not decide whether this showed Hardy shaping up to the task of detecting or was merely an echo of his army days and his desire to have everyone in perfect line.
‘I haven’t actually got round them all yet, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘I’ve still to speak to two of the other men and I haven’t had a chance to hear anything from the kitchen staff either.’
‘Well, then I suggest, Mrs Gilver, that you – if you’ll forgive me – run along and make a start on it. Only send Mr Faulds up to me when you’ve finished with him, would you?’
‘Superintendent,’ I said, carefully, ‘if you’ll forgive me, should you really interrogate him all alone? I rather thought there had to be two of you.’
‘Oh, I’m not here to interrogate him,’ he said. ‘I’m just here to collect him. I’m taking him into the station for the interview.’
I found Mr Faulds in his pantry, dressed in a long green baize apron and with sacking sleeves over his cuffs, the whole place reeking of Goddard’s powder and ammonia. An elaborate table centrepiece lay in several pieces in front of him.
‘Our sins will find us out, Miss Rossiter,’ he said in greeting. ‘Master never liked this, we never used it and so I never cleaned it but all the best’ll be laid out for the funeral so I’m taking my chance today and with luck mistress’ll be none the wiser.’
‘It’s pretty hideous,’ I said. ‘Indian?’
‘An elephant parade,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know… I always thought it looked quite something all set out down the middle of the table, joined together trunk to tail, all the howdahs full of bon-bons.’
‘Was it a wedding present?’ I said, thinking that it rivalled the worst of mine. (A gold – solid gold – pickle jar fashioned like some kind of goblin’s head. It was Indian too, from a rich aunt of Hugh’s who, apparently, hated him.)
‘No, it came down to him through the family,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘From when that branch of the Balfour family were out there. All right for some, eh?’ He looked around at his own surroundings with a half-mocking expression of disgust on his face but I, who had so recently seen Eldry and Millie’s dank little lair, could not commiserate with him over his comfortable pantry. It had a pile carpet on the floor – no grey hair and red tape edging for Mr Faulds – and papered walls, and was bright with ornaments and pictures of a quality which would not have disgraced Pip Balfour’s own bedroom (and had, I thought, probably started their life there before being passed on). What was even more surprising was the well-stocked little bookcase whose leather-bound volumes of Restoration dramatists, Romantic poets and the essayists of the Enlightenment hinted that Ernest Faulds, for all his music-hall days, was a man of some learning. A man, too, who liked his comforts: a door was half-open onto his bed-sitting room which rivalled anything I had ever heard about gentlemen’s clubs for the profusion of leather, oak and dark red velvet to be found there.
‘Come now, Mr Faulds,’ I said, ‘this all seems very commodious. I’ll bet you’ve stayed in theatrical digs that weren’t half as cosy.’
‘What I could tell you about theatrical digs would make a turn in itself,’ he agreed. ‘There was one landlady always took in from the Bradford Alhambra used to count the peas. I’m not joking or jesting, Fanny, she counted out the peas onto your plate. I tell you what, we never dared tell her the old joke about the mean landlady from Aberdeen in case it gave her ideas.’ I waited. ‘Chap complained about the bedbugs one time and she charged him extra for keeping pets in his room.’ I could not help laughing.
‘But seeing your rooms here,’ I said, ‘I’m asking myself if I’ve finally found the one person the late Mr Balfour was good to. I mean, that leather armchair is a real beauty.’
‘That’s mine and came with me from my mother’s when she passed away,’ said Mr Faulds, more soberly. I waited but he said no more, just went on polishing with his head down.
‘Well, speaking of coming into things,’ I said, ‘I haven’t just missed a bonus day, have I?’