‘Bonus day? What’s one of them?’
I was surprised that he did not know, for they interest servants enormously and they were a regular part of life in every house I had lived in.
‘Master’s birthday or mistress’s, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Or the anniversary of the wedding. Birth of sons too, most usually. All the staff get a divi.’
‘Now, why would you think that?’ said Faulds, eyeing me closely. Before I had thought of a way to allude to Phyllis’s windfall, though, he went on: ‘Easy to see you didn’t have time to get acquainted with Philip Balfour Esquire.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re not the exception that proves the rule then? With master.’
‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘He was a fair old puzzle. Nice as ninepence one minute and then he would just turn. And a trial to a pretty girl, Miss Rossiter, as you’ll no doubt have been hearing. I felt for them all, most acutely. Kitty and me both. But what can you do? When the mantel of privilege clothes a man from head to toe, who’s going to listen to you complaining?’
‘You sound as though you’ve been reading Harry’s bulletin,’ I said and Faulds shook his head, sucking his teeth in a show of sorrow.
‘Harry’s a young hot-head. Thinks he needs to change the whole world just to rise in it. He’d be better looking to his talents for his fortune and letting the world go its way.’
‘That’s rather caustic,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Harry would say he was interested in fairness for all and not just a leg-up for himself.’
‘I’m sure he would,’ said Faulds, even more witheringly, making me laugh. We were so cosy I even went as far as to say:
‘But as to one’s talents, and to rising in the world, aren’t you rather neglecting both, giving up the stage for butlering?’
I had gone too far. Faulds’s smile snapped away as though it had never been.
‘Don’t concern yourself about me, Miss Rossiter,’ he said.
‘I do beg your pardon,’ I said, blushing.
‘Granted,’ he said, with a faint inclination of his head. ‘Now, if you’ll forgive me, I need to get on.’
‘Actually, Mr Faulds,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid you can’t. I’ve enjoyed this little chat but I was, in fact, sent to fetch you. Superintendent Hardy wants you.’
‘Well he might,’ said the butler, ‘but he’s not going to get me, Miss Rossiter.’
‘I remember,’ I said, and quoted him. ‘The innocent have nothing to fear from the truth.’
‘Exactly,’ said Faulds. ‘No matter what Harry’s bulletin has to say.’ And with that he began to unroll his cuffs and prepare himself for the interview.
In the kitchen, Mrs Hepburn too had pronounced it time to begin preparations for the funeral tea to come; she had two enormous pans bubbling on the hotplate of the range and was just plopping into one of them a ham of such girth that one could not imagine how she would ever carve it. From the scullery came sounds of vigorous scrubbing and Millie’s voice raised in song.
‘Oh, Fanny!’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘There’s a relief. One less thing to worry me anyway. I’m just crossing my fingers and doing these hams now and if the funeral’s held up well then they’ll spoil but how I’m supposed to get a ham cooked with no kitchener to cook them on is something they’ve won’t tell me.’
‘No kitchener?’ I echoed, looking at the great hulk of the Eagle which was pulsing with heat as usual.
‘Not after today,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘A hundredweight of coal! I ask you! This beastie can burn that up every other day. So I’m switching it off and we’ll have to make do with thon useless contraption.’ She pulled her chin down and nodded to the far corner where a neat little electric stove sat proudly. It had been covered with a dustsheet up until now and its gleaming blue-grey sides and sparkling white enamel doors suggested that it had never seen active service before today.
‘Mistress insisted we had one,’ she said, turning her back on it and nestling up to the front fender of her beloved range. ‘Nasty scootery wee thing – it looks like something that belongs in a lavatory, Fanny, not a kitchen. Not if you ask me. But it’ll boil a pan just the same when all’s said and done, so there we are.’
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘But what did you mean just then, Mrs Hepburn, by a relief?’
She blinked at me for a moment or two before answering.
‘Oh!’ she said at last, ‘Yes, only that Eldry said that policeman had made a beeline for you and I was worried he’d put two and two together and come up with the only new face in the household to pin the blame to.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘none of that. I daresay if it had been the usual kind of thing – trinkets missing, cash mislaid – the new girl would be for it, but murder? Murder’s too serious for… casual suspicion.’ Mrs Hepburn nodded. ‘I heard one time,’ I said, inching my way towards the question of Phyllis again, ‘of a maid – sly little minx – who took to helping herself when a new girl had started, knowing who’d get the blame.’
‘Lord!’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘There’s twisty for you, eh? You’d have to be wicked to the core to think of such a thing.’
‘Have you ever been in a house with a light-fingered maid, Kitty?’ I asked her, trying out the name for the first time. I was pleased to see that she did not bristle.
‘Never,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘I’m glad to say. Or if I have she’s been too clever to get caught at it. You certainly don’t need to worry about that kind of thing here. And don’t be feeling down in the mouth about mistress’s funny turn either,’ she went on. ‘She didn’t mean any slight to you, only natural she wants some old familiars round her. Clara’s up there now to let Phyllis get the dining room swept out at last, seeing it’d lain two nights and a day as it was.’
Mrs Hepburn was hopping from shelf to table to stove, dropping various leaves and little seeds into the ham pot, and would have looked like a witch at her cauldron, but for the pink dress and sparkling white apron.
‘I’m not at all offended,’ I said. ‘It is understandable and I’m sure she’ll be herself again in time.’
Mrs Hepburn wiped the tip of her nose with the back of her hand and looked at me.
‘She’ll get the chance to be herself for the first time in years,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen her go from a girl to a ghost and I’m looking forward to seeing the woman.’ She nodded very firmly and turned back to the range before continuing. ‘And I’m looking forward to feeding her too, Fanny, and not have him always finding fault and deciding he can’t take one day what he ate without a murmur the day before. And not having my good food come back all cut about and wasted so we couldn’t even get the finishing of it up. One time, you know, he poured water into the soup and sent it back saying it was cold, then another time he put a mouse – a dead mouse – into a goose I had roasted and called me up to the dining room to show me and tell me what he thought about my kitchen and my “high jinx” or whatever it’s called.’
‘Hygiene?’ I guessed.
‘And I asked him,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ignoring me, ‘I said, Mr Balfour, I said, how do you suppose that goose got roasted and the poor wee mouse stayed cold, sir? And he had no answer for that. But you’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you, Fanny?’
‘Not tell the superintendent, you mean?’
‘Well, not tell the girls, really,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Because… well, it was a lovely goose and the wee mouse was only in the cavity and I thought as long as I carved the meat off and threw the carcass away. It wasn’t as if I went making stock with it.’ Then Mrs Hepburn winked and gave a huge laugh which shook her all over like a good bowl of jellied broth.
‘Your face, Fan!’ she said. ‘I’m just having fun with you. I put the whole thing out to the pig bin and scrubbed the plate with soda near until the pattern come off. And you can tell that Mr Hardy whatever you like.’