Alec laughed, sharply enough to wake the placid Millie who was lying over his feet.
‘You?’ he said. ‘Not write things down? What, pray tell, is in that bulging article you’ve lugged along with you today?’ He nodded towards Miss Rossiter’s bag, which had a few corners of writing paper peeping out around its straining clasp.
‘Well, yes, all right, but I wish I could be like a policeman and keep my notebook on my knee, rather than having to store it all up until I’m alone again. She was talking about Pip and she said he never went away on his own and he… what?’
‘Would never snip the pockets out of other chaps’ clothes?’ Alec was teasing but I smiled and clapped my hands together.
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Well, almost. Thank you, darling. What she said was that he was no trouble, not fussy, never complained about anything.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, I’m thinking about his food, really. If a man sent back his dinners often enough to enrage his cook, how could his wife say he was easy-going? And do you know what else? When I mentioned the mouse in the goose-’
‘As you do with surprising regularity,’ said Alec. ‘Once would have been enough for me.’
‘Lollie didn’t know what I was talking about.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Would you forget it?’ I said. ‘Could someone mention mice and geese together to you ever again without you remembering?’
‘So,’ said Alec, nodding slowly to acknowledge my point, ‘what we’re saying is that we don’t actually believe a word that any of the servants said about him?’
‘And we don’t have any proof that Lollie’s story has a scrap of truth behind it either, when you get right down to things. And for what it’s worth, the two times I actually met Pip Balfour I couldn’t believe it was the man I’d been hearing about.’
‘But Lollie was scared enough to come to you,’ Alec said. ‘No, I think Mrs Balfour’s tale of threat and treachery is solid enough, just not any of the others. Dandy, what do you suppose is going on?’
Once again, I was counting off the residents of the servants’ hall on my fingers and did not answer him. Was that really true? Could it be? Had we argued away every single instance of Pip Balfour’s villainy in inconsistencies and implausibilities? Even that most likely, most everyday, villainy of lust and its brutal fulfilling? I did not believe that anyone who would ravage Eldry would overlook Phyllis, and I did not believe that Mrs Hepburn would let her niece stay in a house where the master had harmed her, but that still left one of them.
‘Clara,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to contradict what Clara said and what he’s supposed to have done to her is the easiest to believe and – oh God, Alec – it might be the easiest to check. Clara thinks she might have swaddled the baby and hidden it, up there in the nurseries. Lord, I’m going to have to look.’ I shuddered at the thought of it. ‘If someone had told me five years ago the kind of thing I’d find myself doing, I’d have-’
‘Thinks she might have?’ said Alec, interrupting me. ‘What do you mean? Doesn’t she know? If she can’t keep her story straight why should we believe her?’
‘She was in extremis,’ I said. ‘She has a vague idea that she went to the furnace but she also seems to remember hiding a wrapped bundle. Neither memory is clear, under the dreadful circumstances.’
‘Well, I suppose I can sympathise with that,’ said Alec, and I thought of the foxhole again.
‘She might have done both, one after the other,’ I said, ‘or she might have hidden the little body and burned soiled sheets. And anyway, her confusion – her derangement – makes it all the more likely that she could have been turned murderous. Yes, I’m sure of it. I think what Clara told me was true.’
‘And… what? The others made up all the rest of it like a haystack to hide the needle in? In advance? Because they knew that she was going to kill him and they supported her? But if he was not the fiend to them all that they said he was why would they?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘And why in the name of heaven didn’t she just leave? Before the baby, after the baby, whenever. Why didn’t they all just leave? Why, if any of what they say is true, is there a single servant left in the place?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d got somewhere, but it’s only made the whole thing more mysterious than ever. If the stories are true, why didn’t they leave? If the stories aren’t true, why didn’t they care that Pip was murdered? And could Clara have done it? The police surgeon reckoned it was a man and Clara has anything but masculine hands.’ We sat in silence for a while. ‘Although, it’s not true to say that no one ever left,’ I said at last. ‘Maggie the kitchenmaid left and Miss Abbott who was Miss Rossiter’s predecessor took off too.’
‘So what was different about them? What did he do to them that’s worse than the fates of the others?’
‘I don’t know what was done to them. But they are different, in point of fact. They witnessed Pip Balfour’s will. And let me tell you, Alec, the will is another barrel of eels altogether.’
‘A barrel of eels?’
‘Isn’t that the phrase? A sack of monkeys? A box of worms?’
‘Dandy, you’re gibbering,’ Alec said. ‘Tell me about the will.’
Five days I had been in the servants’ hall at 31 Heriot Row but it had changed me. I could not, I told Alec, contemplate even beginning on the will without a pot of strong tea and a plate of buns, thickly buttered and spread with jam. I only regretted that I had no hip flask with me from which to slop in a good dose of something more strengthening still.
12
Crawford’s tearooms were doing brisk trade, as might be expected on a Friday afternoon when all the public houses had been closed, and we had to wait, shuffling forward in the queue every few minutes and trying to ignore the plaintive moans of Bunty and Millie who had been left tied to a lamp post but who could still see us and, more importantly, could smell cakes. We could not even carry on a conversation of any usefulness while so many silent fellow queuers pressed in on us before and behind. At least the pause gave me time to compose my report, though, and when we were finally shown to our place I was ready.
‘Sorry about the table, sir,’ said the waitress, peeping up at Alec and smiling. She had swept one practised glance over me and had clearly concluded that Alec was free to be simpered at. ‘But it’s all we’ve got.’ The table was indeed small, in a far from commanding position at the side of the empty band stage and, I noticed as I sat, none too steady on its feet.
‘Not at all,’ said Alec. ‘This is perfect. Exactly what we’re after.’
The waitress, thinking she had misjudged the matter – for why would anyone want to be so secluded except for wooing – gave me a look of insulted envy, Alec one of pity and flounced away.
‘You should have flirted back,’ I said. ‘She’ll pretend to have forgotten us now.’
‘Good,’ said Alec. ‘Now then, Dandy.’
I told him everything; all about George Pollard and Josephine Carson, the two years’ delay, the break-up of the household and the casting of Lollie into the harsh, cruel world.
‘Golly,’ he said, when I was done. ‘Is someone checking it? The earlier marriage, I mean. And has this Pollard been found?’
‘I’d be very surprised if he let himself be found,’ I replied. ‘I rather think he must have done it. With the help – of course – of what the spy stories call “someone on the inside”.’