Phyllis giggled.
‘You do look a sight, Miss Rossiter,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a terrible day too, Clara and me, with that policeman, but we’ve come through it better than you.’
‘I need to ask you all something,’ I said. ‘It’s about Stanley.’ Millie looked up. She was pushing cloves into the scored glaze of a ham and she stopped with one finger pressed against it like someone leaning on a door bell.
‘Is he all right?’ she said. Phyllis giggled again. ‘He’s gone out without telling us where he’s going.’
‘And who saw him last?’ I said. ‘Mr Hardy wants to know.’
‘Superintendent Hardy?’ said Millie. ‘Does he think Stanley’s in danger? Oh! Oh! Auntie Kitty!’
‘Now hush, Molly-moo,’ said Mrs Hepburn, glaring at me. ‘Miss Rossiter didn’t mean anything of the sort. Don’t upset yourself. We all saw him at dinner-time, Fanny. You tell that to the policeman.’
‘I saw him after dinner,’ said Eldry. ‘I saw him going to the front area door. At least at the time I thought he was going to Mr Faulds’s pantry, you know, to get a job to do or maybe to get his chamois apron or his silver-gloves or something that he keeps in there, but that must have been him leaving.’
‘And what time was this?’ I said. Eldry bit her bottom lip and pushed out her top one.
‘I was just coming out of the china store,’ she said. ‘I’d been getting the sweet dishes for tonight’s dessert. When was that, Mrs Hepburn?’
‘Half-past two sort of time?’ said the cook. ‘I sent you for them as soon as the custard was cool enough to pour without them cracking. Half-past two, Fanny. Tell the copper it was then.’
‘He’s been gone an awful long time then, Auntie Kitty,’ said Millie and the rest of the girls glanced at one another, for this was true.
‘Who cares what Stanley does, Millie-Molly-moo,’ said Clara. ‘I’ve always said you’re too good for him.’
I left them to try to persuade the stubborn Millie of this self-evident truth and slipped out again. At the stairs, I hesitated and then hurried down instead of up. If I really looked as frightful as Mrs Hepburn said, I wanted to make a few hasty repairs before seeing Hardy again.
In my room, I flung off my hat and my much-abused coat and shrugged into the neat little black slub jacket I had taken to wearing in the evening, then I elbowed open the door of my washing room, meaning to splash my face and damp down my hair, but stopped short in the doorway, looking into the dark.
The shutters were closed but I could see that someone was in there, bent over the sink, and my first thought was that whoever it was was drunk – helplessly, disgustingly drunk – and had had the nerve to come to my room, to use my sink, for the inevitable aftermath to take place in comfort and privacy. Then I realised three things all at once, or so quickly in succession as made no difference: that it was Stanley – his striped trousers, his black shoes; that the smell in here which had made me put my hand up to my mouth after the first gasp was not the smell of drink and sickness, but something worse and only too familiar; and that he was not bending over the sink, but slumped there, his round little stomach resting against its front edge, his legs slightly bent and his feet dragging sideways on the tiled floor, absolutely still.
I stepped towards him and all I could see was darkness instead of the white gleam of the china sink that should have been there. I returned to my bedroom and lit a candle.
Now I could see it alclass="underline" the dark head hanging down, the deep, dark red pooled in the bottom of the sink and turning black there, the pudgy hand lying half-open in the deepest part of the puddle with the razor slipping from its grasp. I bent down close to his head, holding my breath, my hand shaking so that everything danced in the candlelight and even Stanley seemed to be moving. His face had not fallen against the sink but was hanging down into it with just the tip of his nose touching and his chin was… I held the candle up and looked more closely, then stepped back so sharply that the candle, in the sudden movement, snuffed itself out. His chin was hidden, had disappeared into the cut in his neck, or the cut in his neck had gaped open and swallowed his chin; either way it was a sight I could not bear to have seen but one which, no matter how I squeezed my eyes shut and scrubbed at them, would not leave me.
I did not have to explain to Superintendent Hardy.
‘I found Stanley,’ was all I said and his face drained until it was as ghastly and as grey as I felt sure mine must be. Together we went back down and he waited while I fumbled the lock open, not offering to do it for me, suspecting perhaps that his hands would be no more steady than my own. I hung back once we were inside and let Hardy enter the little washing room on his own.
He was very quiet in there, not even so much as breathing heavily, much less uttering the ugly sounds of disgust I feared had been torn out of me at the first sight of it. His shoes squeaked now and then and I imagined him bending and craning for a closer look, but that was all until he cleared his throat and said:
‘My dear? Is it his writing?’
I stirred myself and I too had to cough my voice back to life before I could answer.
‘I’m sorry, Superintendent – what?’
‘Is this Stanley’s writing? I’ve never seen it, but perhaps you might have.’
Reluctantly, I edged towards the door and looked in. Hardy had relit the candle and was holding it over the slatted wooden board beyond the sink, peering down at a piece of paper there. He turned round and beckoned to me. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to move it until I have a cloth to wrap it in. We shall need to dust it for fingerprints, naturally.’
I put a hand up to the side of my head to shield my eyes from another sight of Stanley and walked, rather unsteadily, over to Hardy’s side. The paper was a single lined sheet torn from a cheap pad, rather rough, with blue lines across it:
May 8th 1926
I am not sorry for what I did, but I cannot face what will happen to me if I am found out. The world is a better place without Philip Balfour and it will do very well without me.
Stanley Drumm
‘I can’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Mr Faulds would know. Shall I… shall I fetch him?’
‘No,’ said Hardy, putting a hand under my arm and leading me back out into my bedroom. ‘The fewer people who see all this the better, I think, don’t you? There’s no reason to doubt it anyway.’ He had lowered me into the armchair and now sat down heavily upon the bed. He put his hands up as though to rub his face and then jerked them away again, plucked a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped it over his palms. I put my hand to the place on my sleeve where he had touched me. There was a little dampness there.
‘So,’ I said. ‘I was wrong. I always thought that Stanley hinting and boasting was a mark of innocence on him.’
‘And the blood phobia was nonsense,’ said Hardy. I touched my sleeve again and nodded, shuddering.
‘And no matter what Mattie thinks, Stanley must have known about the key. And used it that night.’
‘Yes,’ said the superintendent, ‘I suppose so.’
‘And he did after all often deal with the post-bag and answer the telephone, so he could easily have fobbed off Mrs Light and the Berwick housekeeper.’
‘Who said – as a matter of fact, madam – that it was a man she spoke to when she rang.’
‘So the only question left is why,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Well, that sort of character,’ said Hardy, ‘a peeping tom? He wouldn’t need the kind of motive that would make sense to you or me.’
For some reason, I could hear Nanny Palmer’s voice, on the subject of hanging dogs and bad names, which made no sense at all. I shook my head to silence her.