‘Do you know, Superintendent,’ I said, ‘I am probably the only one of the upper servants who doesn’t have a bottle of something handy in my bedroom somewhere.’
Hardy nodded, acknowledging the attempt at a joke, and then looked around.
‘Bedroom?’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. Well, you must gather what things you will need for the night, my dear, because I shall have to lock up at least until the morning.’
The thought was not to be entertained of sleeping here ever again and so it took some effort to prevent myself from bundling up every last stocking and hairpin and fleeing, but I managed to restrict myself to my notebooks, my nightgown and a change of clothes for the following day and followed Superintendent Hardy upstairs again, feeling like a refugee.
We had hardly had time to tell Lollie and Great Aunt Gertrude the news when Alec returned, mounting the stairs at a gallop and bursting into the room.
‘There’s-’ he began and then checked himself when he saw Mrs Lambert-Leslie and Mrs Balfour there as well as Hardy and me. ‘Forgive me, ladies,’ he said.
‘Out with it and never mind your pretty manners,’ said Great Aunt Gertrude. ‘We’re past all that now.’
‘I’ve got some news,’ Alec said. ‘I went to Stanley’s house out at Shandon and they haven’t seen him, not since his last free day – but here’s the thing: I did find out that he’s a model of filial devotion, never misses a week, certainly didn’t stay away for any long stretch because his father was ill. They didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned it. So I think, I really do, Superintendent, that the whole story about a fear of blood is nonsense and Stanley might well be our man.’
He did not get the expected response at the end of this and when he looked around at our faces to try to find out why, I think he saw them properly for the first time.
‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘Dan – Miss Rossiter, I mean, are you all right?’
I turned beseeching eyes upon Mr Hardy but before either of us could speak, Great Aunt Gertrude steamed in and summed it up neatly.
‘Stanley’s the one, all right. He confessed and then cut his own throat like a white man.’
Alec frowned at the boorish phrase but said nothing, only turned to me and enquired with a look whether I agreed. I shrugged and nodded.
We arranged that I should spend the night in a room on the third floor of the house, the unused nursery floor, and I left to deposit my bundle of books and clothes there. Alec came out of the drawing room behind me while Mr Hardy stayed to summon mortuary men and a police surgeon to attend Number 31 once more.
‘I don’t like this, Dandy,’ he said, as we climbed the narrow staircase together. ‘In fact, I’m going to have to insist that if you spend another night in this charnel house – and on a deserted floor at that – I do too. I shall bunk down between you and the stairs and I’m bringing the dogs in – don’t tell me otherwise. That lot down in the servants’ hall already think I’m Mrs L-L’s fancy man – you should have heard the maids giggling – so it won’t be any shock to them that I get special favours.’
‘You and I agree then,’ I said. I had put down my things on a blanket box on the landing and was opening doors, looking for a suitable room, feeling a little like Goldilocks in the empty cottage, for Lollie had already fitted up her nurseries for the children who would never be and there were short beds, low to the floor, and a crib with lace hangings, but nowhere that would be just right for me.
‘Agree about what?’ Alec said. ‘Here we go, Dandy. The nursemaid’s room. You and Bunty can sleep here and I’ll take the floor in the outer nursery.’
‘Like a bear at the mouth of a cave,’ I said. ‘You know it too, don’t you? Even though you don’t know how you know or what you know. No, don’t scoff! Listen – if Stanley is the murderer and Stanley is dead then what do I have to fear and what do you have to fear for me and why are you not going off to supper and a night in an hotel?’
‘I’m just rattled,’ said Alec. ‘There’s no rhyme nor reason to it and in the morning it’ll be gone, but I’m spooked by it tonight – please, Dandy; humour me.’
He was not alone. The servants’ hall was the most subdued I had ever seen it once the news spread below stairs. Millie, as might be expected, was quite undone, and sat bellowing like an abandoned calf with tears rushing unchecked over her cheeks and dripping from her chin. At least, though, the sound of her howls drowned out the tramping feet of the doctor and the fingerprint men and, a little later, the heavier tramp of the mortuary attendants as they removed the body. Millie was facing away from the area, thank the Lord, and those of us who were not managed to compose our expressions before she noticed and turned around.
No one objected when Mr Faulds broke up the gathering. He bid Clara make up a cot for Millie beside her Auntie Kitty and – very thoughtfully, in my opinion – told Eldry she could do the same in the housemaids’ bedroom, so that she would not be alone. He even asked me if I thought I would manage to sleep up in the nurseries and did not seem entirely convinced when I assured him that I should be fine.
‘What an end, eh?’ he said, shaking his head in great sorrow. ‘What a waste of a life, Fanny.’
‘Four lives,’ I said without thinking.
‘Four?’ said Mr Faulds, looking at me sharply. ‘I suppose you mean master and mistress? But not Millie, surely. She’ll get over it soon. Kitty will talk her round.’
Mrs Hepburn reappeared at that moment and joined Mr Faulds and me before the embers of the servants’ hall fire.
‘She’s off like a lamb,’ she said. ‘Tired herself out with all that crying, so I’ll just leave her a while and not start creaking and splashing until she’s deeply gone.’ Mrs Hepburn cleared her throat. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, Ernest, I could murder a drop of something and that’s no lie.’
‘Only natural,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘And someone should raise a glass to poor Stanley anyway. No matter what he did. His passing can’t go unmarked.’
Mrs Hepburn closed her eyes and nodded very gravely.
‘Do you really think he did do it?’ I said. Mrs Hepburn opened her eyes again. ‘Can you really believe it of him?’
‘It does you great credit that you can’t, Fanny,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘But he left a note. He confessed to it all.’
‘I wish he had said in his note why he did it,’ I replied. ‘I think I’d be happier if I had any idea why.’
‘Oh Fanny,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘You’ve led a sheltered life if that can puzzle you. The truth is, when one man sets his mind to murder another, there’s no “reason” anywhere to be found.’ I nodded reluctantly and Mr Faulds carried on. ‘I remember a pair of comics on the halls with me,’ he said. ‘Brothers they were – Valentine and Gallagher O’Malley: Vally and Gally. They toured their cross-talk act for twenty-five years until one night in Swansea they came off after their bow and encore and went to their dressing room and Val killed his brother, strangled him with his dressing-gown cord, and then called the stage-door to get the police and put his hands out for the cuffs to go on them. And when the copper asked why he did it he said Gallagher had dropped fag ash in the cold cream once too often.’ Mrs Hepburn tutted and shook her head. ‘Fag ash in the cold cream, Fanny,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘without a word of a lie.’
‘But we don’t even have that much of a reason in this case,’ I said. ‘I know what Stanley said about master, about his cruelty, but it wasn’t true. That’s one thing that’s come out from the police digging around. There’s no reason at all – not a spot of ash or anything.’