Alec whistled.
‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘Alec, there’s a forger at the bottom of this.’
‘Hang on, though,’ Alec said. ‘The will, I grant you, is worth forging and the signatures to it, obviously. And the confession. But why would anyone forge a note in your personal papers?’
‘I don’t know why. I’m very confused about things this morning. I feel almost… drunk.’
‘Well, you looked at least “almost drunk” when you came up from your cosy time in the pantry last night,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps it hasn’t worn off yet. What were you drinking?’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said, and ignored Alec’s tutting and rolling eyes. ‘But I’m sure about this.’
‘A forger, though,’ he said. ‘I always thought that a forger had to copy what lay before him and that it took long hours of practice and draft after draft to get it right.’
‘So?’
‘Well, just that that would do for a will that could be worked upon in secret for as long as it took to perfect it, but could a forger dash off a suicide note or slip an entry into a journal without a single crossing-out or false step to betray him? It seems more like some kind of party trick or magic turn, not part of a carefully planned murder. Sorry, darling, I think this particular leap of genius can be cured by two aspirin and a prairie oyster.’ He gave me a very unsympathetic grin and left again.
His words, though, had left their mark upon me. Party trick, he had said. Magic turn. Words which sent me scurrying to put on my clothes, drag a brush through my hair and fly down and down and down the four flights, back to the servants’ floor. If anyone had heard of such a thing it would be Mr Faulds, I told myself, for had he not spent the last part of the evening before regaling me with tales of impressionists and ventriloquists, mind readers and spirit writers, and all the ways there were to fool a gaping audience about who one was or where or what one could see or touch or do? If this feat of forgery were possible, then Mr Faulds would surely have come across it somewhere along the way. And besides, the thought of pouring even a little of this out to Mr Faulds was as comforting as a warm blanket and a mug of cocoa. Mr Faulds would help me.
He was at the head of the table, in his waistcoat with a cotton breakfast napkin tucked into his collar against splashes of yolk on his black tie, but he gave me a sunny smile as I rushed in and did not hesitate to follow me out into the passageway when I said I needed a word with him. He ushered me into his pantry with the utmost courtesy and I sat down again on the seat I had occupied the previous evening.
‘It’s about writing,’ I said. ‘Gosh, this is all so muddled. But it just occurred to me that no one who saw the will being written is here to confirm it. And obviously, poor Stanley is not here to say whether he wrote the note that was found beside him, and there’s another thing too – it doesn’t signify but it started me wondering – and I just think that maybe there’s something peculiar about all this suspicious writing of things and I wondered if you had ever heard of anything like that, in your music-hall days. One of these clever tricksters you were talking about last night or something? Could such a thing be done, do you know?’
Mr Faulds was staring at me with his eyes very wide and his mouth just slightly open, but I could see that behind the frozen look on his face his mind was whirring just as fast as mine.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What have you thought of? Has something struck you too? What is it?’
‘What on earth put such an idea into your head?’ said Mr Faulds.
‘Am I right?’ I said. ‘Have I solved it?’
‘Solved it?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Why on earth would you be looking to solve anything, Fanny?’ He was gazing at me with the oddest expression and I remembered that Fanny Rossiter was not in the business of solving things. He did not seem to disapprove, though. His regard was sorrowful, as though I had filled him with some regretful sadness of some kind.
‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Just listen. I never heard of such a thing. And you can be sure I would have.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Really?’
Mr Faulds tapped his fingers against his cheek and thought hard, but he was soon shaking his head.
‘You must be thinking of the spirit writers I was telling you about. But they had huge sheets of white card and the “spirit pens” – all done with a wire, you know – were great black things that made writing you could see from the back of the gallery.’
‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘I really thought I’d got a hold of something there.’
‘Listen, Fanny,’ he said again. ‘Just hush now and listen to me.’
But before he could go on there was a rap at the door. A spasm of annoyance passed over his face as he barked out permission to enter. It was Eldry, looking startled at his tone.
‘Beg pardon, Mr Faulds,’ she said, ‘but that Osborne, Aunt Goitre’s chauffeur, is asking urgently for Miss Rossiter.’
Mr Faulds looked very slowly between Eldry and me before he replied.
‘You’d better run along then, Fanny my girl. But you need to tell that young man how to behave himself when he’s a guest below stairs in another man’s house. You tell him from me.’
‘He’s in a funny mood this morning,’ said Eldry when the door was shut behind us. I nodded but did not reply. Alec was standing in the open garden doorway, smoking, and turned round when he saw me, throwing his cigarette out onto the grass and starting up the stairs. I followed him. When we were out of Eldry’s earshot I asked him what the trouble was.
‘I was worried about you,’ he said. ‘Phyllis said you came panting in and dragged Mr Faulds from his bacon and eggs and disappeared with him. I didn’t know where you’d got to.’
We were on the ground floor and I veered off the stairway and into the small back parlour which I knew would be empty once the fire was laid for the day.
‘Never mind where I had got to,’ I said, when we were inside with the door locked behind us, ‘ask me where I’ve got to now. I’ve got a lot further in the last five minutes, I can tell you. I went to ask Mr Faulds about the forgery because last night he was telling me all about card tricksters and voice throwers and people who could guess objects held up in the audience when they were blindfold and all that sort of thing. Now, he was adamant he had never heard of such a thing. He thought long and hard and drew a blank. But I’ve just realised something.’
Alec gave a loud tut and rolled his eyes, for he hates these dramatic pauses when I do them even though he does them himself every chance that comes.
‘Mr Ernest Faulds,’ I went on, ‘has said that he has no singing voice, and has “heard” lots of music-hall songs over the years – “heard”, mind; not “played” – and spoke of comics as though of a separate race and said he had no time for magic acts and is not much of a dancer and in short…’
‘In short, has never said outright what it was he did onstage,’ said Alec.
‘Precisely. And did not like it one little bit when I started talking about trick writing. And here’s another thing: one time I teased Faulds about “neglecting his talents” working as a butler instead of treading the boards and he shut down like a trap. I couldn’t understand why I had offended him so, but now I see.’
‘How could forging handwriting make a stage act?’ Alec said.
‘How can card tricks?’ I countered. ‘The question is how can we find out? Or do we just go to Hardy with what we’ve got and tell him Faulds is the man? That he forged the will and the suicide note and killed Pip and Stanley?’