17
The police station at Gayfield Square was buzzing like a hive, with special constables – undergraduates in high spirits and armbands – milling around and getting under the feet and on the nerves of the desk sergeant. So while, on an ordinary Sunday morning, it might have taken some fast talking to get two strange and breathless civilians, a spaniel and a Dalmatian upstairs to the superintendent’s private room, today the poor man just lifted the counter and waved us through.
Hardy was sitting with his head in his hands staring down at a desk covered with sheets of paper, and when he looked up we could see that he had transferred great patches of carbon ink from his hands to his cheeks. I strode over to the desk and put the photograph down on top of the litter.
‘George Pollard,’ I said. ‘Balfour’s cousin. A hypnotist.’
‘A what?’ said Hardy. He peered at the photograph. ‘This is Faulds, isn’t it?’
‘A mesmerist, Superintendent,’ said Alec. ‘A brainwasher. He used to do it as a music-hall act eight shows a week and now he plays a longer game for higher stakes.’
‘You can’t be serious!’ Hardy said. ‘You think he could hypnotise a man into changing his will? Hypnotise another into cutting his own throat?’
‘No, not that,’ I told him. ‘But into writing a suicide note and then bending obligingly over a sink and letting someone else cut it. Certainly. And into believing one had been assaulted and was carrying a child, had been made to sleep in a cold car, had been threatened with the sack… he even hypnotised me last night. I woke up this morning convinced that I had suspected Stanley all along and I still can’t shake it off even though I know it didn’t happen. I read the report in my own handwriting that told me it didn’t happen.’ I shook myself. ‘And when I tried to ask him this morning about… Good Lord, yes, about odd things in people’s handwriting, he started again. Look into my eyes, he said. Listen to my voice. But Eldry disturbed us and told him Mr Osborne was looking for me, otherwise…’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Alec said, squeezing my arm. ‘Please hurry, sir. Goodness knows what he might be doing if he’s really feeling the rope begin to tighten on him.’
‘It all sounds quite unlikely,’ said Hardy.
‘I can’t help that,’ I snapped back. ‘It might well sound unlikely but it’s true. And even if you don’t believe me, at least believe that Ernest Faulds’s real name is George Pollard. We have a witness who will say so.’
Hardy nodded, just once, very curtly and picked up his telephone.
‘Go back to the house,’ he said. ‘Make sure everyone keeps out of his way. I’ll be right behind you.’
Lollie and Mrs Lambert-Leslie had gone to church with John driving them, Mrs Hepburn told me. She was in the kitchen, with Eldry in attendance, preparing a joint of meat and a rhubarb pie for luncheon. It was Phyllis’s free Sunday, I knew, but the rest of the household was in the servants’ hall. Harry – nothing to do, with his master dead and gone – sat in Miss Rossiter’s chair, hunched over the inevitable strike bulletin. Mattie was polishing the maidservants’ shoes on some old newspapers spread on the floor and Clara was over by the window, sewing in the best of the light. Millie, with a hot bottle at her feet and a cup of cocoa on the fender at her side, sat in her Auntie Kitty’s armchair, looking as though she had not stopped crying for a moment since the loss of her beloved Stanley the day before. Her nose was red and bulbous and her eyes were almost lost between purple lids, tears sparkling on their lashes even now. Did I only suspect that Mr Faulds, sitting opposite her, was gazing with something like remorse at her puckered brow and that he winced at each sob that was wrenched out of her?
‘Where on earth have you been, Miss Rossiter?’ Clara said with round eyes, as Alec and I entered the room. ‘I had to get mistress dressed for church myself and Aunt Goitre’s ready to string you up.’
‘Blooming cheek,’ said Alec, sitting himself down at the table and shrugging off his jacket. ‘It was Old Goitre herself that sent us off on a wild goose chase in the first place. You can’t be in two places at once, Miss Rossiter. And if you end up moving to Inverness with Mrs Balfour, you’ll need to take a firm hand with the old-’
‘What wild goose chase?’ said Mr Faulds. I busied myself with my gloves, hoping that Alec had an answer and was not expecting me to catch the lob and run away with it.
‘Flowers,’ Alec said. ‘Corsages for church for the two of them. And for one thing it’s Sunday and for another thing, there’s been no flowers delivered all week anyway.’
‘And they’d be blacklegged if you could get them,’ said Harry.
‘Exactly,’ Alec said.
‘With mourning?’ said Clara.
‘I know,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘That woman is stuck in the days of the old Queen. Whoever heard of mourning corsages these days?’
‘I never heard of them at all,’ said Clara who was looking very suspiciously between Alec and me. ‘And mistress never said a word about any- Hello?’ She turned and looked out of the window. ‘Mercy! There’s the police again,’ she said. ‘Coming to the area door this time.’
‘That was Stanley’s job,’ said Millie with a great wuthering breath in and a snort as she exhaled it. ‘Stanley always answered the area door.’
Mr Faulds gave her a pained look and stood up.
‘I’ll get it myself,’ he said. Alec caught my eye. He must still think himself safe, if he were willing to answer the door to the policemen. Still, I was careful to watch that he did turn to the front outside the servants’ hall and not to the back to make an escape to the garden and away through the mews or over the wall. When the front door had opened and shut and the butler’s pantry door too, Alec dropped his act, and turned to me.
‘Get Mrs Hepburn and Eldry in here, Dan,’ he said. ‘We’ll be best all together.’
‘What?’ said Harry, but I was gone.
I did not even have to speak to the cook and tweenie, but just laid a finger on my lips and then beckoned them to put down the rolling pin and larding needle and follow me, and it was not until the servants’ hall door was locked and we were all inside that I let my breath go.
‘What’s going on?’ said Harry.
‘The police have come to arrest Mr Faulds,’ I said. ‘But as to what’s going on… I hardly know where to begin.’
‘Arrest him for what?’ said Mrs Hepburn.
‘Killing Mr Balfour,’ I said. ‘And Stanley and – I’m very sorry to have to tell you this but – Maggie and Miss Abbott too.’
‘Stanley didn’t leave me?’ Millie said.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘Stanley was murdered, because – I think – he couldn’t resist hinting to Mr Faulds about what he knew. What he saw when he was peeping in the back windows on the night Balfour died, hoping to see Miss Rossiter undressing.’
‘Why do you say “Miss Rossiter” as if she’s someone else?’ said Harry.
‘What did he see?’ said Mrs Hepburn.
‘We don’t know for sure,’ said Alec, but I interrupted him; I had worked it out.
‘He saw you, my dear lady, going to bed on your own in your own room,’ I replied. ‘And he knew that Mr Faulds was lying when he said you were in his room with him.’
‘But I – I was,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘I’m sure I was. I remember it cl- no, not clearly, but I remember it.’
‘You remember it, but not clearly,’ I repeated. ‘And remembering it puzzles you, doesn’t it? It’s not like other memories. Like your memory, Mattie, of the nights you spent in the front hall and why you were scared there when you were never scared in here at the piano. And like Phyllis’s memory of why she was put on warning, which is very hazy indeed.’
‘Aha!’ said Alec. ‘I’ve just realised something, Dandy.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Clara said. ‘And why does he keep calling you that?’