‘When Mr Faulds was on the music halls,’ I told them, ‘he did a hypnotism act. Do you know what that means? He has brainwashed you all. He made you believe that Pip Balfour was some kind of monster, cutting out pockets and interfering with girls and putting dead mice in geese – but none of it’s true. He planted all those horrid ideas – he tried it on me last night – and almost worse than that, he planted the idea that you shouldn’t tell, that you should be ashamed and secretive and guilty. So you all thought you all had motives and suspected one another and you all hated master so much you were willing to ignore them. But hear me and believe me – not a scrap of it was true.’
Clara gasped.
‘None of it?’ she said. ‘Not what I thought either?’
‘It didn’t happen,’ I told her. ‘Nothing happened. Not a thing.’ Clara put her sewing down and hid her face in her hands.
‘And I’ve just thought of something that confirms it,’ Alec said. ‘Phyllis is Mr Faulds’s favourite, isn’t she? And she’s the only one of the girls he didn’t force to believe that Balfour had had his way with her. He gave Phyllis a pretty harmless little memory compared to the others.’
‘How do you know all this?’ said Harry. ‘Who are you?’
I wondered how on earth to explain it all, thinking it would take an hour at least, but Alec showed me I was wrong.
‘Private detectives,’ he said. There was a stunned silence and then Clara broke it at last.
‘I knew you were a hopeless maid.’
‘Phyllis was Mr Faulds’s favourite,’ I repeated slowly. ‘Yes, of course, Alec. She hinted that she knew something and Faulds gave her – well, you know what – to keep her quiet.’
‘But then when Stanley started making insinuations?’ said Alec.
I nodded. ‘It was a very different matter. Mr Faulds had no time for Stanley and he saw his chance to get rid of the problem and shift the blame.’
‘How could Stanley have been so st-’ Clara bit off the word, with a glance at Millie. ‘So reckless? Hinting away to someone he thought was a murderer.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ I said. ‘Perhaps blaming Stanley and killing him was part of the plan right from the start. We’ll never know.’
‘Stanley’s a kind of hero, then,’ said Millie, raising her chin for the first time and gazing at me.
‘Well, a martyr anyway,’ I said and Millie nodded dreamily, quite happy to settle for that.
‘And Ernest Faulds is a villain,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘And all those nights that seemed like dreams… were dreams?’
‘They were, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said.
‘But here’s the question, Fanny – or whatever your name-’
‘Fanny will do,’ I said, smiling.
‘Why did he do it?’ she said. ‘If master wasn’t all those nasty ways he made us think, why would Ernest kill him?’
‘For money,’ I said. ‘Ernest Faulds isn’t his real name. His real name is George Pollard. He’s master’s cousin.’
‘But hang on,’ said Harry. ‘Isn’t the will just so much faddle?’
‘Of course it is,’ Alec said. ‘He must have been brainwashed into writing it. But probably Pollard – Faulds – was going to wait until the house was broken up and then find Mrs Balfour and do away with her. And do you know what, Dandy?’ He turned to me. ‘That way, when the two years had gone by, the wife would be dead and the question of whether she was a real wife or a bidey-in would be moot and then Pollard would turn up at the last minute and no one would connect him with Ernest Faulds the butler.’
‘A bidey-in?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Mistress?’
‘I think you’re right, Alec,’ I said. ‘He would only have had to get Lollie on her own and start mesmerising her and she could have gone the same way as Stanley. It’s not as though anyone would have been surprised at her suicide after everything that’s happened to her.’
‘That policeman better watch himself then,’ Clara said.
‘What?’ I said. Alec had swung round to face her.
‘Mr Hardy,’ said Clara, gesturing out of the window. ‘That’s who’s in with him now.’
I was out of my seat.
‘Just Hardy?’ I shouted, fumbling with the lock. ‘Why in God’s name did he come alone?’
‘Oh hell, Dandy,’ Alec said as the lock released and the door swung open. ‘He didn’t believe you. He probably couldn’t get men at short notice, not easily anyway, and he didn’t see why he should try.’
Faulds’s door was locked but Harry, with one mighty kick, splintered it open and there was Mr Hardy, sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, fast asleep, with his chin sunk on his chest.
‘Hardy!’ Alec said, taking the superintendent by the shoulders and shaking him. ‘Wake up. Where is he?’
I galloped into the bedroom, banged opened the wardrobe, tested the window, wrenched the covers aside to look under the bed and then streaked back to the pantry again. Superintendent Hardy was looking around himself blearily, rubbing his face.
‘Wha-?’ he said, but his eyes were already beginning to roll up again.
‘Take him into the bedroom and lie him down, Alec,’ I said. ‘Then ring for a doctor. He might be drugged.’
Alec nodded and began hoisting the superintendent to his feet.
For a second, Harry and I stood staring at one another, then he said:
‘Garden door.’ He wheeled around and sped out of the room. ‘He can’t have got far,’ he shouted back to me as he ran along the passageway. ‘I’ll catch him.’
I started to follow and then stopped. I looked at the door Harry had kicked open, its lock hanging loose on the splintered board. It had swung wide and was lying back against the wall, across the corner. I put out my hand and pulled it towards me.
‘Watch my face, Fanny,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘and listen to what I say. You’ll understand if you listen. You’ll understand I only wanted what was mine. Only what was mine. Just listen and I’ll tell you. Just listen to my voice, Fanny. Just look at my face and listen to me.’
‘Yes, but you see, the thing is,’ I said, ‘my name isn’t Fanny any more than yours is Ernest Faulds. So really I’m surprised you managed to hypnotise me at all.’
He took a step forward then and, without thinking, I shoved the door hard and heard the thud and crack as it hit him.
Postscript
Two days later, I was sitting in Lollie’s boudoir once more, in a rather wonderful raw silk coat and skirt in the palest imaginable amethyst (which was overdressing a little, but I had to make up for Miss Rossiter’s serge somehow and, as Grant had assured me, amethyst is purple and purple is mourning). Bunty was fast asleep over my feet and I could feel hairs unattaching themselves from her skin and attaching themselves instead to the nap of my pony skin town shoes. Great Aunt Gertrude was still there, with a black mantilla arrangement secured to her head behind the white fan of hair. This had puzzled me at first. Why should her mourning have deepened? Her manner to Lollie offered a clue: it was solicitous and even approaching thoughtful, with her natural flights of opinionated interference frequently choked off and replaced by beatific smiles. I gathered that a bereaved niece who might make a free companion for her aunt and a bereaved niece who was now rich enough to buy and sell her aunt ten times and not notice the outlay required two very different kinds of auntly sympathy.
‘Poor, poor Pip,’ said Lollie, with a glance at the table nearest her, where a large photograph of Pip Balfour had been placed, with a red rose in a silver bud-vase at its side.
‘It’s absolutely shocking,’ said Mrs Lambert-Leslie, sleeves, earrings and chins all a-waggle. But Lollie, I noticed, was less shocked now than she had been in the dreadful week between Pip’s death and Faulds’s – Pollard’s – capture. I could understand that, in a way: the wrenching away from her of her beloved husband by a man who was greedy and evil and no concern of hers was orders of magnitude more easy to bear than the wrenching away by Pip’s own madness and cruelty, with his death only the final horrid chapter. Pip was restored to her heart and could be mourned there.