‘I must say, though,’ Lollie went on, ‘that the Balfour ancestor who just whipped all his money out of the Cornish tin mines and the Nottingham coal mines and left his relations – his own family, Dandy! – to make their own way from scratch again… Well, if it had been him who had been punished instead of my darling Pip I should have said he deserved whatever befell him.’
‘Nonsen-’ began Great Aunt Gertrude and then coughed. ‘I mean to say, I don’t think I would go that far, Lollie my dear, but your generosity of spirit, unflagging, most admirable, dear me, yes.’
‘And I feel the responsibility,’ said Lollie.
‘For what?’
‘Not for anything exactly,’ Lollie said. ‘Just the responsibility of so much money. All that money. When Mr Ettrick came back to see me yesterday and told me the figure… in cold hard pounds sterling…’
Great Aunt Gertrude was as still as a statue, quite breathless, waiting.
‘And especially at a time like this when one only has to look out of one’s window to see the most wretched plights that tattered humanity could endure…’
I turned my eyes to the window onto Heriot Row and the railings of Queen Street Gardens, thinking that tattered humanity did not make a habit of enduring its wretched plights just there. Great Aunt Gertrude was breathing again – in fact, almost panting.
‘One must be prudent, dear,’ she said. ‘One cannot let one’s tender heart lead one to…’
Give away any of that lovely loot to anyone but Great Aunt Gertrude, I guessed to be the end of the sentence.
‘It’s poor Stanley’s family, you see,’ said Lollie.
‘My dear Walburga,’ said Great Aunt Gertrude, ‘no one in the world could lay that at your door. You needn’t let it trouble you for one second, truly.’
‘I needn’t,’ said Lollie. ‘But I shall. Maggie’s parents and Miss Abbott’s sister too – Mrs Light. She’s terribly distraught and I think a cruise would be the thing for her.’
Her aunt, soothed by the inexpensive sound of this, smiled fondly. Then Lollie dropped the bomb.
‘And I was wondering,’ she said, ‘about buying a mine. A coal mine. They don’t have any other kinds around here. And I could probably get one on quite reasonable terms just now.’
‘I shouldn’t doubt it,’ I said. I did not trust myself to look at Great Aunt Gertrude, from whom gurgling sounds could be heard. Bunty lifted her head and gave the old lady an enquiring glance before going to sleep again. ‘But do be careful, Lollie, won’t you? Take advice, dear.’
‘I shall,’ she said, ‘but I’m determined to carry on the Balfour tradition and going against the tide of popular thinking is very much the Balfour way. It’s something I should like to pass on to my children, if I marry again, even though, of course, they won’t actually be Balfours, but perhaps if I had a son I could give him Balfour as his Christian name, if his father didn’t mind too much of course, and then Pip will carry on, in a way.’
She seemed to be skipping ahead rather lightly for a woman whose husband was not yet in the ground, but she was twenty-five and rich with reddish curls and blue eyes and so I supposed that husband number two would not, indeed, be very long in arriving and might easily agree to all manner of things.
‘Now, Lollie dear,’ I said, shoving Bunty off my feet and giving my shoes an ineffectual rub with my hanky, ‘if you will excuse me, I really do want to pay a visit downstairs.’
I had only been away two nights, but stepping through the door under the stairs opposite the dining room and descending those stone steps onto the flagstones felt like something from a half-forgotten dream.
There they all were, what was left of them anyway: Mrs Hepburn and Eldry in their pink dresses with their aprons on, Clara and Phyllis in black with lace caps for serving the tea, and Mattie in a waistcoat and striped trousers.
‘You look very smart,’ I said, smiling at him.
‘Look who’s talking,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Not that I should speak to you that way now, madam, I don’t suppose. But you’re Fanny Rossiter to me for all time and you’ve only yourself to blame so you can lump it. And you were a lovely girl to have around and that kind and brave so I’m sorry I spoke that way.’
‘I’ve got to answer the door now, miss,’ said Mattie. ‘I’m the only man left in the house now. If you think that John’s the chauffeur and he’s outside really.’
‘Where’s Harry?’ I asked.
‘Sacked,’ Eldry said, sounding mournful. ‘Or at least let go. He wouldn’t take on the footman’s duties so there was nothing else for it.’
‘Well, my goodness,’ I said. ‘There are going to be a perfect stream of interviews, aren’t there?’
‘You don’t half sound funny,’ said Clara, and she mimicked me. ‘A perfect stream!’
‘Mind your cheeky tongue,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘No, madam. Mistress hasn’t the heart. She’s keeping us on and she says she’ll get a housekeeper too if I can’t manage the cooking and the running of it all with just Eldry to help me – Millie’s away home to her mammy, you know; she didn’t have the makings of a maid and even I who love her to pieces knew it really. But she says she’ll never have another butler and she doesn’t want the fuss of a footman and that what did she call it, Phyllis?’
‘Flummery,’ Phyllis said. ‘I didn’t think it sounded quite nice but it’s in the dictionary. And I’ve seen enough of butlers to last me a lifetime, so I’m happy. I’m mortified, so I am, to think that black-hearted devil had the cheek to like me.’ Clara gave her a friendly shove and told her not to be a daftie but Phyllis shook her curls and pursed her mouth, comical in her indignation.
‘You should be grateful you were such a favourite with him,’ I said. ‘Or you could have ended up like poor Stanley.’ Phyllis clutched Clara’s arm and stared at me.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been puzzling over this, I have to tell you,’ I said. ‘I know you went to Mr Faulds and I think you must have let slip that you knew something, but he didn’t harm you, did he? He… distracted you. With gifts. Didn’t he?’
‘What?’ said Phyllis again.
‘That very first day after master was killed,’ I said. ‘You went out for the afternoon in your pretty yellow coat and hat, remember? And Mr Faulds had given you a little gift.’
‘I did go to Mr Faulds that day,’ said Phyllis, ‘and asked him for a wee sub so’s I could get my black coat and my prayer book out for the funeral. Is that what you mean?’
‘Get them out?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Oh Phyllis, you’re never at that lark again. You promised me and I promised your ma. I could take my hand to you sometimes.’ She sighed. ‘Aye, but it’s hard for you all these days with them pictures showing you all what you’ve not got. I wouldn’t be young now in this world of ours for a fortune, you poor loves.’
‘And he gave you this “wee sub”?’ I said, leading Phyllis back to the point again.
‘He gave me a whopping great big sub,’ said Phyllis. ‘I cleared my slate.’
‘So the question that interests me,’ I said, ‘is why. Can you remember what exactly you said to him?’
Phyllis screwed up her face, thinking, then shrugged.
‘Nowt,’ she said. ‘I mean, we were talking about what had happened – of course we were – master and all that and I might have- Oh!’ She clapped a hand over her mouth and above it her eyes were wide open.