Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 23

  Clara disappeared into an empty cubicle and pulled the door closed behind her. I sat down on one of the wooden folding chairs laid out for spectators and prepared to wait and then to watch Clara for a polite few minutes before leaving but, when an arc of water sent up by some athletic girl diving in a few feet away from me soaked my skirt through, I thought the better of hanging around at all. I could see Clara’s head over the door of her cubicle and, since she was already wearing her cap – dark red and most unbecoming, I surmised that she had finished changing and went over to say goodbye to her. When I popped my head over the door, however, it was to discover that, to my horror, she had put her hat on first and was only now struggling into her suit, had in dreadful fact only got it unrolled as far as her hips. I stepped back very sharply, almost skidding on the wet floor.

  ‘Oh my dear! I do apologise. How dreadful you must think me.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Clara, peering out at me over the top of the door, her bare shoulders just visible. ‘Why? What have you done?’

  ‘I – um – I didn’t mean, that is, well, if you are not the modest sort, then nothing. Forgive me.’ Clara only laughed and shook her head and I felt all of a sudden very old. I remembered clearly the river bathing with my sister at home, as naked as eels in the sunshine, and the late-night sessions in the dorms at finishing school in Paris with Daisy and Freddy, which we spent ‘trying on’: trying on one another’s dresses and shoes and nightgowns and even underclothes, for my own calico shifts and knickers – my mother’s penchant for Nature stopped at no threshold – sent the other two into shrieks of laughter as they paraded up and down in them and I, of course, thrilled to the unaccustomed touch of machine lace and milanaise as I modelled theirs. But it had been years since anyone except Grant had witnessed my dressing and undressing, and she with a sheet held high between us and her face turned away from the sight of me, and I had forgotten the easy ways of girls.

  I had not, however, forgotten everything about girls. I had not forgotten what they looked like, and as I left the echoing hall and the damp corridors and re-emerged onto the Glenogle Road I was slowly coming to terms with what I had just seen in the changing cubicle. That girl, Clara, had never had a child. She had the untried, untrammelled body of a child herself, a bud, still waiting for flowering and fruitfulness but untouched by it so far.

  And so, I thought to myself as I paced along, not one single one of the stories of Pip Balfour’s treachery was left standing.

  I listened at Lollie’s boudoir door for a long time before knocking, thinking that if Mr Hardy were not in there I would rather not announce myself and get embroiled with Great Aunt Goitre. It was impossible to tell, however, whether anyone else was in there with the lady: her voice boomed on and on, asking no questions and pausing for no replies. She might have been talking to her own extraordinary reflection in the glass, for all one could say. When at last I tapped and entered, though, she did draw breath.

  ‘Knocking on doors, Walburga?’ she said in tones of high astonishment. ‘Where do you find these servants of yours?’ Lollie did not reply (from her wan face and unfocused gaze I could guess that the endless pronouncements and rambling anecdotes had long since beaten her into hopeless silence). Of course, I could not come back with a retort although I had to bite my cheeks to prevent one, for a boudoir on the bedroom floor is not a public reception room and knocking on its door is perfectly proper. I scowled at Great Aunt Goitre who, unfortunately, saw me.

  ‘And don’t you give me that kind of look, young woman,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I was saying, Walburga, my point in a nutshell. The very reason I’ve always resisted hiring a companion. The only ones I’ve ever come across are pert and lazy and I’m not the woman to pay good money and see nothing for it.’

  ‘No, Aunt,’ said Lollie.

  ‘So you see, when you come to make your home with me we shall both be the better for it,’ continued Great Aunt Gertrude. ‘And I shan’t expect any more than the most ordinary gratitude. Nor shall I be selfish, my dear.’ Here she gave a simpering little smile, quite horrid to behold. ‘I still move in the highest Episcopalian circles and there’s many a curate and vicar sent overseas all alone who’d be happy to have a steady wife along with him.’

  I cleared my throat and broke into the stream then, thinking that I had to crack that will and save Lollie from such a future.

  ‘Can you tell me where Superintendent Hardy is, madam?’ I said.

  ‘Pip’s room,’ whispered Lollie. I bobbed and opened the door to leave.

  ‘Oh, and . . . can you tell me, madam, where did Miss Abbott go when she left? Do you know?’

  ‘What? What?’ said Great Aunt Gertrude, unable to bear having to listen to snippets of conversation she could not join.

  ‘Abbott?’ said Lollie. ‘Why . . . ?’

  ‘I have some of her belongings to send on,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t you ask one of the other maids?’ said her aunt, almost at a roar. ‘Where were you trained, girl?’

  ‘Mrs Ruthven,’ Lollie said to me, ignoring her aunt. ‘In the Braids.’

  I entered Pip’s bedroom with some diffidence, expecting to find the superintendent standing there, communing with the spirit of the dead and hoping for inspiration, and unsure whether he would want a witness while he did so. The room, though, was empty, the bed bare, even the mattress gone. I shivered, not just from the cold – the window was thrown wide to air the place – but because ever since the wards a stripped bed means death and looks both pitiful and brutal in its bareness, conceding defeat and moving hygienically on to other things.

  I finally ran Hardy to ground in Pip’s other room, the library on the first floor, following the scent of his cigarette smoke and finding him seated behind a desk which was strewn with papers he was studiously ignoring. He lay back in the chair and blew smoke straight up at the ceiling.

  ‘Miss Rossiter,’ he said, looking down his nose and making great exhausted-sounding hisses out of both parts of my assumed name.

  ‘Mr Hardy,’ I said. ‘How goes the investigation? Have you discovered anything new? Have you found a George Pollard?’

  ‘Hah,’ said the superintendent. ‘A George Pollard? A George Pollard. I found six and then I stopped looking.’

  ‘Where?’ I said. He clearly thought that the unearthing of six suspects was an embarrassment of riches, but to my mind having only six suspects when that morning we suspected the population at large was a great stride forward.

  ‘Well, when I say I’ve found them, I mean I’ve found their names. Found out that they exist. But not in Gloucester. Oh, no, that would be far too easy. Where did I put my notes?’ He stirred the papers on the desk with his pen and picked out a loose sheet covered in inky scribbles. His neat notebook was forgotten, it seemed. ‘Now then. Balfour’s great great great great grandfather, James—’

  ‘The banker?’ I said.

  ‘Just so,’ said Hardy. ‘He had a brother who moved away to take care of one of the family’s many business interests, and this brother had a daughter who married a Pollard and had a son named George. This George Pollard had a George of his own, as well as a Philip, who himself had a son named after his brother: George.’

  ‘But they’ll all be long dead, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘You just need to follow the pieces of string to the end and see where they lead you.’ He was shaking his head, and so I subsided.

  ‘George’s George had a George to go with Philip’s George – these are second cousins, now, same generation as Balfour’s grandfather although older since the original daughter married her Pollard very young – and between them they had a pair of Philips and a pair of Jameses too, and every James and Philip and George in time had a George of his own. Making six George Pollards in total who could all be called cousins of Philip Balfour. They’re every age between seventy and forty-five. All married, none dead yet as far as I can tell.’ He threw the paper down. ‘I’m used to facts being a help to me,’ he said. ‘I c
an’t be doing with this – it’s like a comic operetta.’

  ‘And what about the next generation?’ I said. ‘Surely six married Georges must have had some sons.’

  ‘They did,’ said Hardy. ‘Three. Including two Georges.’

  ‘Just two?’ I said. ‘The great days of Georges are over then. Don’t you count these as cousins? What would they be? Third cousins? Or cousins twice removed? I never know the difference, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I’d have to count them all right,’ said Hardy, ‘but they’re dead. The war. There are no more Georges to bring yet more Georges now unless one of them remarries and starts again. I tell you, I’m sick of the lot.’

  ‘And how did you find all this out since yesterday?’ I said. ‘It’s miraculous when your men are so stretched.’ I looked around at the tall cases of leather-bound books. ‘Is there a family history?’ I asked. ‘Is it all set out in one of these volumes here?’

  Hardy looked up very sharply at the bookcase behind his head.

  ‘By God, there’d better not be,’ he said. ‘I found out by telephoning to my sister-in-law in St John’s Wood and sending her in to Somerset House to do my work for me. I’ll never hear the end of it.’

  ‘She must be a remarkable scholar,’ I said. ‘I always thought it took weeks of toil and wheedling of the porters to trace back as much as all that.’

  ‘I had her sworn in,’ Hardy said. ‘She’s now a special constable of the London Constabulary, Northern Division. So she got the curators or whatever you call them to hop to it and got the job done. She’ll probably refuse to turn in her armband ever again. She’s one of these new women. Well, I beg your pardon, for you’re probably one yourself. But I can just see her out on the street tonight, boxing strikers’ ears and telling them to go home to their beds.’

  ‘She sounds like Great Aunt Gertrude,’ I said. ‘Have you met that lady, Superintendent?’

  Hardy nodded and crossed his arms – an involuntary attempt to defend himself against her, I thought.

  ‘You know she’s offered Mrs Balfour a home?’ I said. ‘We have to overturn this will.’

  Hardy, with a determined glint in his dark eyes, gave the sharp single nod I had come to know, but then immediately after it he groaned.

  ‘Back to the Georges, then,’ he said.

  ‘I would bet that all of them have sound alibis,’ I said. ‘Having a George Pollard – no current address – named in the will when there are so many of them to choose from sounds exactly like Pip Balfour. Like one of the horrid little jokes he played on his wife.’

  ‘And everyone else,’ said Hardy.

  I took a deep breath. This was going to take some explaining, and Hardy was not going to like it.

  ‘No, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘Not everyone else. Not anyone else. Listen to what I worked out this afternoon.’ To his credit, he did, clearing up the mess of papers on the desk as I talked, saying nothing, taking no notes, just nodding now and then. When I had finished he offered me a cigarette, took one himself, lit both and stared at me.

  ‘So what the devil are they up to?’ he said at last. He sat up and looked around himself, ready to take hold of anyone he could find and shake it out of them. ‘Pretending that a man who’s cruel to his wife is cruel to his servants too, when he’s not. Are they covering for her?’

  ‘Not all of them. But going by significant looks and general squirming when I told them about Pollard, I’d say the kitchen girls are sitting on some sort of secret. The valet and chauffeur too. And the footman. Not Mrs Hepburn and not the butler. But definitely – most definitely – Mattie, Clara and Phyllis.’

  ‘Ah, Phyllis,’ said Hardy. ‘Our friend with the bulging purse.’

  ‘Did you get anywhere with the mystery of the seventeen pounds, by the way?’

  ‘She denied the whole thing,’ said Hardy. ‘Acted as if the very idea of a pawnshop was beyond her. And I couldn’t pursue it without “blowing your cover”.’ He looked tremendously proud of having delivered this choice morsel of vocabulary. ‘I’m delighted to hear that you think it’s worth me pressing her again.’

  ‘And Clara too,’ I said.

  Mr Hardy rested his cigarette in the ashtray, laced his fingers together, then turned his hands palms outward and flexed them with a series of sharp cracking sounds. ‘I shall press with the greatest pleasure. I don’t like the feeling that someone has got one over on me; it’s not a feeling I’m used to. And’ – he unlaced his fingers and picked his cigarette up again – ‘while I’m not used to having to do everything myself these days – I’ve been a superintendent ten years now – I’m beginning to remember what a good way it is to get things done.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said, wondering if he knew how terrifying he was when he spoke that way, lips thin and brows lowered. ‘But if you will permit me, I have a plan to press Mattie myself and I’d like to pursue it. I think he might dissolve if one pressed him too abruptly, but I’m going to put him in a vice and turn the handle so slowly he won’t know what’s happening until all of a sudden the truth pops out.’ Mr Hardy looked terribly impressed, as well he might, for such a plan would have been pretty hot stuff, but in reality I was only trying to make sure that he stayed away from Mattie and left him to me. The dissolving was only too likely and, besides, I could not consign that stammer and those dimples to a man whose knuckles cracked in such a fearsome way.

  13

  ‘Mistress says you’re off out again today, Miss Rossiter,’ said Phyllis at breakfast the next morning. It was eight o’clock and, tea trays delivered to Lollie and her aunt, bedroom fires lit, morning room and breakfast room swept and ready, we were gathered around the long table in the servants’ hall for bacon, eggs and ebony tea. Mrs Hepburn was grumbling and apologising in equal measures for the state of the food, which had come from ‘thon useless contraption’ now that the range was cold, but it all tasted the same as ever to me.

  ‘I am indeed, Phyllis,’ I replied. ‘Mistress has Mrs Lambert-Leslie to attend to her and she’s sending me on an errand.’

  ‘Aye, but in the wee car though,’ said Phyllis. ‘All right for some.’

  ‘You’d better not be blacklegging,’ said Harry.

  ‘And what would Miss Rossiter and mistress be blacklegging?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘You’re tilting at windmills, Harry boy, with this strike. You’re getting a . . . thingumijig . . . over it.’

  ‘Monomania,’ I supplied.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘You’ve a proper head for knowing, Fanny.’

  ‘But here’s another thing,’ said John. ‘How come you’re getting to drive Goitre’s wee car instead of me taking the Phantom? First I’ve heard of a maid doing that, I can tell you.’

  ‘Great Aunt Goitre to you, John,’ said Mr Faulds, causing much laughter.

  ‘I’ll be next,’ said Phyllis. ‘Nothing I’d like more than to tootle away down to Portobello on my free day. Good on you, Miss R.’

  ‘I’m not driving it myself,’ I said. ‘Mrs Lambert-Leslie’s chauffeur is accompanying me.’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ said Clara. ‘Great Aunt Goitre’s “chauffeur”. I see.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘It’s always been a free and easy house and no one happier for it than me’ – here she flushed a little – ‘but these things can go too far.’ She gave me a stern look and although she said no more I took her meaning.

  The evening before, after all, I had committed a below-stairs solecism far greater than tucking up with the butler when no one was looking. I had slipped out to a tryst with – as we used to call them in my mother’s day when they were absolutely forbidden in the servants’ hall at home – a follower.

  We had been ensconced as usual, Mr Faulds, Mrs Hepburn and I in the armchairs, Mattie at the piano, the girls clustered about the lamp sewing, the boys spread around the table reading and laying out Patience, when the sound of the area gate opening drew our ears. John, who was nearest the window, leaned back in his chair and
craned upwards.

  ‘Who’s this then?’ he said. ‘Some toff with two dogs. What’s he after?’

  I rose and hurried out to the passageway.

  ‘I’ll see to him,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘I was needing to stretch my legs anyway.’

  Mr Faulds, in his shirtsleeves, was happy to let me and, although Stanley huffed and puffed a little about whose job it was to greet visitors, he did not go so far as to stand up and race me for it.

  ‘What on earth are you thinking, Alec?’ I hissed when I had opened the door to him. ‘Shush, Bunty! There’s a good girl. You can’t just tool up here and knock. Miss Rossiter will be put out with no character.’

  ‘Needs must,’ said Alec. ‘I had to talk to you. I’ve been to North Berwick.’

  ‘And?’ I said. ‘Settle down, Bunty.’

  ‘Can’t you come out for a minute?’ said Alec. ‘She’ll never shut up unless we walk up and down. Really, Dandy, I have to agree with Hugh sometimes – you have spoiled her.’

  I drew the door over behind me and, hatless and in my cardigan, followed him up the steps and out onto the street.

  ‘Well?’ I said when we were a few steps away from the house and the servants’ hall window, at which I was sure all were gathered by now. ‘You’ve been to North Berwick and . . . ?’

  ‘Maggie,’ said Alec, ‘never arrived.’

  I halted and was pulled off my feet by Bunty. Alec caught my arm.

  ‘She was expected on Sunday,’ he said, ‘but didn’t show up. No sign of her on Monday either and when Sir George’s housekeeper – Sir George Finlayson; he was, as you suggested, easy enough to find – telephoned to the Balfours on Tuesday it was to be told of Pip Balfour’s murder. After which, understandably, the housekeeper didn’t think she could press the matter any more.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ I said. ‘She needs to be found. And we must check on Miss Abbott too. Lollie told me she went to a Mrs Ruthven in Braid Hills.’