Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 27

  ‘Mrs Balfour didn’t get them,’ Hardy told me. ‘They were sent to her husband. But if he got them, they weren’t among his things.’

  ‘Faulds and Stanley might remember them,’ I said. ‘And actually, Superintendent, that’s what I was going to say: you need to speak to Stanley. He saw something that night. He knows something. He’s often out at night-time – well, they all are. All four of them from the carriage house, at it happens. Mattie creeps out to his piano practice if you can believe it,’ – Hardy’s eyebrows lifted a little – ‘letting himself in with a key hidden outside the back door. John and Harry frequently go out on the town after lights out and did so on Monday night.’

  ‘I know that much,’ Hardy said. ‘Eldry and Millie told me. Eldry is in the habit of sitting at her window watching for a glimpse of Harry’s legs as he passes. Millie sometimes joins her, but her beloved has yet to be seen.’

  ‘At the front anyway,’ I said. ‘Stanley doesn’t go anywhere near the street. He creeps around the back gardens looking in at maids’ windows.’ Mr Hardy drew his head back sharply as though at a nasty smell. ‘And Mattie tells me – apropos of the murder night – that Stanley was out in the back garden, at Miss Rossiter’s window, and knows that “no one needed to be let in”. I think that’s very significant, don’t you?’

  ‘Peeping tom, eh?’ Hardy said. ‘Never mind speaking to him, then. I can take him in, and have a proper go at him.’ He strode to the fireplace and tugged the bell-rope, looking like an executioner releasing the guillotine.

  Faulds answered the bell and sent a puzzled glance around the room, at the incongruous sight of the superintendent, Lollie’s lady’s maid still in her outdoor clothes, and rather dishevelled ones at that, and the young man who might or might not be Great Aunt Gertrude’s chauffeur. I was standing very properly with my hands folded and my eyes down and Alec was sitting forward on a hard chair as befitted a servant in one of the upstairs rooms, but one could still see Faulds trying and failing to make sense of it.

  ‘Send the footman to me, please, Faulds,’ said Hardy, ‘and tell him to bring his hat and coat, won’t you?’

  ‘Stanley?’ said Mr Faulds, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Well now, sir, I can’t do that right now, I’m afraid, but I’ll leave word that you want to see him.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Hardy in dreadful tones. Mr Faulds swallowed hard but spoke without a tremor.

  ‘We can’t seem to find him,’ he said. ‘It’s not his free afternoon, but he’s gone, sir.’

  ‘Gone?’ said Hardy. ‘What do you mean?’ Alec and I frowned at one another.

  ‘Well, they sometimes slip out after tea if there’s nothing planned for the evening,’ said Faulds, wilting a little under Superintendent Hardy’s gaze. ‘At least Mrs Hepburn lets the girls and so I don’t want to come the heavy and stop the lads doing the same, so long as they don’t take it too far, you understand, but I must say, Stanley is a very proper young man and he usually tells someone if he needs to pop out and says when he’ll be back and all that. I assure you this isn’t like him, not at all.’ Mr Hardy had started moving towards the desk telephone before this speech was halfway through and jiggled the button up and down with fierce jabs of his finger.

  ‘Gayfield police station,’ he said. ‘This is Superintendent Hardy and I don’t want your opinion on the matter, young lady. Just put me through.’ While he waited he turned to Mr Faulds again. ‘When was he last seen? Who saw him? Has anyone been through his things to check whether anything’s missing? Send anyone who knows anything up here to me. Osborne,’ – Hardy scribbled on a scrap of paper and shoved it at Alec – ‘you go to his home address and ask them there if he’s been seen. Miss Rossiter? Go to the carriage house and search it.’

  ‘Now, sir,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Really, Miss Rossiter could not possibly be expected to go poking around in the men’s quarters. I shall take care of that myself.’

  ‘Well, do it then!’ roared Hardy and turned his back on all of us to speak into the telephone.

  Faulds, moving faster than I had ever seen him go and looking quite unlike a butler, dashed away down the stairs and slammed the green baize door behind him.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, to Alec, as we hurried after him. ‘Stanley? Stanley? It can’t be true. All that blood?’

  ‘But if he’s skipped,’ said Alec.

  ‘And why?’

  Alec only shrugged. We were down in the servants’ quarters now. Alec made for the area door. Mr Faulds, emerging from his pantry in a mackintosh, on his way to the carriage house, laid a hand on my arm before we parted.

  ‘Try to keep it from them, won’t you, Fanny?’ he said. ‘Phyllis and Kitty and the others. Don’t upset them before we’re sure, eh? I’ll go and see what’s what in the mews, but I’m sure I’ll find nothing amiss. I mean, not Stanley. Stab master? Never, Fanny. I don’t give scat for Mr Hardy and his ideas. I’ve known that lad nearly four years and I’d stake my life on it.’

  And yet, I thought, he had jumped to exactly that conclusion without Hardy ever actually saying it out loud.

  Mrs Hepburn and the girls were in the kitchen, Millie and Eldry busy and the other two maids perched up on the dresser, huddled close like a pair of little birds.

  ‘I thought I heard you a while ago,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘but with all the rushing about, upstairs and down, I couldn’t be sure it was you. Where have you been?’ When I failed to answer, she looked up and her eyes widened. ‘Fanny, look at the state of your hat! What have you been doing to yourself? And your coat’s ruined.’

  Phyllis giggled.

  ‘You do look a sight, Miss Rossiter,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a terrible day too, Clara and me, with that policeman, but we’ve come through it better than you.’

  ‘I need to ask you all something,’ I said. ‘It’s about Stanley.’ Millie looked up. She was pushing cloves into the scored glaze of a ham and she stopped with one finger pressed against it like someone leaning on a door bell.

  ‘Is he all right?’ she said. Phyllis giggled again. ‘He’s gone out without telling us where he’s going.’

  ‘And who saw him last?’ I said. ‘Mr Hardy wants to know.’

  ‘Superintendent Hardy?’ said Millie. ‘Does he think Stanley’s in danger? Oh! Oh! Auntie Kitty!’

  ‘Now hush, Molly-moo,’ said Mrs Hepburn, glaring at me. ‘Miss Rossiter didn’t mean anything of the sort. Don’t upset yourself. We all saw him at dinner-time, Fanny. You tell that to the policeman.’

  ‘I saw him after dinner,’ said Eldry. ‘I saw him going to the front area door. At least at the time I thought he was going to Mr Faulds’s pantry, you know, to get a job to do or maybe to get his chamois apron or his silver-gloves or something that he keeps in there, but that must have been him leaving.’

  ‘And what time was this?’ I said. Eldry bit her bottom lip and pushed out her top one.

  ‘I was just coming out of the china store,’ she said. ‘I’d been getting the sweet dishes for tonight’s dessert. When was that, Mrs Hepburn?’

  ‘Half-past two sort of time?’ said the cook. ‘I sent you for them as soon as the custard was cool enough to pour without them cracking. Half-past two, Fanny. Tell the copper it was then.’

  ‘He’s been gone an awful long time then, Auntie Kitty,’ said Millie and the rest of the girls glanced at one another, for this was true.

  ‘Who cares what Stanley does, Millie-Molly-moo,’ said Clara. ‘I’ve always said you’re too good for him.’

  I left them to try to persuade the stubborn Millie of this self-evident truth and slipped out again. At the stairs, I hesitated and then hurried down instead of up. If I really looked as frightful as Mrs Hepburn said, I wanted to make a few hasty repairs before seeing Hardy again.

  In my room, I flung off my hat and my much-abused coat and shrugged into the neat little black slub jacket I had taken to wearing in the evening, then I elbowed open the door of my washing room, meaning to sp
lash my face and damp down my hair, but stopped short in the doorway, looking into the dark.

  The shutters were closed but I could see that someone was in there, bent over the sink, and my first thought was that whoever it was was drunk – helplessly, disgustingly drunk – and had had the nerve to come to my room, to use my sink, for the inevitable aftermath to take place in comfort and privacy. Then I realised three things all at once, or so quickly in succession as made no difference: that it was Stanley – his striped trousers, his black shoes; that the smell in here which had made me put my hand up to my mouth after the first gasp was not the smell of drink and sickness, but something worse and only too familiar; and that he was not bending over the sink, but slumped there, his round little stomach resting against its front edge, his legs slightly bent and his feet dragging sideways on the tiled floor, absolutely still.

  I stepped towards him and all I could see was darkness instead of the white gleam of the china sink that should have been there. I returned to my bedroom and lit a candle.

  Now I could see it all: the dark head hanging down, the deep, dark red pooled in the bottom of the sink and turning black there, the pudgy hand lying half-open in the deepest part of the puddle with the razor slipping from its grasp. I bent down close to his head, holding my breath, my hand shaking so that everything danced in the candlelight and even Stanley seemed to be moving. His face had not fallen against the sink but was hanging down into it with just the tip of his nose touching and his chin was . . . I held the candle up and looked more closely, then stepped back so sharply that the candle, in the sudden movement, snuffed itself out. His chin was hidden, had disappeared into the cut in his neck, or the cut in his neck had gaped open and swallowed his chin; either way it was a sight I could not bear to have seen but one which, no matter how I squeezed my eyes shut and scrubbed at them, would not leave me.

  I did not have to explain to Superintendent Hardy.

  ‘I found Stanley,’ was all I said and his face drained until it was as ghastly and as grey as I felt sure mine must be. Together we went back down and he waited while I fumbled the lock open, not offering to do it for me, suspecting perhaps that his hands would be no more steady than my own. I hung back once we were inside and let Hardy enter the little washing room on his own.

  He was very quiet in there, not even so much as breathing heavily, much less uttering the ugly sounds of disgust I feared had been torn out of me at the first sight of it. His shoes squeaked now and then and I imagined him bending and craning for a closer look, but that was all until he cleared his throat and said:

  ‘My dear? Is it his writing?’

  I stirred myself and I too had to cough my voice back to life before I could answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Superintendent – what?’

  ‘Is this Stanley’s writing? I’ve never seen it, but perhaps you might have.’

  Reluctantly, I edged towards the door and looked in. Hardy had relit the candle and was holding it over the slatted wooden board beyond the sink, peering down at a piece of paper there. He turned round and beckoned to me. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to move it until I have a cloth to wrap it in. We shall need to dust it for fingerprints, naturally.’

  I put a hand up to the side of my head to shield my eyes from another sight of Stanley and walked, rather unsteadily, over to Hardy’s side. The paper was a single lined sheet torn from a cheap pad, rather rough, with blue lines across it:

  May 8th 1926

  I am not sorry for what I did, but I cannot face what will happen to me if I am found out. The world is a better place without Philip Balfour and it will do very well without me.

  Stanley Drumm

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Mr Faulds would know. Shall I . . . shall I fetch him?’

  ‘No,’ said Hardy, putting a hand under my arm and leading me back out into my bedroom. ‘The fewer people who see all this the better, I think, don’t you? There’s no reason to doubt it anyway.’ He had lowered me into the armchair and now sat down heavily upon the bed. He put his hands up as though to rub his face and then jerked them away again, plucked a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped it over his palms. I put my hand to the place on my sleeve where he had touched me. There was a little dampness there.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘I was wrong. I always thought that Stanley hinting and boasting was a mark of innocence on him.’

  ‘And the blood phobia was nonsense,’ said Hardy. I touched my sleeve again and nodded, shuddering.

  ‘And no matter what Mattie thinks, Stanley must have known about the key. And used it that night.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the superintendent, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And he did after all often deal with the post-bag and answer the telephone, so he could easily have fobbed off Mrs Light and the Berwick housekeeper.’

  ‘Who said – as a matter of fact, madam – that it was a man she spoke to when she rang.’

  ‘So the only question left is why,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, that sort of character,’ said Hardy, ‘a peeping tom? He wouldn’t need the kind of motive that would make sense to you or me.’

  For some reason, I could hear Nanny Palmer’s voice, on the subject of hanging dogs and bad names, which made no sense at all. I shook my head to silence her.

  ‘Do you know, Superintendent,’ I said, ‘I am probably the only one of the upper servants who doesn’t have a bottle of something handy in my bedroom somewhere.’

  Hardy nodded, acknowledging the attempt at a joke, and then looked around.

  ‘Bedroom?’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. Well, you must gather what things you will need for the night, my dear, because I shall have to lock up at least until the morning.’

  The thought was not to be entertained of sleeping here ever again and so it took some effort to prevent myself from bundling up every last stocking and hairpin and fleeing, but I managed to restrict myself to my notebooks, my nightgown and a change of clothes for the following day and followed Superintendent Hardy upstairs again, feeling like a refugee.

  We had hardly had time to tell Lollie and Great Aunt Gertrude the news when Alec returned, mounting the stairs at a gallop and bursting into the room.

  ‘There’s—’ he began and then checked himself when he saw Mrs Lambert-Leslie and Mrs Balfour there as well as Hardy and me. ‘Forgive me, ladies,’ he said.

  ‘Out with it and never mind your pretty manners,’ said Great Aunt Gertrude. ‘We’re past all that now.’

  ‘I’ve got some news,’ Alec said. ‘I went to Stanley’s house out at Shandon and they haven’t seen him, not since his last free day – but here’s the thing: I did find out that he’s a model of filial devotion, never misses a week, certainly didn’t stay away for any long stretch because his father was ill. They didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned it. So I think, I really do, Superintendent, that the whole story about a fear of blood is nonsense and Stanley might well be our man.’

  He did not get the expected response at the end of this and when he looked around at our faces to try to find out why, I think he saw them properly for the first time.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘Dan – Miss Rossiter, I mean, are you all right?’

  I turned beseeching eyes upon Mr Hardy but before either of us could speak, Great Aunt Gertrude steamed in and summed it up neatly.

  ‘Stanley’s the one, all right. He confessed and then cut his own throat like a white man.’

  Alec frowned at the boorish phrase but said nothing, only turned to me and enquired with a look whether I agreed. I shrugged and nodded.

  We arranged that I should spend the night in a room on the third floor of the house, the unused nursery floor, and I left to deposit my bundle of books and clothes there. Alec came out of the drawing room behind me while Mr Hardy stayed to summon mortuary men and a police surgeon to attend Number 31 once more.

  ‘I don’t like this, Dandy,’ he said, as we climbed the narrow
staircase together. ‘In fact, I’m going to have to insist that if you spend another night in this charnel house – and on a deserted floor at that – I do too. I shall bunk down between you and the stairs and I’m bringing the dogs in – don’t tell me otherwise. That lot down in the servants’ hall already think I’m Mrs L-L’s fancy man – you should have heard the maids giggling – so it won’t be any shock to them that I get special favours.’

  ‘You and I agree then,’ I said. I had put down my things on a blanket box on the landing and was opening doors, looking for a suitable room, feeling a little like Goldilocks in the empty cottage, for Lollie had already fitted up her nurseries for the children who would never be and there were short beds, low to the floor, and a crib with lace hangings, but nowhere that would be just right for me.

  ‘Agree about what?’ Alec said. ‘Here we go, Dandy. The nursemaid’s room. You and Bunty can sleep here and I’ll take the floor in the outer nursery.’

  ‘Like a bear at the mouth of a cave,’ I said. ‘You know it too, don’t you? Even though you don’t know how you know or what you know. No, don’t scoff! Listen – if Stanley is the murderer and Stanley is dead then what do I have to fear and what do you have to fear for me and why are you not going off to supper and a night in an hotel?’

  ‘I’m just rattled,’ said Alec. ‘There’s no rhyme nor reason to it and in the morning it’ll be gone, but I’m spooked by it tonight – please, Dandy; humour me.’

  He was not alone. The servants’ hall was the most subdued I had ever seen it once the news spread below stairs. Millie, as might be expected, was quite undone, and sat bellowing like an abandoned calf with tears rushing unchecked over her cheeks and dripping from her chin. At least, though, the sound of her howls drowned out the tramping feet of the doctor and the fingerprint men and, a little later, the heavier tramp of the mortuary attendants as they removed the body. Millie was facing away from the area, thank the Lord, and those of us who were not managed to compose our expressions before she noticed and turned around.

  No one objected when Mr Faulds broke up the gathering. He bid Clara make up a cot for Millie beside her Auntie Kitty and – very thoughtfully, in my opinion – told Eldry she could do the same in the housemaids’ bedroom, so that she would not be alone. He even asked me if I thought I would manage to sleep up in the nurseries and did not seem entirely convinced when I assured him that I should be fine.