Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 31

  ‘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.

  ‘You might have what?’ said Mrs Hepburn.

  ‘I was moaning about Stanley,’ Phyllis said. ‘Like we all used to, didn’t we? Even if it sounds bad now he’s gone. I told Mr Faulds he’d said he kent something and he was being a pain about it, you know the way he was? Dropping hints and thinking he was it?’ Clara and Mrs Hepburn nodded, but Eldry and Mattie – innocent youths – looked unwilling to malign the dead in this way. ‘And I asked Mr Faulds if he thought I should tell the policeman about it.’

  ‘Oh Phyllis!’ said Mrs Hepburn and Phyllis’s eyes brimmed.

  ‘And Mr Faulds said no and not to worry my head about it and that he’d see to Stanley himself.’

  ‘See to him!’ said Mrs Hepburn. Two great fat tears like goblets slid down Phyllis’s face.

  ‘And he gave me . . . a fiver,’ Phyllis said. She did not look at me.

  ‘He gave you a fiver and you never wondered why?’ said Clara. Still Phyllis would not meet my eye, for I knew it had been much more than that and if a fiver should have set alarm bells jangling then seventeen, or probably twenty, ought to have been as good as a signed confession.

  ‘I didn’t think,’ she said. More tears followed the first two, and faster. The others said nothing.

  ‘Don’t dwell on it,’ I told her, trying to speak kindly but not quite managing, I fear. ‘It’s too late now.’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Stanley, after all, I mean to say, he only had himself . . . and it’s Mr Faulds that should be . . .’

  ‘Thoughtlessness born of innocence is not a crime,’ I said, taking pity at last. ‘It’s a virtue.’ Phyllis smiled her thanks.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Well said, Fanny my girl. And it’s all over now. We can leave all that behind us when we go.’

  ‘You’re moving away?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Mrs Hepburn said. ‘We’re away up north to the lodge tomorrow afternoon, or maybe Thursday if it takes them until then to get the trains straight again.’

  ‘The strike’s definitely going to end then?’ I said. ‘I didn’t think that stupid Astbury ruling could possibly stand.’

  ‘What’s that, miss?’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Judge Astbury said it was illegal,’ I told her.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mattie, with his face very solemn. ‘It’s ending tomorrow, right enough.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news,’ Phyllis said. ‘Your father and brother back at work again.’

  The others, me included, looked at her with pitying looks.

  ‘Eh no, Phyllis,’ said Eldry. ‘The strike’s finishing – all the trains and buses and the newspapers and all them – but the lock-out’s carrying on. The miners’ll just . . .’ She glanced at Mattie and bit her lip.

  ‘The miners’ll just be on their own now, fighting for themselves,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t fret, Mattie,’ said Mrs Hepburn, ‘Mr Baldwin will make it all better. He said so. He’s going to . . . what was it he said?’

  ‘Ensure a square deal, to secure even justice between man and man,’ said Eldry, who was reading from a piece of paper she had been holding folded up in her hand. Phyllis giggled, and Eldry flushed. She must have copied it out, perhaps as a little billet doux to give to Harry upon parting.

  I said goodbye to them all then and, for the last time, pulled the door of the servants’ hall closed behind me. I did not go upstairs to where Bunty was waiting, though, but down.

  Miss Rossiter’s bedroom door was open. The door to the little washroom was closed, and I left it that way. The grate was swept and bare, the bed stripped down, with its pillows and blankets folded in a pile at its foot, and the wooden chimneypiece was empty again. I looked around. I had only spent four nights there, between the first night on Lollie’s chaise and the last night in the nurseries, but I would never forget it and might even miss the view out of the window where the cherry tree was already turning green as the grass beneath it turned pink with fallen blossom. I peered out, seeing movement. Harry was coming up the path in a smart suit and hat, carrying a small case and looking quite unlike a valet, not even trying to. I knocked on the window and waved to him, and instead of taking the steps to the kitchen door he let himself in on my level and came to my room to say goodbye to me.

  ‘Well!’ he said, once he had shaken my hand. ‘So this is the real you, then? Underneath that brilliant disguise.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘If it hadn’t been for events taking all the attention off me I shouldn’t have lasted even the week I did. You made a much better job of it with less effort, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘I wasn’t in disguise!’ said Harry. ‘I’m a working man and I was doing a job that plenty of working men are forced to do, even if it is one that demeans the worker and the master both. Twelve of us, Miss Rossiter, twelve able-bodied workers toiling away all day every day to keep two more able-bodied people fed and clothed and pampered like babies.’

  ‘Toiling?’ I said. ‘We spent half our time in the servants’ hall drinking our way through Pip’s cellar. A cook-general and boot boy might have toiled, but we had a very comfortable time.’

  ‘Not as comfortable as the two of them upstairs. It degrades
all sides the same.’

  ‘So why did you do it?’ I asked him. ‘And are you going to do it again with another master now?’

  Harry looked at me, with a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said, ‘you of all people.’ I waited, knowing he was teasing. ‘Ask John about the club we used to go to. He went for the beer and the dartboard but I went for the talk, Miss Rossiter, and he must have heard some.’

  ‘I worked out for myself that it was a socialist club,’ I said, feeling very much the woman of the world to know that there were such things and to mention them so casually.

  ‘Communist club,’ said Harry. I gasped, not so worldly after all. ‘Soviet Comrades of Scotland. We infiltrated many a house in Edinburgh, from below stairs, waiting and listening.’

  ‘Waiting and listening for what?’ I said and I knew that my voice had turned hoarse, for my throat was dry.

  ‘The call to arms,’ said Harry. ‘The uprising. The start of the revolution. I really did think last Monday that that day had dawned.’

  ‘And now?’ I said, in a whisper.

  ‘They’ve lost their nerve,’ said Harry. He looked over my shoulder and stared into a mythical distance, shaking his head. ‘They never found their nerve. The TUC was that busy keeping it small, keeping it manageable, stopping their brothers from joining up and joining in . . . they did the government’s job for them. And today they’re going to sign on the line and it’ll be over by the morning. They’re giving in, letting go of the greatest groundswell of workers’ solidarity this country has ever— but you don’t want to hear this, do you?’

  ‘I certainly don’t,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it. You mean to say that you were hiding out here, you and all your . . . comrades . . . in people’s houses waiting for the moment to . . . put them up against the wall and shoot them, just for being rich? Pip Balfour? Lollie too? Me? My husband has spent the last ten years telling me that people like you are all around us and I’ve spent the last ten years telling him he’s imagining things and— How can you be laughing?’

  ‘I’m having you on,’ he said. ‘It’s not me and all my comrades. It’s just me. My father was a valet and brought me up to it, but I went into the printers’ union and ended up a newspaperman, then about three years ago or thereabouts I went freelance. I’m going to write a book. About the twelve of us and the two of them. Only now, of course, I can’t decide between the book I was going to write and the one I found myself in the middle of. I know which one would sell more.’

  I could not help my eyebrows rising.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘The idea of making a bit of money does have a universal appeal.’

  Harry’s grin snapped off again.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So don’t go telling your friends in the police about cells of spies in the servants’ halls because I’ll deny I said any such thing and no one will believe you.’

  ‘Well, I shall keep an eye on the review pages,’ I said, ‘and I look forward to reading whichever book you write in the end. It’s bound to be pretty thrilling stuff.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, giving me a very hard stare, ‘don’t you go stealing my thunder and writing your own.’

  ‘I?’ I said, pressing my hand to my heart. ‘I shan’t have the luxury, Harry my boy. I shall be onto the next job. I’m a working woman, you know. We can’t all be freelance like you.’

  And so we parted, Harry and I, Lollie and I, the rest of the servants and I, none of us unchanged by those nine tumultuous days. How, I asked myself, could I begin to describe my part in them to Hugh, if he should ask me? As I pulled the door closed and climbed the stairs to fetch Bunty, I decided to stop off at Alec’s on my way home.

  Facts and Fictions

  The Balfours’ house at 31 Heriot Row is mostly 3 Moray Place and some 5, 6 and 7 Charlotte Square, with just a hint of 29 Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin, which was where I first had the idea for this book.

  The Balfour family is entirely fictitious, as is the account of their various banks, mansions, mines and oilfields around the world. I was, for once, following the good advice of Jim Hogg and ‘just making it up’.

  The details of the strike are based on accounts in the TUC-produced Strike Bulletin and the one Edinburgh newspaper which was published during the nine days.

  The miners’ village and colliery where Mattie’s family live and work, although imagined to be near Smeaton in Midlothian, are not based on any of the pits which made up the Lothian or Dalkeith Companies.

  About the Author

  Catriona McPherson was educated at Edinburgh University, and spent a few years as a university lecturer before writing her first Dandy Gilver novel (shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger). Catriona now writes full-time and lives on a farm in Galloway.

  Also by the same author

  After the Armistice Ball

  The Burry Man’s Day

  Bury Her Deep

  The Winter Ground

  Table of Contents

  Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Postscript

  Facts and Fictions

  About the Author

  Also by the same author