‘Oh, Mr Faulds, please,’ I said. ‘If you had seen it you’d wish you hadn’t. There’s nothing right and proper to be done about it any way you look. And I’m not trying to take centre-stage, I assure you. Let’s please all go back downstairs and wait for the police. If they need someone to show them round, you can volunteer for that – I’m sure I don’t want to.’
At that moment, the question was decided for us by Eldry, who fainted, sinking into her skirts and then half rolling a few steps down the stairs. John and Harry gathered her up between them and fought over her for a moment or two, then John relinquished her with a grin.
‘I hope she comes to before you put her down,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t want to miss this. Anybody else feeling dicky?’ he asked, turning to the other girls and flexing his arms.
‘Shut up with your stupid jokes for once,’ said Harry, turning away and beginning to feel his way down the steps. ‘It’s not the time.’
John tried mugging to the girls but they threw him their severest looks and trotted anxiously after Harry and his still unconscious cargo. John, his cheeks aflame, followed them. I had been looking at Mattie, the hall boy, who was dangerously white-looking, and I went over to him, put an arm across his back and walked down after the others holding him up firmly.
‘Thanks, Miss Rossiter,’ he said. ‘Sorry to be so—’
‘Ch-ch,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been closer to fainting in my life, my dear. Don’t say another word about it.’ In truth, though, I was wondering why he – who had seen nothing of the horrors – should be so affected, but I filed the question away for later; after all I barely knew the child and perhaps this was his norm.
Above us, Stanley was speaking in a low and rather thrilled voice.
‘Terrible thing, Mr Faulds,’ he said. ‘Shocking the way she just waltzed in and took over. I don’t want to see it – I’m as sick as a dog just thinking about it – but if you want to get the spare key and go for a look-see I’ll stand watch for you.’
‘Oh, stop sucking up for once,’ said Mr Faulds.
Three policemen arrived at the door and two of them climbed the stairs, sounding very solemn and deliberate as they did so. I was with Lollie, having changed places with Mrs Hepburn shortly after the mass gathering on the landing had broken up. Eldry had been put to bed with a hot bottle and the steady Phyllis watching over her, and Mattie had been given the honour of one of the servants’ hall armchairs and the more pertinent remedy of hot sweet tea.
Lollie sat absolutely motionless in a small armchair staring straight ahead of her. She had a shawl over her shoulders and there was a fire in the grate – Mrs Hepburn’s work, I imagined – but she was white and pinched-looking and she turned her head only very slowly when a firm knock sounded and a large man in a dark suit entered along with a uniformed sergeant.
‘Superintendent Hardy, Mrs Balfour,’ he said in a strained voice. Lollie stared back without blinking, but I must have reacted since he turned to me and explained. ‘We’ve suspended leave and called in all the specials while the strike’s running, and every one of my inspectors and sergeants is busy organising them so it fell to me.’
‘I see,’ said Lollie. ‘Well, thank you for coming at all, Mr Hardy.’
The large man looked rather grim at that, perhaps seeing an unintended slight or suspecting irony. Actually, I thought Lollie’s tone – the careless sound of her voice – arose from disbelief, from a simple inability to take in what was happening.
‘I assure you, my dear madam,’ said Superintendent Hardy, ‘you will receive our utmost attention until this matter is resolved. I shall see to it personally.’ His voice and his bulk were reassuring although there was some subtle kind of panic in his eyes. Still, Lollie nodded.
‘Of course, of course,’ she said.
‘Now, it’s your husband, I believe?’ he said. ‘Met with a nasty mishap? Where is he?’
Mr Faulds was hovering behind Superintendent Hardy and he stepped forward now.
‘In his bedroom, sir, if you might allow me to escort you.’
‘And you are?’ Hardy nodded at the sergeant, who opened his notebook.
‘Ernest Faulds, the butler.’
‘Well, Faulds, if you’ll just point us in the right direction we’ll take over from here.’
‘It’s locked, Superintendent,’ I said, and he turned to look at me. ‘I thought it was best. I have the key, but I’m sorry to tell you that – in all the confusion – I didn’t stop to think about prints; I just grabbed it, so there’s probably no point in worrying about them now.’ I took the key out of my pocket and offered it to him.
‘Thank you, Miss . . . ?’
That was the question I had been trying to answer for myself since I first stepped towards Pip’s bed and saw the bloodstain. Was this the end of Miss Rossiter? Surely it must be, and yet not only would I give anything to be able to stay in her skin a little longer now that matters had taken this hideous turn, but there was the problem of where my duty lay. As I considered the point, all of a sudden I thought I knew what lay behind the look of unease in Hardy’s eyes. His inspectors and sergeants were policing this stupid strike and he had been left nursing the screaming baby, holding the ticking bomb. And if he could not read the shock in a widow’s voice – whether it were the shock of grief or the shock of what she had done, if she had done it – could he solve a murder? Could he, plucked out from behind his desk and thrown back into the torrent of an investigation for the first time in years perhaps – and there was something about him, the crisp cuffs, clean nails and careful arrangement of his glossy hair, which made me sure it was years – but anyway, could he be trusted to do it without me?
‘Miss . . . ?’ he prompted, and the very fact that he seemed not to have gleaned any of what was surging through me, right before his eyes, had almost made my mind up when Lollie spoke, looking awake again, and aware of what was around her.
‘Miss Rossiter, my lady’s maid,’ she said. I shelved the decision, telling myself that the body was their first priority, that it would be an annoyance and a distraction to them to start a long and confusing story about my identity right now.
‘Fanny Rossiter, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘I, with one other, found him, you know.’
Mr Hardy took the key from me and I was glad to see that he – finally – gave me a searching look as he did so. Miss Rossiter’s vowels and manner of speaking had completely deserted me and even Mr Hardy must know that I was no ordinary maid.
‘This way, sir,’ said Mr Faulds, and they left Lollie and me alone.
‘Please don’t tell them who you are, Dandy,’ she whispered to me as soon as they were gone. ‘If they know that I thought he was going to hurt me they’ll think
I
hurt
him
. They’ll think I only asked you to come to give me an alibi and they’ll arrest me and put me in jail and I’d die. I couldn’t stand to be locked up in a jail cell. Oh, please, promise me. Or ask—’ She broke off with a cry. ‘I was going to say, ask Pip,’ she said. ‘He would know what to do. He would be able to help. Oh! Oh, Pip!’ Then she put her head down into her hands and began crying hard, sobs racking her chest as though she were choking.
I am afraid to say that although I sprang to her side and comforted her, with a great deal of hair-patting and shushing, I was thinking all the while that the police, looking around themselves and seeing a neatly acquired alibi, would have a point. Her state of shock was convincing enough – no one can make her face go pale at will – and the reality of the current tears could not be questioned, soaking her face and hands as they were and coming complete with a great deal of wet sniffing, but whether they were born of grief, remorse or a healthy fear for her neck was another question. Tears can be turned to account with the greatest of ease if one has a gift for weeping.
At length and after a few horribly deep snorts and swallows, Lollie sat up straight again and pulled away from me. I returned to my seat.
Her eyes were purple-looking now over the pallor of her cheeks, the lashes spiked and sparkling, and, although her nose was swollen and her lips trembled, youth shone out of her. (Had I cried so hard for so long I should have been sodden and wretched and looked ninety.) She tried a smile when she saw me looking at her. It was not successful and a further two fat tears splashed down her front.
‘About the question of an alibi,’ I began. I thought I spoke kindly and with lightness, but Lollie, tears drying up in an instant, gazed back at me in horror. I decided to plough on. ‘I shall, of course, say to Superintendent Hardy that I was in your room overnight and I shall say – which is true – that I don’t think you could have left and returned without waking me, but I can’t be sure. And as to the question of whether I tell him who I am and why I’m here . . .’
Lollie had recovered herself a little and she spoke up stoutly.
‘I don’t expect you to lie,’ she said. ‘You can say this is your first job as a lady’s maid and that I had heard about you and wrote to ask if you would come and that it’s not what you were brought up to. All of that is quite true. And then you can stay and help find out what happened. Please say you will, Dandy. You must.’
I regarded her in silence. As truths go, the history of Miss Rossiter she had laid out was unimpressive: a forked-tongue taradiddle of the highest order and if I were to serve it up to Hardy and be found out afterwards I should be lucky to escape arrest, if not a smack on the legs with a hairbrush for the cheek of it. On the other hand, I could not bear to rip myself away from this now. And, I told myself, if she had wanted a simple alibi she could far more easily have enticed Phyllis or Clara upstairs with a story of nightmares. No one, surely, planning to murder her husband would invite a detective into the house, into the very room; I was not only Lollie Balfour’s alibi – I was the stamp of innocence branded on her with indelible ink. Still, I had to satisfy the demands of my own conscience too.
‘As I was saying,’ I continued, just as though the silent tussle had not happened, ‘I don’t think you could have got out and back. I have to check, though. Would you rather do it yourself or shall I ring down for one of the girls?’
‘Do what?’ said Lollie. ‘Check what?’
‘How much noise you’d have made getting out of bed and coming back again. I’m sorry to ask you right now, but I’d like to be able to say to Mr Hardy with confidence straight away that you couldn’t have done it.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Lollie, already on her feet and making her way to the door. We crossed the landing to her bedroom and slipped inside. I returned to the chaise, pulling the screen across in front of it, and Lollie climbed onto the bed and lay down.
‘No, get right under the blankets,’ I told her. ‘It should be as near as possible as it would have been.’
Of course sound travels further at night, but Heriot Row is a quiet street and today was a quiet day. I could hear, as I lay there, the wheels of a delivery boy’s bicycle rattling on the cobbles and some birdsong from the Queen Street gardens and then, just as Lollie began to move, a heavy horse clopped past. After the sound of its hooves and its cart wheels died away I could hear very clearly the sound of the starched sheets being pushed back, the creak of bedsprings and the padding of soft footsteps crossing the floor. The door hinge was silent enough, but the handle clicked twice and there was that dragging sound as the foot of the door passed over the carpet. Then it closed with another pair of clicks, the footsteps sounded again and the bedsprings protested even more loudly as she climbed back in. It was impossible to ignore, but would it have awakened me?
‘I tried to be as quiet as I could,’ Lollie said softly. ‘After all, I would have, wouldn’t I?’
I got up and rounded the screen, giving her a reassuring smile.
‘Indeed you would,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ Then we both jumped at the sound of movement out on the landing and Lollie paled again; the little task I had set her had taken her mind away from the nightmare for a moment but now it returned.
‘Are they moving him?’ she asked. I shook my head.
‘No, they won’t be moving him for quite a while,’ I said. ‘The police doctor will have to come. Later today perhaps, but not now.’
‘And’ – she gulped a little – ‘will I have to look at him?’ I could not help closing my eyes briefly as the picture of Pip’s face flashed through my mind again.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Someone will have to identify him formally at some point but it needn’t be you, dear. It needn’t be a relative at all, just someone who knew him. Perhaps Mr Faulds? He’s desperate to help in some way.’
Lollie sat back against her pillows.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Faulds will take care of it for me. Poor thing. Do you think I’m wicked, Dandy, not to want to see him? Should I, do you think? I’ve never seen anyone . . . dead before.’
‘Don’t think about it just yet,’ I said to her. ‘You might feel different in a day or two.’ I went over and stood beside her bed, taking her hand and trying to chafe some warmth into it. ‘People will tell you it’s best to remember him as he was and others will tell you it helps to see his body, but no one really knows, so don’t listen if they pretend to.’
‘It all seems like a dream,’ said Lollie. ‘Not just this morning, I mean. The trouble – you being here, everything I was so scared of. All I can think of now is that bumblebee in the tennis net and how gentle he was and how much fun we always had.’
She looked very small sitting there in her bed, and I squeezed the hand I was holding.
‘Isn’t there anyone I could telephone to?’ I said. ‘There must be someone who could come?’
‘My Great Aunt Gertrude from Inverness, I suppose,’ said Lollie. ‘She doesn’t hold with the telephone but I could send a telegram to her.’
I did not like the sound of Great Aunt Gertrude from Inverness somehow; in my experience old ladies who do not hold with the telephone tend not to hold with a great deal besides, such as large fires, soft cushions and cocktails. Aunt Gertrude sounded to me like a bracing walk made flesh.