‘Are there friends one could summon for you?’ I said. I often feel as encumbered by friends and family as a horse is with flies in August, twitching at them to leave me alone and dreaming of tranquil solitude; it was hard to believe that this girl could be quite so alone.
‘We were everything to one another,’ Lollie told me. ‘I never saw the danger in that until now.’
I squeezed her hand again, hoping to head off another bout of weeping, and was glad to hear the heavy tread of feet stumping up the stairs. There was a little quiet murmuring out on the landing and then Mrs Hepburn appeared, carrying a covered basin.
‘I’ve got some—’ she said and then stopped and frowned. ‘You’ve never put her back in her bed in her frock, Fanny! Come on, madam, out you get and back into your nightie. I’ve got some bread soup for you but it’s fair hot yet anyway so we’ve plenty time till it’s ready to sup.’ I turned to go, but Mrs Hepburn laid a hand on my arm and spoke in a low voice. ‘You’ll forgive me, Fan, won’t you? I shouldn’t have ticked you off like that, but I’m just all upside down and it slipped out. I beg your pardon, though.’
‘Don’t mention it, Mrs Hepburn,’ I said, thinking if that was Miss Rossiter being ticked off then there were no words for what Dandy Gilver née Leston had received from the tongues of Nanny Palmer, Madame Toulemonde and Grant over the years. ‘I’ll get back downstairs to them all if you’ll stay with mistress now.’
Mrs Hepburn dropped her voice even further and turned partly away.
‘I think you’re wanted next door,’ she said. ‘But see and get a port with brandy from Mr Faulds when they’ve finished with you.’ I nodded. The port and brandy cure-all was a favourite with my own dear Mrs Tilling and, although I had resisted so far throughout childbirths, bereavements and a fire in the attics, I could imagine that today might be the day I succumbed to its charms. I took a deep breath and went out of the bedroom.
On the landing, Mr Hardy was standing with his hands on his hips looking about himself with a furious expression on his face. The sergeant, in contrast, leaned back against the banister rail with legs straddled well apart and a handkerchief pressed to his mouth.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Hardy, seeing me. ‘Miss eh . . . Miss . . . ?’
‘Rossiter,’ I said.
‘And you found . . . ?’ He jabbed a finger at Pip’s bedroom door.
‘With one other,’ I said. ‘Eldry. Etheldreda, the tweenie. She took the tray in but she didn’t lift the sheet.’
‘You liftit the sheet?’ said the sergeant, looking at me with respect.
‘I had to make sure there was nothing to be done,’ I said. ‘I mean, I could tell there was a great deal of blood but there was just a chance he was still alive. I was a nurse in the war.’
Mr Hardy tugged his coat straight and tweaked his cuffs – girded his loins, in fact, for the task ahead.
‘In that case, Miss Rossiter,’ he said, ‘we’ll start with you. Now. Downstairs, I think. There must be a room that’s not in use this morning. And Sergeant Mackenzie? You go and find a telephone and get the surgeon and see if there’s anyone in the station who can slip along with some fingerprinting . . . things and if not . . . And tell PC Morrison to round up the rest of the servants and keep an eye on them all until we can . . .’
‘Right you are, sir,’ said Sergeant Mackenzie, sparing Hardy from the problem of ever ending this speech. ‘I’ll get straight to it.’
I led Superintendent Hardy downstairs and into the back parlour where Lollie had held the interviews. The fire was unlit, which gave a cheerless air to the place, but the day was warm enough to do without one. Hardy sat at the little papier mâché writing table (looking a lot like the big bad wolf looming over the house of sticks) and opened a new notebook at the first page. I sat on the same hard wooden seat as before and reported the story of meeting Eldry on the stairs, of hearing her scream, running to her aid and letting her out of the bedroom door. I was just about to go on and tell the superintendent about what I had seen under the sheet, when he interrupted me.
‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Why did she lock herself in in the first place?’
‘No, you misunderstand me,’ I told him. ‘The main door was still locked from the night before. Eldry had gone through the dressing room – the bathroom.’
‘And that was open?’ said the superintendent. ‘Now, why would the murderer close one door and leave the other open?’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘They were both locked up tight. The key to the door of the little hallway that leads into the dressing room is kept on the lintel and Eldry let herself in with it.’
‘One of these Yale locks?’ he said. I nodded. ‘And the key of the main door was on the inside when you got there?’ I nodded again. ‘Good God,’ he said and glared at me. ‘You see what this means, don’t you?’
‘I do, sir,’ I replied.
‘I’ve been thinking someone must have got in. Even though there’s nothing missing as far as we could see. There was quite a bit of disturbance last night here and there. I suppose I thought some devil had broken in but . . .’
‘But only someone who knew the house well would know about the Yale key,’ I finished for him. ‘And actually, Superintendent, the house as a whole was very secure last night. Mr Faulds, the butler, was locking up when I went to bed. He’s a bit of a stickler for it by all accounts.’
‘Good God,’ said Hardy again. ‘This is going to be an all-out scandal. This is going to need seeing to.’ He could not have looked less keen to do the seeing if he had sprinted for the door and pounded on it begging for release, but he squared his shoulders and sat up a little straighter. ‘Right then. I’ll need a list of everyone who was in the house and I’ll need to speak to them all. I’ll need your full name to start with.’
‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘Well, then. I’m employed under the name of Frances Rossiter. Miss.’ Superintendent Hardy looked up at me with his pencil in mid-air. ‘My married name is Gilver,’ I went on. ‘That is to say, my real name is Dandelion Dahlia Gilver. When I took this job, I changed it. My relations would not otherwise countenance my employment, I don’t suppose.’
‘Gilver,’ said the superintendent, looking thoughtful ‘Gilver?’
‘It’s a prominent name in Perthshire,’ I said and Hardy nodded. ‘I thought it best to change it under the circumstances.’
Hardy looked at me for a while without speaking and I did my best to meet his gaze square-on. He was not, I thought, an unintelligent man, only rather flustered by this extraordinary day. Perhaps he had come in sideways from the army straight to his desk and had never gathered statements and tracked suspects before. He certainly had nothing cunning about him, but rather the unstoppable look of someone who spent his youth being pushed to the front of the team in games of rugby football. Yes, that was it! If I had passed him on the street I should have guessed that he was a very prosperous and still rather sporting Borders beef farmer; he was completely out of his element sitting here today.
‘The circumstances being that you’re working as a maid,’ he said finally.
‘Well, a companion is perhaps a better way to express it, Superintendent,’ I replied. ‘Mrs Balfour is not – was not – happily married and she felt herself in need of a champion, while she considered what to do about it, but she felt also that her husband wouldn’t be pleased to think she had turned to someone for help and so I was smuggled in, I suppose you would say. As her maid. To help.’
There was another long silence to be got through now. I waited it out, trying to look a good deal more confident than I felt.
‘And how long have you been here?’ said Hardy at last.
‘Since yesterday,’ I replied. ‘I arrived at teatime.’
He put down his pencil and folded his hands on top of the notebook. His jaw, which was square enough even at rest, now stuck out in the most marked fashion.
‘You arrived yesterday, using a false name,’ he said, and I noticed for the first time how deeply shadowed his eyes were under the strong brow, ‘to help Mrs Balfour with the problem of her husband.’
I often tell myself that after years of constant detecting my days of naivety are in the past, that no longer do I put on my red cloak and set off for my grandmother’s cottage with a basket of treats, but it was not until that very moment that I saw the forest of trees pressing in all around me and realised that being used as an alibi was not the worst suspicion which could fall upon me.
‘Superintendent Hardy,’ I said, all thought of subtlety vanished, ‘do you know an inspector called Cruickshank from Linlithgowshire?’
‘I’ve heard the name,’ said Hardy. ‘I can’t say I remember ever meeting the fellow.’
‘Or how about Inspector Hutchinson, from the Perthshire Force?’ I asked. Superintendent Hardy’s stern face split into a grin.
‘Maynard Hutchinson?’ he said. ‘Everybody knows him. The stories I could tell you about him would make your hair curl.’
‘Well, then telephone to him and ask him about—’
‘Mrs Gilver!’ exclaimed the superintendent. ‘Dandy Gilver?’
‘At your service,’ I said, letting out a huge sigh of relief. ‘Truly, Superintendent: at your service and awaiting instructions.’
‘So what was all that about a companion?’
‘All true,’ I said. ‘More or less. Mrs Balfour called me in to help her. To be a witness to her husband’s behaviour and a champion of her cause. He was a complete brute, you know. I don’t imagine anyone will be mourning him once the shock has passed over.’
‘Sounds to me as if she’s dropped you right in it, madam,’ Hardy said.
I held up my hand.
‘Miss Rossiter, Superintendent, please. Not madam. If I’m to stay here and help I need Fanny Rossiter more than ever, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Ah now, I don’t know what I think of that,’ said Hardy. ‘You saw him up there – what had been done to him. You could be in grave danger, and I can’t let a civilian – not to mention a lady – risk herself that way.’
‘Oh come now, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you just tell us that you had called in all sorts of extraordinary manpower to handle the strike?’
‘Retired officers and territorial soldiers and suchlike,’ said Hardy.
‘Well, what’s one more? I’ll even sign a contract if it would help.’
So it was that Superintendent Hardy allowed the ranks of his constabulary to be swelled by one more volunteer and I became a special constable of the Edinburgh City Police. For all I know, I might still be one; I do not recall any formal release from my duties anyway.
‘Here, you haven’t got the dog with you, have you?’ asked Hardy. ‘Don’t tell me you brought the dog.’
‘I haven’t, in fact,’ I said. I could only imagine what the caustic Mr Hutchinson had said about my beloved Bunty at whatever policemen’s shindig he had enlivened with tales of our adventures.
‘Just as well,’ said Hardy, and returned to business, with another great roll of the powerful shoulders and another answering creak from the delicate chair in which he was sitting. ‘So. Miss Rossiter. Do you have your own room or can you account for any of the other maids?’ ‘Other’ was said with a bit of a twinkle, but I knew that my answer would soon snuff that out. If, that was, I could bring myself to deliver it.
‘I owe Mrs Balfour whatever loyalty I can give her,’ I said.
‘But?’ said Mr Hardy.
‘But,’ I went on, ‘as I’ve had occasion to point out to earlier clients in past cases, I am not a “hired gun”.’ Hardy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My children,’ I said. ‘Dreadful taste in story papers. What I am, come what may and no matter who is paying me, is a servant of truth.’
‘So . . . ?’ asked Mr Hardy.
So . . . I told him, feeling like the worst kind of sneak, especially as he clearly thought that Lollie installing me in her very bedroom was getting on for elaborate and roused suspicion rather than quashing it.
‘But I don’t think she could have got out and back without me noticing,’ I said. ‘Although . . .’ A further and even more damning possibility had just occurred to me.
‘Although what?’ said Hardy.
‘She shoved a nightcap down me with some insistence. If I were to lay my hands on the glass, could it be tested to see if she’d put some kind of sleeping powder in it? I mean, I’m sure she didn’t but it would be good to be able to discount it completely.’
Hardy gave me a sharp nod of approval and agreement, then rubbed his jaw again.
‘What about washing?’ he asked. ‘Even if she had you doped up – and let’s hope not, eh? – could she have run the hot water without waking the house? I know I couldn’t in my bathroom but this place seems pretty plush and maybe the plumbing is silent.’
‘Why do you assume . . . ?’ I said and then stopped.
‘There would have been a fair amount of blood,’ said Hardy, confirming what I thought. ‘She – or whoever – would have had to wash at least the hands and arms.’
‘In that case, I think not,’ I said. ‘Certainly, I don’t think she could have used her own bathroom. And I don’t really think she slipped me a powder and I don’t even think she killed her husband. But . . .’
‘But if it’s not her then who is it? I only wish you had been here longer, Miss Rossiter, and could tell me a little about the household.’
‘I can tell you a surprising lot,’ I said, and this time I felt no compunction. ‘I only met Mr Balfour briefly and he seemed perfectly pleasant then but – as I say – he was not well loved, Superintendent. Not by the maids anyway.’ Mr Hardy gave me a look which seemed to enquire whether it were the age-old problem. I threw a look back confirming that indeed it was. He sighed. ‘And rather an extreme case,’ I said. ‘There have been two recent departures: a Miss Abbott, my predecessor, and a kitchenmaid, Maggie, who flounced off on Saturday night. Phyllis, the housemaid, is on notice as we speak.’
‘On notice, eh?’ said Mr Hardy. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘But could a woman have done it?’ I asked.
Hardy shrugged.