As Alec stared back at him, breathing like a bull and struggling for a response, help came from the most unlikely quarter. Bunty – quite out of character and driven by who knew what noxious cocktail of terror, shock and cold fury rising from the three human occupants of the car – suddenly leapt, baying, for the open window and made a creditable attempt to take Mr Mair by his fleshy neck, snarling like a hound of hell. Alec stamped on the accelerator and got us away before she could actually connect with him, which was just as well, and Mattie, amazingly enough, was not further petrified by this latest turn but was unaccountably delighted, whooping and clapping and lunging over the front seat to hug Bunty hard.
‘My God,’ said Alec, laughing as well once he had recovered himself. ‘Dandy, what on earth? Has she ever done that before?’
‘Never!’ I squeaked, feeling weak from the parade of extreme emotions. ‘Whoever heard of an attack Dalmatian? Oh, why couldn’t Hugh have been here to see it? He’ll never believe me!’
Mattie had stopped laughing and was now hugging Millie, who had pushed her head in between him and Bunty when she felt that her friend had hogged the limelight for long enough.
‘Who’s Hugh?’ he said. ‘And why did you call Miss Rossiter Dandy, Mr Osborne?’
Thankfully, though, there was too much else going on for him to pursue such points, and after just one panicked glance between Alec and me in the driving mirror the questions sank without reply.
15
Back at Heriot Row, when we slithered out of a six-inch opening to prevent Bunty from surging out after us (and it was excruciating to leave her without saying goodbye, especially after such heroics), there was a sharp rap above. I saw Superintendent Hardy standing in the drawing-room window beckoning to me and without so much as going to my room to take my hat off, I sprinted up there with Alec behind me.
Hardy met us on the landing and gestured into the library.
‘I have something to tell you,’ I began as soon as the door was shut behind us.
‘You shall have to wait your turn,’ he said. ‘I have a great deal to tell you. Good solid results. I’ve had two men trying to trace Miss Abbott and Maggie all day.’
‘Oh, please tell me you’ve found them,’ I said, and then as he hesitated I realised that there is something worse than being missing and I hoped that he had not found them, that they had run off and were living high on the hog together somewhere.
‘I hope not,’ said Hardy, confirming my fears. ‘But let me tell you in an orderly fashion. Maggie’s family haven’t missed her yet, or at least they hadn’t until a police sergeant rolled up to tell them she wasn’t where she should be. Her mother said she usually gets a letter on Wednesdays but thought nothing of it, with the new position and the strike too. The bad news, the very bad news, is that the body of a young girl was found drowned off the Brigs of Fidra on Monday.’
‘The what?’ said Alec.
‘On the road to Berwick,’ said Superintendent Hardy. ‘A well-nourished and healthy young girl dressed in a manner suitable to a servant, and no one has come forward to claim her as their own. We’re taking Maggie’s father and brother down there just as soon as we can organise a car.’ He shook himself all over like a dog in the rain. ‘I’m glad it’s not me going along with them,’ he said.
‘And Miss Abbott?’
‘Now, Miss Abbott
was
missed,’ said Hardy. ‘Her sister, a Mrs Light, of Trinity, has been trying to find her since shortly after she disappeared in April. She sent several letters to this house but got no reply.’
‘Lollie never mentioned any of them,’ I said.
‘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 splash 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: