by AJ Wright
‘Quite,’ Ambrose said curtly. Then something seemed to occur to him. ‘You say you found the letter?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, then you know exactly what it said?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Are you going to enlighten us?’
‘Perhaps later, sir. When we have someone in custody.’
Prudence Morris looked up and gave Captain Bell a sharp look. ‘I thought you had someone in custody?’
‘It’s a fluid investigation, ma’am,’ he said weakly.
Ambrose, however, was not to be thwarted. ‘Is there any reason why we shouldn’t know what the letter said?’
Brennan shook his head but gave Prudence Morris a quick glance. Ambrose gave a slight nod of understanding and let the matter drop.
‘What happened when Mr Morris had left?’ Brennan asked.
‘I went to bed, Sergeant,’ the widow said. ‘And my brother-in-law ensconced himself in the smoking room with one of those vile objects.’
‘She refers to my finest Cubans,’ Ambrose added with a touch of humour. ‘I stayed there until Isaacs roused me – I had fallen asleep. And I had an early train the following day.’
‘I see. Perhaps you would be good enough to summon the butler, Mr Morris. Now is as good a time as any to have a few words with the servants.’
‘Of course.’ Ambrose Morris stood up and, as he pulled the cord beside the fireplace, turned to Captain Bell. ‘Alexander, you are more than welcome to remain here while your sergeant makes his way below stairs.’
The chief constable beamed and accepted the invitation with gratitude.
Brennan, too, for different reasons, was grateful for the offer.
‘What’s this?’ Brennan asked.
He pointed to something that looked like a cupboard – two heavy wooden doors on short, squat legs – yet there was a metal strip that ran all the way around the door frame.
‘We store food in it. Keep it cold with ice.’
Grace sat at the kitchen table watching the policeman swing the door open and close with almost a child’s curiosity.
‘This is not where I normally work,’ she added with a note of hurt pride in her voice. ‘I’m not a kitchen maid, y’know.’
She was, Brennan guessed, fast approaching thirty, and there were traces of the young pretty girl she had once been in the smoothness of her skin and the youthful defiance that still lingered in her eyes like a half-guttered candle. She wore a plain black cotton dress, and he guessed this was the customary mourning apparel of the servants.
Brennan smiled at her and joined her at the table, placing his hands flat down in a conciliatory gesture. Grace seemed fidgety, almost afraid. Perhaps her experience of policemen had not been a happy one. He then leant back in his chair. ‘That’s a curious accent, Grace. Where are you from?’
‘Wolverhampton.’
‘Ah. Then you must find the local accent a bit … difficult.’
‘I get by. Don’t have much to do with ’em. Don’t get the time.’ She’d pronounced it toime, with a rise on the mysterious second syllable that caused him to smile. She caught the expression and glared at him, but said nothing.
‘I suspect they work you hard.’
Grace shrugged. ‘It isn’t too bad. Mistress helps.’
Brennan frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been a lady’s maid before. Got the highest testimonials,’ she added with a defiant lift of the chin. ‘But the woman I worked for previous couldn’t do a thing for herself. They’re all like that. Why dress yourself when ye’ve a maid to do it for you? But missus, she does all that sort of stuff herself. I reckon she’s shy. As if I ain’t seen it all before. Got the right name, Prudence.’
‘Do you like her?’
‘I’m paid twenty-four pounds a year to like her.’
She softened slightly and added, ‘But yes, I do. Suffers something awful with her rheumaticals. Like I say, independent. Can’t say I like the smell of that stuff she rubs on. Arnica. Sickly stuff.’
Ironic, he thought. The maid complains of former employers who had her doing everything and when she has a mistress who helps herself she is equally indignant. Women, he reflected wryly.
‘And Mr Morris?’ he went on. ‘The late Mr Morris, I mean.’
‘Oh him.’ She looked down at her hands again. ‘It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.’
‘Not to the police,’ Brennan interjected, imbuing the interview with a superstitious untruth.
‘Well, there was him and his son. Master Andrew.’
‘Go on.’
‘Hammer and tongs these last few weeks. Warmer in that thing.’ She indicated the cold safe that had taken his fancy.
‘Have you any idea why they argued?’
Another fumble with her hands. ‘No, sir.’
She was a typical servant, relishing the above stairs gossip but going only so far in disseminating it. You never knew where it would end up.
‘Was it to do with the coal strike?’
‘Well, yes and no,’ she said. ‘I did hear a few scraps, as it happens, loike. The strike, yes, but also somethin’ about a girl. But that’s all. Honest.’
Molly Haggerty, thought Brennan.
‘Remember anything they said about this girl?’
She thought for a few seconds. ‘Master didn’t approve. And Master Andrew, well, I reckon I heard him cryin’ once.’
‘Crying?’
She nodded. ‘Sobbin’ then. Wasn’t a nice sound, whatever it was.’
‘Was anyone with them?’
‘Oh no, sir.’
‘Yet they were shouting?’
‘Well, when I say shoutin’, it was more like whisperin’ loud.’
And a damned nuisance when your ear’s pressed flat against the door, he mused. ‘Tell me about Saturday night. The night Mr Arthur Morris left the house.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Jane and I had cleared the dinner things and left mistress and Mrs Cox in the dining room. The gentlemen had gone into the smoking room.’ She sniffed her disapproval. ‘Stinks to high heaven, that place, ’specially in the mornin’. I’m just glad it’s not me has to disinfect the room. They spend hours burnin’ trays of charcoal to get rid of the pong.’
Brennan raised a hand to stop her before she ran the whole gamut of domestic chores. ‘Jane? She’s the kitchen maid?’
‘Timid as a mouse, she is. She’s walking round this place now as though the master’s goin’ to jump out an’ take her with ’im. The dead are dead, I keep tellin’ her, but you should see her run past a mirror!’
‘Saturday night?’
‘Yes, well, I was sitting in ’ere when I heard the front door.’
‘Heard it?’
‘Someone thumping on it. Loud. I reckon they bruised their hand they thumped that loud.’
‘What then?’
‘I rushed along the corridor, got to the hallway and saw Mr Ambrose coming downstairs with a box of somethin’. He goes to the door and looks out, an’ I think he saw someone in the bushes. Anyway, then he shuts the door and Mr Arthur tells me to get some letter in the post box. Then when he reads it he says somethin’ about havin’ to see someone he’d forgot about and says he’s goin’ out.’ She shrugged. ‘By this time Isaacs was there, too. He’s the butler. And he’d been with Mrs Venner. He’s always with Mrs Venner, if you get my meanin’. They share a glass of sherry.’ She imbued the phrase with all the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.
‘You saw no one outside?’
‘Not sure. Might’ve seen someone in the bushes, but it was dark over there.’
‘What about Master Andrew?’
‘He’d left earlier. Lookin’ not best pleased. Besides, leavin’ at that time, with ’em just havin’ dined an’ all. That’s how you get indigestion.’
‘I see. Did you see what was written on the letter?’
The maid again raised her chin. ‘I don’t read private mail. No matt
er who it’s from.’
Brennan looked at her for a few seconds. ‘Can you describe the envelope then?’
‘What?’
‘The envelope.’
She gave a careless shrug. ‘An envelope’s an envelope.’
‘Was it clean? Dirty? Smudged, wet, damp, crumpled, torn?’
‘It was an envelope, a nice white envelope. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘And written on the front?’
‘Master’s name.’
‘Arthur Morris?’
‘That’s his name, I reckon.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Then? Nothin’ happened. Once Mr Morris had gone mistress said we should finish our duties and then retire for the night. She asked me to escort her upstairs an’ she went to bed. I think she was goin’ to read for a while.’
‘And Mr Ambrose?’
‘He went into the smoking room for one of those awful cigars. Why, he might as well stand in the middle of a thick fog an’ take long deep breaths. Never seen the sense in it, myself.’
Before she could launch into a general attack on the filthy habits of those above stairs, he smiled and stood up to indicate the interview was at an end.
The girl Jane had done nothing but look at him like a startled deer just before the hunt begins, and could add little to what Grace had told him. She, too, heard the hammering on the front door, and said she thought they were all going to be attacked by a gang of drunken bloodthirsty miners wielding shovels and pickaxes.
‘I got their coats an’ that was that.’
‘Whose coats? Ah, you mean Mr and Mrs Cox?’
Her face darkened. ‘Aye.’
‘You don’t like them?’
‘Not my place, is it? Likin’s not expected.’
Brennan’s curiosity was piqued. He said, in his most solicitous tone, ‘What is it, Jane?’
‘Nothin’, sir.’
‘You can tell me.’
The kitchen maid held his gaze for a few seconds then said, ‘Oh she’s all right. It’s him.’
‘James Cox?’
‘Aye.’
‘He treats you with disdain? Is that it?’
She shook her head. ‘Takes liberties.’
She looked him fully in the eye as if to challenge him to pursue the obvious.
‘I see.’
Inwardly he grimaced. With some of these people, you would think we were still living in the eighteenth century and not seven years short of the twentieth. But there was nothing he could do unless the girl made a complaint.
‘So they left?’
She nodded. ‘I heard him say he was goin’ to his club. But Mister Ambrose lifted his cigar by way of an excuse. I got the impression the mistress would have been delighted if he’d gone an’ all.’
‘Why?’
‘Not much love lost between Mister Ambrose and the mistress, if you ask me.’
It merely confirmed what Brennan had suspected from the briefest of interviews with them. He wondered what the reason was?
When he sought out Isaacs, he found him standing at the table in the butler’s pantry, leaning over an array of silver ornaments, all spread out on a white cloth. He was busy polishing a two-handled silver cup, its scroll handles ending with a flourish of heart motifs. Brennan could see himself reflected on its curved surface and was captivated by the grossly rotund figure he presented.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the butler, maintaining the regular rhythm of his work. ‘I did indeed hear the knocking. I was quite alarmed by it.’
‘Alarmed?’
‘Well, when someone thumps so hard on the door like that, it’s bound to be bad news, isn’t it, sir?’
Brennan considered that for a moment. ‘Whoever it was didn’t avail themselves of the brass door knocker then?’
The butler sneered. ‘Using a door knocker – in moderation – is a sign of good breeding, Sergeant. The person who hammered on the door probably had no conception of its use. Probably thought it was a real lamp and not an ornamental one.’
Brennan thought of the myriad of houses throughout the poorer areas of the town whose doors contained nothing but a panel of hard wood to knock on. He lowered his voice for his next question. ‘What was your master like, Isaacs?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Was he a good employer?’
Curiously, he stopped his polishing and placed the silver cup carefully on the cloth, a smile almost making its way to his lips. ‘Do you know he had a sense of humour, sir?’
‘Really?’
‘On the first day of the coal strike, do you know what he did?’
‘Tell me.’
‘He called me into the drawing room and said he was going to raise my salary by twenty-five per cent. “That’ll show them, Isaacs,” he said, and burst out laughing. So yes, sir, I reckon he was a good employer.’
Mrs Venner, the cook, was a small, petite individual in her forties, Brennan guessed, with red hair neatly tied up in a bun. She was putting the finishing touches to a shoulder of lamb, placing it carefully onto a roasting tray.
Brennan watched her with fascination. She was meticulous, wiping away any salt or fat that had caught the rim of the tray before stooping to place it into the large oven. All around the room, neatly hung with handles all facing the same direction, copper pans caught the reflection of the large fire burning in the grate near the oven. There was a tempting aroma of freshly baked bread, the yeast almost overpowering in its intensity. He was instantly hurled back in time, when he would sit before the blazing fire, playing with his toy soldiers and yelling at his two brothers who always insisted on wrecking his military stratagems by pinching his favourite pieces. When they scampered off with their prisoners, he would sit and watch the dough rise between swathes of steaming clothes on the wooden maiden, cursing them. He smiled sadly at the memory of Rory and Ciaran, killed down the pit when he was only twelve.
Smells, he reflected. They carry their own history.
‘There’s days when she doesn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive.’ The cook’s words broke into his reverie.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Mistress. She doesn’t eat. Not when the pain’s bad.’
‘The rheumatism?’
Mrs Venner walked over to a large cupboard and opened one of its doors. He was amazed to see how well stocked it was with all manner of jars filled with preserves and pickles, and bottles of exotic-looking cordials. She extracted a jar of what looked like strawberry preserve and closed the door.
‘Aye. The rheumatism. Sometimes she can hardly walk. Poor woman.’
‘What was Mr Morris like?’
She placed the jar on a side table and looked into Brennan’s eyes. She had piercing blue eyes, and he thought it little wonder that the butler was rumoured to be stricken. ‘My sister lives in Kendal, Sergeant. A great reader. She wrote to me about a short novel she read, written by Mr Stevenson. About a man who is kind and gentle one minute and a brute the next.’
Cleverly done, he thought. She gave her opinion of her late employer while speaking no ill of the dead.
‘On the Saturday night, you heard the knocking on the door?’
‘Fit to wake the dead it was,’ she said, then coughed at the impropriety.
‘Where were you?’
‘Me an’ Isaacs were discussin’ household matters in his pantry,’ she said, almost succeeding in not blushing.
‘What then?’
‘Nothin’. Isaacs went out to see what the commotion was, came back an’ said we were to go to bed.’ This time she did blush. ‘I mean, to our separate rooms, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘I gather Mr Arthur and Mr Andrew had been having a difference of opinion recently?’
She sniffed and began to unscrew the lid of the preserve. ‘Strange sort of phrase for Jane to use, Sergeant.’
‘It wasn’t Jane, actually …’
He stopped suddenly and blushed,
inwardly cursing himself for falling for one of his own interrogative ploys. Mrs Venner was clearly no fool.
‘Grace then. Thought as much. Thinks herself a cut above, just because she’s a lady’s maid and doesn’t come from round here. Let’s see her prepare a Nesselrode pudding, shall we?’
‘I asked you a question.’ He decided the abrupt approach was the only way he could reassert his authority with this woman.
She sniffed. ‘They were father and son. Fathers and sons fall out. It’s to be expected.’
‘About what?’
‘That boy is a sensitive soul, Sergeant.’
He thought of the series of landscapes upstairs. ‘I’m beginning to see that.’
‘And his father had this notion he should be getting married. To someone of his choosing, you understand?’
‘And Andrew Morris objected?’
‘He’s his mother’s son, not his father’s,’ she said cryptically, waving a knife at him laden thick with strawberry preserve.
Inside Ryland’s Cotton Mill, the deafening roar of the shuttles and the looms and the mule spinning concealed a deepening gloom. Many of the girls knew their families depended upon their wages to keep the food on the table and the rent collector at bay. Their fathers and their husbands sat around the house or lounged on street corners during the day, and the only thing the girls were greeted with when they returned from a full day in the mill was a grunt or a hard word.
They worked the machinery with a shared sinking feeling in their gut, and hid that feeling with laughter that was just a little too raucous. And all the while that afternoon, the wind blasted its way round the building, carrying with it flurries of snow that flew past the windows set high in the walls.
Alfred Birch, the overlooker, walked along the aisle separating the rows of shuttles keeping a careful eye out for the shirkers. He saw Molly Haggerty standing by her machine, staring into the distance. He gave her a sharp rap on the shoulder and mouthed the words ‘Get on with it!’ before moving on.
Molly blinked, looked across at May Calderbank, and mouthed an obscenity. May gave a thin smile and resumed her work. In only a few days the young girl had lost some of the perkiness, some of the bounce in her walk. Her younger brother had developed a rash, and had complained of deafness. May had heard her mother whisper the word ‘typhus’.
