Major Vernon nodded.
“And the night she vanished – two nights ago, she was at dinner with you as usual, in the Steward’s room?”
“Yes, sir, she was.”
“And do you remember anything particular about that night?”
“Well, now I think of it, yes,” he said. “She excused herself. Left early. Said she had a headache and couldn’t eat. That was it. And that was the last I saw of her.”
“And she would have known that the Pleasure Gardens were out of bounds?”
“Of course,” Bodley said. “She’s stayed here enough times.”
“And is that rule always observed?” Major Vernon said. “By the younger staff, for example?”
“I should say so,” said Bodley. “I should hope so, at least. But young people nowadays, they can be flighty.”
“But that isn’t how you would see Miss Jones?”
“No, no, but women are weak creatures, and easily persuaded. Now there’s one or two the lads, new to the house, who perhaps don’t always realise what lucky souls they are to be here, and might be inclined to abuse their good fortune now and then. I could imagine – well, we’ve a new third footman, a Londoner, whom I have my doubts about. He’s a splendid looking fellow, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t a dangerous sort. Something about him I don’t like at all. Jack Edwardes is his name, sir, you might want to talk to him. He was winking at the housemaids all through prayers this morning. Jack by name, Jack by nature, I fear.”
Mrs Taylor came in with a tray of food and beer, along with a maid who brought water and towels.
“Thank you Mr Bodley, that was helpful,” said Major Vernon. “If you think of anything else about Miss Jones, please do tell me.”
“Of course, sir. Glad to be of help. I take it that, well, from what his Lordship said to me this morning, that you’re here because she’s been done away with, poor soul? Is that so, Master Felix?”
“It’s not clear what happened yet,” said Felix.
“Let us pray it was just an accident,” said Mrs Taylor, as she laid the table. “Imagine that poor woman’s family, what torments they will suffer if it was not. Her poor mother! I could not bear it if something like that happened to my Annie. She’s away in service, you see sir, she’s lady’s maid to young Lady Heathfield, down in Lincolnshire. Imagine getting that letter. It does not bear thinking about.”
When Bodley and Mrs Taylor had gone, Felix and Major Vernon, having washed the dirt and dust of their morning’s work from them, sat down to a meal of cold chicken pie, bread, blue cheese, and a bowl of strawberries, accompanied by a jug of ale.
“How long has Mr Bodley been Lord Rothborough’s man, do you suppose?” Major Vernon said.
“Oh, at least twenty-five years,” said Felix, draining his glass. “He is an immemorial fixture.”
“A footman who winks at housemaids is not necessarily a murderer,” Major Vernon remarked. “Though he might be inclined to organise a tryst in a forbidden grotto.” He got up from the table and began again to study the detailed map of the estate. “I walked back from the Pleasure Gardens yesterday afternoon. It was a leisurely stroll and it took over half an hour. Now she was last seen by her mistress helping her dress for dinner after seven, and then we can assume she left the house, perhaps to meet someone. But who? Jack the footman wouldn’t be able to get away, because he’d be wanted in the dining room to serve dinner.”
“So perhaps it wasn’t someone from the household that she was intending to meet?” Felix said, coming up and joining him at the map.
“Exactly,” said Major Vernon. “It could be anyone, couldn’t it? Coming from anywhere. And long gone now, if he has any sense.”
“He?”
“In the first instance, I think we could make that small assumption. The father of the child springs to mind.”
“You mean she meets him, tells him she’s with child and he decides to deal with it, so to speak?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time that a man has evaded his responsibilities in such a fashion. And it’s an ideal place to carry such a brutal, pragmatic act, wouldn’t you say? She could have screamed all she liked in that cave and no-one would have heard anything. And there’s the pool there to dispose of the body, creating confusion about the manner of her death.”
“That might do as a working hypothesis,” said Felix.
“It will have to do,” said Giles. “It is all we have at present, thanks to Sir Arthur and Mr Haines!” He shook his head. “We can just hope that common sense and decency will prevail with them tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Felix. “But I don’t feel very optimistic. Given what Haines said about Ardenthwaite. Why on earth does he think I would want to run for parliament? How dare he make such assumptions about me? What kind of people are these? I think Lord Rothborough has dropped me into a viper’s nest. I ought to have know better than to let him –”
“But you said yourself it was a fine house when you saw it.”
“Yes, it is,” said Felix. “Too fine. Too big. Too significant, it seems.”
“You should take ownership. Let your neighbours see who you really are. Perhaps, if it might help, you might like to entertain Mrs Vernon and me there one afternoon? It would make an easy excursion from Stanegate, especially with the weather like this. She likes old houses and it would do you good to practice playing host.”
“You’re as bad as he is.”
“It’s not a sentence of transportation,” Major Vernon said.
“I know, I know,” said Felix. On quite a few occasions they had discussed Ardenthwaite, the property that Lord Rothborough had acquired for him, and the Major’s sensible arguments had generally prevailed with him. But after that humiliation from Mr Haines, a mere country coroner, he felt the foundations of his being cut from under him, like a keen axe going through the slender, fragile trunk of a sapling. How could a bastard whore-son ever lay honest claim to a place like Ardenthwaite? It would be presumptuous folly.
And at the same time, an odd idea sprung up in him, where he sat in one of those fine old rooms and talked at length with his sister, who might, from time to time, ride over to see him there – No, that was a pernicious fantasy, and he dismissed it carefully, distracting himself by consulting his watch.
“I need to get back. Martinez was quite frail last night when I left him. He isn’t a monk, by the by, but a Dominican friar, it seems. I got that much out of him. Found him on his knees. Took all my efforts to get him to rest in bed.”
“Some of his countrymen seem to be at Stanegate. They were at the Well,” said Major Vernon. “According to Lord Rothborough, they are a sort of government in exile, forced out by a coup. He may have a connection to them.”
“Why on earth would they go to Stanegate?”
“Maybe it is more fashionable than we supposed,” said Major Vernon. “Certainly the millinery shops are expensive enough. Yes, you had better get back. I have a note for Mrs Vernon here,” he said, taking it from his coat pocket. “There was nothing for me from her, I take it?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry.”
“There was no reason why she should write.” Major Vernon said. “Tell her I will be back as soon as I can. Certainly tomorrow. I am going to interview the household, but I think I will have to cast the net a little wider, soon enough.”
Chapter Seven
Lady Charlotte was again waiting to meet him in the great marble entrance hall.
“Mr Carswell, has he –?”
“Gone back to Stanegate, yes,” said Giles.
“Ah, good,” said Lady Charlotte, although she did not sound happy. “By which I mean, that is for the best.”
Giles nodded, sensing her confusion. It seemed best to offer her a distraction.
“Are you still willing to help me, Lady Charlotte?”
“With great pleasure.”
“I want to talk to all the ladies’ maids, Miss Jones’ circle, so to speak, alth
ough from what Mr Bodley has told me, I am not sure she was ‘of’ their circle, if you understand me.”
“Oh yes, perfectly.”
“Now, I have asked for the Steward’s room to be put at my disposal. I was just on my way there.”
“Do you know the way?”
“I was going to get one of the footmen – Henry, I think it is?”
“I can show you. We have to go through the tunnel. I can show your our railway.”
A large swinging door, upholstered in buff coloured baize, led to a hallway, with a stairwell leading down and in the heart of the well, a large brass cage was suspended by an elaborate mechanism of hooks and pulleys.
“You turn the handle here, and it goes up and down. To fetch the food from the kitchens,” Lady Charlotte said. “We used to get Bodley to give us rides in when we were little, but Mr Grainger, the house steward, would get cross with us.”
“Remarkable,” said Giles, admiring the mechanism.
“Oh, we have perfected all the arrangements – or rather my father has. It is a mania with him, after eating so many cold dinners in his friends’ houses. One never has cold food here at Holbroke, unless of course it is intended to be so! The trolleys come out of the cage and go straight into the serving room here.”
And she opened the door to a room that would not have disgraced itself as a kitchen in an ordinary gentleman’s house. “And beyond that is the dining room and our breakfast room is just to the side there. It is so convenient and efficient. I don’t think I shall ever find a house to match it. Perhaps that is why I am a spinster yet!”
“You could always improve your future husband’s house, I suppose.”
“He will have to be tolerant,” said Lady Charlotte. “And very rich. Quite a rare combination.” She began to go down the stairs. “And this is the tunnel and the railway.”
“Goodness. More of a crypt than a tunnel, I would say,” said Giles.
The steps led into an underground chamber, poorly lit by a few scanty skylights and oil lanterns hanging on hooks. There was a central aisle, with tracks laid in the floor, like those Giles had seen at mines or factories, but instead of the carts there were trolleys set up to carry the dinner trays back and forth, pushed along by a kitchen boy, Giles supposed. To the side broad archways led to rather darker areas which were full of lumber. It was efficient, but gloomy.
“Holbroke is full of surprises,” he could not help remarking, thinking of the elaborate fancies of the Pleasure Gardens.
“We are the eighth wonder of the world,” said Lady Charlotte, rather proudly, as they started of down the central aisle. It was most unjust that the house and all its glories could not pass to her on Lord Rothborough’s death, he thought, when she was clearly so fond of it. An entail was an entail, but he could not help thinking that a fairer system ought to prevail. If a young Princess could ascend the throne and become Queen of England, then why should Lady Charlotte not be a Marchioness of Rothborough in her own right?
-0-
“You have all the women waiting for me, Mrs Hope?” Giles asked the housekeeper.
“Yes, sir.”
“Before I begin on that, perhaps you might give me your impressions of Miss Jones?”
“I tell you, it’s a shock. She is not the sort you would imagine to meet an end like that – what was she doing there? I cannot imagine how she could be mixed up in anything that needed the police looking into it. She was so quiet. And she’s stayed here quite a few times, and I’ve never really got to know her. She was not a talker. Some people come and you learn their whole life story in a matter of minutes, but Miss Jones, no. Very odd now I think about it.”
“And the last you saw of her was at the upper servants’ dinner that night?”
“Yes, sir. She excused herself before dessert, that’s all I remember.”
“I should also like to see where Miss Jones was sleeping.”
“Of course, sir. That’s back in the main house, up in the South Pavilion.”
“I shall see that Major Vernon finds it,” said Lady Charlotte. “In the meantime, perhaps we might have some tea brought in, and Miss La Roche, if she is ready?”
“Yes, of course, my Lady,” said Mrs Hope.
The four maids, those employed by Lady Rothborough and her three daughters were friendly, eager to help, often quite talkative. They came in one by one, all in turn distressed by the loss of Miss Jones, but none of them able to claim any intimacy with her. Some of them were ashamed by their lack of knowledge, as if they had failed to bring her fully into the circle.
Only one of them, Lady Charlotte’s maid, Jane, bold like her mistress, dared to venture a criticism.
“Sometimes I found her a little sly. As if she had secrets she didn’t want to share with us, that she was somehow special.”
“What gave you that idea?” Giles asked.
“There was a woman in my last place, she thought she was better than all of us because her father was the bastard son of an attorney. So she kept herself to herself, as if we could never be good enough for her. There was something about Miss Jones that made me think of her. It was just a feeling, but I did feel it. You would try your best with her, and it would never be more than a few words, and it wasn’t shyness, because there was a way she had of looking at you, as if she were trying to size you up. Does this sound silly, my Lady?”
“No, not at all,” said Lady Charlotte. She glanced at Giles.
“I think we need to look at her room,” he said.
“Oh, I can show you, sir,” said Jane. “She sleeps next to me and Agnes.”
When Lady Charlotte’s maid had gone, and they were alone, Giles said, “This woman is a tabula rasa. It takes a great deal of self control to be that self-contained, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. Unless she was slightly deaf and couldn’t hear what people were saying.”
“An excellent observation,” said Giles. “Let’s see what you make of her room.”
“You still want me to help you?”
“If I don’t get you into trouble,” he said. “A second pair of eyes and a different point of view is always useful.”
“Then of course,” said Lady Charlotte.
Jane took them back through the tunnel, and then upstairs by the back stairs to the South Pavilion where most of the female guests and the Rothborough daughters lodged. The maids, it appeared, found their accommodation nearby in smaller bedrooms, subdivided for the purpose. Eliza Jones had been put in a long slot of a room, its window divided by a partition wall, on the other side of which lay Jane and Agnes’ room. The walls were papered with a faded pattern of oak leaves and suggested that this might once have been a grand room, but the furniture which was plain and modern told another story. A deal table and chair, a jug and bowl, a narrow bedstead and the woman’s own box were the limit of it. On the wall a few hooks held her clothes. There was a bible on the bed. Giles examined the flyleaf, hoping for a revealing inscription. There was nothing. He shook it over the bed, but nothing fluttered out.
“Let’s have a look at her box,” he said.
“Won’t it be locked?” said Lady Charlotte. She tried the lid and it was indeed locked.
“There are ways around that,” said Giles, taking his keys from his pocket. He had added the skeleton key to his own bundle of keys thinking it was safest in his care. “This is a lock-pickers friend,” he said, showing her the key. “I confiscated it from a rogue.”
“What a useful item,” said Lady Charlotte. “I should not like to see that in less responsible hands, though.”
“No,” he said, gently easing it into the lock and agitating it a little until he felt the lock yield. “There we are!”
The box contained, much as would have been expected, clothing and folded linen. There was also a sewing box and one or two unremarkable books.
“What do you think of her clothes? Anything out of the ordinary?” Giles asked, as Lady Charlotte looked through them.
�
��No, nothing. Very plain, but suitable. Not her mistresses’ cast-offs – but I have never seen Lady Warde wear anything but her weeds.”
“Stop a moment – may I see that one?” Giles said, catching sight of something which intrigued him. Lady Charlotte handed him the dull blue flannel petticoat with some surprise. He examined it, and his suspicions were confirmed. “Well, my goodness. Look at this.” And he showed her the deep pocket formed by the hem of the petticoat, fixed at intervals by a button to stop it opening. “Can you guess what that is for?”
“It’s very large, for an ordinary pocket.”
“Quite! You could hide anything you liked in there, couldn’t you?” he said. “That’s why they are popular with the light-fingered sorority – what we have here is a thieves’ petticoat.”
“No!” exclaimed Lady Charlotte. “Surely not?”
“Miss Jones clearly had specialist knowledge of the trade. I’ve seen these before. I have seen a silver teapot stashed in one of these. Some of the better shops in Northminster could not understand how things were disappearing. Turned out that a woman called Lucy Peele, apparently a respectable middle-class woman, was coming in and looking at trifles. She would then stash away something when the shopman’s back was turned. Obviously, that’s a ruse that takes some practice to perfect. I wonder how Miss Jones learned about such things.”
“Are you implying she might have had a criminal past?”
“Or a criminal present,” Giles said. “Staying in so many grand houses, running in and out of rooms which are full of tempting bibelots. A silver spoon from the morning breakfast tray here, a snuff box there –”
“That is a rather disturbing thought.”
“It is just a possibility. But given that she was so self-effacing and that no-one knows anything about her – well, that is a known criminal strategy – among successful criminals, that is. They learn to be practically invisible. This is the first interesting thing we have found about her, wouldn’t you say, Lady Charlotte?”
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