by Evelyn James
“There, there, hush now,” she sat herself next to the girl and put a very gentle hand on her shoulder. “It’s been an awful shock. Has anyone brought you tea?”
The maid shook her head. She was about sixteen, a stocky little thing, working class and with only a limited charity school education to tide her over. The events of that afternoon were all rather beyond her.
“Right, you are coming with me. You need hot tea and something to eat, nothing worse than shock for the appetite,” Annie told her robustly. Annie believed that a good meal was the cure for almost all ailments. “Direct me to the kitchens and don’t worry about a guest helping you, now. In everyday life I am more like you than one of these charabanc folk.”
Bridging no objection, she had the girl show her towards the servants’ quarters. She put her arm through that of the little maid’s and half-supported her as they stumbled towards the hotel kitchens where it would be possible to make tea.
“So sorry, miss,” the maid sniffled. “My legs has quite gone to jelly.”
“No matter,” Annie reassured her. “That is why I am here.”
Like most big buildings where catering and other services were required, the servants’ area of the hotel was vast and labyrinthine. Pointless little sets of stairs let down two paces into a corridor before, further along, another short set let back up again. Doors led off into rooms or more hallways, many had internal glass windows to allow natural light to filter into otherwise unlit rooms.
The little maid directed their progress in-between taking little sniffles, for she was still on the verge of tears. Annie managed to extract her name from her as they were traversing a long corridor with a heavy door set at the end. It was Mary Sharp. The girl was from Windermere and came in everyday to clean rooms and make the beds. She had never seen someone dead before.
“Once I caught this little old lady naked,” Mary said as they moved along, talking about herself was distracting and the tears threatened less. “Mr Stover was cross. But I knocked on the door as I’m supposed to, and I called out to see if anyone was in. When no one answered I opened the door myself. It was mid-afternoon. It states quite clearly in a little notice in each room that between the hours of ten and four the maids will be going around cleaning the rooms and a guest should give special notice if they don’t wish to be disturbed.”
Annie had seen that notice herself and had made a point of ensuring her room was spotless each morning by nine o’clock before any maid came to clean it. Annie had standards and no one was going to have to clean up after her. She even made the bed, though she knew the maids would change the sheets.
They finally made it to the kitchen, where Annie deposited her charge in a large wooden chair. Quite a number of servants were in the kitchen and it appeared they were holding a discussion concerning the events of the day. They all looked up in surprise at Annie’s arrival with Mary. No one moved to go to the girl’s aid, however. Annie cast her eye around at them, feeling annoyed by their lack of movement. Surely one of them was concerned about the hapless Mary and the shock she had suffered?
“Well?” Annie asked them sternly. “Do none of you know how to make a strong cup of tea for someone who has suffered a nasty shock?”
The room seemed to jump back into action. A French chef, wearing a stiffly starched white hat (that looked rather pretentious to Annie) lifted up a heavy copper kettle and passed it to a girl who filled it at the sink. Other people excused themselves, muttering about work they had to attend to. Rather rapidly the kitchen emptied, apart from those people who found it necessary to their work to be there.
Sweet tea was at last placed before Mary, and the French chef went into the vast pantry and returned with a small piece of chocolate torte, which he set before the maid and reassured her that she must eat it all.
“Sweet things for shock, yes?” he cast a wary eye at Annie, who was still standing, hands on hips, in the doorway looking rather tyrannical.
Annie had taken a good look at the kitchen during the tea making, and was satisfied it was ship-shape enough for her. There was an enormous dresser along one wall, probably purpose built, which contained vast numbers of pans, copper moulds and serving platters. On the opposite wall, almost as huge, was a coal range, brightly polished and black-leaded. Next to it was a smaller gas range, clearly very newly installed. Mr Stover did like his modernisations, but whether his chef agreed with him was another matter.
“I suppose you have all heard what has happened?” Annie asked those few left in the room.
Everyone looked sheepish. One maid muttered something about a suicide. A young man near the sink, clearly the pot boy destined to scrub plates all evening, prodded a stack of breakfast bowls on the draining board and grumbled that he never got sweet tea. He was scowled at by the maid.
“Have none of you got a tongue in your head?” Annie was annoyed with them all. She had forgotten that she was a guest here and not a fellow servant. No one was sure quite how to address her.
“It is horrible!” the French chef declared at last, in his rugged accent. He collapsed into a chair. “How can I cook tonight with thoughts of this dead man on my mind.”
“How will I sleep?” the maid added.
“I’ll never feel safe opening a door in this place again,” Mary sniffled.
“Dear me,” Annie shook her head at them all. “Surely you lot saw worse in the war? I know I did. If you work in a hotel, with all these people coming through, all with their own woes, eventually you will have someone pop their clogs on you. It stands to reason.”
“But two people?” Mary said. “That woman was first.”
“Mrs Hunt,” Annie replied.
“Yes, her,” Mary nodded. “I know that weren’t at the hotel, but she died anyways.”
“And there was all that fuss about someone throwing a chamber pot at her,” the young man at the sink clattered the dishes again. “Us servants got the blame for that.”
“But none of you threw it?” Annie asked.
They all shook their heads.
“Why would we?” the maid spoke. “We have better things to do than throw chamber pots around.”
“This has all been very queer,” Annie agreed with them, deciding it was time to do a little probing. “And I think it very important that Mr Stover realises his servants aren’t to blame in this matter. That is why I came down to talk with you all. I have a few questions for you, would you be prepared to answer them?”
The servants glanced about at each other.
“If we can,” the maid shrugged. “We have nothing to hide.”
“Good. Perhaps we can begin with a strange story I have heard. Do you all know Miss Smythe?”
“Her!” Mary almost spluttered her tea over herself. “Don’t talk to me about her!”
“Why ever not?” Annie asked.
“I went into her room to change the beds, like I always do, and while I was about it I knocked over her suitcase with my foot…”
“You should be more careful Mary!” the other maid interrupted to scold her.
Mary stuck her tongue out at her, clearly feeling greatly recovered from her shock.
“I knocked her suitcase over because it was hidden behind the armchair in the room and it fell down and the catch sprung up. Now, when someone’s suitcase falls over you expect to see clothes and private articles. I saw a bloody big rat!”
“Rats!” the French chef almost jumped out of his chair in horror at the thought.
“How did a rat get in Miss Smythe’s suitcase?” Annie asked in astonishment. That was the last thing anyone wanted in a smart hotel – even the merest hint of rats roaming around would have everyone leaving.
“It were in a cage,” Mary said, enjoying having everyone’s attention on her. “Like it were a pet.”
The other maid made a gagging noise. The pot boy laughed. Annie had heard of stranger creatures being kept as pets and decided to store this information up for Clara.
“Wha
t about a tin? Did anyone see such a thing in Miss Smythe’s room? She stated to someone that she had given this tin to a servant,” Annie changed the subject.
Again her query was greeted by shaking heads.
“None of the girls has a new tin as far as I know,” the maid said. “Unless she is hiding it, and why would anyone do that? We all keep little trinkets about us.”
“I never saw a tin in Miss Smythe’s room,” Mary agreed.
“What about in anyone else’s room? Has anyone else received a tin containing marzipan fruits that you know of?” Annie speculated that maids in a hotel were best placed for seeing a person’s belongings and for noticing new things. They went into all the rooms and tidied up. When you did that you were bound to see things. But no one had seen tins of sweets in guests’ rooms.
“You only get marzipan fruits at Christmas, don’t you?” Mary said to no one in particular.
Everything was becoming more and more curious by the moment.
“What about Mrs Hunt? Did any of you meet her?”
The potboy pulled a face which implied he rarely set foot in the main hotel, being chained (metaphorically speaking) to his sink. Mary shook her head, but the other maid seemed to be thinking very hard. At last she spoke.
“I had to take Mrs Hunt her meal after she was hurt,” she said. “I took it up to her room. She was rather sharp, but perhaps she was just in pain. She complained the food had taken a long while to come and I apologised because I was sent to her original room by mistake at first, not knowing that she had moved rooms.”
“I understand it was an abrupt change,” Annie said. “She took a dislike to her room.”
“I rather thought it more a dislike to the person in the room opposite,” Mary said bluntly.
“Why do you say that?” Annie swung her full attention on her.
Mary gave a shrug.
“I had just finished the last room on the ground floor. That is my last floor to do each day, as I always start at the top floor and work down. Not me alone, of course, there are other girls. But we all follow the same pattern,” Mary felt this explanation most necessary to justify her knowledge of Mrs Hunt’s room change. “Anyway, I was picking up my things when I saw Mrs Hunt being led to her room by Mr Stover. Now Mr Stover hates maids being seen by guests when it isn’t necessary, so I darted back into the room I had just cleaned. I heard Mr Stover opening the door to the next room and letting Mrs Hunt in, and she saying it seemed a reasonable enough room.
“I was just slipping away, thinking they were all distracted, when the door to the room opposite Mrs Hunt’s opens and a man walks out, and he looked straight across the corridor and for a moment nothing happened, and then his head jerked up as if he recognised someone. I was poised in the middle of the hall, and I could look across and see exactly what, or rather who, he was looking at. Mr Stover had his back to the door, but Mrs Hunt was facing it and I saw her eyes meet those of the man.
“Then the man pulled the door of his room firmly closed behind him, gave Mrs Hunt a filthy look, the sort you give to someone you hate, and left. No sooner had that happened then Mrs Hunt was demanding she have a different room, that the one she was in was not suitable and she could not abide staying in it. Mr Stover had a trying time calming her.”
Mary grinned at them all, pleased to be able to impart this information.
“Who was the man?” Annie asked, feeling that this was something important.
Mary had to pause and think for a moment.
“I do know who it is,” she said, twirling a strand of hair around her calloused fingers. Too many hours of scrubbing had given her rough, raw hands. “What is the name of that man on the ground floor who is a doctor?”
She had directed this question at the other maid, but Annie didn’t need any further hint. At virtually the same time as the maid spoke, so did Annie, and they both said the same name.
“Dr Masters!”
Annie was stunned. The name meant a good deal to her. But so far there had been no hint of Dr Masters knowing Mrs Hunt, for that matter he had tended to her when she was hurt. Could it be that he was really her murderer? But why? Well, there were enough people in this hotel with motives against her, why should Dr Masters be any different?
“I thought Captain Blake very handsome,” the older maid sighed mournfully.
“He weren’t when I saw him,” Mary shuddered.
“Mon dieu! Do not say such things!” the French chef squealed. “How will these hands make fine filo pastry tonight when they shake so? My mind revolts at all this business.”
“Why would anyone kill themselves?” the pot boy puttered. “I mean, what’s so wrong with this life, anyway?”
Even a life spent washing dishes, apparently, was not one to despair of. Annie did not have the energy to begin explaining the fickleness of the human mind. She, herself, had stood on the precipice and had almost fallen. Clara had saved her and now the days when she wished herself dead were just a distant memory. But that did not mean she had forgotten how it felt or the awful despair that had come over her. But what was Captain Blake’s demon? Had he killed his aunt? The thought was not so improbable, surely?
She was about to say something more when Mr Stover suddenly appeared in the kitchen.
“What is all this?” he declared at once, scowling at the few servants scattered around. “Shouldn’t you all be preparing dinner? Or are we all going to simply fall apart because a guest has chosen to leave us early?”
Mr Stover’s gaze fell on Mary.
“Have you finished all the beds?” he demanded of her.
Annie intervened sharply, determined to make her presence felt. She was not the boldest of creatures, but she would not have someone intimidated, especially when they had suffered a rather nasty shock.
“Mary is recovering herself,” she told Mr Stover firmly. “At my command.”
For the first time Mr Stover realised there was a guest in the hotel kitchen. He puffed out his cheeks, clearly wanting to shriek at the impropriety of such a thing, but restrained by his decorum from doing so.
“Perhaps you will escort me back upstairs so I need interrupt the running of your kitchens no further?” Annie suggested. “I don’t remember the way back up, as I was busy helping Mary when I came down.”
Mr Stover continued to puff his cheeks, like he had just run a race and was catching his breath. Finally, with one last glance at Mary, he conceded to Annie’s request. He barked one last time at his staff to get on with dinner and then led the way back through the various hallways and up into the body of the hotel. He was agitated, that was plain, but who would not be after the events of the last few days. When they reached the foot of the main staircase and Annie went to depart, Mr Stover turned on her quickly;
“Tell Miss Fitzgerald this is none of her business!” he said stoutly before marching off.
Annie merely smirked at his back. No one ever told Clara what was, or what wasn’t her business.
Chapter Twenty-three
Clara convened a council of war. It was clear things had taken a serious turn and there was no more time to waste. She had the list she had found in Mrs Hunt’s room and she had written a second list that detailed the suspects on Mrs Hunt’s list that were also on the charabanc excursion to Windermere. The list consisted of eight names, including Mr and Mrs Wignell, Edwin Hope and Madeleine Reeve. That left four suspects yet to be questioned to ascertain what connection they had to Mrs Hunt and where they had been at the time of her death. The Wignells stated they were together at the time, as did Hope and Reeve, without further evidence Clara could not pick apart their statements. But the other names might offer a clue.
And then there was the strange Miss Smythe and Dr Masters, both of whom did not appear on the list, but had some connection with Mrs Hunt. Clara couldn’t help thinking of that peculiar incident at the stopping point where Mrs Hunt had insisted that a rat had run over her feet, and Miss Smythe had crouched to pick something u
p. The discovery of a pet rat in her luggage gave Clara pause for thought.
She set out her plans to Tommy and Annie after dinner.
“We have a list of names of people who may have had a motive to harm Mrs Hunt. So far we don’t know if they had the wherewithal to actually do so, or if they had the opportunity. Excluding the possibility that those on the list who stayed behind at the hotel during the Windermere trip actually made their own way there, we are left with six individuals who were at the scene of the crime, and four of those we have yet to speak to.”
Clara passed the list to Tommy, who examined it and then gave it to Annie.
“Are we excluding Blake as the killer?” Tommy queried.
“No one is excluded,” Clara made plain. “But now you mention Captain Blake, I do have a second prong of attack planned. I want to get into his room and take a look around. There may be evidence of his guilt if he was the killer of his aunt. I am not inclined to consider his death at this stage as anything other than what it looks like. Suicide.”
“How are you going to get into his room?” Annie asked.
“That is a little more complicated,” Clara conceded. In fact it was very complicated since Mr Stover seemed to have quite taken against her. “I will need the master key for Captain Blake’s room.”
This statement was greeted with uncertain silence from her friends.
“All the rooms have a master key for use by the maids and Mr Stover,” Clara explained. “If Mr Stover won’t let me in himself, and I very much doubt I can persuade him to do so a second time, then I will need the master key. Or rather, a copy of it.”
“You realise you are stepping rather into the territory of illegal activities, old girl,” Tommy said steadily, his face very serious.
“A dreadful crime has been committed and everyone is ignoring it,” Clara countered. “I know I am stretching even my own limits, but if a search of Captain Blake’s room can produce the evidence either to his guilt or innocence, then it must surely be undertaken.”
