Chapter 15 - Discoveries
After Jen’s interview, she had gone back to Etta’s room and taken down the breakfast things that she had forgotten in their haste to leave. These were not received well by the kitchen staff but as Mrs. Butler was not there, Jen won them over with her charm. She felt in need of a nice cup of tea.
‘Where’s Mrs. Butler then?’ she asked.
‘Up with her ladyship, receiving the menu for tonight.’
Just then Mrs. Butler stormed into the kitchen, brandishing a piece of paper.
‘A nice thing,’ she screeched, ‘when a hardworking and thoughtful creative artist like myself gets abused and sensible suggestions trampled underfoot?’
‘What happened, Mrs. Butler?’ asked Gladys, the kitchen maid all agog.
‘I went up to see the missus with my carefully prepared menu for lunch and dinner, and what does she say to me?’
‘What did she say?’ Jen asked, who was enjoying the show.
‘She says, she says,’ Mrs. Butler’s voice rose ever higher, ‘that we are not going to have consommé, or lamb chops. No, she wants Mr. Spinoza to have an American meal to cheer him up, so we’re to have clam chowder then hamburgers, fried potatoes and baked beans followed by peach cobbler, if you please. So I say to her, “madam, where am I supposed to get clams and this isn’t the season for peaches. And she just looks at me and say, “I’m sure you can improvise, Mrs. Butler, you’re so resourceful.”
‘What a stupid idea. As if having some food from home would make him feel better when he’s just lost his wife,’ Gladys said.
Mrs. Butler looked sideways at her. ‘Well, it might,’ she grudgingly admitted, ‘but at least consult with the cook before you decide on the menu.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Jen asked, interested.
Mrs. Butler snorted. ‘They can have lentil soup and like it, I’ve got plenty of those.’
‘You could call it, “Chicago Lentil Soup”,’ Jen suggested.
‘Is there a special lentil soup in Chicago?’ Gladys asked.
‘Who knows?’ Jen replied.
That got a giggle from Gladys and a half smile from Mrs. Butler.
‘What about the baked beans?’
Mrs. Butler snorted. ‘We’ve got plenty of cans of those and the ladies and the gentlemen will just have to lump it if there aren’t enough at breakfast for a couple of days. Lets see how sympathetic they feel to Mr. Spinoza then.
They all laughed. Jen hadn’t realised that they had had baked beans back in the thirties. Or had they, could she believe anything that happened in a novel?
Solomon Taylor came into the room and asked for a cup of tea.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
They looked at each other, all a little shame faced.
‘Only the revised lunch menu,’ Mrs. Butler said in a tone to discourage any further enquiry.
As Solomon was drinking his tea, he moved towards Jen.
‘Your lady will be arranging for you to attend Mrs. Mowbray this evening. Make sure you have a good look round the bedroom once she leaves.’
‘What about Mr. Mowbray?’
‘I have offered to dress him and he will be dressing before his wife.’ `he nodded at her, drained his cup, left it by the sink and went out of the kitchen.
Miss Potter came down to lunch that day. She was late down, the table was nearly full up with members of staff, and the room was buzzing with chatter as the servants speculated about the murder and what the police were up to. An awkward silence fell as Miss Potter entered the room.
‘Ah Miss Potter, do please join us,’ Mr. Cook said genially. He frowned then hissed at John the foot man and Kate the senior housemaid, ‘make room immediately for Miss Potter.’ They obediently shifted and Jen found herself next to Miss Potter. She was looking composed and didn’t show any signs of distress but nevertheless Jen said to her, ‘I’m very sorry about what happened, Miss Potter. It must have been distressing for you.’
‘It was,’ said Miss Potter, ‘but I take comfort from the bible.’
‘You mean she has gone to life everlasting?’
‘I mean, the wages of sin are death,’ Miss Potter said with grim satisfaction. ‘As it says in the bible and is preached every Sunday.’
Jen was taken aback. She hadn’t realised that Miss Potter was so religious or that sort of religious. She wondered exactly what Mrs. Spinoza had done to deserve this verdict.
After finishing with Etta, Jen went to find Mrs. Mowbray’s bedroom. It was on a different floor to Etta’s and round the other side.
Mrs. Mowbray was waiting for Jen in her large bedroom. She was alone, sitting in front of her dressing table, looking at herself in the mirror. There were a large number of pots, lipsticks, brushes and perfume bottles on it.
‘Oh there you are,’ she greeted Jen. ‘It’s very kind of Miss Ashcroft to loan you to me. I usually have to make do with the services of Kate if she has time or even Lily who has no experience at this kind of thing.’ There was a plaintive note in her voice.
To say nothing of my kindness, thought Jen.
‘I thought you could help me with make up first.’ She sighed. ‘I buy these things but never quite know what to do with it all,’ she confessed. ‘I was brought up to think that it was always best to look natural.’
‘`I’ll see what I can do, madam,’ Jen said, striving to sound professional.
Mrs. Mowbray turned round to her.
‘Do you think my eyebrows need thinning?’ she asked.
‘Oh no,’ Jen said firmly. She had no intention of getting embroiled with tweezers and pain. ‘Lets have a look at what you’ve got, shall we?’
She carefully made up Mrs. Mowbray’s face with foundation. The foundation called Ivory Pink was thicker than she was used to so she tried to apply it with a light hand. As she was trying to apply the face powder with a powder puff, Mrs. Mowbray chose that moment to say, ‘it’s true what they say, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’ Jen asked. ‘Shut your eyes, please.’ She was concentrating on not dumping too much powder onto her face.
Mrs. Mowbray waited until she had finished with the powder puff before saying, ‘that song, the one that goes “keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved”.’ She sighed.
Jen recognised the signs of someone wanting to confide in someone. She was rather surprised that Mrs. Mowbray would choose her. Then she realised that she was a servant and not a person. She was just part of the wallpaper.
‘That’s what they say,’ she confirmed.
‘But it’s not so easy to do. It’s all right for men, they get old and people just say they look more distinguished but for us women,’ she sighed again, ‘we have to strive to look as beautiful as a twenty year old least our husbands start looking around for a more desirable partner.’
‘We do, they do,’ Jen agreed, thinking she knew where this was going.
‘And if we can’t manage it, then their eyes start wandering and there is always some younger woman who will encourage them to, well, to behave indiscreetly.’ Marjorie Mowbray’s voice wobbled. ‘And their husbands will even have the audacity to bring their fancy to their family home’.
Jen was torn between wanting to hear more and realising it could soon lead to tears, which would be ruinous for applying makeup.
‘But it is also well known that most husbands might enjoy a little fling but will always return to their wives. Always.’
Marjorie Mowbray hiccupped. ‘Do you think so?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Jen said firmly.
Then Marjorie seemed to realise who she was talking to and pulled herself together.
‘What colour would you recommend for my eyes?’ she asked, clearly signalling that this conversation was at an end.
‘I think a light blue to contrast with your lovely dark eyes,’ Jen said laying it on a bit thick but she thought that Marjorie could do with a little encouragement.
She chose the lightest shade of
blue she could find for Marjorie’s eyes and hesitated between a dark red and a lighter pink colour for her lips. She knew that women wore a lot more red lipstick in the old days and finally plumped for that. She put Marjorie’s hair up into a bun, grateful that Marjorie couldn’t see the back very well from the angle of the hand mirror that she held up. She then tactfully dissuaded Marjorie from the rather horrid canary yellow dress that she wanted to wear but instead steered her a powder blue creation with a v neck to make the most of Marjorie’s curves and a matching lace bolero that covered up her rather plump arms.
She congratulated herself that Marjorie looked a lot better by the time she finished her ministrations and hoped she thought so too.
‘There, missus, you look a picture,’ she said in her best imitation cockney accent.
Marjorie preened a little. ‘I do, don’t I?’ she asked, moving herself this way and that to admire herself in the mirror.
‘Thank you, sorry, what was your name again?’
‘Jane,’ Jen said. Her feelings of benevolence to Mrs. Mowbray took a sharp downturn.
‘Thank you, Jane. You may go.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to me to tidy up a little before I go?’ Jen suggested. She would be really annoyed if after all this, she couldn’t even carry out her mission.
‘Very well. Be careful. My jewellery box is locked by the way.’
Jen said nothing but seethed inside. Flaming cheek!
Mrs. Mowbray left the room and Jen quickly tidied the dressing table and wiped away the spillages. She didn’t want to tidy up too quickly in case Mrs. or Mr. Mowbray came back and asked what she was doing.
She looked through the drawers in the dressing table first. Then kicked herself, it was probably something of Mr. Mowbray’s that she should be looking for. So she checked the drawers of the tallboy and the one underneath the wardrobe. Nothing. She even dragged a chair to the wardrobe and looked on top. Only a couple of hatboxes, which she checked. Nothing. She looked inside the shoeboxes under the bed. She looked under the mattress, just in case. Again, nothing. She was about to give up when she thought of looking inside the wardrobe, she was sure that Solomon would have checked the suits but did it herself anyway. To her complete unsurprised, there was nothing in the pockets. She spotted a couple of shoeboxes on the bottom of the wardrobe and drew them out. Both boxes contained shoes and she was about to put them back in disgust when she noticed that one of the shoes had something tucked inside. She pulled it out and saw that it was headed “Geology Report”. She thought that she had heard that Mr. Dennis Mowbray was something to do with finance. Was it dodgy finance? Goldmines, she thought to herself and tucked the paper into her apron pocket.
Then she heard heavy footsteps coming towards the room.
Murder and Mittens Page 15
