‘Tell me about it,’ I said, mentally shaking myself. I might have my regrets but this poor girl had a husband plotting her grisly end and deserved all of my attention.
‘Yes, of course. Well, I’ve been married for five years and my husband is . . .’ She stopped and looked around herself at the apartment. I waited. ‘My husband is . . .’ she said, and looked around again. I sat forward a little and looked around too. Of good fortune, I thought, judging by the clock and the pictures. Yet I had never heard of him, so he probably was not a gentleman as such, but then Edinburgh has lots of not gentlemen as such who have been beyond question for generations. A banker, perhaps.
Mrs Balfour sat up a little straighter in her seat.
‘My husband is . . . a devil.’ She gave a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. ‘There. I’ve said it. And finding out was so unexpected that it still seems not quite real. I didn’t know him for long before we got engaged but I could see straight away – or thought I could – that he was a poppet. I mean to say, his name’s Pip.’
‘And when you say he’s . . . unsatisfactory,’ I prompted, but Mrs Balfour laughed and shook her head.
‘He’s a monster, Mrs Gilver. A nasty, brutish, bullying, philandering, dishonest, beastly . . . pig.’
‘And you think he’s going to kill you?’
‘Oh, I’m sure of it,’ she replied. ‘He told me so.’
‘I see. And can I ask why?’ She stared dumbly back at me. ‘Does he want to marry someone else?’
‘That’s an idea,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen any signs of it, mind you.’
‘You said – just now – that he was a philanderer,’ I reminded her.
‘Yes,’ she said, frowning. ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? He is. Faithless, adulterous, underhand . . . it must be that. Why else, if not?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘to quote a police acquaintance of mine on the subject of murder: it’s either love or money.’
‘I haven’t a bean.’
‘Are you insured?’ Mrs Balfour looked rather startled. It is difficult always to remember how far I have travelled along the road from where I used to be, where she still was, in that warm glade of gentle womanhood where such things would never occur to one. I felt as though I should have narrowed eyes and a cigarette in one corner of my red lips as I grilled her.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, blinking, ‘but Pip has heaps of his own anyway.’
This was interesting; it is always interesting to hear how anyone manages still to have ‘heaps of his own’ in these dark days, but it was probably not to the point and so I passed on.
‘And when you say he told you, do you mean he threatened you? Might he merely have been blustering? Was he very angry about something at the time? Or – forgive me – had he been drinking?’
Mrs Balfour laughed again.
‘Pip? Drunk? No, that’s not the kind of man he is at all. I shall try to explain.’ She picked up a pen from her desk and fiddled with it as she spoke, gouging the nib into her blotter.
‘It was at Christmas-time when it started – really started, I mean. It was Boxing Day, the servants’ party, and if anyone had had too much “good cheer” I think it was me, because my memory of it is very peculiar, somehow. Mrs Hepburn had made her hot punch and I wonder if perhaps one of the other servants might have embellished it. Our chauffeur is a bit of a scamp. Anyway, the party was in its last stages, everyone rather hot and getting too tired for more dancing, and all of a sudden there was some kind of trouble with one of the maids – lots of shrieking – and Faulds, the butler . . . Oh, but of course you met him, didn’t you? . . . had to haul her off and give her a talking-to. He was most displeased. And we all went to bed a bit flattened. But I couldn’t get to sleep and I certainly couldn’t face ringing down for someone to bring tea – it had all been so unseemly and embarrassing – so I went to fetch some for myself, or milk anyway which is easier, and when I got back up to my room, Pip was there, and he was . . . Well, he was . . . He was like a man possessed. He was in a complete rage and that’s when he told me for the first time that he was going to kill me.’
I considered the story in silence. If I had heard it the morning after the events took place, I should have brushed it off without a murmur: servants’ parties are notoriously ticklish affairs even without the adulterated punch, and what with maids and masters dancing together – mistresses and scamps of chauffeurs too, if I were reading correctly between the lines – then the lady of the house creeping back down in her nightgown, a husband breathing fire was hardly astonishing. However . . .
‘For the
first
time?’ I repeated.
‘Yes, and since then it’s been drip, drip, drip,’ she said. ‘He’s perfectly ordinary during the day, when someone might see him, but sometimes at night he comes to my room and simply revels in it. Telling me that he loathes me, that he curses the day he met me, that he’ll get rid of me if it’s the last thing he ever does – you get the general idea.’ Her smile was still brave but her voice had got a wobble in it and her eyes were shining. ‘And the worst thing of all is that since that first time I’ve come to realise that there were hints of it all along rumbling away underneath that I was too naive or too trusting to see.’
‘But he hasn’t actually done anything,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mrs Balfour.
‘Which is odd, if he really means it,’ I said. ‘I mean, he’s had months. What do you suppose he’s waiting for?’
I wondered if this was a little too callous, but Mrs Balfour merely shrugged.
‘I have no idea,’ she answered, ‘but he’s not going to wait much longer.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s going away to our place in the Highlands for the first of August,’ she said. ‘And, as I wrote to you, I can’t leave the house any more unwatched and I can’t telephone without being listened in to, but I taunted him – one beastly night when he was at it as usual – I said what made him think that I wouldn’t pack my things and run off when he went shooting, and he said I’d be long gone by then. He said – I shall never forget it – he said, “Naturally, this will have to be tidied up by the end of July. I’m not going to miss the stags over it.”’ She gave a little sob as she spoke and then caught her bottom lip in her teeth.
‘Mrs Balfour,’ I began, after another long moment’s consideration.
‘Oh, Lollie, please,’ she said. ‘Not Mrs Balfour when I’ve just told you all that – too ridiculous for words. And certainly not Walburga.’ There was a ghost of a smile.
‘Well, Lollie,’ I resumed, ‘it’s a most fantastical tale. He sounds not only insupportable – that almost goes without saying – but actually mad. He sounds as though he needs some kind of rest cure or some clever doctor. However,
he
is not my concern.’ I gave her a stern look. ‘You are. And your instincts are sound. You should do just what you threatened to. Pack your bags and go, my dear girl. Or leave your bags behind and go. Just go.’
‘But go where?’ said Lollie. ‘My parents are dead, I have no friends that aren’t his friends too, I have no means of getting any money without his approval. And besides . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Are there children?’ I asked, guessing that they would be a heavy anchor.
‘Not yet,’ said Lollie. ‘I mean, no. See?’ she went on wildly. ‘“Not yet”! I still can’t convince myself that this is actually happening to me.’
‘Is he in the house at this minute?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘Well then, you can walk out of the front door along with me. Come home with me. And then telephone to a doctor, or to the police. To both.’
‘You do believe me then?’ said Lollie. ‘He always reminds me that I have no proof or witnesses and tells me that anyone I speak to will think I’m mad. And that he’ll give them lots of help to think it when they come to ask him about me.’
‘Hm,’ I said. She was right about the evidence and witnesses, of course, when I looked at the matter coolly. On the other hand, waiting until what they witnessed was her murder could not be recommended.
‘Is there any way you can try to be even more careful?’ I asked. ‘Has he ever given any hints of his proposed method?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lollie. ‘I should have told you. It would be impossible to go on if I thought every dish might be poisoned or I might be shot in the back at any moment. No, I think he’s going to strangle me at night in my bed.’
‘He told you that?’
‘Not in so many words,’ she said. ‘He whispers as he comes and goes, you see.’ She leaned forward and spoke very softly. ‘
The rain set early in tonight, the sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worst to vex the lake.
’
I could feel a nasty prickling feeling creeping up my back towards my neck, where a nasty shrinking feeling in my scalp waited to meet it.
‘What on earth?’ I said, thoroughly rattled.
‘I wondered for the longest time,’ said Lollie, ‘and then I found it. Well, a line of it – in a volume on the Carlyles.’ I must have looked impressed at this example of her reading habits, because she went on: ‘A volume that Pip left on my desk for me to find, open at the right page. It’s Robert Browning: a horrid, horrid poem all about strangling his mistress.’
‘I don’t know it, I’m glad to say.’ I shook my shoulders to drive off the last of the shivering. ‘So. You need a reliable witness and you need protection in the night-time. You need, in fact, someone to sleep in your room with you. Do you have a sister?’ She shook her head. ‘An old nanny?’ Another shake. ‘A trusted maid of stout heart? Well, stout everything would be best, really.’ Lollie opened her hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Oh! Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Your maid left, didn’t she, hence today’s interviews. Well, what about the girl before me then? She looked pretty sturdy.’
‘The girl
before
you,’ repeated Lollie, a beseeching look in her eyes. It took me a moment to see what was being besought.
‘Ah, now,’ I said. ‘Well, as to that. I mean, I don’t think that would be possible, I’m afraid.’
‘Why not?’ she asked me.
‘One would have to . . . Well, one would have to know what one were doing,’ I said, ‘which I don’t. At all.’
‘But in the newspapers . . .’ said Lollie.
‘Oh no, I don’t mean the detecting. I certainly know what I’m doing as far as that goes. And I can see that it would be wonderful to be stowed away in the heart of the household getting to the bottom of it – very practical – but as to the actual . . . I’d be seen through in a minute. I thought Faulds out there had uncovered me as soon as I opened my mouth. Gosh, if I tried to mix up freckle cream or launder lace . . .’
‘But I’d help,’ said Lollie. ‘I wasn’t brought up with my own maid and I know most of it. We could muddle along together. And if it’s your fee that’s worrying you—’
‘I assure you it’s not. No, my worry is Mr Faulds. And Mrs . . . Hepburn, was it? And the chauffeur? And you mentioned a maid or two at the Christmas party? That’s too many to take into your confidence and I couldn’t begin to fool them – not over days and weeks.’
‘Twelve,’ said Lollie.
‘Twelve what?’ I asked her.
‘Servants,’ she replied. ‘Butler, cook, kitchenmaid, scullerymaid, tweenie, parlourmaid, housemaid, a valet, a footman, a hall and boot boy, and the chauffeur.’
‘Twelve servants?’ I echoed.
‘Including you,’ she said, smiling.
And a small part of me wonders even now how much of my agreeing sprang from a desire to find out how, in the name of heaven, in these days of desperate and universal retrenchment, they were managing it.
2
‘
And all her hair, in one long yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around, and strangled her,
’ said Alec, peering at the volume in the lamplight, and tracing the tiny print with the stem of his pipe.
‘That’s the one,’ I said. ‘Only it’s red.’
‘Not words you’d want your love to come cooing at you in your bedchamber,’ Alec said. He turned the page. ‘Good God, listen to this bit.’
‘Oh, please, no more!’ I said. ‘What a man he must have been – and after his poor wife wrote all those
lovely
sonnets for him.’
Alec snorted and put his pipe back in his mouth. We were in his library, on the evening of the successful interview. (I had braved the hoots of derision over Miss Rossiter’s adornments to commune with him, as I always did when a new case was stirring and at intervals while it wore on too.) At least, I thought to myself, the hoots of derision were all I should have to brave; there would be no frosty silence nor cutting remarks from Hugh when I got home since, after a great deal of glowering and muttering over the last four years, he had finally managed to find space inside his skull for the idea that Alec and I were friends, colleagues and nothing more, an idea I took great pains not to dislodge again.
‘I have to agree with young Mrs Balfour,’ Alec was saying now. ‘Walburga, was it? – poor girl! It sounds so torrid and mad, she’d have a hard time convincing either the bobbies or docs until he actually strikes. I suppose you’re convinced, are you?’
‘I am but, as to the bobbies, it’s even worse than having to convince them. I’m pretty sure that as long as he keeps to whispered threats she doesn’t have a case. She doesn’t even have a case for divorcing him unless she can unearth one of the philanderees and get him that way.’
‘She can’t divorce him for cruelty when he murmurs about winding her tresses round her little throat? That’s a bit thick.’
‘Apparently not,’ I said, trying to hide my smile. Alec is younger than me and sometimes seems
much
younger, as when he is troubled and wounded by life’s unfairness, by life’s showing itself so regularly to be ‘a bit thick’. ‘I went to the National Library and looked it up before I caught the train home,’ I told him. ‘Apparently, he can be as cruel as he likes as long as it’s only to Lollie – she doesn’t encourage “Walburga”, for obvious reasons.’
‘Law books in the National Library
and
grey serge, Dan,’ said Alec. ‘You’re flying all flags on this one, surely?’