Enter Pale Death (29 page)

The twitch became a smile and the enlivened face took on the radiance of the goddess Minerva. Joe saw suddenly why the staff spoke of this woman with such respect.

“If you’ve just been upstairs with Ben I’m thinking you’ll be wanting these.” She hauled on a key chain attached to the belt of her skirt and selected a key ring. “Here you are. The big one
unlocks Grace’s room. I doubt you’ll find anything helpful in there—it has been cleaned out regularly since the awful event and Grace has nothing to hide. She was caught up in all innocence in the machinations of others, Commissioner. Grace is not … a plotter or an evil-doer by nature. She’s a Suffolk girl with all their admirable qualities. There’s nothing more I can tell you. Mistress Cecily gave her leave to go home to Bury. It’s not an excuse, though I’m sure you must be suspecting—collusion? Would that be the word? No—her mother is very ill—not expected to live out the summer, I’d say. Heart trouble. Grace has arranged for her sister to go down and mind her mother next week and we’ll see her back on duty then. But that’s not much help to you. I’ll give you her mother’s address in Bury, should you wish to pursue her. Meantime—as for me—I can only report impressions. Do you want to hear them in the absence of hard evidence?”

Joe was thinking that any impression coming from the firm mouth of Mrs. Bolton was worth ten times most people’s idea of evidence and he accepted gratefully.

“It was the gingerbread that made me suspicious. Grace came in here and asked for a slice for the mistress. Just before midnight. With her cocoa. Lady L. didn’t like spicy things. Grace didn’t deny it when I guessed it was a craving of someone about three months gone, if you know what I mean. We had a bit of a laugh over it. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard as much hinted at but this was the first concrete clue.”

“How much gingerbread did she take away?”

“I gave her enough for three normal portions. Her ladyship had quite an appetite. I didn’t want to risk her putting Grace to the trouble of coming downstairs again for more. I was going to put it in the pig slop bucket anyway. It had gone hard and no one fancied it much.”

“Was anything left of it?” Joe asked, feeling foolish.

“Not a crumb. No idea what she did with it and Gracie’s not
saying but by morning it had all vanished. Betty, who does out the rooms on that floor, reported that there was a strange smell in her ladyship’s room and she had to fling all the windows wide open to clear it.”

Joe nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Bolton. I think I know what that was. And no—it wasn’t your gingerbread! Can you tell me why the room is still in its original state?”

“Mistress Cecily’s orders, sir. ‘Touch nothing,’ we were told. ‘You may clean surfaces but that’s all.’ ”

“Mistress Cecily, ah, yes …” Joe said, speculation in his eye. “Back in the saddle again. Things are moving more smoothly with the old mistress in charge again, would you say?”

Mrs. Bolton’s chilly expression warned him she would say nothing of the sort. Discretion even after death was the rule for housekeepers. She unbent so far as to confide, “Mistress Cecily and I understand each other well, Commissioner. Indeed, we arrived here at Melsett on the same day, over forty years ago. She brought me down with her from her father’s household when she married. I was given a position of rising authority here with the task of raising the level of domestic discipline and capability. Under Sir Sidney—the bachelor Sir Sidney—things had become regrettably lax.”

Joe smiled. “What I see is a credit to your efforts, Mrs. Bolton. As well run a household as I ever saw, I do believe.”

Enid Bolton seemed pleased by the compliment

“Well, thank you Mrs. Bolton.” Joe began to get to his feet, the interview over. “Just one more thing.” He touched his plaster and grimaced. “How much per week do you pay the Green Man of the Woods to heave logs at your house guests?”

If he had thought to catch her out he was disappointed. She chuckled. “You’ll not find that villain’s name on my books, sir! You rightly guess I do all the payments for indoor and outdoor staff. That’s been the way since we lost Steward Hunnybun and he was
replaced by a Farm Manager. Albright is very good in his way, but he doesn’t have Adam’s insight and tact. Adam calls by and gives a hand still if ever I need him but luckily I have a head for figures and it’s no trouble. You may inspect the household accounts if you wish.”

Mrs. Bolton got to her feet and selected a large red leather-bound ledger, the last in a series, from the bookshelf. She placed it on the table. “Help yourself,” she invited. “Lady Lavinia could never be bothered. I can’t be certain she quite followed the calculations when I insisted on having her signature at the month’s end. I don’t believe she knew the price of a packet of pins! But no—to answer your question—‘Goodfellow,’ as he likes to call himself, among other things, is not on the house payroll. Never has been. ‘It’s a personal contribution, Enid, and none of your business,’ Adam said when I asked him where the buffoon got his beer money. I don’t think Adam knows either.”

“Can you tell me in what ways Mr. Goodfellow bothers the household?” Joe asked as though merely requiring confirmation of knowledge he already had.

“Peeking and prying!” The answer came at once. “The maids don’t like to be working in the dairy and see his ugly face leering at them through the window. They don’t feel free to kick off their shoes these hot days and dabble in the moat to cool off as they’d like to. He’s always drawn by the sight of a bare leg. He pushed Rose off the edge last summer and stood by laughing as she sank under—in the afternoon uniform she’d just put on all fresh from the laundry press. Just as well Ben heard her scream and came running. Pest! It’s like having a hornet buzzing about all the time. Never knowing where it’s going to plant its sting.”

“Don’t the men take some action?” Joe cast a sideways look at Ben, noting his suddenly clenching fists. “Did no one step forward to remonstrate on Rose’s behalf?”

“He’s too slick to do anything when the men are about.
Though I do recall that Goodfellow fell into something less salubrious than moat-water shortly after Rosie’s escapade.”

Ben reddened and grinned.

“The men servants work hard for their pay, Commissioner, and they don’t like to see him louting about, pretending to do a bit of coppicing here and a bit of fencing there when all he hangs about for is dressing up, scaring people and getting sozzled down the pub of an evening. But their hands are tied. He has the master’s ear, you might say. Lady L. couldn’t stand him, though she couldn’t get him dismissed either. Heaven knows—she tried often enough!”

“Where did he come from? Anything known?”

“He’s been here since before the old master died. Sir Sidney knew him. From his army days? He fetched up here as a down-and-out … oh, thirty years ago … and Sir Sidney, who was a very generous man, gave him a part time job, helping with estate work, sometimes with the horses. He’s been here ever since. He ‘arrives with the cuckoo, that harbinger of Spring, and leaves the moment Jack Frost returns to crackle the surface of the moat with his icy breath.’ That’s what he tells the guests in his spirit-of-nature way. May to September, in my vocabulary. His sister’s a seaside landlady in Southend. She’d tell you she kicks her brother out at the arrival of the first summer holiday-maker and doesn’t let him back until the last one has left. The man’s a total fraud and an exploiter of the Truelove family’s generous nature. My advice—don’t ever ask him to take his mask off.”

“Too late, Mrs. B.! I have looked on the true face of the nasty, blood-sucking rogue. But I see worse in the mirror every morning.” He grinned as he pointed to his left cheek. “And he hasn’t done much to improve the landscape. I owe him one.”

“Well, if you want to know more, Mr. Styles will inform you. He’s been here longer than any of us.”

Joe thanked her for her help and drained his herb tea. “Now
then, Ben,” he said and turned to Mrs. Bolton. “If you can spare this excellent chap for another half hour, we’ll get back to work.”

T
HE WELL-OILED LOCK
clicked and the door swung open on Grace Aldred’s room. Cheerful and well appointed, Joe thought. In many ways a plainer version of her mistress’s boudoir. Everything here was scaled down in size, subdued in colour, less sumptuous in quality. A dressing table (pinewood, not mahogany) was draped in a white machine-made lace cloth and Grace’s brush and comb (tortoiseshell, not silver) were laid before a swivelling mirror on barley-sugar twist uprights. The curtains were of a pretty chintz but of a pattern too large for the room. They’d been cut down to size from some grander space, Joe thought. The bed was pin neat and made up with fresh linen but even here the coverlet showed signs of thrift; it was a patchwork sewn from scraps of silk and velvet. A square of embroidery had been left ready to be picked up again on the footstool by the one comfortable chair set beside the fireplace. To occupy the few quiet moments before the bell he noticed on the wall next to it rang to summon Grace to her mistress a few yards down the corridor.

The personal items were sparse. A photograph of two little girls in their Sunday best. Grace and her sister? A copy of last week’s
Film Fun
magazine by the bedside, open at a photograph of Cary Grant. There was little of Grace herself here. She seemed to be merely an adjunct to her mistress, herself a faded scrap, a piece of the household patchwork.

Joe stood quietly in the doorway, absorbing the atmosphere with Ben moving in anxiously behind him. Joe recognised that Ben’s loyalties were being stretched again. He was uncomfortable with his own presence in a maid’s room and doubly uneasy that Joe was here, missing no details with his sharp, trained eye.

“I don’t think this is going to take long, Ben,” he said. “Don’t worry—we’re not going to have to search through sock drawers
and read entries in diaries. If I’ve got this right, Grace will never know we’ve even been in here. Come in and shut the door. Look around. What was it you suppose Grace wanted someone in authority to see? It all looks perfectly normal to me.”

“Nothing here.” Ben shrugged and took a pace back towards the door.

Joe fingered the key ring. “Hang on. What’s this? Two more small keys. What do they unlock?”

Ben took them, feeling the weight. “This here’s the key to her maid’s box. That’s kept up in the attic with the trunks when it’s been unpacked. This other one …” He glanced around. “It must unlock the wardrobe. That’s where she keeps her uniform and her spare shoes.”

“Have a look, shall we?”

Joe unlocked the large cupboard which, in an earlier, more glorious existence, must have been called an
armoire
. He was faced by a neat array of uniform, dark blue morning and pale blue afternoon dresses, lined up on embroidered hangers padded out with lavender stuffing. Heavier winter coats and serge dresses lurked behind them, protected from the moth by balls of fragrant cedarwood dangling like rough necklaces from the hangers. He was about to close the door when he smelled it. A base undertone, barely holding its own against the predominant cedarwood and lavender. As he shunted forward a handful of garments the smell intensified. He worked his way beyond the winter clothes to the back of the cupboard and the last item of clothing was revealed. A dark green waterproof cape of the kind ladies used to cover themselves when out riding occupied the space, looking, in its deliberate isolation, rather sinister, Joe thought. He pulled it forward on its hanger and looked around for somewhere to carry out an inspection.

“Not on the bed, sir,” Ben took over. “I’ll put it over here on the floorboards in case something’s in there as shouldn’t be. Cor!
What a pong! That’s not mothballs!” He spread it out and held it down by the shoulders as though he expected it to leap up and resist arrest.

“The mistress’s riding-out-in-inclement-weather coat. But what’s it got in its pockets? Sorry about this, Ben.” Feeling rather like the Great Magnifico two minutes into his act, Joe took a pair of rubber gloves, Scotland Yard issue, from his trouser pocket and slipped them on. “Just in case we’re landed with poisons of some nature to deal with …” he murmured apologetically.

He felt in the right pocket and encountered a small hard lump. “Take my handkerchief from my breast pocket, Ben, and spread it here by me.”

The dark brown-grey, slightly crumbling mess he scooped out was greeted with a schoolboy’s exclamation of disgust by Ben. “Urgh! It’s sh—horse-excrement! What’s she doing with that in her pocket!”

“Not shit, Ben. No, something infinitely more evil! Horse-droppings are ambrosial in scent compared with this stuff.” Joe was beginning to feel queasy and recognised that without Adelaide Hartest’s sound talking-to, he would have been dashing straight for the jug and ewer on the toilet table. “Hard to believe, but that substance was once a slice of Mrs. Bolton’s excellent gingerbread.”

“Where did it get the stink, then? And why?” Ben wanted to know.

“I could give you the recipe for the very special frosting but you wouldn’t want to hear it. I’ll just say it’s a mixture of decayed animal parts—stoat’s liver being one. It’s a magic formula for scaring horses. Yes, scaring them. They’ll take fright and try to run away on catching scent of this.”

“Anyone offering a lump of this to a savage horse …” Ben had got there and his face froze into pale disbelief.

“Anyone standing in the entrance to the horse’s stall will be
cleared out of the way in the horse’s instinctive effort to escape,” Joe confirmed Ben’s fears. “It will use its teeth and hooves and frantic strength to obliterate what it perceives as the horror that’s advancing on it.”

Joe reminded himself that it had been Ben, tip-toeing along in his patent-leather slippers, who had come upon the awful scene and had stood guard over the body with a raging stallion crashing about an open stable. “But you were there, Ben. You saw the results for yourself,” he said quietly. He’d noticed that the lad’s teeth were chattering at the memory.

“I was lucky then,” he said when he could get the words out. “Having smashed her up, he went backwards into his stall, shivering. People say I was brave to have stuck it out down there but—the honest truth is—I reckoned that big feller was more scared than I was. Poor devil! Poor lady!”