Enter Pale Death (39 page)

Grace was self-possessed enough to smile back and pause to wave a showy goodbye to the gaggle of young faces peering at her from the bus with astonishment and speculation. She claimed his arm, enjoying the intrigue of being seen in the company of such
a smart gentleman and, without further ado, set off with him up the drive.

“You got away with no trouble, then?” he asked politely.

“Yes. They were quite glad to get shut of me. I’d rather be here with the other girls. We get time for a good gossip on Sunday afternoons. I’d miss that, Mr. Sandilands.”

As soon as the bus had rattled out of sight, Joe pulled her to the side of the drive into the shade and put down the bag. He turned to face her. Neat, brown-haired Grace had the plain but bright features of a robin, he thought, and she carried her head slightly cocked to one side, which increased the illusion.

“Listen carefully to me, Grace. I must give you my full title and explain why I’m here at the Hall at the invitation of Cecily, Lady Truelove.”

Grace nodded without surprise to hear his explanation.

“Now tell me—who exactly gave you permission to be away from the Hall?”

“It was Mrs. Bolton, sir. Last Tuesday … She asked me how my mother was getting along and I told her she’d been having these pains in her chest … Yes, it was Mrs. B. She’s strict but she’s a kind-hearted lady. She told me to take the whole week off if I wanted to. I said no need for that—I’d got behind with my gophering and would never catch up. I expect she’d cleared it with Lady Cecily. Nothing happens without her ladyship knowing.”

“I’ve visited your room, Grace. Thank you for so discreetly preserving the evidence. Were you expecting someone like me to come along and rake it over?”

“No. Can’t say as I was, sir. No one so grand as you. I had hoped Adam Hunnybun might come and set everything straight. I wasn’t sure quite how he’d manage it—he doesn’t often visit these days. I was waiting for him to come back.”

“How did you come by the rain cape your mistress was wearing that night?”

Grace looked affronted at the question. “I was her personal maid, sir. Who else would have the sorting out and cleaning of her things? It came back from the hospital with the rest of her clothes. They went on the bonfire.”

“Cleaning? You had preserved the cape in its uncleaned condition. Why?”

“I wasn’t happy about that rubbish she was meddling with. Witchcraft, she called it. Monkey-business, I thought. I had bad feelings about the whole silly scheme. I didn’t want to get the blame. They always go for one of us when someone high and mighty takes a tumble and I was the one who’d been to Mr. Harrison’s and bought the stuff she had me smear on that gingerbread. I thought someone ought to know the truth of the matter. How I tried to put it right. Tried to stop her getting hurt.”

Grace frowned and paused, wondering whether to go on.

“Tell me what happened that night, Grace. I should like to know what you did to protect Lavinia from herself.”

“She swore me to silence, sir. Told me what she was planning—to tempt that great savage horse out of its stall where it had been holed up for a week and attract it to her with those oriental spices. Horses love them, she said. They call them ‘drawing herbs.’ Sounded a bit dangerous to me so I …” She sighed and was uncomfortable in telling the rest of her story. “So I disobeyed the mistress. First time I’d ever gone behind her back. I told someone. Someone I could trust and who knew all about horses. ‘Can that be safe?’ I said—luring a beast towards you like that? She’ll get herself killed. And I don’t want to be blamed for it.”

“What advice were you handed, Grace?” Joe proceeded with caution. Gentling. Leading her on. She knew where she wanted to go; all he had to do was reassure her that she was on the right path.

“Good advice!” she said defiantly. “It made sense to me. Lady
Lavinia must have gone and done something wrong … The horse wasn’t supposed to even come out of its stall …‘He must not be drawn,’ I was told. ‘You’re right, Grace, that’s madness. That animal has a bad record. What you need is something to keep it well
away
from the mistress. A smell that will repel it, not encourage it to venture out. Leave it to me. I know just the thing that’ll have it backing off. You must find a way to smear the substance I’ll give you onto the cake instead of the spices from the chemist. Can you do that?’ Well, of course I could. Nothing easier. It was handed to me sealed up in an old jam jar. I did all that nonsense about making a paste of the spices from the chemist and smearing the gingerbread I got from the pantry like the mistress told me to. She wasn’t paying much attention because she doesn’t like strong smells and—mixing and cooking—all that’s servants’ work and she wasn’t interested. I chucked the spicy slice away in the pig pail and put the muck from the jam jar on another slice. That’s the one I stowed away in her pocket ready for the morning. It smelled disgusting, even to me. ‘That’ll keep anything at a safe distance, man or beast,’ I thought. Was I to blame, sir?”

“Not at all, Grace. Don’t concern yourself. You did your best. What any dutiful maid would have done. But, sensibly, you kept the cape as evidence that you’d tried to avoid a disaster in case someone like me came calling? Your little insurance policy?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Joe’s voice was authoritative but kindly as he asked for his last piece of information. “Grace, I need to know whom you consulted in your hour of need. Who was it who supplied you with the good advice and the bating mixture?”

Her eyes skittered from side to side and he thought for a moment she was about to refuse this last fence. At last, she told him.

Joe’s response on hearing the name was instant and decisive. He grabbed Grace by the shoulders and pulled her further into
the shadows. “Grace, I’m taking you straight to Adam Hunnyton’s cottage, where my car is parked. I’m going to ask Adam to drive you back to Bury right away to your mother’s house and there you are to stay until he comes to fetch you back again. I’ll tell them at the Hall that there’s been a telephone message from you: your ma’s taken a turn for the worse and you’ve got to stay on. That will be perfectly acceptable.”

He didn’t add: “Indeed, something of a relief for one person up there.” Arranging another murder so soon after the last might be a bit tricky with a house full of guests. What would they come up with? A garrotting in the drying ground? A sudden surge of lethal current from one of those new-fangled ironing machines? He didn’t want to terrify the girl.

But Grace was thinking things through. “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer” had been cocky young Ben’s assessment, but she was by no means the dullest, Joe guessed.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Possibly. Though you haven’t deserved to be and I shall say so.”

“Will I get the sack?”

He must have hesitated a fraction too long.

“Worse than the sack? Is that what you’re trying not to say, sir?”

“I think it’s not impossible that steps might be taken …” he started to say with annoying imprecision. “Look, Grace, there is much at stake. Things you have no inkling of. Not very certain I do myself. Come with me. We’ve no time to lose. Adam will know what to do for the best—I’m no more than a stranger here.”

H
ALF AN HOUR
later Grace Aldred was safely—and happily—stowed away with Adam’s sister. Rather than make the journey back to town and into a family situation Grace had just left, a stay with her old friend Annie was much to be preferred.

Having gone without the ‘light collation’ on offer for lunch at the Hall, Joe had wolfed down a piece of fruit cake and a mug
of tea at Hunnyton’s cottage. Grace had accepted a biscuit, listening nervously as the two men spoke to each other in short sharp phrases, looking constantly at their watches, calculating times and distances and making plans. Grace, while not managing to follow much of the professional-sounding conversation, seemed to sense that everything stemmed from the action she had taken on that ghastly April morning and she twitched with feelings of guilt and foreboding. It was not over yet and someone was for the high jump. But these two men who spoke over her head in soldiers’ voices seemed to have her welfare at heart and they assured her it would all soon be dealt with and she wasn’t to worry. Joe had seen her safely off to Annie’s house in the company of the superintendent, whom she seemed shyly to adore.

Joe strolled into the hall and greeted Styles with the self-satisfaction of a man just returned from a post-luncheon constitutional. He walked swiftly about the corridors for a while, smilingly avoiding conversation with anyone and finally headed for the telephone room. He emerged after a few minutes, leaving the door open and calling for the butler. “Ah, Styles! There you are. Sorry, I seem to be treading on your toes today … I was in there talking to the Yard. The phone rang as I put the receiver down. Thought it must be my superintendent with an afterthought but no—it was for you. The Aldred household ringing from Bury, courtesy of the grocer. A three-penny bit to hand and time of the essence so I took a message.” Joe’s eyes went slightly out of focus as he recalled a piece of lightweight information. “Grace’s mother’s taken a turn for the worse. Heart trouble. Grace won’t be back until Wednesday at the earliest. Apologies and all that. Oh, and would you please tell Mrs. Bolton she’s sorry about the … gophering? I say—does that make sense?”

Styles smiled. “Perfect sense, sir. Mrs. Bolton will be relieved to hear there’s been a communication. Tea has been cleared, I’m
afraid, sir. Shall I summon up another pot? No? The dressing gong will sound at seven for dinner at eight.”

“Thank you, Styles. I shall be on parade at eight.”

B
EFORE THE GONG
sounded he would set in motion the plans he’d made with Hunnyton, and he’d start in the kitchen. He looked at his watch. The lull between tea and drinks. This was the right time to catch Ben and Mrs. Bolton and explain what he wanted from them.

Two hours to go before he could disappear to his room and be certain he would not be disturbed. At seven he would go up and do his packing, preparing for a quick exit. Lagonda back to Cambridge and then whatever train was available to get him back to reeky old London. He could be back at his desk by midmorning on Monday, checking one last time the wording of the resignation that he kept permanently in his drawer undated and ready to be delivered to the chief commissioner. He could be taking one last look at the plane trees lining the Thames Embankment. Like them, he’d absorbed year on year the contamination of his surroundings and finally, in a moment of release, he’d throw off the whole layering of filth to reveal the pristine white trunk beneath. If his core did indeed remain unsullied. He couldn’t be certain that the rot hadn’t begun to penetrate.

In an odd mood of self-doubt and nostalgia, spiked by an edge of excitement and anticipation of change, he first made his way to the Great Hall. He passed the crowd of disapproving ancestors in review one by one, countering their superior stares with his own knowledgeable gaze. He moved on down the corridor to the dining hall, where he annoyed a couple of footmen who were putting the finishing touches to the dinner table by taking up space in front of the Canaletto landscape of the Thames. Saying a quiet farewell? There hadn’t been much he’d enjoyed at Melsett but he’d been glad to see this.

The enchantment was broken by a confident voice at his elbow. A low and intimate voice that sent a shiver down his side. “So here it is! I’d never seen one of his views of London before. It’s superb, of course. Though I have to say, once one has seen any of his sunlit pictures of Venice, the contrast with a grey northern cityscape is striking but unwelcome. The dome of St. Paul’s seems reduced, the architecture uninviting, the water murky, don’t you think?”

The voice was accompanied by a trace of perfume matching in its sophistication.
Cuir de Russie
? Masculine tones of birch and amber were sharpened by a top note of jasmine. It spoke to Joe of Paris, of leather jewel cases spilling over with diamonds, tickets for the Opéra and champagne. He’d last encountered it in the plush, enclosed comfort of a first class sleeping carriage on the Train Bleu heading south. The women who wore it gave and expected no quarter. They relished an armed flirtation and they knew how to deal with irony.

“If the subject is dear to one’s heart and the artistry sublime, I claim no disappointment, Miss Despond. If I had the resources to buy it, I would think I’d died and gone to heaven.”

“Call me Dorothy. I remember that you’re Joe. Anyway, Joe, I don’t think it’s for sale so we both have to put heaven on hold.”

Joe had the clear impression she was trying to provoke him.

“There are others perhaps more attainable … Did the Stubbs take your fancy? The Gainsborough? Cecily Lady Truelove is, as we speak, locking up her Lancret, secreting her Seurat, I believe.”

He meant it to sting and, hearing her sharp intake of breath, he guessed he’d been successful. She disengaged with a fencer’s flourish and stepped between him and the painting. Her eyes locked on his in disdain. “What are you? Cecily Truelove’s guard-dog? You are very rude, even for a policeman!”

“I apologise. I acknowledge that the goods you deal in are vastly more expensive than a pound of pippins. The last thing I’d
want to do is ruin Truelove’s chances of selling off his birthright. Suffering from straightened financial circumstances, as he is at the moment, he may be minded to do just that.”

She had not known.

The pallor of her face, the long silence before she replied told Joe all he wanted to know. Was he being an utter cad, revealing Truelove’s position? Yes, he was. He could make out a case with no difficulty. It was a caddish thing to do and far outside his usual meticulous manners. But the rebellious streak in Joe took up arms alongside his unfashionable belief in the rights of women to live their lives with the freedom accorded their male counterparts. The men in Truelove’s world could learn of his imminent destitution by the simple exchange of information from one deeply buttoned arm chair to the next in a St. James’s club, between the rows of leather-covered benches in the Houses of Parliament, between shots on the grouse moor. Who would whisper a lifesaving truth in Dorothy’s ear? No one. She and her father were not on the circulation list when it came to scurrilous confidences, distanced from the English establishment as they were by class and nationality. Even set apart by their wealth, which brought with it a certain mistrust and, in these hard times, envy. If Joe slipped away into the dark now and left this girl, however worldly and uncongenial, to be hoodwinked by Truelove, he would hold himself guilty of neglect of duty for ever more.