Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Read Free Page A

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