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

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?’
    ‘You haven’t heard the half,’ I said. ‘Here’s what I propose to do next, darling.’ And I told him, to his evident and gratifying stupefaction; when I finished his mouth hung open, his pipe cooling, forgotten, in the ashtray.
    ‘You don’t stand a cat’s chance,’ he said at last.
    ‘Well, thanks a lot,’ I said, laughing.
    ‘But seriously, Dan, how do you hope to pull it off? How can you propose to go in and do what amounts to making a fool of a man who is certainly violent and probably raving mad? And why? Why not say you’re a girlhood friend or something?’
    All of these were objections I had put to Lollie hours before, but she had answered them and, besides, I had come around to the notions for reasons of my own.
    ‘He wouldn’t let her have a friend to stay,’ I said. ‘And he won’t take any notice of me. As long as I dress soberly and keep my head down I’ll be fine. And I’ve decided not to attempt too much authenticity. I shall say I’m gently born and recently come down in the world. That should cover any amount of ignorance and unintended slips, don’t you think?’
    Alec nodded rather reluctantly.
    ‘And most important of all,’ I went on, ‘there’s this question of Lollie being followed whenever she goes out and eavesdropped upon whenever she’s in the house. Do you see?’
    ‘Ah, of course,’ said Alec, who usually does see; it is one of the most comfortable aspects of our collaborations. ‘It must be one of the servants, doing his master’s bidding. Well, all right, you’ve convinced me.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, to be a fly on the wall though, Dandy, when you’re . . . when you’re busy . . . What exactly does a lady’s maid do all day?’
    ‘Don’t ask me!’ I said, rolling my eyes in not-completely-mock horror. ‘I have tomorrow and Sunday cramming with Grant – and won’t she adore it! – but for now I can’t imagine.’
    ‘I’m almost tempted to join you just to watch the fun. Would I make a footman?’ Alec stood up and came to offer me the cigarette box, bending over from the waist like a jointed wooden soldier and clicking his heels together with a beaming smile.
    ‘You look like a Punch cartoon of a bad waiter,’ I told him. ‘And anyway, there isn’t another opening. The Balfours, if you please, have twelve servants in their Edinburgh house, and goodness knows how many more in the Highlands.’
    ‘Twelve?’ said Alec, standing up straight again and frowning. He ran Dunelgar on seven and a few locals for the rough work. ‘What does he do, this Pip? Some kind of merchant or something, is he?’ He sat back down again and knocked out his pipe.
    ‘Well now,’ I said. ‘ He doesn’t do anything, but listen to this and tell me if you don’t agree that some earlier Balfour must have sold his soul to the devil.’ I lit my cigarette and sat back to regale him with the history of the Balfours as it had been told to me. (The last thirty minutes of Miss Rossiter’s interview had