Death Sits Down to Dinner (16 page)

“Sir Reginald was seated at the bottom of the table, Jackson, at the far end,” Lady Montfort reminded her. “And don’t forget the search for white spirit.”

“Yes, m’lady, I could wait in the dining room for a while to account for the time. I wonder how long it takes to stab someone?”

“Not long, done in the blink of an eye.” This came too quickly for Mrs. Jackson’s comfort.

“But wouldn’t the murderer have blood on them, m’lady?”

“Not if you were quick! Well actually I really don’t know!” Lady Montfort had the grace to look embarrassed.

If someone was stabbed in the heart, surely there would be blood everywhere?
Mrs. Jackson asked, “Was it all over the dining room, m’lady?”

“The front of his evening clothes had a saturated patch around the handle of the knife, not as much as I would have thought.”

“Was there blood on the walls and the carpet, m’lady?”

“Good heavens no, Jackson,” Lady Montfort exclaimed at the splashy vulgarity of the idea. “And no sign of a struggle either. All this is beside the point really; perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves.

“What we need to find out is why Adelaide is so frantic about talking to a policeman. Why she concealed a photograph of Sir Reginald under her pillow, if it was Sir Reginald, and why it took her twenty minutes to go downstairs, pick up a bottle of white spirit, and return to the salon. And also,” she pointed to her timetable, “we need to know exactly where the servants were between a quarter to eleven and half past eleven. You see I have gaps here for the servants, except for the Clumsy Footman and the butler. And we really should fill them in.”

Mrs. Jackson could quite see why Lady Montfort wanted to know these things; she wanted to know them too. But the little she knew of Miss Gaskell had made a strong impression.

“Is it possible that someone as young and scared as Miss Gaskell would have what it took to stab her employer’s oldest and closest friend in the middle of a dinner party, m’lady?” she asked.

“Perhaps she had fallen for Sir Reginald and he wouldn’t have her, which might explain the photograph under her pillow. Although how a lovely young thing like Adelaide could be interested in a dull as ditchwater old fogy like Sir Reginald rather eludes me at the moment,” Lady Montfort said.

Completely missing the point,
thought Mrs. Jackson,
that Sir Reginald was exceedingly rich and without a wife, whereas Adelaide Gaskell was exceedingly poor with only the prospect of a life of servitude and devotion to one old lady after another to look forward to, unless she married.

But Lady Montfort needed her attention: “And now I come to the strangest part of this situation, and something which might or might not have anything to do with this distressing business. Captain Wildman-Lushington, who was also at the party, if you remember, Jackson…” her fingertip beat a rapid little tattoo on the chart next to his name, “was killed yesterday when he was trying to land his aeroplane. He was thrown clear, but his body was found yards away with a broken neck. But we’ll leave that aside for a while until I hear from Lord Haversham about the aeroplane and whether it was tampered with. I merely wanted to keep you informed that there might be another murder.”

Quite likely this aeroplane crash was just an accident
, thought Mrs. Jackson. Opinion among her fellow servants at Iyntwood was loud and sure on this particular point: flying was dangerous. “Did,” she ventured aloud to her ladyship, “the flying accident tie in with the murder?”

“I’m not sure at the moment. It might perhaps be a cover-up, especially if the murder had been observed by Captain Wildman-Lushington.

“Now to work, Jackson. Let’s divvy up our tasks. Did you bring your notebook? Well then, here is paper and pencil. Let’s assign what each of us must do.”

And with all the youthful enthusiasm and gaiety of someone who is about to play a parlor game, Lady Montfort was up out of her seat and produced the necessary materials for their list-making.

“I am to find out whether Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Tricklebank provided an alibi for each other downstairs in the outer hall after they left the dining room. Then I have to think a bit more about Captain Vetiver, as he is the only person with a connection to Miss Kingsley’s party, Eastchurch, and the RNAS, except of course for Mr. Churchill, and he doesn’t seem to count in this investigation.

“It would be useful to find out about blood. As you so sensibly pointed out, wouldn’t the murderer be covered in it? Perhaps I should ask Detective Hillary when I have the opportunity.”

On occasions like this, Lady Montfort always reminded Mrs. Jackson of a little bird. Propelled by the energy of her thoughts, she moved lightly about the room as she discarded ideas and picked up on the threads of others. Every so often she stopped short and seemed almost to burst into song when she had a breakthrough in her thinking.

“Now, Jackson, what about you?” Lady Montfort alighted next to her on the sofa. Mrs. Jackson was pleased that she wasn’t being told what to do.
At least I may come up with my own list then,
she thought.

“Well, m’lady, I will find out how Miss Gaskell’s morning with the police inspector went, and perhaps I can get her to talk about that photograph and find out if it is actually Sir Reginald. I will also check how long it takes to go between the salon upstairs and the dining room. I wonder too about Miss Kingsley at that time, as they were both away from the salon together for about five minutes.

“And then tomorrow afternoon I have to go to Kingsley House in South London and meet with the matron there. Several young boys are selected each year to be pages for the charity evening and it is usually Miss Gaskell’s job to interview them and choose three or four. But I am to do it in her place, so that might be useful.” Mrs. Jackson was quite pleased with her list. She paused, pencil poised, to see if Lady Montfort had anything to add to it.

“Oh indeed it will, Jackson. Do you think you can possibly find out where all Miss Kingsley’s servants at Chester Square were at the crucial time? Will it be difficult if they don’t talk about what happened?”

“Well, I’ll do my best. This might take a bit longer, m’lady, as I don’t want to upset anyone. They are such a closedmouth lot,” she said as she added a note to her list.

They both studiously jotted down their directions to themselves. And Lady Montfort said, more to herself than to her housekeeper, “This is all very jolly.” She did some underlining and then looked up. “And I’m going to the Royal Opera House with Lady Ryderwood and Mr. Greenberg tomorrow evening. We will be in Lady Shackleton’s box, so nice for us. It will be interesting to have a little talk with them and see if they can remember anything unusual about that evening.”

“Is Miss Melba singing, m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson wanted to show off her newfound knowledge.

“Sadly not, she rarely sings at the Royal Opera House these days. She’s in London en route to her native Australia to settle in Melbourne. No, it’s Luisa Tetrazzini singing the soprano role, and we are all thrilled to bits because Enrico Caruso is to be ‘Pinkerton.’”

“What opera are you going to, m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson wondered if one saw or listened to opera.

“
Madama Butterfly,
so there won’t be a dry eye in the house.”

Chapter Fourteen

The comfortable circumstances of the Chimney Sweep Boys charity were apparent in the well-kept grounds surrounding Kingsley House and its warm, clean, and well-furnished interior. Mrs. Jackson, who was a snob about architecture, living and working as she did in one of the most gracious Elizabethan houses England had to offer, could think of no better purpose for the overly ornate and architecturally hideous redbrick house than to house the young people lucky enough to be rescued from the degradation and fear provided by a life of poverty. It had been built in the neo-Gothic style so popular in the mid-1800s to gargantuan proportions, according to Miss Gaskell, for a retired West Indian sugar baron who had drunk away his fortune.

The resident matron for the charity was waiting for her in the heavily paneled hall. She was a tall, wide woman, with a well-fed red face and big arms crossed tightly in front of a bosom as wide and as deep as a bolster. She was tightly constrained within a navy-blue serge dress and a crisp white apron. For some reason she had chosen to include, as part of her uniform, a complicated white-starched and winged wimple of the sort worn by hospital nurses in religious houses, which stood out in crisp wings around her large head.

The matron introduced herself as Miss Biggleswade. As she pronounced her name she gave Mrs. Jackson a thorough once-over, her deep-set eyes taking in every detail from Mrs. Jackson’s elegant but simple hat to the quality of her neat little boots.
No doubt she has accurately pigeonholed me precisely for what I am,
Mrs. Jackson thought,
a working woman in the employ of a rich and established family
. She bore the matron’s scrutiny with her customary poise and felt a pang of sympathy for whoever had to work for the woman.

“Just call me Matron, Mrs. Jackson, everyone does here. I am solely responsible for the boys’ welfare in Kingsley House,” Miss Biggleswade explained as she labored up the well-worn, oak staircase. “I am responsible for the domestic side of things, and the boys’ behavior once they are finished with their schoolwork. With one hundred and ninety young boys, I can assure you I have my hands full with the little scamps.” She lowered her voice to a more confiding tone: “And what with all this bother over Sir Reginald’s accidental death and policemen talking to the headmaster and his staff, I am behindhand this morning, dear. So it’s take us as you find us, I’m afraid.”

Matron toiled up another flight of stairs; her corsets creaked ominously as she reached the penultimate step and paused to catch her breath, the crisp angles of her wimple shaking from the effort of her climb.

“All the boys are at their lessons on the ground floor of the house for the rest of the morning. So we can catch our breath and get to know one another.” And on she lumbered to open the door of her room.

“Please come into my little home away from home, and we will have a nice cup of tea, dear. Then I’ll call in the boys who have excelled both in their schoolwork and their good conduct and you can talk to them in turn.” She ushered Mrs. Jackson into a comfortably sized room so stuffed with furniture and whatnots supporting a mass of bric-a-brac and curios that Mrs. Jackson felt stifled the moment she set foot in it. Matron, now quite startlingly short of breath, nevertheless talked on, pausing to inhale in great wheezing gasps, her face red and mottled from the exertion of her climb.

“Miss Gaskell always made what I thought were the strangest choices in her selection of pages for the charity evening.” A deep sniff of disapproval. “But I can see you are a sensible woman.” And Mrs. Jackson understood that her conversation with Matron if handled with the right touch would be as informative as anyone could hope for.

They settled themselves in lavender and pink chintz chairs with deep flounces, and tea was brought to them by a young maid. Matron poured milk into teacups, and had yet to pick up a large teapot adorned with lurid pink roses, when something occurred to her.

“Oh, just one moment, please excuse me, dear. I almost forgot.” She thrust herself out of her chair, trundled across the room, and opened the door. Leaning through its embrasure, she called up the corridor, “Symes, Symes? Come here, boy.” And after a moment a small, nervous, and sharp-eyed little boy appeared in the doorway and stood dutifully to attention before her, his thin, mouse-color hair, skinny arms, and knock-knees assurances of an early life of deprivation.

“You can cut along to your classroom, Symes, and if I catch you running in the dormitory corridor again it will be bread and water for a week.” She reached out a sturdy arm and pushed the boy in the direction of the stairs, and with a fearful nod he set off as quickly as he could without breaking into a run.

“Have to have my eye on them all the time, you see, Mrs. Jackson. It takes some of them a long time to understand the importance of obeying rules, coming from their disadvantaged beginnings. It will be the third time this week I have had to put that boy in the corner for running. We never beat boys in Kingsley House.” She went on virtuously and Mrs. Jackson was careful to keep her face impassive. “A good whipping never works with their kind. But most of them learn to toe the line quickly if you deprive them of the one thing they count on here: three square meals a day and hot milk at bedtime. Now where were we? Ah yes, this sad business of Sir Reginald. Were you there, dear, at the time I mean?”

It had been a long time since anyone had dared to call Mrs. Jackson “dear” and Matron had committed this blunder several times, but Mrs. Jackson chose to ignore her presumptuous gaffe. “No, I wasn’t, Matron, I am just…”

“I heard all about it from the chauffeur; Macleod is a terrible old gossip, all chauffeurs are of course. But that’s servants these days. Now, how is Miss Gaskell? I heard she had been taken quite ill.”

“Nearly recovered, she…”

“Not a robust girl, I’m afraid, which makes extra work for poor Miss Kingsley. I advised Miss Kingsley not to employ such a young and flighty girl as a companion. Choose someone solid, I said, someone dependable, not some flibbertigibbet, always making eyes at the gentlemen.” She put four sugar lumps into her teacup.

“She is certainly a pretty girl,” Mrs. Jackson managed to contribute.

Matron made a loud, derisive sound as she turned her immense, creaking bulk in her chair toward the tea tray and seized a plate of iced fairy cakes. “Ah yes, most conscious of her appeal is Miss Gaskell, always on the lookout for an opportunity, that one.” She waved the plate toward Mrs. Jackson.

“Not for me, thank you. Yes, I suppose that is a risk with employing young and pretty girls.” Mrs. Jackson felt disloyal to Miss Gaskell as she offered encouragement to a woman who needed none at all where her judgment of the young companion was concerned.