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SIDNEY GRICE TURNED the key with great care not to rattle the lock, and inched the handle anti-clockwise to open the door, so slowly that I had difficulty seeing it move at all and found myself looking about me at nothing. When he had a three-inch gap Mr G brought the dental mirror, clipped it to the end of his cane and inspected the stairwell before flinging the door violently open.
‘Do not be afraid,’ he bawled down the opening, ‘unless you murdered your master in which case you ought to be terrified.’
I listened but heard no response.
The steps were narrow and uncarpeted. They ran directly under the main staircase, into a whitewashed rectangular passage which must have been built directly beneath the hall but was much less wide. At the far end was a small, high-barred window through which I glimpsed a pair of clogs shuffling by.
The first doorway led into the servants’ dining area with eight wooden chairs round a well-worn pine table. At the head sat a thin woman, verging upon being elderly, wearing a simple black dress and eating a slab of mutton. She looked up as we came in.
‘Name?’ Sidney Grice pounced towards her.
The servant half-rose with great difficulty. She was having trouble using her right arm and I remembered Cherry telling us about the head injury inflicted by Nathan.
‘I am Mrs Amelia Emmett, the housekeeper,’ she declared proudly and toppled back into her seat. Her cheeks were grey and cross-hatched as if with a fine quill dipped in red ink.
A narrow opening led out of the room behind her right shoulder and she faced a closed door on the other side of the room.
Mr G tapped the quarry-stone floor with his cane. ‘I shall do one thing and you shall do the other.’ He put his ear to the whitewashed wall and rapped with his knuckles. ‘I shall provisionally accept the truth of your statement and you shall stay exactly where you are with both of your unsightly proletarian hands resting on the superior surface of the table.’
Mrs Emmett clucked indignantly. ‘I am in charge here and you cannot give me orders.’
My guardian’s lips elevated at the corners.
‘And I am the man whose investigations may entrust you to the tender care of Mr William Marwood, the staggeringly incompetent official hangman.’ Mr G ambled behind her.
‘I ’aven’t done nothing.’ Mrs Emmett’s haughty manner and sham-refined accent temporarily collapsed into consternation.
‘Your flimsy attempts at protestation will not rescue you from his attentions if I decide that you have indeed not done nothing.’ Sidney Grice bowed until his head was alongside hers and whispered. ‘Whilst there is breath in your clumsily constructed and poorly maintained body, you would be well advised to do as you are told.’
‘Oh.’ The housekeeper hugged her bosom as if it were a baby.
‘What did Mr Mortlock ingest for his last meal?’ Sidney Grice looked under an upturned bowl.
‘Hagfish stew.’
‘Sounds delicious,’ I muttered.
‘And so it was.’ Mrs Emmett bridled. ‘Mr Hesketh had a taste and said how sorry he was to be missing it, and that young police officer ate a whole bowl of it the next morning.’
‘Are you the only one down here?’ I asked.
‘I was a minute ago.’ Mrs Emmett eyed me coldly. ‘And who might you be?’
‘I might be anyone.’ I helped myself to a chunk of meat from the carving board. ‘But, fortunately for me, I am Mr Grice’s assistant, Miss Middleton.’
I popped the mutton in my mouth. It was dry and not very fresh, but nonetheless a welcome change from the vegetarian fare of Gower Street.
‘Oh yes – I’ve read about you – the downy one.’ Mrs Emmett drew the joint away.
‘Dowdy,’ my guardian corrected.
‘That as well,’ she conceded.
The meat took a lot more chewing than I had anticipated and if I had been by myself I might have spat it out, but I covered my mouth and said, ‘I think the word you are looking for is doughty.’
‘Doubting what?’ Mrs Emmett scratched her scalp with her fork and I began to think she might make a good companion for Molly.
I tucked the mutton into my cheek pouch and went to the door. ‘Did this used to be the room of your predecessor, Amelia Seagrove?’
‘What if it was?’ Her jaw jutted indignantly. ‘It’s mine now.’
‘Then it must also be the room she died in.’
Nancy Seagrove, the housekeeper, was killed with a single blow of a broad long-bladed knife, probably the same carver that was used on the other victims, George Pound told us. It went through her neck from right to left and ripped into her pillow, so she must have been lying on her left side. There was no sign of a struggle or even movement. She would have died instantly in her sleep. She was the lucky one.