GERRUND STRAIGHTENED HIS peaked cap.
‘How do I look, milady?’
Quite the Sullivan, Ruby said.
John L. Sullivan was an American boxer and she had met him in Sunrise Over Mars Manor.
I did not just meet him, she protested. I rescued him, though he always denies it.
Gerrund looked rather smart in his grey uniform, but I was not going to tell him that. He was vain enough about his appearance already.
‘Like an emergency man,’ I said, not sure if that was the term I was seeking, and he sniffed.
‘Here goes,’ he said as we ascended the steps.
‘Five minutes,’ I reminded him.
Gerrund marched straight on while I turned right along the side of the house to stand at the corner out of the line of vision, I hoped, but within earshot, though I could not hear the bell.
‘Good day, miss,’ Gerrund said. ‘We have had a report of an electrical leak in the area and I need to check your basement.’
‘We haven’t had any problems with it,’ a voice I recognised as Matilda’s protested and I could hear Gerrund sucking through his teeth even from six yards away.
‘You wouldn’t,’ he assured her, ‘until it’s too late.’
‘How d’you mean?’
A black-and-white cat appeared around the side of the house.
‘It builds up,’ my man was explaining, ‘until your whole house fills with electrical gas.’
‘I haven’t smelt anything.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ he assured her again. ‘It’s not like coal gas. It just gathers. The silent menace we call it.’
What a cheek! I had written The Silent Menace and Ted Wilton had assured me that it was almost publishable.
‘Then, when it gets concentrated enough,’ my man continued, ‘the slightest thing – just one flash of your beautiful eyes – and up it goes – BOOM!’
‘Do you really think they are?’ Matilda simpered, more interested in the compliment than the threat of an imminent explosion.
‘The loveliest eyes that ever graced a room,’ he assured her, which I thought was laying it a bit thick, especially as he had pinched the line from My Gorgeous Galway Girl, but women, myself included, and men, come to think of it, will believe almost anything as long as it is flattering.
‘But what can be done?’ she asked.
‘I need to come in,’ Gerrund rattled his metal toolbox, ‘and test for it with my sensitive scientific equipment.’
The cat tiptoed towards me.
‘Welllll…’ She hesitated.
‘Starting in the cellar,’ he told her. ‘It usually seeps up from the underground pipes.’
‘Welll…’
‘And I shall need you to come with me because I am unfamiliar with the layout of the property.’
‘Well…’
‘And also,’ Gerrund continued, ‘I am frightened of spiders so I may need you to hold my hand.’
‘You’re awful!’ Matilda cried, as if being awful were by far the best thing that a man could be.
‘Given half a chance,’ he agreed.
I would have shut the door in the face of any man who tried that one with me – unless he were very good looking and she probably thought that he was. Gerrund had a rugged quality that appealed to most women though not, of course, to me.
I prefer Anthony Appleton, Ruby said.
He is all yours, I told her, regretting it instantly for any man with whom she fell in love had to die and there had been nine so far.
‘You’d better come in,’ Matilda decided, and I doubted that she would have let him leave by that stage.
The cat strolled by.
‘Good morning, Chaos,’ I whispered but, my not being edible, he curled his tail contemptuously. ‘I have a title,’ I informed him, omitting to mention that it was only a courtesy one, to make it quite clear how important I was, but nobody – not the Empress of India nor the man in Bury St Edmunds who makes the finest kid gloves in East Anglia – is as important as a cat. He ambled past me, his nose in the air.
Gerrund, when I peered over, was stepping into the house.
‘You lead the way,’ he said. ‘I’ll shut the door.’
And he did not, I trusted, without leaving it off the latch.
I checked my watch. Time passed but boredom overtook it, closely followed by an itchy right foot. I glanced at my watch again and wondered if it were broken and whether I had time to take off my boot, but decided that I did not.
I looked back towards the gardens. They were busy. A red-haired, spangle-suited man was strumming a banjo and assuring us in falsetto tones that he wished he was in Dixie.
So do I, I thought because his voice was almost as out of tune as his instrument. People were shying away but a lady in white tossed a coin into his hat. Perhaps she was hoping that, if she encouraged him to continue, she would get the gardens to herself.
The minute hand of my watch moved on reluctantly.
I went to the door and turned the handle. Gerrund, as usual, had not let me down. Matilda was giggling somewhere distant and, presumably, semi-subterranean. I poked my head through, and Chaos shot past me into the hall.
‘Come back,’ I whispered, but cats are not renowned for their dog-like obedience. He ran into the front sitting room and under a sofa and I did not have the time to coax him out.
I had not noticed how noisy my leather soles were until it was important that they were not. Cautiously I crepitated to the stairs and up them. At least the treads did not creak, I was relieved to find until, my having reminded them, they all started to do so. It was unlikely that I could be heard from the basement, I told myself, but it had been unlikely that I would discover a prehistoric flint mine at Thetbury Hall by falling down it until I did. Luckily I was holding my father’s hand at the time. Unluckily the jarring dislocated my shoulder.
All the doors of the first floor were closed, which was a shame because I enjoy a good nose around other people’s homes. I like to see what they have in the rooms they do not open to visitors. That was how I discovered Rodney Pelham’s plan to assassinate his wife with a mechanical doll. He had been so preoccupied in its construction that he was not aware that she had died three years previously.
The mantles were turned down but plenty of light came through the back window, frosted with an etched fern pattern. The wallpaper was nice with little blue butterflies flitting between little pink flowers.
Nice does not mean anything, Ruby criticised, adding editing to her already astonishing list of talents.
Well it does not mean nasty, I argued though I took her point.
The next flight, which could probably have squealed at full volume without alerting anybody, was silent. The wallpaper was nice on the second floor too, as was the majolica jardiniere that I brushed against, steadying the wobbling plant pot just in time to stop it toppling over.
All the doors were closed here as well, including the one at the bottom of the last flight but again there was a rear window, etched in thistles this time.
The final flight was uncarpeted and the walls were distempered white, though scuffed and grubby in places where they had been brushed against over the years and by me that morning. I flicked my scarlet dress but the paint, so ready to quit the wall, had formed a firm attachment to my clothing.
There were no gas mantles on the top floor and no lamps hung from the hooks on the ceiling. All five doors were plain pine and they were closed too, but a skylight gave sufficient moss-filtered light for me to see clearly through the galaxy of dust hovering in the air. Servants would neither have the time nor the energy to perform anything other than essential cleaning in their own quarters.
I tried the first door – an iron lever handle, rather than the white porcelain balls on the lower storeys – and found a boxroom, empty but for one wall which was lined with steamer trunks piled two or three high. Through the cobweb-draped window I could make out the top of a fire escape.
There was a rocking horse in the next room. I had one of those and named her Penelope after Mrs Odysseus. She was my greatest treasure until I rode her down the main stairs. Penelope took them at a canter, I was thrilled to find, though less delighted to discover that, no matter how hard I hauled on her reins, she would not come to a halt.
The third room was half-filled with tea chests and had a long rack of coats and dresses that, presumably, Mrs Poynder did not intend to wear nor wish to give away. There was a silk taffeta ivory gown I would not have minded if it could be shortened and taken in.
Resisting the urge to try it on, I was turning the handle of the next door when I heard a small voice calling.
‘Is that you, Matilda?’
I put my ear to the woodwork but heard nothing other than the allegro beat of my heart. I opened the door. More boxes.
‘Tilly?’ A little louder and coming from the fifth door, I judged and made my way to it.
‘It might be,’ I said, which did not sound anything like as clever a response when I heard it aloud as I had imagined that it would, and Ruby piffed contemptuously to drive the point home.
‘Come in,’ the voice said and I turned the handle.
As I had half-expected this door did not open. I wiggled the handle because it is an essential element of being human to rattle uselessly at locked doors, that and shouting down telephones when you know you have lost the connection.
‘I have not got the key,’ I told her.
‘It must be somewhere,’ she said, like a tiresome adult when a tiresome child has lost a toy and added, even more tiresomely, ‘where did you leave it?’
Good question, Ruby commented.
No it is not.
One day I shall explain sarcasm to you, she promised.
Let me think, I huffed and, huffily, she did.
Dr Poynder would not have taken the key with him, nor would Matilda I reasoned; if either of them were out and there were a fire, the occupant would be trapped. I doubted that he would entrust the key to the kitchen staff. If it were me I would not leave it downstairs in case I forgot it and had to traipse all the way down and back up again. I would keep it nearby.
There was no furniture that it could be put upon or into, and no hooks other than the ones on the ceiling and there were only cobwebs hanging from those. I stood on tiptoe, reached up and touched the top of the frame. My fingertips came away clean and I could not imagine anybody dusting up there unless the ledge was in use. I ran my fingers along and felt it.
‘Ping!’ I breathed.
What on earth is that supposed to mean?
It is an expression of satisfied surprise.
Do not put it into my mouth when I manage to escape.
Do not assume that you will.
I inserted the key and turned it.
‘I am coming in,’ I warned in case the owner of that voice was standing or crouching just behind the door, though her voice had sounded further away.
The room had been dark with the curtains drawn but I could see fairly well with the light going in from behind me. There was an iron-framed bed, ornamented with enamelled flowers, against the middle of the wall straight ahead of me and the figure of a woman lay upon it, propped up on two pillows.
‘Good morning, Mrs Poynder,’ I said and stepped inside.