Death Sits Down to Dinner (24 page)

He did that on purpose,
thought Mrs. Jackson;
he wanted to see their reactions. The police always do that, take people by surprise and shock them into betraying some emotion or blurting something out.

The sergeant, pleased at the uproar he had caused, waited for it to die down before he started another one.

“The other person I want to see is your new footman, your second footman, working name of James, real name Eddy Porter—like to have a word with this young man first off.” The sergeant’s manner was genial, as if he anticipated a pleasant, informal chat with clumsy Eddy Porter.

Eliza piped up, “I think James is cleaning shoes in the scullery. I’ll go and find him if you like.”

“Yes, Eliza, if you would, please,” Martha said, quickly giving her permission before she was upstaged by the policeman. “When you say ‘mortuary’ you mean that Len is dead, don’t you, Sergeant?” She continued, not put off by the repressive look he gave her, “I mean you said ‘mortuary,’ so of course you think you have found the body of Mr. Crutchley. I am right, aren’t I?”

The policeman ignored her and turned to Eliza, who had come back from a quick tour of all the rooms belowstairs.

“He’s not down here. And he’s not outside having a cigarette. Do you want me to run over to the mews, Martha, and see if he’s taking a break with Macleod?”

Martha nodded, “Yes, and please be quick about it, Eliza. The sergeant wants a word with him and we don’t want to keep him waiting here too long.” But when Eliza came back and said that James was not at the mews, and after she and John had searched through the house, they came back to report that James was nowhere to be found.

“His uniform is hanging up in his room, and his personal things have gone,” said John, looking guilty, as if he had helped spirit the other man away.

“Then he’s scarpered,” said Martha. She turned to the policeman. “Don’t s’pose you have another footman lying around in your mortuary then, Sergeant?”

The sergeant unbuttoned the top right breast pocket of his uniform jacket and pulled out a small notebook and a lead pencil.

“So you think it’s Leonard Crutchley then?” Martha persisted. She was not going to give up, Mrs. Jackson thought with admiration.

“We have to have a formal identification first of all, miss, but certainly the man we have at the mortuary is a footman. He is wearing livery and it is exactly the same livery as the one this gentleman has on here.” He glanced at John and then past him toward the butler.

“Mr. Jenkins, shall I take John here along with me for identification purposes?” The policeman was correct in assessing that the elderly man was going to slow his day down considerably, as the butler was holding out his waistcoat watch to show it was certainly not the correct time of day to identify bodies.

Mrs. Jackson was quite distressed for Mr. Jenkins. His direction of the servants seemed to grow more tenuous each day and she was growing accustomed to finding him gazing vacantly out a window in one of the many rooms in the house. At her approach he would turn to her with a look of such frightened surprise that she was reminded of the White Rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland.
When she stated her reason for interrupting his reverie, he would pull out his waistcoat watch and without even looking at it say, “Really, my dear young lady, that’s impossible, I believe I would have remembered.” It sometimes took all her restraint not to reply,
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,
a perception that she thought was not too wide off the mark.

Then, to Mrs. Jackson’s relief, Mr. Jenkins pulled himself together.

“Absolutely not, Sergeant, I will accompany you myself. John, my overcoat, gloves, and bowler if you please, and while I am gone please make sure that Miss Kingsley is not troubled in any way. Now then, Sergeant, I am ready. And we will use the servants’ entrance on our way out, and perhaps you would kindly remember to use that door when you come to this house next time.” And correctly attired for cold weather, the elderly butler led the way to the area door.

Chapter Twenty

The servants sat on in the Chester Square servants’ hall as they waited for Mr. Jenkins’s return. John was sent up to retrieve luncheon trays. He returned and they ate their dinner in silence. Mrs. Jackson picked her way through an insipid mutton stew and idly wondered what delicacy had been served up in the servants’ hall at Montfort House.
It certainly wouldn’t be anything as bland and tasteless as this mess,
she thought, pushing aside a half-cooked dumpling and eating around watery, overboiled cabbage. Now that they were gathered together, the tight-lipped silence among the Kingsley servants, which had prevailed when she first arrived in the house, returned. When Eliza’s distress abated enough for her to ask through a stuffed nose what could have happened to the new footman Eddy Porter, Martha turned such a frowning look on her that she lowered her eyes and returned to her weighty treacle pudding and lumpy custard.

Mrs. Jackson decided that the moment Mr. Jenkins came back to the house and she knew whether he had been able to identify Leonard Crutchley’s body, she would call it a day and return to Montfort House. She hoped that Mr. Jenkins had his wits about him, because livery alone would not be enough to identify a body that had been in the Thames for four or five days.

The kitchen maids cleared the table; their noisy chatter over the sound of running water and the clatter of pots and pans that accompanied washing up seemed even louder amid the expectant silence in the servants’ hall as they waited on. John left for a cigarette in the area outside the servants’ entrance, and Martha instructed Eliza to make tea. The racket in the scullery came to an end, and the kitchen maids came back into the room looking apologetic and sat down with them.

And finally the area door opened and slammed shut. Mr. Jenkins had returned. Every one of the servants stood up as he came into the servants’ hall, but none of them spoke. Mrs. Jackson thought it said a great deal for their respect that they waited for the butler to speak first. His trip to the mortuary had obviously been harrowing: his face was gray and pinched with cold, and there was a look of miserable despair about him. If they all hoped to be informed whether he had been able to make an identification, they were to be disappointed. Mr. Jenkins nodded to them briefly and without saying a word walked down the corridor to his pantry and closed the door.

“Oh good Lord, it was Len,” said Martha, and she put her large hands over her face. “What is the world coming to? This will be too much for Mr. Jenkins, I know it will.”

“Make some tea for Mr. Jenkins please, Eliza,” Mrs. Jackson said as she got to her feet and prepared to follow the butler. And to the cook who had poked her head out of her kitchen door: “Cook, will you arrange for someone to cut some sandwiches as quickly as you can, unless you have something hot and nourishing on hand, like soup. The chicken soup from upstairs luncheon will do perfectly. If there is any left, I will take it in to Mr. Jenkins.” Mrs. Jackson wasn’t going to have any more of this pact of silence and closed doors; she was far from being an impatient woman but she had no intention of waiting around for a couple of days for what had happened at the mortuary to reveal itself. She did not catch anyone’s eye because she felt the looks that were being given one to another among them at her having instructed the cook to serve the butler soup made for Miss Kingsley.
Too bad if they don’t like it
, she said to herself.
I’m not leaving here until I know, and that poor old man needs something a bit better than dreary reheated mutton stew inside him.

When a tray was produced with a large bowl of soup, sandwiches, and a pot of tea, she carried it through to the butler’s pantry to find Mr. Jenkins sitting at his desk, still wearing his bowler and scarf, his topcoat thrown carelessly aside over a chair.

Violent death had come to Chester Square not once but twice, and the stress was taking its toll on the elderly members of the household. Miss Kingsley was still shut up in her room and was not at home to anyone who called. Her butler, who after the death of Sir Reginald had been visibly fraying around the edges, after identifying the murdered body of his comrade was beginning to unravel.

It was distressing to see him sitting at his desk cautiously sipping a tiny glass of whiskey. Offering a cup of hot sweet tea seemed inadequate and silly at a moment like this. Mrs. Jackson cleared a space on the desk and quickly laid out a napkin and a spoon. Then she placed a bowl of fragrant chicken soup in front of him and a small plate of sandwiches next to the bowl.

“You’ve missed your midday dinner, Mr. Jenkins, so here, take a bite of sandwich and then eat some soup.” And with that she sat down and waited. Severe shock often increased the appetite and she knew she must be patient and wait for him to eat.

He barely acknowledged her, but to her relief he took a tentative bite of his sandwich, grunted, and took a larger bite. He chewed voraciously and sipped his whiskey, and when he had finished that he picked up his spoon and started to eat the soup, taking an occasional bite of sandwich. Mrs. Jackson saw a little color return to a face that had been the color of putty.

“You may take the tea away, Mrs. Jackson,” he said as she moved toward the tray. “I don’t want any of that slop today.” And he poured himself another whiskey. And still Mrs. Jackson said nothing.

“They always forget to put mustard on the ham,” was his assessment of his sandwiches as he finished them off, and poured a third whiskey.

Mrs. Jackson judged that now was the time, before he finished off his glass.

“Were you able to make an identification of the man at the mortuary, Mr. Jenkins?” she asked.

“Yes, Mrs. Jackson, I was. It was difficult because the body had been in the water for several days; he had been washed downriver to Tilbury. He was found last night … poor lad.”

“So it was Mr. Crutchley, was it?”

“Yes, it was Len, it was undoubtedly Len.” His voice sank low and for the first time he allowed himself to express a little of the emotion he felt. “That boy had worked for me for ten years, from hall boy to second footman and on up. I trained him myself. He was only twenty-four.”

Mrs. Jackson saw his sorrowing face and knew how terrible it must have been to identify the body of someone who had been part of the old man’s family.
Those who work for us always become like our own,
she thought, as she remembered the housemaids she had trained, the cooks she had befriended, and the footmen who had come and gone in her life over the years. But however much she empathized with the tired, saddened old man sitting across the desk from her, grieving over the loss of someone whom he had been fond of, she had to know more.

“You say he was in the river; had he drowned?”

“No, not drowned. The police say he was dead when he went into the Thames. He had been hit over the head and his body thrown into the river. Thrown there like rubbish.” Mr. Jenkins’s hands shook and he finally looked up at her.

“He was murdered, Mrs. Jackson, waylaid on his way back to the house from running an errand, knocked out cold, robbed, and thrown away. And I thought, God forgive me, that he had run off. He was a straightforward, law-abiding lad with no vices. He worked hard, he was respectful to those he worked with, and a good son to his mother. I was training him up to take over my job when I retired. And I thought he had just run off. I never dreamt…” His voice trailed off and he stared across his desk at her, looking for reassurance that the world he knew was not crumbling away. But she had nothing to offer, so she nodded her reassurance that the shock would wear off and in time he would accept this loss. Then she noticed that his pale, watery eyes were losing focus, he was withdrawing into himself. The events of the last few days had been too much, this second murder had come as a terrible blow, and unable to find his equilibrium, he was staggering, reeling at the loss of a young man he had cared about.

Mrs. Jackson got up from her chair and walked around the desk. She took the glass from his hand, as whiskey couldn’t help him now. She gently removed his bowler hat from his head, and he was hardly aware that she did so. She put a comforting arm around his shoulders. How long she stood there she didn’t know, but after a while she rang for John. She met him outside the butler’s pantry and told him to help the old man to bed.

“Light a fire in his room and keep him warm, on no account must he get cold. If you can, it would be a good idea to sit with him through the night, or at least check up on him, he has had a terrible shock. And yes,” she answered his look of silent inquiry, “yes, it was Leonard Crutchley. Murdered. And now I want you to tell me something, John. Be quite straightforward about your answer, please.”

She left Chester Square twenty minutes later, coat buttoned up tightly to her neck, her scarf wrapped up to her ears and her hat pulled down low over her brows. She walked rapidly and all the way she thought of nothing at all, she was aware only of her steps ringing out on the hard pavement and her breath clouding the air as she walked. It took her exactly fifteen minutes before she ran lightly down the area steps and through the scullery door into the servants’ hall of Montfort House.

There was the usual clamor belowstairs at Montfort House, but after the repressive atmosphere at Chester Square, Mrs. Jackson welcomed the relaxed gaiety of the group. The second footman lowered his voice the moment she walked through the door, and the pretty little housemaid stopped talking in midsentence as she took her place at the table. Mrs. Jackson felt quite sad that she was the reason for their silence. She had evidently established a reputation with the younger servants as a crabbed old spinster.

Ginger, however, smiled and said, “Good evening, Mrs. Jackson, Percy and Annie are going out to the Picture Palace to see the new Mary Pickford film. It’s come all the way from America, what’s it called again?” She turned to the second footman, who glanced sideways out of the corners of his eyes at Mrs. Jackson before he answered.