Death Sits Down to Dinner (7 page)

“As long as that’s all she does.” She heard his exasperation, but it was resigned exasperation. “As long as you are both busy with the simple pleasures of the Christmas season and not off together scouting around for clues.”

Well for pity’s sake,
thought Clementine,
how could he make us both sound so vulgar? Like two prying and poking old ladies.
She remembered how restrained, methodical, and sensitive they had both been not to transcend the bounds of propriety when her husband’s nephew, Teddy Mallory, had been so horribly murdered. How they had collected every scrap of information, every tiny detail, without asking direct questions while the entire household both above and below stairs had been thrown into confusion and chaos by the most bungling and intrusive of police inquiries. An investigation headed up by a man with an ax to grind against the aristocracy as he trampled hither and yon, without making a speck of progress, always ready to arrest the wrong man especially if he came from the upper class. It had taken skill, intelligence, and intuition to piece together those scrupulously gathered remnants of information. And then Mrs. Jackson, in one brilliant stroke, had found the last piece to their puzzle and created a whole and perfect picture of what had happened on the night Teddy Mallory had been so brutally killed. After which Clementine, observing strict gender protocol, had dutifully taken their information to Lord Montfort, so that through him Chief Constable Colonel Valentine had brought the culprit to bear in all official correctness. And Clementine and Mrs. Jackson had gone quietly about their everyday lives as if nothing had happened at all.

Her mind was superbly alert now.
Funny how that happens; you feel quite sleepy, ready to say good night, and then you get annoyed about something, and there you are as bright as day.

“I think that’s less than fair, Ralph,” she said with genuine reproach. “We did nothing that could possibly be construed as unconventional; it was you and Colonel Valentine who made the arrest.”

“Yes, it was. And I would be utterly grateful if it was Detective Inspector Hillary who made the next one. This is a different situation entirely and I am entirely relieved that you see it that way too.”

Chapter Six

The next afternoon, Clementine returned home rather confused after her visit to Hermione Kingsley. Not surprisingly, the old lady had rallied; Miss Kingsley was of a generation that did not allow disaster to affect the standards of behavior. Personal distress was best kept tightly under wraps, concealed under a mask of locked-down composure.

Correct deportment aside, the elderly woman’s face was leached of all color, her skin almost transparent, Clementine observed as they sat in the drawing room to drink tea. There was a feeling of the absent about Hermione, as if she didn’t quite register where she was. Clementine glanced over at the butler, Jenkins, who appeared to have suffered the worse from the garish business of Sir Reginald’s being stabbed to death in his mistress’s house. If Hermione was temporarily absent, her poor old butler had never quite returned from his shock of last night.

Jenkins stood in the doorway to the drawing room, watching over the Clumsy Footman, who had blundered so badly the night before as he served coffee. The older man’s large, imposing head was held erect, but Clementine saw that his hands were trembling slightly as they hung by his sides, and she could not decide whether this was due to age or to anxiety. And there appeared to be a strange, rather vacant look in his eye, which struck her as a bit disturbing.

But the reason Clementine came away from Chester Square, puzzled and perplexed, was Hermione’s complete refusal to talk about the preceding evening. She did not acknowledge in any way that a murder had been committed in the dining room of her house and, what was even more worrying, did not refer to the evening at all. With increasing concern she realized that Hermione had taken completely to heart Churchill’s instructions that Sir Reginald’s death not be discussed among her household and guests. She had apparently dismissed the incident completely from her mind. Her party for Winston was something that had never happened.
How extraordinary,
Clementine thought. Sir Reginald had been a friend of Hermione for years, the mainstay of her charity, raising thousands of pounds over the decades and acting on her behalf in the House on every reform that affected the lives of the children and orphans of the impoverished. Their friendship had been so close over the years that if Hermione hadn’t been so much older than Sir Reginald, everyone would have fully expected them to marry. Yet, for the duration of their afternoon together, Hermione’s lips were compressed in a thin line on the subject of her friend’s death. She had kept the conversation exclusively on the topic of her charity evening, even though the man who had worked unstintingly for its cause had been killed in her house.

Clementine had been quite ready to follow the old lady’s lead; it was important to bide one’s time if you wanted information. And so the two of them had sipped tea, nibbled around the edges of their hot buttered toast, and kept their conversation focused on the evening that would take place next week, with or without the sterling efforts of Hermione’s paid companion, Adelaide Gaskell.

“How is Miss Gaskell?” Clementine had been quick to ask this question, since it did not trespass on the forbidden matter.

“Poor young girl, her head cold has settled in her chest. I’m quite sure she has bronchitis. Dr. Brewster came over this morning and has prescribed linctus for her. Now she must stay in bed and rest, he says, otherwise she might well contract congestion in the lungs.” The tired old eyes blinked twice but Clementine did not take this as regret for Hermione’s selfish behavior of the night before.

“How will you manage next week?” Clementine had finally ventured.

“Adelaide is a thorough young woman; she has kept records of all previous charity evenings. Jenkins will manage under her instruction.” She was firm on this point then, thought Clementine as her eyes swiveled over to the old man standing by the door, whose tremor, it seemed to her, was even more pronounced.

Now was the time that Clementine should have recommended moving the charity recital to Claridge’s Hotel, calling in the talented skills of Rosa Lewis, or suggested postponing the event, but she did no such thing.

“If I might make a suggestion, Hermione.” She cleared her throat. “I would be happy to send for Mrs. Jackson. She is extraordinarily efficient, has arranged both our summer and hunt balls year after year. Each one a resounding success, as I am sure you will remember.”

The old lady leaned forward a little in her wing chair. “But can you spare her, Clementine? Won’t she be needed to organize Christmas?” Hermione made it sound as though Saint Nicholas relied entirely on Mrs. Jackson to ensure that his yuletide festivities were a single shared experience for every Christian soul worldwide.

“Yes, of course we can spare her. We will be here in town for the next week or so…” She didn’t say why, because they were not talking about murder investigations just yet.

“My dear Clementine, how generous of you; I would be so grateful. Mrs. Jackson is so impressively able. Would you telephone to her?” Like Clementine’s mother, Hermione still demonstrated the habits of an older generation, born in an age without newfangled contraptions. The telephone, an artifact with a dubious provenance, was a necessary evil Hermione had reluctantly installed last year, along with electric light in the servants’ hall. Even so, she never went near the instrument, which was kept in a far corner of the library behind a potted palm, dusty with disuse as there was an extension in the butler’s pantry. It was Jenkins who, like a medium in a séance, spoke to the telephone, her intermediary with the outside world.

Quite pleased to have accomplished her mission, and ready to get things moving, Clementine had rapidly finished her tea and taken herself off to Montfort House. She asked White to telephone to Iyntwood and instruct the butler, Hollyoak, so he might inform Mrs. Jackson to ready herself for a trip up to London.

“Mrs. Jackson will stay here at Montfort House and go over to Miss Kingsley in Chester Square every day to help with organizing her charity recital. I know we have a full house in the servants’ quarters, so I think it would be best if you put Mrs. Jackson in the old nursery. She will be comfortable there and it won’t inconvenience anyone.”

If White was surprised that Iyntwood’s housekeeper was to be lodged on the third floor of the house, rather than in the attic bedrooms on the fourth floor with the other female servants, he did not betray any curiosity. He merely bowed his handsome head and murmured that all would be taken care of. Then he asked where Mrs. Jackson would take her meals.

“Her meals?” Clementine was momentarily mystified. “She will take her breakfast with you belowstairs or in her room if she chooses to, her luncheon and dinner wherever she happens to be. I am sure Mrs. Jackson will tell you what she wants, White.”

“Then she will not take her meals with the family?” He obviously wanted to be clear on this point, she thought.

“Certainly not, White. Whatever gave you that idea?”

*   *   *

An unsuspecting Mrs. Jackson had awakened at the Talbots’ country house, Iyntwood, to a snow-filled morning and had decided to go for a nice long walk that afternoon with the dogs. From the moment she had pulled back her curtains and discovered that it had snowed in the night, she had decided to make the best of this glorious winter day. Perhaps she would stop off for a cup of tea with her friend Mr. Stafford, who would be busily at work drafting plans for an extension to Iyntwood’s rose garden to be started in the spring.

She always enjoyed a long walk in the first snowfall of the year, and at half past two she pulled on her stoutest boots and changed into a thick wool skirt. She buttoned her coat to her throat and wrapped a bright, cherry-red scarf, knitted for her birthday by the first housemaid Agnes, up around her neck and pulled a felt hat low over her ears, completely covering her glossy, dark auburn hair. She had just picked up her gloves when there was a knock on the door of her parlor.

“Come in,” she called, and the hall boy came into the room and stood respectfully in front of her.

“Mr. Hollyoak says good afternoon, Mrs. Jackson, and asks you to join him belowstairs.” The boy took in her bulky walking garb. “Soon as you can, he says.”

And that was it for her walk and her pleasant cup of tea with Mr. Stafford in his cottage on the edge of the park. She changed back into her pinstripe skirt and white blouse and went downstairs to the butler’s pantry. At five o’clock, after yet another change of clothes and dressed in her best dove-gray Sunday suit and hat, and carrying a small suitcase, she boarded the express train at Cryer’s Breech station for Marylebone.

There was a sense of adventure in the air as the train began to pick up speed, and Mrs. Jackson in her second-class compartment, prettily flushed from her run along the platform to catch the train, was quite pleased at her summons to London. It would be pleasant to do some shopping with Miss Pettigrew in the larger department stores and perhaps have tea at the new Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch.

An hour and a half later, she was sitting downstairs at Montfort House, enjoying a well-cooked supper with the London staff gathered around her at the servants’ hall dining table.

Mrs. Jackson was a conservative individual and, as she was fond of saying, she observed the old ways when it came to the conduct of servants in a great house. This was her first visit to Montfort House in many years, and the upper servants were known to her only by name. Within ten minutes of taking her place at the table she had formed the opinion that the present staff in the house got away with murder. It was evident that Lord and Lady Montfort were dining out this evening, but it was quite unorthodox, in her opinion, for the butler and his footmen to be sitting around downstairs at this hour, instead of in waiting upstairs. If Lord or Lady Montfort needed anything before they left for the evening, they would have to ring and wait for a footman to come up from the servants’ hall. Iyntwood’s butler, Mr. Hollyoak, would have been appalled at such laxity and quite rightly, too.

She lifted her eyes from her plate of food and noticed that there were several pairs of curious eyes fixed on her. Their communal scrutiny did nothing to alter her composure. She knew that they had all been guessing why Iyntwood’s housekeeper had been called up to London from the moment they had heard she was on her way.

The new cook, a pretty and dashing young woman who could be no more than twenty-six if she was a day, was particularly attentive and full of questions. There was no housekeeper at Montfort House; the cook was second-in-command and fulfilled both roles in the house. It was natural for her to be curious as to why Mrs. Jackson was on her turf, but it was not Mrs. Jackson’s habit to explain herself. The butler—and one glance told you he was far too young to be a butler, she thought—having accurately guessed his age at close to her own
,
would take several more years to acquire the gravitas of demeanor so necessary in a good butler to a large London establishment.
Oh well,
she sighed to herself,
London ways; everything happens at such a fast pace in the city, no wonder Edna Pettigrew always returns with tales of chaos in the servants’ hall at Montfort House.

Listening to the bright chatter around her, she noticed that, except for the cook, they were all Londoners, another mark against them. Mrs. Jackson, like many provincials, was a little narrow in her view about Londoners. Country-bred people remembered their place and looked up to the old and august families they worked for. City-bred servants were far too independent and unreliable, always ready to turn things to their own advantage. This opinion had been formed years ago, when Mrs. Jackson had started her career in London as a lowly housemaid at Montfort House, and had been reinforced by reports relayed by Miss Pettigrew when she returned from trips to London with her ladyship. “If that Mr. White was offered a job by some rich American he would be off like a shot,” was a pronouncement often made by Miss Pettigrew when she came back from London brimming with information on new fashions, society scandals, and the inevitable report on Montfort House servants’ hall, which was kept confidentially between the two of them.