The following days passed grimly. Emily tried hard to be the perfect lady’s maid so that not even Edith could find fault with her. She ironed many articles three and four times, redampening them and smoothing them again and again with the flatiron till they were flawless. Her back and arms ached, but she would not be beaten by a crease in a piece of cotton. There was no time to sit down and swap gossip, as she would have liked to, since there was also the possibility that someone else on the staff might have known something.
There was always the chance that Veronica’s resolve would weaken or her courage fail, and Emily would find herself given notice again. She bit back any smart replies, forcing herself to act meekly, to walk with her head less high and without the slight whisk of skirts that was natural to her.
On the other hand she went out of her way to flatter Mrs. Melrose, the cook, who became a first-class ally, since she disliked Mrs. Crawford already. Emily worked on the principle “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” She did rather well with the butler also. Normally it was a tactic she would have despised, but she must survive here if she were to be any use to Charlotte or Thomas, and there was no time for fine moral niceties.
The tweeny and the scullery maid were the lowest forms of life in the household, but the tweeny in particular was an observant child and not unintelligent, and Emily was able, through a little kindness, to draw quite a lot of information from her. Of course, the girl knew nothing about Robert York, and very little about the family at all; but she had very definite opinions about the rest of the servants. There was no room to be subtle.
On Saturday Emily took her afternoon off and met Charlotte in the park in a fine, driving rain. It was bitterly cold and they huddled together, pulling collars higher and burying their hands in muffs, but at least it was highly unlikely that they would be observed. Who but the illicit or those bound in the utmost haste from one place to another would be out on such a day? Even the homeless chose the comparative shelter of the streets rather than the open wastes of the park, where the wind could sheer unchecked across the flat gray-green winter grass; and forbidden lovers had no eyes for anyone but each other.
They exchanged news, which gave them both some new insights, but no conclusions beyond what they already knew: the murderer was in Hanover Close, and either Veronica or Loretta knew, if not who it was, then at least why the crime had been committed. But how to break their silence was still a mystery.
Charlotte was frightened. She hovered on the edge of begging Emily to leave the York house. Three times she started to, and then the almost paralyzing fear for Pitt drowned out everything else and her words died in her throat. Not that it would have made any difference; Emily had no intention of retiring from the fight and sitting by while they tried Pitt and hanged him.
Which did not mean Emily was not also frightened. After hugging Charlotte good-bye, she sniffed back the tears and turned from the park gates to run along the wet pavements in the rain, past the carriages in the streets, along the wrought iron railings and down the area steps into the kitchen. She was so cold she was shaking inside. She piled her sodden coat and boots into the laundry room to dry, ate a silent supper at the kitchen table, and went up to her room. She lay in bed still shivering and thought how she might trap the man or woman who had murdered three times already and had hidden the crimes so well that the only person suspected was Pitt.
She woke in the dark with a scream in her throat and her body clenched with terror as a footfall made the merest tap in the bare passage outside her door. Soundlessly she slid out of bed, the cold air on her skin cutting through her thin nightgown like a blow. By the dim light of the badly curtained window, she grasped the one wooden chair and wedged it under the door handle. Then she scrambled back into bed again, pulled her knees up to her stomach, and tried to get warm enough to go back to sleep, so that she would not be useless in the morning, either to work or to match wits with a murderer, trap them, and survive to show the proof.
She got up in the chilly gray dawn in time to remove the chair, so that when Fanny, the tweeny, called to waken her she knew nothing of it. The day was full of tedious, time-consuming chores and Emily learned nothing that seemed to be of value.
This was pointless! It could go on for months! She must force the issue.
Late in the evening she crept into the pantry, pocketed half a dozen biscuits dipped in chocolate, and made two cups of cocoa. She carried them upstairs, where she knocked on the tweeny’s door and, when it was opened, whispered her invitation.
Five minutes later they were curled up, feet under them, on Emily’s bed, sharing the biscuits and sipping hot cocoa. Emily began to gossip.
It took ten minutes before she could bring up the subject of Dulcie’s death.
“Whatever was she doing leaning out of the window?” she said, eating the last biscuit. “Do you suppose she was calling to someone?”
“Nah!” Fanny said scornfully. “If’n there’d bin anybody there, they’d ’a said, wouldn’t they? I mean, nobody saw ’er fall! Anyway, she weren’t like that.”
“What do you mean?” Emily affected innocence.
“Well ...” Fanny hunched her shoulders in a shrug. “She weren’t a flirt. She were sort o’—proper. Quiet like.”
“And nobody saw her at all?” Emily said incredulously.
“It were dark! She fell out some time in the evening. We was all inside.”
Emily gazed at her. “How do you know? Do you know where everyone was?”
Fanny screwed up her face. “Well, we would be, wouldn’t we? Where else would anyone be on a wet night in the middle o’ winter?”
“Oh.” Emily sat back against the thin pillow. “I thought maybe you actually knew where everyone was: at supper in the kitchen, or in the servants hall.”
“No one knows when she fell out,” Fanny explained patiently. “Any’ow, she were there at supper wiv us ’erself.”
“You mean—” Emily opened her eyes wider. “You mean she fell during the night? What was the last time anyone saw her?”
“Edith said good night to ’er ’baht ’alf nine,” Fanny replied, thinking hard. “Me an’ Prim was playin’ cards. Dulcie weren’t feelin’ that special, so it must ’a bin after that, mustn’t it?”
“But that doesn’t make sense!” Emily persisted. “Why should she be leaning out of a window during the night? You don’t think—” She took a deep bream and waited. “You don’t think she had someone climbing in?”
