The Murder of Busy Lizzie

saw that the occupants were at home.

‘Oh, sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I’ve been given the afternoon off, so I just come in to turn down the beds.’

‘And you are as welcome as the flowers in May,’ said Sebastian. ‘Tell me, though, for I am a neophyte in these matters, what is the reason for the ritual?’

‘The what, sir?’

‘This turning down of beds. What’s the object of it?’

‘We just haves to do it, sir. It’s laid down.’

‘I thought Friday was your afternoon off,’ said Margaret. ‘Why has it been changed to today?’

‘In the ordinary way, yes, tomorrow, miss, but it’s been changed because of the upset.’

‘Mrs Chayleigh’s death?’ asked Sebastian.

‘That’s right, sir. We might be wanted tomorrow to answer questions, so Miss Crimp give me and Walter, as should be having our half-day tomorrow, she give us today instead.’

‘By questions, do you mean questions from the police,’ asked Sebastian.

‘That’s right, sir. “Answer up prompt and truthful,” Miss Crimp says, “and, if you don’t know, don’t hang about and waste the inspector’s time. Just say you don’t know. And what on earth they think you can know has me beat,” she says.’

‘And do you know anything?’

‘Not to say know, sir, not nothing I don’t, but if they was to ask me did I see her get on the boat, well, I did not, sir, and nobody’s going to make me say as I did.’

‘But how could you see her get on the boat?’ asked Margaret. ‘You weren’t down at the landing-stage, were you?’

The girl hesitated.

‘Come on,’ said Sebastian. ‘You can tell us. In fact, we’d very much like to know. You may not have been told this, but Mrs Chayleigh was our aunt. Her real name was Miss Lovelaine. She was my father’s only sister.’

‘Oh, sir, you’re having me on!’

‘No, he isn’t,’ said Margaret, ‘so tell us what you know. It might be very important.’

‘Miss Crimp said not to talk to anybody but that inspector.’

‘By “anybody” she only meant newspaper reporters,’ said Sebastian craftily. ‘She didn’t mean Aunt Eliza’s relatives.’

‘Well…’ The chambermaid thought it over. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘p’raps you do have a right to know. I’m allus supposed to be doin’ out the chalets, see, when the boat puts in, but I ain’t, because when I’m doin’ out the chalets it’s easy enough to slip away and get down to the beach, and my feller’s one of the boatmen, see? Miss Crimp and Mrs Chayleigh is always kep’ very busy when the boat puts in, because there’s them as is comin’ to the hotel and there’s them as is leavin’ and there’s often stores to be seen to, oh, and a mort o’ things to do. Of course, I never knew, not till all the rumours started, as Mrs Chayleigh was thought to ’ave caught the boat. All I know is as she never did. You won’t let on as I’ve told you, will you? I could get in trouble if it was knowed as I slipped away from me work to ’ave a word with Bob.’

‘You’d have been in trouble if Mrs Chayleigh had caught the boat,’ said Margaret, ‘wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh, I knowed where she was. She was over to Puffins, that big ’ouse in the dip. I ’eard Miss Crimp say as there wasn’t nobody else free to go.’

‘Go? What for?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Oh, to drop in some bacon and eggs for the visitors what was rentin’ the ’ouse for the summer. They never knew I ’eard, but it never crossed my mind. I never thought no more about it, ’cept to watch out. I just watched ’er go down the dip and then I run out and down the cliff road. I didn’t talk to Bob not more than ten minutes, in case I should be missed, and because he was busy checking the people as was wanting to be took out to the steamer and gettin’ their luggage aboard. I come up the road behind the new lot of visitors, and I never see Mrs Chayleigh again.’

‘But didn’t that surprise you?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Oh, no, because when Miss Crimp started to fret I thought Mrs Chayleigh had caught Thursday’s boat, you see, being as I knowed she hadn’t gone over on the Wednesday.’

‘Eggs and bacon?’ said Margaret. ‘But why take them all that time in advance?’

‘In advance of what, miss?’

‘Oh, nothing, really. Look, we’re keeping you here talking when it’s your half-day off. I’m awfully sorry.’

‘What was that about eggs and things?’ asked Sebastian, when the chambermaid had gone.

‘Nothing much, except that, as the stuff comes up fresh from the farm, and Dame Beatrice and Laura didn’t come on that Wednesday but a week later, I can’t see any point in Aunt Eliza’s going over to Puffins on the Wednesday, afternoon.’

‘Oh, I expect Dame Beatrice’s servants were coming by the Wednesday boat to get the house ready. The stuff would have been for them.’

‘Then they might know something about what happened to Aunt Eliza that afternoon.’

‘No, because the boat wouldn’t have been in when Aunt Eliza went across to Puffins. You know, Maggie, she seems to have disappeared from that house, doesn’t she? I think we might do a lot worse than go over there and have a word with Dame Beatrice.’

‘But, Seb, we’ve never met her!’

‘The Tutor has—and we know Laura. Come on, let’s take the bull by the horns. There’s something dashed peculiar about all this, and I think we ought to try to sort it out.’

‘But if those provisions were meant for the servants, and the servants were expected that Wednesday, there’s nothing to sort out, is there?’

‘There is, if Aunt Eliza meant to dump the provisions and catch the boat and obviously didn’t catch it. Besides, how would she get into Puffins, anyway, to leave the things? Would she have had a key?’

‘She could have left them in the porch or somewhere, I suppose.’

‘Well, I’m going to clear it up, if only for my own satisfaction. Coming with me?’

Dame Beatrice greeted the young people kindly and offered them tea. She and her secretary had knocked off work on the Memoirs and were ready, she informed them (with a terrifying leer) for intellectual conversation.

‘Not intellectual, I’m afraid,’ said Sebastian. ‘The fact is that we’ve just heard a rather incredible tale about Mrs Chayleigh—our aunt, you know—and as this house was mentioned we thought you might like to hear it.’

‘Rather incredible?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Delightful. Do go on.’

‘You, Seb. You don’t waffle as much as I do,’ said Margaret.

‘Well, I don’t want to waste time by going over well-trodden ground,’ said Sebastian. ‘Dame Beatrice knows about Aunt Eliza.’

‘Ah, yes. Yes, indeed,’ murmured Dame Beatrice. ‘You don’t have to be sorry for us,’ Sebastian went on. ‘We’ve never met my aunt. There was a family row before we were born. Then Aunt Eliza wrote a surprising sort of letter inviting my father to bring us all here for a month’s holiday. My mother wouldn’t come. When we arrived there was no Aunt Eliza and no rooms booked. Miss Crimp took us in, though, and then there began this panic because Aunt Eliza was supposed to have gone over to the mainland and she hadn’t said a word to Miss Crimp about our coming and she didn’t return to the hotel. The next thing, as you know, Dame Beatrice, was the discovery of her body.’

‘Which has now been transported to the mainland.’

‘Yes. The next part of the story we’ve just had from our chambermaid at the hotel. She says that on the Wednesday, exactly a week before we came here—we came, you remember, on the same day as you did—Aunt Eliza came to this house with some provisions. She doesn’t seem to have been seen alive again. The idea was that, after she’d left the food here, she was to catch the Wednesday boat for the mainland, but it seems certain that she couldn’t have done. For one thing, this maid says that she would have spotted her.’

‘Why?’ asked Laura. ‘Why would the maid have spotted her?’

‘She’d popped down to the landing-stage to have a word with her young man,’ Margaret replied.