“Did you go into the front of the house at all?” Tellman persisted.
“I went across the hall to fetch the newspapers to iron.”
“What?”
“I went across the hall to fetch the newspapers to iron them,” Finn repeated. “I wanted to see if there was anything in them about Mr. Parnell. I saw Mr. Doyle coming downstairs.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he go? Into the dining room?”
“No. He went in the other direction, but I don’t know where to. I went back through the baize door with the newspapers.”
“Then what?” Tellman had his pencil poised, his eyes on Finn.
Finn hesitated.
“Yer gotta tell ’im,” Gracie urged. “It’s important.”
Finn looked wretched.
Gracie longed to lean forward and touch his hands again, but she could not do it in front of Tellman.
Tellman licked the end of his pencil.
“Mr. McGinley sent for me,” Finn said shakily.
“From where? Where was he?” Tellman asked.
“What? Oh, in his room, I expect. Yes, in his room. But I met him as he was coming across the landing. He told me to go with him and to stand in the hall while he went into Mr. Radley’s study. He said someone had put dynamite there and he was going to … to make it safe.”
“I see. Thank you.” Tellman took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about Mr. McGinley. Looks like he died a hero.”
“Somebody murdered him,” Finn said between his teeth. “I hope you get the son of the devil who did it and hang him as high as Nelson’s column.”
“I expect we will.” Tellman looked at Gracie as if he wanted to say something further, but he changed his mind and went out. Gracie turned back to Finn, longing to be able to help. She could guess at the grief and shock which must be tearing at him, and soon it would be fear for himself also. With McGinley dead he would have no position. He would have to start looking for a new place, with all the difficulty, hardship and anxiety that was. She smiled at him tentatively, not to mean anything, except that she understood and she cared.
He smiled back and reached up with his hand to touch hers.
* * *
Pitt found Tellman about an hour later, standing in the havoc of the study.
“What did you learn?” he asked quietly. The door had not yet been replaced.
Tellman recounted to Pitt what Finn had told him.
“That’s more or less what we know.” Pitt nodded. “Anything else?”
“Maid came in and lit the fire just after seven this morning,” Tellman replied, consulting his notebook. “She dusted the desk and refilled the inkstand and checked there was enough paper, wax, sand, tapers, and so on. She opened the drawer down this side because that’s where they’re kept. There was nothing wrong with it then. And she’s been with the house since Lord Ashworth’s time.”
“So it was after seven this morning, and the bomb went off at about twenty-five to ten. That’s two and a half hours.”
“All the servants were either upstairs or in the servants’ hall having their own breakfast,” Tellman replied. “Or else about their duties in the laundry, the stillroom or wherever it is they do these things. I never imagined there was so much to do to keep half a dozen ladies and gentlemen turned out as they like to be, and fed, housed and entertained.” His face expressed very clearly his opinion of the morality of that.
“Could any of them have come through and put the dynamite in here?” Pitt made no comment on the number of the servants.
“No. It’d take a fair while to set up a bomb with dynamite, and something to trigger it off when Mr. Radley opened the drawer. You couldn’t just put it in and run away.”
“It seems all the women were either with their maids or else at breakfast, and then with each other,” Pitt said slowly. He had spoken to them all, although he had never seriously thought that it would turn out to be a woman who had put the dynamite in Jack’s study. “Except Mrs. Greville. Not unnaturally, she still likes to spend some time alone.”
Tellman said nothing.
“That leaves the men,” Pitt said somberly. “Which means either Moynihan or Doyle. Piers Greville was with Miss Baring.”
“Moynihan was in the conservatory with Mrs. McGinley,” Tellman said with a shake of his head. “Your Gracie saw them there. Of course, there’s nothing to say they didn’t do it together, to get rid of McGinley so they could marry each other … if that sort like to marry.”
“They’d marry,” Pitt said dryly, “if they could ever settle on which church … if either would have them. I gather both sides feel very strongly about not marrying the other.”
Tellman rolled his eyes very slightly. “He’s daft enough about her he would have killed her husband, and I
