“No, that’s perfectly fine. So you’re all on your own?”
“I am.” Her cheeriness wavered for a moment. “It’s a bit odd at night but I know that’s only my imagination.”
“Well, what would you say to a nice cup of tea and some company for a bit? My husband is upstairs talking to the solicitors, you see.”
“Oh! I had better take them something up, I suppose. They’ll start ringing for me any moment now. Do excuse me for just a moment.” The woman started to bustle around, and disappeared for a short while. She re-emerged with a teapot which she set down on the table and then went off again to take a tray of things upstairs. By the time she came down, Adelia had poured the tea and was sitting on a wooden chair.
“I’m using the little stove in the housekeeper’s room,” the woman confessed, and unveiled a cake on a plate. “Serving you here like this does seem wrong, you know, you being a lady and all. I mean, you said you was a lady but ... Well, anyway, we can sit somewhere else if you prefer?”
“This is perfectly fine. Thank you.” Adelia wondered if the maid didn’t believe her. “What’s your name?”
“Beatrice Hutt.”
“Miss Hutt...”
“Beatrice is fine.” She smiled.
“Beatrice. How lovely. And yes, I really am a lady but not one of the very superior ones.”
“I can tell that, my lady!” She howled with laughter. Truly her lack of deference was both startling and refreshing to Adelia, but also a little disconcerting. What were the new rules of social interaction?
“How long have you worked here, Beatrice?”
“Only a year, my lady, but he was a good master and he will be missed.”
“I heard similarly good things from the other servants. You must know, however, that he wasn’t well liked in his own circles?”
The maid laughed. “Oh, yes, we knew that. He didn’t believe in the old ways of kowtowing and scraping and pretending how one person was somehow better than another just on account of how they were born.”
“And you, yourself, seem inclined to ... I mean you are ... not to say, well, revolutionary but ...”
Beatrice raised one ginger eyebrow. “There is no difference between you and I, and I challenge you to disprove it. My lady,” she added, with a cheeky grin. “And we Scots are a far more egalitarian race than your sort.”
“I concede without rancour,” Adelia replied. “I am not here to argue about any of that. But what does interest me is this: Mr Nettles had a variety of business interests and I am aware that not all of them were entirely above board.”
Beatrice Hutt’s face shut down immediately. “I am – I was just a housemaid.”
“But here’s the thing,” Adelia said, putting her empty cup down with a loud clink. “He did not work alone. He could not have worked alone. Without your help, he could not have achieved what he did.”
“My help? What has been said?” Beatrice whispered.
“Nothing. I have never heard your name before. And who would I be to judge? I do not live in London. I’m a relic from the countryside and I don’t understand half of what I see and hear.”
That raised half a smile. “My lady, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“It is true. But I do understand that Digby Nettles used the cleverness of many people, including servants. He treated you as equals, as much as he was able to, and rewarded your intelligence and ingenuity, did he not?”
And yet Adelia’s flattery did not have the expected effect. Suddenly, Beatrice Hutt was roaring with laughter once more. Tears began to course down her cheeks as she shook with mirth. Adelia could not fathom what had amused her so much.
“Oh, my lady, you’re just like him! You’re all the same! Upper class do-gooders who think they can say a few nice things and get on our side and be one of us. That was his problem, too, you know. He talked about our cleverness and our ingenuity.” Beatrice mocked Adelia’s accent as she used her own words against her.
Once again, Adelia felt adrift as the usual codes of social interaction shifted. She thought she was saying the right things. She’d been nice, hadn’t she?
Beatrice wiped her eyes with the corners of her apron. “Nettles said all those things to us because he just wanted to use us and we knew it. But I bet that he didn’t know that we knew. He thought he was clever. Yes, I’ll admit what he did. He paid some of the servants a little extra cash to move things around at night across the city. He paid men from low dives to do certain tasks for him. I may as well tell you, seeing as he is dead now; and I was never involved.” She took a serious stance for a moment. “I am innocent,” she reiterated.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I don’t care if you do or you don’t.” But in spite of her words, her light manner began to return. “Why are you interested, though?”
“We think he was murdered.”
“We?”
“My husband and I are detectives of a singular and private sort. The police think it was an accident but we disagree.”
“Why bother investigating?”
Adelia shrugged. “Why not?” There were a thousand reasons she could give. But she could not think of the right reason to give that might convince Beatrice.
“Why not, indeed. You are a strange one, and I take it back what I said about you being just like him. You’re a little different. I can’t think who would kill him, though.”
“Someone did. So he had no obvious enemies?”
“He had too many. I’d have to list half of London. But
