Now that wasn’t the last bit suspicious, was it, Bea thought sardonically.
Unable to scrutinize the implement itself, she sought out the space it used to occupy. “Where on the counter did it sit?”
Parsons pointed to a square table beneath a trio of hanging baskets near the arch to the hallway. It was a smallish surface, indicating that it propped up a smallish device.
Addressing the kitchen maid directly, Bea asked how high the machine stood. Gertrude raised a hand to her shoulder.
“That is its elevation when it is on the table?” Bea said to make sure she understood its dimensions.
“Yes, when it is on the table. It was always on that table or the center counter,” Gertrude explained.
Noting the size of the table and the height of the machine, Bea thought it was very unlikely that le peu guillotine was large enough to remove the head of a grown man. To confirm her suspicion, she asked for a physical description of the victim and discovered he was a man of approximately fifty years of age, possessing modest height and girth.
“He was several inches shorter than Parsons,” the kitchen maid said, “and had a narrower frame.”
Bea nodded and asked Gertrude to list the items usually inserted into the appliance for dividing.
“Joints of meat mostly,” she said. “Onions, bacon, coconuts.”
All very modest, Bea thought. “What is the largest thing?”
The other woman’s eyes widened in surprise but she other showed no reaction as she said pineapples. “Anything bigger and you have to use a cleaver,” she said, nodding to the collection of five heavy, broad blades that hung from the wall. “The le peu guillotine made a very precise cut, much neater and cleaner than a food chopper.”
She continued to detail the benefits of the apparatus—it was, for example, particularly suited for cutting thin slices of ham—as Bea’s gaze lingered on the assortment of cleavers. There was something slightly off in their arrangement, she thought, observing how much larger the first one was than the second. Its blade was almost twice as wide as the one next to it, while the four others decreased gradually in size. It was almost as if one was missing.…
Intrigued by the prospect, she walked over to where the kitchen tools dangled from neatly aligned nails and asked where the medium-large cleaver was.
Startled, Gertrude suddenly stopped speaking and shifted her eyes to the wall. At once, she saw it, the same height disparity that Bea had observed, and her eyes narrowed in confusion. Her tone baffled, she admitted she had no idea where it had gone. “It must have been mislaid when we were cleaning up after dinner last night. Things are always chaotic after a dinner party, with so much bustling activity, and that can sometimes happen.”
Thoughtfully, Bea examined the room and reconsidered her assumptions about its orderliness. “Is this how the kitchen looked last night?”
“Oh, no, your grace, it was a frightful mess,” Gertrude said as the scullery maid nodded in agreement. “We always try to keep the worktables clean but once the guests start to arrive and the food is placed on serving platters, everything becomes a muddled jumble. And there was flour everywhere last night because Thomas—that’s the kitchen boy—didn’t realize there was a hole in the sack and trailed it everywhere.”
“I meant after the party,” Bea clarified. “Is this how the room looked when you went to bed?”
“Why, good gracious me, yes, of course,” Gertrude said fervently. “Go to sleep with flour all over the floor? And with dirty mixing bowls and egg shells scattered all over the counter? We would be run out of house and home by mice within the week. No matter how long it takes or how late the hour grows, we always restore the kitchen to order before we go to sleep, especially after a party, for that is when things are the messiest. If I myself were not so diligent about cleanliness, Mrs. Blewitt, the housekeeper, would insist on it.”
“How late did the hour grow?” Bea asked.
“Around one for me,” she said, “a little later for Esther. That is typical for a dinner party of that size because the last course is served around ten and the guests usually leave about an hour later. When I went up to bed Monsieur Alphonse was still in the garden smoking a cheroot. It was his habit to take the air after a long day of cooking.”
Bea nodded and looked at the butler. “And what time did you go to sleep?”
“After the last guest left, I oversaw the cleanup of the dining room,” he said, “and consulted with Mrs. Blewitt, who was in the pantry checking her stocks, to see if she required my help with anything. That was around midnight. She assured me everything was in order, so I checked that the house was secured, confirmed the cellar door was firmly locked and retired to my room. It was perhaps twelve-thirty by then, maybe twelve forty-five? I know I was in my bed by one o’clock. I, too, saw Monsieur Alphonse in the garden smoking a cheroot.”
Taking note of the time, Bea asked him again to show her where exactly the body was when he found it.
His eyes darted to the scullery maid, as if worried about offending her sensibilities with his answer, but he made no protest as he walked toward the small table that usually held le peu guillotine and stopped a few feet short. “It was here,” he said soberly, his lips compressing tightly as he recalled the horrible event. “It was right here. I found him almost as soon as I entered the room.”
Like the rest of the kitchen, the spot where he stood was immaculate. The wood itself showed signs of wear—stains, scratches, gauges—but there was not a hint of the copious amount of blood that must have
