“Well, he’d be wrong, then,” said Ellen, with an engaging toss of the head, “because it’s bird’s blood, and not rabbit’s at all, because her ladyship told me so; and wouldn’t it be quicker just to go and ask the person than get fiddling round with your silly old microscope and things?”
“Well, I only mentioned rabbits for an example,” said Mr. Bunter. “Funny she should have got a stain down there. Must have regularly knelt in it.”
“Yes. Bled a lot, hasn’t it, poor thing? Somebody must ’a’ been shootin’ careless-like. ’Twasn’t his grace, nor yet the Captain, poor man. Perhaps it was Mr. Arbuthnot. He shoots a bit wild sometimes. It’s a nasty mess, anyway, and it’s so hard to clean off, being left so long. I’m sure I wasn’t thinking about cleaning nothing the day the poor Captain was killed; and then the Coroner’s inquest—’orrid, it was—and his grace being took off like that! Well, there, it upset me. I suppose I’m a bit sensitive. Anyhow, we was all at sixes and sevens for a day or two, and then her ladyship shuts herself up in her room and won’t let me go near the wardrobe. ‘Ow!’ she says, ‘do leave that wardrobe door alone. Don’t you know it squeaks, and my head’s so bad and my nerves so bad I can’t stand it,’ she says. ‘I was only going to brush your skirts, my lady,’ I says. ‘Bother my skirts,’ says her ladyship, ‘and do go away, Ellen. I shall scream if I see you fidgeting about there. You get on my nerves,’ she says. Well, I didn’t see why I should go on, not after being spoken to like that. It’s very nice to be a ladyship, and all your tempers coddled and called nervous prostration. I know I was dreadfully cut up about poor Bert, my young man what was killed in the war—nearly cried my eyes out, I did; but, law! Mr. Bunter, I’d be ashamed to go on so. Besides, between you and I and the gatepost, Lady Mary wasn’t that fond of the Captain. Never appreciated him, that’s what I said to cook at the time, and she agreed with me. He had a way with him, the Captain had. Always quite the gentleman, of course, and never said anything as wasn’t his place—I don’t mean that—but I mean as it was a pleasure to do anything for him. Such a handsome man as he was, too, Mr. Bunter.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Bunter. “So on the whole her ladyship was a bit more upset than you expected her to be?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Bunter, I think it’s just temper. She wanted to get married and away from home. Drat this stain! It’s regular dried in. She and his grace never could get on, and when she was away in London during the war she had a rare old time, nursing officers, and going about with all kinds of queer people his grace didn’t approve of. Then she had some sort of a love-affair with some quite low-down sort of fellow, so cook says; I think he was one of them dirty Russians as wants to blow us all to smithereens—as if there hadn’t been enough people blown up in the war already! Anyhow, his grace made a dreadful fuss, and stopped supplies, and sent for her ladyship home, and ever since then she’s been just mad to be off with somebody. Full of notions, she is. Makes me tired, I can tell you. Now, I’m sorry for his grace. I can see what he thinks. Poor gentleman! And then to be taken up for murder and put in jail, just like one of them nasty tramps. Fancy!”
Ellen, having exhausted her breath and finished cleaning off the bloodstains, paused and straightened her back.
“Hard work it is,” she said, “rubbing; I quite ache.”
“If you would allow me to help you,” said Mr. Bunter, appropriating the hot water, the benzene bottle, and the sponge.
He turned up another breadth of the skirt.
“Have you got a brush handy,” he asked, “to take this mud off?”
“You’re as blind as a bat, Mr. Bunter,” said Ellen, giggling. “Can’t you see it just in front of you?”
“Ah, yes,” said the valet. “But that’s not as hard a one as I’d like. Just you run and get me a real hard one, there’s a dear good girl, and I’ll fix this for you.”
“Cheek!” said Ellen. “But,” she added, relenting before the admiring gleam in Mr. Bunter’s eye, “I’ll get the clothes-brush out of the hall for you. That’s as hard as a brickbat, that is.”
No sooner was she out of the room than Mr. Bunter produced a pocketknife and two more pillboxes. In a twinkling of an eye he had scraped the surface of the skirt in two places and written two fresh labels:
“Gravel from Lady Mary’s skirt, about 6 in. from hem.”
“Silver sand from hem of Lady Mary’s skirt.”
He added the date, and had hardly pocketed the boxes when Ellen returned with the clothes-brush. The cleaning process continued for some time, to the accompaniment of desultory conversation. A third stain on the skirt caused Mr. Bunter to stare critically.
“Hullo!” he said. “Her ladyship’s been trying her hand at cleaning this herself.”
“What?” cried Ellen. She peered closely at the mark, which at one edge was smeared and whitened, and had a slightly greasy appearance.
“Well, I never,” she exclaimed, “so she has! Whatever’s that for, I wonder? And her pretending to be so ill she couldn’t raise her head off the pillow. She’s a sly one, she is.”
“Couldn’t it have been done before?” suggested Mr. Bunter.
“Well, she might have been at it between the day the Captain was killed and the inquest,” agreed Ellen, “though you wouldn’t think that was a time to choose to begin learning domestic work. She ain’t much hand at it, anyhow, for all her nursing. I never believed that came to
