yet? Well, do it then!
Don’t stand there gawpin’!”
“Yes, miss,” Gracie said obediently. She scampered upstairs before the steam cleared and she was obliged to see Ada’s open dress and general disarray.
Gracie realized that once someone put those sheets into the boil, no one would be able to prove a thing. She nearly asked Mags, the other between-stairs maid, if she had seen the policeman, then realized she had no explanation for wanting to know, so instead she went immediately to her alternative plan and found Mr. Tyndale.
He was alone in the butler’s pantry, inspecting the silver to see if it had been cleaned to perfection. He looked very serious, frowning a little.
She knocked on the door.
He looked round with irritation, then saw who it was. “Miss Phipps? Is something wrong?” he asked anxiously.
She came in and closed the door behind her. “Yer’d better call me
‘Gracie,’ sir,” she corrected him, feeling awkward and yet savoring a flicker of very definite enjoyment. “I gotter speak ter Mr. Pitt, very urgent, but there in’t no way I can ask anyone where ’e is. I found summink as could be very important. Can yer ’elp me?”
“Yes, of course I can. What have you found?” He was clearly worried.
She shook her head. “I gotter tell Mr. Pitt.”
Tyndale was embarrassed. He obviously felt foolish for having asked, and then been rebuffed.
Now she was sorry for him, and perhaps a trifle foolish also for making him uncomfortable. He might remember it and not be the ally she needed. She swallowed hard. This could be the wrong judgment, but regardless of that she had better be quick. “Can I ask you summink, sir?”
He was still guarded, uncertain of the correct protocol with her.
She was a servant, and yet she was not. “Certainly. What is it?”
“The sheets with
“Where did you see those?” he asked sharply.
“In the laundry.”
“That’s impossible! Her Majesty is at Osborne, and no one else uses them. Thank you for telling me. I shall find out what has happened and put a stop to it.”
“Yer mustn’t do that, sir!” She all but grasped hold of him, getting her hand as far as to touch his sleeve before she snatched it away.
“It’s a clue, or least it may be. Yer gotta keep it a deadly secret till Mr.
Pitt says yer can tell. It’s a murder, Mr. Tyndale. Yer can’t tell nobody nuffin’.”
He looked pale. “I see.”
At that moment there was a sharp rap on the pantry door, and a moment later it flew open and Mrs. Newsome stood in the entrance.
She was a good-looking woman in an agreeable, ordinary way, but now her face was flushed and her eyes were hot. “What are you doing in here, Gracie Phipps?” She looked from Gracie to an obviously uncomfortable Mr. Tyndale, now also coloring deeply with both anger and embarrassment.
“She came. .” he started, and then floundered badly.
Mrs. Newsome’s face tightened, her eyes hard.
Ridiculously, Gracie thought of Ada and Edwards on the laundry stairs, and felt the heat in her own cheeks. She must rescue Mr. Tyndale. The idea was absurd, and revolting, but it was abundantly clear what Mrs. Newsome thought. And Mr. Tyndale was only in this situation because he was helping Gracie. He might care what Mrs. Newsome believed of him, but even if he didn’t, he would care bitterly about being thought to behave inappropriately with a brand-new serving girl less than half his age.
Gracie lied with ease. “I came ter give ’im a message as the policeman’d like ter see ’im, ma’am.”
“Really,” Mrs. Newsome said coldly. “And why did he ask you to deliver such a message?”
“ ’Cos I were there, I ’spect,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Indeed.” There was no light whatever in Mrs. Newsome’s face.
“Well, in future, Gracie, you will get about your duties without speaking to policemen, and you will not come into the butler’s pantry, or into any other room, and close the door. Do you understand me? It is completely inappropriate.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am, I won’t.” Gracie swallowed her anger and her dignity with quite an effort.
“I told her to close the door, Mrs. Newsome,” Tyndale suddenly found his voice. “I did not wish other staff to be hearing a message from the police. It is distressing enough having them here at all.
Everyone is upset.”
Mrs. Newsome’s face expressed disgust that was almost comical.
“Do you imagine I am unaware of that, Mr. Tyndale?” she said scathingly. “While you are here counting the knives with Gracie, I am trying to find Ada; assure Mrs. Oliphant that she will not be murdered in her bed; persuade Biddie that she cannot leave, at least until the police tell her she can, and she’ll get no character from me for leaving us in the lurch. I am also trying to stop Norah from having hysterics, and make sure someone dusts the hall and at least gets a start with the ironing.” She picked at a stray wisp of hair across her brow and poked it back into its pins savagely, making the whole effect worse. “And in case you have not noticed,” she went on, “one of your serrated-edged meat knives is missing. You should have twenty-four.”
Less flustered, she would have been a comely woman, and not as old as Gracie had at first assumed.
Suddenly Gracie was aware of a vulnerability in her that almost took her breath away. Mrs. Newsome was jealous. It was absurd, and desperately human. She cared for Mr. Tyndale.
“I had better go and see what the policeman wants,” Tyndale said unhappily. “I. . I know it is difficult. Please do your best, Mrs. Newsome. And I know one of the knives is missing. I shall speak to Cuttredge about it.” He closed the drawers in which the knives sat in their green baize slots, and locked it with one of the keys from his small, silver chain. Then he walked past both women and went out to look for Pitt.
Gracie and Mrs. Newsome stared at each other. The silence grew increasingly awkward.
“May I be excused, please, ma’am?” Gracie said at last, her mouth dry. She wanted intensely to escape the emotion in the room. She must not allow Mrs. Newsome to know how much she had seen. She would never be forgiven for it.
“Yes.” Mrs. Newsome straightened her skirt automatically, her own much larger key ring jangling. “Of course you may. Is Ada looking after you, showing you what to do?”
“Yes, thank you, ma’am.” She would say nothing about what Ada was really doing in the laundry, or that Ada was something of a bully.
It was difficult to think that Mrs. Newsome could be so blind! But one did not tell tales.
“Good. Since it is eleven o’clock, you may go to the kitchen for a cup of tea.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Gracie bobbed rather an awkward curtsy. It was not something she was used to doing; Charlotte would have found it ridiculous.
Along the corridor, in the huge kitchen with its Welsh dressers of crockery and copper pans on the walls, rafters hung with herbs, Cuttredge was sitting in one of the hard-backed chairs. Mrs. Oliphant, the cook, was in another opposite him. There was a teapot on the table, several clean cups, and two plates of fruit cake.
“I reckon it were stole!” Rob, the boot boy, said with a shrug. “Yer won’t never find it.”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Oliphant retorted sharply. “You keep a still tongue in your head, boy, or you’ll go to bed with no dinner!”
He bit his lip, but his expression said he knew a lot he dared not say.
“Well what, then?” Mrs. Oliphant demanded. “Who stole it? You saying one of us is a thief?”
“ ’Course I in’t,” he said indignantly, his round eyes widening.
“Why’d anyone ’ere take a knife for? Can’t sell it, can yer, not one dinner knife.”
“It was probably dropped,” Cuttredge put in.
Mrs. Oliphant ignored him. “Well, there’s no one else, unless you think one o’ those wretched girls took it?”
