Buckingham Palace Gardens

he even be thanked for it? Thanks could mean a lot, in fact it could mean almost everything.

“But I am grateful,” she added in the prickly silence. “Wouldn’t ’a done for me to tell everyone as Ada made me do ’er job wi’ the slops, which is wot made me late. An’ please don’t say nothin’! I’ll sort ’er.”

He looked desperately uncomfortable. “Have you. . have you learned anything?” His voice caught in his throat.

“Best you dunno, sir,” she replied.

“Would it be helpful if you were to serve at dinner tonight?” he asked.

“Serve? You mean like at the table?” she was horrified.

“Yes. They are not dining until late. You still have at least two hours. Would it help you to observe?”

“I. .” She hated to admit it. “I dunno as I know ’ow ter do it, sir.

Not. . not wi’ silver dishes an’ all them glasses an’ all.”

“You won’t be asked to serve the wine,” he assured her. He looked better, and he had the upper hand again. “Just the vegetables, and clear away. The footman will serve the wine and the soup. Would it help?”

“If someone’s as mad as all that, yer’d think yer could see it, wouldn’t yer?” she said thoughtfully. “Mrs. Sorokine’s bin goin’

around all day askin’ things. Mr. Tyndale, sir, do you know if someone broke a dish, all blue and white china, wi’ a bit o’ gold in it? One from upstairs, I mean? She were askin’ like it mattered.”

He looked concerned. “Yes, I am aware of that. She asked me also. I tried to discourage her. It seems I did not succeed. Who was she asking?”

“Walton. ’As it got summink ter do with the murder, sir?”

“No. No, you have quite misunderstood. There isn’t such a dish here. The matter has to do with some unfortunate behavior of a quite different nature,” he said firmly, watching to see if she believed him.

“It is His Royal Highness. Leave it absolutely alone. Do you understand me, Miss Phipps? I am most desperately serious.”

She was astounded, and a little frightened as well. She realized for the first time the delicacy of the balance Mr. Tyndale needed to keep between his own beliefs and those of the man and the class he served.

Did he even see the absurdity of it? How difficult was it for him to explain to himself, and justify, when it was late at night and he was alone in his room? Did he question, waver? Then count the cost?

He blinked under her gaze. “Do you understand me, Miss Phipps?”

he said again.

“No, sir,” she replied. “But I’ll do like you say.”

The door swung wide open and Mrs. Newsome was there again, her face white apart from two spots of color in her cheeks.

“Phipps-” she started.

“If you have something to say, Mrs. Newsome, then you had better say it to me,” Tyndale cut across her abruptly. “Phipps was reporting a certain matter to me, which I shall relay to the police. The fewer people who know of it the better. It may turn out to mean nothing, but we must see. You will keep this entirely to yourself.” That was an order; there was no possibility of misunderstanding this time. Was he repaying her for showing him up in front of the other staff at the table?

“Indeed,” Mrs. Newsome said unhappily. She turned from Tyndale to Gracie. “Phipps, there is a considerable amount of rubbish in the still room after the party. No one got round to cleaning it up. Go and do so, and while you are there, you can scrub the floor.”

“I want her to help at table this evening,” Mr. Tyndale said.

“She’s not fit to, but if that’s what you want, then she can do so.

After she’s scrubbed the still-room floor,” Mrs. Newsome rejoined.

“Don’t stand there, girl! Go and do as you’re told!”

I t wa s a messy and quite difficult job. The room was cluttered with all manner of rubbish, as Mrs. Newsome had said, and in the early-evening heat Gracie could hear the irritating buzzing of flies.

She hated the big, lazy things circling round anything dirty or sticky, settling and laying eggs on the surfaces. She gave a little shudder of distaste, and went to fetch a bucket of water and some baking soda to help it get back a decent smell.

It took her half an hour of cleaning and scrubbing and washing down and repiling up again before she came to the bottles where the flies were. They were old wine bottles, by the look of them, and expensive too. The labels were ornate and in soft colors, like old parch-ment. She picked one up and looked at it. A fly buzzed out of the neck and zoomed away.

“Ugh!” she said disgustedly. “Must be very sweet.” She looked at the label. She could not read all of it, but she recognized the word port. That would be for the gentlemen to drink after dinner. She had heard about that. Could be terribly expensive. She put it to her nose experimentally and sniffed a little. It was sweet, like sugar and salt, and a bit like iron. Certainly not anything she would want to drink.

It was revolting! Wonder if that one was bad. Could wine go bad?

She picked up another, and tried it very gingerly. That smelled entirely different, and very nice indeed, like real wine she had tasted before. She went back to the first one and tried again. It was just as horrible. There were eight empty bottles and she tried all of them.

Five were lovely, three disgusting, all the same, with the sickly sweet, ironlike smell.

She tipped one up and poured out a few drops onto the back of her hand, then smeared it gently over her skin. A fly returned and settled on her. She shook it off violently. She put her finger to the red stain and spread it a little farther across her hand. Then she knew what it was-blood.

She tipped up the others that smelled the same, and got a little trickle of blood out of each one, mixed with the lees of the wine. Why would anyone put blood into a wine bottle? What kind of blood-

animal or human?

She stood up so quickly she nearly overbalanced and had to reach out and grasp onto a broom handle to hold herself up. She was a little dizzy, but there was no question in her mind what she must do: hide the three bottles that had held the blood, and then go and tell Pitt. No one else must know. She would feel ridiculous if it were something to do with a special recipe of the cook’s, but far more so if it had something to do with that poor dead woman someone had butchered, and she did nothing about it. Nobody deserved to end up that way, no matter who they were.

She went back to Mr. Tyndale and told him she had to speak to Pitt straightaway. Ten minutes later she was standing in front of Pitt.

He looked tired and worried. His hair was even more unruly than usual and his shirt collar was crumpled. It seemed no one was looking after him. She noticed it all, and it brought a stab of both sorrow and guilt to her, but it was not important compared with the bottles in the still room.

“Are you all right, Gracie?” he asked as soon as she had closed the door. “Tyndale said the other servants are making things difficult for you.”

“In’t nothing as matters, sir,” she said, surprised that Tyndale should have told Pitt. “I came about summink I found wot could be. . I dunno. Mebbe I’m bein’ a bit daft meself, but it don’t seem right, or make no sense.”

A flicker of hope lit his eyes. “What is it?”

“I were scrubbin’ out the still room an’ I found eight empty bottles wot ’ad ’ad port wine in ’em,” she replied. “Five of ’em smelled like wine, real nice, an’ three of ’em ’ad flies all around, an’ smelled different. I tipped ’em out, an’ they ’ad blood in ’em.”

“Blood!” He was stunned. “Gracie, are you sure?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “Could the cook ’ave mixed blood an’ wine ter make summink? A sauce, or summink like that?”

“Three bottles of port! I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “And why put the blood into the port bottles anyway? Wouldn’t she have mixed it in a bowl or a pan?”

“Yer gonna ask?”

“Yes, I am! Where are the bottles now?”

“I ’id ’em.” She told him exactly where. “D’yer know anything else, sir?” She would never have asked him such a thing even a month ago.

“Not much,” he admitted, defeat flattening his voice in spite of an obvious effort to keep it up. “It could still