“Yer gonna ask Mr. Tyndale?” She was looking at him now in intense concentration.
“Yes, I am.”
Pitt spent a little more time searching for other pieces large enough to give a better idea of the shape and diameter of the plate, and formed the opinion that it was possibly a pedestal dish rather than a flat one. Some of the pieces were too thick to be part of an ordinary plate.
He put them in the box again and carried them down to the butler’s pantry, where he found Tyndale with ledgers open and a pen in his hand. Apparently he was working on the cellar records. He looked up. Pitt came in and closed the door.
“What may I do for you, Mr. Pitt?” Tyndale said coolly.
Pitt leaned against the wall. “Tell me where the Limoges pedestal dish was, and how it came to be broken,” he replied.
The color bleached from Tyndale’s face and his voice came only with an effort. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have no idea what you are talking about. Her Majesty has literally thousands of pieces of porcelain. If one has been broken, I know nothing of it. I don’t believe it was in this wing. If it were, one of the maids would have told me.”
“Mrs. Sorokine knew where it came from,” Pitt told him.
Tyndale looked even whiter. Pitt was afraid he was on the verge of some kind of attack, possibly his heart. “I’m sorry.” He meant it, but he could not afford the mercy he would have liked. “Julius Sorokine faces a lifetime in an asylum, without trial. Before I let that happen to anyone, I am going to be certain beyond any sane or reasonable doubt that he is responsible for the deaths of these women. I am going to find out who smashed a Limoges plate the night Sadie was killed. I can do it quietly, with your help, Mr. Tyndale, or I can question every manservant in the place, and find out whatever it was Mrs. Sorokine found out, and which very likely cost her her life!”
“Her husband killed her,” Tyndale told him, his voice catching in his throat. “This. . this breakage had nothing to do with it. It’s another matter altogether, and private.”
“There is no privacy where there is murder, Mr. Tyndale. What was the ornament, and where was it? How did it get broken, and why did you hide it?”
Tyndale was wretched. He loathed lying and it was naked in his face.
“It was broken by accident. I didn’t hide it, I simply disposed of the pieces. There is no point in keeping them. No one could mend it.
For heaven’s sake, Inspector, it’s shattered! It’s dust!”
“I can see that. I can also see that it was Limoges, and probably very beautiful. Where was it and who broke it?”
“One of the maids, but no one is taking responsibility. I can’t punish anyone for clumsiness when I don’t know who it is.” Tyndale looked eminently reasonable, his voice was steadying again.
Pitt had not the slightest doubt that he was lying. Minnie Sorokine had pursued this, and learned what it was. How? What questions had she asked that Pitt had not? Why had Tyndale answered her, and yet would not tell Pitt? What terrible thing had her questions made him realize?
“At what time?” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” Tyndale was putting off answering.
“When was it broken? At what time? That will tell you who did it, surely?”
“I. . I don’t know.” Tyndale was flustered. “Some time the. . the day of the death of that woman. We were all upset. I dare say we didn’t notice it immediately.”
“A Limoges plate was lying smashed on the floor, and the maid cleaning didn’t notice it?” Pitt said with open disbelief. “I’m sorry, Mr.
Tyndale, but that won’t do. Where was the dish?”
“I don’t know.” Tyndale’s face was set in refusal.
“It was a pedestal dish,” Pitt said, guessing as he went. “Mostly white with a blue picture in the center, and a gold edge. I found pieces of those.”
“I don’t know,” Tyndale repeated stubbornly.
“Then I shall ask the maids,” Pitt replied. “And the footmen.
Someone will have seen it. Don’t they dust regularly?”
“Yes, of course they do! But. .” Tyndale tailed off. His face was blotched; a muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Assemble the staff in the servants’ hall, Mr. Tyndale. I shall speak to them in fifteen minutes. I want everyone there,” Pitt ordered.
Tyndale hesitated.
“Don’t oblige me to ask the Prince of Wales’s assistance in this,”
Pitt warned.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the murder!” Tyndale protested again. “It’s. . it’s a domestic matter! This is absurd.”
“An ornament is smashed on the night of a murder,” Pitt said grimly. “Someone was in the room, and committed a violent and extraordinary act, perhaps of rage. I want to know which room it was, and who was there. Assemble the staff, Mr. Tyndale.”
Tyndale left obediently, walking like a man under condemnation of some fearful punishment.
Pitt waited, feeling guilty. Was he really pursuing a clue that would explain the anomalies in the case and enable him to be satisfied that Julius Sorokine had killed both Sadie and his own wife? Or was he merely determined to force his will on Tyndale because he had defied him, and Pitt wanted an answer for no reason except his own satisfaction? Did he resent the fact that Minnie Sorokine could as-semble these facts and deduce the truth, and he could not? Had she known some extra fact that he had not?
In fifteen minutes exactly he walked to the servants’ hall and saw them all dutifully lined up, hot-faced and frightened. Gracie was at the front, probably so as not to be hidden behind taller, plumper girls.
He avoided looking at her.
“A Limoges plate was broken on the night the prostitute was murdered,” he said gently. “It was probably a pedestal plate, mostly white with a painting in the middle with quite a lot of blue in it and a gold rim. I don’t think any of you broke it. I think it may have been one of the guests, either the one who actually killed the woman, or someone who saw what happened.” That was a stretch of the truth. “I want to know which room it was in.”
They all stood staring at him. No one spoke.
“Who does the dusting?” he asked.
“Me and Norah, mostly,” Ada said nervously. “An’ Gracie, since she come.”
“Which room was that dish in?” Pitt asked.
“I dunno.”
“Didn’t you dust it?”
“I never seen it.”
Pitt turned to Mrs. Newsome. “You are the housekeeper-aren’t you responsible for works of art? Especially valuable ones?”
“Yes, I am,” Mrs. Newsome said stiffly. She looked puzzled and unhappy. She was avoiding looking at Mr. Tyndale so clearly that it was obvious.
“Where was that dish kept, Mrs. Newsome?”
“I don’t recall a dish like that,” she said flatly.
“Did you send maids to clean up, wash and scrub a room on the morning of the murder?”
“Of course. The linen cupboard. But only after you told me to,”
she said stiffly.
“Before that! At the end of this wing, or into the east wing?”
“No. And the east wing is not my responsibility. I would be exceeding my authority to do that.”
There was nothing else he could think of to say. They stood stiffly, shoulders back, faces carefully blank. No one was going to tell him.
There was nothing for him to do but accept defeat with the little dignity left him.
He returned to his own room confused and angry. He paced the floor, trying to think of a way to force Tyndale’s hand. He was certain Tyndale knew where the plate had been, and had told Minnie. The more he refused to say, the more certain Pitt became that it mattered.
