A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [51]
They burned both wood and coal in the house fires, so there would be a coal cellar. Very possibly there would also be a place inside for wood, certainly at least for kindling. Had anyone looked there, thoroughly?
The house where the meat and other perishable food was kept would be perfect, but the servants would go in there regularly. They would check all the stores to make sure nothing was spoiling. But they might not go to the icehouse, not in this weather.
She went down to the cloakroom where she had left her outside coat when she had arrived, not knowing then that they would be unable to take walks. She put on her boots. The cellar would be bitterly cold, and dirty.
She lit one of the lanterns that were stored in the cloakroom and set off.
An hour later she was aching, filthy, and shuddering with cold, and she had found nothing that helped in the slightest to figure out what had happened to the body of Anton Ballin.
Think! It had to be somewhere. Was it conceivable that whoever had murdered him had somehow destroyed his corpse? But how? Burning? The only possible place for a fire big enough to get a whole body into would be the furnace used to heat the water in the laundry room. And the maids did the laundry regularly.
Were the fires kept going all night? Hardly likely, at least not hotly enough to destroy a corpse.
Still, she would look.
She went slowly, very reluctantly, to the laundry room. The fire under the big copper tub in which the sheets were boiled was glowing dimly. One might have burned a rat in it, but nothing bigger. And the smell would have been awful.
She stood in the middle of the room and turned around slowly. Apart from the copper one, there were deep tubs next to the wall, and mangles. On the shelves above, there were many jars for all kinds of substances: soaps, lye, starch, chemicals for cleaning various stains on different kinds of fabrics.
She walked slowly through to the drying room. Long airing racks were suspended from the ceiling to deal with days when it was impossible to dry anything outside.
There was another large tub by the wall. She tiptoed over to it and lifted the lid, her heart pounding. There was nothing inside it but loose, light brown bran. It was useful for lifting certain stains, or for rubbing fabrics that needed extra care. Determined not to have to come back and search the room again, she found a wooden spoon with a long handle and poked it down into the bran. It met no resistance. With a gulp of relief she closed the lid.
There was nowhere else left to look, except the still-room. There were plenty of bottles and jars in it, but a glance told her there was nowhere large enough for a corpse.
So where was he? It must be two in the morning now. Christmas Day. And here she was frozen cold, hunting around her hosts’ laundry room for the body of a dead man. And she had told Alice that life in a company of touring actors was fun!
The only place left was the icehouse. It couldn’t be there, but where else was there to look? The stables? No, Caroline knew enough of horses to rule that out. Horses smell death and are afraid of it. They would certainly have let people know if there were any sort of decaying body near them. Even in the hayloft the smell would be appalling, and they would have had a plague of rats within hours, let alone days.
There was no choice but to go outside across the yard to the icehouse. She went to the scullery door and unlocked it. Why anyone had bothered with the bolts in this weather was beyond her. Habit, and obedience possibly. They were stiff to move, and the top one was high, but she managed, with rather a noise. She hoped fervently that everyone else was asleep.
She pulled the door open and stepped out, holding the lantern high. She did not completely close the door: She needed the crack of light to guide her back, and somehow leaving it ajar made her mission seem less final.
The air was bitter but there was no wind at