Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [33]
“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?” she said to Rob. “They weren’t nowhere near the dining room, you stupid boy! Dinner was all cleared away before we took ’em up. You don’t feed tarts like them. What are you thinking of?”
“There