Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [103]
‘I was never good enough to her, never grateful enough.’
‘I don’t suppose anybody ever is.’
‘Why would someone do this to a poor old lady?’
‘I think she was more than a poor old lady. She didn’t like what was happening and was doing her best to stop it.’
‘But I don’t like it either. Does that mean somebody wants to kill me?’
‘I hope not. Just stay quietly in your room today and I’ll help you get away tonight, if that’s still what you want. They’ll have to cancel the ball, I suppose.’
‘They won’t. My stepfather’s been planning this for a long time. He won’t let the death of an old lady he hated prevent it.’
‘What about the coroner? Won’t he have to be told?’
‘Sir Herbert is deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county and chairman of the bench of magistrates. If he says her heart failed, that’s what the verdict will be.’
She took a last look at the figure on the bed and turned away.
‘I must go to my mother.’
‘I think she may be asleep.’
Her look showed she knew exactly what I meant by that. She seemed to have grown up a lot in the last few minutes.
‘I’ll wait with her till she wakes up. I can’t leave him to tell her.’
We went out and I watched her walking heavily away along the corridor. There were several things I must attend to and the first of them was getting out of my ridiculous dinner dress back into proper clothes. The nursery corridor was deserted, Betty presumably elsewhere with the children. It took some resolution to go past the closed door of the schoolroom with the smell of wet wool in my nostrils where Mrs Beedle’s blood had been sponged from the carpet. The staircase up to the maids’ dormitory was dark and I hesitated there for some time. For all I knew, the killer might have escaped that way, into the maze of servants’ quarters. When I got to the landing by the maids’ room, a reassuring sound of snoring came from inside. I hesitated for a while, then continued up the narrower staircase to my room. At the door, I thought I heard a rustling noise above me.
‘What do you want?’ I said into the darkness.
No answer. Probably a rat or a pigeon in the roof timbers. I opened the door, hoping that if I had to scream at least it would wake the maids below.
‘Is anybody in there?’
The sound of my own voice bouncing back told me that the room was empty. It must be dawn in the world outside because a little grey light was coming through the window. I took a deep breath and lit the candle. It took three tries because my hand was shaking, but I felt better when its light flickered round the walls.
The dress, with its array of tiny buttons, had been intended for somebody with a lady’s maid and I tore some of them off as I struggled to get out of it. It was a small relief to turn to my own clothes, neatly folded on the bed. Then my heart lurched and I started trembling again because I hadn’t left them on the bed. I was quite certain that I’d left them as I always did, folded on the chair. And they’d been turned upside down. I’d left a shawl Betty had loaned me at the bottom, then the dress, petticoats, stockings and garters. Now the shawl had disappeared entirely, the dress was uppermost with the other things underneath it, and one garter was lying on the floor beside the bed.
There was something wrong with the wash bowl, too. I was sure I’d emptied it after washing, but now there were a few inches of dirty water in it and my small cake of soap had been moved. Somebody had come into my room and washed. Somebody who needed to wash blood off his hands? I looked at the water. No blood that I could see or smell, just soap scum. I knelt to pick up the garter and stayed kneeling with my head on the bed, bludgeoned by fear and misery. Not even my room was safe. If somebody had come in and