The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [141]
“Or perhaps I shall be hanged, and then I won’t have to bother.”
“Did you kill Scarborough?” Pitt said very gently.
“No I didn’t,” Carvell replied quite calmly. “And before you ask me, I haven’t the slightest idea who did, or why.”
He was wretchedly miserable and frightened. Pitt questioned him for a further ten minutes, but he learned nothing that added either to his knowledge or to his impression of the man. He left him sitting crumpled up in the hall and went to see what Tellman had discovered.
He found him in the servants’ hall, a comparatively small place compared with some he had been in, but very comfortably furnished and with a pleasant smell of lavender and beeswax polish. The odor of luncheon cooking made him suddenly aware of hunger. The white-faced footman was standing to attention. An upstairs maid was in tears, a duster in her hand, a broom leaning against the wall. The housekeeper sat upright in a wooden-backed chair, her keys at her waist, ink, presumably from the household ledgers, on her fingers, her face looking as if she had just found something unspeakable on her plate. The scullery maid and the cook were absent. The kitchen maid was facing Tellman, a smudge of black lead on her sleeve from the stove, her expression tearful and obstinate.
Tellman looked around at Pitt. Seemingly his questioning of the maid was not worth pursuing.
“What have you learned?” Pitt asked quietly.
Tellman came over to him. “Very little,” he said, his face showing some surprise. “After the reception the staff spent a great deal of the afternoon clearing up. The extra footmen and maids hired for the event were paid off and left. One of them had been dismissed earlier for unbecoming conduct, I don’t know what it amounted to, some domestic misdemeanor. Nobody seemed to know exactly what. Carvell spent the afternoon out somewhere, the staff don’t know where, but the footman thinks it was simply to be alone and grieve in his own way.”
“Grieve?” Pitt said quickly.
Tellman looked at him without comprehension.
“Was the footman aware that Carvell had a profound feeling towards Arledge?” Pitt said under his breath, but with a sharpness to his voice.
Tellman shook his head. “Oh—no, I don’t think so. Seems he regarded any death as a very somber affair, needing a space for recovery.”
“Oh! What about Scarborough?”
“Spent the afternoon in his pantry, and checking the stock in the cellar,” Tellman replied, drawing Pitt a little farther away from the servants, who were all staring expectantly. “Dinner was a light affair, a cold collation of some sort. Carvell read in the library for a while, then retired early. Staff were excused at about eight. Scarborough locked up at ten and no one saw him after that.” Tellman’s face was uncompromising in its conviction, his dark, deep-set eyes level, his mouth in a hard line. “No one rang the doorbell, or the other staff would have heard. It rings in the kitchen, and in here.” He turned and gestured to the board with all the bells on, listed by room. The front door was plainly visible.
“And no break-in, I presume,” Pitt said, not even making it a question.
“No sir, nothing at all. All the windows and doors were properly fastened—” Tellman stopped.
“Yes?” Pitt said sharply. “Except?”
Tellman pulled a face. “Except the French doors in the dining room. The housemaid says she thinks they were open when she went in there this morning. At least not open, but unlocked. Carvell probably went out that way, and when he came back, forgot to bolt them.”
“Somebody did,” Pitt agreed. “It is just conceivable Scarborough went out that way himself, alive and quite voluntarily.”
Tellman’s face showed disbelief, and contempt for Pitt’s indecision. “What for?” His sneer was obvious. “Don’t tell me you think the butler went out into the park at night to pick up a woman? I thought we’d abandoned the idea it had anything to do with prostitutes. We knew that was daft when the commissioner said it! This is not a lunatic with an obsession about fornication, it’s a perfectly sane murderer