Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [162]
“Never ’eard that he was. But he certainly had cocoa that evening. I’d swear to that. I’ve seen poor George. Anyway, seems Mr. Chancellor’s foot slipped, or summink, and George moved rather sudden like, and got himself scalded. Mr. Chancellor rang the bell immediately, and Mr. Richards came and saw what had happened. Then before you know what’s what, we’re all in the kitchen trying to help poor George, getting his coat off, ripping his shirtsleeves, putting this and that on his arm, Cook and the housekeeper arguing fit to bust whether butter’s best, or flour, maids shrieking and Mr. Richards saying as we should get a doctor. Housemaids is upstairs in bed, in the attic, so they didn’t know a thing, and nobody even thought of them to clean up. And with Mr. Chancellor needing to go out”
“So he drove himself?”
“That’s right.”
“What time did he get home?”
“Don’t know, sir. Late, because we went to bed just before midnight, poor George being in state, and the mistress not home yet….” His face fell as he remembered all that he had learned since the panic of that night.
“Where was Lily during this upheaval?”
“In the kitchen with the rest of us, till Mr. Chancellor sent her to the landing to tear up the old sheets to make bandages for George.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Shall I get Lily, sir?”
“Yes please.”
Pitt stood in the fine hallway, looking about him, not at the pictures and the sheen on the parquet flooring, but at the stairway and the landing across the top, and then at the chandelier hanging from the ceiling with its dozen or so lights.
Lily came through the green baize door looking anxious and still profoundly shaken.
“Y-you want to see me, sir? I didn’t know anything, I swear, or I’d have told you then. I don’t know where the mistress went. She never said a thing to me. I didn’t even know she was going out!”
“No, I know that, Lily,” he said as gently as he could. “I want you to think back very carefully. Can you remember where you were when you saw her leave? Tell me exactly what you saw … absolutely exactly.”
She stared at him. “I just came along the landing after turning down the beds an’ looked down to the hallway….”
“Why?”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Why did you look down?”
“Oh—I suppose ’cause I saw someone moving across towards the door….”
“Exactly what did you see?”
“Mrs. Chancellor going to the front door, sir, like I said.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“Oh no, she was on ’er way out.”
“She didn’t say good night, or tell you when she expected to come back? After all, you would have to wait up for her.”
“No sir, she didn’t see me ’cause she didn’t turn ’round. I just saw her back as she went out.”
“But you knew it was her?”
“O’ course I knew it was her. She was wearin’ her best cloak, dark blue velvet, it is, lined with white silk. It’s the most beautiful cloak….” She stopped, her eyes filling with tears. She sniffed hard. “Yer didn’t ever find it, did you, sir?”
“Yes, we found it,” Pitt said almost in a whisper. He had never before felt such a complex mixture of grief and anger about any case that he could recall.
She looked at him. “Where was it?”
“I don’t think you need to know that, Lily.” Why hurt her unnecessarily? She had loved her mistress, cared for her in her day-to-day life, been part of it in all its intimacies. Why tell her it had been pushed down into the sewers that wove and interwove under London?
She must have understood his reasons. She accepted the answer.
“You saw the back of Mrs. Chancellor’s head, the cloak, as she went across the hall towards the front door. Did you see her dinner gown beneath it?”
“No sir, it comes to the floor.”
“All you could see would be her face?”
“That’s right.”
“But she had her back to you?”
“If you’re going to say it weren’t her, sir, you’re wrong. There weren’t no other lady her height! Apart from that, there weren’t no other lady here, sir, then nor ever. Mr. Chancellor isn’t like that with other ladies. Devoted, he was, poor man.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking that, Lily.”
“I’m glad….” She looked uncomfortable. Presumably she was thinking of