Six hours later, as the light was fading, Powerscourt arrived at Brympton Hall and found Georgina Nash staring out at the gardens in her downstairs drawing room.
‘Lord Powerscourt, how good of you to come. This is all too terrible.’
‘Good evening to you, Mrs Nash. Is there any news? Has the young man turned up?’
‘No, he has not. There’s no sign of him at all. The police are here, searching the house and grounds. Willoughby is leading a search party around the lake. We’ve had one corpse here already, and now this.’
Georgina Nash looked as though she might be about to cry.
‘Do we know when he was last seen?’ said Powerscourt. ‘How long has he been missing?’
‘I think he was last seen after supper in the servants’ quarters yesterday evening. He said he was going up to his room. William shares a room on the top floor with the other trainee footman, Oliver Fox, but Oliver’s away at present. So nobody noticed until he didn’t come down to breakfast. I’m going to find our butler Charlie Healey, if he’s not out with one of the search parties, he knows more about William than anybody.’
Powerscourt stared out into the gardens behind the south front. He smiled when he saw that the fountain, source of so much anxiety to Georgina Nash until it was finally repaired, was still working properly, great bursts of water shooting into the evening sky.
Charlie Healey looked about forty years old. Powerscourt could tell at once that Charlie had been in the British Army. He vaguely recalled being told that he had fought with great distinction in the Boer War.
‘Good evening, Mr Healey,’ Powerscourt began. ‘This is a bad business.’
‘It is indeed, sir. I pray to God we can find him.’
‘Tell me about William Stebbings if you would. What sort of a young man was he?’
Charlie had given his account twice already today to different varieties of policemen.
‘Well, sir, he was a very good young man, if you know what I mean. He was hard-working and polite and always keen to learn. When he’d finishing learning how to be a footman, sir, he would have been a credit to anyone’s household.’
‘Did he want to be a footman? Or did he have other plans?’
‘Funny you should ask that, my lord,’ said Charlie Healey. ‘He did have other plans for later on, if you follow me, and he was kind enough to ask my advice.’
‘So what did he hope to do?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘Well,’ said Charlie Healey, pausing as if not sure he should mention this in front of Mrs Nash, ‘he was in love with those great ships, the ones that cross the Atlantic on the White Star Line and the fleets of the other great shipping companies like Cunard. Mauretania, Lusitania, Carmania… the names of those huge vessels were music in William’s ears. His plan, my lord, Mrs Nash, was to get lots of experience working as a footman. Then he was going to apply for a job as a steward on one of them big ships. After that he thought he could get promoted up from steward to senior steward and maybe even purser. That was William’s dream. One day he told me that he might even see if he could transfer from being a steward to being a sailor. Maybe he’d have ended up Captain, who knows.’
Charlie smiled at the end of his account. ‘You don’t suppose, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that his dream might have got the better of him? That he’s run away to sea?’
‘I have thought about that, my lord. It’s possible. Inspector Cooper had the same idea and he’s sent word to Southampton and Liverpool and all the places those big ships sail from asking them to look out for William.’
‘What about his room?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Has he taken all his clothes? Would it be possible for me to have a look, Mrs Nash?’
‘Of course you can, Lord Powerscourt. Charlie will take you up there now. Remember to mind your head in the attics.’
Charlie Healey and Powerscourt had a brief military conversation on the way to the top floor, discovering each other’s regiment and dates of service. Charlie was most impressed when he learnt that Powerscourt had been Head of Military Intelligence for the British Army in South Africa. ‘Why, my lord,’ he said, ‘we must have been there at the same time even though we never met. Just fancy that.’
The first two floors of Brympton Hall were full of large elegant spaces like the drawing room downstairs or the Long Gallery on the first floor. Up here it was as if the architect and the builders had run out of room. The second floor was a rabbit warren of little rooms, attic rooms, twisting staircases and even one room directly underneath the clock tower with a kind of balcony looking out over the front drive that seemed to Powerscourt like the perfect place for suicide.
‘Just round this corner, my lord,’ said Charlie Healey, showing them into a small room above the Long Gallery with low windows and a sloping ceiling overlooking the garden. If you twisted your neck, Powerscourt discovered, you could just catch a corner of Georgina Nash’s fountain. There were two single beds lined up against opposite walls. Each bed had a small cupboard beside it. There was a tall cupboard for clothes at the far end.
‘Feel free to look into William’s cupboard, the one on the left of the door,’ said Charlie Healey. ‘The only thing that seems to have gone is the money, but I have no idea how much he had, or if he had anything at all. He bought an expensive present for his father’s birthday last month, that might have cleaned him out completely.’
‘And the clothes? Have they gone?’
‘As far as we know, they’re still here. He didn’t have very much in the way of clothes, William. Most of them looked to have been inherited from his brothers, there were plenty of elder brothers.’
‘And he was last seen after supper yesterday evening, ‘said Powerscourt, ‘and his disappearance was only spotted after breakfast this morning, am I right, Charlie?
‘You are, my lord. We eat our meals together in the servants’ quarters in the basement. Cook was always trying to get William to have second helpings. He was thin, you see, and she thought he needed fattening up.’
‘If William wanted to go out, did he have to tell you where he was going, when he would be back, that sort of thing?’
‘All the servants could go where they wanted in their free time. Sometimes they told me if they could find me. I’d gone out myself yesterday evening so maybe William tried to tell me but wasn’t able to do so.’
‘Were there any visitors expected? Did anybody see any strangers in the grounds or approaching the house?’
‘Inspector Cooper asked that one too, my lord. I don’t think so. Inspector Cooper did say that the Hall was so full of doors and staircases that you could get a whole football team in and out and nobody would notice.’
Powerscourt sat down on William’s bed and tried to imagine that he was sixteen years old and obsessed with ocean liners. What would William have done? Where would he have gone? Did it have to do with the murder?
‘Forgive me for asking, my lord,’ said Charlie Healey, ‘but is William’s disappearance very important? To your investigation, I mean. It’s not every day after all that Norfolk sees all these policemen arriving on the case, closely followed by a top investigator from London. I presume it must have to do with the earlier murder.’
‘This interest does have to do with the earlier murder, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you’re quite right. Can I tell you the reason in confidence?’
Charlie Healey nodded. He was an avid reader of mystery and detective stories in his leisure time, and was particularly devoted to The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.
‘My role in this case,’ Powerscourt was checking the space behind the pillow in William Stebbings’ bed in case it contained buried treasure, ‘is to secure the acquittal of Cosmo Colville, the man you apprehended in the state bedroom with a gun in his hand. Now – forgive me this horrible thought, but I can assure you it is the same thought that has led Inspector Cooper and his men here on their search mission in the grounds – if young William has been murdered, one assumption must be that it is because of what he saw at the time of the murder. Maybe he didn’t realize how important it was since most of the people were strangers to him. Murderers often kill a second time because somebody has seen them committing the first murder or has some piece of information which links them to the killing. Are you with me so far, Charlie?’