‘Coo!’ she said to nobody in particular. ‘I wouldn’t ’alf like to foxtrot to one o’ them Savoy bands like you ’ear on the wireless. Better than the Christy Minstrels you get on Southend pier.’
‘Well, you never will, so forget it,’ replied Mrs Varley. ‘Go and bring the rest of the coal in.’
‘Yes, mum.’
She skittered off, nearly colliding with Iris, the upstairs maid and one of flame-haired twin sisters who had entered the ffolkeses’ service on the same day. The other’s name was Dolly and, identically pert in their identical maids’ outfits, they were next to impossible to tell apart.
‘Oh, me poor feet!’ Iris groaned. ‘They’re fair killin’ me!’
She collapsed on to the chair next to Tomelty’s.
‘’Ello, beautiful,’ he greeted her with the uncouth coquetry he had long since patented. His was a line as subtle as semaphore and you couldn’t help wondering how it ever worked. Yet it did, again and again.
‘Want me to give you a massage?’ he hopefully proposed.
‘Cheeky monkey! Oooooh!’ she sighed ecstatically as she tipped off her shoes under the table – the heel of the left with the toe of the right, the heel of the right with the toe of the left. She started vigorously rubbing the soles of her feet. ‘I’ve been dyin’ to do that for the past hour. They’re red raw!’
She let out a sigh of pleasurable anticipation.
‘Tomorrow’s me mornin’ off and I’m goin’ to set the alarm clock to six o’clock – just to remind meself I can go straight back to sleep. Bliss!’
‘So what’s happening up there?’ asked Mrs Varley, who was shovelling the third of four spoonfuls of sugar into her tea. ‘Still all in a state, are they?’
‘Not ’alf. S’why they’re keepin’ us downstairs – cos of all the dirt that’s bein’ spilt. As I was leavin’ the drawin’-room with the tea-tray, that actress, Cora what’s-’er-face, was callin’ Gentry a lyin’ ’ound – “a lyin’ ’ound” – them were ’er actual words an’ she fair spat ’em out! I wouldn’t like to meet ’er on a dark night.’
‘Well, you never will, so forget it,’ said Mrs Varley, who couldn’t have got through the day without plentiful dippings into her kitty of stock phrases.
‘It’s a turn o’ speech, Mrs Varley. What they call an allergy.’
‘I don’t hold with allergies. Plain English should be good enough for anyone.’
She thoughtfully sipped her tea, pinkie upraised in the refined manner.
‘I’m surprised, though, to hear you say she was spitting mad. She always struck me as so swelte and sophisticated.’
‘Swelte?’ said Iris derisively. ‘That stuck-up thing? Swelte, my –’
‘Iris!’ warned Chitty. ‘Language!’
‘Sorry. But I ’ad to laugh, you see, at somethin’ she let slip out.’
‘Who?’
‘The so-called Cora Rutherford.’
‘What do you mean “so-called”?’
‘Well, it was like this. They was all havin’ their tea, even the copper, and she – Cora Rutherford – she was tryin’, you know, to brighten up the mood with one of ’er antidotes. She’s got a ton o’ them antidotes.’
‘I don’t hold with antidotes.’
‘Oh, put a sock in it, Mrs Varley! Go on, Iris, what happened?’
The kitchen was all ears. Addie had come back from the coal-house and was standing as inconspicuously as possible at the garden door – she was an inconspicuous creature at the best of times – while Dolly, who had just returned from her duties upstairs, took a seat on the other side of Tomelty from Iris.
‘Well,’ said Iris in a stage whisper, ‘she was sittin’ close to the fire in that fur wrap of ’ers –’
‘Isn’t it somethin’, though!’ Dolly interrupted her with a sigh. ‘I’d just die – I’d kill – for a mink wrap like that!’
‘It’s not mink, it’s fox.’
‘It’s mink.’
‘Fox!’
‘Mink!’
‘Girls, girls, surely it doesn’t matter?’
‘How right you are, Mr Farrar. It’s most aggravatin’ to be interrupted in an antidote ’ardly before you’ve started,’ said Iris, glaring at her sister.
‘As I was sayin’ before I was so rudely interrupted,’ she continued, ‘she was tellin’ ’em all some story about ’er bein’ a little kid – it wasn’t about the theatre for once – it was about ’ow she’d been misbehavin’ with some local boy – no, no, not what you’re thinkin’, Tomelty, you Irish tink, you – you with your one-track mind! Seems ’er an’ this boy ’ad been splashin’ about in a mud pool together an’ when she got home ’er mum was blazin’ mad at the state of ’er clothes an’ ticked ’er off no end – an’ she, Cora, she said this witty, rude thing back at ’er mum – which was atcherly the point o’ the antidote – but what made everyone laugh out loud was when she repeated what ’er mum said when she ’eard ’er say this witty thing’ – Iris switched to an uncannily convincing imitation of Cora Rutherford’s accent – ‘“So dear Mama turned to me and cried, ‘How dare you speak to your mother like that, Nelly!’” Nelly!’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Addie.
Iris burst into raucous, dirty, gravelly laughter.
‘Nelly! There she was, tellin’ ‘er antidote an’ bein’ so witty an’ all, an’ she got so carried away she clean forgot ‘er name was supposed to be Cora. She didn’t even finish the story. She clapped ’er ’ands over ’er mouth and that pasty face of ’ers – just like one of Mrs Varley’s soda scones, it is! – went quite peuce. I daresay ’er name isn’t Rutherford neither. Ramsbottom more like.’
‘Now, now, Iris,’ said Chitty, who realised he was fighting a losing battle in defence of the decencies, ‘we don’t want any of your lip in this kitchen.’
‘Little Nelly Ramsbottom,’ Iris went on unrepentantly, ‘the queen o’ the back-to-backs!’
Her chant – ‘Lit-tle-Ne-lly-Rams-bo-ttom!’ – was taken up by Dolly and even, though at first circumspectly, by Addie, the three of them beginning to dance a conga round the kitchen table.
‘Wheeesht, all of you!’ an indignant Mrs Varley shouted at them. ‘What a way to behave when there’s a dead body in the house!’
‘Go on,’ said Tomelty, ‘you said yerself as ’ow Raymond Gentry was a bad lot. You’re not about sheddin’ tears over ’im now, are you?’
‘No, I am not,’ she replied. ‘But it’s not a pleasant thought – sharing the house with a murderer.’
‘You needn’t go botherin’ yer ’ead about that,’ he retorted with a snort. ‘This murder is strictly a toffs’ affair. It’s a fine art for the likes o’ them – a snooty sport, bit like fox-’untin’. We might feel like murderin’ one o’ them, but you can bet yer last farthin’ they’d never dirty their manicured fingers murderin’ one of us, for sure if we ain’t good enough to invite to cocktails we ain’t good enough to murder neither. If one o’ that bunch upstairs was to kill one of us, ’e’d be oystercised all right – but you know for why? Not cos ’e’d done a murder but cos ’e’d stepped out of ’is own class!’
For all his rough-diamond exterior Tomelty could be quite eloquent.
‘Can you see any o’ them takin’ the time or trouble to bump one of us off in the attic an’ leave it lookin’ like no one’s come in or gone out? Some ’ope! If ever we ’ave ours comin’, we’ll get it the good old workin’-class way, a quick bash on the back o’ the noggin outside the Dog an’ Duck. ’Ave no fear, Mrs Varley, your life – aye, an’ your virtue, too – is safe as ’ouses!’
‘Here, you!’ said Mrs Varley heatedly. ‘My virtue’s my business and don’t you forget it! If the late Mr Varley was alive to hear what you just said, he’d be spinning in his grave!’