I am afraid to say that although I sprang to her side and comforted her, with a great deal of hair-patting and shushing, I was thinking all the while that the police, looking around themselves and seeing a neatly acquired alibi, would have a point. Her state of shock was convincing enough – no one can make her face go pale at will – and the reality of the current tears could not be questioned, soaking her face and hands as they were and coming complete with a great deal of wet sniffing, but whether they were born of grief, remorse or a healthy fear for her neck was another question. Tears can be turned to account with the greatest of ease if one has a gift for weeping.
At length and after a few horribly deep snorts and swallows, Lollie sat up straight again and pulled away from me. I returned to my seat.
Her eyes were purple-looking now over the pallor of her cheeks, the lashes spiked and sparkling, and, although her nose was swollen and her lips trembled, youth shone out of her. (Had I cried so hard for so long I should have been sodden and wretched and looked ninety.) She tried a smile when she saw me looking at her. It was not successful and a further two fat tears splashed down her front.
‘About the question of an alibi,’ I began. I thought I spoke kindly and with lightness, but Lollie, tears drying up in an instant, gazed back at me in horror. I decided to plough on. ‘I shall, of course, say to Superintendent Hardy that I was in your room overnight and I shall say – which is true – that I don’t think you could have left and returned without waking me, but I can’t be sure. And as to the question of whether I tell him who I am and why I’m here…’
Lollie had recovered herself a little and she spoke up stoutly.
‘I don’t expect you to lie,’ she said. ‘You can say this is your first job as a lady’s maid and that I had heard about you and wrote to ask if you would come and that it’s not what you were brought up to. All of that is quite true. And then you can stay and help find out what happened. Please say you will, Dandy. You must.’
I regarded her in silence. As truths go, the history of Miss Rossiter she had laid out was unimpressive: a forked-tongue taradiddle of the highest order and if I were to serve it up to Hardy and be found out afterwards I should be lucky to escape arrest, if not a smack on the legs with a hairbrush for the cheek of it. On the other hand, I could not bear to rip myself away from this now. And, I told myself, if she had wanted a simple alibi she could far more easily have enticed Phyllis or Clara upstairs with a story of nightmares. No one, surely, planning to murder her husband would invite a detective into the house, into the very room; I was not only Lollie Balfour’s alibi – I was the stamp of innocence branded on her with indelible ink. Still, I had to satisfy the demands of my own conscience too.
‘As I was saying,’ I continued, just as though the silent tussle had not happened, ‘I don’t think you could have got out and back. I have to check, though. Would you rather do it yourself or shall I ring down for one of the girls?’
‘Do what?’ said Lollie. ‘Check what?’
‘How much noise you’d have made getting out of bed and coming back again. I’m sorry to ask you right now, but I’d like to be able to say to Mr Hardy with confidence straight away that you couldn’t have done it.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Lollie, already on her feet and making her way to the door. We crossed the landing to her bedroom and slipped inside. I returned to the chaise, pulling the screen across in front of it, and Lollie climbed onto the bed and lay down.
‘No, get right under the blankets,’ I told her. ‘It should be as near as possible as it would have been.’
Of course sound travels further at night, but Heriot Row is a quiet street and today was a quiet day. I could hear, as I lay there, the wheels of a delivery boy’s bicycle rattling on the cobbles and some birdsong from the Queen Street gardens and then, just as Lollie began to move, a heavy horse clopped past. After the sound of its hooves and its cart wheels died away I could hear very clearly the sound of the starched sheets being pushed back, the creak of bedsprings and the padding of soft footsteps crossing the floor. The door hinge was silent enough, but the handle clicked twice and there was that dragging sound as the foot of the door passed over the carpet. Then it closed with another pair of clicks, the footsteps sounded again and the bedsprings protested even more loudly as she climbed back in. It was impossible to ignore, but would it have awakened me?
‘I tried to be as quiet as I could,’ Lollie said softly. ‘After all, I would have, wouldn’t I?’
I got up and rounded the screen, giving her a reassuring smile.
‘Indeed you would,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ Then we both jumped at the sound of movement out on the landing and Lollie paled again; the little task I had set her had taken her mind away from the nightmare for a moment but now it returned.
‘Are they moving him?’ she asked. I shook my head.
‘No, they won’t be moving him for quite a while,’ I said. ‘The police doctor will have to come. Later today perhaps, but not now.’
‘And’ – she gulped a little – ‘will I have to look at him?’ I could not help closing my eyes briefly as the picture of Pip’s face flashed through my mind again.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Someone will have to identify him formally at some point but it needn’t be you, dear. It needn’t be a relative at all, just someone who knew him. Perhaps Mr Faulds? He’s desperate to help in some way.’
Lollie sat back against her pillows.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Faulds will take care of it for me. Poor thing. Do you think I’m wicked, Dandy, not to want to see him? Should I, do you think? I’ve never seen anyone… dead before.’
‘Don’t think about it just yet,’ I said to her. ‘You might feel different in a day or two.’ I went over and stood beside her bed, taking her hand and trying to chafe some warmth into it. ‘People will tell you it’s best to remember him as he was and others will tell you it helps to see his body, but no one really knows, so don’t listen if they pretend to.’
‘It all seems like a dream,’ said Lollie. ‘Not just this morning, I mean. The trouble – you being here, everything I was so scared of. All I can think of now is that bumblebee in the tennis net and how gentle he was and how much fun we always had.’
She looked very small sitting there in her bed, and I squeezed the hand I was holding.
‘Isn’t there anyone I could telephone to?’ I said. ‘There must be someone who could come?’
‘My Great Aunt Gertrude from Inverness, I suppose,’ said Lollie. ‘She doesn’t hold with the telephone but I could send a telegram to her.’
I did not like the sound of Great Aunt Gertrude from Inverness somehow; in my experience old ladies who do not hold with the telephone tend not to hold with a great deal besides, such as large fires, soft cushions and cocktails. Aunt Gertrude sounded to me like a bracing walk made flesh.
‘Are there friends one could summon for you?’ I said. I often feel as encumbered by friends and family as a horse is with flies in August, twitching at them to leave me alone and dreaming of tranquil solitude; it was hard to believe that this girl could be quite so alone.
‘We were everything to one another,’ Lollie told me. ‘I never saw the danger in that until now.’
I squeezed her hand again, hoping to head off another bout of weeping, and was glad to hear the heavy tread of feet stumping up the stairs. There was a little quiet murmuring out on the landing and then Mrs Hepburn appeared, carrying a covered basin.
‘I’ve got some-’ she said and then stopped and frowned. ‘You’ve never put her back in her bed in her frock, Fanny! Come on, madam, out you get and back into your nightie. I’ve got some bread soup for you but it’s fair hot yet anyway so we’ve plenty time till it’s ready to sup.’ I turned to go, but Mrs Hepburn laid a hand on my arm and spoke in a low voice. ‘You’ll forgive me, Fan, won’t you? I shouldn’t have ticked you off like that, but I’m just all upside down and it slipped out. I beg your pardon, though.’