‘If the sabotage had been devised to make someone’s trousers fall down or their skirts blow up, I would have that old rogue as my principal suspect,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘But I think he gets an automatic cross.’
I laughed. ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Though if I find out that any housemaids have been fondled, he should be top of the list. So that’s everyone from above stairs?’
‘I believe so, yes,’ she said, putting her pen on to the tray. ‘Below stairs . . . Well, I’m afraid that’s rather within your purview. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m not at all certain who the runners and riders are within our host’s household.’
‘I can list the main ones for you, if you’d care to add them to your list.’
She picked up her pen once more. ‘Say on, tiny one,’ she said.
‘There’s Mr Spinney the butler. He’s unusually affable and easy-going for a butler.’
‘A little too perfect, you think? Something to hide?’
‘No idea, my lady. Then there’s the housekeeper, Mrs McLelland. I can’t fathom her out at all. Polite and friendly, and yet at the same time oddly cold and distant. I’d like to know more about her.’
‘Righto,’ she said, making a note.
‘The cook is the delightful Mrs Ruddle, and her maid is Patience, who prefers to be known as Patty. Lovely women. You’d think they were mother and daughter, the way they get along.’
‘Perhaps they are,’ suggested Lady Hardcastle.
‘One never knows,’ I said. ‘Oh, Morgan the chauffeur – we can’t forget him.’
‘Well, no, we can’t. But he was the one who pointed out the sabotage. Wouldn’t he have tried to hide the deliberateness of it?’
‘Perhaps, my lady. But it might be a cunning double-bluff.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, making more notes. ‘We’ll keep him in mind, but I have my doubts.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ve not met many of the others.’
‘What about your pal Betty?’
‘Oh, of course, yes. But she was in the room with me all night.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘As certain as I can be, my lady,’ I said. ‘I’d been at the champagne and might have slept peacefully on if she’d got up in the night, but she’d been supping enthusiastically, too. I doubt she’d have been in a fit state to find her way to the stables, let alone track down a pair of wire cutters and find precisely the right place to employ them.’
‘Good enough for me,’ she said. ‘Didn’t they have a driver?’
‘They did,’ I said. ‘Finlay. But he just dropped the ladies off and went back to London, so he wasn’t even here.’
‘Unless he sneaked back at dead of night and did the dirty deed. He’d know one end of a spanner from the other.’
‘A weak point, badly made, my lady. Finlay Duggan shall remain unlisted.’
We sat a moment in thought.
‘What was the name of that chap you said was a rum ’un?’ said Lady Hardcastle after a while. ‘You said he was “a handful”, as I recall.’
‘Oh, Evan Gudger,’ I said. ‘Footman of this parish, currently serving as guests’ valet.’
‘That’s the chap. On the list?’
‘Mischievous, rebellious, like as not a bit reckless. I’d say he was listworthy, yes, my lady.’
‘Goodness,’ she said as she wrote. ‘It’s quite a list, isn’t it?’
‘It is. And we’ve not covered half the staff.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, capping her pen and tapping it against her teeth. ‘Well, we’ll find out nothing more sitting here picking through the remnants of breakfast. Time to dress and start poking our noses into things, I think.’
‘Righto, my lady,’ I said, and stood to remove the tray from her lap.
As we passed the open door of the library on our way to the front door, we saw Miss Titmus hunched over something at the large writing desk by one of the windows.
‘What ho, Helen,’ called Lady Hardcastle.
Miss Titmus looked round, slightly alarmed.
‘Sorry, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. We’re off for a stroll round the grounds. Care to join us?’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Titmus. ‘Oh, yes. Thank you. That would be super. Just let me . . .’
She turned back to the desk, and I could see that she had been fiddling with her camera. She closed it with a snap, and brought the reassembled instrument with her as she joined us in the passage.
‘You don’t mind if I bring this?’ she said, indicating the camera.
‘Why on earth would we mind?’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘To be honest, I’m not sure, but it does vex Roz so. She gets frightfully cross with me for carrying it about.’
‘Well, neither of us is Roz, and I think it’s a splendid little thing. I remember when cameras were great wooden boxes that arrived on the back of a cart with a team of six or seven men to operate them.’
Miss Titmus laughed. ‘Oh, Emily, you do make me chuckle.’
‘Glad to hear it, old thing,’ said Lady Hardcastle. Taking Miss Titmus by the arm, she led us all out into the September sunshine.
We strolled around the formal garden that we’d seen from the terrace at the rear of the house. Despite having no practical gardening skills whatsoever, Lady Hardcastle’s theoretical knowledge of flowers, herbs, shrubs, trees, bushes, mosses, weeds, lichens, and fungi seemed, to me at least, to be encyclopaedic. Such was her passion for matters botanical, she would occasionally break off mid-sentence to point out a plant, excitedly describing its origins, usually with plenty of references to the Latin names of its floral relatives. I was delighted to see that Miss Titmus was as nonplussed as I. Another town girl, clearly. But she made up for her lack of technical knowledge with an extraordinary enthusiasm for shape and colour. The pair of them made for very entertaining garden companions, even for someone like me who could barely tell a Passiflora from a park bench.
We stopped for a moment beside a bed of rose bushes, while Miss Titmus crouched before one particularly impressive specimen, apparently trying to capture its likeness with her camera.
‘I know it’s all the rage these days to photograph people,’ she said as she stretched forwards to position herself more propitiously, ‘but I do like to snap “things” when I can. You know, buildings, motor cars . . . flowers.’ She finally stood. ‘I just wish colour photography was more practical for the amateur. Wouldn’t these look glorious in full colour?’
‘It would be a treat, indeed,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Is this new, all this photography lark?’
Miss Titmus looked at her curiously as we walked on. ‘No, not really. I believe the first photographs were taken in the 1820s.’
Lady Hardcastle laughed. ‘I’m so sorry, dear. It was a terribly badly worded question. I meant is it new to you? Have you been interested in photography for long?’
‘Ohhh,’ said Miss Titmus with a laugh. ‘A couple of years. But I’ve been fascinated by the whole thing since . . . Well, since school, really. That photograph of the cricket team entranced me. I could scarcely believe that our images had been captured by that box – a moment frozen forever. It’s quite magical, don’t you think?’
‘I rather think it is, when you put it like that,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I dabble with moving pictures myself, you know.’