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“No,” Evan admitted glumly. “I’ve spent the last week and a half chasing my shadow around London looking for jewelry I’ll lay any odds you like was destroyed the night it was taken—or trying to find out the past history of servants whose records are exemplary and deadly monotonous.” He was busy turning out drawers of neat, serviceable feminine clothes as he spoke, his long fingers touching them carefully, his face pulled into an expression of distaste at his intrusion. “I begin to think employers don’t see people at all, simply aprons and uniform stuff dresses and a lace cap,” he went on. “Whose head it is on is all the same, providing the tea is hot, the table is laid, the fires are blacked and laid and stoked, the meal is cooked and served and cleared away, and every time the bell is rung, someone answers it to do whatever you want.” He folded the clothes neatly and replaced them. “Oh—and of course the house is always clean and there are always clean clothes in the dresser. Who does it is largely immaterial.”
“You are becoming cynical, Evan!”
Evan flashed a smile. “I’m learning, sir.”
After the maids’ rooms they came down the stairs to the second floor up from the main house. At one end of the landing were the rooms of the housekeeper and the cook and the ladies’ maids, and now of course Hester; and at the other the rooms of the butler, the two footmen, the bootboy and the valet.
“Shall we begin with Percival?” Evan asked, looking at Monk apprehensively.
“We may as well take them in order,” Monk answered. “The first is Harold.”
But they found nothing beyond the private possessions of a very ordinary young man in service in a large house: one suit of clothes for the rare times off duty, letters from his family, several from his mother, a few mementoes of childhood, a picture of a pleasant-faced woman of middle years with the same fair hair and mild features as himself, presumably his mother, and a feminine handkerchief of inexpensive cambric, carefully pressed and placed in his Bible—perhaps Dinah’s?
Percival’s room was as different from Harold’s as the one man was from the other. Here there were books, some poetry, some philosophy of social conditions and change, one or two novels. There were no letters, no sign of family or other ties. He had two suits of his own clothes in the cupboard for his times off duty, and some very smart boots, several neckties and handkerchiefs, and a surprising number of shirts and some extremely handsome cufflinks and collar studs. He must have looked quite a dandy when he c
hose. Monk felt a stab of familiarity as he moved the personal belongings of this other young man who strove to dress and deport himself out of his station in life. Had he himself begun like this—living in someone else’s house, aping their manners trying to improve himself? It was also a matter of some curiosity as to where Percival got the money for such things—they cost a great deal more than a footman’s wages, even if carefully saved over several years.
“Sir!”
He jerked up and stared at Evan, who was standing white-faced, the whole drawer of the dresser on the floor at his feet, pulled out completely, and in his hand a long garment of ivory silk, stained brown in smears, and a thin, cruel blade poking through, patched and blotched with the rusty red of dried blood.
Monk stared at it, stunned. He had expected an exercise in futility, merely something to demonstrate that he was doing all he could—and now Evan held in his hand what was obviously the weapon, wrapped in a woman’s peignoir, and it had been concealed in Percival’s room. It was a conclusion so startling he found it hard to grasp.
“So much for Myles Kellard,” Evan said, swallowing hard and laying the knife and the silk down carefully on the end of the bed, withdrawing his hand quickly as if desiring to be away from it.
Monk replaced the things he had been looking through in the cupboard and stood up straight, hands in his pockets.
“But why would he leave it here?” he said slowly. “It’s damning!”
Evan frowned. “Well, I suppose he didn’t want to leave the knife in her room, and he couldn’t risk carrying it openly, with blood on it, in case he met someone—”
“Who, for heaven’s sake?”
Evan’s fair face was intensely troubled, his eyes dark, his lips pulled in distaste that was far deeper than anything physical.
“I don’t know! Anyone else on the landing in the night—”
“How would he explain his presence—with or without a knife?” Monk demanded.
“I don’t know!” Evan shook his head. “What do footmen do? Maybe he’d say he heard a noise—intruders—the front door—I don’t know. But it would be better if he didn’t have a knife in his hands—especially a bloodstained one.”
“Better still if he had left it there in her room,” Monk argued.
“Perhaps he took it out without thinking.” He looked up and met Monk’s eyes. “Just had it in his hand and kept hold of it? Panicked? Then when he got outside and halfway along the corridor he didn’t dare go back?”
“Then why the peignoir?” Monk said. “He wrapped it in that to take it, by the look of it. That’s not the kind of panic you’re talking about. Now why on earth should he want the knife? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not to us,” Evan agreed slowly, staring at the crumpled silk in his hand. “But it must have to him—there it is!”
“And he never had the opportunity to get rid of it between then and now?” Monk screwed up his face. “He couldn’t possibly have forgotten it!”
“What other explanation is there?” Evan looked helpless. “It’s here!”
“Yes—but was Percival the one who put it here? And why didn’t we find it when we looked for the jewelry?”
Evan blushed. “Well I didn’t pull out drawers and look under them for anything. I daresay the constable didn’t either. Honestly I was pretty sure we wouldn’t find it anyway—and the silver vase wouldn’t have fitted.” He looked uncomfortable.
Monk pulled a face. “Even if we had, it might not have been there then—I suppose. I don’t know, Evan. It just seems so … stupid! And Percival is arrogant, abrasive, contemptuous of other people, especially women, and he’s got a hell of a lot of money from somewhere, to judge from his wardrobe, but he’s not stupid. Why should he leave something as damning as this hidden in his room?”
