Free Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman by Tessa Arlen Page B

badly, never seen anything like it. First she threw a rock at him then she called him a pig and that he should get out, no one wanted him here.”
    â€œJohn.” Her voice cut across the kitchen and the footman spun around. “What are you talking about? How many times do I have to tell you? There is to be no gossip. Now come with me, please, we are going to use the Royal Doulton for tea and I can’t reach the top shelf.”
    John meekly followed her to the china pantry.
    â€œWho were you talking about just now?” she asked, pushing the door of the china pantry closed for greater privacy.
    â€œMiss Lucinda—she had quite a falling-out with Mr. Teddy on the terrace last night just before dinner. She was in a right old state, I could see and hear her through the terrace door.”
    â€œYou are setting such a bad example, young man; this is not the sort of comportment I expect from a second footman. You never discuss our guests’ behavior, do you understand me?”
    â€œBut should I tell the sergeant what I saw, Mrs. Jackson?”
    She recognized he had a point. Who held the higher authority now? Herself and Mr. Hollyoak, or the policeman sitting in the butler’s pantry?
    â€œYou don’t volunteer information to the sergeant unless he specifically asks you. Is that clear?” She held her stern look until, thoroughly crushed, he said it was.
    She grimly patrolled belowstairs until she felt sure she had suppressed the hysterical need for gossip that had prevailed ever since Sergeant Hawkins’s arrival. She was aided in this by the massive effort it took to produce dinner for sixteen people in the dining room.
    This respite gave Mrs. Jackson a few moments for some quiet introspection, and she took herself off to her parlor to ponder the unsolved instance of the missing Violet. She was sensible enough not to blame herself entirely for Violet’s departure, but she certainly believed herself accountable for not knowing what had made Violet so unhappy in the first place that she had, in Mrs. Thwaite’s parlance, gone and done a bunk.
    She felt personally affronted by the third housemaid’s abrupt and completely unjustifiable departure. She had been impressed with Violet from the moment the young girl had come to work at the house. Violet was deft about her work, and quick to understand the importance of detail, but with enough intelligence to comprehend how the house worked as a whole. Mrs. Jackson thought she had identified some of the qualities in Violet that were necessary for her perhaps to become a candidate for the post of housekeeper when Mrs. Jackson retired. The girl’s unannounced departure was a slap in the face, and after Mrs. Jackson had recovered from the realization that Violet had actually bolted, she felt not only embarrassed that one of her girls had run off but personally and deeply hurt. Underneath this was the worry that a village girl with no life experience had left the security and safety of the house.
    She pondered the possible reasons for Violet’s running off and came up with nothing. The usual whys and wherefores connected to runaway housemaids were well known. They either were in the family way or had gone off with a “follower.” Sometimes they were thieves who had been set up by gangs of housebreakers, trained to recognize lucrative hauls and courageous enough to open the door for the real work to be done in the night. All of these were highly unlikely in Mrs. Jackson’s view, as far as Violet was concerned. She knew herself to be an intelligent woman with a practical cast of mind; she relied on reason to give her answers and very rarely wasted time on conjecture. Beyond that, she was incapable of venturing. She washed her face and hands and went back downstairs to the servants’ hall. She knew that it was time she informed Violet’s employers that she was no longer in the house.

 
    Chapter Nine
    Since the