Free Murders Most Foul by Alanna Knight Page B

intently studying the garden. She gasped.
    ‘How dreadful – dreadful!’ And she exchanged a tearful look with her husband. ‘She came with good references. That was all we knew about her—’
    ‘And was all that was required to know about her,’ Archie interrupted impatiently. ‘Servants are here to obey orders and wait upon us; further communication or details of their personal backgrounds are of no possible interest to us.’ Servant girls were normally recruited from the workhouse – always eager to get rid of another orphan, they were apt to exaggerate when a reference was demanded. Ida Watts, he was to learn with regret, had been taken on by Mrs Brown in an emergency and had stayed.
    Archie was furious at the kind of publicity he could expect when this sordid story hit the newspapers’ readers, always eager to throw aspersions on their betters, those they envied – the decent well-off members of Edinburgh society who had earned the right to elegant homes. Lumbleigh Green, so cherished, would be for ever tarnished. Suicide was bad enough, but to have been brutally murdered meant problems employing local girls, cautioned by gloomy parents against setting foot in that ‘murder house’.
    Later, moaning to Clara, Archie was hurt by her reaction. He thought that as his wife she should support his views, appreciate their predicament, and all her sympathy should lie with the disturbance to her husband’s comfortable existence rather than with a maid whose unfortunate end had caused everyone such inconvenience.
    As for that damned Lizzie Laurie. Only Clara’s tears stopped Archie dismissing her on the spot as he said angrily:
    ‘I cannot help you. What do I know of this girl? I do not talk to the maids but I expect she wore a white cap and apron, a dark dress.’ His shrug was an expansive gesture. ‘All maids look alike to me.’
    Gosse hoped for more success with Mrs Lumbleigh. He addressed her politely, and turning reluctantly from her intense study of the garden, she said wearily: ‘I gave her instructions as we have no butler, but that was the limit of our communications.’ As she spoke she looked at her husband and as if for his approval she added: ‘I’m afraid I would never recognise her either, without her uniform.’
    At least, Faro noted, she wore an expression of concern.
    Gosse was bidding good day to Archie with a civilityhe was far from feeling. He nodded to Faro and headed to the kitchen, their entrance to be greeted by an outraged housekeeper. How had he dared to interrupt the master? But Gosse cut her off by saying that time was short and as the enquiry concerned servants, he had every right to do so.
    Answering his questions, Matilda Brown looked him straight in the eye, answered him firmly and had no information to add to his enquiries regarding Ida Watts, her manner indicating that this unwholesome business was a sheer waste of her own, as well as the master’s, precious time.
    Faro decided the housekeeper was so ordinary that without the routine identity particulars, it would have been difficult even to guess her age – she could have been anything from thirty to fifty.
    ‘You are not from this area?’
    She thought about that for a moment before replying: ‘I left my folks’ farm in Angus when I met my husband.’
    As he so often did, Faro found his thoughts wandering on a number of lines: how cautious even the innocent were when replying to police questioning, the impossibility of imagining Mrs Brown as a radiant bride and the equal inability to picture what had she been like as a child.
    ‘Lizzie Laurie?’ Gosse was asking her.
    ‘Mrs Lumbleigh’s maid. You will find her upstairs in the mistress’s room.’
    Faro did not relish the embarrassment of having to interview Lizzie, and hoping that task would fall to Gosse, was considerably relieved when the sergeant sent him out to seek the remaining servant, the coachman Brown,muttering, ‘I doubt you’ll get anything useful