“Is there anything we can do while you’re busy with the staff?” Constance asked.
“I suggest you mingle with the other guests and continue to listen and observe,” Barnaby said. “We have several questions we’ve yet to find answers to, and at some point, someone is going to letsomethingfall.”
Alaric looked at Constance, and both of them nodded. “Very well,” Alaric said.
Constance’s chin firmed. “We’re happy to do whatever we can to help identify Glynis’s and Rosa’s killer.”
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Chapter 7
In order to move things along as quickly as possible—and as they had no grounds whatever to imagine the murderer was one of the staff—Stokes, Barnaby, and Penelope elected to speak with the staff as a group in the servants’ hall.
The staff duly gathered around the long deal table that ran the length of the room, sitting in what were no doubt their customary places, although Carnaby and Mrs. Carnaby forsook their positions at the table’s head, leaving those for the investigators.
At Stokes’s direction, they started at the beginning, with the arrival of the guests and, subsequently, the guests being shown to their rooms. Stokes and Barnaby questioned, while Penelope used the answers to draw up a rough sketch of the first floor and the position of the various wings and bedrooms. “So Miss Johnson followed Mrs. Macomber upstairs. Where, exactly, is Mrs. Macomber’s room?”
Seated at Penelope’s elbow, Mrs. Carnaby peered at the sketch. “At the start of the wing where we put the unmarried ladies and the matrons without husbands attending, ma’am. Close to the main stairs on the west side of the corridor”—she pointed—“just there.”
“Good.” Penelope scribbled that down. “And the unmarried gentlemen?”
“In the west wing, ma’am,” Mrs. Carnaby said. “It’s the long corridor leading to the master’s room.”
“I see.” Penelope wielded her pencil. “Here?”
“More or less, ma’am.” Carnaby added, “From the master’s suite, what we call the family wing runs north.”
“Are there any gentlemen with rooms there?” Stokes asked.
“Two,” Carnaby replied. “Mr. Edward has one of the rooms toward the north end, and Mr. Alaric—Lord Carradale—now he’s staying, has the room one door up from the west wing corridor.”
They quickly filled in where the other unmarried gentlemen’s rooms were situated; the married couples had been accommodated in yet another wing.
“And Mrs. Cleary’s room?” Penelope asked.
“Just there, ma’am.” Mrs. Carnaby tapped a spot toward the end of the ladies’ wing. “She’d come before and liked that room, so we gave it to her again.”
Barnaby glanced at the sketch; the gentlemen’s rooms were on the opposite side of the house from the shrubbery, while the ladies’ rooms lay more or less at the midpoint of the house. Two of the married couples’ rooms overlooked the lawn before the shrubbery entrance, but the chances of anyone having glanced out at just the right moment to see the murderer cross the lawn were slim, and neither of the couples had mentioned any such sighting.
“Those of you who work in the stables.” Stokes looked down the table. “What can you tell me about the times Lord Carradale came and went on Monday and, again, on Tuesday?”
It transpired that Carradale’s gray gelding, Sultan, was a favorite among the stable staff; the stableman, Percy’s groom, and the stable boy all verified the times Alaric had arrived at and had ridden away from the Hall.
With Morgan taking notes, Stokes turned his attention to Carnaby and the footmen who had been circulating among the guests at Monday evening’s soirée. As they’d hoped, the staff were more acutely aware of who had been where, and through judicious questioning, Stokes pieced together a detailed account of Glynis Johnson’s movements through the evening.
“So with Mrs. Collard, Miss Johnson approached Lord Carradale and the group he was chatting with,” Penelope clarified. When one of the footmen and Carnaby nodded, she arched a brow at Barnaby.
Stokes caught her eye and arched a brow back.
She grimaced. “It could be nothing, but it does lend credence to Carradale’s suspicion that Glynis was using him as…well, cover, in some way. For some reason.”
“Sadly,” Barnaby dryly remarked, “that gets us no closer to comprehending that reason.”
The footmen and Carnaby were very certain that no altercation, argument, or even disagreement had occurred among the guests during the course of the evening. “They all seemed very pleasant and civilized,” Carnaby said.
Unfortunately, when it came to the critical time on Monday night immediately after the guests retired, when asked if they’d seen Glynis Johnson anywhere in the house or grounds, all the staff looked blank.
After a moment, they exchanged glances, then Carnaby volunteered, “We all assumed she’d gone upstairs with the other ladies.”
