“There’s only one possible time if it was yesterday afternoon.”
“ Which it was,” said Fox. “Baskett says the cupboard was all spick and span before the charade. We’re lucky it wasn’t tidied up later on. He was going to put things straight when the accident happened and after that our chaps told him not to. So it must have been during the conversation between the brothers. I got the old nurse talking. She won’t say anything against the family but she’s got her knife into Miss Tinkerton. You know what these old girls are like, sir. Mrs. Burnaby kept sort of hinting at things, suggesting Miss Tinkerton’s a very inquisitive sort of woman and very much in with her ladyship and against his late lordship. I reckon Miss T. and Mrs. B. had a row at some time or other and Mrs. Burnaby doesn’t forget it. I reckon they’re kind of bosom enemies if you know what I mean.”
“I do. Not very reliable evidence.”
“No, but there may be something in it all the same. She couldn’t say a good word for Miss Tinkerton but there was nothing you could get your teeth into. At one time it was Miss Tinkerton carrying on with the menservants — that Giggle, as Mrs. B. called him, in particular.”
“Good lord!”
“Yes. At another time it was Miss Tinkerton repeating gossip about Miss Friede, as Mrs. Burnaby calls her.”
“What sort of gossip?”
“Oh, saying the stage was a funny life for a young lady. Nothing definite. She kept saying ‘those two.’ ”
“Who did she mean?”
“That’s what I asked her, and she gave a bit of a laugh and said: ‘Never mind, but they were hand in glove against his late lordship and there was more in it than met the eye.’ Seemed as if she meant Tinkerton and her ladyship. Later on she said her ladyship would be properly in the soup if it wasn’t for Miss T. I don’t know,” said Fox. “Search me what she was driving at half the time, but I’ve got it all down and you can see it, sir, for what it’s worth. Based on imagination from start to finish, as like as not, but it did seem to suggest that Miss Tinkerton’s a bit of a sly one. And taking the prints in the cupboard into consideration, if they are hers, I wondered if she was sort of keeping watch — well, for somebody else. Naming no names, as Mrs. B. would say.”