The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

‘I must insist that you do. When you’ve finished, I want you to try to remember exactly what happened when you found Miss Bartram. Anything you can tell us will be of help.’

Eleanor looked up. ‘Why? She … she drowned herself, didn’t she?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, she must have done. She argued with her sweetheart the other day. He’d … he’d taken a shine to me, you see.’ Eleanor looked down at her hands. She took a gulp of brandy, enjoying the burn it gave as she swallowed. ‘I did nothing to encourage him,’ she added quickly, as the Inspector scribbled furiously, ‘but he grabbed at me and Lizzie saw, and she was very upset. When I saw her, lying there …’

She stopped. The Inspector leant forward.

‘I’m afraid that would not have been possible,’ he said, gently. ‘We suspect murder.’

The mug slipped through her fingers.

Murder.

He kept her in there for over an hour. By the time the interview was over his notebook was full, even though she hadn’t told him everything. Then he’d helped her to her feet and told her to get something to eat, as if she were a child hankering for a biscuit.

Eleanor made it halfway down the corridor before she threw up in a plant pot.

She couldn’t face eating. The thought of food when Lizzie’s bloated face kept flashing through her mind was obscene. Besides, the kitchen was full of policemen, and she was sure they’d all be watching the flash of the knife as she sliced the bread, listening to the splash as she washed her hands. No. She couldn’t do it.

The drawing-room door opened. Eleanor whirled around, but it was only the Inspector.

‘Ah, Miss Hartley. Could you tell me where Mr Pembroke is? I need to speak with him.’

Eleanor started. ‘You don’t think he could’ve—’

The Inspector held up a hand. ‘I understand Mr Pembroke was the last person to see Miss Bartram alive. An interview is all I need.’

‘He left,’ said Eleanor, licking her lips. ‘He heard the noise, and when he found out what had happened he went out before you arrived.’

‘Out? Do you know where?’

Eleanor shook her head. The Inspector was watching her very closely. Eleanor hadn’t told him about confronting Lizzie in the kitchen, or about Lizzie’s threats to throw Eleanor to Mr Pembroke. His notebook was full enough already. He hadn’t just scribbled down everything she’d said. When she’d struggled to speak past the lump in her throat, he’d made notes then, his calculating eyes on her hands, her dress, her red eyes.

The Inspector lowered his voice. ‘You seem nervous, Miss Hartley. Let me reassure you that everything you have told me will be kept in the strictest confidence, unless the case should come to trial.’

Eleanor’s eyes flickered up and down the corridor. Mrs Fielding was standing in the doorway to the servants’ staircase, her face pale.

‘Now, I must ask if there is any reason why you assumed your employer might have harmed Miss Bartram?’

It was too good an opportunity to miss, but Mrs Fielding was still standing in the doorway. If she overheard, Eleanor would be dismissed with no money and nowhere to go. Eleanor glanced towards her, and made sure the Inspector saw.

‘Find the other girls,’ she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.

It was well into the afternoon before the policemen left. They paced across the kitchen in long strides, measuring the distance between the tradesmen’s entrance and the corner where the kitchen coal scuttle was usually kept. They stood at the bottom of the servants’ staircase and opened and shut the baize doors, shouting up the stairs to see how much sound they kept out. They searched Lizzie’s room, and crowded around the water trough.

Eleanor kept well out of their way. She, Aoife and Daisy waited in the drawing room in case they were needed. Aoife couldn’t stop crying, and Daisy went ashen every time she caught sight of the coal scuttle propped up against the fireplace. Eleanor couldn’t look at it. When they’d turned Lizzie over, there’d been a mark on her forehead from where someone had struck her with the coal scuttle in the kitchen. Then, she must have staggered into the garden, where her attacker had drowned her.

Aoife sniffed. ‘I wish they’d all go away,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘They must’ve found everything by now.’

‘Did they say what they were looking for?’ Eleanor asked.

Daisy snorted. ‘They won’t tell us. Not until they know we didn’t do it, anyway.’

Aoife whimpered. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Eleanor snapped, shifting in her seat, ‘they don’t suspect us!’

A policeman called up the servants’ staircase and all three of them jumped.

‘You were in with that Inspector a long time,’ Daisy muttered, her brown eyes fixed on Eleanor. ‘What did he want?’

Eleanor threw up her hands. ‘Of course I was in there a long time! I found her! And … it wasn’t easy, you know. I was upset.’

‘I’m sure you were,’ said Daisy, her voice careful.

Something in her tone made Eleanor stiffen. It was as if Daisy had smoothed all the sharp edges off her words and placed them gently into the conversation. The silence in the room seemed thicker now that she had spoken.

‘I was,’ Eleanor insisted.

Eleanor was sitting between Daisy and the door. She saw Daisy’s eyes flicker towards the doorknob, just once. In that same measured voice she said, ‘I wasn’t suggesting anything else,’ and did not speak again.

By night the crowds had gone. Most of them went with the policemen when they took the body away. Some boys had spent the evening daring each other to scale the wall and stick their hand in the water trough, but that had ended when a tearful Mrs Banbury had taken a swipe at them with a carpet beater.

Eleanor had tried to take her mind off everything. When the Inspector left she’d gone back up to her airless room to finish the last of her mending. No one had stopped her. But when she’d opened the