Chapter 20 - Jen
Jen’s reception in the Servants’ Hall for lunch was frosty, to say the least. News had travelled fast. Jen wondered if she should be ringing a bell and shouting ‘unclean!’ The servants didn’t make eye contact and she saw them hover at the dining table to make sure where she was going to sit and then sit as far away as possible.
Mr. Cook arrived and seemed surprised to see her. ‘I thought you might wish to have lunch in your room, today Miss James.’
‘Really? Well, you thought wrong, Mr. Cook.’ She retorted. He seemed taken aback by her attitude.
‘Under the circumstances,’ began Mrs. Wagstaff. ‘And with Miss Potter here,’ she indicated with a slide of her eyes, Miss Potter who was standing a couple of feet away from her. Miss Potter sniffed.
‘And what circumstances are those?’ Jen enquired.
She heard a mutter from behind her, from Kate, the pretty Senior Housemaid, ‘not right, a thief shouldn’t be sitting with decent folk.’
She swung round to face her, ‘if you’ve got anything to say to me, have the decency and courage to say it to my face.’
‘No need to take it out on the girl,’ Mr. Cook said.
She swung back to him and his disapproving face. She caught sight of Solomon Taylor entering the room. He looked grave.
‘Tell me, have any of you ever heard of guilty until proved innocent?’ she asked very deliberately.
Solomon Taylor cleared his throat. ‘Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. Latin for the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies or as we commonly call it, presumption of innocence.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Taylor. So, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, what that means is that people in this country accused of a crime are presumed innocent until guilty.’
‘But the police arrested you,’ Kate said.
‘Twice,’ Mr. Cook said.
Jen sighed. ‘They did not arrest me twice. They merely interviewed me after Etta, Hetty, Miss Ashcroft and I went for a drive. Then I was arrested very briefly on suspicion of stealing Lady Mowbray’s necklace after they found the necklace in Miss Ashcroft’s jewellery box and then released when they realised that someone must have planted it there. OK?’
‘OK by me,’ said a new voice. It was Callum Fraser who had just come in.
‘No smoke without fire,’ Mrs. Butler said.
‘Oh really? Have you never heard of the police making wrongful arrests?’
Their shocked faces showed that they had not. Jen recalled that they did not live in her world of police corruption and cynicism.
‘Aye, I have,’ Callum Fraser said. He stared belligerently around the Servants’ Hall. ‘I’ve known plenty of people taken by the police for no real good reason and then arrested on some trumped up charges.’
There was a mutter of ‘Scottish.’ Possibly from Miss Potter.
‘Who said that?’ demanded Callum.
No one answered.
‘This is why I thought it would be best for you to take your meal in your room or in the Servants’ Room,’ Mr. Cook told Jen. ‘To avoid any scenes and any distress to Miss Potter.’
‘I refuse to act as if I’ve done something wrong,’ Jen said.
‘And she hasn’t. You should think hard before you start acting as if she’s got the plague. It could happen to any one of youse.’ Callum’s Scottish accent got stronger when he was angry, Jen noted. ‘Any one of you could be accused. Do you not think that when that damn necklace went missing, the first thing the high and mighties did, was to blame us?’
‘Mr. Fraser, that is quite enough,’ Mr. Cook said.
‘You’re a bunch of hypocrites and the sight of your stupid faces makes me sick,’ Callum roared. ‘I’m off to the pub for lunch. Coming?’ he asked Jen.
‘Thank you,’ said Jen who was genuinely grateful for his support, ‘but no.’
‘Suit yourself,’ and he stormed out.
Jen hoped that when he calmed down and thought about it, he would come to realise that she could not have gone to the pub with him. That would have been an admission of guilt as far as she was concerned. She could not tell Mr Cook that she would not eat her lunch separately and then scuttle off somewhere else.
They all sat down. Solomon Taylor was sitting on one side of her. Lunch was served; a rabbit stew with plenty of potatoes. When Lily had finished serving, she sat down next to Jen, a gesture of support, which warmed Jen’s heart.
‘Thanks for your support,’ Jen hissed to Solomon, the one person who really knew that she was innocent.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought that you were doing very well by yourself.’
‘Huh.’
‘I didn’t believe you had done anything wrong, miss, honest,’ piped up Lily. ‘Tell me, was it scary when that inspector arrested you?’
‘It wasn’t fun.’
‘Funny that they put it in Miss Ashdown’s box though.’
‘Funny isn’t the word.’
‘They probably panicked about being caught with it on them and her room was the first one they came to,’ Solomon Taylor said.
Jen saw Kate further down the table, look sceptical at this and she gave her a hard stare. Kate flushed and looked down at the table.
‘Don’t mind her, miss,’ Lily said softly. ‘She always thinks what Mr. Cook does. She’s his niece, see.’
Jen did not know if that was useful information or not but she tucked it away. As she studied them both, she noticed a little family resemblance mainly around the bright, button eyes and they had the same shade of very dark brown hair although what hair remained to Mr. Cook was shot with silver and mainly around his ears and back of head.
After lunch, Jen went for a smoke out in the kitchen garden. She felt she really deserved on. As she smoked, not just one but two cigarettes, Etta would forgive her this once, she wondered where the murder weapon could be hidden. The police had looked all over the house and grounds, it was true but had they looked absolutely everywhere? Had they looked in the most ridiculous place possible? Jen remembered how once she looked everywhere for a couple of hours for her purse before finding it in the fridge. And how distraught Etta had been on discovering that she had washed her mobile phone by forgetting to take it out of her jeans.
An idea occurred to her. She stubbed out the cigarette and carefully disposed of it by putting it in the dustbin by the door. She went through the busy kitchen and into the scullery. Elsie wasn’t there, she was helping in the kitchen. Jen walked over to the washing machine and hesitated. It really would be a most ridiculous hiding place. Then she opened the lid and felt around inside. To her surprise, she felt something wrapped up in material. She pulled it out. It was something was smallish but felt heavy. The material was a blouse, a nice one. She unwrapped the blouse and there, lying within its folds was a marble statuette with bloodstains on its green baize covered base.
Chapter 21