I stared at Ainsel for a while, my mouth wide open.
“‘The more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.’”
She sounded like she was speaking on stage.
“Are you imitating some actor, or…” I said, at last.
Ainsel looked hurt. “It’s the talk of London! Haven’t you read it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I murmured.
“Fine. Point is, this case doesn’t even have a crime. It’s just people being people.”
“You’ve figured it out?”
“Two hints: the acorns and the can you threw out, and the bell that rang in the guest room at night.”
“Er…” I hadn’t expected the acorns and can to show up here. “Oh, just tell me already!”
“Well, what’s the simplest explanation? The culprit walked past Mrs. Banks’s room and then used the key they were holding to unlock the back door. Once outside, they used the same key to lock the door behind them.”
“Huh.”
“Mrs. Banks chased after the culprit, but she checked the lock after the person had already turned the key from the outside. A door like that, you can’t tell if it’s been locked from the inside or the outside just by looking at it.”
“But how did the culprit get the key? Mrs. Banks always has them on her,” I said.
“Something strange occurred just before this, remember?”
“Strange? You mean the broken bell?”
“Yes. Mrs. Banks heard a bell ringing, so she left the room carrying the bundle of keys that unlocks the main house. While she was gone, the keys to unlock the servants’ quarters were left hanging on the wall, including the key that unlocks the back door.”
“They stole the key while Mrs. Banks was away, and they rang the bell as a distraction? But how? The bell was ringing from a locked guest room. There was no one in that room, so how could anyone have rung the bell?”
“That’s easy, Cathy.” Ainsel grinned at me. “If Mrs. Banks had to lock that room, then anyone could have gone in and out of it before she did.”
“Maybe…”
“It’s a simple trick. First, you tie a long string to the lever that rings the bell. You run that string under the door, leaving just the tip poking into the corridor. Maybe you stick the string to the wall with a little wax. Then, at night, you yank, and the bell rings. The string will break, and you pull out the rest of it.”
“Wait, but wouldn’t Mrs. Banks have noticed something like that when she came to lock up?”
“This room wasn’t in use. There may have been a fire in the hearth earlier, but, before bed, you and the other maids go around dousing fires in rooms we aren’t using.”
“That’s true.”
“So there was no fire nor any other light. The room would have been dark. There’s no risk of Mrs. Banks noticing a piece of string by lamplight, especially since her eyesight isn’t what it once was.”
Ainsel was convincing.
“Now, after the bell trick, the culprit hid in the shadows of the corridor. When Mrs. Banks reached the second floor, our phantom went downstairs, took the back door key off the bundle in the housekeeper’s room, then returned upstairs and hid in the corridor again. When Mrs. Banks got back, she wouldn’t have noticed the missing key right away. Later, the culprit changed into a maid uniform and went downstairs. Obviously, it would have been better if Mrs. Banks had gone to sleep, but unfortunately she was still dozing over her ledgers in the housekeeper’s room. The culprit was forced to walk past that door and through the corridor to get to the back. They used the key to open the door and locked it so Mrs. Banks wouldn’t follow them.”
“Wait,” I said. A question had come to me. “Why should they wait before they went out? Why not just go directly out after luring Mrs. Banks to the second floor and stealing the key? If they’d done that, there would’ve been no risk of them being seen at all.”
“Clever, Cathy,” Ainsel said. “Likely because they still hadn’t received the signal. It wasn’t time for them to go out yet. Late at night in this cold, you’d freeze to death waiting around outside. But if they waited for their signal before ringing the bell, Mrs. Banks may have fallen asleep and never noticed. In which case, the housekeeper’s room would be locked and there’d be no way to steal the key.”
“Wait, Ainsel. You’ve lost me. Signal? Who is this culprit? For this to work, they’d have to be from upstairs. In which case, the Diana Mrs. Banks saw wasn’t a servant, but…”
“Exactly. I’ve deduced that the person Mrs. Banks mistook for Diana was actually Lady Lavinia.”
Deduced.
Not a word you heard every day.
Lady Lavinia was Diana?
“What on earth—”
“And the signal was those acorns you saw. Someone threw acorns up at Lady Lavinia’s window. She heard the noise and poked her head out, then the two of them plotted in secret.”
“In secret? But if someone outside wanted to talk to someone on the second floor, they’d have to speak quite loudly. Someone would notice.”
“But remember, there is a way to whisper sweet nothings without being overheard. It involves using another long piece of string.”
“A lover’s telephone,” I murmured.
Another name for a tin-can telephone. These often showed up in romance novels, and children in London played with them all the time. Everyone knew about them.
“Oh, then the can I found…”
“I’m assuming when Lady Lavinia was pulling it up, it hit a wall or a window frame and the string came out, leaving just the can lying on the ground. The person on the other end could have picked it up, but it was so dark they may not have been able to find it,” she explained.
“Right, so what’s it all mean? Who is this person coming from the outside?”
“I’m assuming the vicar’s son, Gerald Neville.”
The lover’s telephone. I could see them in my mind’s eye, like an illustration from a romance novel.
Lady Lavinia leaning out her window, her hair loose like Rapunzel’s while she lowered a string to her prince. The prince whispering down the line to his princess…
“Lady Lavinia and Gerald must be in love. He’s been teaching her to ride since she was little. Not at all strange that feelings should arise between them. But she’s the eldest daughter of an earl, and he the second son to a vicar. They live in different worlds, and the gap between them is far too great.”
And the earl wanted Lady Lavinia to accept Viscount Hume’s hand in marriage.
“That’s why she didn’t go to London for the season and refused other opportunities for gentlemen to see her. The master must have figured out what’s between them, which is why the vicar’s family are no longer welcome at Wald Abbey.”
The earl had fallen out with the vicar to separate his daughter from a man beneath her station.
“But the two of them continued talking in secret. Using the telephone, Gerald visited at night to profess his love for Lady Lavinia. He must’ve been looking up at her as she leaned out her window in the moonlight, like something from a play. They continued their secret rendezvous, and this time, they met in person.”
“So Diana…”
“My lady would have needed help from Sophie and so must have told her the plan. Lady Lavinia used the trick I’ve already explained to get the key to the back door, and, once we were all asleep, she waited for Gerald’s signal.”
“Then she changed into servant’s clothing.”
“On the off chance that she did pass someone, or was spotted, they’d think she was the faerie Diana. It worked perfectly. No one would ever imagine the beautiful lady would dress as a maid. The idea is so impossible that Mrs. Banks, with failing eyesight, never recognized her.”
“You said she must have had Sophie’s help,” I said.
“When she came back, she had to return the key to the bundle or Mrs. Banks would have noticed. But if Mrs. Banks had gone to sleep, the housekeeper’s room would be locked up. That’s where Sophie came in. She’s a lady’s maid, so she can go in and out of the housekeeper’s room without suspicion. The next morning, Sophie distracted Mrs. Banks and secretly returned the key to the bundle. And poof, the magic is complete.”
Magic.
A mystery so strange that everyone believed a faerie must have done it, and Ainsel had figured it out in just a few minutes.
I stared in astonishment at her mischievous grin.