The Third Piece of the Puzzle

The next morning Mr. Carson's Mr. Hyde persona was more pronounced than ever. Mrs. Carson had hoped for more but, being a realist, had expected no less. It was a relief to withdraw to her own sitting room so she didn't have to pretend to ignore his behaviour and could get on with the work of the day.

She had hardly opened the monthly accounts ledger when a knock at the door drew her attention and she looked up to find Lady Mary standing there, clasping something in her hands.

Well, this was a welcome sight. "My lady."

"Good morning, Mrs. Carson." Lady Mary said this very smoothly, having practised as she came down the stairs. She closed the door behind her and moved across the room, holding out the hand that held, now that Mrs. Carson could see it more clearly, a small book. "This came in the morning post from Lord Gillingham," she added, as Mrs. Carson took it from her. "If information was what you were looking for, Mrs. Carson, then you're in luck. The insidious valet kept a meticulous account of Lord Gillingham's comings and goings for the more than three years of their association. It's about as complete as you can get, although what use you will make of it I hardly know."

The surprise of Lady Mary's abrupt appearance was nothing to the sudden cascade of factual riches contained in the small volume. Fanning the pages and noting in passing the dozens of entries, Mrs. Carson felt rather daunted. "Me either, my lady," she murmured. Another aspect suddenly struck her and she looked up at Lady Mary in puzzlement. "Why didn't Scotland Yard take this, my lady?" She wondered at this oversight, if oversight it was.

"Apparently, the valet ...," Lady Mary was determined not to show the man the respect of using his name, "...was quite an organized fellow. He kept duplicate diaries of this information, one for his master and one for his own use. Lord Gillingham explained this in the note he sent me accompanying this material. Scotland Yard has the other copy."

"Ah." Well, that made sense and was a little more reassuring about the effectiveness of the police. "I thank you for this, my lady. And for delivering it yourself so promptly. I'd have come upstairs for it if you'd rung."

Lady Mary shrugged dismissively. "I've got business in the kitchen as well. My appointments are going to keep me on the road all day today, and Mrs. Patmore - or perhaps Daisy - is packing me a lunch." The idea of such a thing as a packed lunch was clearly a bit of a novelty for her. She turned toward the door. "All this running around. I may have to learn how to drive a car. It seems a bit of an extravagance these days to have a man accompanying me solely for the purpose of getting me from one place to another."

This revolutionary utterance regarding the superfluity of the chauffeur was hardly out of her mouth when the door swung open and Mr. Carson came in. Focusing on a paper in his hand, he did not look up until he was halfway through his sentence. "Mrs. Carson, there is some kind of discrepancy in the inventory that I..." He broke off when he realized that Mrs. Carson was not alone. His whole demeanour shifted from business-like formality to genial sociability, his serious expression fading into a pleasant smile. "Lady Mary!"

Lady Mary favoured him with one of her sweet smiles, the genuine kind, not the mask she employed for appearance's sake, but not before flashing Mrs. Carson a look of mingled bewilderment and disbelief, prompted by the way Mr. Carson had addressed his wife. Mrs. Carson acknowledged this with a resigned shrug and a cursory eye roll.

"You were saying, Charlie?" Mrs. Carson looked to her husband with innocent politeness.

Lady Mary's smile tightened a little so as not to react to this provocation and, more, to the irritated look that flashed across Mr. Carson's face at it. "Good morning, Carson," she said evenly, regaining her composure. "I was just delivering something to Mrs. Carson," - she spoke the name with deliberation, - "and now I must be going." She slipped away.

He moved to let Lady Mary by and then levelled a slightly exasperated look at his wife. She stared right back at him with a disingenuous expression on her face. Trying to determine how exactly he should respond to this challenge, his eyes fell on the book she was holding, and he was distracted. Closing the door firmly behind him, he gestured at it. "Might that be something to do with Lord Gillingham?" he asked, smiling smugly.

He'd made a good recovery, she had to give that to him. If she were an intemperate sort of person, she might have flung it at him. But she didn't rise to provocation as easily as he did, and so she smiled in return. "It is." Her good humour faded, however, as she fanned the pages once more and saw again the volume of information contained there.

"What is it?" He noticed the cloud descend on her and was immediately responsive, moving to her side.

She looked up at him, shrugging. "Lord Gillingham has had a very active social life. There's a lot of information here, Charlie." This time there was no message imbedded in the use of his name. She just said it. "You were right in your needle in the haystack observation."

"So?"

She raised her eyes to his. "So...so what do I think I'm doing anyway?"

Her slightly despairing tone touched him, as any discomfort or dispiritedness she felt always did.

He reached out to her, enclosing both her hands in one of his. "Don't be discouraged just yet, love."

He shocked himself more than he did her. "I mean..." His eyes went round with alarm at his slip and his eyes darted immediately to the office door before coming back to hers, still alive with consternation. And then he caught himself and the flash of panic faded and he took a deep breath. And he tightened his hand overs hers. "I mean," he said more gently, and his eyes recalled her to the tenderness of the man he was in private, "don't be discouraged just yet, love."

Oh, but she loved him! And in that moment she forgave him for his exasperating behaviour this morning and every morning. She acknowledged this unexpected manifestation of his feelings by keeping her own in check. Instead, she smiled warmly, and withdrew one of her hands from his so that she might give his arm a brief, reassuring squeeze, and then she drew back from him just a little.

"It's a crazy notion," she said flatly, bringing them back to the subject. "I've got three lists of names and place and dates that don't mean anything at all, and they'll never come together in any coherent way."

He nodded his gratitude at her forbearance and understanding, and relaxed. But he did not abandon his desire to bolster her confidence."It's not crazy," he said, and his voice was steady again. "Put it away for the day and then bring all your lists up with us tonight. We can go over them together and see if we can't make something of them."

It wasn't his project and she knew he was not convinced of its value to the actual matter of Mr. Green's death. But he knew it was important to her and that was quite enough to secure his support. For a moment they just stared at each other, and then she tucked the book away into one of the pigeonholes on her desk.

"So what was the problem with the inventory?" she asked.

The Odd Thing

But they couldn't make anything of the evidence they had collected. Not that night or on any of the several nights after that. The daily rounds at Downton Abbey were, as they always had been, quite enough to keep the Carsons occupied from dawn 'til dusk. And with the fewer but no less real demands of the life they were trying to build together around the framework of their working world, there was not a great deal of time available for detective work.

The initial impetus of the investigation remained, however. Anna was slipping more deeply into a state of emotional torpor. While it had as yet no discernible impact on the quality of her work, it was increasingly apparent in the nature of her interactions with those close to her.

"I've been watching Anna," Mr. Carson said, as they were getting into bed one night, a fortnight on from the acquisition of Lord Gillingham's social diary. "And I see what you mean. I've seen dishwater that was brighter than she is."

For a moment, Mrs. Carson wondered if she should warn him off his covert observations lest Anna notice. But the trouble was that Anna was very unlikely to do so. "Mr. Bates is very worried about her," she said instead. "We had a chat this afternoon. He wasn't even asking for help. He just needed to say it out loud to someone, the poor man. There's nothing more difficult than watching someone you love decline, and knowing that there's nothing you can do about it."

He noticed she hadn't fluffed up the pillows the way she usually did if they would be sitting up for a while. "Not reading tonight, then?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so," she said, wriggling down beneath the bedclothes. "I've got too much on my mind to concentrate on that." He was silent for a moment and she glanced up at him. "Why?"

He gestured to the large and rather untidy pile of newspaper clippings on the nightstand on her side of the bed. "You still haven't finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."'*

"So? Nothing's going to change if I don't get it read this week or next."

He squirmed a bit. "It's just that I want to talk about it. It's interesting. There's a bit of a twist at the end and there's been some controversy about it. I thought..."

"Don't tell me any more!" she cried, putting her hands over her ears. "I don't want to know!"

Her silliness made him laugh. "So I can put the lights out then," he assumed, reaching over to do so. In the darkness, he turned on his side and reached for her and she nestled into his arms, her back to his chest, his knees curled under her.

"You didn't tell Mr. Bates about your... project, did you?"

She stiffened in his arms. "Heavens, no! The man's got enough on his mind without burdening him with that nonsense."

"Then nothing's come to you yet."

"You'd be the first to know if it had, Charlie." She twisted around a little and for a few minutes they indulged in some light snogging, which is about all that their demanding work schedule allowed on a regular basis. And then she turned and snuggled into him again and waited for sleep to come. They lay quietly for a while, he relishing the scent of her hair from the head tucked under his chin, and she enjoying the warmth of his body, so much superior to the blankets and socks she had relied upon in the past. She loved being married every bit as much as he did.

"Tell it to me again," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"Tell me what you've learned from your pieces of paper," he repeated.

"Now?"

"Now is as good a time as any, don't you think?"

She did not answer and as the silence dragged on, he thought he might have offended her. So he moved his head around hers and slid the tip of his tongue into the hollow behind her ear lobe. This evoked a sharp peal of laughter and a general tensing up of her body, and she slapped him lightly on his ear, which was all she could reach in that moment. "Get away with you, Charlie!" she cried, still laughing. "You know that tickles me!"

He withdrew a bit, but returned to the subject. "Lay the case out for me, love." He'd much rather play, an impulse that still made him slightly uncomfortable, but he felt a higher calling to help her untangle the ongoing source of aggravation over Mr. ... over Lord Gillingham's valet's murder. Like Lady Mary, Mr. Carson did not like to honour the dead man with notice.

"Are you serious?"

"I've asked, haven't I?" Reluctantly he moved away from her and reached out to put the light on again. Somehow he thought this was a conversation that needed to have a light shining on it. "Tell me," he said again, as he turned to face her.

She looked at him over her shoulder, concluded that he was serious, and sat up herself. "All right." And it was clear that she took him at his word, for she fluffed up his pillows before letting him settle back into them, and then she got out of bed to retrieve her papers from the top of the clothes chest by the door. While she was up, he punched her pillows in an effort to bulk them up a bit, but he knew he hadn't done as good a job as she did, which was ridiculous, really, because how complicated was it?

"I've got three lists," she said, snuggling in beside him and holding up the papers. "The first is the one you got from Sergeant Willis, the names of the six women, including Anna, who we know were attacked. According to the sergeant, they were all members of staff and all young women between eighteen and thirty." She appreciated Mr. Carson's growl of disgust. "You got their names, where they were working, and a rough estimate of when the attacks happened." She handed that to him. "Then I made up a list of everyone who was living or working at Downton when ... that man...," she was not about to bring his name into her bedroom, "... was here. That was the easy job. And, finally, I've got quite a long list of where Lord Gillingham travelled with the man. I took the diary and reduced it to two pages, noting the house, the county, and the dates in each case." She glanced at him.

"All right," he said, looking from one page to the others, "these are the basic facts. Have you deduced anything from them yet?"

"Not much," she admitted. "I compared the information about the women to Lord Gillingham's diary and have pinpointed, to within a day or two, when four of the attacks took place. In each case, Lord Gillingham only went to the house once. As I doubt that ...he could have gotten access to any of these places on his own, I think we can assume that his crimes took place over those visits. Of course we know when Anna was assaulted. I can't quite pin down the sixth one. But, then, this is information Scotland Yard would have. In fact, they'll have the exact dates, so I haven't learned much so far."

"What about the sixth one?" This did not really seem like a profitable line of inquiry, but Mr. Carson liked to do things properly, and felt they ought to finish with one type of information before moving on to another.

"It's more complicated," Mrs. Carson said. "They went to Chesley Park, in Cheshire, five times in the two years prior to his death. Lord Gillingham must have a good friend there," she added, as an aside. "But that means I can't pin down when the assault that took place there, against..." she consulted Sergeant Willis's list, "...Leah Close took place. Not that it matters, I suppose. It's not like knowing when an attack took place is going to help me with anything. These other victims have all been cleared. It's only Anna who has no alibi for where she was when he was killed."

"Why is that?"

"What do you mean?"

"She was in London, at Lady Rosamund's house. How was it that no one saw her all morning?"

Mrs. Carson shrugged. "Lady Rosamund doesn't have a large staff. It's just her butler, cook, housekeeper, and two maids. She might have a scullery maid, or a kitchen girl, too, I'm not sure. But there aren't as many people in that house as there are in this one. Lady Mary left to do her errands and Anna was on her own. She says she didn't leave the house. But no one can testify to that fact."

He shook his head. "How ridiculous. I have the impression that I can't tie my shoelaces in this house without a half dozen people noticing, and Mr. Barrow taking mental notes."

She reached over and patted his hand. "Well, you are hard to miss, Charlie."

"All right, what else have we got?"

"Well, nothing, really. I can make the connections between the victims and where ... Lord Gillingham was, but I can't bring anything else together."

He took the list of Lord Gillingham's visits from her and ran his eye down it. "Doddington Hall, they've kept their grip on that one. Were I Lord Grantham, I might look into how they've done it. There might be some useful lessons for Downton. Arley Hall is one I've always wanted to see. The family's got a good reputation as employers. Shugborough may be a fine house, but I understand the society in the neighbourhood is not at all that congenial." He happened to glance up and find her staring at him with her mouth open just a little in amazement.

"What?" He didn't know why he was getting that look.

"How do you know all this?"

It happened only rarely, but sometimes he wondered who she thought he was. "How do you think? I have spent a life in service, Elsie, and I've kept my eyes open. You've got to keep on top of things when you're the butler. You've got to know what is going on at other great houses in order to be certain that you're keeping your own house up to the mark." He rolled his eyes in a rather dramatic gesture of exasperation at having to explain this to her.

"And...how do you do that, exactly?"

"I talk to people," he said. "Other butlers," he added, as her bewilderment continued. "And valets, sometimes."

"When?"

"All right," he conceded, "I don't have much opportunity to talk to them, exactly. But I've met a few of them, and I've communicated by letter with a number of others, and I've heard about others through the ones I do know. And...good God, Elsie, I've been at this for decades. I know who all the players are."

When she still continued to look dumbfounded, he shook his head in exasperation. "If I were the Foreign Secretary, I'd know who my equivalents were around the world, wouldn't I? It's part of the business. And you know I've had a longstanding interest in the great houses of England. And ...one or two in Scotland," he added a bit lamely.

She gave him a look at that last remark. And then she took Lord Gillingham's list from him and ran her eyes over it once more. "So who's the butler at Chesley Park, then, Mr. Know-it-all?" There was a note of both sarcasm and serious interest in her question.

"Alun Wendover," he replied promptly. "Why?"

"Well, that's the question mark in my sad little sack of connections, isn't it?"

"Do you want me to write to him again?"

Now she stared at him. "No, I don't want you to write to him. What do you mean again?"

"Well, it was some ago, now, but you asked me to write to him once."

"I never did, Charlie Carson."

He sighed. "You did, love."

"But I'd never even heard of Chesley Park until this came up!"

"Not so, Elsie. It was a few years back, but you asked me to write to the butler at Chesley Park and ask for the name of the housekeeper there."

She was puzzled. "Why would I want you to do that?"

"Why do you usually write to other housekeepers, love?" Really, he was beginning to think they ought to go to sleep. She was a bit dull tonight, which was not at all like her.

Her perplexed stare gave way to a more thoughtful expression, and she drew the corner of her lower lip between her teeth. "To ask for or to check on a reference," she said absently.

"Precisely."

"And when was that?"

She expected him to respond with a vexed, How am I supposed to know? But he didn't. Instead, a shadow passed over his face and his demeanour, which had shifted between exasperated and playful, turned solemn. "Sometime in 1921, I think. They had their troubles at Chesley Park," he said gravely. "I remember because when I heard about it, it brought back our tragedy with Lady Sybil."

The reference to Chesley Park had sobered him, but the recollection of Lady Sybil was like a blow to them both. Mr. Carson had known all of the Crawley girls from birth which gave him, with his abiding interest in all things to do with the family, a special interest in each of them. Lady Mary was his special favourite and had inhibited the development of familiarity with her younger sister, Lady Edith. But Lady Sybil had made her own way, charming everyone in the house with her zest for life and her determination, even as a small girl, to know and love all God's creatures, without regard for their station in life. She had wooed the butler of Downton Abbey and won in his heart a place all her own beside, rather than in competition with, her eldest sister.

The thought of Lady Sybil caught at Mrs. Carson's heartstrings, too. She had never been as personally devoted to the family as Mr. Carson had apparently been from the first day of his employment here, but she, too, had fallen under the youngest Crawley girl's spell. When Lady Mary, as a child, made her way to the butler's pantry for special treats and the undivided attention of the man who presided over the downstairs world, Lady Sybil had visited the housekeeper's sitting room. There she occasionally enjoyed a biscuit and tea, but also often just asked questions, and consequently knew more about the housekeeper's youth in Argyll than anyone else in the house, including Mr. Carson.

Without conscious thought, they each reached for the other, the papers scattering over the blankets, as they held hands for a long moment.

"What happened at Chesley Park?" Mrs. Carson asked finally, not wanting to spend too much time revisiting the pain of Lady Sybil's excruciating last hours, twisted in the fits of eclampsia. It might be too much to say that her death was the fault of that London specialist, Sir Philip Tapsill, but as far as Mrs. Carson was concerned, things might have turned out differently had Dr. Clarkson been given a free hand.

"They lost the elder son, who had only come into his inheritance a year or two earlier." Although they were in their own rooms, and felt secure there from prying eyes and ears attuned to the divulging of secrets, he leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. "Took his own life. A very sad business, that." He shifted back a little. "And then, very shortly thereafter, his mother passed. From a broken heart, they said."

They paused in respectful silence.

"We've all got our burdens to bear," Mrs. Carson said finally.

He nodded soberly.

"Well, I can't remember what I was after exactly, but if I sent a letter, I'll have a copy in my files. That will explain everything, I expect," she said.

"But you won't," he said abruptly.

She gave him a sharp look. "I'll have you know, Charlie, that I keep meticulous staff records. I've got a copy of every letter I've sent and received in all my years as housekeeper."

"I'm sure you do, love," he said easily. "But you never sent the letter."

"Why not?"

"Because Mr. Wendover never replied to mine with the housekeeper's name. It wasn't very professional of him, but what with the upheaval in that house, I can't blame him for the oversight." He said this with genuine sympathy. "I'm not sure I wouldn't have made a like omission in the weeks after Lady Sybil's death."

Mrs. Carson doubted it, but, then reconsidered. As scrupulous as he was in his professional duties, she knew how deeply his love ran.

"I wonder that I never followed up with you," she said. "I'm usually quite diligent in things like that."

He did not disagree, knowing this to be the truth. "Who would you have been checking up on?"

She shrugged. "Search me. I don't remember off the top of my head and as we haven't got my letter of inquiry, I'm not sure how to find out."

"Well, it can't be that difficult to figure out," he said. "You'd only have been doing it for someone who was under consideration for employment. Where's that staff list?"

As he shuffled through the papers, she shook her head. "But if I didn't check the references, I wouldn't have hired the person. So it won't be there."

He found the list and held it up for her perusal nonetheless. Her eyes shifted from the column listing the family, on the left, to the much longer column on the right with the names of the staff in residence during the period of Lord Gillingham's visits to Downton in the company of his valet. She was looking largely to humour him. And then her attention fixed on a name in the middle of the list.

He saw her frozen expression. "Is there something?"

"Just a minute." She let the paper slip from her grasp and stared vacantly across the room, thinking. Suddenly a jumble of unconnected thoughts were scrambling around in her brain. If she could only put them together properly. Someone whose references she hadn't checked because the decision to hire was not her own.

"But ... that's an odd thing."

The tone of her voice unsettled him, and he pushed the bedclothes aside and shifted onto his knees so that he could look into her face. "What is?"

"I don't know how it all fits together just yet. But ... she would have known him, then. She'd have met him there, at Chesley Park. She would have been there at the time of three, possibly four of his visits."

"Who? Who?"

His confusion and impatience recalled her to the moment.

"Lord Gillingham visited Chesley Park several times in the summer, fall, and early winter of 1921 and early 1922. Mr. Green...," she forgot that she wasn't speaking his name, "...was there with him, so the evidence of the diary tells us. But...she must have been there, too. But she never gave any indication that she knew him." She looked up at him suddenly. "Charlie, you'll need to dig out the letter you sent to Mr. Wendover, so we can be absolutely sure."

"Sure of what? What are you talking about?"

She shook her head. "I don't even think it's got anything to do with Mr. ... his murder." She'd come back to her right mind on that.

"Do you think you've found another victim?"

"No, I'm sure I haven't. It's just ... such an odd thing."

"Elsie! Who was there?"

She looked up into his anxious eyes. "Edna Braithwaite."

* AUTHOR'S NOTE:

According to Wikipedia, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was first published as a 54-part serialization in the London Evening News from July 16 to September 16, 1925. This would make for a rather large pile of newspaper clippings.

NOTE ON CHRONOLOGY

Mr. Fellowes has played fast and loose with historical chronology in Downton Abbey, making it difficult to get the dates right. To the best of my knowledge, based on information gleaned from the series and the summaries of episodes I have found online, Lady Sybil died sometime in 1920, in the middle of Season 3. The Season 3 "Christmas Special" took place in Scotland, maybe in September 1921. Tom's flirtation with Edna Braithwaite, resulting in her sacking occurs then. Six months later, in the spring of 1922, Miss O'Brien leaves and Braithwaite is hired to replace her. Braithwaite is at Downton for only a few months before she is obliged to leave as a result of her attempt to coerce Tom into marriage. The Season 4 Christmas Special has the family in London in high summer for "The Season." Season 5 opens in 1924 with the General Election of 1923, that brought Ramsay MacDonald to power with a Labour government, after the election in December, 1923. Lady Edith has spent the bulk of Season 4, post-house party, lamenting Michael Gregson's disappearance in Germany, her anxiety at its highest during The Season, a remarkable situation as the "Beer Hall Putsch" masterminded and executed badly by Adolf Hitler, and used in Season 5 to explain Gregson's death, occurred in November, 1923, long after he had already disappeared in Germany. All of this means that it is very difficult to get the chronology exactly right for the purposes of this story. But I've done the best job I could. If it seems a bit askew, I think much of the responsibility lies at the door of Baron Fellowes and his deployment of dramatic license.

Existing Country Homes referred to above. I chosen them because, according to , these were still family homes in the 1920s. Sorry for the slight to society in Staffordshire.

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire

Arley Hall, Cheshire

Shugborough, Staffordshire