CORNERING A KILLER
Chapter 11 Now What?
Thomas's Story
"The thing is, even I thought it was an accident."
It was late and they all had to get up early in the morning. But Barrow wasn't going to be able to sleep in his excited state and the Carsons would hardly have slept going to bed without hearing his story. So once more they were together in the butler's pantry, seated around the great desk. It was a mark of the intimacy that their collaboration had fostered that they were this time almost huddled together. There was neither more nor less privacy to be had in physical proximity, but it seemed appropriate.
"There I was on the platform and these lads were rough-housing a bit." He was thinking of them more favourably since they had pulled him back from the brink. "It was natural to think that I'd been thrown off balance when one of them backed into me. It only came to me when I was sitting on the train thinking about it. I wasn't shoved. I was tripped."
"But ... how could she ... or anyone have done it without being right there?" Carson did not doubt Thomas, but he couldn't quite picture the scene.
"It was an umbrella handle around my ankle," Barrow said, shaking his head. He knew it and yet still had a hard time believing it. "It kept going through my mind, how did I lose my balance? And then I ... felt it again. The little jerk on my ankle at just the right moment. And that's how no one else saw it either. She didn't have to touch me."
"But surely someone saw her, coming right up to you like that."
Barrow disagreed. "There were several people on the platform. It was the last train. And it was raining and they were all crowding up to the third class cars and folding up their umbrellas. Everybody was a great grey blur. I should have been more alert. I should have thought..."
"It's easy to say so in retrospect," Mrs. Carson said soothingly, nodding encouragingly at his glass of wine. He took her unspoken advice and sipped it. "And who would have expected her to act so ... precipitously."
"What a chance she took!" Mr. Carson was not a risk-taker by nature. Had he ever left anything to chance? Edna Braithwaite's boldness took his breath away.
"She has to take risks," his wife said meditatively. "She's already taken risks." And then she was looking contritely at Barrow. "We ought to have anticipated that." He waved away her concern. They none of them could have foreseen this.
"You might have seen her, though," Carson persisted.
"And what if I had? She'd just have made up some story about begging me to reconsider. If, that is, I saw her before I fell. And even so, even if I'd tripped and somehow not been crushed by the train, I couldn't prove anything." Thomas paused and a sober demeanour descended on him. "I can't prove anything. It was the perfect crime."
"Again," Mrs. Carson said grimly.
"Last time wasn't perfect," Carson interjected. "There were witnesses."
"Yes, and they've identified Anna."
"Point taken. But at least we know now." Carson turned to the underbutler. "You've brought us along, Mr. Barrow. Well done."
"He's done more than that," Mrs. Carson said emphatically. "You've thrown out the bait, Thomas, and there's no going back on it now." Her uneasy gaze rested on him. "I hope we've done the right thing."
They all sipped their wine.
"Now, what?" Carson said into the silence.
"We wait."
"For what?"
"To see if she pays up," Barrow said simply. "Or not."
They all knew what that meant.
Anticipating Murder
Knowing Mr. Barrow's story did not, in the end, ensure a quiet night.
"Where are you going?" Elsie asked. They'd gone to bed and by mutual agreement had decided to try to sleep. But it was going on twelve-thirty by the old alarm clock she'd had for years and which now sat on the little table on her side of the bed when she felt her husband getting to his feet. It was, perhaps, an unnecessary question as mid-night destinations were usually predictable. But she'd felt his restlessness ever since they'd turned out the lights, which only mirrored her own unease, and somehow discerned that something else was afoot.
"Tea," he said quietly into the darkness. "If we're going to be up, anyway, we might as well."
They'd never had tea in the middle of the night before. At least, not in bed. It might have been a pleasant novelty had it not been occasioned by their apprehensions. In his brief absence in the kitchen, Elsie turned on one of the side lamps and fluffed up the pillows, before settling into a comfortable position. When Charlie joined her, they sat for several minutes, trying to enjoy their tea and calm their troubled thoughts.
"That was just the thing," she said at last, hoping that her feelings would conform to the boldness of her words.
Charlie wasn't convinced. "You're worried."
She sighed. "Of course I'm worried. I never liked Edna, but I never thought her up to this, even when all the evidence pointed to her."
"It's hard to believe something so alarming about someone we know," he agreed. "And it's natural to be shocked. We don't - we ought not - to be so familiar with murderers."
"I know we wanted to prompt her to action," Elsie went on, not trying to hide her agitation now, "but ... It's clearly something that, to her, is dangerous enough to kill over. Or try to kill for, anyway. And we've lost control of events. She's already made one attempt. What's to stop her from slipping into Downton and poisoning his food?"
"That won't happen," Charlie said confidently. "It's not her modus operandi, is it?"
Elsie's tea cup clanked onto the saucer. "I beg your pardon?" When he only looked puzzled, she said, "Modus operandi? What's that?"
He frowned. "It's Latin."
The exasperated noise this elicited from her brought a ghost of a smile to his face, in spite of their conversation. That sounded more like her.
"For 'way of doing something,'" he added helpfully, and just a little mischievously.
"I'm familiar with the term," Elsie said drily. "But it sounds very American. What have you been reading?"
"Nothing," he said, shifting guiltily as he had recently perused a low-brow pulp fiction magazine Andy had left lying around. "What I meant was," he went on hurriedly, "she's killed once that we know of and now tried and failed to kill someone else. I don't think we can add Lord Bracken here. And both times she's done it in a way that could be called an accident, as Mr. Barrow can attest. Poison is trickier. It's much more likely to have been murder and bring on a formal investigation. She won't want to get her hands dirty that way."
Elsie frowned at him a little, wondering at this sudden outpouring of information on crime. She accepted the logic of what he said, but was hardly reassured. "But what are her options here? There aren't any busy roads or trains running through the estate that she could push Mr. Barrow into."
"No, but there's a roof he can be pushed off of. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because," she said, reaching over to take his hand, "I didn't know you thought about such things."
"Well, no more than you!" he said, a little indignantly. "Like you, I've been trying to imagine scenarios so that we might plan our counter-maneuvres. And the roof is a possibility. There are some dangerous spots, hence the recent spate of repairs."
"But how would she get him up to the roof?" Elsie demanded. "First she has to get into the house herself. And then up to the roof? With Mr. Barrow? Won't she know that he knows about the attempt in Durham? Won't she think he must be on his guard with her even more so now? She'll hardly expect that she can slip into Downton unobserved by anyone else, entice Mr. Barrow up to the roof, and then hope he'll turn his back while she pushes him off!" She shook her head. "It just doesn't make sense. I'll believe that she'll change her methods before she'll try something so outlandish."
"As you said, we have no control." The very thought pained him, but he was distracted by the worry lines on her brow and added, half-jokingly in an effort to dispel them, "Well, I'm not going to taste his food for him."
She looked wearily at him and then reached out to caress his face. He pressed his lips to her fingers.
"Don't worry," she assured him. "I wouldn't let you."
Waiting
The several days that followed were uneventful both in terms of the usual goings-on at Downton Abbey and the more specific developments regarding Edna Braithwaite. The Carsons found the waiting excruciating.
"And I'm usually a patient man," Mr. Carson said in passing during one of their muted discussions in the passage. He was so distracted that he missed his wife's raised eyebrows.
On Tuesday morning, he distributed the post as usual at breakfast, shaking his head almost imperceptibly at his wife as he did so and passing over Mr. Barrow, for whom there was nothing. Again.
"I'm beginning to dislike having two posts a day," he said to her later, idling by her chair as she sat at her desk in the housekeeper's sitting room. "I keep hoping something will come, and then I'm disappointed when it doesn't. And then I remember the implications for Mr. Barrow if she decides to act instead of pay and..." He let his sentence finish itself.
"I know," Mrs. Carson said, nodding in understanding. She frowned a little and looked up at him. "Have you noticed that Mr. Barrow doesn't seem affected at all? He seems almost ... I don't know, exhilarated these last few days."
Carson made a dismissive sound. He appreciated how Barrow's involvement in their inquiries had significantly advanced their position, but his opinion of the man had not fundamentally changed. "Well, he would. He thinks he's so much smarter than she. And there's nothing like escaping death to make you cocky."
It occurred to Mrs. Carson that human nature was a very strange thing. "I would have thought it would make for more sombre reflection," she said.
"You think that way because you're a woman," her husband told her airily. "The thing to do when you're worrying about Mr. Barrow, love," he dropped his voice a little on the term of endearment, and glanced over his shoulder self-consciously, "is to remember where this started - with Anna." And he held out a hand to her that she might take it and be reassured by his touch.
"I know," she said softly, tightening her hand in his. "There's Mr. Barrow on the one side and Anna on the other. And Mr. Bates as well. As she declines, he smoulders more dangerously. I keep waiting for him to explode."
"Well, let's hope we solve this thing before that happens."
They agreed on that.
And More Waiting
When there was nothing in the post on Thursday morning Mr. Carson was frustrated, but Mrs. Carson was downcast.
"Maybe we've come to the end of the road on this," she said. "What if she does nothing at all?"
"Well, she won't do nothing," he said emphatically. "Because whether in our cause or not, I feel certain Mr. Barrow will carry through with his threat to expose her scheming and she can be certain of that. So she will have to act, one way or the other."
She couldn't argue with that.
And then there it was, in the second post on Thursday afternoon. Carson reluctantly handed the note over to Barrow. He had no choice. It was addressed to the underbutler. And Barrow, in a determinedly casual way, only glanced at the envelope and tucked it into his pocket, and then finished his tea as though nothing was afoot. But he was not going to play any games with them, Carson decided. As Barrow got up from the table, the butler moved to obstruct his departure.
"In my pantry, after dinner," he intoned, giving Barrow a meaningful look.
The underbutler nodded curtly and then stepped around Mr. Carson and was gone.
"I've never seen him attack his duties so zealously," Carson remarked sarcastically to his wife.
They met as arranged at the end of the evening.
"Well?" Mr. Carson had always been the impatient one.
Barrow had hardly closed the door before this demand was made of him. He held up the envelope and from it extracted several pound notes. "Success!" he declared, and glanced at each of the others in turn. His own smile was not mirrored in their sober countenances.
"What did she say, then?" Carson pressed him. He was seated behind his desk, his wife to one side, Barrow across from him. He leaned forward as he spoke to emphasize the urgency of the situation.
"Nothing."
It was all a bit of a let-down.
"What could she say?" Barrow said, with a muted note of exasperation. "'Thanks for the loan'? Every month for the rest of her life?"
"All right. So she's paid. Now what?"
Barrow stared at the butler for a moment and then his gaze slid slowly over to the housekeeper. Mr. Carson was no plotter. Mrs. Carson was another story.
"Well, we knew it last week when she tripped you on the platform, Mr. Barrow, but this is further confirmation. We have our killer. She wouldn't be paying otherwise."
"You know it. And I believe it," Mr. Carson said, addressing his wife. "But we're still nowhere in practical terms that will mean anything to Inspector Viner." He gave the name the contemptuous inflection that the family used to speak of the investigating officer from Scotland Yard.
"Now we have to trap her in the act," Barrow said mildly, his eyes narrowing as though he were contemplating plans to do so.
"You mean the act of killing you," Mr. Carson said bluntly. "Your casualness about your own life chills my blood, Mr. Barrow. The thing is, if she's paying, she may have decided not to act. After all," he glanced at Mrs. Carson, "as you said the other night, how would she get into Downton to do the deed? She can't lurk around the village hoping Mr. Barrow will present himself at the very moment someone is speeding down the High Street.
"I think she's buying time," Mrs. Carson said slowly. "Edna is not the kind of person to let herself be pushed around. Like us, she can't quite figure out how to go forward. She had her opportunity there on the platform and then was thwarted. She'll need to plan better the next time."
"Perhaps she was frightened by her failure," Carson mused. He suppressed the inclination to reach for Elsie's hand in this moment. He knew she had been quite shaken by Barrow's close call. But Carson did not want to make a demonstration of his affections in front of the underbutler, even to comfort his wife.
"She didn't fail," Barrow corrected him. "She almost succeeded. I think it'll have emboldened her. But I agree with Mrs. Carson. It'll take her some time to cook up a way to put me in a vulnerable position."
"What we need is an opportunity," Mrs. Carson said and then shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Barrow. I don't mean to sound so cold-hearted about you."
"I knew what I was getting into," he said calmly.
She nodded, accepting his assurance. "We can't very well send you up there again, not now. It's too dangerous and she'll get the wind up if we're obvious about it."
"And we won't be there to witness it, either," her husband added. "Which, of course, is the point of it all."
"Somehow we'll have to get her here." Her brows knit with perturbation at this. "But how?"
"We've come this far," Carson said soothingly, momentarily more concerned with his wife's frustration than with the situation itself. "Your 'little grey cells' will come up something." He had, in the course of this investigation, developed a greater appreciation for the capacity of her 'little grey cells' than ever he had before.
She smiled at his allusion and they exchanged glances that reflected a warmth and intimacy well beyond the simple humourous comment.
Slightly nauseated even by this subtle glimpse of the Carsons' personal life, Barrow sought to restore the direction of the conversation.
"I think an opportunity will present itself," he said. "We just have to wait."
Carson was distracted. "You're a cool one."
Barrow grinned. "This is like fishing, Mr. Carson. You know about that." He gestured to the stuffed fish on the sidetable. No one knew the story behind it but it had been there as long as anyone who worked at Downton could remember. Over the years more than one maid had complained about having to dust it. "You play out your line and then you let the trout come to you. Patience."
"When have you ever been trout fishing?" Carson said disdainfully. Barrow, he knew, had grown up in Manchester, far from the lakes and streams of the Downton estate where Carson had fished in his boyhood.
"Never," Barrow replied, not at all put off by the butler's scorn. "But I have done this before. Trust me. A situation will present itself."
After he had gone, Carson turned to his wife. "Did he just admit to blackmail and then ask me to trust him?"
She took his hand and patted it, as though to comfort him against alarming reality. "Don't tell me you're shocked."
"I'm not," he said stiffly. "But we've come to a sad state when this is how we must do things."
She sighed. "We must use the instruments we have, Charlie. And we're fortunate in having such a very good one as Mr. Barrow."
He remained sceptical.
A Catalyst to Action
Waiting was frustrating. Not knowing when or where or how their suspect might strike was painful. The strain began to show. Junior members of staff noted how Mr. Carson was more irritable of late and wondered whether Mrs. Carson's cooking skills had fallen off again. Mrs. Carson herself was more sharp-tongued than ever, giving credence to speculation about a marital rift. But there was no explaining Mr. Barrow's heightened sensitivity to sudden movements. Miss Baxter watched him worriedly, apprehensive that he might have embarked on some new medical regimen that was disagreeing with him.
"Is there no way for us to precipitate some action?" Mr. Carson demanded impatiently of his wife at increasingly annoying intervals. He knew it was a futile question and that it irritated her, but asking acted as a stress release valve, if an imperfect and short-lasting one.
There was no telling how long this might have gone on for there was no predicting Edna Braithwaite, beyond a conviction that she would eventually act, had not other forces intervened. Although he could not suppress his own rising uneasiness with the uncertainty of it all, Barrow had been confident that something would turn up and he was right, although it came in the unlikely form of Inspector Viner and Mr. Bates.
On a Tuesday morning, two and a half weeks after the compromising payment had come in the mail, Barrow emerged from the wine cellar where he had been shelving the latest shipment from the family's supplier in London. There was a time when Mr. Carson had handled every aspect of wine management, largely because this was a critical element of the butler's duties but at least in part because he had little faith in his footmen attending to this function with the care required. Special considerations applied to Barrow. Mr. Carson had a long memory when it came to the former footman's pre-war thefts from the wine cellar. But even Mr. Carson acknowledged that an underbutler had to have some responsibilities that set him apart from a mere footman and the wine-stealing had been a long time ago.
More vigilant even than he was ordinarily, Barrow noticed an atmosphere in the kitchen as he came in to get a cup of tea.
"What is it?" he asked, his eyes darting from Daisy to Mrs. Patmore and back to Daisy again. He was more likely to get an informative response from the assistant cook. Mrs. Patmore did not always indulge his curiosity. But she surprised him by responding.
"Mrs. Carson has just gone up to the library. With Anna. Inspector Viner's here again."
"What?!" Barrow spread his arms in a gesture of exasperation, evoking a small smile from Daisy, for he held a bottle of wine in each hand. His sympathy for Anna had not expanded, but it wasn't necessary to be one of her defenders to find the Scotland Yard inspector's meaningless visits provocative in the extreme.
"How much more of this could anyone be expected to take?" Mrs. Patmore mused, shaking her head.
"What's going on?"
The three of them turned toward the passage where Mr. Bates had just come in from the yard. Although the Carsons had undertaken their investigation for the purpose of relieving Anna, Bates's mental health had always been an additional consideration. Where Anna suffered her sorrows in subdued depression, his response to the harassment by the iniquitous Inspector Viner had taken the form of a brooding hostility, his temperament, as Mrs. Carson had once observed, "volcanic."
Now his dark eyes, flashing with a barely-contained anger, shifted from one to the other of the kitchen's inhabitants who had all taken on a semblance reminiscent of a deer in a car's headlamps.
"Tell me," he said firmly, advancing into the room in a way that could only be described as threatening, although neither Mrs. Patmore nor Daisy were intimidated and Barrow had never turned at hair at Mr. Bates's glowering.
Mrs. Patmore put down the butcher knife she was using to chop stewing beef for the servants' supper. And then, hesitating two seconds more before replying, she not very subtly brushed the knife beneath some dish cloths beside her work space. "It's only ... Well, Inspector Viner is here again, Mr. Bates. Apparently he wants to..." She spoke in a cajoling tone, hoping to defuse the valet's rising fury, but to no avail.
"That bastard!" Bates fumed and strode across the kitchen to the passage leading to the servants' staircase.
He was inhibited by his own physical limitations and Barrow, imagining how it might be if Bates were to burst into the library in this frame of mind, stepped in his path. "He's just here to annoy, you know that," he said soothingly, appreciating the irony of him of all people looking out for Mr. Bates. "It would be best if you..."
But Bates wasn't listening. He brought both his arms up and thrust them forcefully against Barrow's chest, knocking the underbutler hard back into the counter and then stepping around him, with more agility than he usually demonstrated, and storming off in the direction of upstairs.
Barrow had not anticipated this. Mr. Bates had attempted to bully him on occasion and had even, once, grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into a wall, but there had always been a sense of holding back there. This time Bates had shown no restraint. Nor had he given any consideration to the fact that Barrow still held the two bottles which slipped from his grasp and shattered and splashed everywhere.
"Ow!"
Mrs. Patmore and Daisy rushed to his side but not without caution for the spray of glass shards.
"Are you all right, Mr. Barrow?" Daisy reached out to him first, helping him to regain his feet.
"Yes. Ow!" he said again, pressing a hand to the back of his head which had banged up against a cupboard.
"You'd better go after him."
The grimness of Mrs. Patmore's word electrified both Daisy and Barrow.
"Like that?" Daisy said, gesturing to Barrow's now red wine-stained livery.
"That's the least of it," Barrow declared, exchanging glances with Mrs. Patmore. He would have liked to put some ice on his head, but he knew she was right.
"We'll take care of this," Mrs. Patmore said, already looking for a broom. "You get on."
He did, dashing into the passage and taking the steps two at a time. Mr. Bates, who ought to have been slowed by his infirmity, was already well ahead of him.
Lady Mary Intervenes
It was a tense scene in the library.
Mr. Carson had come downstairs to fetch Anna and invited Mrs. Carson to accompany them, thinking she might act as an ameliorating influence in these disagreeable circumstances. She had readily agreed. Anna's own reaction was one of chilling numbness. Over her head the Carsons' exchanged worried glances. Every time the Inspector came to Downton the immediate thought in every mind was that this time he would finally make an arrest.
"But surely he would come downstairs to do that," Carson murmured to his wife as they passed through the green baize door.
In the library itself, Lady Mary stood with Inspector Viner and the local constable, Sergeant Willis. As the hostess, Lady Mary might, in other circumstances, have invited the men to sit. But she had had her own run-ins with the Scotland Yard man and was in no mood to extend even fundamental courtesies to him. In lieu of any real power, it was all she could do.
Sergeant Willis was as affable as usual. Inspector Viner affected a more business-like demeanour, brusque and no-nonsense. He did not wait for Lady Mary to initiate the conversation when the Carsons and Anna entered the room, immediately addressing himself to Anna as he took a seat without asking. Lady Mary noted these faux pas but fumed silently, biding her time.
"Mrs. Bates," the Inspector began coolly. "Please sit."
Lady Mary might remain impassive about this, but Mr. Carson's eyebrows soared and he was only prevented from addressing it by a sharp look from his wife. As Anna took her place on the sofa, Mrs. Carson moved to stand beside the butler, perhaps to forestall any possible outbursts from him.
Both of them noticed the acid look on Lady Mary's face as the inspector ignored her altogether. Unbidden, she sat beside Anna and channelled her irritation by glaring at the police officer. He remained wholly oblivious to her.
"Now," he began, a patronizing note in his cool voice, "I've been reviewing supplementary details of your movements on the day of Mr. Green's death and would like you to tell me again what you did that morning, there being still no corroboration by any of the staff at the Belgrave Square home of Lady Painswick of your activities."
Anna sighed, but it was Lady Mary who spoke.
"What utter foolishness! I think this is harassment, plain and simple!"
Inspector Viner's gaze flickered her way. "I don't care what you think," he said blandly.
Mrs. Carson quickly grabbed her husband's arm, preventing a reaction from him. He would take pleasure from tossing the inspector out of the Abbey into the gravel, but that would get none of them anywhere.
"If you could just..."
The door to the library flew open and Mr. Bates burst in, drawing everyone's attention. Anna's eyes went round in horror and for the first time in weeks, her pallid cheeks flushed with colour.
"Mr. Bates!"
But Bates ignored his wife. He moved aggressively across the room, his cane swinging wildly. To those among them who cared for him, alarm was the preeminent emotion. Sergeant Willis, who had been idling to one side in the knowledge that his presence here was entirely ornamental, suddenly roused himself. Inspector Viner, however, only smirked and remained in his seat.
"You!" Bates seethed. "I have had enough of your bullying and intimidation and I'm going to put an end to it!"
Bates was a physically solid man, broad-shouldered and powerful, his upper body strength enhanced over the years in compensation for the weakness of his leg. Robert Crawley knew part of the story of his past and Anna a great deal more, but only the suggestion of a shadowed past had given other members of the Downton family reason to believe there was a potential for violence there. The conviction among them of his innocence in the matter of his first wife and, indeed, with regard to the insidious Mr. Green, lay in a faith in his highly-principled character, rather than in doubts about his capacity to kill. And when it came to the protection of his wife or loyalty to Lord Grantham, there was no certainty the one would not triumph over the other.
Perhaps seeing a murderous intent in the man's eyes, Mr. Carson shook off his wife's restraining hand and moved to intercept the irate man. Barrow's lack of fear, where Mr. Bates was concerned, had made him incautious and thereby vulnerable to the valet's explosion. The butler, who was not inexperienced with the volatility of men - upstairs and down - under the influence of anger or drink, was not so complacent. He flung himself at Bates and grappled with him, knowing that were the valet to lay a hand on the inspector, no mercy would be shown.
There were cries of alarm from the three women, as the two men scuffled. Inspector Viner, belatedly getting to his feet, made no effort to intervene and, indeed, held out a hand to prevent the sergeant from joining the fray. The more fraught the situation, the more likely the dam was to break in favour of a confession from Mrs. Bates.
Mr. Carson had tangled with some men in his time but Mr. Bates proved remarkably able, despite his handicap. It was therefore, of some relief, when another liveried figure appeared and threw himself into the scrum. Between them, the butler and the underbutler managed to wrestle Bates into submission, though it was a hard-fought few minutes and by the time Bates surrendered to their combined weight and strength, all three were breathing labouriously.
"Mr. Barrow! Are you all right?" It was Mrs. Carson who drew everyone's attention to the vibrant red stairs on his starched shirt.
"Red wine," he gasped, still catching his breath. "Mr. Bates knocked me over," he added, seeing a reproving look forming on Mr. Carson's face.
"Mrs. Bates, how much longer are you going to let this go on?"
The patronizing voice of Inspector Viner intruded on them all.
"I'm not going to let this go on," Lady Mary declared firmly, turning on the policeman. "Either make an arrest or get out of this house. We'll have our solicitor file a formal complaint if you don't."
To everyone's surprise, Viner only smiled smugly and, with a gesture to Sergeant Viner, withdrew without another word.
"Son of a bitch" Bates snarled, still overwrought.
"Mr. Bates!" Not even the police officer's pressure could banish all sense of propriety from Anna.
"I'm with Mr. Bates on that," Barrow said unexpectedly, relaxing his hold on the valet and taking out a handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his face. He did not often engage in fisticuffs.
Mr. Carson let go more slowly, but when he did his usually imposing form slumped a little and he inhaled deeply, trying to regain his equilibrium. Mrs. Carson went to his side. It was not the moment for an overt display of concern, but she rubbed his back comfortingly anyway.
"Why can't he just leave us alone!" Bates demanded, his eyes still flashing. To his left, Barrow was attempting to tidy up his disheveled uniform and on the other side, Mr. Carson was self-consciously brushing his hair back into place. But Bates was much too agitated to worry about how he looked, although he stood unsteadily, having dropped his cane in the mêlée. It was Mrs. Carson who retrieved it for him.
"Anna." Lady Mary's voice was a balm of calm, more a technique of control than a true expression of her feelings. "Why don't you take Bates down to the servants' hall and have a cup of tea, the two of you. I think we can all appreciate Bates's feelings with regard to that creature Viner, but the excitement is over now. Barrow, perhaps you'd like to get cleaned up. Carson, Mrs. Hughes, would you remain, please?"
Lady Mary waited until the other three had cleared the room and closed the door behind them, Barrow glancing back resentfully as he did so. Mrs. Carson gave him a sympathetic look. He was as involved in this as any of them and had a right to know what was happening. She would report in full to him when they went downstairs.
The external air of sang froid that Lady Mary had displayed before the larger party gave way to impatience and irritation in the more intimate company of the Carsons.
"What a horrid man!" she exclaimed. "I agree with Barrow on that. I don't blame Bates one bit."
"Nor do I," Mrs. Carson agreed, "though it does no good. Poor man," she added sympathetically.
"Well, we can't let this continue," Lady Mary said briskly. "We need to do something. What progress have you made with your investigation?"
Though he was as engaged in the matter as either of the other two, indeed more so than Lady Mary, Mr. Carson felt an impulse to smile indulgently as Lady Mary directed this query to his wife. They'd had their ups and downs, Elsie and Lady Mary, but he did not doubt that in this gesture his wife was getting the respect she so often thought lacking from lady of the house.
Mrs. Carson gave her the details. "So we're fairly certain of our quarry now, but we've no way to prompt her to act. It's an invidious position to be in, but we must wait for her to take the initiative."
It was only the conclusion they had repeated endlessly to themselves downstairs for the past few weeks. Not even Mr. Barrow had challenged it. Lady Mary, however, appeared to have other ideas.
"But I don't agree," she said bluntly.
"Beg pardon, my lady?" Mr. Carson said quizzically.
"I don't agree," she repeated. "Anna is a wraith and Bates has already lost control once. We may lose them both if we just wait."
"But..., my lady, there is nothing to do but wait," Mrs. Carson repeated with more patience than she felt. Clearly if it was possible to act they would have done so.
Lady Mary shrugged impatiently. "But there is. What you need is to provide Edna Braithwaite with an opportunity to attempt to kill Mr. Barrow."
Without looking at each other, the Carsons each shivered a little at the cold-blooded manner with which Lady Mary spoke.
"All we have to do is get her to Downton," Lady Mary went on. "That's not complicated."
"We can hardly invite her here, my lady," Mr. Carson murmured, wondering a little at Lady Mary's inability to see the problem.
"Of course not," she said smoothly, looking at him. "But I can invite the Edgertons for an intimate house party and they can bring Edna. I'll just make sure to dress the occasion up enough that Lady Edgerton cannot do without her maid."
Now the Carsons did exchange glances. "I thought you hardly knew them," Carson said cautiously. "Won't that look suspicious?"
"No." And Lady Mary smiled almost impishly. "The Edgertons, it turns out, are very good friends with the Sinderbys. And the Sinderbys are practically family now, so...it can be accomplished with subtlety." She was pleased with herself.
"How did you discover that, my lady?" Mr. Carson asked, marvelling at his favourite's suggestion. Mrs. Carson rolled her eyes. The other two didn't notice.
"I spent an entire afternoon with them, Carson. We had to talk about something. Getting them and her here will be the easy part. Getting Edna to act and then preventing her from being successful, those will be the challenges. But that's for you two to sort out. I'll be very busy entertaining that weekend." Lady Mary paused. "What do you think?"
It was Mrs. Carson's turn to acknowledge the other woman's shrewdness. "Doing nothing has got us all on edge," she admitted. "And this allows us to regain some of the initiative, at least. I think you should proceed, my lady. I'll tell Mr. Barrow."
Securing the housekeeper's support for her plan pleased Lady Mary, but her satisfaction quickly faded. "I don't like the idea of imperiling Barrow any more than you do, Mrs. Carson. But this is the scenario we have."
"I hope it works," Mr. Carson said heavily.
Mrs. Carson caught his eye. "It must."
