Page 60 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

‘I couldn’t say,’ said Crooks. His master, he thought, had an air of waiting for something: news, or an occurrence. But that was the merest speculation. He looked up from the left boot and caught Mrs May’s disgruntled expression. ‘I really can’t say,’ he said, with more emphasis. ‘Because I don’t know.’

‘Oh,’ she said. And then, ‘Well, I dare say it will all come out in the wash, one way or the other. And it’s very nice to have company. It can be a bit dull here with just Olive and me, and her sleeping out. What would you say, Mr Crooks, to a hand of cards this evening? Cribbage, if you like.’

‘That would be most agreeable,’ said Crooks.

Molly Sands’s last pupil of the day had cancelled, and Richard had taken her for a walk in Green Park. ‘You don’t get out enough,’ he told her sternly. ‘Sunlight and fresh air are very important for your health.’

She looked at him with level amusement. ‘I’m sure you’ve shunned daylight for most of your life in favour of frowsting indoors and carousing, like every other young man. Alcohol, cigarettes and games of chance – late evenings in smoky rooms – not waking until noon is long past . . .’

‘Now, where did you get that idea?’ he asked, with large indignation. ‘I was a soldier, don’t you remember? Galloping across the veldt under blue South African skies. Sleeping under the stars with my saddle for a pillow. Up with the first grey light of dawn to wash in an icy stream. I could hardly have chosen a healthier life if I’d thought it out for a fortnight.’

‘You do talk nonsense,’ she said fondly. ‘I must say, though, that it is very pleasant to be out while there’s still daylight.’ She lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes in pleasure for a moment.

He thought she looked tired, and felt a pang. He longed to snatch her away from her life of toil. ‘If only I had a white horse with me, I would catch you up before me and gallop away with you,’ he said. ‘Take my arm – the path is rough here.’

She took it with a smile of complicity, knowing he just wanted her touch, and they walked on in silence for a while, the silence of people at ease with each other.

After a while she said, ‘How was the dinner last night?’

‘Large and dull,’ he said. ‘I would sooner have had a neat supper with you. I was only asked because my mother needed a single man. That’s all I am these days – a make-weight at the dinner table.’

‘Poor you!’ she sad. ‘Self-pity is so very painful.’

He pinched her arm in retaliation, and said, ‘It was rather strange not to have Moss there, being magnificent in the hall.’

‘Any more news of him?’

‘No, he’s still in the infirmary. Which reminds me, there was a report in the paper the other day about something or other, and they had mis-spelled the word “infirmary” as “infamy”. I thought that rather appropriate.’

‘Is it very dreadful?’

‘Not dreadful, just bleak. But, then, I suppose his bedroom at the Castle is probably not a nest of Oriental luxury. I haven’t been in it, you understand – I speak as a matter of general principle.’

‘I don’t suppose he minds it as you would. One judges from the point of view of what one is used to.’

‘Whatever makes you think I’m used to Oriental luxury?’ He frowned, thinking. ‘The oddest thing about it, you know, is not the heart attack.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No, he’s a large, florid man, and like all butlers I suspect he does rather well for himself on the master’s wine, especially the port—’

‘Why especially the port?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Tradition, probably. My point is that butlers are supposed to be large, florid men, or how can they be imposing? Now, the footman who was standing in for him last night is not at all butlery – a cadaver of a man, all bones and angles. He—’

‘You were going to tell me the oddest thing about it,’ she reminded him.

‘Oh, yes – the oddest thing was that he went to the zoo on his afternoon off, Moss did, and took one of the housemaids with him.’

‘Do you find the zoo or the housemaid odd?’

‘Both, but the housemaid most of all.’

‘Ah, a romance!’ she said. ‘That’s nice. Is she pretty?’

‘I don’t think so. Pale and insipid. But he must, or why did he pick her? She was brought back by a large policeman, apparently, and had a fit of hysterics, but the next day she was completely normal and showed not the slightest sign of being upset. Nor has she requested leave to visit him. So if it was a romance, it was one-sided.’

‘How do you know all this?’ she asked, amused.