Farthing (4 page)

I was so deep in this pleasant reverie of my own real everyday life that I’d walked almost halfway back to the house before I started to pay any attention at all to the others. Daddy was walking with Angela

Thirkie, talking about the countryside. Mummy was walking with Sir Thomas, talking about servant problems. This left me with Lady Manningham, whom I barely knew. She was quite young, much younger than her husband, and she was looking at me timidly as if she would like to have a conversation but didn’t know where to begin. “Isn’t it a glorious day,” I said, insipidly enough.

“Beautiful, yes, and such lovely countryside,” she said.

“The gardens were laid out by Nash,” I said, slipping easily into my old role as daughter-of-the-house.

“We have his plans for the gardens. There are also some very interesting sketches the young ladies of the family made of them soon after they were planted. The trees, of course, were saplings. It seems strange

to me sometimes that we are seeing them as Nash meant them to be seen, when he himself could only imagine them in their full glory.”

“That is strange,” she said, struck by the observation. “So much we do casts such long shadows.

Do you plant more trees?”

“When one dies or is blown down my father always plants a new sapling,” I said. “And when Hugh and I

were children we used to plant acorns, hundreds of them every year. It was a project of ours, and we’d think of our descendants marveling at the oak forests.”

But Hugh was dead, and my putative descendants wouldn’t be Eversleys or grow up here. That was just as true when I was a child and would have been true whoever I married. After Daddy dies the estate and the title will go to cousin Alfred, though I was due for most of the money and plenty of other bits of land that aren’t entailed on a male Eversley heir.

“Tom and I live in quite a small house,” Lady Manningham confided. “We don’t have any family
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property like this. Tom’s a bit of a self-made man.”

“One of the best kinds,” I said, entirely sincerely.

“He was made a baronet for services to industry,” she went on, encouraged. “I thought it quite silly at first, being Lady instead of Mrs., but being here has made me see it in quite a different light. I mean people have always been ennobled for serving their country; it’s just a matter of how and what, isn’t it?”

“I think one of my ancestors was ennobled for doing something unspeakable for Henry VII,” I said, truthfully enough, and then repented of it when I saw how she was trying to cover up her look of horror.

“No, seriously, you plant some acorns for your descendants,” I said, and she put her hand on her stomach in that way that newly pregnant women always do, with that look. I raised my eyebrows, and she put her finger to her lips and nodded, so I just smiled. She was a much nicer person than Mummy usually invited along to her bashes, though I suppose it was Sir Thomas who had actually been invited, and Lady Manningham had just come along as his wife.

She looked away, clearly seeking for some different topic of conversation. I was glad enough, because however pleased I was, and I was, that she was knocked up, I couldn’t help feeling envious, because it was what I was so longing for myself at that moment. It was all very well David saying it was nice to be on our own for the time being and that there was plenty of time, and he was right, of course, but I did so want to start a family right away, and couldn’t help being cross sometimes that stupid nature wasn’t cooperating.

“So, you still go to church,” Lady Manningham said.

“Yes,” I said. It was the only possible answer unless I wanted a long conversation about things that were none of her business, such as David’s lack of particular religious feeling and my non-conversion to

Judaism. If she’d known anything about the religion at all she’d have been able to tell I hadn’t converted the day before when she was introduced to me and saw that I wasn’t wearing a hat. I was wearing one that morning, of course, I’d just been to church, but I hadn’t taken up covering my hair as Jewish women do. However, she clearly didn’t know a thing. If anything, I go to church more often than I would if I

hadn’t married David. I’d always gone at Farthing, naturally, everyone goes to church in the country. But now I went regularly in London as well, which I’d let slip to some extent before. It somehow seemed more necessary to point up my Christian identity, which I hadn’t even been aware of before meeting

David, not in contrast to him, but to make it perfectly clear to other people.

I’d been pretty intent on this conversation, and hadn’t been listening to the others—and if I had I’d only

have heard Mummy on the servant problem, a theme of hers I knew very well indeed. But then Angela raised her voice and began to recite Browning’s “Oh to be in England.” I know it has some different proper name, “Thoughts of Home” or something, but that’s what everybody calls it. She recited it with grace notes and quavers in the voice and dramatic pauses and everything Abby taught me to hate, and it took her all the rest of the way up to the house—and she hadn’t finished when we got there. It didn’t make it any easier that all the things Browning was rhapsodizing about were around us then, or that it was in fact May, which meant that Browning had got it wrong, though I suppose it’s not all that surprising considering that he was doing it in Italy or Greece or wherever it was, and his wife missing her spaniel.

Abby told me about them, eloping abroad, but somehow it was the spaniel that stuck in my mind. I can picture it now, very soulful eyes, rather like Angela Thirkie, but more forgivable in a spaniel somehow.

Mark was standing out on the terrace, looking awkward. He was smoking a cigarette, which
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seemed a strange thing to do on the terrace after breakfast. He raised a hand when he saw us coming, but Angela didn’t stop reciting, so he stood and shuffled and looked awkward and tried to break in a few times without success. Mark Normanby was Angela’s brother-in-law, married to her sister Daphne, so I

suppose she thought she needn’t take any notice of him, though he’s something frightfully high up in the government, and incredibly clever, and incidentally terribly gorgeous, in a touch-me-not way. Mummy looked restless and I thought she was about to quote, “Mary has delighted us long enough,” the way she always used to do with me when she was tired of my recitals, but thank goodness Angela wound down at last.

“Good morning, Mark,” Mummy said, and would have gone past him into the house, but he raised a hand to stop her.

“Something rather unpleasant has happened,” he said. “I was waiting here to catch you on your way back from church.”

“Unpleasant?” Mummy’s elegant eyebrows went up under her hair, and she pronounced the word as if it came in two distinct crisp sections, separating it like the segments of an orange.

“There’s been an accident, well, an accident or something. It’s rather awful,” Mark said.

“What’s the matter?” Daddy asked. “Who is it?” He’d guessed at once that it must be one of the guests, and so had I.

“It’s James actually,” Mark said, looking at Angela.

“Is James ill?” she asked. It was a natural enough thing to say, I suppose, but her voice sounded very unnatural. It might have been the voice of someone who realizes that she’s been making a fool of herself reciting “Oh to be in England” when something Mark Normanby could describe as “rather awful” has happened to her husband.

“Not ill, no… well, the thing is that he seems to be dead,” Mark said, and that’s when I had my uncharitable thought and Angela fainted dead away and was caught very neatly by Daddy.

4

The door was opened by a very grand butler. “Scotland Yard, I presume?” he asked, inclining his head a trifle.

Carmichael handed him his card. The butler inclined his head a fraction more over it.

“Mr. Yately asked to be informed when you arrived,” the butler said. In response to Carmichael’s questioning look, he amplified. “Mr. Yately is the police inspector they sent over from Winchester.”

“Very well, show us to Mr. Yately,” Carmichael said.

The butler opened the front door and let them into a splendid paneled hall. There were wooden doors leading off in all directions and a curving staircase leading upstairs. The brass of the door handles gleamed. There was one window immediately above the door, which allowed light to fall on an old portrait of a lady in a ruff, accompanied by a little dog, also in a ruff.

By some magical mechanism known only to servants, the butler had summoned a footman.

“Show these police gentlemen to the dressing room of the blue bedroom,” he instructed.

Carmichael liked the ambiguity of “police gentlemen.” Everything about Farthing subtly suggested wealth and privilege and class distinctions very carefully maintained. Then here he came, tramping in police boots to disturb the hierarchies as they were laid down by bringing in an entirely orthogonal power. In civilian circumstances, he would be recognized here as on the very lowest rank of gentry, and Royston would be sent to the servants’ entrance, wherever that was— which he must find out; it might be important.

The minion bowed, took a step towards the stairs, and looked inquiringly at Carmichael.

Carmichael, with a quick exchange of glances with Royston, followed obediently. The butler vanished through the door under the portrait, which Carmichael tentatively labeled as likely to lead to the servants’ quarters.

He must get hold of a floor plan, or have one drawn up. That would be a job the local police would probably be sufficiently competent to manage.

“So, where is everyone?” Royston asked the footman.

The footman looked outraged for a moment, then presumably remembered that he was talking to a policeman. “Her ladyship is resting in her room.” Carmichael immediately placed him as a local. His accent was only a little smoother than Betty at the gate. “His lordship is in the library with some of the guests. Most of the other guests are in the drawing room. Miss Lucy—Mrs.

Kahn I should say—and

Mrs. Normanby are looking after Lady Thirkie, who is having hysterics in Miss Dorset’s room.

Miss

Dorset was in the kitchen talking to the staff when I left, sir.”

“And who is Miss Dorset?” Royston asked.

“Miss Dorset is her ladyship’s cousin, and her secretary-companion,” the footman said.

Poor relation, Carmichael mentally appended, but surely a secretary-companion shouldn’t be talking to the servants, even if she was one of the family? Carmichael was more interested in Mrs.

Kahn, anyway, who he remembered, now that he heard the name, from a minor fuss in the newspapers the previous autumn. “English rose plucked by Jew,” the Daily Express had screamed, and even the

Telegraph had asked more quietly, “Should the daughters of our aristocracy be permitted to mingle their blood with the trash of European Jewry?” Lucy Eversley, yes, he remembered now—there had been photographs, nothing especially pretty, but very determined, which he supposed she’d have to be to come from this home and marry a Jew. Surprising that she was still invited down here for weekends.

“Is Mr. Kahn here?” he asked.

“Mr. Kahn is in the library,” the footman said.

Carmichael filed the fact for consideration. Certainly any Jew would have reason enough to hate old

Thirkie. He ran his hand along the wooden wall as they went up the stairs. It was as smooth as silk; it must be polished regularly. The stairs were carpeted with a strip of dark blue drugget held down by irons.

“How many are there on staff?” he asked.

“I can’t rightly say, sir,” the footman replied. They came to the top of the stairs, the bannister terminating in a carved acorn. “There are those of us who belong to the house and those his lordship and her ladyship bring down with them from London, and just at the moment there are also the visiting staff.”

“How many on the permanent staff?” Royston asked.

“Twelve,” the footman said without hesitation, leading the way up a second flight of stairs.

“Mrs. Simons the housekeeper, seven housemaids, Mrs. Smollett the cook—undercook presently, of course, being as

Mrs. Richardson is here—two kitchenmaids, and myself.”

“So the butler and the cook come down from London?” Carmichael asked, intrigued by this glimpse of upper-class life.

“Yes, sir, they travel in advance of the family. And some of the kitchen staff too, as well as the family’s personal attendants.”

“Another dozen then?” Royston asked.

“I’m not rightly sure who exactly is here this time,” the footman said, more confidingly. “That’s about the right figure, but it’s been proper chaos downstairs the last two days. I haven’t known if I’ve been coming or going myself.”

“Worse than a normal houseparty?” Carmichael asked.

“Much worse—well, normally we have more notice.”

Interesting, Carmichael thought, and possibly worth following up later.

“I’d have thought it would have taken more than seven maids with seven mops to keep a place like this in this condition,” Royston said as they reached another landing. This time they did not continue up; the footman led them down the corridor.

“They work very hard, sir, and of course we have girls from the village who come in to do the rough work as needed. I suppose I should also mention the stable staff and the garden staff, who do not live in.

You don’t think—I mean you don’t suspect any of the staff, do you, sir?”

“We’ve only just got here, we don’t suspect anyone yet,” said Carmichael, amused at the supernatural powers of detection attributed to Scotland Yard. “We just want to get a feel for the situation.”

“I see, sir,” the footman said, as he paused before one of the doors.

“And your name?” Royston asked, taking out his notebook.

“Jeffrey, sir,” he replied.

Royston rolled his hand in the air. Jeffrey frowned, unsure of what was wanted. “Would that be Something Jeffrey, like Judge Jeffrey, or would it be Jeffrey Someone?” he asked.