“Well, yes,” I said. “Very quiet.”
Marjorie sighed and scooped me under her arm and had me stand close as she finished her letter—which was to let Mummy know that we’d arrived safely, and to ask for a recipe for sorrel soup that Marjorie wished to share with her cook.
“Possibly the worst burden of being Lady Greyson,” said Marjorie, “among many, I confess, is the planning of meals. I would so prefer to curl up in a chair and eat cheese on toast than worry all day about whether to serve Swiss chard or broccoli with the veal.”
“What are the other burdens?” I said. “You still love James, I hope?”
“I love him more than ever,” said Marjorie, “for being so patient with my inept efforts to be the new Lady Greyson. Sadly, his mother is not so rich in patience.” She sighed heavily as she folded the letter and put it into an envelope, adding it to a stack of three or four others waiting for seals. She took out a new page and wrote the date across the top, while I imagined the wrinkly lips of Dowager Lady Greyson pursing in disapproval, and shuddered in empathy.
“At the very least, you have a lovely desk set,” I said, admiring the row of matching implements for writing.
Marjorie laughed. “It was a gift from James’s mother,” she said. “One of her kinder gestures, when we were married. It comes from a collection begun by James’s father. He was a great collector of odd things.”
“I noticed the teapots.” I eyed the cabinet that opened into the secret passage.
“Yes,” said Marjorie. “The horned owl teapot on the top shelf was his first acquisition. And see?” She passed me her paper knife with its ivory handle carved to show an owl in flight. The inkwell had one too, as did the smaller knife for trimming pen nibs and the rocking ink blotter.
“For Owl Park,” I said. “How sweet.”
“The set in the library has owl heads embossed on silver handles,” Marjorie said. “But mine is made for a lady’s hands, and it suits me very well.” She glanced at the bookshelf beside the fire. “Now, if only there were time to read all these books,” she said, “or even one of them. The greatest loss of married life seems to be that I haven’t read a novel in months.”
“I suppose when you’ve learned how to be the lady of the manor,” I said, “you’ll have time to read a book.”
“Where is my little sister?” said Marjorie. “She has become rather wise and grown-up.”
“Not quite all grown, I hope, if that means no time for reading! I will always choose murder with Sherlock Holmes over tea and corsets with anyone else.”
“Well, I’m very happy to have you keep me company while your friends are rehearsing,” she said.
“I would rather have measles than perform in a play,” I said, “but I do love going to watch them!”
“What an odd day, don’t you think?”
“Starting with Mrs. Sivam screaming us all out of our beds in the middle of the night?” I said. “As odd as a day can be!”
“She was just as good at piercing shrieks when we were at school,” said Marjorie. “Kitty Cartland’s special trick. Cartland was her name before she married Mr. Sivam. She made the same noise whether it was a spider in the washbasin or an intruder in the greenhouse.”
“Did you have many of those?” I said. “Intruders, I mean.”
Marjorie laughed. “Just the one. Though no one saw him except for Kitty, her scream being so effective in scaring him off. The headmistress guessed he’d been lost after too much ale at the village pub and came into the greenhouse to find shelter on a mound of burlap scraps. Kitty was collecting lilies, to decorate the chapel on Sunday morning, and got frightened to bits.”
I loved Marjorie’s stories about school. During her holidays, I’d beg to hear about the time she and her friends had purloined a pot of jam and shared it in the dark of the dormitory, or how, on the stroke of eleven, they’d all dropped their pencils during maths.
“Was Kitty one of your close chums?” I said.
“No, no,” said Marjorie. “She was older. We overlapped by only a year. She was in the sixth form when I got there in the fourth. Poor girl was called Oinks at school, even by us younger girls, for being so piggy about eating more than her share.”
“She’s not piggy in the least bit!” I said. “That was very mean-spirited of you!”
“I shouldn’t have told you,” said Marjorie. “So unfair to expose youthful flaws when one has grown up to have such pretty dresses and silky hair and not a hint of roundness.”
“Her husband is ever so nice,” I said. “Almost as kind as James.”
“James and Lakshay were great pals at Oxford,” said Marjorie. “I have the sense that James befriended Lakshay when he first arrived from Ceylon, a lonely boy far from home, though James wouldn’t put it like that. He tells about seeing Lakshay carrying a table on his shoulders up the stairs to his rooms, and how he enticed him to join the rowing team.”
“How did Kitty come to marry him?” I asked.
“I do not know their love story,” said Marjorie. “James has been so busy with Owl Park since his father died, he hasn’t had time for friends and fell out of touch with Lakshay. They met again recently and found they still liked each other. That’s when I learned that Lakshay had married Kitty. So, we thought to invite them for Christmas.”
“Is it usual for an Englishwoman to marry a man from Ceylon?”
“I do not imagine it is common, but it does happen occasionally,” said Marjorie. “They seem to be at ease, which is really all that counts, is it not?”
“Like you and James,” I said, and was rewarded with a smile. “He will feel gratified to return the Echo Emerald to the goddess Aditi, will he not?”
“A gentleman is coming here the day after Christmas to appraise the gem so it can be insured for travel. Mr. Sivam’s dream will come true very soon.”
“He’s awfully far from home,” I said. “Even if he lives here now. Like Hector.”
“Just like Hector,” said Marjorie. “Or like me, at Owl Park. I feel like a toad dropped into the middle of a frog pond—and we all know that toads can’t swim!”
A knock at the door. “Come in, Mrs. Hornby,” Marjorie called out. And then to me, “This will be Cook, I’m afraid, about today’s meals.”
I quickly vacated the chair next to my sister’s desk where Mrs. Hornby was accustomed to sitting each morning. Marjorie had a list of things to discuss with the cook about her current guests, beginning with thanks for taking the trouble to make nut rissoles for Mr. Sivam’s vegetarian diet. What would she provide this evening? Grannie Jane could not tolerate tomatoes. What did Mrs. Hornby think about this or that and this?
I listened politely for a few moments before wandering—ever so casually—to the cabinet that hid the entrance to the secret passage. I noted the handle on the second drawer down that Lucy had turned yesterday. I daren’t touch it in case it sprang suddenly to life. I imagined Mrs. Hornby clutching her bosom in shock if part of the furniture began to move!
“I make a lovely rum cake, if you’d like that, your ladyship,” said Mrs. Hornby. “No one is a teetotaler that I’ve been informed about.”
“That will do very nicely, Mrs. Hornby, thank you.”
When the cook eventually made her way out, Marjorie sagged in her chair.
“Whatever menu I choose, James’s mother has a reason to complain. I never seem to get things right!”
“What if you asked for her advice?” I said. “She must have been the young Lady Greyson herself at one time?”
“Oh, Aggie,” said Marjorie. “My greatest fear is being revealed as the imposter that I am. Asking for help would be like shouting out loud all the things I do not know. My only comfort is that I do not see how things can get any worse!”
CHAPTER 8
AN EVENING ENTERTAINMENT
HECTOR
AND LUCY WERE infuriatingly secretive about what they’d been doing all day. I found Hector limping up and down the hallway with a silly smile on his face, occasionally pausing to raise a fist in the air. Lucy used the poker from the nursery fireplace to practice what she seemed to think were the moves of a dashing swordsman. Lucy frightened Dot nearly out of her wits by lunging with her weapon just as the maid opened the door to say that the volunteer actors were wanted in the ballroom to be costumed.
“I could bring you a cup of tea, Miss Agatha,” said Dot, once the others had slipped away and down the stairs. “Only, it’d have to be right now. It’s Christmas Eve, you see. We’ve already laid out the supper for after the play, because we servants are at liberty tonight. We watch the entertainment just as you do, and get handed drinks by her ladyship and the rest of you lot. My brother, Fred, and another of the footmen have roles in the pantomime.”
“It’s not really a pantomime,” I said. “You might be disappointed if that’s what you’re expecting.” I explained that a tableau was more like a living photograph or painting, with everyone in costumes and makeup, frozen in the most dramatic moment of the book. It was usually a book, or a famous painting, or something from the Bible.
“The actors don’t move or speak to each other. And they won’t be acting silly or singing naughty songs.”
“Whatever it is,” said Dot, “it’ll be better than washing out socks.”
* * *
—
Grannie Jane and I passed the last hour of the afternoon threading popped corn to make garlands to decorate the numerous statues and busts that inhabited the rooms of Owl Park. Marjorie eventually led us to the ballroom, where we sat with Dr. Musselman and tried not to twitch with excitement.
A curtain of plush maroon velvet hung in deep folds in front of a platform at one end of the room. On the evening of a real ball, the orchestra would play on this little stage, just two feet above the dance floor. Tonight, there’d be as many people on the stage as sitting in chairs, even counting the dozen servants who’d come to watch. James was backstage, becoming an actor, but Marjorie made a fine show of escorting Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Hornby to seats in the front row. Soft notes from a piano tinkled out from behind the curtain. Once we’d all found seats, we rustled and murmured for a few minutes until the lights dimmed and the gentle music stopped.
I loved this minute in a theater, when the lights went down on the audience and came back up inside a play. The curtains were drawn back to show three people encircling an impressive goose, trussed and roasted upon a platter. Mr. Mooney was dressed in a caped overcoat and tweed hat. He held aloft a magnificent jewel, the size of a plum and glowing blue in the stage lights. He examined it through an oversized magnifying glass. The other actor, Mr. Corker, wearing a stiff brown suit, gaped into the innards of the goose as if there might be more treasure to discover. I barely recognized Annabelle Day as the plump, astonished housekeeper. Padding and makeup increased her girth and age remarkably.
I leaned over to whisper directly into Marjorie’s ear. “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’! The story by Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle! I mean, Sir Arthur, now.”
Marjorie had sent me the book and I’d read it aloud to Papa during the weeks of his illness. The gemstone in the story is stolen from a countess and turns up in the gullet of a Christmas goose. Mr. Holmes makes clever deductions by simply examining a man’s hat.
“That’s why I selected it from their list of tableaux,” said Marjorie. “For you! Now, ssh.”
The curtains slid together after a bit, the piano music started up, and the audience began again to breathe.
“I’d faint dead away,” said Mrs. Hornby loudly, from the front row, “if such a stone turned up inside any bird I cooked! That bird weren’t washed proper before it went into the oven.” Everyone laughed. And then the lights dipped, signaling the second tableau.
Another Christmas feast, a crowded table this time, again surrounding a roasted goose. The same goose, I could tell, made of painted plaster with a garland of cranberries draped across its breast. Mr. Mooney, who moments ago had been Sherlock Holmes, was now dressed in a wrinkled nightshirt with a striped nightcap on his head, gazing in at a merry dining room through a window in the scenery and beaming with pride. Miss Annabelle Day was the mother of the household, a silver ladle in her hand, ready to serve from a tureen. Mr. Corker played her husband. Their family was shabby of costume, each watching the unexpected gift of a roasted bird with hungry anticipation. I spotted Lucy in a cap and patched pinafore, Frederick the footman with a pretend piece of pie, and Dot holding the pose of a ghostly sprite.
“A Christmas Carol!” I said. “By Charles Dickens!”
Marjorie squeezed my arm and then began to clap.
“Look at Hector!” I said. “He’s Tiny Tim!”
He wore a huge checked cap, a rough linen shirt and a gleeful grin. “God bless us, every one!” he cried. His crutch, waving in the air, came close to knocking off the head of his stage-Papa, Mr. Corker. As promised, my hands were warm from clapping so hard.
“One more,” said Marjorie, when the curtain had closed.
“Another book?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
We had a longer wait this time, but the audience cheered when the curtain parted. A painted backdrop showed the rolling waves of a bonny blue sea. We were aboard a pirate ship in a rare moment of merriment. Five grimacing pirates were dressed alike in rough muslin shirts, wide orange trousers, and dark curling wigs beneath battered hats or kerchiefs. One of them was a bit taller—Frederick, the footman; one a bit shorter—Mr. Roger Corker; and one small and slim—Miss Annabelle Day. Mr. Sivam and James were like twins, almost, except for their coloring. All of them wore high buckled boots and had hands and faces smeared with coal smut and pot rust to make them appear sea-roughened and sunburnt. Mr. Mooney was dressed in a frock coat with gold epaulets. He had a peg leg and a tattered parrot pinned to one shoulder.
“Dastardly rogues!” Dr. Musselman began to clap his hands with great enthusiasm.
“Three cheers for Long John Silver!” called out Kitty Sivam. For that’s who Mr. Mooney portrayed.
“I’m meant to be the hero!” cried Lucy, stepping out of her character to hurl an unfriendly glare at Mrs. Sivam. “I’m Jim Hawkins!”
“And so you are, darling,” said Kitty. “But I thought the villain might need some encouragement before you trounced him.”
Lucy froze into position again, but did not quite erase the look of pique on her face. Long John Silver laughed a mighty pirate laugh. He swung a cardboard cutlass over their heads, keeping the real sword and dagger safely attached to his belt.
The curtain closed and the entertainment was done, an excellent night in the theater.
And a party still to follow!
CHAPTER 9
A JOLLY SUPPER
LUCY WANTED TO PLAY the piano in the drawing room during the supper buffet after the tableaux, but James told her no.
“He says I am too heavy-handed,” she complained. “That I may play for guests only when I have refined my touch.”
Miss Annabelle Day took her place on the piano bench instead. The vivid makeup of a pirate had been wiped from her face, though she still wore the white shirt with a low front that displayed considerable bosom. Previously hidden by a ragged black wig, her auburn hair was pulled into a high knot that emphasized the scoop of her neckline.
She shuffled the sheets of music and made a selection, smiling up at Mr. Corker, who set a glass of champagne next to her. He was still in full pirate garb, except for the sword, which he’d jammed into the coal scuttle by the fire. James had stayed in costume too. His face makeup, like Mr. Corker’s, was streaked and sweaty.
Annabelle’s fingers moved gently across the keys for a few bars and then she began to sing, softly. A hush fell as we l
istened for a while, before chatter began again.
Hector wore his ragged Tiny Tim jacket and breeches, reluctant to put aside his moment of triumph. Lucy kept her hair tucked under a cap to look like brave Jim Hawkins for an hour longer. She held two cakes, urging Hector to choose one. They now were colleagues of a sort, who had shared an afternoon apart from me. I tried not to itch in my new Christmas dress.
“It is unnerving, James, to look at you,” came old Lady Greyson’s unhappy voice. “I do wish you’d wash your face and put your proper clothes back on.”
“I’m showing my Christmas spirit, Mother. All in fun, you know. The servants are having a splendid time, seeing us behave a bit foolishly.”
“Foolish does not become you,” she grumbled. “Nor does it suit the drawing room, to be invaded by a platoon of pirates.”
“How is your toothache, Mother?” said James.
“Dr. Musselman put in a drop of chloroform earlier, but I’m afraid it has quite worn off.”
“I will see if he can supply another dose. Perhaps you’d like to retire to the comfort of your own room? Evelyn can take you up and get you settled. But mind you don’t keep her long. Tonight is for your lady’s maid to enjoy as well.”
Lady Greyson sighed loudly. James caught me watching and winked.
“Here’s Aggie to keep you company while I find Evelyn.”
I would have far preferred to be sent on the Evelyn-seeking errand, but never could have said so. I assisted Lady Greyson into a chair and waited for her to get comfortable, dreading the moment when I must speak. What to say, what to say? Where was Grannie Jane in my time of need? Across the room, conversing with a pirate, whose back was to me. Mr. Corker or Mr. Sivam? I couldn’t tell which because the costumes were all the same. Not James, I hoped, as he should be bringing Evelyn to rescue me.
“Do you like the music?” I said.
Peril at Owl Park Page 5