National Trust
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• A year or so back, Mr Kirby-Trott needs money. He’s even closing off rooms in the house and hiring fewer of us servants. So he has a soap-stone copy of the necklace made and swaps it for the real one what he sells. (So he’s doin’ it for a good reason but it’s still NOT RIGHT.)
• When Mrs Kirby-Trott decides to show off her Chinese jade necklace at a dinner with that General Gurton, Mr Kirby-Trott panics ’cause he knows that, being a Chinese expert and that, the general will see it’s a fake at once… (The master must have been in a right old panic!)
• …So he quickly hides the fake, soap-stone necklace so Mrs Kirby-Trott has to wear her emeralds instead. (Quick thinkin’ on his part.)
• Mr Kirby-Trott was probably planning to put the necklace somewhere Miss Annie would find it while he and the mistress were out. Then she’d put it back in its red-velvet-lined box and Mr Pritchard could lock it back up in the safe. And no one would have been any the wiser that something weren’t quite right! (Then we’d have had none of this mess!)
• Everything went as planned until the master left the necklace to be found by Miss Annie but someone else got to it before she had a chance…
• …And went and stuffed it up the chimney in the bedroom fireplace! (Uho!)
• But what about that burnt receipt? How comes that turned up now? I reckons the master had it hidden away in a drawer of the desk in the unused study, but remembered it and burnt it in an ’urry when he realised he’d said Mahesh could use the room.
So all that remains unanswered is who put the necklace up the chimney? And you know what? I’ve solved that too!
I have. I must have been eating brain food without even knowing it!
Remember Mrs McNamara telling the tale of the thieving magpie stealing shiny things for its nest, dear diary?
Well, I’ve heard Nanny Brown callin’ Master William a ‘little magpie’ more than once. I’ll bet he were the one what put the tin soldier in the dough and the little china doggies in the big vase. And put the pretty necklace up the chimney, throwing all his father’s plans into chaos.
Who’d ’ave thought it? The mystery of the missing necklace was down to the Kirby-Trotts: father and son. It was never really stolen in the first place!
And me, Jane Pinny – nothing more than a maid – solved it all by meself. Well, with more than a bit of encouragement from me best pal, Plump, along the way!!!
If I had an audience, I’d take a bow about now!
One of the things that the vicar loves sayin’ in his sermons on Sunday mornings is that “God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” I think it means that we don’t have to understand why God does what He does and just accept that there’s a reason. That’s why there’s injustice in the world. We don’t know why, but it’s all part of a plan. But sometimes, I can
understand why things happen. Like this morning.
We was having a staff meeting in the servants’ hall when the door at the top of the stair opens and we hear none other than the master himself calling down: “Pritchard? Pritchard!”
This was a most unusual thing for Mr Kirby-Trott to do, when he could simply have yanked one of the bell-pulls, to set a bell a-jangling down below.
“Coming, sir!” called Mr Pritchard, who broke off mid-sentence, and hurried out into the passage.
Then we all heard it.
The
Followed by the cry.
Followed by the
Then another cry.
And then silence that followed that.
Me instinct was to rush out and see what had happened, but Mrs McNamara was quick to instruct us to stay in our places as she dashed from the room. (Between you and me, it all sounded quite comical, but it would have been VERY bad to have smiled, let alone laughed!)
And, do you know what? Them servants’ stairs ARE jinxed. That’s why Jack broke his leg. That’s why Mr Warpole nearly dropped the framed photograph. And that’s why Mr Kirby-Trott took a tumble and broke his nose.
Yes, the master has broken his nose!
There were so much blood and now it looks flatter than a boxer’s!
And, between you, me and Plump, dear diary, I think that’s a kind of justice. I think it’s God performin’ one of His wonders! It’s justice for him tricking his wife out of her real jade necklace. It’s justice for him letting suspicion fall on poor Nelly. And, that felt right somehows.
This evening I were talking to Plump about it and he agrees.
“You solved what happened to the necklace,” he says from the window ledge, “and natural justice saw your master punished for it!” He nibbled at a piece of bacon rind I’d brought him from the kitchen. “See, Jane?” he said, doing his pigeon head-bob. “I told you you’re special.” He bobbed his head and looked at me. “Coo!”
I felt good.
I love Plump.
I may not be a lady and I may not be all educated, but Mr Pritchard is right. We ALL plays a part in making this country what it is. We all help them wheels turn. And I ain’t stupid. Like I said before, dear diary, I has PLANS.
Jack made a full recovery and was fortunate enough to be reinstated as a footman. He eventually became butler and, later in life when his bones stiffened, he walked with a slight limp brought on by his old injury. Mr Kirby-Trott was less lucky. His nose was well and truly squashed and he earned the nickname ‘Old Flat Face’ at his gentlemen’s club. Jane’s friend Mary eventually married first footman Long Johns. Jane Pinny never married and stayed at Lytton House for many years, working her way up the ranks of servants, finally becoming housekeeper. She was known as a hard-worker who always had a kind word for those she worked with and who, later, worked under her. She was housekeeper when William Kirby-Trott inherited Lytton House after his father died. Sadly, pigeons don’t live as long as people, but when Plump died Jane gave him a grand burial after a night of crying. Plump’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren could neither speak nor write, but were always welcome on Jane’s window sill where she fed them each evening as she told them about her day.
Although none of the characters in this book are real and there is and was no Lytton House, what IS true is the information about such grand country houses, the types of people who lived in them in Victorian times and their daily lives. Another great way to bring history to life is, of course, to visit a National Trust property. This might give you a glimpse into the servants’ world of seventeen-hour days of backbreaking work.
Also available:
THE SECRET DIARY OF
John Drawbridge, Medieval Knight in Training
Look out for:
THE SECRET DIARY OF
Thomas Snoop, Tudor Boy Spy
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2017 by Nosy Crow Ltd
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Text copyright © Philip Ardagh, 2017
Illustrations © Jamie Littler, 2017
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