‘Well, sir, I was worried the heat in the oven and the kitchen grate might cause a conflagration, sir, so a couple of the lads and I went in and brought the coals out. And we thought while we were there we would bring your supper out to you, though it is not normally our place.’ He opened the front door again, and there on the doorstep, covered in cloths, were the supper pots. The smell was extremely appealing. Murray called for Robbins.
Supper was served in a manner reminiscent of refreshments at a badly arranged ball, with people coming and going through to the parlour, and the food laid haphazardly on the dining table and eaten off more of the Spode, and servants embarrassed to eat with their masters, and guests not sure if they should stay or leave, and Mrs. Chambers wondering if there would be any food left to give them in the morning, or anywhere to cook it.
When the meal was finished, no one seemed disposed to retire to the drawing room, and everyone, concerned or not, listened politely to Murray’s announcement that the servants who were fit to be moved should find themselves beds in the empty house. Mrs. Chambers looked pleased, although she would be making no beds herself, with her arm well bandaged along a piece of window frame. Mrs. Mutch was concerned, vaguely, about the kitchens, though whether it was the ones she had left or the ones she was going to seemed to vary from minute to minute. Mary had fetched ointment from Mrs. Chambers’ sitting room for Effy’s burned arm, though for the moment it was wrapped in damp bandages and she was drinking her fourteenth cup of tea: Iffy, limping artistically, was counting. Smith had come round groggily, but to Blair’s alarm did not recognise any of them, and persisted in addressing Mrs. Freeman as Meg, which did nothing for anyone.
With remarkable energy that would probably tell on her later, Mrs. Chambers took a lamp and Jennet and went over to inspect the empty house. She found not only the fires lit, for Thalland’s men were enjoying their unfamiliar domestic work, but also a quantity of trunks, blankets, pans and kitchen tools rescued by the men from the shored-up ruin. Even as the tears started in her eyes, one of the stable lads came through the door carrying, with steady reverence, the first of the dishes for the ball.
‘Where do you want these, ma’am? We’ll have the tables over soon, too.’
Mrs. Chambers knew the house and soon had the purposes of the rooms established. Jennet was set to bed-making, and soon Mary joined her, while Mrs. Mutch and Iffy, the one nearly as useless as the other, began to arrange the kitchen. Effy insisted on moving and so did Smith, so the parlour was soon cleared of its hospital air. When Murray walked over with Robbins around ten o’clock, there was space to sleep, eat and cook in decent surroundings, and Murray instructed them all to go to bed and rest. At the main house, the ladies retired with their maids and the gentlemen finally sat with brandy in the drawing room and listened to the rain.
‘What on earth went wrong?’ asked Murray at last. ‘I must send for Mr. Elliot at once.’
‘It seemed to me – though of course I am no expert, not at all – that the men had shored up the roof of the tunnel quite adequately,’ said Blair.
‘Evidently not,’ said Murray bitterly.
‘They could not be down there, could they?’ asked Balfour suddenly. He was only a little older than Murray, but his habitual anxiety aged him. For a second, the worry was infectious.
‘No, no,’ said Murray. ‘I definitely saw them during the rescue. They had stopped for the day.’
‘Good, good,’ said Balfour, looking for something else to worry about. Dr. Inglis said,
‘And will they be fit to attend Communion in the morning? I assume they all have tokens.’
‘Yes, sir, they do,’ said Murray. ‘As to your question, I can only guess the answer.’
II
That night, the rain beat on the windows of Letho House. Murray lay awake listening to it, imagining the creaks and groans in the servants’ wing. Sunday was a disjointed, awkward day, frustrating its inhabitants who had so much to do and so little liberty to do it. In the event, all but Smith, Effy, Mary and Robbins attended the service the next morning. Smith and Effy were each in bed in the newly-segregated floors of the new servants’ quarters, and Mary elected to stay with Effy who was still in great pain, despite Dr. Feilden’s sedatives. Smith had remembered who he was and who Blair was, but not much more. In all physical respects, apart from the bruise on his head, he seemed well, but the physician had recommended a day’s rest, not several hours on a hard pew. Robbins stayed in case Smith wandered.
‘How are the injured?’ asked Murray. He had not slept well, thinking about them, and Robbins had noted the shadows under his eyes.
‘Improving very well, sir. The new building might not be home, but if you will forgive me, sir, at least it is not damp.’
Murray sighed.
‘Robbins, you do not need to reprimand me. I am fully aware of my blame in this case. If I had thought of some other way of dealing with the damp –’
‘Sir, you could not have foreseen it. We all know that well.’
‘But if I had thought –’
‘Sir, if you will excuse me, there is one thing we need very badly.’
Murray brightened, hoping to make amends.
‘Whatever I can do,’ he said, ‘tell me.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Robbins, clearing his throat, ‘we need creamware. Or pottery of some kind. We have only a few pewter plates left over from your grandfather’s time, and Mrs. Mutch says they make the food taste odd. I had thought – there is a set of old china hardly used in the dresser along the passage, and we would take great care of it till we could order more made, sir, with your permission.’
‘Of course,’ said Murray.
‘Your good coat is ruined, sir, and so is mine. The lime and paint from the plaster and brickdust were thick on them, and then they were wet: there is no cleaning them. The servants will all need new second-best livery: Mrs. Mutch and the kitchenmaids, as you saw, were in rags, and of course much of Effy’s gown was burned, too. They are beyond mending.’
‘They will all be replaced as soon as can be,’ agreed Murray. ‘Tell Mrs. Chambers she may buy as she needs.’
‘And then, sir, there is the ball.’
Murray groaned. In the middle of the night he had begun drafting, by the light of his bedside candle, letters to all his guests cancelling the event.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Mutch cannot possibly do all the cooking in her present state.’
‘No, sir, we want to go on with it, if you will,’ said Robbins stubbornly. ‘I have talked to the servants at breakfast this morning, and they are all of the opinion that we can manage perfectly well. The best part of the food was already prepared because of the preachings, and the boys rescued all but one jelly last night. All the good livery was packed away in trunks so it is not even dusty. If we could have maybe the loan of Mrs. Fairlie’s cook to help instead of Effy, and the usual help from the best-looking stable and garden lads, and work as hard tomorrow as we had planned to, we see no reason for a cancellation.’
Murray felt guiltily pleased.
‘Are you all sure?’ he insisted, willing Robbins to say no so that he could atone in some way for letting them down so badly. ‘Is Mrs. Mutch at all well enough?’
‘She is determined to prove herself, sir, as are we all.’
III
Mrs. Mutch, with Iffy’s help and Mrs. Chambers’ limited but intelligent assistance, produced a dinner which was adequate, if not her best, and after the preachings in the afternoon produced a supper that hardly showed it had been cooked in an unfamiliar kitchen.
Murray acknowledged to his appointed hostess, Mrs. Freeman, that he was sure they could carry on with the ball. The Balfours, who were to stay on for it, were politely pleased and secretly rather impressed: Isobel was publicly bored but quietly delighted, and planned how to finish her new gown.
Murray and Thalland inspected the propped-up ruin, for safety’s sake, and found it stable. Thalland gave it as his op
inion that the whole wing would have to come down and be rebuilt, and Murray agreed with him. He wondered if he should hire one of the architects involved in the dispute between the Heritors and the minister: the minister had looked a little sheepish this morning until he had heard about the servants’ wing, when he had gone very pale and had not spoken for some time.
IV
On Sunday evening, Dr. Inglis had retired to his room to reflect on the sermon he had given and the others were in the drawing room listening to the playing of Mrs. Balfour and Isobel. Murray sat at a table where Mrs. Freeman worked at a drawing, and wrote a stern letter to Mr. Elliot. Blair and Balfour quietly discussed the current prosperity of the countryside. There was no sound of hoofbeats or wheels on the drive to forecast an arrival, so when Robbins announced that a visitor was waiting for Murray in the parlour, he was a little surprised. His thought was only that Mr. Helliwell might have called to enquire after his injured parishioners, but to his astonishment, when he entered the parlour, he found Kennedy waiting for him. Kennedy had not been at the preachings or the Communion, being as Episcopalian as Miss Kirk, and it seemed an age since Murray had seen him. They greeted one another cordially.
‘Will you not join us in the drawing room?’ asked Murray. ‘I have guests, if you would do me the honour of meeting them.’
‘Unfortunately, I must deprive myself of that pleasure this evening,’ said Kennedy apologetically. ‘I came on several counts, the first and most important to enquire after your household. I heard about the accident.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Murray looked down. ‘One of the kitchenmaids is badly burned, Mrs. Chambers has a broken arm, and Mrs. Mutch has taken a knock on the head, as has Blair’s man Smith. But that is all, and we have been more fortunate than I deserve.’
‘The next matter,’ said Kennedy, as though he wished to have it over with, ‘may seem selfish to the point of stupidity in the light of your misfortune. I wondered if I might have my room back and move here again.’
‘Certainly,’ said Murray, a little puzzled. ‘But – why now?’
Kennedy grinned, shamefacedly.
‘These Kirk girls,’ he said obliquely, ‘always sending me to confess all to you. They must be good for my soul, surely.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Murray, wanting to go back to his letter and his own worries. Kennedy gave a little nod, as though he had readied himself.
‘Miss Kirk has instructed me to tell you of something which might help, if not to catch the murderer of that woman, then at least to forestall the taking of any innocent man for it. She says I should have told you before, but my excuse is that other matters on my mind had distracted me from what was, at the time, and may still be, a trivial incident.’
‘This is something Miss Kirk witnessed, or something you have talked of with her?’ asked Murray, beginning to be more interested.
‘Something I have talked of with her, and which she believes may be of significance. I should say,’ said Kennedy, not quite parenthetically, ‘that Miss Kirk has done me the honour of consenting to be my wife, at the appropriate time. I tell you this confidentially, for as yet I have not heard a reply from her brother. That is why we thought it proper if I were to move back here to Letho.’
‘My dear sir,’ said Murray, swallowing his astonishment, ‘may I offer you congratulations on securing the affection of the lady, and as for the brother I wish you the best of outcomes.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kennedy with a contented smile. ‘But to my information, for if I return without telling you, she will not admit me. On the night of the fireworks, I believe I told you, I had arranged them as a distraction to cover the arrival of the Kirks at Cullessie. Of course, they did not arrive till the next day, I know that now. But you remember that you and I were amongst the last to leave the inn, and I stayed behind to look for my handkerchief while you went home alone. Well, I did not tell stay as late as midnight, which was what I told you: I stayed not long after you, and went back via Cullessie to see would I catch a glimpse of Parnell, or talk to her before we had to meet in public.
‘It must not have been much after eleven, for I saw the doctor go in home as I was leaving the inn and he told us he was home around then. I walked up the main street and up Kirk Hill, and just turned the corner into the lane between the manse and the church when a man came out of it, over the stile. I swung the lantern up to see if it was anyone I knew; perhaps I had caught up with you, I thought, and cursed my luck. But of course it was not you.’ He stopped, and Murray said impatiently,
‘Well, who was it?’
Kennedy seemed surprised.
‘Oh, no one I knew. No one I have seen since, and, I am fairly sure, no one I had ever seen before.’
‘Well, what did he look like?’ asked Murray, trying to be calm. The sheriff’s officer had said he had had no report of a stranger in the parish, so who could this have been?
‘He was tallish, taller than I, but dark.’
‘Of what age? Of what class in life?’
‘Oh, young. Not far off our age, I should have thought. As to his class, well, I should have said he had a gentle appearance. We are basing all this, may I remind you, on one flash of my lantern.’
‘I know, I should not push you,’ Murray conceded. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me. We hope to have made some progress in the case, anyway, but Blair’s man Smith, who was sent to Aberdeen to find out more about the dead woman, was one of those injured in the collapse of the servants’ wing, and has lost all memory of his journey.’
‘Unfortunate indeed for all concerned. Well, I must away, if you will excuse me.’ He rose, then said suddenly, ‘Miss Kirk is a good woman, and as you know I have done nothing to deserve her affection. But I shall try to merit it, with all my might.’
‘Please present her with my kindest regards,’ said Murray, ‘and tell her I could not have wished for happier news. You will move back here tomorrow?’
‘If I can,’ said Kennedy. ‘Old Mrs. Kirk has been having a bad time, but I shall try not to leave it too late.’
‘But you will be at the ball, will you not?’ said Murray. ‘It is to go ahead, you know.’
‘Oh!’ said Kennedy, ‘but Miss Kirk cannot – you know –’
‘I know,’ said Murray, ‘but if your engagement is secret, perhaps it is just as well.’
‘True,’ said Kennedy. ‘Well, I hope, at any rate, to see you tomorrow.’
V
From the earliest hours of grey daylight, Monday was unbelievably busy. By the time Murray wandered through on his way to breakfast, the gallery was almost unrecognisable, the windows as wide as they would go, the curtains half-down, the carpet half-up, and the furniture halfway into other rooms. Mrs. Chambers, with dusters arranged over her bandaged arm like flags, sat in the midst of struggling manservants directing their efforts with regal efficiency. Even as Murray watched, the carpet vanished down the stairs like a worm down its hole and Jennet, Mary and William started with brooms from the other end of the gallery. Murray felt superfluous and fled downstairs.
In the parlour, breakfast was laid out, but Isobel was sitting at the window stitching furiously at something white and complex. She jumped as Murray came in, then sewed on.
‘Thought you were my Aunt Freeman,’ she said shortly.
‘Good morning, Isobel,’ he replied.
Blair and Balfour came in in boots from an early morning walk. One of the spaniels tried to follow, but was grabbed from beyond the door and disappeared with a yelp.
‘A fine day, if damp,’ remarked Balfour.
‘The servants are already wearing a path in the drive,’ said Blair happily, and helped himself to eggs.
Gradually, over the course of the morning, the gallery and adjacent rooms were transformed. Two half-tester beds were dismantled and run down to the cellars, and card tables were set up in one bed chamber, and a table for light refreshments in the other. Robbins went to one of the barns where the carpenters had been restoring the c
hairs from the cellar, and inspected them, and found them good. A long string of lads formed with a chair apiece and caterpillared with them into the garden and through the courtyard door of the house, taking the chairs upstairs and skipping down again. By dinnertime, the furniture was all arranged, the floor polished and ready and the curtains rehung without the accompanying dust.
Dinner was swift and informal, for the kitchens in the new servants’ quarters had to be seen to be believed. Iffy dropped three plates and a plan of soup and made the best pastry she had ever produced in her life, but Mrs. Mutch was flying round like a thing demented and hardly noticed. Heaps of fruit and vegetables, harvested from garden and glasshouse and brought by wheelbarrow, appeared from time to time by the back door and were swiftly absorbed into the alchemical process inside. At one point Jennet, susceptible to confusion, took a dish to the dining room that was intended for the supper, but fortunately Daniel recognised it and brought it back unscathed. The huge wooden chest with its iron hinges that housed the best silver was hauled, with ropes and a team of strong men, out of the silver room in the old servants’ wing and rolled over the increasingly muddy gravel to the new quarters, where its contents were examined and their polish perfected.
As soon as dinner was cleared, the pace became even more frantic. The dining room was rapidly rearranged, with the table extended as far as it would go and laid with everything possible that could not spoil by evening. Robbins opened bottles to let the contents breathe, and decanted all he could. Mary spooned ice into the bases of the urns that would hold Mrs. Mutch’s famous ice creams, and cleaned soot out of the gravy warmers. Carlisle and his underlings came in from the gardens with armful after armful of flowers and foliage, and soon there was a scent of roses and lilac through the gallery and hall and card room, while the less strongly perfumed flowers formed a breathtaking display in the dining and refreshment rooms. When Mrs. Chambers came to look at the arrangements, she was overwhelmed, but had to take a pair of scissors and discreetly, left-handedly, trim back some of the more exuberant branches: Carlisle did not appreciate that a supper table was also for supper.
An Abandoned Woman (Murray of Letho Book 4) Page 28