by Muriel Spark
‘Yes,’ says the visitor from the depths of the back seat.
‘I’ll just call the house,’ says Theo and returns to the lodge.
‘Drive on,’ says Prince Eugene to his driver. ‘Don’t wait for him and all that rot. I said to Klopstock I’d look in after dinner and I’m looking in after dinner. He should have told his porter to expect me.’ As he speaks, the car is already off on its meander towards the house.
Lister is waiting at the door. He runs down the steps towards the big car as the driver gets out to open the door for the prince.
‘The Baron and Baroness are not at home,’ Lister says.
Prince Eugene has got out and looks at Lister. ‘Who are you?’ he says.
‘Excuse me, your Excellency, that I’m in my off-duty clothes,’ Lister says. ‘I’m Lister, the butler.’
‘You look like a Secretary of State.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ says Lister.
‘It isn’t a compliment,’ says the prince. ‘What do you mean, they’re not at home? I saw the Baron this morning and he asked me to drop in after dinner. They’re expecting me.’ He mounts the steps, Lister following him, and enters the house.
In the hall he nods towards the library door from where the sound of voices come, ‘Go and tell them I’m here.’ He starts to unbutton his coat.
‘Your Excellency, I have orders that they are not to be disturbed.’ Lister edges round so that his back is turned to the library door, as if protecting it. He adds, ‘The door is locked from the inside.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘A meeting, sir, with one of the secretaries. It has already lasted some hours and is likely to continue far into the night.’
The prince, plump, with pale cheeks, refrains from taking off his coat as he says, ‘Whose secretary is it, his or hers?’
‘The gentleman in question is the one who’s been secretary to both, sir, for the past five months, nearly.’
‘Almighty God, I’d better get out of here!’ says Prince Eugene.
‘I would do that, sir,’ Lister says, leading the way to the front door.
‘The Baron seemed all right this morning,’ says the Prince on the threshold. ‘He’d just got back from Paris.’
‘I imagine there have been telephone conversations throughout the afternoon, sir.’
‘He didn’t seem to be expecting any trouble.’
‘None of them did, your Excellency. They were not prepared for it. They have placed themselves, unfortunately, within the realm of predestination.’
‘You talk like a Secretary of State to the Vatican.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘It isn’t a compliment.’ The Prince, buttoning up his coat, passes out into the night air through the door which Lister is holding open for him. Before descending the steps to his car, he says, ‘Lister, do you expect something to happen?’
‘We do, sir. The domestic staff is prepared.’
‘Lister, in case of investigations no need, you understand, to mention my visit tonight. It is quite a casual neighbourly visit. Not relevant.’
‘Of course, your Excellency.’
‘By the way, I’m not an Excellency. I’m a Highness.’
‘Your Highness.’
‘A domestic staff as large and efficient as yourselves is hard to come by. Quite exceptional in Switzerland. How did the Baron do it?’
‘Money,’ says Lister.
The voices, indistinguishable but excited, wave over to them from the library.
‘I need a butler,’ says his Highness. He takes out a card and gives it to Lister. Jerking his head towards the library door he says, ‘When it’s all over, if you need a place, come to me. I would be glad of some of the other servants, too.’
‘I doubt if we shall be looking for further employment, sir, but I thank you deeply for your offer.’ Lister puts the card in a note-case which he has brought out of his vest pocket.
‘And his cook? That excellent chef? Will he be free?’
‘He, too, has his plans, your Excellency.’
‘There will of course be a scandal. He must have paid you all very well for your services.’
‘For our silence, sir.’
Upstairs a voice growls and the shutters bang.
‘That’s him in the attic,’ says Prince Eugene.
‘A sad case, sir.’
‘He inherits everything.’
‘How, sir? He’s a connection of the Baroness through her first marriage. A cousin of the first husband. I think the Baron could hardly bequeath a vast estate to him, poor thing in the attic. The Baron is succeeded by a brother in Brazil.’
‘The one in Brazil is the youngest. The one in the attic is next in line — no relation to her at all.’
‘That,’ said Lister, ‘I did not know.’
‘Few people know it. Don’t tell anyone I said so. Klopstock would kill me. Would have killed me.’
‘Well, it makes no difference to us, sir, who gets the fortune. Our fortunes lie in other directions.’
‘A great pity. I would have taken on the cook. An excellent cook. What’s his name?’
‘Clovis, sir.’
‘Oh, yes, Clovis.’
‘But he will be giving up his profession, I dare say.’
‘A waste of talent.’ The prince gets into his car and is driven away from the scene.
Mr Samuel has taken off his leather coat and is sitting in the large pantry office which gives off from the servants’ hall, looking through a file of papers. He leans back in his chair, dressed in a black turtle-necked sweater and black corduroy trousers. The door is open behind him and the large window in front of him is black and shiny with blurs of light from the courtyard, like a faulty television screen. A car draws up to the back door. Mr Samuel says over his shoulder to the servants in the room beyond, ‘Here’s Mr McGuire, let him in.’
‘He has the keys,’ says Heloise.
‘Show a little courtesy,’ says Mr Samuel.
‘I hear Lister coming,’ says Eleanor.
Mr Samuel then gets up and comes into the servants’ sitting-room. From the passage leading to the front of the house comes Lister, while from the back door a key is successfully playing with the lock.
Lister stops to listen. ‘Who is this?’
‘Mr McGuire,’ says Mr Samuel. ‘I asked him to come and join us. I might need a hand with the data. I hope that’s all right.’
‘You should have mentioned it to me first,’ says Lister. ‘You should have phoned me, Mr Samuel. However, I have no objection. As it happens I need Mr McGuire’s services.’
A man now appears from the back door. He seems slightly older than Mr Samuel, with a weathered and freckled face. ‘How’s everything? How’s everybody?’ he says.
‘Good evening, Mr McGuire,’ says Lister.
‘Make yourself at home,’ says Clovis.
‘Good evening, thanks. I’m a bit hungry,’ says Mr McGuire.
‘Secretaries get their own meals,’ says Clovis.
‘I’ve come flat out direct from Paris.’
‘Heat him up something, Clovis,’ Lister says.
‘Leave it to me,’ says Eleanor, rising from her chair with ostentatious meekness.
‘Mr Samuel, Mr McGuire,’ says Lister, ‘are you here for a limited time, or do you intend to wait?’
Mr McGuire says, ‘I’d like to see the Baron, actually.’
‘Out of the q
uestion,’ says Mr Samuel.
‘Not to be disturbed,’ says Lister.
‘Then what have I come all this way for?’ says Mr McGuire, pulling off his sheepskin coat in a resigned way.
‘To hold Mr Samuel’s hand,’ says Pablo.
‘I’ll see the Baron in the morning. I have to talk to him,’ says Mr McGuire.
‘Too late,’ says Lister. ‘The Baron is no more.’
‘I can hear his voice. What d’you mean?’
‘Let us not strain after vulgar chronology,’ says Lister. ‘I have work for you.’
‘There’s veal stew,’ Eleanor calls out from the kitchen.
‘Blanquette,’ says Clovis, ‘de veau.’ He puts a hand to his head and closes his eyes as one tormented by a long and fruitless effort to instruct.
‘Do you have a cigarette handy?’ says Heloise.
‘There’s a lot of noise,’ says Mr McGuire, jerking his head to indicate the front part of the house. ‘It fairly penetrates. Who’s the company tonight?’
‘Hadrian,’ says Lister, taking a chair, ‘give a hand to Eleanor. Tell her I’d be obliged for a cup of coffee.’
‘When I was a boy of fourteen,’ says Lister, ‘I decided to leave England.’
Mr McGuire reaches down and stops the tape-recorder. ‘Start again,’ he says. ‘Make it more colloquial, Lister. Don’t say “a boy of fourteen”, say “a boy, fourteen”, like that, Lister.’
They sit alone in Lister’s large bedroom. They each occupy an armchair of deep, olive-green soft leather which, ageless and unworn, seems almost certainly to have come from another part of the house, probably the library, in the course of some complete refurnishing. A thick grey carpet covers the whole floor. Lister’s bed is narrow but spectacular with a well-preserved bushy bear-like fur cover which he might have acquired independently or which might have once covered the knees of an earlier Klopstock while crossing a winter landscape by car, and which, anyway, looks as if importance is attached to it; indeed, it is certain that everything in the room, including Mr McGuire, is there by the approval of Lister only.
Between the two men, on the floor, is a heavily built tape-recorder in an open case with a handle. It is attached by a long snaky cord to an electric plug beside the bed. The two magnetic bobbins, of the 18-centimetre size, have come to a standstill at Mr McGuire’s touch of the stop-switch; the bobbins not being entirely equal in their content of tape it can be assessed that half-an-hour of something has already been recorded at some previous time.
Lister says, ‘Style can be left to the journalists, Mr McGuire. This is only a preliminary press handout. The inside story is something else — it’s an exclusive, and we’ve made our plans for the exclusive. All we need now is something for the general press to go on when they start to question us, you see.’
‘Take my advice, Lister,’ says Mr McGuire, ‘and give it a conversational touch.’
‘Whose conversational touch — mine or the journalists’?’
‘Theirs,’ says Mr McGuire.
‘Turn on the machine,’ says Lister.
Mr McGuire does so, and the bobbins go spinning.
‘When I was a boy, fourteen,’ says Lister, ‘I decided to leave England. There was a bit of trouble over me having to do with Eleanor under the grand piano, she being my aunt and only nine. Dating from that traumatic experience, Eleanor conceived an inverted avuncular fixation, which is to say that she followed me up when she turned fourteen and — ’
‘It isn’t right,’ says Mr McGuire, turning off the machine.
‘It isn’t true, but that’s not to say it isn’t right,’ Lister says. ‘Now, Mr McGuire, my boy, we haven’t got all night to waste. I want you to take a short statement of similar tone from Eleanor and one from Heloise. The others can take care of themselves. After that we have to pose for the photographs.’ Lister bends down, turns on the machine, and continues. ‘My father,’ he says, ‘was a valet in that house, a good position. It was Watham Grange, Leicestershire, under the grand piano. I worked in France. When Eleanor joined me I worked in a restaurant that was owned by a Greek in Amsterdam. Then we started in private families and now I’ve been butler with the Klopstocks here in Switzerland for over five years. But to sum up I really left England because of the climate — wet.’ Lister turns off the switch and stares at the tape-recorder.
Mr McGuire says, ‘Won’t they want something about the Klopstocks?’
Lister says, impatiently, ‘I am thinking.’ Presently he turns on the recorder again, meanwhile glancing at his watch. ‘The death of the Baron and Baroness has been a very great shock to us all. It was the last thing we expected. We heard no shots, naturally, since our quarters are quite isolated from the residential domain. And of course, in these large houses, the wind does make a lot of noise. The shutters upstairs are somewhat loose and in fact we were to have them seen to tomorrow afternoon.’
Mr McGuire halts the machine. ‘I thought you were going to say that him in the attic makes so much noise that you mistook one of his fits for the shots being fired.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Lister says.
‘Why?’ says Mr McGuire.
Lister closes his eyes with impatience while Mr McGuire switches on again. The bobbins whirl. ‘The Baron gave orders that they were not to be disturbed,’ Lister says.
‘What’s next?’ says Mr McGuire.
‘Play it back, Mr McGuire, please.’
Mr McGuire sets the reels in reverse, concentratedly stopping their motion a short distance from the beginning. ‘It would be about here,’ he says, ‘that your bit begins.’ He turns it on. The machine emits two long, dramatic sighs followed by a woman’s voice — ‘I climbed Mount Atlas alone every year on May Day and sacrificed a garland of bay leaves to Apollo. At last, one year he descended from his fiery chariot — ’
Mr McGuire has turned off, and has manipulated the machine to run further forward silently.
‘That must be the last of your Klopstock sound-tracks,’ Lister says.
‘Yes, it is the last.’
‘You should have used fresh reels for us. We don’t want to be mixed up with what Apollo did.’
‘I’ll remove that bit of the tape before we start making copies. Leave it to me,’ says Mr McGuire, getting up to unplug the machine.
‘What is to emerge must emerge,’ says Lister, standing, watching, while Mr McGuire packs the wire into place and fastens the lid on the tape-recorder. He lifts it and follows Lister out of the room. ‘It’s a heavy machine,’ he says, ‘to carry from place to place.’
They descend the stairs to the first landing of the servants’ wing. Here, Lister leads the way to the grand staircase, followed after a little hesitation by Mr McGuire who has first seemed inclined to continue down the back stairs.
‘I hear no voices,’ Lister says as he descends, looking down the well of the great staircase to the black and white paving below. ‘The books are silent.’
They have reached the ground floor. Mr McGuire stands with his heavy load while Lister approaches the library door. He waits, turns the handle, pressing gently; the door does not give.
‘Locked,’ says Lister, turning away, ‘and silent. Let’s proceed,’ he says, leading the way to the servants’ quarters. ‘There remain a good many things to be accomplished and still more chaos effectively to organize.’
III
‘It must have happened quick. I wonder if they felt anything?’ say
s Heloise. ‘Maybe they still feel something. One of them could linger.’
Lister says, ‘I can’t forbear to ask, does a flame feel pain?’
‘Lister and young Pablo,’ says Mr Samuel who is moving round the servants’ room with his camera, ‘stand closer together. Lister, put your hand on the chair.’
Lister puts his hand on Pablo’s shoulder.
‘Why are you doing that? It doesn’t look good,’ says Mr Samuel.
‘Leave it to Lister,’ says Eleanor at the same time that Lister says, ‘I’m consoling him.’
‘Then Pablo must look inconsolable,’ says Mr Samuel. ‘It’s a good idea in itself.’
‘Look inconsolable, Pablo,’ says Lister. ‘Think of some disconsolate idea such as your being in Victor Passerat’s shoes.’
The camera clicks quietly, like a well-reared machine. Mr Samuel moves a few steps then clicks from another angle. He then moves a lamp and says, ‘Look this way,’ pointing a finger to a place in the air.
‘Pablo smiled the second time,’ says Eleanor. ‘You want to be careful.’
‘Mr Samuel knows that the negatives are mine,’ Lister says, ‘don’t you, Mr Samuel.’
‘Yes,’ says Mr Samuel.
‘Where is that wreath?’ Lister says. ‘Where’s our floral tribute?’
‘On the floor in my room,’ says Heloise.
‘Go and fetch it.’
‘I’m too tired.’
‘I’ll go,’ says Hadrian, going. As he opens the door a long howl comes from above.
‘Sister Barton failed to give him his injection tonight,’ says Lister, ‘and I wonder why.’
‘Sister Barton is upset. She didn’t touch her supper,’ says Clovis.
‘She’s suffering from fear, quite a thrilling emotion,’ says Lister. ‘People love it.’
‘I sent up cold chicken breast and lettuce cut into shreds the Swiss way, which she imagines in her inexperienced little heart to be the right way,’ Clovis murmurs. He is standing with one hand on the belt that encircles his narrow hips. Several gold medallions hang from chains on his chest. Mr Samuel’s camera trains upon him, as he seems to expect it to do. He lowers his lids. ‘Good,’ says Mr Samuel, moving round to Heloise.