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‘You will need some staff: a matron, teachers, a housekeeper, a maid or two and an odd-job man.’
‘I know. We can use local people who are out of work.’
They continued to talk about the Hadlea Children’s Home all the way and Jane was glad of that. It was easier than speaking of the events of the day before, still large in her mind and, she suspected, in Mark’s mind, too. After he had left them, her parents had flatly refused to listen to any more of Isabel’s pleading and told her she would change her mind and not disgrace the family with gossip. It was bad enough that Teddy had embarrassed them and been forced to flee the country, but this would be worse and they would not hear of breaking it off. Isabel had resorted to weeping all over Jane and begging her to intercede on her behalf. Jane could not do it, could not hurt Mark. He had been very understanding, but she wondered how he really felt, particularly about Issie’s confession that she believed herself in love with Drew, but of course she could not ask him.
They passed a few scattered cottages, an inn and a small triangular green where two women gossiped at a pump, then turned into an overgrown drive, whose gates were permanently open and trapped in weeds and long grass. A short ride and the house came into view. It was a large square house, not much smaller than Greystone Manor, covered in ivy, which hung over the windows in long strands. There were several slates missing from the roof and one of the chimney stacks had lost its coping. Mark pulled up at the front door and they sat surveying the building in silence before Mark jumped down and came round the vehicle to help her down. He preceded her up a dozen steps to the blackened oak door with its rusty lion’s-head knocker and beat a tattoo.
‘No one is living here, surely,’ she said.
‘I am told there is a caretaker.’ He rapped again and waited, but no one came. He tried the door, but it was bolted from the inside. ‘Let’s try the back,’ he said.
They found an old man in the yard chopping wood. ‘Are you the caretaker?’ Mark asked.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I do. I am Lord Wyndham and this is Miss Cavenhurst. We have come to view the property.’
The man stuck the axe in the chopping block. ‘Best come with me, then, though if you’re expecting a palace, you’ve come to the wrong place. ’Tain’t fit to live in.’
‘We know that,’ Jane said. ‘What is your name?’
‘Silas Godfrey, miss.’
He led the way into the house through the kitchen. There was a woman standing at the table, cutting up a hare. ‘My wife, Dotty,’ he said, then to her, ‘These folks have come to view the house.’
She gave them a quick bob and continued her work. Silas led them from the kitchen into a narrow hall at the end of which a door led to the front of the house. ‘Have you been here long?’ Jane asked him, as they crossed a black-and-white-tiled hall and entered what would have been the dining room. It was oak-lined with a deep window looking out on to a terrace. Weeds were growing in the cracks in the paving.
‘All me life. Come here as a nipper, I did.’
‘Then you will know what the house was like in the old days.’
‘That I do. Grand it were. It were well kept, too, with any number of servants. Sir Jasper and her ladyship useta give dinner parties in this room. There were always sumf’n going on. The hoi polloi from Lunnon useta come down to stay.’ They followed him to the drawing room, a large room with lofty ceilings and carved cornices and windows on two sides, one of which looked out on to the terrace, the other on to a tangle of long grass, weeds and overgrown rose bushes, which had once been a garden. ‘It all stopped when her ladyship took ill,’ he went on while Mark inspected everything, stamping on the floorboards and poking his finger into the window frames. ‘She were ill a long time and when she died, Sir Jasper let everything go. He would not have anyone here. Cut himself off, he did, and started acting strange.’ They moved to another smaller room, which smelled fusty and airless and made Jane wrinkle her nose. It had obviously once been a parlour, but there was a narrow bed set against the wall by the window. An outer door led on to the weed-infested side garden. ‘Shut himself in this here room, he did, and never moved out of it day or night. We’ll go upstairs now, but watch out, some of the treads are missing and the banister i’n’t safe.’
Up the stairs they went. The old man obviously found the climb an effort because he was breathless at the end of it. He recovered quickly and was soon talking again. ‘The servants left one by one. There weren’t much point in a-keepin’ ’em on. There were only me and Dotty left when he died. The lawyer what come down from Lunnon asked us to stay and keep an eye on the place while he found Sir Jasper’s heirs. Seems he didn’t have no close family. Place hev got even worse since then. I can’t do the work nor can Dotty.’ All the time he was speaking he was going from room to room, throwing open doors. The bedrooms were in semi-darkness because of the ivy, which was already encroaching into the rooms through broken windows. At the end of the wide corridor there were more stairs. ‘There’s another floor,’ he said, reluctant to climb.
