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Hester seized the first book to her hand, and holding it with its face towards her so its title was hidden, brushed her way past him.
“If you will excuse me, I must return to see how Lady Moidore is feeling.”
“Of course,” he murmured. “Although I doubt it will be much different from when you left her!”
It was during the day after that she came to realize more fully what Myles had meant about Romola’s headache. She was coming in from the conservatory with a few flowers for Beatrice’s room when she came upon Romola and Cyprian standing with their backs to her, and too engaged in their conversation to be aware of her presence.
“It would make me very happy if you would,” Romola said with a note of pleading in her voice, but dragged out, a little plaintive, as though she had asked many times before.
Hester stopped and took a step backwards behind the curtain, from where she could see Romola’s back and Cyprian’s face. He looked tired and harassed, shadows under his eyes and a hunched attitude to his shoulders as though half waiting for a blow.
“You know that it would be fruitless at the moment,” he replied with careful patience. “It would not make matters any better.”
“Oh, Cyprian!” She turned very petulantly, her whole body expressing disappointment and disillusion. “I really think for my sake you should try. It would make all the difference in the world to me.”
“I have already explained to you—” he began, then abandoned the attempt. “I know you wish it,” he said sharply, exasperation breaking through. “And if I could persuade him I would.”
“Would you? Sometimes I wonder how important my happiness is to you.”
“Romola—I—”
At this point Hester could bear it no longer. She resented people who by moral pressure made others responsible for their happiness. Perhaps because no one had ever taken responsibility for hers, but without knowing the circumstances, she was still utterly on Cyprian’s side. She bumped noisily into the curtain, rattling the rings, let out a gasp of surprise and mock irritation, and then when they both turned to look at her, smiled apologetically and excused herself, sailing past them with a bunch of pink daisies in her hand. The gardener had called them something quite different, but daisies would do.
She settled in to Queen Anne Street with some difficulty. Physically it was extremely comfortable. It was always warm enough, except in the servants’ rooms on the third and fourth floors, and the food was by far the best she had ever eaten—and the quantities were enormous. There was meat, river fish and sea fish, game, poultry, oysters, lobster, venison, jugged hare, pies, pastries, vegetables, fruit, cakes, tarts and flans, puddings and desserts. And the servants frequently ate what was returned from the dining room as well as what was cooked especially for them.
She learned the hierarchy of the servants’ hall, exactly whose domain was where and who deferred to whom, which was extremely important. No one intruded upon anyone else’s duties, which were either above them or beneath them, and they guarded their own with jealous exactitude. Heaven forbid a senior housemaid should be asked to do what was the under housemaid’s job, or worse still, that a footman should take a liberty in the kitchen and offend the cook.
Rather more interestingly she learned where the fondnesses lay, and the rivalries, who had taken offense at whom, and quite often why.
Everyone was in awe of Mrs. Willis, and Mr. Phillips was considered more the master in any practical terms than Sir Basil, whom many of the staff never actually saw. There was a certain amount of joking and irreverence about his military mannerisms, and more than one reference to sergeant majors, but never within his hearing.
Mrs. Boden, the cook, ruled with a rod of iron in the kitchen, but it was more by skill, dazzling smiles and a very hot temper than by the sheer freezing awe of the housekeeper or the butler. Mrs. Boden was also fond of Cyprian and Romola’s children, the fair-haired, eight-year-old Julia and her elder brother, Arthur, who was just ten. She was given to spoiling them with treats from the kitchen whenever opportunity arose, which was frequently, because although they ate in the nursery, Mrs. Boden oversaw the preparation of the tray that was sent up.
Dinah the parlormaid was a trifle superior, but it was in good part her position rather than her nature. Parlormaids were selected for their appearance and were required to sail in and out of the front reception rooms heads high, skirts swishing, to open the front door in the afternoons and carry visitors’ cards in on a silver tray. Hester actually found her very approachable, and keen to talk about her family and how good they had been to her, providing her with every opportunity to better herself.
Sal, the kitchen maid, remarked that Dinah had never been seen to receive a letter from them, but she was ignored. And Dinah took all her permitted time off duty, and once a year returned to her home village, which was somewhere in Kent.
Lizzie, the senior laundry maid, on the other hand, was very superior indeed, and ran the laundry with an unbending discipline. Rose, and the women who came in to do some of the heavy ironing, were never seen to disobey, whatever their private feelings. It was an entertaining observation of nature, but little of it seemed of value in learning who had murdered Octavia Haslett.
Of course the subject was discussed below stairs. One could not possibly have a murder in the house and expect people not to speak of it, most particularly when they were all suspected—and one of them had to be guilty.
Mrs. Boden refused even to think about it, or to permit anyone else to.
“Not in my kitchen,” she said briskly, whisking half a dozen eggs so
sharply they all but flew out of the bowl. “I’ll not have gossip in here. You’ve got more than enough to do without wasting your time in silly chatter. Sal—you do them potatoes by the time I’ve finished this, or I’ll know the reason why! May! May! What about the floor, then? I won’t have a dirty floor in here.”
Phillips stalked from one room to another, grand and grim. Mrs. Boden said the poor man had taken it very hard that such a thing should happen in his household. Since it was obviously not one of the family, to which no one replied, obviously it must be one of the servants—which automatically meant someone he had hired.
Mrs. Willis’s icy look stopped any speculation she overheard. It was indecent and complete nonsense. The police were quite incompetent, or they would know perfectly well it couldn’t be anyone in the house. To discuss such a thing would only frighten the younger girls and was quite irresponsible. Anyone overheard being so foolish would be disciplined appropriately.
Of course this stopped no one who was minded to indulge in a little gossip, which was all the maids, to the endless patronizing comments of the male staff, who had quite as much to say but were less candid about it. It reached a peak at tea time in the servants’ hall.
“I think it was Mr. Thirsk, when ’e was drunk,” Sal said with a toss of her head. “I know ’e takes port from the cellar, an’ no good sayin’ ’e doesn’t!”
“Lot o’ nonsense,” Lizzie dismissed with scorn. “He’s ever such a gentleman. And what would he do such a thing for, may I ask?”
“Sometimes I wonder where you grew up.” Gladys glanced over her shoulder to make sure Mrs. Boden was nowhere in earshot. She leaned forward over the table, her cup of tea at her elbow. “Don’t you know anything?”
