“Very well, until tea time then, Ethelroyd.”
Outside, in the smokey fogs from the railroad yards and the sea, Tony Saxe looked at Eric with worried, appraising eyes. Taking a silk handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at the sweat on his forehead.
“You scared hell out of me,” he said.
Eric smiled as they settled themselves in the convertible. “Why were you worried?”
“That was one hell of a bluff you were running about them back-up dealers. Supposing the fat man called you on it...?”
“It wasn’t likely,” Eric turned on the ignition key and listened to the smooth hum of the motor. “People who let themselves go to seed like that rarely have much strength of character.”
Eric glanced at his watch. “Well, you character analyst, we’ve got some time to kill. I suggest we have a large lunch — to get our nutriments — and some decent wine and count our blessings.”
Chapter Nineteen
Maud was not a good traveller. She liked restaurants and cocktail lounges, snacks from room service and television. London, with its parks and churches and the boldly delicate tracery of the architect Wren had no appeal for her, and the museums with their solemn, dusty silences turned her almost faint with boredom.
She usually napped after lunch, the coverlet of her bed sprinkled with gossip and fashion magazines, and it was at this time that Jessica explored London on her own, using the underground subway, which Andrew had taught her to do, window-shopping in Knightsbridge, visiting the Tate and National galleries, and feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.
One day Jessica became restless during lunch in the dining room of the Dorchester. The sensation was perplexing — not significant enough to make her apprehensive, just the vaguest of premonitions, the most fragile of tremors across her warning systems.
Maud was having an iced Calvados with her coffee and exchanging smiles and pleasantries with the gentleman at the adjoining table, an Arab from Morocco who wore a red fez with his dark gray suit. Jessica asked to be excused and Maud dismissed her with a quick smile.
In their suite facing the park, Jessica sat at the curved-legged escritoire and began a letter to Dr. Julian, hoping this would dissipate her strange, rootless anxiety.
But after she had written his name and started the letter with “We are in London for a week or so, Aunt Maud and I—”, she stopped there, mildly irritated and self-conscious at the banality of the sentence.
When she began again on a fresh sheet of paper, Jessica wrote down several unrelated words and then the pen began to move almost by itself, swiftly and reflexively, and she was writing a poem to Julian instead of the simple letter she had planned, putting down her truest and most candid feelings without guilt or reservation. Jessica was plumbing depths of sensitivity she had barely been conscious of, tapping well-springs of emotion at the very core of her being. In a way, she didn’t quite understand, Jessica realized that these new feelings were connected with the topsy-turvy change of events in her life — the death of her beloved Andrew, the loneliness for Julian, and the newness of Uncle Eric and Aunt Maud, who were so surprisingly and so constantly at home in what had once been her dearest sanctuary, the lands and mansion of Easter Hill.
With a faint smile, she wrote down the words “sudden” and “sharp” and “silver,” savoring their provocative sibilance. And then she looked out the windows at the greenness of the park and thought sadly and somewhat wistfully of the inevitable words that must complete her thoughts: “gemstone” and “childhood.”
At noon the following week, cool sunlight lay across the ponds and streams of Easter Hill, gently gilding the feathers of ducks and trumpeter swans. In the stables, Kevin O’Dell pitched hay into Windkin’s stall and brought the hunter a leather bucket of water.
From the garden, Capability Brown collected an armload of iris and daffodils and took them to the kitchen where the cook was preparing lunch for Mr. Griffith and an American tourist he had met at the Hannibal Arms.
With a glance at the stove, Mr. Brown said drily, “Would you think, Mrs. Kiernan, that will satisfy the gentlemen till tea time?”
“I grant you, Mr. Griffith fancies a good table.”
The trout were ready for the broiler, bright with butter and lemon slices; a heavy brown turtle soup with sherry simmered on a gas ring; and the baron of beef circled with roast potatoes and parsnips was ready in the warming oven. In still another oven, the cakes that Mr. Griffith preferred for high tea were baking — a pineapple upside-down cake and a chocolate to be layered with raspberry preserves.
Rose sat at a wooden service counter using a curved spoon to scoop butter-balls from a delft crock. “It’s not like her to be gone a week without even a postcard.”
“If the truth were told,” Lily said, taking the pineapple cake from the oven, “Miss Jessie didn’t fancy going off to London.”
“That’s nothing for you girls to be gossiping about,” Mrs. Kiernan said. “There, Mr. Brown. This will do nicely.”
“Himself was asking me again about the silver darning egg and the Chinese snuff box,” Rose said.
“If by ‘himself’ you mean Mr. Griffith, please say so, girl.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kiernan, but he stands so grand with his thumbs hooked in his vest pockets, looking at me like I’d pinched them.”
“The lass feels as I feel,” Mr. Brown said, placing the daffodils in a vase. “There’s a cloud over this house since Andrew Dalworth—” Mr. Brown made the sign of the cross on his forehead “—joined his Maker. Uncle or not, I can’t stomach that Griffith. He’s seen fit to hire an extra hand in the stables, and a rogue at that, if I’m any judge. And what sort of a name has he got? I leave it to you, Mrs. Kiernan — is Benny Stiff any kind of a proper name for a man?”
Old Flynn, in a striped serving jacket, came up from the wine cellar with six bottles in a canvas sling. “He’s got an eye for the labels, I’ll give him that. Whether there’s a palate to match, I’m not so sure.”
“Ach, Flynn, you’re as much a critic as Mr. Brown here,” Mrs. Kiernan said.
“It’s the truth, ma’am,” Flynn said. “He went like a shot to the bins with the big clarets, the same that Mr. Dalworth, God rest him, sent back from Bordeaux two summers ago. Same with the burgundies — Richebourgs and the like. But at three and four bottles a meal, he and his friend, Mr. Saxe, should be down with gout presently.”
“Now, now, what sort of example are you setting for the girls?”
“Pay us no mind,” Flynn said, with a smile at the young maids. But something occurred to the old man as he uncorked the wine and he frowned. “Tell me something, ma’am. Have you noticed that Fluter seems off his food lately? No life or bounce to him at all?”
“He’s heartsick because Jessie’s away,” Lily said.
“That’s God’s truth,” Rose said. “I read about it once in a novel with a girl on the cover in a big hat with ribbons.”
Mrs. Kiernan stirred the turtle soup with a firm, almost angry flick of her wrist.
“As for Fluter’s rations, Mr. Flynn, I wouldn’t be knowing. Mr. Griffith is feeding him these few days, say he wants the dog to get to like him better...”
Later that same morning, Eric discovered Lily dusting in the library. Without preamble he said, “Now this won’t do at all, Miss. I don’t want you girls messing about in these rooms when Mrs. Griffith and I are expecting luncheon guests.”
“But, sir—”
“No excuses, I want this work done earlier, before breakfast, if necessary.”