Chapter 5
The first indication that the dining-room chimney had ceased to perform its ordinary duties was not smoke but toast.
Margaret looked up from the household account beside her plate as the slice in Thomas Bevan’s hand acquired a black edge without approaching either candle or grate.
A gray ribbon drifted beneath the plaster cornice, spread along the ceiling, and descended with the leisurely confidence of something that believed the room belonged to it.
Thomas followed her gaze. “That seems excessive for one breakfast.”
Across the long table, Joseph Hales sniffed once. “Wet soot.”
The grate coughed.
A dense black cloud rolled into the room, swallowed the brass fender, and drove three residents backward from the nearest chairs.
Someone overturned a cup. Another man shouted that his coat was on the settle.
Sarah Pritchard seized the coffee pot before an elbow could send it into a lap and planted it upon the sideboard with enough force to restore order in its immediate vicinity.
Margaret was already standing.
“Leave coats, cups, and dignity,” she said. “West corridor doors first. Thomas, take the account box. Mercer, open the garden door before you go. No one uses the east stair.”
Twenty-six residents, five household workers, Henry, and Margaret had not been intended to breakfast in one room.
They did so because the smaller dining parlor had become a temporary dormitory during the east-wing repairs, and because the House’s established custom was that no man ate alone merely because there was insufficient matching china.
The crowded arrangement now became an obstacle of benches, chairs, walking sticks, and men attempting to help one another while smoke erased the far end of the room.
Henry rose from the chair at Margaret’s right.
For three mornings he had occupied that place without assuming the head of the table.
The noon named in Croft’s notice would arrive that day, the fourteenth and final day of the period he had allowed.
Margaret’s appointment prevented him from emptying the House by unilateral order, but the notice remained pending, and every new defect gave him another ground upon which to press it.
He had asked where residents ordinarily sat, accepted that Joseph’s chair required the outer corner for his wooden leg, and learned not to speak to Sarah before she had accounted for the bread.
He had even submitted to the House’s thin coffee without asking his valet to improve it.
At the first sign of danger, those careful domestic adjustments deserted him.
He seized the end of the nearest bench and began to lift.
Margaret caught the movement through the smoke. “Put it down.”
“It blocks the door.”
“It seats six men who are presently standing behind you.”
“I can clear it.”
“You can keep the passage moving.”
The bench rose another inch.
“Your Grace,” she said, using the title with enough precision to make it a public instrument, “leave the furniture.”
Henry looked at her.
The room pressed around them in coughs, scraping boots, and the sharper panic of men who had known smoke in circumstances less domestic than a breakfast room.
His expression hardened with the instinct to act where weight and danger were visible.
Margaret had seen officers carry things no one had asked them to carry because lifting required less humility than listening.
She pointed to the west door. “Simmonds has stopped. Mercer will not pass him. Move them, not the bench.”
Henry released the wood.
He crossed the room in three measured strides and placed himself where the smoke was thinning near the corridor. His voice changed when he addressed the men. It did not grow loud so much as acquire direction.
“West passage. Keep your hands upon the shoulder ahead if you cannot see. Simmonds, look at me.”
Simmonds stood near the doorway with one hand braced against the wall. The smoke had drained the color from his face. His eyes were not fixed upon the breakfast room but upon some darker place beyond it.
Henry stepped into his line of sight without touching him. “The door is four feet to your left. Mercer is beside you. You are walking out with him.”
Simmonds blinked.
Mercer held out an arm. “Come and complain about the coffee in cleaner air.”
Simmonds took it.
The blockage at the door broke. Henry kept the line moving while Sarah sent the two kitchen maids ahead to count men in the west hall. Thomas tucked the account box beneath one arm and gathered loose papers from the sideboard with the other until Margaret removed half the stack from his hands.
“Only the box,” she said. “The breakfast bills may burn.”
“They are the butcher’s bills.”
“Then they possess the strongest motive.”
Thomas coughed into his sleeve but smiled as he went.
Joseph remained beside the grate, leaning upon the back of a chair while he studied the smoke. Margaret crossed to him after the last resident nearest the fire had cleared the room.
“You are leaving,” she said.
“I am looking.”
“You may look from the doorway.”
“The smoke is coming down rather than across. Something has stopped the draw above the throat.”
“You may announce that discovery from the corridor.”
Joseph’s eyes watered. “Your new rank has made you domineering.”
“My old employment had already accomplished it.”
He moved toward the door, though slowly enough to preserve the fiction that the choice was his.
A second mass of soot dropped into the grate. Sparks spat outward and died upon the stone hearth. Margaret snatched the wool rug back before one could catch, then followed Joseph into the west corridor.
Henry stood at the turn toward the hall, counting faces as Sarah’s maid called names from the far end.
He had unbuttoned his coat, and soot marked one superbly cut sleeve where Simmonds had gripped him.
His posture remained straight, but his left foot had shifted behind the right in a manner Margaret had begun to recognize.
The knee was troubling him.
He had said nothing of it since the wedding. He had climbed no unnecessary stairs, but he had also attended every account review, resident question, and supplier meeting without once asking to sit before she did. Politeness could be a graceful form of concealment.
Margaret had not yet determined whether to challenge it.
“Twenty-five,” Sarah called.
“Thomas?” Margaret asked.
“Here,” Thomas answered from behind the account box.
“Joseph?”
“Still regrettably present.”
“Twenty-six,” Sarah said. “Staff accounted for.”
Henry looked toward the dining-room door. Smoke continued to pour through the upper panels, though more slowly now that Mercer had opened the garden door and created a cross-current.
“Is there another hearth upon the same stack?” he asked.
“The morning room below the east guest chamber,” Margaret said. “It is not in use.”
“Close every door between here and the stair. No one enters until the fire is drawn.”
Sarah nodded to the maids before Margaret could repeat the instruction. Henry’s command had served the plan rather than replaced it, and the household obeyed without the small hesitation that followed an unfamiliar authority.
Margaret noticed the difference.
Joseph lowered himself onto the broad window seat. “The fire can be carried to the kitchen range. Then we inspect the throat and the upper flue.”
“No one enters alone,” Margaret said.
“I had hoped to bring a violinist.”
“You may bring Will and two wet cloths.”
Henry looked at the soot advancing beneath the dining-room door. “The chimney should be inspected from the roof as well.”
Joseph gave him a level stare. “We have a roof passage.”
“I saw it yesterday.”
“You saw the door.”
“I saw a narrow passage beneath the southern slope, a hatch beside the second stack, and three slates allowing water through.”
Margaret looked at him. “When did you inspect the roof passage?”
“After the settlement documents arrived.”
“You were instructed not to use the east stair.”
“I used the west stair.”
Joseph rubbed one broad hand across his mouth, leaving a black streak near his chin. “He learns quickly and selectively.”
Henry’s gaze remained on Margaret. “I did not go onto the roof.”
“You went beneath it without telling me.”
“I was inspecting property for which I had become responsible.”
“Responsibility does not render a floor sound.”
“No. The joists did.”
Margaret heard the argument drawing breath between them and refused to permit it the use of a smoke-filled corridor.
“We will discuss unsupervised inspections after breakfast ceases attempting murder,” she said. “At present, you will take the residents into the ballroom and keep them there while Sarah checks Simmonds and anyone else affected by smoke.”
Henry’s expression suggested that “keep them there” ranked beneath his preferred forms of usefulness.
Margaret added, “Several men will return to the dining room if no one with authority explains why they may not retrieve their coats. You have authority. Employ it.”
He glanced toward the cluster in the front hall, where two residents were already debating whether smoke truly damaged wool.
“What will you do?”
“Joseph and I will trace the obstruction.”
“I am coming with you.”
“No.”
His sentences shortened. “Mrs. Blackwood.”
She had not yet grown accustomed to the name. From Henry it sounded neither intimate nor possessive, but it reminded the corridor that marriage had changed their public relation even when nothing private had followed.
Margaret met the title with one of her own. “Your Grace, you have a room of anxious men, one of whom has mistaken this smoke for another fire. I have a carpenter who knows the chimney path and a house whose walls I have been repairing for eleven months.”
“I can assist with the roof hatch.”
“Joseph can open it.”
Joseph said, “Eventually.”
Margaret ignored him. “The most useful task is not always the one nearest the damage.”