Chapter Nineteen #2
‘I did, sir,’ Frederick said. ‘I wondered why he hadn’t appeared and went and knocked on his door. There was no answer so I went in and there he was, still in the clothes from the wedding, sitting exactly the way he was yesterday evening when I decided to take over dinner service.’
‘You decided?’ Giles said sharply. His temper was not improved by early-morning deaths in the servants’ hall.
Mrs Webster stepped forward. ‘I tried to wake Mr Moss without success, so I agreed with Frederick that he should do the service.’
‘How did you try to wake him?’ Arbogast asked.
‘I said, “Are you awake, Mr Moss?” but he didn’t stir.’
‘You didn’t touch him, or shake him?’
‘Certainly not. It wouldn’t be my place to do so.’
Frederick gave the doctor a sharp look. ‘Are you saying he was already dead then?’
Arbogast addressed Giles with the answer. ‘He probably over-exerted himself at the wedding, then had a long walk uphill from the Carr. I imagine he felt very tired, sat down to rest for a moment, and that was that. A massive heart attack.’
‘Damn it,’ Giles muttered. He pulled himself together. ‘I suppose he didn’t suffer?’
‘From the look of the body, there was no struggle or convulsion. I don’t suppose he knew anything about it. It will be my duty to inform the police, but I don’t think there’ll be any need for an inquest.’
‘Inquest! Good God, no!’
‘The facts of the situation seem quite clear and we know he had a weakness.’
‘I should never have taken him back. But he said he was well, and he seemed well.’
Arbogast put out a hand as if he would touch Giles’s arm comfortingly, but drew it back as you would from a dog with its hackles up.
‘There is always a chance, when a person has suffered one attack, of a second happening, and there’s often no warning.
He probably felt well right up to the end. No blame attaches to you.’
Giles recoiled. ‘I should think not!’
‘I’ll send Mrs Cargill up to lay him out, and then Folsham can take him away. Who is his next of kin?’
‘He hadn’t any, as far as I know,’ said Giles. He looked at Mrs Webster.
‘I think we were all he had, my lord,’ she said.
‘Then I will pay the funeral expenses,’ Giles said shortly, and walked away.
Frederick and Mrs Webster remained to discuss details with the doctor. When Frederick left, he passed Rose in the corridor, who said, ‘Go on, then. Write that up in your little notebook!’
Upstairs breakfast was subdued. ‘Poor man,’ Kitty said, with tears in her eyes. ‘He was so happy to be back here.’
‘At least he died doing what he liked,’ Richard said. ‘I suppose it’s not a bad way to go.’
‘He’d have been upset by the wedding,’ Dory said. ‘He had rather a soft spot for Ada.’
‘I suppose you knew him best of any of us,’ Kitty said.
Dory knew Kitty said it to be kind, but it didn’t do to keep remembering she had been a servant here. ‘I don’t suppose I exchanged half a dozen sentences with him in my life,’ she said.
Sebastian came to her support. ‘Giles must be the one who knew him best. He’s been butler here for most of your life, hasn’t he, Giles?’
Giles was with his own thoughts. ‘I suppose there will have to be a funeral,’ he said.
‘And I suppose I’ll have to go. And we’ll have to find a replacement.
It’s all damned inconvenient, with hunting and shooting and Christmas coming up.
Everyone hates having to get used to a new butler – which was why we took Moss back in the first place. I knew it was a mistake.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Richard said, amused, ‘or you’d have said something.’
‘I wonder,’ Kitty said, ‘whether we shouldn’t promote Frederick, instead of getting someone new. He’s been helping Moss for some time, Mrs Webster tells me. And he covered dinner very well last night.’
‘That’s up to you,’ Giles said. ‘You’re in charge of the staff. If Mrs Webster thinks he can do it, I’ve no objection. ‘
‘Well, it’s easier to get a new footman than a new butler.’
Alice pushed back her chair violently. ‘Poor Moss is dead and all you can talk about is replacing him! We were his family. He loved us so much he came back to work here though he knew it could kill him.’
‘Did he?’ Richard queried. ‘You make him sound like a war hero.’
‘We were all he had. The least you can do is pretend you care.’
‘We do care,’ Kitty said. ‘It’s just that it’s easier to talk about practical things.’
Alice stalked to the door, the dogs padding after her.
There she turned and said, ‘And Giles wasn’t the one who knew him best. He was never here.
I knew Moss from when I was tiny. He was –’ she had to swallow sudden tears – ‘he was more like a father to me than Papa was!’ she concluded harshly. And then she was gone.
There was a brief silence, then Richard said, ‘I hope when I die there’s someone to regret me so sincerely.’
‘You were butler here once,’ Giles said to Afton, as he handed him his jacket. ‘I’d hate to lose you as my valet, but I wouldn’t like to appoint a rival if you hankered after the job.’
Afton was pleased to be asked, but said, ‘No, thank you, my lord. I’m happy as I am.’
‘What do you think about Frederick? Would he be willing to be promoted?’
‘As far as I can tell what goes on in another man’s mind, I think he’s had his eye on the job from the beginning.’
‘But can he do it?’
‘Mr Moss has been training him in a butler’s duties. And he knows our ways.’
‘Better than getting a stranger in, you mean?’ Giles said, adjusting his cuffs. He looked up sharply. ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Is he not liked?’
‘A butler doesn’t need to be liked, my lord. He needs to be respected.’ Giles was still looking at him, frowning slightly. Afton went on, ‘He’s tall and good-looking: the danger would be having him poached by your envious guests.’
Giles laughed. ‘You should take the question seriously. You’ll have to live with the blighter.’
‘I think he would make a good butler,’ Afton said. What he didn’t say was, But I don’t know how long he’d stay. He couldn’t get over the feeling that Frederick had some secret that was far removed from the concerns of Ashmore Castle.
Richard had gone first to Hundon’s to talk to Woodrow, and now had to ride out to Long Chill Farm to talk about the milk scheme: they hadn’t yet committed themselves to joining.
Though December, it was still mild, a damp, foggy day.
The outlines of the trees were ghostly in the clinging mist. He remembered how the fog in London had smelt of coal and horses.
Country fog was white, and the only smell was of wet grass and decaying leaves.
Nesta had thought, when they left Hundon’s, that they were going home, and she sulked when he turned her up the hill.
He pushed her on and she put her shoulders into the slope, her long ears flicking back and forth, listening for his voice.
He tended to talk to her when riding alone. The foolish habit of a lonely man.
He had seen a paragraph in the newspaper that morning, which had emphasised to him how completely Molly was gone from his life.
It concerned the opening of the new Burton Hall in New York on the 6th of December with a special concert, conducted by Sir Thomas Burton – with the parenthesis, ‘who celebrated the birth of his first child, a son, only two weeks ago.’ It seemed he’d been so thrilled about it, he’d included a mention of it in his speech from the podium.
So it was not Molly who had informed Richard of the birth of her grandchild, but the common press. He knew then that he would never hear from her again, that she would never come back. It had hurt him, but he found that he could live with it. What was left was the emptiness. Where was love?
He reached the top of the first slope, turned onto the long cross track and pushed Nesta into a trot. They would have to press on if he was to get to Long Chill and back before it was full dark. ‘And what about Alice?’ he said aloud. Nesta turned an ear back. ‘That little outburst this morning?’
It had not all been about Moss, he was sure.
All was not right with his youngest sister.
He hoped that something he had put in hand might bear fruit and give her something to occupy her, something to be happy about.
It was taking longer than he had expected to get an answer, but he knew he didn’t understand the ins and outs of the business.
‘So there’s no need to despair yet,’ he told his mare.
The track to Long Chill ran through Long Wood, the conifer plantation belonging to Lord Shacklock, but it was a right of way – one of the old Pilgrim Paths, according to legend.
Under the tall, straight trees it was darker, and eerily quiet.
Nesta’s hoofs made no sound on the deep layer of pine needles; there was no birdsong, and no wind to rustle the branches.
The fog was higher, hanging in the upper reaches of the trees like cobweb.
It made him think of Grimms’ fairy tales, where strange and usually unpleasant things happened in still, dark forests.
He was glad when they came to the end of it without meeting a wolf, a troll or a witch.
Nesta, too, seemed glad they were out, and put in a dancing step or two, pulling at her bit to indicate that she wouldn’t mind cantering.
Richard heard the flat sound of a gunshot echoing off the quiet sky, and twisted in the saddle to look back.
He didn’t see anyone at first, but then he spotted a movement and saw a tall figure in a loden hat and a dull green poacher’s coat tramping up the hillside.
The colours were good camouflage. The man had a gun under his arm.
Someone shooting pigeons, he thought, or rabbits.
He was too far off to recognise the face, but Richard thought from the height that it might be Lord Shacklock, and was glad, if it was, that he had not met him while inside the plantation.
Even though it was a right of way, the man hardly needed an excuse to take offence.