Conrad's Fate (26 page)

He was nearer than we realized. The next moment he flung the door open and stood looming in the doorway. Millie made a sort of movement, as if she was thinking of turning invisible, but then realized that it was too late, and stood up instead. Mr. Prendergast hitched his face sideways at her, and his eyebrows traveled up and down his forehead like two sliding mice. He looked at me, and then at the tray.

“What is this?” he said. “Is Christopher really a girl?”

“No, no,” I said. “This is Millie.”

“She's not another wheelbarrow,” Mr. Prendergast said. “Is she?” And when Millie simply looked completely confused, he narrowed his eyes at her and said, “So where are you from, young lady?” For a moment he looked so utterly serious that he made goose bumps come up on my arms.

Millie probably felt the same. “Er, from Series Twelve, really,” she admitted.

“Then I think I don't want to know,” Mr. Prendergast said. He hitched his face the other way, and I remembered, with great relief, that he was simply a very good actor. “I think,” he said to me, “that she'd better be a feather duster.”

“What
are
you talking about?” Millie said, exasperated and frightened, but almost laughing, too. This was the effect Mr. Prendergast seemed to have on people.

“We can't have Conrad embarrassed,” he said to her, “and he would be if you went on sharing his room like this. So I think you'd better come downstairs and get turned into another new housemaid. Luckily there are so many just now that one more will hardly be noticed. Come along to the lift, both of you. No, let
her
carry the tray, Conrad. It makes her look the part more.”

Hardly able to believe it, we followed Mr. Prendergast to the lift. Hugo was in it. He stared at Millie with gloomy surprise.

“New feather duster,” Mr. Prendergast told him airily. “She's the child star of
Baby Bunting
—you won't know it yet, it's on trial in the provinces, but it'll be a hit, I assure you.”

Millie went bright red and gazed hard at her tray, biting her lip. I think she was trying not to laugh.

Mr. Prendergast said nothing more until the lift was nearly at the undercroft. Then he said suddenly. “By the way, where
is
Christopher?”

“Around,” I said.

Millie added, “He went to the bathroom.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Prendergast. “Indeed. That accounts for it, then.”

Rather to my surprise, he didn't ask any more. He just stalked with us to the Middle Hall, where he took Fay aside and murmured a few words to her. It was like magic, really. Fay and Polly and two other girls instantly took charge and hurried Millie off to the maids' cloakroom. When they came back, Millie was wearing a brown-and-gold-striped dress just like the other girls, and a proper maid's cap. She sat and chatted to them and the other actors while the rest of us had supper.

Fay and Polly must have found somewhere for Millie to sleep that night. When I saw her at breakfast the next morning, she had her hair up on top of her head, under her cap, and Fay or someone had done things to her face with clever makeup, so that Millie looked rather different and quite a bit older. I think she was enjoying herself. She had a surprised, happy look whenever I saw her.

I kept out of Millie's way on the whole. I dreaded the moment when Miss Semple spotted Millie. Miss Semple's mild, serious, distracted eyes didn't miss much, and I was sure she would realize that Millie was not a real maid before long. Then the fat would be in the fire, and Mr. Prendergast would probably get the sack. I was fairly sure he had made Millie into a feather duster in order to get sacked.

But Miss Semple—nor Mrs. Baldock—did not notice Millie all day. Some of the reason was the ghost. It distracted people by playing pranks, dragging the sheets off all the newly made beds on the nursery floor, smashing tooth glasses, and bouncing that red rubber ball down flights of stairs. It had done something new every time Mrs. Baldock took me over to train me upstairs. But some of the distraction was due to the changes Christopher had started by pressing that button in the cellar. Everything kept moving about, so that when you put something down and then turned around to pick it up again, it wasn't where you'd left it. Most people who noticed—and it was hard not to notice before long—thought this was the ghost's doing, too. They just sighed. Even when all the sheets and towels got shifted to quite different cupboards on different floors, they said it was the ghost again and sighed.

But no one could blame the ghost when, late in the afternoon, all our uniforms suddenly changed color. Instead of gold and brown stripes, we were suddenly wearing bright apple green and cream.

Miss Semple was really distressed by that change. “Oh Conrad!” she said, “what
is
going on? These are the colors we had in my mother's day. My mother changed them because they were thought to be unlucky. Green
is
, you know. Things had gone wrong then until Stallery had barely enough money to buy the new colors. Oh, I do hope we aren't in for any more bad luck!” she said, and went rushing off past me in her usual way.

We were all still rushing about exclaiming, when the Countess and Lady Felice came back unexpectedly.

The Countess and Lady Felice were not
expected until the next morning, just before all the guests arrived. But they had finished their shopping early, it seemed, and now there they were, in three cars drawing up outside the great front entrance.

Their arrival caused a general stampede. I had just arrived in the kitchens for my cookery lesson, but Mr. Maxim sent me away again, because he had to help get together a proper dinner for the ladies in a hurry. He told me to go and help in the hall instead. Hugo shot out of the lift as I went by and raced to the garage to find out where Count Robert had gone with Anthea, and to get him back if he could. In the black-floored hall, there was the main stampede, for what Mr. Prendergast called “the dress rehearsal for the real show tomorrow.” Footmen raced down from the attics and up from the undercroft, and the marvel was that we all arrived there just as Mr. Amos—with Mr. Prendergast haunting his right shoulder like a skinny black scarecrow—threw open the huge front doors and Francis and Andrew pulled them wide.

The Countess sailed inside with a new fur wrap trailing from her shoulders. As she handed the wrap off to Manfred, she gazed around at us all with gracious satisfaction, but she seemed, for a second, a little puzzled to see us all in our green-and-cream stripes. “Amos …” she began.

Mr. Amos said, “Yes, my lady?”

“I forgot what I was going to say,” said the Countess. Evidently she was as insensitive to the changes as Mr. Amos was. “Has all been well?”

“Naturally, my lady,” said Mr. Amos. He turned and
looked
at the red rubber ball that came trundling out of the library as he spoke. Then he looked at me. I picked it up—and it felt just as if I was wrenching the ball out of someone's resisting hand. I shuddered and shoved it into the library and shut the door on it.

“Then where is Count Robert?” the Countess demanded.

“Mr. Hugo is currently searching for him, my lady,” Mr. Amos replied.

“Oh,” the Countess said ominously. She marched away to the stairs, saying, “See to the luggage, will you, Amos.”

It needed all of us to see to it. The three cars were stuffed with boxes, carrier bags, and parcels. I could not believe that two ladies could have bought so much in such a short time—though I suppose there were four ladies at it, really. The two Lady's Maids came in with armfuls of parcels and made a great pother about things being handled
gently
and being carried
right way up
. You could see they had been enjoying themselves. But Lady Felice, who hurried through while we were all handing parcels and carrier bags along like a bucket chain, did not look happy. She kept her head down, but I could see she had been crying.

She still looked that way when I was waiting on the Family at Dinner that night. This was such a magnificent meal that you would never have guessed that the Great Dictator and Mr. Maxim had been taken by surprise like the rest of us and had—so Mr. Maxim told me—made it up as they went along, wrestling also with the way chickens became salmon and cream became parsley as the food was fetched to the kitchens. The changes were quite bad that evening.

“You know I never notice,” Mr. Maxim told me, “but Chef
does
, and he sorrowed, Conrad.”

It struck me as a pity that neither Lady Felice nor Count Robert seemed to feel much like eating. Count Robert, who arrived back from some inn outside Stallstead, had certainly had supper with my sister before Hugo found him. He pushed food about on his plate, while the Countess told him that he should have been in the hall to meet her and how discourteous he was not to be there. He didn't even point out that she had come home a day early. But he stopped even pretending to eat when she went on to describe all the things he was expected to do and say when Lady Mary Ogworth arrived tomorrow.

So much for Anthea's chances! I thought, standing against the wall on my own. Christopher was still missing, and I was beginning to worry about him. With all these changes happening, he could be in castles and towers and mansions moving farther and farther away from Stallery all the time, and if the witch had not caught him yet, she
would
catch him if he was stuck out there again when Mr. Amos turned his machines off for the night. But there seemed nothing I could do....

“As for Felice,” I heard the Countess say, “the very
least
I insist on is that she be polite to Mr. Seuly.”

At this, Lady Felice threw her fork down with a clatter.

Count Robert leaned forward. “Mother,” he said, “does this mean that you've made some kind of arrangement for this Mr. Seuly to marry Felice?”

“Of course, dear,” said the Countess. “We called on him on our way to Ludwich, and we had a long talk. He has made a very handsome offer for Felice, financially speaking.”

“As if I was a
horse
!” Lady Felice said violently.

The Countess ignored this. “As I
keep
telling Felice,” she said, “Mr. Seuly is even richer than Lady Mary Ogworth.”

“Then,” said Count Robert, “why don't you marry him yourself?”

This caused an astonished silence. Mr. Amos stared, the Countess stared, Gregor's mouth came open, and even Lady Felice raised her face and looked at her brother as if she could not believe her ears. At length, the Countess said, in a fading, reproachful whisper, “Robert!
What
a thing to say!”

“
You
said it first. To Felice,” Count Robert pointed out. And before the Countess could pull her wits together, he went on, “Tell me, Mother, why are you so very set on your children marrying for money?”

“Why?”
gasped the Countess, with her eyes very wide and blue. “
Why?
But, Robert, I only want the best for you both. I want to see you properly settled—with plenty of money, naturally—so that if anything happens, you'll both be all right.”

“What do you mean, ‘if anything happens'?” Count Robert demanded. “What do you imagine
might
happen?”

The Countess looked to one side and then to the other and seemed not to know how to answer this. “Well, dear,” she said finally, “all sorts of things might happen. We might lose all our money—or—or … This is a very uncertain world, Robert, and you
know
Mother knows best.” She was so much in earnest, saying this, that big tears trembled on the ends of her eyelashes. “You've hurt me very much,” she said.

“My heart bleeds,” Count Robert answered.

“At all events,” the Countess said, in a sort of imploring shriek, “you have to
promise
me, darlings, both of you, to behave properly to our guests!”

“You can count on us to behave,” Count Robert said, “but neither of us is going to promise more than that. Is that clear?”

“I
knew
I could count on you!” the Countess announced. She smiled lovingly from Count Robert to Lady Felice.

They both looked confused. I didn't blame them. It was really hard to tell what anyone had promised by then. I looked at Mr. Amos to see what he thought. He was scowling, but that might have been because he could see a speck of dust on the glass he was holding to the light. I wished Christopher were there. He would have known what was going on underneath this talk.

But Christopher was not there that night, and he did not turn up in the morning either. I had to make two journeys to collect all the boots and shoes. I was annoyed. After that I was working almost too hard to remember Christopher. But not quite. People are wrong when they say things like “I didn't have time to think.” If you're really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you're doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you're working hard at something else. I was thinking—and feeling—a lot all the time the guests were arriving. Thinking about Christopher, worrying about Anthea, and feeling for myself, stuck here without even an Evil Fate to account for what I was doing.