Death Sits Down to Dinner (11 page)

Chapter Nine

Mrs. Jackson had spent her first morning at Chester Square going over Miss Gaskell’s notes for the Chimney Sweep Boys charity evening for the preceding year. It had been slow-going and tedious work, as the guest list was an untidy, incomprehensible mess. Names had been crossed off and then added again to the list farther down, some names marked with an asterisk, others with an exclamation point. Mrs. Jackson assumed the marks were code to denote important or unimportant guests, but she couldn’t quite be sure which represented which. She opened the ledger for expenses and donations for the year before. Here there was some order at least. There was a long list of names and the amount donated entered in the credit column. The total was an extraordinarily large sum. The size of each contribution helped her to understand that an exclamation point on her guest list signified a generous donor, whereas the asterisk relegated the giver to the status of a minor donor. She calculated a figure that separated the generous from the sparing, and then, because she was nothing if not orderly and neat in her work, she compiled two lists, in alphabetical order: list A and list B. Pleased with her work at the end of the morning, she had two lists numbering a total of two hundred and forty guests. How on earth had they managed to cram that many people into the two salons? Even with both double doors connecting the two rooms laid open, it would have been a crush. In the end, she went downstairs to talk to the butler.

Mr. Jenkins was presiding over the business of washing crystal; he was being particularly tetchy with the James, the second footman, the one who had been given the unfortunate name of Clumsy Footman by Lady Montfort. The butler stood up as she came into the room and suggested they repair to his pantry so their conversation would not be interrupted. He called for tea to be brought, fussed around to make sure she was comfortable, and made a little space on the top of his cluttered desk so she could put Miss Gaskell’s ledger and her own notebook down among an untidy melee of brown wrapping paper, balls of string, pencils, sealing wax, old account ledgers, and half-finished lists that littered its surface.

Miss Kingsley’s butler conformed completely to Mrs. Jackson’s ideal of an upper servant of the old school, and she felt reassured by his courtesy as she settled herself in a small chair to the right of his desk. His manners were those of a gentleman and his bearing was upright and dignified. It would be both rewarding and pleasant to work with a man of his sensibilities. After they had chatted politely about the weather, it had started to snow, and he expressed his concern for her comfort in the small room that she had been given to work in, Mrs. Jackson asked her first question.

“I am unable to talk with Miss Gaskell until she is a little more recovered and I hoped you might be kind enough to enlighten me. What rooms do you use in the house for the charity evening for the actual recital? I know the small salon may be opened into the larger one, but over two hundred people would be rather a crush, wouldn’t it?”

“The paneled wall at the back of the large salon opens up completely into the gallery, giving us plenty of room. The gallery and the conservatory below it were added to the house in the 1850s, about ten years after the house was built, so that the family might hold large formal balls on the first floor. I would be pleased to show you over the house at two o’clock this afternoon. Last year we used the dining room to serve supper. I am not sure if we can this year, though … use the dining room, I mean … Miss Kingsley…” Here he stopped, uncertain about going further.

“If Miss Kingsley prefers not to use that room”—Mrs. Jackson could completely understand why she would not wish to—”then we could use the drawing room for supper and the inner hall and perhaps even the conservatory for her guests to relax in. This would give us ample space for the buffet and plenty of room for people to mingle in the hall and even on the stairs, something I have observed they seem to enjoy doing. And if the conservatory is heated, sitting there might be pleasant for Miss Kingsley’s guests.” She was rewarded for her quick assessment and understanding of the situation with a positive beam from the old gentleman, who up until now had seemed perhaps a little preoccupied and rather distant.

Mrs. Jackson returned to her between-stairs office to spend an industrious rest of the morning, working through a series of menus for the supper so that the catering chef might start ordering food. She had her dinner sent up on a tray so she could continue with her work.

Some time passed and looking up from her lists she noticed that it was a little after the time that Mr. Jenkins said he would take her on a tour of the house. Patting her hair into place and stopping only to wash her hands, she went downstairs to find him. Two housemaids putting away the washed china from luncheon upstairs stopped what they were doing to see what she wanted.

“Is Mr. Jenkins here? I was supposed to meet with him at two o’clock and I’m a little late. Is he in his pantry?”

“No, he is not, ma’am.” The youngest maid made a respectful bob
. Really,
thought Mrs. Jackson,
how well trained and polite they all are in Chester Square; so refreshing after Montfort House and all that easy familiarity.

“Do you know where he is?”

The two women looked at each other, and the younger of the two blushed, leaving the senior housemaid to take over.

“Mr. Jenkins is in the wine cellar, ma’am. He often spends his afternoons classifying some of the inventory. I will run down and fetch him up directly.” It didn’t take her more than two minutes to achieve this, and Mr. Jenkins arrived a little puffed, but as polite and accommodating as ever.

“Yes, how may I help you?” he asked.

“You were to show me the room arrangements for the recital, Mr. Jenkins.”

“Yes indeed, of course, of course. But who are you, my dear? Did you make an appointment?” The elderly butler looked rather mystified as to why this nice young woman was here to see the house.

For a moment Mrs. Jackson was too taken aback to reply. She realized that the old man had completely misremembered who she was and had quite forgotten their appointment. She turned to look at the maids for confirmation of the butler’s forgetfulness.

“Mrs. Jackson is here to organize the charity evening, Mr. Jenkins,” the younger housemaid said in a gentle voice. “Of course you remember.”

“I most certainly do, Eliza,” he said with dignity. In an effort perhaps to cover his absentmindedness, he pulled out his waistcoat watch and after consulting it said, “I thought we had an appointment at half past three, Miss, er … Miss…”

“
Mrs
. Jackson,” prompted Eliza quietly.

“Mrs. Jackson. But since you are here early, by all means let’s go upstairs and I will show you around.”

Still baffled by the situation in which she found herself, Mrs. Jackson decided it would be a good idea to have a little chat with the first housemaid when she brought her afternoon tea up to her. It was important that she establish exactly what was going on here. Had the butler been sampling his inventory in the wine cellar? He seemed quite sober but that was no indication. She drew near and discreetly inhaled, and found only the pleasant scent of well-laundered linen and a faint aroma of bay rum from a close early-morning shave. Either the shock of a murder in his dining room had temporarily addled Mr. Jenkins’s wits or, more likely, he was showing his age. At any rate she needed information, from someone other than Mr. Jenkins, that she could rely on and wondered when she could arrange a meeting with Miss Gaskell.

Before she followed the butler to the back stairs, she turned to the elder of the two housemaids and asked her name.

“It’s Martha, Mrs. Jackson. I will bring tea up to your office at five o’clock if that would be a good time for you.” Another bob and she gave Mrs. Jackson the sort of look that made it clear she understood her dilemma.

Now that he had been recalled to his duty, Mr. Jenkins was determined to more than make up for his earlier mistake. He embarked on what turned out to be a most thorough and edifying round of the house; her official escort on a guided tour, as if she had just paid sixpence at the door.

They took in the principal floors of the house, which included a well-curated library, the pretty little sitting room that looked out over the garden with its Adam fireplace and mantel brought in, Mr. Jenkins told her, from the old Kingsley rectory before it had been demolished.

“Like many of the grand houses in the area, this house was built with its neighboring houses by Thomas Cubitt in the late 1820s,” he explained, as he led Mrs. Jackson up the wide central staircase from the spacious inner hall, instead of the back stairs, so that she might better understand the layout of the house. “These gracious buildings still remain in the hands of those who originally bought them, nearly a hundred years ago now.” Mrs. Jackson, who worked in a house that was more than three hundred years old and looked nothing like those of its neighbors, nodded, as if she was impressed.

At the top of the stairs they crossed the wide landing to their right and Jenkins opened a pair of double doors into a comfortable, well-lit apartment that faced the street on its north side and to the west the neighboring house, which bridged the top of the square just discernible through the trees.

“Two pairs of double doors separate the small salon from the large one,” the butler explained as he opened them up to reveal the larger room. A handsome grand piano stood in the larger of the salons in front of two pairs of windows on the room’s west side. Then, with all the pride of revealing an ancient architectural secret, the old man walked to the paneled south wall of the large salon and, releasing a concealed catch, slid one side of half of the wall to the right and the other to the left, revealing a lovely room with graceful proportions that looked out over the gardens at the rear of the house. The walls, covered in dull gold brocade, were hung with old portraits and landscapes and had the faint musty air of a place that was rarely used. The furnishings were of a period that Mrs. Jackson recognized as George III, with graceful lines and gilded wood frames.

“When these three rooms are opened up into each other we have a large area indeed, Mrs. Jackson.” Jenkins turned to survey the three rooms almost with the complacency of ownership, she thought. “And there is plenty of space to seat everyone quite comfortably. The two rooms across the upper hall can of course be used as well to entertain our guests during supper. Miss Gaskell usually has the piano set here, just so.” He used his hands spread slightly apart, palms facing each other, and swung his arms to indicate the position the piano would be moved to. “And then everyone has a perfect view.” He smiled with pride. “Miss Gaskell says the rooms provide more than adequately for any singer or pianist to be heard perfectly well throughout. Almost as good, she says, as a concert hall.” He waved airily to take in what was in fact a large area indeed and one that could more than comfortably seat a gathering of the number invited.

Perhaps to atone for his earlier mistake in forgetting who she was, the elderly butler became almost garrulous. “The other evening we had some music in here for a few of the ladies and gentlemen. It was only necessary to use the small salon.” He shrugged off the smaller room as merely a parlor, thought Mrs. Jackson, when it was of a grand size. “Of course we had to open up the larger salon behind it to allow for the power of the pianoforte, which is of similar scale and dimension to that used in the Royal Albert Hall.”

Mrs. Jackson wondered if anything could be heard outside the room if someone was playing the piano.
Possibly not,
she thought, then caught herself. No, she would not walk down that path, she would not be drawn.

She walked over to the windows of the gallery that looked out over the gardens. Two or maybe even three inches of snow lay over the shrubs and trees below, covering the garden and the world beyond it in a glittering blanket of faerie. She fleetingly felt a pang for Iyntwood and her missed country walk, the country was always so beautiful under snow. She had promised herself a trip to Selfridges to do some shopping tomorrow afternoon, but even shoveled clear the pavements would be slushy and the going treacherous. She sighed. It would take little of her time to arrange this charity evening and then she was not quite sure what she would do with her days.

She turned into the room as Mr. Jenkins was explaining how the chairs were set in straight rows around the piano, but not too close to the instrument, he cautioned, because of the power of its sound. She couldn’t imagine why the audience had to sit in rows. Surely there were enough comfortable chairs and sofas for guests to sit in groups so that they might relax and enjoy the music, rather than arranged in tight ranks like children in Sunday school.

“Would you like me to talk to the butler at Montfort House about helping you out on the night?” she asked Mr. Jenkins, and was instantly gratified with a sweet smile as the old man’s mild eyes quite lit up.

“If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition, I would be most grateful,” he said. “It is becoming more difficult every year to acquire good servants. Our first footman left us quite abruptly a couple of days ago after some several years, and it has been the dickens of a job trying to find a replacement. The one I ended up with”—he made the luckless footman sound like an unsatisfactory new hat—”simply doesn’t fit at all. He is awkward and even though he came with a good reference I can hardly believe how badly trained…”

“What happened to the one who left you?” She was only making polite conversation but his reply was rather startling.

“Why, nothing at all, and that’s the puzzle of it. He just up and left us one day, for no good reason at all, and he didn’t even trouble to give notice even though he had been with us for quite some time. But that’s the way of young men in service today, such regrettably selfish behavior.”

But Mrs. Jackson was only half listening; she turned and looked over the rooms again. With the chairs they already had in there, she rapidly counted places; they would need only to bring in chairs and sofas from the other reception rooms in the house to make seating quite comfortable, and with the help of Montfort House servants it would be simplicity itself to organize a perfect evening for the charity. An evening that offered the finest things in life, without being overdone and fussy; delicious food with good wine in rooms filled with flowers and a salon arranged so that everyone would be comfortably seated to listen to the superb voice of Nellie Melba. She mentally cast around the room so that she could make plans for the set-up of sofas and chairs. That immense potted palm would have to be moved to the far corner and the cumbersome Chinese screen taken out completely, as they both took up far too much space around the window. There were several other large and awkward pieces that perhaps could be moved altogether, she thought, as her gaze rested on a four-foot, Imperial-yellow Chinese water jar that squatted in front of the screen.