Hand in Glove

While he waited for the water to boil, Alfred Belt stared absently at the kitchen calendar: ‘With the compliments of The Little Codling Garage. Service with a smile. Geo. Copper’. Below this legend was a coloured photograph of a kitten in a boot and below that the month of March. Alfred removed them and exposed a coloured photograph of a little girl smirking through apple blossom.

He warmed a silver teapot engraved on its belly with Mr Pyke Period’s crest: a fish. He refolded the Daily Press and placed it on the breakfast tray. The toaster sprang open, the electric kettle shrieked. Alfred made tea, put the toast in a silver rack, transferred bacon and eggs from pan to crested entrée dish and carried the whole upstairs.

He tapped at his employer’s door and entered. Mr Pyke Period, a silver-haired bachelor with a fresh complexion, stirred in his bed, gave a little snort, opened his large brown eyes, mumbled his lips, and blushed.

Alfred said: ‘Good morning, sir.’ He placed the tray and turned away in order that Mr Period could assume his teeth in privacy. He drew back the curtains. The village green looked fresh in the early light. Decorous groups of trees, already burgeoning, showed fragile against distant hills. Wood-smoke rose delicately from several chimneys and in Miss Cartell’s house across the green, her Austrian maid shook a duster out of an upstairs window. In the field beyond, Miss Cartell’s mare grazed peacefully.

‘Good morning, Alfred,’ Mr Period responded, now fully articulate.

Alfred drew back the curtains from the side window, exposing a small walled garden, a gardener’s shed, a path and a gate into a lane. Beyond the gate was a trench, bridged with planks and flanked by piled-up earth. Three labourers had assembled beside it.

‘Those chaps still at it in the lane, sir,’ said Alfred, returning to the bedside. He placed Mr Period’s spectacles on his tray and poured his tea.

‘Damn’ tedious of them, I must say. However! Good God!’ Mr Period mildly exclaimed. He had opened his paper and was reading the Obituary Notices. Alfred waited.

‘Lord Ormsbury’s gone,’ Mr Period informed him.

‘Gone, sir?’

‘Died. Yesterday it seems. Motor accident. Terrible thing. Fifty-two, it gives here. One never knows. “Survived by his sister – ”’ He made a small sound of displeasure.

‘That would be Desirée, Lady Bantling, sir, wouldn’t it?’ Alfred ventured, ‘at Baynesholme?’

‘Exactly, Alfred. Precisely. And what must these fellows do but call her “The Dowager”. She hates it. Always has. And not even correct, if it comes to that. One would have expected the Press to know better.’ He read on. A preoccupied look, indeed one might almost have said a look of pleasurable anticipation, settled about his rather babyish mouth.

Below, in the garden, a dog began to bark hysterically.

‘Good God!’ Mr Period said quietly and closed his eyes.

‘I’ll attend to her, sir.’

‘I cannot for the life of me see – however!’

‘Will there be anything further, sir?’ Alfred asked.

‘What? No. No, thank you. Miss Cartell for luncheon, you remember. And Miss Maitland-Mayne.’

‘Certainly, sir. Arriving by the ten twenty. Will there be anything required in the library, sir?’

‘I can’t think of anything. She’s bringing her own typewriter.’ Mr Period looked over the top of his paper and appeared to come to a decision. ‘Her grandfather,’ he said, ‘was General Maitland-Mayne. An old friend of mine.’