Sparks nodded. They stepped over the salt and continued down the hall. Mirrors and canvases hung in the spaces between doors; every one had been turned to face the wall. They stepped over a second line of salt and rounded another turn. Here the hallway stretched away into the murk as far as the eye could see. At the far end, there was both movement and light; a candle was burning. As they moved closer, eyes adjusting to the dark, they saw the person Barry had described.
He sat on a three-legged stool, a pear-shaped, balding hulk of a man, middle-aged, pasty, and hollow-eyed. He wore butler's livery, stained and grimy, buttons missing or fastened askew. Swallowed in folds of excess flesh, his features were doughy, ill defined. His buttery neck spilled over a collar gray with sweat. Laid out before him was a silver service, full settings for forty, set in precisely measured rows. In his pudgy hands, he held a tattered rag and a gravy boat, rubbing and buffing one with the other obsessively, polish and a basin of water on the floor at his feet. He muttered darkly as he worked, his voice a raspy whisper with plummy undertones.
'The forequarter of lamb requires three hours . .. two hours for the oyster pudding—must find the whetstone; carving knifes aren't sharp enough—rosettes and a pastry bag for the charlotte a la Parisienne ... for the ptarmigan a Madeira sauce ...'
He took no notice of Sparks and Doyle as they approached and stopped at the edge of the silver display.
'Croquettes of leveret ... a fricandeau of veal ... boned snipe stuffed with forcemeat ...'
'Hello,' said Sparks.
The man froze without looking up, as if he had imagined the sound of another voice, then, dismissing the possibility as unimaginable, returned to his handiwork.
'Shells for the quail and pigeon pies ... yeast dumplings with truffles and foie gras ...'
'Here's a bright specimen,' Sparks whispered to Doyle, then: 'I say; hello there!'
The man stopped again, then slowly turned and looked up at them. His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing; he blinked and squinted repeatedly, as if the sight of them was too much to hold within a single field of vision.
'Yes, hello,' said Sparks congenially and, now that he had the man's attention, more quietly.
Tears sprang from the man's eyes, and great lachrymose heaves erupted from deep inside him, rippling the fabrics encasing his slack, corpulent belly. His eyes disappeared into the mountainous recesses of his brow as waves of moisture skied shamelessly down his wobbling cheeks.
'There now, fellow,' said Sparks, with a concerned look at Doyle, 'can't be as bad as all that, can it?'
The gravy boat danced in his dangling hands as thunderous sobs racked his body. If his center of gravity had not been so low and prodigious, he would surely have plopped off his stool.
'Now, now, what seems to be the trouble here?' asked Doyle, slipping into his best bedside manner.
A succession of wheezes, gasps, and explosive eructations followed, as the man attempted to navigate the hot torrent overwhelming his emotional creek bed. His wet pink mouth convulsed like a trout beached in the mud.
'I'm ... I'm ... I'm ... I'm ...' A lame stutter was all the man could manage between palpitating spasms.
'It's quite all right. Take your time,' said Doyle indulgently, as if cajoling a widow to discuss her neuralgia over a glass of elderberry wine.
'I'm ... I'm ...' The man inhaled mightily, captured and held the air at its apex, struggling as it vibrated hotly inside him, until he grabbed hold of his breath by the scruff of the neck—one could almost see him do it—and expelled it explosively out of his throat: '... not the cook!'
The man seemed shocked by the sound of his own voice, his lips stuck in a quizzical O.
'You're not the cook,' Sparks repeated back to him, to clarify.
The man shook his head violently to confirm, then fearing he'd been misunderstood, nodded vigorously in agreement, accompanied by a swelling orchestration of bovine snorts, braps, snurrs, and gleeps, as he was clearly not yet equal to another assault on the peaks of articulation.
'Has someone . . . mistaken you for the cook?' asked Doyle, perplexed.
The man moaned most unhappily and shook his head again, his jowls whipping around him like an aspic.
'Let me make absolutely certain we all share in the same common understanding,' said Sparks, with a complicit look to Doyle, 'that you, sir, are most assuredly ... not the cook.'
The rationality of Sparks's reply appeared to hammer a plug into the punctured keg of the man's misery. The waterworks subsided. His shuddering flesh slowly settled. He looked down and seemed genuinely bewildered to discover the gravy boat in his ham-sized hands—then, as if there were nothing else to do when one found a gravy boat in one's hands, he began idly to polish it again.
'What's your name, my good man?' Sparks asked gently.
'Ruskin, sir,' the man replied.
'I take it that you are currently in the employ of this good house, Ruskin,' said Sparks.
'Butler, sir. In charge of pantry, plate, and scullery,' said Ruskin, without a hint of pride. 'Worked my way up from the knife and brushing room. Fourteen years old when I came to the Manor. The Master and I, we grew up together, after a fashion.'
'Why are you polishing the silver, Ruskin?' asked Doyle gently.
'Got to be done, doesn't it?' Ruskin replied calmly. 'No one else to do it, is there?'
'Not the cook, certainly,' Sparks said, sympathetically leading him on.
'No, sir. A very wicked and a lazy man, the cook. Pa-ree—si-an,' he intoned, as if no further explanation were necessary. 'No discipline in him. Cuts corners. Never learned the value of a day's labor for a day's wage, in my opinion. Better off without him, we are. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if I may speak candidly, sir.'
'So you've been left with the cooking as well,' said Sparks, with a nod to Doyle, now able to trace the root of the man's despair.
'That I have, sir. Now the menu, that was settled weeks ago. Had it printed up for the table settings.' He patted his pockets, smearing himself with polish. 'Have a copy here somewhere.'
'That's quite all right, Ruskin,' said Sparks.
'Yes, sir. And a glorious dinner it is, too,' said Ruskin, with a faraway light in his eye that Doyle associated with the dangerously unbalanced. Or perhaps it was the contemplation of all the food that so transported him.
'And there's a problem with the dinner, is there?' asked Sparks.
'We find ourselves a bit understaffed at the moment, and with the cook gone as he is, well, I'm afraid it's all a bit beyond my reach....'
'Cooking the dinner,' said Doyle helpfully.
'Exactly, sir. I plan to get on to the cooking straightaway, after discharging my other responsibilities. There's a great deal to do, and one needs time to cook the dinner properly, but I've committed the menu to memory should there be any confusion,' said Ruskin, absentmindedly patting his pockets again. 'Dear. Dear, dear. I've misplaced my watch.'
'Quarter to nine,' Doyle said.
'Quarter to nine. Quarter to nine,' he repeated, as if the whole idea of time were alien to him. 'The guests will be arriving—oh, are you gentlemen here for the dinner?'
'We've arrived somewhat ahead of schedule,' said Sparks, trying not to alarm him.
'Then you are the first, actually—welcome, welcome—oh dear, I beg your humble pardon; gentlemen, I haven't offered to take your bags,' Ruskin said, attempting to rouse his quivering mass off the stool.
'It's all right, Ruskin; our man has the situation well in hand,' said Sparks.
'Are you sure? I should drive your carriage round to the barn—'
'Thank you, Ruskin, it's taken care of.'
'Thank you, sir.' Ruskin settled back down. He sagged visibly, and his skin turned a deeper shade of gray.
'Are you all right?' asked Doyle.
'I'm passing tired, sir. Truth is I could do with a bit of a lie down before the festivities, just a few minutes is all, but you see, there's so terribly much to do,' said Ruskin, short of breath, dousing the abundant sweat from his forehead with the rag, streaking his brow with metallic black.
'Are you expecting quite a lot of guests for New Year's Eve, Ruskin?' asked Sparks.
'Yes, sir, near to fifty. Quite the gala. Quite exceeding himself this year, the Master is.'
'The Master's here in the house, is he?'
