and splashing his arms and legs. ‘Quack, quack!’
‘Pray come out,’ Holdsworth called. ‘There may be weeds or other hazards. I cannot save you – I cannot swim.’
Frank stopped splashing and quacking. He stared across the water at Holdsworth.
Maria had not been able to swim either, nor for that matter had Georgie. And so the water had swallowed them whole and spat them up to the surface once it had siphoned the life from them.
Had Sylvia Whichcote been able to swim? Had she drowned just as Frank was about to drown?
Holdsworth opened his mouth but no words came out. Instead he sucked in breath. He could not get enough. Pin-like pains stabbed his chest. The great grey sky pressed down on him. Dear God, he was drowning in air.
Frank turned over on to his front and swam with leisurely strokes to the bank. All of a sudden the world had become sane again. Breathing heavily, Holdsworth stepped forward and held out his hand. Frank took it, and hauled himself out of the water.
‘Dear God,’ Frank said, his teeth chattering, ‘it’s so damned cold.’
For the rest of their first day at the mill, Holdsworth and Frank Oldershaw circled around each other like animals who did not know each other but had been forced to share the same confined space. Until now, Holdsworth had followed where common sense or instinct had led him. He had had no doubt that removing Frank from the care of Dr Jermyn would be in Frank’s best interests and therefore in his own best interests too. Now he was not so sure. Indeed, he was not sure of anything.
Frank’s behaviour was unpredictable. He gambolled about like a large and energetic puppy, reminding Holdsworth inevitably of Georgie when a fit of excitement was on him. Frank sang discordantly, mingling drinking songs with nursery rhymes, and sometimes applying the words of one to the melody of another. He ate whatever was put before him, shovelling food into his mouth as though he had been half-starved at Barnwell. He resisted, or rather ignored, all attempts to guide him in any direction. Every now and then he fell asleep in the middle of what he was doing – again like Georgie – at table with his head cradled on his arms, on the grass in the garden or the cobbles in the yard, on the kitchen floor in the corner by the stone sink.
Mulgrave said and did nothing that did not relate to his own duties. He waited for Holdsworth’s orders, and when he received them he obeyed them swiftly and fairly efficiently. He avoided being left alone with Frank, though Frank ignored him as he ignored Holdsworth. Mulgrave was a good servant and a worthless ally.
The only other living thing in the house was the ginger cat. Unlike the three humans, he appeared entirely unconcerned by the strangeness of the occasion. He approached each of the men with the same impersonal enthusiasm. He demanded to be petted and fed. To Holdsworth’s embarrassment, he found himself stroking the animal when it leaped on to his lap, and he even fed it with a scrap of meat from his plate. When Holdsworth pushed it away, the cat leaped on to Frank’s lap, and Frank absent-mindedly stroked it just as Holdsworth had done.
On one occasion, when the cat had again been on Frank’s lap, it grew weary of him and jumped down. It sauntered into the kitchen where it plagued Mulgrave. Mulgrave did not want its attentions and kicked it. The cat squawked with pain and surprise. It was this that unexpectedly affected Frank, who had been watching events through the open door.
He stood up suddenly, and his chair fell over behind him. The cat ran round the kitchen in momentary panic.
‘Let him be,’ Frank said, his voice sounding thick and rusty from disuse. ‘Let him go freely wherever he wishes, do you hear me?’
Mulgrave bowed. He came forward and righted the chair. Frank frowned. He looked puzzled, as if wondering what had happened. He sat down on the chair without looking behind him to see if it was there. The cat jumped on to his lap again and purred loudly.
24
You never knew with Mr Whichcote.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Augustus slept fitfully for nearly two hours in a chair drawn up to the dying glow of the kitchen fire. Even in his dreams he heard the jangling of the bell over the kitchen door. He was not summoned, however, and he dozed until the scullery maid came down at five o’clock.
The girl, who was the next best thing to a halfwit, coaxed the fire into life and made an almighty clattering as she set pans of water to warm. One by one, in order of seniority, the other servants appeared – the wall-eyed maid, the old man who had tended the garden with gradually decreasing efficiency since the time of Mr Whichcote’s great-uncle, and finally the cook, a majestic but sour-faced woman who was at present working out her notice. None of the servants liked the day after a club dinner. The day itself was hard work, but it was a break in routine, undeniably exciting, full of strange faces, and with the tantalizing possibility of discarded trifles or unexpected tips. Afterwards, though, came the unpleasant task of clearing up.
A little after eight o’clock, Mr Whichcote’s bell rang. Augustus took his jug of warm water upstairs. When he returned, thirty minutes later with tea and rolls on a tray, he found the jug had not been touched. Mr Whichcote was still in his dressing gown, sitting up in bed and making notes in his pocketbook. He gestured towards Augustus to leave the tray on the night table. As he did so, the footboy glanced down and saw that the master was adding up a column of figures, against which he had made a number of entries.
An hour later, there was a knocking at the front door. Augustus opened the door to Mrs Phear. Her maid Dorcas was two paces behind her.
Mrs Phear advanced into the hall, as implacable as a small black cloud in a clear blue sky. She addressed the air in front of her. ‘Where’s your master?’
Augustus hastened to open the study door. Mr Whichcote was already rising to his feet. Mrs Phear said that she had brought her maid with her: the girl was so idle at home that a little work would be good for her.
Whichcote turned to Augustus and held out a key for him to take. ‘You and the girl will make the pavilion neat again. I wish to see it clean and swept and garnished, with everything restored to how it was.’
Augustus bowed and turned, believing he had been dismissed.
‘Stay. Come here.’ Whichcote towered over the footboy. ‘Only you and the maid are to work down there. I hold you responsible for that, as well as the rest. Now go.’
Mr Whichcote kept the pavilion locked. According to Cook, this was because the building was reserved for the master’s obscene and blasphemous activities, especially those that occurred on the nights of club dinners, so the master’s caution was entirely understandable. Cook said that she herself would not go in there alone for all the tea in China. Mr Whichcote, she said, was a gentleman who made your blood run cold, which was one reason why she had handed in her notice; the other reasons being the death of her late mistress (God rest her soul), the impious activities of the master and his friends, and (worst of all) his inability to pay his servants on time. Cook also said that if Mr Whichcote made your blood run cold, then Mrs Phear made it freeze in your veins and turn your very heart to a block of ice; and Cook was right.
Augustus took Dorcas through to the service side of the house, where they collected the brushes, mops, cloths and buckets. He carried the key of the pavilion in his pocket and was conscious of its weight and the responsibility it signified. Dorcas, who was half a head taller than he was, stared straight ahead. She had a white and bony face with freckles like flecks of mud on her skin.
‘We’ll do the big room upstairs,’ he said as he unlocked the pavilion door. ‘Then the little room they used downstairs and the staircase.’
‘You please yourself,’ the maid said, still without looking at him. ‘I want to see the bedchamber first.’
Augustus stared at her. ‘How do you know there’s a bedchamber?’
‘Because the girl told me. The one who had to lie in there last night all trussed up like a bird for the oven.’
‘You’re making it up,’ Augustus said uncertainly. ‘I was here last night.’
‘But you weren’t in that bedchamber, were you?’
