“Mr. Perkins will be going out alone to do some listening for us. It will be to you that he reports if indeed he has anything to report. Where might you two best meet?”
“There is an inn on High Street, name of the Good King George,” said Mr. Perkins. ”Suppose we get together there about noon each day and have us an ale, and I’ll tell you what I know. How does that strike you?”
“Why, I’m thirsty already.”
“Enough of that, you two. We’ll-”
Sir John, interrupted by the sudden halt of the coach, gave a firm nod. ”God bless you, sir,” said he to the constable. ”And remember well what I told you.”
“Goodbye, all.” And so saying, Mr. Perkins threw open the door and jumped from the coach. I pulled the door shut behind him, took his wave through the window and returned it.
The magistrate said nothing during the rest of the trip. That left it to me to puzzle out what he had discussed with Mr. Perkins there in the road. It seemed likely that Sir John had asked him to serve as his spy. After all, Mr. Perkins was, if not well known in Deal, at least remembered. He had known his way round the owling trade and been forcibly enlisted into the Army. The last any of the townsmen had seen of him, he was no doubt being led away in chains by the recruiting sergeant and his party. Those who did recall him would quite naturally assume that he had lost his arm in military service. They would be willing to answer any of the questions he might put to them. He would be perfect in such a role.
Yet having formed that notion, I dismissed it immediately. There was something in it which rang false for both men, yet I could not determine what it was for either. Ah well, perhaps Perkins would be more forthcoming than Sir John when I met him next midday.
But for now, here was Deal before me. As I stared out the window at the shops along Broad Street and at those we passed by, I realized how much more prosperous-looking was the picture before me than would have been a tableau from any comparable section of London. The people were better dressed; they walked with a more confident step. The shop windows were filled with goods of a quality that only the grandest shops in lower St. James Street might carry. The smuggling trade may have been illegal, but it had certainly brought good times to Deal.
Looking away from the coach window for a moment, I happened to catch Clarissa’s eye. She was obviously most impressed by what she saw all round us. Her eyes were wide with excitement.
“Why, Deal is near as grand as Bath!” said she. ”Had you ever imagined it so?”
I admitted I had not. But then, as we came to the bottom of Broad Street, the driver turned the team right. And there, through the window, off to our left, was a great body of water.
”Oh, there it is,” said Clarissa,”-the sea, the ocean, the English Channel.”
“And there beyond it,” said I, ”is France. Can you see it?”
She studied the horizon carefully. ”I … I don’t know. I think I can. How far is it?”
Before I could respond, Sir John spoke up: ‘Thirty-five miles, give or take a mile or two.”
“So close?” Clarissa exclaimed. ”Why, we’re nearer to France than we are to London.”
“Indeed we are,” said he.
The driver reined the horses to a halt. I heard him call out, asking another for directions to the residence of Sir Simon Grenville. The response I heard not quite so clearly, but in a moment more we were off. We drove up a street, and in less than a mile the street became a road, and so on until we were back into the country. Ever upward we went by easy degrees, so that when at last we turned off the road and into a driveway, we must have been a few hundred feet above the town and the sea. We were so long on the way that I began to suppose that we had taken some secondary road that led still farther upward. But not so, for the team of four slowed at the driver’s direction. I heard the brake applied. We came to a halt just at the door of a manor house, which had been added onto so often and grandly that it had reached the proportions of a small castle.
And yet it had no grand entrance, no portico with which to impress the visiting aristocracy and nobility; perhaps hereabouts Sir Simon was the only one of his class in residence; perhaps then Deal was his fiefdom.
As these thoughts did thus flash through my brain, a man emerged to meet us and, leaving the door symbolically open behind him, to bid us welcome. Among the landed in the country, a great host of house servants seems to be considered something of an embarrassment. They keep, rather, a number of retainers who are capable of duplicating the work of the rest. The man who came out to greet us was one of these and should not be thought of as a butler. No, indeed, he was no butler, for he lacked the degree of coldness any proper London butler would surely have had. He was simply a Kent fellow of middle years, big and strong-a proper countryman- and he had come out to assure us that we were expected but most of all that we were welcome.
He managed to convey that just by stepping out upon the little porch that was raised a step or two above the ground. He chuckled to himself as he bowed and approached the door of the coach and threw it open.
“Here, miss, give me your hand, and I’ll help you down.”
Clarissa took advantage of the offer and stepped down very lightly indeed. Sir John was next: he did not attempt to jump, as was his wont, but accepted the proffered hand with good grace and hopped down quite nimbly. Only I, who was last of all, displayed a certain clumsiness in exiting the coach; my heel caught in the step, and had the jolly retainer not been there to catch me, I should have tumbled face-first into the dust of the driveway.
“Hi, watch it there, my lad. I’d not want to present you to the master with a broken head. Steady as she goes, eh?”
He pulled himself to his full height, put a hand atop his protruding belly, as if to hide it from sight, then spoke forth in the manner of one who had memorized a piece in order to have it down precisely.
“My master, Simon Grenville, Baronet, was unavoidably called away this day. He deeply regrets not being present to welcome you himself, but he assures you that his household staff will do all that they can to make you comfortable in your rooms until dinner, at which time he will join you.”
“And the horses? Our driver and coachman?” asked Sir John.
”If they will but drive round the house to the stable, sir, the staff there will do all that needs be done for the horses. The driver and coachman will be taken care of by us in the house, you may be sure.”
“And one last question: How may we call you?”
“Will Fowler, sir, and my family has been in service to the Grenvilles for three generations. Now, if you will step this way, please?”
And so it was settled. We were assured that there would be time for a nap before dinner, and that we would be knocked up in time to dress.
“I am grateful for that,” said Sir John to me once we were alone in the room we shared. ”I had briefly entertained the notion of visiting the magistrate. Yet when a man is as bone-weary as I from travel, all he can do is seek rest.”
After we woke and dressed, we were ushered in to the large formal dining room where we found a tall and rather handsome man awaiting us, obviously our host, Sir Simon Grenville. I saw no sign of a hostess-a Lady Grenville-and I wondered at that, but Sir Simon made no immediate explanation, and I thought perhaps there was no Lady Grenville. We took our places, with Sir John at his right, of course, and the longest meal of my life began. There was course after course. Plates of various foods appeared and vanished before me, apparently of their own power-I always seemed to be looking the other way when the server whisked one plate away and put another in its place. And with each course there was a new bottle of wine of a different color and a different flavor put before us. That all this was done according to some intricate plan, and not simply as a demonstration of great abundance, I learned as Sir Simon himself explained his situation to us.
“You will note,” said he, ”that I am alone here. Lady Grenville is on the other side,” he made a vague gesture toward the Channel, ”visiting her family. She is, as you may gather, French. And being French, she brought with her into our happy marriage, a French cook; indeed the finest French cook who ever came to these shores, or so he keeps declaring. His name is Jacques, you see, and Jacques feels unused and unappreciated because we do not often have occasions here in our sleepy little corner of England to make full use of his talents. Especially does he enjoy showing them off to my wife, for she is French, and only the French can fully appreciate their cuisine. Yet she has been away a considerable length of time due to an illness in the family. This is, in fact, the first occasion on which he has prepared a full-course dinner in the grand style in her absence. Ordinarily, that might seem reason to caution you as to its quality. Nevertheless, first of all, Jacques has not been put to the test for far too long, and he has been eager to prove himself. And secondly, say I in prideful mock-humility, I believe
