It was thus that Rupert, looking for Anna in the garden, found them. Leaning against each other as if they were one substance, the man bending over her, holding her close, while she turned to him in total trust — and her hair, loosened by the dance, streamed across them both.

14

It took one hour and twenty minutes for news of Anna’s sudden elevation at the ball to reach the servants’ hall at Mersham. One of the Heslop chauffeurs, going to fetch late arrivals from Mersham Halt, had mentioned it to the station master, who thought it of sufficient interest to merit a telephone call to his old friend Mr Proom.

Though it was late, only the bossy Mildred who had replaced Mrs Park’s beloved Win, and the two new, enormous and asinine footmen imported for the wedding had gone to bed. Mrs Park was patiently icing the exquisite petits fours and mille-feuilles with which she proposed to supplement the five-tiered perfection of the wedding cake. James and Sid, cobwebbed from a long session in the cellar, were polishing the Venetian decanters; Peggy and Pearl, resting their aching feet on the slumbering Baskerville, were folding damask table napkins into intricate flower shapes; Mr Cameron, on a rare visit indoors, was giving Louise instructions about the disposition of his orange trees.

Mr Proom’s entry put a stop to all these activities.

‘A countess!’ said Mrs Park, putting down her forcing bag and sitting down suddenly. ‘Well, I never!’

‘The Russian aristocracy is more numerous than its British counterpart,’ said Mr Proom judiciously. ‘For example, all the offspring of a prince or a count will carry the title.’ But he was considerably shaken all the same.

‘It’s that Charles’s face I’d like to have seen,’ said James, who had suffered at the hands of Heslop’s first footman.

‘Fancy her dancing with his lordship,’ said Peggy. ‘It’s like that film… you know, the one with Lillian Gish, where she comes up from the country all innocent like…’

Mr Proom and Mrs Park exchanged glances. Certain things about Anna’s recent behaviour were becoming clear to them.

‘A countess, eh?’ Mr Cameron, into whose ear-trumpet the news had duly been shouted, had begun to wheeze with unaccustomed and silent laughter. He knew, now, what to call his new rose, and the joke — obscure, private, pointless — was just the kind he particularly enjoyed.

‘Remember that day she first came,’ said Pearl, ‘when she went and sat down right at the bottom of the table, below Win, even?’

‘Aye.’

For a moment they were silent, all in their different ways remembering Anna.

‘It just shows about that dratted dog, doesn’t it,’ said Sid. ‘Bloomin’ snob. ’e must have known.’

But sharp Louise had seen another aspect. ‘She won’t be coming back, not for a minute. We’ve seen the last of Anna.’

‘Anna’s not like that,’ said Peggy hotly. ‘She’d never—’

‘It’s nowt to do with Anna,’ interrupted Louise. ‘It’s that Miss Hardwicke. She won’t have Anna in the house, not after his lordship’s made such a fuss of her. Not for a minute.’

Proom inclined his domed head in acknowledgement that Louise spoke the truth.

‘Mrs Proom will miss her,’ he said heavily.

‘She’s not the only one,’ said Mrs Park, brushing away a tear.

In the small hours, after the ball, the weather broke. A niggling wind shuffled the leaves, clouds scudded in from the west, it began to rain.

To the girl stumbling in her torn sacking dress up the grassy path that led from Mersham woods to the kitchen gardens, the rain meant nothing. She was in the last stages of exhaustion; her hair filthy and matted, her bare feet bleeding, a frayed tape with a number stamped on to it still clinging to her wrist. Every so often she would stop for breath and turn her bruised, vacant face towards the woods, listening for pursuit, before she was off again and as she ran she sobbed continously like a child.

She had reached the kitchen gardens, passed through the door in the wall, crossed the orchard. In her clouded brain there was only one bright image: one room, one person to whom she could no longer give a name.

Nearly spent now, she stumbled across the servants’ courtyard, dragging herself along the damp stone walls of the kitchen quarters, groping, putting up a hand with its torn fingernails to feel for the window, the one window behind which was sanctuary.

She had found it. With a last desperate effort she leant across the water butt and tapped once on the pane of glass behind which Mrs Park lay sleeping, before she slithered, unconscious, on to the cobbles.

Win had returned.

‘There’ll have to be an enquiry, Rupert,’ the distraught dowager said to her son. ‘Dr Marsh says there’s no doubt Win’s been seriously ill-treated. It must be an absolutely diabolical place — she was dressed in sacking, literally. She’s half-starved, too, and terrified. If you go up to her, even though she’s barely conscious she puts up her arms as though she expects to be hit. I’m going to get it closed down if it’s the last thing I do. And Rupert, you must speak to Muriel — the servants are dreadfully upset! Mrs Park’s given in her notice — she’s going to take Win to her sister’s when she’s well enough. I can’t think how Muriel came to find such a place. It’s miles away, thank heavens, and notorious, I understand.’

‘Surely Muriel must have made enquiries?’ said the earl, dragging himself out of his private hell to attend to his mother.

‘Well, she should have gone herself to see it, Rupert. You can’t imagine how much harm this will do below stairs. They’re upset enough about Anna’s going, and though it’s noble of her it’s quite unnecessary because Minna asked her to stay and the Rabinovitches also—’

‘Noble?’ Rupert’s voice tore at the dowager’s raw nerves like sandpaper. ‘That’s rich! That’s very rich! Anna hasn’t gone alone, I assure you. She’s eloped. I found her in the garden carrying on like a guttersnipe with one of the chauffeurs.’

‘The chauffeurs?’ The dowager’s brow cleared. She smiled. ‘Oh, yes, I forgot you weren’t there when that came out. It seems that the Nettlefords’ chauffeur was her Cousin Sergei, the one she’s so fond of! You can imagine how Honoria carried on when she found she’d let a perfectly good prince get away.’

‘I see. That explains it.’ Rupert’s voice was grimmer than ever. ‘Well, they should make a very handsome couple — and at least we’re spared the strain of having our coals carried upstairs by a princess.’

‘No dear, I’m sure Anna—’

Rupert swung round and the dowager stepped back a pace. Never in all her life had she seen him look like that.

‘You will not mention Anna to me again, please,’ he said. ‘Not ever.’

By the time Rupert came to find her, Muriel was in a very nasty temper. Louise, sent for to replace Anna, had refused to wait on her and Muriel had been compelled, on a morning on which she particularly wished to dazzle, to dress herself.

‘She’ll have to be sent away, Rupert,’ she said now, angrily recounting her tale of woe.

‘There is not the slightest question of Louise being sent away,’ said Rupert levelly. He had just spent half an hour cross-examining his butler. Proom’s attempts at honourable evasion had withered before the tactics that Rupert had perfected in four years of dealing with his men. The earl was now fully informed of the situation below stairs and his anger, though perfectly contained, far outstripped Muriel’s own. ‘Louise was upset because of your treatment of Win, which, I don’t scruple to tell you, Muriel, was monstrous! As far as I can see, you virtually had the girl kidnapped on her day off.’

‘How dare you, Rupert. How dare you speak to me like that!’

‘I won’t humiliate you by countermanding the orders you have already given,’ continued Rupert as though she had not spoken, ‘but there must be no further interference with Proom’s arrangements. As for Mrs Proom, Mersham is her home and will be until the day she dies.’

‘Mersham!’ hissed Muriel. ‘Don’t talk to me about Mersham. Your precious Mersham would be under the hammer now if it wasn’t for me.’

‘Yes,’ said Rupert quietly. ‘And better it should be than that it should be destroyed by the kind of ideas perpetrated by your friend Dr Lightbody. If George were alive he’d think that too.’

‘Oh? What’s wrong with Dr Lightbody’s ideas? I happen to be about to invite him to come and work down here.’

Rupert looked at her in amazement. ‘You can’t imagine I would allow that?’ he said.

‘Allow?’ shouted Muriel, her chest heaving with operatic rage. ‘Allow! Who do you think you are?’

Rupert’s next words were spoken very softly.

‘The owner of Mersham, Muriel,’ he said.

And in the stunned silence which followed he went on more gently: ‘Surely you didn’t imagine that your wealth would allow you to bully me? As for Dr Lightbody, you are, of course, perfectly free to choose your own friends, but that I should allow a man whose ideas are wholly repugnant to me to set up shop at Mersham is quite ridiculous.’ His face creased into a smile. ‘On the other hand your relations are quite another matter.’

‘My… relations,’ faltered Muriel.

Rupert nodded. ‘Your grandmother, for example, would be perfectly welcome to make her home with us,’ he went on silkily, ‘or your Uncle Nat. I’ve always wanted to meet a rat-catcher — especially one with such original ideas about what to do with the skins.’

‘You… wouldn’t,’ said Muriel, who had turned quite white.

‘Not if you don’t wish it. But remember what I have said.’ Suddenly he reached out, took her hand: ‘Look, Muriel, you don’t love me, do you? You’re beautiful and capable and rich; you could marry anyone. It’s not too late to free yourself. Think hard, my dear — there are a lot of years ahead of us. Could you really be happy with a man who dislikes everything you hold most dear?’

Panic overwhelmed Muriel. Two days to go: literally the day after tomorrow she would be a countess! Was it possible that this glittering prize could still be snatched from her? On this very morning she had meant to tell Rupert at what times he might physically approach her. That he might find it in himself not to approach her at all had never even crossed her mind. And, squeezing her eyelids together, she managed a perfectly authentic tear.

‘Please don’t talk like that, dearest,’ she said, and for the first time he saw her genuinely afraid. ‘I’m extremely… devoted to you.’ And as he remained silent, ‘You wouldn’t… jilt me?’

Rupert shook his head.

‘No, Muriel,’ he said, trying to keep the weariness out of his voice: ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

Crossing the hall on his way out with his dog, the earl came upon a cluster of servants grouped round the library door, which had been left slightly ajar. Peggy with a feather duster, James with his stepladder… Sid.

Moving closer, he heard a voice issuing forth: high-pitched, well-modulated, self-assured…

‘… Can anyone seriously doubt, ladies and gentlemen, that the elimination of all that is sick and maimed and displeasing in our society can — and indeed must — be the aim of every thinking…’

The servants, seeing his lordship, scuttled for cover. Rupert pushed open the door. On the dais at the far end of the empty library, one hand resting on the bust of Hercules which had given Anna so much trouble, stood Dr Lightbody, testing the acoustics of his new home.

Rupert entered, Baskerville at his heels. The door shut behind him. The servants crept slowly forward again. Till the door flew open and a dishevelled, blond-haired man shot out into the hallway and collapsed in a heap on to the mosaic tiles…

Very late that night, Proom, on his last rounds, found a light still burning in the gold salon and went to investigate.

Lying sprawled on a sofa, his head thrown back against the cushions, one arm flung out — was his lordship. His breathing was stertorous; the decanter of whisky on the low table beside him was empty.

For a long moment, Proom stood looking down at his master. Something about the pose of the body, both taut and abandoned and the weariness of the slightly parted lips, half-recalled an entry he had seen in one of his encyclopaedias… Something about ‘Early Christian Martyrs’, he thought. Then suddenly it came to him: Botticelli’s altarpiece of St Barnabas in the Uffizi.

He leant forward to shake his lordship by the shoulder. Whereupon the earl opened an unfocused eye, pronounced, with perfect clarity, a single word — and at once passed out again.