‘Tut,’ said the butler, expressing in the only way he knew, his deep compassion.

Then he went downstairs to order James to come and help him carry his lordship to his bed.

On the following day, the last before the wedding, Mr Proom received a telephone call. It was from the station master at Maidens Over and informed him that a family by the name of Herring had been apprehended while trying to cheat the Great Western Railway of two fares.

‘Where are they now?’ asked Proom when he had digested this piece of information.

‘They are locked in my office, Mr Proom, pending further investigations. What would you wish me to do with them?’

‘If you would be so kind as to keep them there, Mr Fernby,’ said Mr Proom. ‘Just keep them there. On no account let them out till I arrive.’

‘It will be a pleasure, Mr Proom,’ said the station master.

But when he had replaced the receiver, Proom did not go to find the earl or the dowager. Instead he stood for a long time lost in thought. Mr Proom remembered Melvyn Herring. He remembered him very well…

‘It is impossible,’ said Mr Proom to himself after a while. And then: ‘It is absurd. I must be losing my reason even to think of such a thing.’

He continued to stand by the telephone, the light reflecting off his high, domed forehead. ‘Quite absurd,’ he repeated, ‘and in the worst possible taste. Yet could anything be worse than things as they are now?’

They could not. And presently Proom went first to find James to tell him that he would have to deputize for a few hours, and then to Mr Potter to ask if he could spare one of the cars.

Leo Rabinovitch was working in his study. He had retired from the rag trade, but his business sense was inborn and since he and Hannah had come to the country their wealth, due to his astute investments, had trebled. Now it seemed as though his fortune would go, not as he had hoped, to further the interests of the Cohens or the Fleishmanns or the Kussevitskys, all of whom had sons whose mothers had watched Susie reach marriageable age with unconcealed interest, but to the Byrnes, whose record in matters like the burning of the synagogues in medieval York, for example, was far from impressive. Still, there it was. Tom was a nice lad and Susie’s very spectacle frames, since the ball, seemed to have turned to gold.

It was at this point that the parlourmaid, round-eyed with wonder, announced Cyril Proom. Proom had come to the front door, a gesture which had brought beads of perspiration out on his forehead, and the maid had nearly fainted. Not because she had expected him to come by the back door either. She had simply expected him to be for ever at Mersham; immaculate, planted, there.

Rabinovitch looked up — and was at once attacked by a deep, an almost ungovernable lust.

Hannah was a good housekeeper. The Towers ran well, the food was excellent, the rooms clean and cared for. But Hannah, sensibly knowing her limitations, stuck to women servants, and these she treated in the traditions that prevailed in the village homesteads of her youth. In the servants’ quarters of The Towers nothing was secret, nothing, felt Leo Rabinovitch, was spared. The Rabinovitches’ maids got the shingles and the piles and were nursed by Hannah. They were crossed in love and their sobs floated up to the study where Rabinovitch was trying to read his company reports. They dreamt about nesting crows and royal babies and fire engines and told him so while serving breakfast. They walked in their sleep, their aunts fell off bicycles, poltergeists infested their cousins’ cottages — and every disaster, minutely chronicled, reverberated through the rooms and corridors of his house.

But if Proom had come to offer his services… If Proom were to take over the running of The Towers… Leo’s eyes momentarily closed and a series of dizzying vignettes flashed through his mind. Himself sitting at dinner while a totally silent footman, an English footman, inscrutable and powdered, approached with the lebernockerl and sauerkraut. Himself arriving after a day in the city, handing his hat and coat to Proom himself and receiving only a pleasant: ‘I trust you had a successful day, sir?’

But as he looked at Proom, standing respectfully before him in his unaccustomed lounge suit, Leo knew that all this could not — should not, even — be. For Proom belonged to Mersham. Proom was Mersham.

‘You will sit down, Mr Proom?’

‘No, thank you, sir.’ The mere idea had made Proom flinch. He was extremely embarrassed now, wondering why he had come, and putting off the moment when he would have to make his request, he said, ‘May I be permitted to felicitate you on the news of Miss Rabinovitch’s engagement? The event gave great satisfaction below stairs.’

‘Thank you. How are things at Mersham?’ enquired Rabinovitch.

Proom, in pursuit of his plan, made no attempt at polite evasion.

‘Bad, sir,’ he said with finality.

Rabinovitch nodded. ‘You know we shall not be visiting any longer?’

‘I had heard, sir. There will be a number of changes — and none of them for the better.’

Rabinovitch waited. ‘I can help you, perhaps?’

Proom cleared his throat. ‘A long time ago, sir, you said that if I ever needed help, I had only to come to you.’

Leo nodded. ‘I said it and it is true. Never shall I forget what you did for Susie.’

The incident to which Rabinovitch referred had taken place shortly after they came to The Towers. They had all gone in a party to a local race meeting, taking along the twelve-year-old Susie. Susie had patiently watched three races, after which she had drawn a book out of her pocket and settled herself on a folding stool to read. She was deep in her story when a Bugatti coupé, incompetently parked on a slope, began to roll towards her and it was Proom, standing guard over the picnic hampers, who had seen what was happening and pulled her to safety.

Proom plunged. ‘I need a considerable sum of money, sir. Immediately. And in cash.’

He mentioned it and Rabinovitch’s bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise. The sum was one which would keep a man and his family in comfort for a year.

‘You shall have it, Mr Proom. But I wonder whether you are wise to take it in this way. If you are considering the purchase of a cottage for Mrs Proom, for example, it might be wiser—’

‘It’s not for me, sir,’ said Proom, shocked. ‘I’d never ask it for myself, sir. I can take care of myself; I’ve a bit saved.’

‘For what, then?’ asked Leo, surprised. ‘Or do you not wish to tell me?’

‘It isn’t that I don’t want to, sir. But… well, I have this plan and I don’t really want to involve anyone else. It’s a very… peculiar plan.’

‘You are trying to help someone else?’

‘You could say that.’ There was a pause. ‘Things couldn’t be worse at Mersham, sir. Lady Westerholme, well she’s at her wits’ end and Mr Rupert — his lordship, I mean — I saw him in hospital when they first brought him over from France and he looked better than he does this morning. And Anna’s gone—’

Leo smiled. ‘You heard what happened at the ball?’

Proom inclined his head. ‘Yes, sir. The account gave great pleasure to all the staff. But it was what was done to Win,’ he continued, ‘that made me think anything was worth trying.’

‘Win? Who is Win?’ enquired Leo.

Proom told him the story, while Leo made Central European noises of sympathy.

‘If I tell you what I mean to do, sir,’ said Proom, realizing how unfair it was to ask for help without giving his confidence, ‘I’m afraid you’ll think I’ve taken leave of my senses.’

Carefully, much embarrassed by its theatricality, he explained his plan. When he had finished, Leo looked at him incredulously.

‘Your plan will not succeed, I think; there are too many people who will fail to act as you hope. But if it does, don’t you see, you are destroying also yourself? The financial consequences to Mersham would be disastrous.’

‘I know, sir. But… well, I taught Mr Rupert to ride a bicycle. There wasn’t the fuss made of him there was of Lord George, but there’s no doubt who was the finer gentleman. And seeing him like this…’

There was a pause. Then Leo nodded. ‘You shall have the money, Mr Proom. Immediately. And in cash.’

Anna, meanwhile, was fine. She was very well. She had, as she frequently informed Pinny, never felt better in her life.

‘I don’t doubt it, dear,’ said Pinny. ‘All I said was that I wish you’d eat something. You’ve been home twenty-four hours and you haven’t touched a thing.’

Anna gazed obediently at the breakfast table set out in the little parlour, took hold of a piece of toast and conveyed it to her mouth.

‘It doesn’t go down,’ she said in a puzzled voice, exactly as she had done when she was five years old and sickening for quinsy.

Pinny’s heart contracted with pity and helplessness. From Anna’s account of Mersham, which seemed to be inhabited by absolutely everyone except its owner, she had drawn her own conclusions.

‘I have been thinking,’ said Anna, ‘and I believe it would be best if I went to Paris. Kira has said she can find work for me in her salon — selling perfumes and such things. It would,’ she added bleakly, ‘be very interesting.’

Since none of them had the fare to Pimlico, let alone to Paris, Pinny felt free to agree that it did indeed sound a fascinating way of life.

‘Ah, no, my little flea,’ said the countess, patting her daughter’s hand. ‘Paris is so far! Something will come along soon, you see. Dounia has a new plan,’ she continued, referring to her irrepressible sister-in-law, the Princess Chirkovsky. ‘We are to make very much kvass in Miss King’s kitchen — she has permitted it — and sell it to the teashops of the Lyons because nobody in England knows at all about kvass—’

‘Luckily for them,’ said Pinny under her breath.

Anna tried to smile. But added to the ceaseless, searing pain about Rupert, there was another anxiety now about Sergei. If she could not find suitable work soon and help her family, Sergei might well sacrifice himself and marry Larissa Rakov and a loveless marriage seemed to Anna, in her present state, to be a hell like no other.

‘There are always good things happening,’ said the countess, determined to divert her daughter. ‘For example, have you heard about Pupsik?’

‘No?’ This time Anna’s smile was not assumed. The troubles of the Baroness de Wodzka were very close to her heart. ‘Has he…?’

‘No,’ said the countess. ‘He has not. But the daughter of Colonel Terek has married a very rich man with many factories, and of course the Colonel has always had a tendresse for the baroness ever since she came from the Smolny, so he has sent Pupsik to a very expensive clinic in ’arley Street and they have made Röntgen rays and found absolutely clear the Rastrelli diamond in some part of him that begins, I think, with a “c”.’

‘That’s marvellous! So now they will be able to operate?’

‘They will be able,’ admitted the countess. ‘But they will not, because the baroness does not permit that Pupsik should suffer and has taken instead a job where she receives the washing parcels in a laundry in, I think, Clapham. But you see how there are always wonderful things.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ said Anna tenderly, getting up to kiss her.

She wandered over to the window. In three hours, Rupert and Muriel would be man and wife. ‘Help me to endure it,’ she prayed. ‘Oh, help me, please.’

‘There are many wonderful things,’ her mother had said. Well, she would have to find them somehow. Even in this wedding, perhaps. And suddenly, unbidden, she did find something. Ollie’s pride and joy as she walked down the aisle in her pink dress, holding up Muriel’s train. For Ollie would be all right now. Anna, slipping upstairs, meaning to say goodbye to Ollie, had seen Muriel go into the child’s room carrying a most beautiful doll. Clearly Muriel was sorry for what she had said and had come to make sure that nothing spoilt the little girl’s joy on her big day.

Lost in reverie, Anna did not at first pay any attention to the huge, black car which had drawn up in front of the house. A car with a pennant on the bonnet and two serious-looking men in dark suits in the back. Men who now descended to allow the chauffeur to hand out a figure wrapped in innumerable shawls… an old woman in a kerchief…

Anna gave a gasp. ‘Mama! Pinny!’

But when they reached her she could not speak and it was the countess, tears running down her cheek, who cried: