“Is he lost?” Mr. Ferncliffe knew the moment the words popped out of his mouth that he had hit the nail on the head and he felt his spirits lift: Here was the damsel in distress his heart was always seeking. What did it matter that she failed to see him as a knight in shining armor? He would prove to her that chivalry was his middle name. Actually, his middle name was Herbert, but that was a disclosure that could be made much later, over a glass of red wine. If he were to help her, he must first ask one vital question.
“And your name is?”
“Flora.” She evinced appropriate maidenly surprise. “And Grandpa isn’t lost. It’s just that I can’t find him in any of the usual places. Most times when there’s a tour going on, he stays close to the old buttery where the silver collection is kept, but ...”
“I’ll help you look for him.” Mr. Ferncliffe put his hand in his raincoat pocket and produced, instead of a sword suitable for slaying dragons, a notepad and pencil. “Let me just take down a few details and then, if we
don’t find your grandfather in a very short time, I can spare you the distress of phoning up the police.”
“But it isn’t that serious.” Flora backed away from him, narrowly missing stumbling over a couple of boys on the floor, who along with the rest of the group had opted to be quiet as they listened in on the unfolding drama. “I’m sorry, sir, that I said anything to make you think I was worried. Grandpa is probably in the kitchen right now having a cup of tea with the housekeeper.”
“But what if he isn’t?” Mr. Ferncliffe’s voice rang out with unusual fervor. “What if the poor old chap has wandered away from the building and is even now heading down the road, a pitiful prey to oncoming traffic?”
Flora pressed her fingers to her temples, drew a deep breath, and mustered a smile. “Grandpa is in full possession of his faculties. He’s as sensible as you are, sir.” A derisive snicker from one of the boys filled in a tiny pause. “Thank you for your kindness but, honestly, you’ve got enough on your plate looking after twenty boys without worrying about me or Grandpa.”
“Twenty-two.” Mr. Ferncliffe put the notebook and pencil back in his pocket and tried not to look as rejected as he felt, when Flora Hutchins disappeared through an archway to his left. He told himself that he was better off without her, that she couldn’t even count, and that his mother would have hated her. Then his eyes totted up the number of boys present in the grand hall and he discovered Flora was right. There were twenty of them. So where were the other two?
Mr. Ferncliffe was about to pose this question to the remaining little horrors when Edward Whitbread came sauntering forth from the direction of the tea shop.
‘‘Awfully good cream cakes,” he announced, as if this explained everything.
“How dare you wander off on your own?” Mr. Ferncliffe, unable to prevent his voice from sounding
pathetically shrill, dug a hand into his raincoat pocket and got stabbed by the pencil.
“I wasn’t on my own, sir,” responded Edward with the arrogance he had learned at his father’s knee. “I was with Boris Smith. He said he was going to look at the rude screen in the chapel. Thought it would be full of carvings of saints with their clothes off. Disgusting, some people’s minds.” Edward sighed heavily. “Anyway, sir, I thought that for the good of the school I should go along to keep an eye on him. After all, he’s not like the rest of us, is he?”
Mr. Ferncliffe gnawed on the inside of his cheek. It was true Boris Smith was not cut from the same cloth as his fellow classmates. Each year New Church Preparatory School For Boys offered a free place to an undeserving youngster from a less than affluent background. Boris was one of the recipients of this largesse, and Mr. Ferncliffe had pondered, on more than one occasion, the wisdom of the school’s board of governors. Such as the time Boris’s science experiment turned out to be a demonstration in blowing up the chemistry lab. But Mr. Ferncliffe knew Edward Whitbread to be an instigator. He found it impossible to believe he had tailed after the other boy to keep him out of trouble.
“So where is Boris now?” he asked frostily. “Stuffing himself with cream cakes in the tea shop?”
“I don’t think so, sir.” Edward smirked at a couple of his pals who were only too eager to egg him on. “I gave up on Boris after he started in on some cock-and-bull story about his Aunt Mabel being Lady Gossinger. As my father says, it really doesn’t do to try to help these people. If you’ll believe it, Mr. Ferncliffe, Boris said he was going to sneak into the family’s private quarters and surprise the old girl.” Edward looked sickeningly virtuous. “I wasn’t prepared to be a party to that, sir; so I went to the tea shop expecting that you would be along soon with the rest of the chaps. And the woman at the counter, a good sort for that kind of person, insisted I have something to
eat
to
keep my strength up for the coach journey home.”
Mr. Ferncliffe ground his teeth. Duty demanded that he go in search of Boris, but he wouldn’t have been the least disappointed to discover that the other missing party, the butler named Hutchins, was a particularly maladjusted vampire who had bitten the boy on the neck before escorting him on a tour of the dungeons. Ill-wishing not being an exact science, it is rarely one-hundred-percent successful, even in places with the shadowy history of Gossinger Hall. And it would not have lightened Mr. Ferncliffe’s emotional load to know that Boris Smith was blithely unaware that he was in deep trouble.
This was typical of young Boris, who tended to live entirely in the present. He had promised his grandmother Edna to behave himself on the school trip. And at the time he had meant every word. He had agreed that although her bleached blond hair might be deceiving, she was getting too old for any more shocks to her nervous system. He had also promised that he would not go telling any of the kids in his class that his Great-Aunt Mabel was her Ladyship of Gossinger Hall. Gran had explained that if the board of governors got hold of that piece of information they might order her to cough up the school fees for the last four terms. And then where would they be? Out on the street with a mattress and a saucepan, that’s where. Boris had assured Gran, before heading off to join his classmates, that he understood completely.
But, typically, he had forgotten his promises. He modestly refrained from taking credit for getting into mischief with Edward Whitbread, because his had only been a supporting role, requiring little more than a promise that he would keep his mouth shut about their visit to the medieval toilet and subsequent high jinks.
And afterward, in the spirit of camaraderie, Boris had told Edward about Great-Auntie Mabel. The other boy had crossed his heart and promised not to blab and Boris almost trusted him; but suddenly it seemed to him that, given the chance that this afternoon’s activities would catch up with him, he might as well go whole hog against Gran’s wishes and beard the old bat, otherwise known as Lady Gossinger, in her lair. Perhaps he could squeeze five pounds out of her.
Boris had been about to open the door marked “Private” when it swung open with a groan that startled him into sitting smartly down on his bottom and scooting under a table covered with pamphlets to avoid getting barked in the shins. Before he could get up, two men came out and started talking, and he decided to stay where he was rather than be ordered to scram and in all likelihood lose his opportunity to sweeten up Great-Aunt Mabel.
“Must say I feel the most frightful cad,” said the elderly man with the bald head and the stoutish build of one who rarely, if ever, refuses custard with his pudding. “Hate to see a woman cry.”
“Afraid it came as a bit of a blow to her, Uncle Henry,” responded the younger man, who looked to Boris like a real toff.
“I suppose you think I should have told her in private, eh, Vivian? No need really for you or Sophie to be there. Knew that, of course. But I’m a coward by nature.” The elderly man looked deeply sorrowful. “Always have been, always will be, I suppose. That’s why I married Mabel in the first place, if you want the whole truth of it.”
“There’s no need to bare your soul to me. Some things best left unsaid, Uncle Henry.”
Boris realized these two starchy-mouthed geezers were talking about Gran’s one and only sister, his Great-Aunt Mabel.
“Hang it all, Vivian,” the older man said, “got to talk to someone. Made a damn silly mistake the day I met Mabel. Thought she’d come after the job as housekeeper. Been advertising for one all week in the paper. Never occurred to me she was part of a tour group. She looked the part, do you see? Like a housekeeper, I mean. And she wasn’t wearing the headphones, so you can understand, can’t you, m’boy, how I got the wrong end of the stick?"
“I don’t get what you’re saying, Uncle Henry.”
“Know it sounds damn odd, m’boy, but when I asked her if she’d be happy at Gossinger, she thought I was popping the question. So what was there for a chap to do?”
“You could have told her she’d misunderstood.”
“There is that.” Sir Henry looked dolefully down at the floor. “But there is also, when all is said and done, the matter of atonement. Of recent years I’ve become something of a religious man. No point in letting the chapel go to waste, if you understand what I’m saying, m’boy.”
“Not precisely.” Boris could see that the young man named Vivian was striving not to look disappointingly thick.
“Never was much good at explaining m’self.” Sir Henry squared his shoulders and looked his nephew in the eye. “But to try and put it in a nutshell, I rather got the idea when Mabel was so stuck on marrying me that I was being handed a penance that might in its small way make some reparation for the sins of the past. Not my past, if you get what I’m saying, Vivian. Dull sort of fellow. Never been sufficiently interesting to get up to any great wickedness.”
“Then whose past, Uncle Henry?”
“Enough said, m’boy.”
“It’s not that business about the family silver?”
“Mustn’t even discuss it, Vivian; walls have ears,
don’t you see, gave m’father my solemn oath when the poor chap was coughing out his lungs on his deathbed. That’s when he told me the story. Just as your father told you before he passed on. That’s how it works, family tradition and all that.” This was a lengthy speech for Sir Henry and he wasn’t done yet. “I hope you understand, m’boy, that in making the decision to leave Gossinger Hall to Hutchins, I feel I’ve done m’damnedest to move our family one step closer to laying the past to rest.”
“I’m sure you’ve done what you think is best, Uncle Henry,” responded Vivian, “but to be perfectly frank I don’t suppose that is a whole lot of consolation to Aunt Mabel at this moment.”
“You could be right.” Sir Henry stood there, looking very much like a stuffed owl to Boris, who was still hiding out under the table. “But when all’s said and done it’s not as though Hutchins would turn Mabel out of the house after my day. I haven’t yet spoken to him about m’plans, but I haven’t a doubt in the world he’d invite her to make Gossinger her home for as long as she liked.”
“And she could be a second mother to Flora?” Vivian raised an eyebrow. “I may be wrong, Uncle, but I rather got the impression from Aunt Mabel’s outburst upstairs that she would sooner be dead than stay on under those conditions.”
“You think she put it that strongly, do you?” Sir Henry looked crestfallen until he remembered something. “But it’s not as though she won’t have options, m’boy. I plan to leave her a tidy sum, enough money to keep her in reasonable comfort. And she has the flat in Bethnal Green, you know. She’s got a sister there, and after I’m gone I would think she’d want to get back to her roots. Nothing like your own people, is there? Fact of life.” Sir Henry breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Give Mabel time, she’ll come round.”
“If you say so, Uncle Henry.”
“She’s a good woman, wouldn’t want you to think I’m not damned fond of her after all these years.”
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on,
thought Boris. He shrank back closer to the wall as Sir Henry looked around him in an absentminded sort of way and said that he thought he would go and look for Hutchins and have a chat with him about the situation. Whereupon Vivian Gossinger said that he would toddle down to the pub for a pint. And after bleating on a bit more like a pair of sheep, the two of them strolled off along the corridor, leaving Boris to get to his feet and ponder.
The boy found it impossible not to feel a twinge of sympathy for Great-Aunt Mabel, even though she’d never done anything halfway nice for Gran. But there was no denying that he saw the possibilities in the situation. Right now Auntie was bound to be feeling all alone in the world, betrayed by her husband, abandoned by the stupid nephew, so how could she fail to view a visit from Boris as a little ray of sunshine sent like a gift from God to lighten her darkest hour?
Boris opened the door marked “Private” and went up narrow twisting stairs that were partially lit by a window that was the shape and approximate size of an arrow. It was like climbing out of a well, he thought, and he’d probably smell like a frog for at least a week. Boris felt a flicker of affection for the council flat where he lived with Gran. It mostly smelled like toasted cheese or fish-and-chips.
By the time he reached the top of the stairs and found himself on a narrow landing, facing a door, he was convinced Great-Aunt Mabel would burst into tears of joy when she saw him. His only fear was that she would also smother him with sloppy kisses or, even worse, want to hold him on her lap. But, he reasoned philosophically as he lifted his hand to tap on the door,
if he ended up with ten pounds in his pocket it wouldn’t be so bad.
Boris knocked a second time. Not getting any answer, he turned the heavy iron handle with both hands and pushed open the door. There were two ladies in the funny round room. One was lying on a sofa and the other one, who looked a lot like the Queen Mother, was bending over her, talking in a singing sort of voice.
“It’s Cousin Sophie, Mabel ...”