The Mystery of Cromwell's Skull by James Evelyn

Author:James, Evelyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Raven Publications
Published: 2023-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Mrs Moss escorted Victoria to her bedroom.

“I do find it most disturbing that something in the house has gone missing,” she said, bustling her through and pointing out where she kept her belongings.

The room contained a wardrobe, a small bed with a metal bedstead, and a small chest of drawers beside it. There was not much else aside from a very old chair that sat in the corner with a book perched on the arm. The book, when Victoria took a closer look, was a work of poetry.

“All the years I have worked here, no one has ever broken into the house,” Mrs Moss continued. She sat herself down on her old bed, which creaked beneath her. “I have been here since I was a girl, you know. Back then, it seemed a different place. That was when old Mr Dunbar was alive. His wife was still around then too, and the older boys, though they were not here long before they moved out and went their own ways. I remember the current Mr Dunbar’s father very well. A sweet lad, perhaps a little bit naïve, but on the whole I liked him a good deal. I should say I liked him better than his older brother. Though there was nothing particularly wrong with him, just that he was aloof and did not seem to care much what the servants got up to, or how they felt about life.

“I know it is rather peculiar to say such things, but a servant does notice when they are cared about. And though many a householder would assume that a servant was just a tool, something no different really to a sophisticated fire poker, to a servant it means a lot when the family cares about them. It alters the way we work for a start, at least, I think so. I would not have been here all this time had I felt uncared for, and certainly Mr Jennings would not have stayed. The old master was very, very good to us, and so was his daughter.”

Mrs Moss became solemn. She stared at the walls of her room, which were papered in a pattern of small rosebuds and green stripes. She seemed to be looking beyond them. To another time, another place. Remembering who had gone before them, and who was now lost to her.

“Mr Dunbar seems very nice,” Victoria said to try to nudge her out of her morbidity.

Mrs Moss glanced at her.

“Oh yes, he is very nice, and I am sure he will have a lovely wife, and they will have a family here, and it will be quite something. The house will bustle again, and that will be very nice. Very nice.”

There was something in the way she spoke that made Victoria feel she did not entirely mean that, perhaps after all these years of growing used to serving a single elderly woman, Mrs Moss was not feeling comfortable with the idea of having a young family in the house again.

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