The Jubilee Problem by Anna Elliott & Charles Veley

Author:Anna Elliott & Charles Veley [Elliott, Anna & Veley, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B075XPS1LD
Publisher: Wilton Press
Published: 2017-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

34. AN EXCHANGE OF BANKNOTES

LUCY

I would have expected the butler in a household like the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire’s to be a stately, silver-haired personage with a name like Worthington or Cogswell. Someone stiffly dignified and proper, who fairly oozed upper crust respectability from every pore.

The actual Devonshire House butler, however, was the opposite of that mental picture in nearly every regard.

Mr. Bellini, husband to Mrs. Bellini, the housekeeper, looked rather like an Italian version of St. Nicholas from a Christmas card illustration. Only an inch or two taller than I, he had a plump, round frame and an equally round, jolly-looking face, with a pair of humorous dark eyes and wisps of curly black hair circling the edges of his otherwise balding head.

He was energetically polishing the silver when I came into the butler’s pantry to speak with him, but he was happy to talk to me as he worked, especially after he had studied my face and then declared, “Ah, you’ve Italian blood in your veins, or I’m a Dutchman.”

He spoke English well, but with a strong accent.

I smiled. “Yes, my mother. My grandfather still lives in Rome.”

It still gave me a slight jolt of surprise to say as much. For my entire life, I’d had no idea who my parents, much less grandparents, might be. But Mr. Bellini beamed at me. “I knew it!”

It took me only a few moments to turn the subject from the meals to be provided for the D’Oyly Carte players—my ostensible reason for the visit—to the subject of Maud Jones.

“Ah.” Bellini shook his head, the smile momentarily slipping from his face. “Poor unhappy girl. Her work was no good, no good at all. My wife spoke several times to her about it. Mrs. Bellini had made up her mind to recommend that the girl be dismissed from service if she did not improve.”

A day had passed since I had put Mary on the northbound train. So far, I had had no outraged telegrams from Holmes, which I took to be a hopeful sign. Granted, I had not been back to the Exeter Street flat. I had spent yesterday in rehearsals for the Duchess’s ball and then slept last night in an unused dressing room at the Savoy.

But if my father had wished to communicate with me, I did not doubt that he would have found a way.

“Maud was going to be let go?” I asked Mr. Bellini.

Bellini dipped his head, working the edge of his polishing rag into the elaborate swirls on the handle of a serving spoon. He wore a heavy gold signet ring on his left hand—another detail that did not at all fit my picture of the perfect butler—and it caught the light as he worked.

“My wife had as good as told the girl herself.” He leaned forward a little. “We think that was why she chose to leave—to spare herself the shame of having been let go.”

A footstep sounded in the passageway behind me.

Bellini glanced up, looking

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